Chương 200

The entrance to the storm drain was exactly where Jareth had said it would be: hidden behind a row of overflowing latrines in Sector 4, covered by a rusted iron grate and a dense growth of nettles. Considering the hell that was apparently hiding inside it, it was definitely not very impressive. Foreboding, perhaps, in that strange way places frequented by society's outcasts often were, but nothing about it suggested the presence of a foreign operation.

Yet the closer they got, the more pronounced an acrid smell became, until Orion signaled for them to stop. This isn't sewage, especially given Silverpeak's filtering systems.

"That's definitely toxic," Elara muttered, pulling her sleeve over her nose and mouth. She lifted a hand, her fingertips shining with a diagnostic spell.

"Give me a moment to check the concentration." She flicked her finger toward the gate, releasing a spark of mana. Fizz. Fizz. The moment the light crossed the threshold of the iron bars, it unraveled. The mana structure disintegrated like sugar in hot water, turning into harmless light before it vanished completely.

"I barely got any feedback," Elara reported tightly.

"The concentration of Silence in the air is high enough to strip the enchantments off our clothes in minutes. If we breathe that... I can't say we've run that kind of experiment yet, but without constant healing, it's very likely to damage our internal organs."

"So, it's a death trap," Pauline summarized, not looking particularly surprised.

"We can't shield against it, as any spell would falter. I have been working on tier three magics for this kind of thing, but it's still not complete. I wouldn't last more than a few minutes."

"Standard magic won't work," Orion agreed, stepping closer to the grate. He adjusted his glasses, peering into the gloom.

"Even beyond the Intent problem, standard magic relies on the ambient Field to sustain a barrier. I can't imagine maintaining a connection in there would be easy." By now, the others knew him well enough to wait for him to finish his thought. He wouldn't have brought them here if he didn't believe he could do something about it, after all. I wonder if I'm spoiling them a bit too much.

Pauline should, by all rights, be leading this mission, yet here they are, waiting for me to come up with a solution to a problem that seems to be stumping the brightest minds of the Sanctum.

"I've already shown that Knowledge-first spells can better sustain the Silence's effects, but that probably won't be enough here, given the enclosed environment and long-term exposure. No, we need to make a way through it, and I believe I have the solution."

"More physics?" Selene asked, eyeing the dark tunnel warily.

"Indeed," Orion nodded.

"The Silence has mass, we know this. It has volume. That means it obeys the laws of fluid dynamics." He crouched down, picked up a twig, and began to scratch a diagram into the mud, his mind shifting gears as he explained.

"We need a pressurized environment, one made of positive pressure. If the air pressure pushing out from us must be greater than the atmospheric pressure pushing in, then the gas cannot physically enter our space. It's the same principle used in clean rooms and biohazard labs."

"And how do we create that? As far as I know, none of us is an Air Mage, and setting up the warding schemes would take hours we don't have," Elara asked. Orion waved her concern away.

"I already know the necessary principles. I just need to combine them into a spell." A choked laugh made him turn to Selene, who waved him off and forced her features back to seriousness. When he turned back, he couldn't see anything that might have elicited such a reaction, and decided it probably wasn't that important. Standing up, Orion closed his eyes. He had to craft this perfectly; it couldn't just be a vague wish for fresh air fueled by plenty of mana and skill.

It needed to be a precise, mathematical construct, a spell built on knowledge so dense that the Silence couldn't find any foothold to weaken it. Step One: Define the Boundary Layer. Orion visualized a sphere around the group. P_{internal} > P_{external} He needed to sustain a pressure differential of at least 1. 5 atmospheres. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Step Two: The Barrier Mechanism.

A static wall of air wouldn't suffice; the gas would diffuse through it. He required velocity and a high-speed laminar flow. P + 1/2 rv^2 = {constant} Following Bernoulli's principle, by increasing the air velocity at the perimeter, he could create a dynamic wall. A centrifuge. Step Three: Gas Exchange. They couldn't breathe the outside air; they needed a source. 2H_2O -> 2H_2 + O_2 Electrolysis was his solution.

He could extract moisture from the damp tunnel walls, split the molecules using a localized electric charge made of lightning mana stripped of intent, reduced to pure voltage, then vent the hydrogen and cycle the oxygen into the center of the sphere. The formula clicked into place in his mind. It was complex and messy because he couldn't fully fill in the gaps with his intent.

Every variable had to be considered, and every interaction already described within the formula, or the Silence would find something to weaken it. And if it failed on them while they were half an hour into the tunnel with no quick way out, it would spell their doom, so he really had to be sure he could sustain it for a long time. Redundancy after redundancy was added, each explained and detailed as much as possible.

By the time he was satisfied, the CC was starting to heat up with the excess mana he'd drawn from the Field, and he knew for sure he had just created another tier two spell, even though it would seem very underwhelming in any other situation.

"Gather close," he ordered.

