Chương 138: Train of Ghosts

Viren figured he ought to be grateful that the Rhellian students hadn't actually done anything to them all yet. No argument. No anger. No threats of using magic to gouge out anyone's eyes or turn them all into ferrets or whatever other mad ritual went on these Crypts. He wasn't just pulling things out of thin air. The fear was very real. He had seen several depictions of even more insane ritualistic processes on a few murals here and there.

Thankfully, the possessed Rhellians just seemed happy to drag them along to… somewhere. Considering how foreboding it all felt, considering how things were changing the deeper they went into the Crypts, Viren figured his foreboding feeling was perfectly on point.

"Have you figured out an escape plan yet?" Saera asked Acrypha. Acrypha kept her eyes on their silent captors.

"I'm working on it."

"How long is it going to take?" Lyen asked.

"I'm working on it."

"That's right, you two," Viren said.

"She's working on working on it." Acrypha still didn't turn but the gritting of her teeth was very audible." I'm working on it." Viren scowled.

"Why do you have to be snippy with me but not with the other two?"

"Because they're not annoying." That just made Viren's scowl grow deeper, though she might have had something of a point. He wasn't exactly figuring out a plan or helping in any way. Not that Saera or Lyen were, but Viren wasn't them. Acrypha clearly held him in higher regard than the other two. Which he needed to live up to a little more, if he was being honest. Sadly, he didn't find a solution. He saw no escape routes, saw no way they could all run and escape from the Rhellians.

Starting a confrontation was probably not going to be a good idea. Not when there were this many of the students from the institute, the majority of whom were both older and stronger than Viren. Even Acrypha would have trouble taking on this many of them at the same time. Which meant there was only one direction Viren could go with this.

"I'm going to—""I'm going to distract them," Acrypha said.

"When I do, you all need to run." Viren's deepening scowl was going to give him very, very early wrinkles at this rate.

"That's my idea, Acrypha." If there was a silver lining to the whole possession business, which was what they had assumed had happened to the Rhellians going by their weird behaviour, then it was the fact they didn't care what the Arcoryx students talked about. As long as they were following the Rhellians' orders, they were fine. It would probably be a better idea to talk in whispers at least, but by the time Viren realized that, they had already revealed their intention of escaping. That was alright.

Viren wasn't a strategist, but he did intend on being a hero.

"Unfortunately," Acrypha said.

"Only one of us here is strong enough to cause an actual distraction that will have all the Rhellians standing up and taking notice. So I need to be the one doing it."

"Then how are you going to run?" Viren asked. He stared at the other two, who had been nodding along at Acrypha's plan.

"And why aren't you two concerned that we'll be leaving one of us behind?" Lyen hedged for a bit before summoning up his courage.

"Uh, didn't you say leaving one of us behind was going to be your idea?" Acrypha snickered. Viren glared at the whole lot of them. How she could snicker and laugh in a situation like this was beyond Viren. Was she really that confident about things turning out for the better? Was she completely fine being left alone by herself? To be fair, she did have those overpowered guardians if she really needed backup. Acrypha was pretty strong, all things told.

But it turned out there was no need for any of them to play the part of the potentially sacrificial distraction. For just then, the air changed. The atmosphere itself turned into the precursor of a magical storm, the residual mana in the air starting to pop and fizzle. Something was coming. Something that had them all forgetting all their little plans and stopping in place, including the weird Rhellians. Something—or some one, rather—who arrived in no time at all.

A crack split the air, a rift popping in the middle of them all for Ryland to emerge from its dark depths. It was odd. Viren was relieved to see his mentor, of course, while also feeling a heady sense of excitement that always came with the expectation of seeing terrific magic. But confusion dominated those emotions for now. How had he and the rest of them sensed Ryland approaching? Normally, the man would just pop out of a rift in spacetime without any warning.

He'd appear here, there, wherever he felt like going, without any warning whatsoever. And yet, Viren had been able to tell Ryland was coming before his rift had actually arrived. It felt like a very minor thing to care about, but for someone like Marionys Ryland, even small changes in details were significant. Viren understood that quite well. So what was the reason behind that slight shift in approach? Ryland smiled at the Arcoryx students.

"I'm glad to see you're all safe." The Rhellians started gathering closer, their eyes glowing brighter and their magic surfacing with deadly intent. Whatever ghosts were possessing them certainly had no intention of showing them mercy.

"Sir…" Viren slowly said.

"I was waiting for you to show up."

