Chương 457: (450) 6.64. Plans in Place

"The whole barrier?" Shia repeated, staring at him with wide eyes.

"You managed to turn the whole barrier between fragments solid? You're serious?"

"Yep. For the record, a huge part of that was the grand artifact the two of us created, so I quite literally couldn't have done it without you." Shia leaned back in her chair, still staring at him in shock as she tried to wrap her head around the story he'd just told them. With impending doom out of the way for at least the moment, Shia, Alka, and him had gathered once more, this time sitting in a circle on a hill on top of the Burrow rather than heading back in.

They wanted to be able to leap into action the moment Scule's Soul Mark stopped moving. Shia appeared to be having a tough time comprehending his tale, but in typical fashion, Alka was less than impressed.

"The Contracts guy sounds like a right prick," she said, crossing her arms as she glanced up at the heavens.

"I'm assuming he can hear me, right? Or do I have to raise my voice?"

"Maybe don't antagonize the God that Scule said is one of the strongest in all existence," Vin suggested, rolling his eyes as Alka gave him an indifferent shrug.

"I know I can't tell you guys the details on why me and him are even having these issues in the first place, but I'm pretty certain his heart is in the right place."

"Do Gods even have hearts? I figured they were just big, glowing balls of golden light, or something along those lines," Alka admitted, her glowing eyes narrowing.

"If they have hearts, that means they can bleed…"

"And this unbreakable, magically-insulated, six-mile-wide barrier is going to hold up theoretically forever?" Shia asked, causing Vin to sigh and rub at his eyes.

"I think you've both gotten a little off track here," he admitted.

"I chatted with the Gods again, and I stopped the trogums from slaughtering everyone within this fragment. That's all we need to worry about. Perhaps we should be working on something slightly more useful? Like a plan on how we're actually going to take down the Rebel Queen once Scule and Reginald find her?"

"That's probably not a bad idea…" Shia admitted, tapping her chin as she peered at him.

"Wait a minute. If your barrier is blocking magic, can your Sense Soul even reach Scule from here?"

"That's… a pretty good point," Vin admitted, not having thought of that just yet. He hadn't asked for the mana to block everything from going through the barrier except for his magic. He'd called for a complete and utter blockade to be set up. In theory, his spells should be as ineffective as anyone else's for getting through. To confirm, he cast an experimental Sense Soul in the direction Scule had gone in. Sure enough, the spell rebounded back far quicker than it had the last few times.

If he hadn't known about the barrier, he would have just assumed that the Soul Mark he was looking for wasn't in that direction.

"It's strange… It blocks magic, but you can't really tell that it does. The only reason I noticed something was off was because my spell is designed to bounce back to me. Hopefully, that means the Rebel Queen doesn't know what happened. From her perspective, the thousand of troops she had pouring through the barrier suddenly just went dark. Fingers crossed she thinks something wiped them all out in an instant."

"So we need to shift locations in order to hunt for Scule and Reginald?" Alka asked.

"Get you a direct line past the barrier you created?"

"That would probably be for the best," Vin said, moving to get to his feet before something caused him to pause.

"Though now that I think about it…" Vin sat there, scratching his head as he went over the idea in his mind. Something about witnessing how mana was everything and everywhere had given him an idea. All this time, he'd been casting magic in a fairly straightforward manner. Sure, he could tweak his runic formations with Runic Recalibration, but casting a spell was largely as simple as pointing to where he wanted it to happen and pouring mana into the runic formation. But mana was everything. It was everywhere.

He was already harnessing the ambient mana in the air in order to propel his empowered sensing spells across multiple fragments. Who said his magic had to be cast in a straight line? Before his current train of thought could slip, Vin threw together his Sense Soul spell, taking a deep breath before he poured his mana into it. Only this time, as he cast, he tried to will his mana to move in the direction and way he wanted it to. It was almost like putting a spin on a thrown ball just as it left a pitcher's hand.

Done incorrectly, and the entire spell would fail to hit its target. But if the caster knew what they were doing... Vin grinned as he felt his mana pulse out of his body and bend, curving around the giant barrier he'd set up as it bypassed it completely. What he'd done had absolutely nothing to do with runic formations at all, so he'd never even considered something like this was possible. Yet it also wasn't anything he needed to worry about the Gods' intervening in either.

He wasn't forcing mana to obey his bidding and enact his demands, he was simply encouraging the spell he'd properly cast to bend a little bit. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Lesser arcane discovery! 5, 000 exp gained. His mana rebounded back around the barrier as it followed the same path he'd sent it out on, and Vin nodded.

"Good news, Scule is still alive. I'll cast the spell again in another couple of minutes and see if the two of them are still moving. As soon as they stop, we attack."

"How did you get your spell around the barrier?" Shia asked.

"It's hard to explain," Vin admitted.

"Actually, I think it's impossible to explain unless you've gotten a first-hand glimpse into how mana truly works."

