Chương 272

Strike Team Obsidian moved out at first light, slipping past the druidic settlement's wards and into the shadowed expanse of the Ironwood. Garrick, as their leader, took the point and quickly showed exactly why he'd been granted the position. With a Body stat breaching a thousand, he carved a path through the undergrowth as easily as if he were on a proper road, moving fast enough to set a grueling pace yet slow enough to keep the squad tightly clustered. Erethemor, predictably, did his own thing.

His spiked tail thrashed through the ferns, and though his footfalls were heavy, he moved as easily as Garrick's silent march. Every time the adventurer surged ahead to scout a particularly dense thicket or scale a steep ridge, Erethemor immediately matched the burst of speed, stubbornly keeping pace with Garrick. Ostensibly, it was meant to keep them safe from the forest's dangers, but everyone could tell it was just an attempt to prove himself the better fighter.

Orion didn't take part in the jockeying, falling in beside Jordan near the center of the formation. The silence between them felt heavier than it ever had in Valderun. Something had happened to his friend, something beyond mere participation in the war. Though he showed no overt distress, Orion had come to know him too well to be content with the quiet.

"You've grown stronger," he noted a few hours into their march. He'd done his best to wait for the other to open up, but when it became clear that wouldn't happen, he'd decided to take matters into his own hands. Jordan offered a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"The front lines leave little room for weakness. It was either grow or die."

"Where did you fight?"

"The northeastern front, overlooking the sea," Jordan replied, his eyes dimming.

"It began as a holding action to reinforce Leviathan Watch, but the Iron State dropped a mechanized division behind our lines, turning it into a slaughter. A senior paladin and I held a chokepoint in a canyon for three days while the wounded evacuated." Given that the Radiant Watch had some of the best healers in Cyril outside the Sanctum, the survivors' conditions must have been truly horrific if they had to abandon their position. Orion considered asking but refrained when Jordan opened his mouth to speak again.

He touched the hilt of his sword, tracing the worn leather.

"I reached the third tier on the second day. I knew it could have happened, but there was no time to bask in the Light. I took all the power offered to me and used it to survive long enough until we were relieved." Jordan didn't elaborate on his class specifics, and Orion didn't pry. It was a well-known courtesy in Cyril; you didn't ask for people's Status unless you were sleeping with them or trying to kill them, and he didn't really need to ask anyway. But Orion could easily read the subtext.

The cheerful squire who had loved crossing blades for the sheer thrill of it had been forged into a weapon of duty. Yet he couldn't shake the suspicion that the transformation hadn't just happened in that canyon. The Radiant Vigil was notorious for breaking their initiates down before rebuilding them as instruments of the Light, which seemed more in line with what he was seeing. I knew there was something off about that guy, Yacob Wester.

He wasn't anything special, since he hadn't even reached the third tier, but the fact that he was given leave to train the squires meant he had to have some other skill. Likely to break people down.

"Well, I am very glad you survived that ordeal," Orion said, hoping to draw a smile.

"So am I," Jordan murmured, though his eyes remained fixed on the trees ahead. The forest was surprisingly quiet. Over the first two days, they covered ground that would have taken an army a week, yet they encountered very little resistance. Most of the fauna, it seemed, had fled south, driven away by the constant clashes in the northern forest. Only the most territorial predators remained. When they encountered trouble, they handled it swiftly and without issue.

A pack of six-legged, steel-bristled wolves ambushed them near a shallow river crossing, and Orion didn't even have time to structure a macro. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Erethemor practically teleported, blurring past the others as his claws ignited with roaring crimson fire. From what Orion could tell, he didn't even need to cast a single spell.

He tore the alpha in half with a single swipe, the beast's armor offering no resistance, then hurled the bloody remnants at another. While the dragonkin went to town on the pack, Garrick stepped into the path of another wolf that had thought to circle around for easier prey, planted his feet, and delivered a devastating bare-handed punch to the creature's skull. The force rippled through the air, halting the wolf's advance with a sickening crunch and crushing its skull into paste.

The skirmish lasted only a handful of seconds, and after harvesting a few claws, they moved on, making good time. On the evening of the second day, an hour or so before they were due to stop for the night, Esmeralda fell back to match Orion's pace. She offered a fanged grin, subtly waving a pale hand. The shadows deepened around them, muffling their voices within a private sphere. Interesting. It looks like Pauline's magic at first glance, but its nature is quite different.

Whereas she manipulates darkness as an absence of light, this is more its own thing. In fact, the mana she'd drawn from the field was purely dark-attuned, lacking the flecks of light that Pauline usually used.

"It's been a rather quiet stroll, considering the dangers of the place," Esmeralda mused, her crimson eyes flicking toward the Dragonkin ahead.

"Though I suppose keeping the lizard fed helps."

