Chương 262

As they neared the stone bridge, the air changed. The sweet scent of the forest was being overtaken by something acrid and sharp, forcing them to clear the air lest they inhale fumes. Fortunately, such a feat was barely worth mentioning given the powerful casters they had along, so Orion could keep his full focus on the hole in the barrier, trying to get a good reading on what had caused it. Archmage Valentia stopped a dozen yards from the breach, holding his staff defensively.

In the center of the emerald light, a circular void had been carved, and a quick look showed it hadn't caused structural damage to the rest of the ward. Somehow, a portion had dissolved without triggering a cascade failure. That wasn't something Orion had known was possible, and he suspected it had to do with both the nature of life mana sustaining the barrier, given its propensity for vitality, and the specific compound that had been used. With some wariness, he knelt at the edge of the opening.

He pushed mana into his glasses, but the data that returned was a chaotic mess of partially solved variables.

"I can't make out its structure," he muttered, his brow furrowing as he stared at the viscous liquid clinging to the ward's edges.

"The bonds are shifting too fast for me to track. I can see traces of powdered crystals and a distillation of some shadow-based monster, but there's another major catalyst here that's rewriting the Field as it touches them, like the Silence." As the Veil Priestess of Potioneering, his mother had spent the past several months dissecting every scrap of Silence the Iron State had ever deployed. She had analyzed canisters, studied the residues on armor, and attempted to brew counter-agents, though with little success.

Even then, she was by far the best expert they had on the subject, so he let her have a go. She reached out, hovering her hand inches from the breach. Her fingers hesitated, and her grim expression suggested that his assumption was correct. Whoever had brewed this was the same person behind the Silence.

"This is no generic brew like the Silence," Asteria said.

"I can tell it was brewed on the spot. It's a specialized refinement, a bespoke version of Silence tailored to this ward's harmonic frequency." She looked at Valentia, her silver eyes hard.

"No machine did this. No Iron State agent could have accounted for the local mana's flux. We are in the presence of the man himself. The Alchemist." Valentia didn't seem particularly pleased by that. Their current assessment was that the Alchemist was a Tier Five, meaning they were outmatched even before entering the fray.

"How sure are you?" He asked.

"Almost certain," Asteria admitted. She reached into her robes and pulled out a small crystal ball. With a tap of her finger, she directed a surge of light mana into the artifact. The crystal flared with silver light, while her lips moved in a silent incantation.

"What are you doing?" Valentia asked.

"Reporting to the High Priestess," Asteria replied, her eyes fixed on the crystal.

"If he can synthesize a solvent for a ward this powerful on the fly, he is beyond our power. She needs to know in case we fall here." She crushed the crystal ball in her hand, and silver dust scattered into the chasm. The message was sent. Surprisingly, she didn't even try to send Orion away. But the interference in the Field was strong enough to warp any attempt at spatial manipulation on the scale required for teleportation, and there was no way the Alchemist wasn't aware of their presence.

They hadn't been attacked only because the man had decided not to. Attempting to flee now might see them hunted down like dogs, whereas they needed to gain as much time as possible for the High Priestess to arrive. It wasn't something that was done easily. Orion could see the worry and contemplation on the other witches' faces, and everyone knew that if two Tier Five casters took to the field, things would become dire. But there was nothing else they could do.

"Let's go in," Asteria said, her tone brooking no argument.

"We may not be able to kill him, but we can slow him down, and I doubt he'll be kind enough to let us prepare for much longer." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Indeed, the moment the message departed, the Field grew fuzzier. There was no Silence fog to point to, nothing to fight back against. It just weakened, and if that wasn't a message, Orion didn't know what would be. Thus, they stepped through the breach and were greeted by an environment that felt almost surreal.

Massive, translucent roots—some as wide as towers—stretched across a void that seemed to have no floor, only a distant, swirling mist of rainbow-hued mana. Flowers that looked like they were made of blown glass hummed as they passed, their petals vibrating with the "Song" the druids had spoken of. Nectar dripped from some, while others were still buds, despite having seemingly no biological origin. It was fae-like, beautiful, and utterly lethal to the unwary.

Space here didn't make sense; a root that looked like a mile long could be crossed in three steps, and the grove's distant center felt both light-years away and close enough to touch. Occasionally, Orion saw flashes of what he thought might be humans, but they were gone like memories a moment later. Some were as still as corpses, while others seemed frightened. Are those the druids? Did they go into hiding after realizing resistance was futile? Nobody seemed to have an answer, and in a way, that was better.

Their being out of the way would prevent more casualties, and while Orion had seen firsthand how mighty they could be when they went all out, he suspected even such an effort wouldn't amount to much if the Alchemist was truly tier five. At the heart of the crystalline network lay the enemy. A dozen Iron State soldiers, clad in matte-black armor that drank the light of the roots, stood in a circle, but they weren't the focus. In the center of the circle, standing over a large white root, was a man.