"And do not step outside the circle once I cast this. If you do, you'll probably die." The women stepped in without hesitation. He doubted even Selene fully understood why his spell was so different from a regular wind wall or why it would survive the Silence when their magic wouldn't. Still, they trusted him, and he appreciated that more than he could say. Orion raised his hands.

"[Atmospheric Centrifuge]." +2 Attunement +1 Mind +121, 200 Exp Level up! The air around them screamed. A visible cylinder of wind roared into existence, spinning at nearly a hundred miles per hour around their group. Dirt and leaves were kicked away violently, and Orion suspected he could easily repurpose a good portion of the spell into an offensive effect.

But for now, he limited himself to adjusting the balance of energies until it subsided into a low hum, just barely audible from inside, yet still very much active.

"My ears popped," Pauline winced, rubbing the side of her head.

"That means it's working," Orion said.

"I'm cycling fresh oxygen from the humidity. The pressure is pushing the toxic air away. As long as I maintain the velocity, we're safe." He turned to the grate. With a gesture of his other hand, he struck the rusted iron with a pulse of [Gravity Cannon]. The grate flew inward, twisting like taffy.

"Let's go," he muttered, and they walked into the darkness. As it turned out, although the tunnel was wide enough for a carriage and lined with slick, moss-covered bricks, the space felt shrunken by the oppressive green haze that filled it, making for a very claustrophobic descent. The Silence was all around. It swirled against Orion's wind shell like a living thing, searching for weakness. But every time a streak of green gas tried to enter, the fast-moving air caught it and pushed it back.

Since they were driven purely by physics and no mana interacted with them, there was nothing for it to weaken.

"This is incredible," Elara whispered, watching the gas bounce off the invisible wall.

"There's barely any mana in the structure. I didn't even know it was possible to cast like this."

"I wouldn't say it's particularly efficient," Orion grunted. Maintaining the calculation required constant focus, all for a result that he could have achieved with a simple tier one spell, but this was the best he could come up with in such a short time.

"Watch your footing." They walked for twenty minutes as the tunnel sloped deeper underground, and the air outside the shell grew thicker, turning from mist into a pea-soup fog. That was when they heard the footsteps. They were heavy thumps, making no effort to hide this deep into the tunnels. Orion led the group into an alcove, where he shrank the [Atmospheric Centrifuge] until they were completely enveloped by the mists. Out of the fog, shapes finally became visible.

They were humanoid but enormous, easily seven feet tall, composed of heavy, bolted iron plates, industrial in design, lacking the elegance of Sanctum's animated stone golems, yet they possessed a brutal charm of their own. Their heads were smooth domes with no eyes, only a series of vents glowing with a pale light.

"These would be the steel men, then," Pauline whispered, eyeing the constructs with wariness.

"I can't sense them, even accounting for the disruption the Silence causes."

"They must have some kind of internal reservoir of Silence. I have no idea how they can function, given that they are still clearly magical in origin, but it's the only plausible explanation," Orion agreed. They watched the procession for a while, safely tucked away in the alcove, but suddenly, the lead golem stopped. Its head turned toward them, and even though it had no eyes, it seemed to sense some kind of disturbance, despite the air outside the pressure field being completely unaffected by his spell.

A grinding noise echoed from its chest.

"Intruders," a mechanical voice grated.

"Purge them." The golems immediately charged, even though they had been completely unaware of them until that moment. The only saving grace was that Orion genuinely doubted any signal could get through the Silence. If they dealt with this group, they probably wouldn't be discovered by the rest. Pauline didn't wait for the first golem to close the distance, already drawing her quarterstaff from the shadows. She drove it into its chest, unleashing a point-blank explosion of darkness.

Such was the sheer kinetic impact that the golem was sent skidding back several feet, its front plate dented, but it was clear the damage was only cosmetic, as it resumed its charge no more than a moment later, and Pauline was soon entirely absorbed in the fight. Usually, she would have had an advantage in such a dank environment and could have used her shadows to corrode and weaken the animation enchantments.

However, whenever she tried to influence the construct, the mana fizzled out, confirming Orion's suspicion that they were somehow infused with the Silence. And just a few seconds later, the rest of the patrol reached them, and he knew he had to act decisively because their current team composition couldn't handle such a resilient enemy.

With only a brief hesitation, Orion cast a gravitational spell using a small portion of the mana stored within the CC, doing his best to infuse it with as much of his knowledge as possible to ensure it was resilient enough to travel through the Silence, and unleashed it at the ceiling above the golems.

"Get back!" he shouted, and Pauline didn't hesitate to do so as a ten-ton section of the tunnel arch cracked and plummeted. The golems, on the other hand, didn't react. They lacked survival instincts, so they just continued charging. The masonry slammed into the front four golems, crushing them beneath a mountain of brick and stone, and metal screeched as frames bent and flattened.

The remaining two golems stumbled over the debris, and that was when Pauline finally unleashed whatever she'd been working on, opening her mouth so wide he heard a crack and spewing out a deluge of oily darkness.