"He's certainly efficient at killing things," he replied, keeping his voice low despite the ward. Erethemor had proven himself very dangerous in close combat, but Orion suspected that his real strengths lay in greater feats of magic, as he always seemed to hold back from drawing as much mana as he truly wanted.

"He's a blunt instrument," Esmeralda countered, rolling her eyes. She leaned closer, her tone dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Tell me, Orion. Have you noticed the absolute insanity of this roster?"

"We're almost all Extra Rankers," he confirmed, matching her knowing look. Esmeralda's smile widened.

"I knew you weren't just a pretty face. Good. A single Extra Ranker is a strategic asset. Grouping so many of us together for what is supposed to be a very dangerous sabotage run is certainly a statement. The High Council is either incredibly confident in our survival or desperate to prove that even Cyril's next generation can crush this Alchemist's plots." Either option was no good. The first meant their leaders were expecting far too much of them. As for the latter…

it likely meant they were walking to their deaths.

"Or they are hoping we thin each other out to prevent future competition," Orion added dryly, though he didn't truly believe it. His father, for one, wouldn't allow it, or at least he hoped he wouldn't, and it just made no strategic sense to do so in these circumstances. More likely than not, this was a test for the up-and-comers of the new generation, just as they had once fought back the threat from the sea to forge Cyril.

The leaders of the major factions were almost all very old, and their perspective on life could, at times, be quite distorted compared with that of regular people. Esmeralda laughed brightly, unbothered that it looked odd given the lack of sound.

"Perhaps. But until then, I find the company fascinating, especially our quiet academic." She nodded toward Verner, who was carefully examining a patch of discolored moss. Heeding the hint, Orion dispelled Esmeralda's shadow ward and drifted up to walk beside the Collegium Mage. Verner was a surprisingly easy conversationalist. Unlike many of the Sanctum's traditionalists, who viewed magic as a rigid, divine art, Verner treated it as a science, even if he didn't quite call it that.

"The barrage doctrine is fundamentally sound," he agreed, carefully navigating a cluster of exposed roots.

"But against the Iron State's Silence-infused plating, raw output yields diminishing returns. If we applied a layered metaspell—specifically, a harmonic destabilizer—we could theoretically shatter the alchemical coating before the primary kinetic impact connects."

"You'd need to encode the destabilizer into the front of the spellform," Orion noted, impressed by the other. It was remarkably close to the principles behind his own [Null Laser], even if their methods might differ, the underlying thinking was similar.

"That requires a solid grasp of structural resonance, which isn't common among all mages, as far as I know."

"It is true that many of my fellows prefer to focus on their chosen art without delving deeper into the mysteries of magic," Verner replied with a modest shrug.

"But my mentor has always encouraged a more... flexible approach to the arcane. He believes that true power lies in understanding the foundations rather than simply flinging powerful spells about."

"He sounds like a wise man," Orion said.

"Who is your mentor?"

"Archmage Ithacus," Verner answered immediately, with deep reverence.

"He is a brilliant mind, though his methods often put him at odds with the rest of our leaders. He believes Cyril must evolve if we are to survive this new age." Orion nodded, filing the name away. Archmage Ithacus. It didn't ring any bells, which made sense given the sheer size of the Collegium's hierarchy. The fanatical loyalty shown on Verner's status screen suddenly made more sense in light of a student's academic devotion to a radical professor.

The march continued into the third day, and the landscape slowly began to shift. The towering ironwood trees grew sparser, their bark turning ash-gray, duller than the more vibrant steel from before. The hum of the Field, the noisy background of life mana that defined the forest, began to weaken, growing more static the further they went. Garrick raised a fist, and they halted accordingly. Daus, the Sentinel, stepped forward without being asked. He knelt, pressing his hand against the gray, lifeless earth.

His green eyes darkened, and for a moment, he looked like he might be sick.

"We are at the forest's edge," he whispered, looking deeply troubled. Given that their maps showed there had once been at least another hundred miles of forest before the sea, it was easy to understand why. Feeding mana into his SDGs, Orion tried to make sense of the Field's hum and slowly began piecing together a map. In his mind's eye, he could see the dense forest line abruptly end, giving way to a vast, rocky expanse that sloped down toward the unseen northern coast.

The entire new plain was swallowed by a thick, unnaturally still fog, and even if he hadn't had his glasses actively analyzing its composition, he could have guessed it was born of the Silence-acids used to burn down the forest. He quickly relayed as much to the others, who grew grimmer.

"We'll stop here for the night," Garrick declared, scrutinizing the mists with hooded eyes. No one complained, not even Erethermor. They all knew things would become very dangerous very quickly from now on, as they'd be moving through hostile territory, with the constant risk of enemies finding them in the mists. Even Orion couldn't guarantee he'd be able to warn them ahead of time, because despite his advances, the Silence covering the plains meant he'd only notice once they were already approaching.

Well, we knew what we were getting into. Time to put our money where our mouth is.