"No, you weren't," Acrypha said.

"You wanted to throw yourself at the Rhellians as some sort of sacrificial distraction!" Viren gawked at her." You were going to do that!"

"Yes, but so were you." Viren moved his mouth, but no words came out for a while. The sheer gall of her to just go about blathering like that. It seemed Ryland didn't care for their bickering, though, going by how his magic was intensifying. The Rhellians had stopped advancing. Looked like the ghosts possessing them weren't entirely devoid of self-preservation instincts.

"What are you going to do, sir?" Acrypha asked.

"Something Viren is rather familiar with," Ryland said.

"I have no intention of fighting all these Rhellian youths, after all." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Viren perked up. He was familiar with it.

"You're going to exorcise away all the ghosts!"

"Correct." Viren turned to his fellow students from Arcoryx.

"We all better take cover or something. Sir's Glyph of Exorcism is really powerful. I had a barrier around me and I was still almost knocked out!" That made Ryland almost wince, which Viren did catch. Oops. It probably hadn't been his mentor's intention to dislodge Viren's soul from his body too. Just the clutches of Fate. In the same vein, he probably only sought to push the invasive spirits out of the Rhellians' bodies, not their original souls. But Ryland never even got to cast his magic.

He had built it up, had made himself feel like a bomb about to explode with a frightful amount of mana, but someone else decided to interrupt proceedings.

"You will not!" shouted the Rhellian High Academ. Viren wasn't the only who screamed and fell back. High Academ Zevo shot in with blistering speed, his entire armoured form glowing like a man set on magical white fire. The impact when he crashed into Ryland was like a cannon going off. A boom that threatened to make Viren's eardrums collapse. Then there was the shockwave from the point of collision, where Viren and the rest of the students were all thrown off their feet.

But despite the shock, despite feeling the sudden panic making his heart pound like it was about to burst, Viren was struck by wonder more than anything. Because Ryland was still standing. He hadn't moved a single fingerbreadth. Viren had seen how. At the moment of impact, Ryland had simply brushed aside the onrushing High Academ with just a swish of his hand. The motion had been quicker than a blink, quicker than Viren should have been able to follow.

He had just been staring at the exact right location, had caught how Ryland pushed aside High Academ Zevo, redirecting the man's momentum with impossible deftness and skill. What in the world was Ryland? Viren really ought to stop being surprised by the man. An impossible endeavour. Not when he kept performing feats like that. The other students were trying to pull themselves back to their feet, just as Viren had been doing. Obviously, none of them were as fast as the High Academ.

He was back upright in a flash, before Viren had even formed the intention in his head properly, before his body had even registered that getting up and getting away were his main priorities.

"If you intend to proceed bullishly," High Academ Zevo shouted.

"Then I will be forced to halt you via any means necessary. [Armoured Wind]!" Viren lost the ability to breathe for a moment as all the air rushed past him. It was as though he was caught in an inverse storm, the winds blowing him closer instead of flinging him away. Everyone screamed as they were momentarily torn off their currently imbalanced positions towards the centre of the altercation. Where Ryland dissolved the magic with no trouble at all." [Entropic Ingestion]."

As suddenly as Viren had been tugged forwards, he now slumped back in place. Ryland's spell had made the air turn still almost instantaneously. And Viren wasn't even sure how. That said, there was a crackle of brilliant white energy running along Ryland's hand. Zevo blinked in surprise at his spell losing power so quickly, but he was casting again, setting up a barrier spell just in time as Ryland's outstretched palm made contact.

Another boom, even louder than when the High Academ had launched himself at Ryland, and Zevo went shooting in the opposite direction. He was attempting to force himself out of the pile of rubble and debris that the blast had thrown him under, shouting out a curse to keep him occupied, but Ryland was already on it. A series of rifts formed in quick succession, some below and some above where the High Academ had fallen. And then he was trapped. Squeezed in from both over and under him, Zevo was trapped.

Viren could only stare at the ingenuity of Ryland. It wasn't enough that the man was ridiculously powerful. He was practically unmatched in intelligence when it came to the use of his own powers. How could anyone ever even hope to match that?

"You—""Enough," Ryland said.

"As I've already stated, whatever consequence you might fear isn't something that I need to worry about. No one will come to harm. Not under my watch." He proceeded to ignore the struggling High Academ, turning to all the students. A familiar series of spells emerged from Ryland in quick succession, his spell circles flashing like someone had called down the sun into the depths of the Crypts. Viren found himself being clad in the same kind of barriers Ryland was known to cast.

