Chương 188

"Stop," Orion said, raising a hand. His command was barely a whisper, but in the silence of the tunnel, it was enough to echo all around them. The others froze, looking for whatever it was that had spooked him. Yet there was nothing out of the ordinary. The tunnel had continued beyond the Abyssal Eel much like in the previous section, except for one thing. There was a new scent in the air.

Usually, that wouldn't be something Orion would pay much attention to, but this particular smell stirred a long-suppressed part of his memories, reminding him of the days working in the engineering lab with other physics graduates to turn their ideas into something real. It was the smell of industry. The slightest tang of metal, mixed with grease and other, more elusive scents he couldn't precisely identify.

That had no place in a cave in the middle of the Sanctum's lands, but it definitely explained how the villagers managed to get such high-quality equipment and where they initially went.

"Lights off," he ordered.

"We don't want to reveal our presence." Luna and Dorian quickly extinguished their [Torchlights], while Pauline didn't need to because the shadows already clinging to her like a second skin rose, blurring her outline until she was barely more than a smudge in the darkness. Orion tapped his CC, adjusting the spectrum of his glasses to see better in the dark. It took them a few extra minutes to reach the end of the tunnel, but when they did, Orion immediately felt vindicated.

Ahead of them, the tunnel opened into a vast, natural grotto. An underground river ran through the middle of the grotto, deep enough for flat-bottomed barges to travel, and he once again wondered if they had come all the way from the sea. A makeshift dock had been built from fresh timber, the same high-quality wood used on the roofs of the nearby hamlet. A sleek black boat without a mast or sails was currently moored at the dock. It sat low in the water, with a smooth hull and free of barnacles.

Men in gray leathers were unloading crates, and they didn't have the typical lackadaisical air of smugglers. They resemble locals in their features, but their clothing and habits are unusual. They must have been working at this site for a long time.

"I don't see any runic engraving," Dorian muttered.

"And no rows. How does that thing move?" Magic was a highly versatile force, creating dozens of modes of transport, from flying brooms to self-driving carriages, yet they all shared similar schematics. This ship was unlike any other thing Orion had seen in this world so far.

"It has propellers," he muttered, pointing to a brass mechanism churning slowly at the stern. [Hypotheticism] had some trouble parsing through the enchantments on it, and he felt his suspicions grow firmer.

"There is a water-pressure enchantment that allows it to move at infinitesimally small mana costs. It's low enough that even looking at it, I can barely examine it. I imagine it would be undetectable at larger distances."

"It is," Pauline said gravely. She seemed a bit spooked, probably because her own methods of analysis weren't working that well. There were about a dozen men and women on the dock, but they weren't armed with cutlasses like pirates. Instead, they carried crossbows with bulky, glowing mechanisms attached to the stocks, which seemed very hard to shield against, if the distorted readings he was getting from them were any sign. Something meant to disrupt mana? I guess that would be like guns here.

A kind of great equalizer. Orion took a moment to examine the men. He didn't think his assessment was wrong, but given the stakes, he didn't want to risk these people not being the villagers. Matthus — Opportunistic Smuggler Class: Fisherman [D-rank] Level: 69 Mind: 61 Attunement: 37 Body: 121 Traits: Song of the Waterways [D-rank]; Frozen Fishing [D-rank] Sal — Traitor Class: Village Chief [C-rank] Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Level: 79 Mind: 210 Attunement: 70 Body: 134 Traits: Song of the Waterways [C-rank]; Leader's Charisma [D-rank] Nothing we can't handle. The old man, Sal, is the strongest of the group, and while his stats are decent, he's not on the same level as Pauline or even me. So I was right, it is the equipment we need to watch out for. But among all the people in the cavern, it was the figure perched on a limestone ridge overlooking the operation that caught his attention.

She was huddled in the shadows, wrapped in a grey cloak that blended perfectly with the stone, watching the unloading process with the focus of a hawk waiting for a field mouse to break cover, eerily still as a statue.

"Selene," Luna gasped softly once he pointed her out. Orion signaled for silence.

"Stay here. Pauline, keep your eyes on the men. If they spot you or us, do not hold back, but try to keep at least one alive." She gave him a brief nod, and he knew she wouldn't hesitate to deal with the enemy lethally. Too many things felt off, and they desperately needed answers, but he had no intention of putting his friends at unnecessary risk.

He moved forward, using the rhythmic thud of the unloading crates to hide his footsteps, and climbed the ridge, moving slowly until he was just a few feet behind the crouching figure.

"You're loud," Selene whispered, in a rough voice, though she didn't turn around.

"I would have expected a genius to know better than to come all the way here with only a newly raised Magistra for backup."

"And you're reckless," Orion countered, sliding into the space beside her.

"Especially for a seer." Selene finally turned to look at him, and Orion felt a pang of shock. She was exhausted, her face pale and drawn, with dark circles beneath her eyes betraying more than mere sleepless nights.