He was unassuming, disturbingly so. He wore no heavy armor or mechanized exoskeleton and carried no weapons. He was dressed in a simple, slate-gray coat that looked more like a lab technician's uniform than a warlord's regalia. He was of average height, with thinning hair and a face that could have belonged to a middle-aged father. If Orion had met him in a city, he wouldn't have given him a second thought. The only thing that betrayed his nature was his left eye.

It glowed with an amber light that did not come from a magical source. Rather, it was a mechanical lens, and though Orion failed to get a read on it, he strongly suspected it was a sensory instrument. One that made his own adamantine glasses look like children's toys. Squinting, he forced a pulse of mana from the weakened Field into his HUD to inspect the man. Static tore across his vision, lines of red code overlapping and deleting themselves in real time.

Data streams were being scrambled before they could even be processed. Uther Katzaet —??? Class:??? Level:??? Attributes:??? Traits:??? Orion recoiled as a sharp pain lanced through his temples, forcing him to redirect his attention, for the CC struggled to break the feedback loop. The Alchemist didn't look up from his work. He held a small glass dropper, carefully adding a single bead of black fluid to a hairline fracture in the white root.

"Lord Katzaet!" one of the armored guards grunted, his voice muffled by a heavy respirator. He raised a sleek rifle and aimed it at Asteria's chest.

"Intruders have breached the ward! Permission to engage!" Uther paused. He inspected the dropper for a moment, then shook his head as if disappointed and slowly placed it back into a velvet-lined case on a floating tray beside him. He turned, his amber eye whirring as it focused on the Alliance strike team.

"No, don't bother," he said. His voice was soft, carrying a note of genuine curiosity.

"I've been tracking their approach since they left the Basin. The little mathematician's trajectory calculations were particularly refreshing. It'd be a pity to kill them before we could have a chat. I'm sure our friends wouldn't begrudge me that much." He stepped away from the root, wiping his hands on a clean white cloth. He looked at Orion, then at Asteria, as if he were a professor greeting a group of promising, if slightly disruptive, students.

It was incredibly unnerving to be in his presence, knowing nothing they could do would protect them, but if the man wanted to talk, they would talk for as long as the High Priestess needed to reach them.

"I am Uther Katzaet," he said, offering a small, polite bow.

"It is rare to find people who bother to study their craft rather than just apply it. You, in particular, young man, interested me. I saw you use thermodynamic compression alongside gravity magic to breach my zeppelin. It was a bit messy, but the logic was sound." The guard who had spoken earlier seemed to have different ideas and didn't lower his rifle.

"My Lord, these are the commanders of the force that resisted our advance! We must deal with them now, if you'd let us—" Uther sighed, as if disappointed. He glanced over his shoulder, and that was enough for the Field to ripple. The guard didn't even have time to scream. His armor began to unravel, and over several seconds, the brass, the rifle, and the man inside lost their molecular cohesion. By the time it was over, the soldier dissolved into a thick, grayish goo that splashed onto the floor with a wet thud.

Uther turned back to Orion, his expression unchanged, as if he had merely swatted an annoying fly that had been bothering him.

"I hate it when they give me impatient minions," Uther sighed.

"Now, where were we? Ah, yes. You are quite an interesting one, but I suspect your mother over there wouldn't like me singling you out too much."

"You'd be right," Asteria replied in a frigid tone. She knew they needed to stall for as long as possible, but Orion suspected she was very close to snapping, judging by the way her face had gone blank.

"Yes, young mothers are always very protective of their young. It is a common phenomenon among most mammals, and humans are no different in that respect."

"What are you doing here?" Valentia asked, seemingly done with the inane rambling. Uther regarded him for a long moment, and Orion feared he'd react explosively, but the man simply huffed, as if amused.

"I've been trying to crack this little overgrown nut for a while, you know? It would have been much easier if I had no other responsibilities. I'm pretty sure I could have tracked it down in a couple of days, but other matters keep pulling my attention away. I only just managed to convince the annoying generals to bite your trap, or I would have been stuck in place for weeks more!"

"Are you saying you knew the Shattered Basin was a trap, yet sent your forces there anyway?" Valentia asked incredulously. Uther shrugged.

"Those were all pretty ungainly machines anyway. I have been telling them they need to evolve beyond what works and develop their understanding, but I can never get through to those knuckleheads." With a sigh, he turned back to the root, tapping his cheek as if in thought. The guards around him twitched, eager to get to the real fighting, but none dared move without his permission.

Orion would have attempted to inspect them, but the moment he tried to draw on mana, Uther gave him an amused look, and his connection to the Field failed.