The strange sensation of something unfathomably solid yet almost completely imperceptible now had Viren in an airtight grip. Ryland nodded at them all.

"You should all be ready now. Nevertheless, let me warn you for a moment. The following magic might be a little difficult on your soul, so I suggest you refrain from casting any spells. I promise, no harm will come to you."

"Sir," Saera said, quiet but forceful. She glanced at the rising Rhellian students and quickly went on.

"What's going on? What are you going to do?"

"There's a bit too much to explain just yet but give me a few moments. As for what I'm about to do, well, I'm going to exorcise the possessed students here." Which was exactly what Ryland proceeded to do. An impossibly powerful Glyph scarred itself into reality. Viren's soul was immediately smothered with a very overwhelming, and very familiar, tidal wave of magic. Pious pulled his arm back. He was tempted to spit now that his little altercation with the First High Adjutant was over, but he restrained himself.

He had already dealt with the horrid woman. There was no need to push it, was there? He spat anyway. Foul little mongrel. The woman winced. Pious's magic had left her broken and ruined. Barely alive. The battle hadn't lasted long at all. He hadn't even needed to expend much of his magic for her. There was hardly any evidence of their brawl. A few cracks, a few spots where the earth had melted into magma. And a great deal of blood where the woman lay injured.

She hardly had a mouth to speak with, but she managed to force some words out anyway.

"You've won nothing," she gurgled out, blood spilling out of her.

"I'm not here to win, you little fool," Pious said.

"I'm here to protect my investment. And it's because you're too idiotic to recognize it that you're now lying dead at my feet." And just for good measure, he spat on her once again.

"The Hand will still get you," she squeezed out. Then she gasped and fell silent. Pious turned back just as he had been about to pass her. He frowned heavily at her unmoving form. What did she mean that the Hand would get him? Surely, she didn't mean the Hand of Freedom. That was absurd.

"And why would they ever do that?" Pious asked. The First High Adjutant didn't answer. Pious scowled. Then he let his mana loose." [Touch of The Dreadlich]." There was something odd with the way the spell took effect. Something quite strange. Normally, [Touch of The Dreadlich] threaded through the target's body to reconstruct the manasoul from the traces it had left behind. Every soul had a certain shape it took within the physical vessel. Even if it passed on, that shape remained.

[Touch of The Dreadlich] essentially refilled that space, thereby "resurrecting" the target and making them feel alive. But of course, the mana forming the fake manasoul was controlled by a different entity, which meant the target was now under the caster's control. The First High Adjutant gasped awake.

"Now, answer me," Pious said.

"What do you mean by the fact that the Hand of Freedom would come after me?" She was hardly paying attention to him.

"What have you done to me? Why is my skin… falling apart?"

"Because I willed it to." Pious stepped closer, his mana emerging from him like thundercloud.

"And if you don't answer me, I will enslave your soul for the rest of your eternity and set your body to deconstruct and reconstruct itself eternally, trapped in a cycle of agony for as long as I live."

"I… will… not —" The First High Adjutant gasped. Then she screamed. Pious was not one for mercy, though the shrillness of her voice could call down unwanted attention, which would be annoying, to say the least. Just as Pious was about to put forth more pressure to make the undead woman crack, unrivalled magic exploded through the entirety of the Crypts. Pious was himself slammed off his feet, his form crashing into the walls. But he wasn't in pain or anything. Instead, he laughed. He roared. This magic.

This incredible power. This madness. It was still going, an endless pulsing, pounding, hammering might that didn't care at all for what stood in its way. This was… This was him. He could almost taste it in the incredible, impossible mana. When Pious finally slumped back to the ground, he found that nothing besides him had really been affected. Well, apart from the First High Adjutant. She was well and truly dead now, even that fake manasoul that [Touch of The Dreadlich] had brought on now disintegrated to nothing.

What maddening power. What traitorous might. For the first time since this mad business had started, Pious was starting to see the big picture. Oh, that upstart thought himself so clever. That fool of a Demiurge really thought he was manipulating everything perfectly. Well, it was now time to throw the most powerful wrench into Kindly Mavar's plans. He wanted the Dreadlich? Fine, then. Pious would give him his own pet Calamity to do with as he wished.

Whether he could control it or not was nothing Pious needed to concern himself with. With a surge of darkness wrapping Pious's form, he descended. Straight into the Dreadlich's lair.