"I'm not reckless," she muttered, turning back to the dock below.

"I've been piecing together clues about this operation for a week now. I doubt you did more than beat up a poor guild employee to get an answer about where I had gone." Orion blinked, momentarily thrown off by how eerily accurate her words were.

"Well, it wasn't an employee. Red Mane is the guy I beat up." One of her eyebrows rose in surprise, though she didn't say anything further, just humming.

"What's actually going on, Selene?" he whispered.

"Why go so far to ignore me when you know I would have come with you at the drop of a hat? We've been to weirder places together." She flinched, dropping her eyes to her trembling hands, and he knew it wasn't just an emotional reaction.

"I won't tell you," she said, shaking her head.

"Believe me, it is better this way." Orion bit back a groan of frustration, reluctant to make any more noise than absolutely necessary, but he gave her a look that said this was not over. Turning back to the scene below, she deliberately ignored the heat in his gaze.

"Well," he said softly, deciding that if she was that distressed about it, maybe this wasn't the best place to push her further.

"Since you've been trailing them for so long, can you tell me what's going on?" He could infer a few things, like that the locals had been drawn into some kind of smuggling operation, but this was much too organized, and their equipment was too advanced.

"Look," she said, pointing down. Below, the older man in a slightly more ornate uniform, whom he knew was the leader—and likely the Village Elder—lifted the lid of a crate to check if everything was okay. What he revealed wasn't swords or foci, nor were they monster parts or valuables. Instead, he pulled out a glass canister filled with a shifting, silvery liquid.

Even from this distance, looking at it caused Orion's SDGs to glitch with static, something he'd never experienced before, and any attempt to analyze the substance with [Hypotheticism] failed completely. Given the very nature of the Trait, which was to adapt and provide probabilistic assessments, that was significant in itself.

"I believe that it is some kind of liquid mana-blight," Selene whispered.

"A substance I saw them use to defeat monsters that were several times stronger than them, and even a team of adventurers they encountered. As far as I understand, it targets mana itself, eating away at it like nothing else I've seen. It's made my visions extremely disjointed." Orion felt his heartbeat quicken at that.

Such a substance would be extremely dangerous in the hands of a hostile force, and if it truly worked as Selene believed, without limitations, it could be a devastating weapon against the Magocracy, where mana was might. What such a valuable item was doing in the hands of a group of villagers, he couldn't even begin to understand, but if it was here, it probably meant the person who made it felt confident enough to leave it in unsecured places. That alone was very dangerous.

"We need a sample," Orion decided, his voice firm. He'd already made up his mind about using violence, but the stakes had become even higher now.

"We must bring it back to the Sanctum and have my mother examine it."

"We can't," Selene hissed, gripping his arm. Her fingers were ice cold.

"If we fight here, they'll either flee or scuttle the boat, which will release the toxin right here. It'll wash out into the Horned Lake and the subterranean rivers, causing an ecological disaster like never before. I've seen it, Orion. Twelve times I've played this scene in my head. Twelve times." Orion looked at her. He saw the paralyzing fear of what might happen. She was stuck in a loop, frozen by the horrors she had seen in timelines that hadn't occurred yet.

Her skills as a seer were not in question, but since Seraphina hadn't sensed anything of the sort, he couldn't help but wonder if it was as unavoidable as she believed.

"How often was I here?" He asked. Selene opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly and stared, wide-eyed.

"What—what does that have to do with anything? I saw the same result happen no matter who I told or who I brought along."

"I do not doubt your skills," he said gently.

"I saw what you did to the Abyssal Eel. But you know this better than anyone else. I am nothing like the witches of the Sanctum. My abilities are very different from theirs." His piece said, Orion signaled down to Pauline, Dorian, and Luna. He held up three fingers. Three prongs of attack. Ambush.

"Selene," he murmured calmly.

"I need you to tell me where they are going to attack. Can you do that for me?" Selene took a shaky breath and looked at the villagers who had the magi-tech crossbows. Her eyes glowed faintly with silver light, and her pupils dilated until they swallowed her irises.

"Yes," she whispered.

"I can see where they will aim."

"Alright, here's what's going to happen. Once we take down the first few, they will probably use those crossbows against us. That is the moment everything goes wrong in your visions, right?" he asked. She gave a brief nod, still focused on whatever she was looking at.

"Then I have a solution. Those crossbows have a vial attached to their bolts, which contains something very similar to what is inside the crates. That is some kind of anti-magic bolt that would normally pierce through magical shields, probably through any below Tier Three, and not many witches, even Magistrae, would bother developing such a spell." Something in Selene's expression eased, as if, for the first time, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and he knew he was right.

"Then it's a very good thing I spent so long developing new ways to cast spells, right?" he asked, and the wide-eyed look he received in response told him she understood where he was going.