Chương 539: Chapter 541: Alone

"Did it work?" asked Veritum. He wrung his hands anxiously at the outer edge of the ritual circle, something I had never seen him do before. It made him look more like a balding merchant than the warrior who had led the village for years. I closed my eyes as I felt a trace of heat and frustration appear at the edge of my eyes. Admitting that I had failed felt awful. The knowledge that nobody was coming to help us felt even worse. I pushed down a wave of frustration.

Now wasn't the time to wallow in my doubts and my frustration. We had to move. I would have time to handle my own emotions later. I pushed down my frustration, and shook my head.

"I thought it was working for a moment. I felt like I was connecting with something. But I didn't have enough essence to finalize it, or something." I said.

"I failed. I'm sorry."

"You failed?" Veritum closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to scream in frustration, before his tensed facial muscles and neck muscles began to relax. He spent a few more moments taking in one deep breath after another, before he snapped out of it. He gritted his teeth.

"Understood. Is there anything you think will change if you try again?"

"No. I don't think I'm able to succeed at contacting the fog pillar right now."

"Got it. Since you can't contact the fog pillar, we're on our own. In that case, realistically, we have two options. We can either try to fight the water elemental, or we can flee the island and seek refuge with one of the nearby cities."

"We can't take many people with us if we flee," said one of the other villagers, an elderly man named Ondal.

"We don't have enough boats to carry everyone. Not to mention, we'd need to bring supplies too. If we choose to flee, I doubt even one in five of us will survive. I say we try to fight this water elemental, and seek to drive the monster back into the depths of the ocean."

"But fighting is hopeless," said another adult.

"We all heard how much life force that thing has. It has already shown a willingness to climb 'above' an island and just swallow it whole, and it shows deep hostility towards other life forms. Whether we can win is deeply questionable, given our depleted resources, our low combat strength, and the number of children and elderly we have. Miria also noted that it seems to come from the same tree civilization that nearly killed us eight years ago.

If it's from that force, and they've returned for another battle, this monster might not even be alone. This might just be the beginning. What if we invest a lot of time and power into fighting this monster, only for another one to pop up tomorrow?" I shuddered. I actually hadn't thought about the fact that the water elemental might not be alone. Within a few days or weeks, we might be swarmed with more water elementals.

We could face wave after wave of monsters, before the universal tree ripped into this dimension and turned it into fertilizer. Just like before. Worse, I didn't think we could escape the way we had last time. I was a bit better at spatial manipulation, especially due to the time I had spent levelling {Void Mastery}.

However, it was still nowhere near good enough to allow me to teleport from one dimension to another on my own, even if I factored in whatever interplanar connections existed within this dimensional cluster. Last time, my ability to flee had mostly been supported by tens of thousands of people hoping for the best outcome, my eldritch connection to the concept of hope, and my alteration essence reserves.

My alteration essence reserves hadn't changed since then due to the fact that this world used alteration essence to fuel the System. We had far fewer people to pull off mass-teleportation, which meant that the amount of hope the village could generate was much lower than before. In short, trying to flee this dimension was impossible under our current conditions. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Other adults in the village started to argue whether we should try to fight or try to flee. The opinions seemed evenly divided, which surprised me. I had expected the split in opinions to be far less even. Those who advocated fleeing were mostly the new parents of this generation - they had just had kids, and they wanted their own children to survive, even if it meant that a large portion of the village would certainly perish.

They felt that fighting the water elemental was hopeless, and the best path forward was to try to found another new village again. The 'fight' faction instead felt that the water elemental must have some kind of exploitable weakness. As long as we found it, we could trap it or outright kill it. If they succeeded, only a few combatants might die during the battle, and with a great deal of luck, we might not lose anyone.

Everyone knew that was probably a fantasy scenario - this monster was too strong for us to kill without any losses. Still, the fight faction seemed to be trying to propr up their case by listing the absolute best case scenario. For several minutes the debate raged on, while I tried to figure out whether I should weigh in or not. I was prepared to abide by the village's decision either way, and to be honest, I also harbored a little bit of hope.

Perhaps there was some way to kill the water elemental that I hadn't noticed yet? If so, we could survive. I conspicuously ignored the fact that, if the universal tree had truly resumed its invasion, more water elementals might come tomorrow. We needed to handle problems one at a time. Even if I had no idea how to solve those potential future problems.

"Veritum… I think we have to flee again," Felix finally said. I blinked in surprise, and looked at him. I hadn't weighed into the debate so far, and Sallia and Anise also seemed content to let the others debate. I had thought Felix was the same. Several adults in the village glared at Felix, but he didn't shrink back from their glares.

"I don't feel good about abandoning the village we've poured time, effort, and risks into. On the other hand, I truly believe that we have no way to handle the water elemental. We haven't had enough time to recover from the losses we experienced as we fled to this dimension and founded this village. The water elemental is an extinction event. We should at least preserve some of our strength," said Felix. Veritum looked hesitant at Felix's words. He looked back at the village, which was still about evenly split.

"We've spoken about potentially finding a weakness of the water elemental that we can exploit to win. Does anyone have a good idea what we could actually try?" asked Veritum.

"Miria's soul based attacks?" asked one of the villagers. I shook my head.

"I already tried it. It didn't work."

"Fire magic?"

"I didn't try it, but given the size of its body, I suspect trying to boil the water in its body away or anything of the sort is likely an exercise in futility," I said. A few other villagers offered suggestions, but most of them reeked of desperation. The best suggestion I heard was that we could try hitting it with electricity magic and hope that it hit the core of the water elemental, assuming the creature even had a core.

The problem was that nobody in our village specialized in any form of lighting or storm magic, meaning that while it was actually a good idea, we had no way to pull it off. If we had more time, perhaps the craftsmen could have put together a weapon that fixed this problem. Sadly, we just didn't have time. Finally, Veritum sighed. With that sigh, it seemed as if he aged several decades. His back became more hunched, and the subtle wrinkles at the corner of his eyes seemed to deepen.

"Pack up what we can. Prioritize food and necessities. We'll head into the water in three hours. For evacuation, we'll prioritize children first, then new parents, then those who have the most well-rounded or useful abilities and thus the best chances of keeping other members of the village alive. I think that Felix is right. We have no way to keep ourselves alive. We must flee again, and hope that wherever we flee to is willing to shelter us," said Veritum.