"In that case, I think I'll let myself remain pleasantly curious," Shia snorted.

"No way am I going through all the crazy stuff you keep putting yourself through. With that problem solved, back to the matter at hand. What's the plan for going up against the Rebel Queen?"

"For starters, you shouldn't be going up against her at all," Alka pointed out.

"Remember what happened the last time we were there? She blasted your mind with information about her and her people the moment we stepped into her chambers. You were all but dead to the world for a good while. Even Vin took a few seconds to shrug it off. If it wasn't for me being there to put a blade to her throat, she could have had her elites kill the two of you in an instant."

"And that wasn't even an attack, she was just trying to communicate via memory like her people usually did," Vin added.

"Not to mention if she's commanding entire armies from whole fragments away, she has to have gotten a lot stronger since we last saw her. Alka and I should go this one alone. She's immune to mind magic, and I've got Total Resistance, a high focus, and my Survivor title to rely on. You, Scule, and Reginald could get mind wiped if you're not careful."

"I don't like it, but you've got a good point," Shia sighed.

"You know, maybe you should look into a spell to help prevent that sort of thing from working. You've already got Concealment, and that blocks magic from escaping the body. Maybe you can inverse it and form some sort of general, all-purpose shield against direct magic like that."

"That's not a bad idea… Though it would be more for combat classes. A spell like that would probably still work both ways, meaning no magic leaving the body so long as it's active either."

"Still, it could be useful for the Slayers in plenty of scenarios," Alka said.

"Remember when we went up against that first epic monster? The dimensional one that ate your arm? Its shriek paralyzed everyone across the entire battlefield other than me and you. A spell like Shia suggested could have kept the Slayers functional and in the fight."

"Good point. Alright, I'll add that one to the list," Vin said, pulling out his journal and jotting it down under his 'potential magic ideas' page.

"But just because you shouldn't go after the Rebel Queen directly, doesn't mean you can't help us. We could go with the same fake elite monster plan we used against the ranker king."

"Have Scule and I pretend to be an elite monster and attack from the side?" Shia asked, tapping at her chin some more as she thought.

"Draw out the Rebel Queen's more elite trogums and give you two an easier time getting to the main target? Yeah, I can do that. You guys don't think she can mind blast us from that close?"

"A power that strong will have a pretty hard fall off point," Vin said, oddly confident in his assumption. He didn't know why he felt so certain of his words, but he knew them to be true.

"Reaching out to communicate with friendly troops is one thing. Launching an attack is something entirely different. We were literally in her own chambers the last time, you'll be fine so long as you keep your distance."

"You sure you don't want me to head in on my own?" Alka asked.

"I know you've got plenty of defenses, but I'm completely immune. It would certainly be safer."

"There's no telling what defenses she'll have in place or if she has any other powers to rely on that she didn't before," Vin pointed out.

"For all we know she's developed some form of telekinesis to go along with her telepathy. You're one hell of a fighter, Alka, but you're not going to be able to do a damn thing if she levitates you a foot off the ground."

"I could throw my sword!" Alka argued, her eyes narrowing as if daring him to say that again.

"I wouldn't call that nothing!"

"Regardless, Vin should go with you," Shia said.

"Should Epli stay behind? We wouldn't want it to get mind blasted."

"Actually, I'm pretty certain her people are immune to that sort of thing," Vin admitted, leaning on Common Ally as he peered at Alka's helmet.

"Not because it doesn't have a brain, but because its people are so… slippery is the best way I can think to describe it. It's almost like the Rebel Queen's mental grasp would slip off Epli just as easily as a physical hand would."

"After Epli saved my ass during our battle with the ranker king, it goes where I go," Alka said, surprising Vin by patting her helm lovingly. Compassion wasn't exactly a side of Alka he'd ever really seen much of, but he was more than pleased to see it here.

Epli's presence had been doing wonders for his and Shia's worries that Alka may turn into an emotionless killing machine one day having been separated from her flesh and blood body, and he could only hope Alka and Epli continued getting along as well as they did. He knew the two of them spent most nights chatting with one another as Epli was nocturnal, and Alka physically couldn't sleep.

"Alright, I guess that's about as good a plan as we can put into place without seeing the terrain we'll be fighting in," Vin admitted, throwing out another bending Sense Soul as he curved the spell around the barrier. The spell bounced back and gave him his reading, and he blinked as he received what they'd been waiting for. Scule and Reginald were in the exact same location they'd been in the last time he'd cast.

The animal carcass the two of them had been hiding in had been dropped off, presumably somewhere near the Rebel Queen.

"It's go time," Vin said, wishing he had his new staff as he helped Shia to her feet.

"You guys ready to stop any more fragments from getting wiped out?"

"Oh yeah," Alka said, her eyes flaring as she mentally prepared herself.

"Time to go finish what I threatened months ago."