Chương 362: Chapter 348

Despite his cockiness, Sam didn't actually want to trigger any traps. Naturally, he expected at least something, but even so, he intended to be careful. First, he watched the remnants of the Steel Lions, led by David, leave the area the way he had come. As they departed, he tossed a high-quality mana potion at their mage – it wouldn't do for them to lose the barrier on the way. He wasn't idle while they left. Sam turned his attention toward the center of the area.

With the fuller picture David's report had given him, he began probing with his mana sense. There was still a section he couldn't access – a perfectly spherical void that swallowed part of a building – but around it, he could feel bodies moving in jerky, unnatural patterns. He closed his eyes and sat down, leaning against a wall, focusing entirely on the barrier. He wrapped it in a thin layer of his mana, searching for any give – any crack, any weakness. There was none. It was perfect.

'If I can't sneak in… why not use full force?' After all, a wise man once said: When in doubt, C4! Sam didn't have C4 with him, but he had something better. He gathered his mana, drawing it in and compressing it into a single point, shaping it into a massive spike. Then, with a metaphorical hammer, he drove it down. It shattered. Mana scattered like glass shards in the wind. Sam didn't care.

He tried again – pulling the energy together, compressing it tighter, forcing it into shape with sheer control – and struck once more. It shattered again. He frowned, immediately probing the barrier for any change. There was none. After a moment, he exhaled and let the gathered mana disperse. Trying again would only waste time and effort. With a grunt, he pushed himself to his feet and headed for the door.

'Time to get dirty…' Once again, he stepped onto the streets, running straight toward the mysterious barrier. David had said they'd evacuated as many people as possible. Those who remained had long since been twisted into abominations by blood magic. Still, every time Sam passed a motionless body, he released a pulse of void magic, erasing it from existence. Better for everyone involved. A minute later, he reached the source – a three-story building, its lower two floors swallowed by the spherical barrier.

Up close, the thing was even more unnatural. It didn't glow. It didn't shimmer. It simply existed – a perfect sphere carved into reality, its surface smooth to the point of being featureless. It reflected nothing, absorbed nothing, and gave nothing back. Even the light seemed to hesitate around it, as if uncertain whether it should touch it at all. Cobblestones near its edge were fractured, some lifted slightly as though something had pushed up from beneath them and then frozen mid-motion.

A wooden cart lay half-consumed, its front end simply… gone, the rest left behind at an unnatural angle, as if reality had been cleanly sliced. Around it, a dense crowd of shambling figures wandered. They weren't truly walking – just… moving. Their steps were uneven, disjointed, as though their bodies no longer agreed with themselves. Limbs twitched mid-motion, shoulders jerked at odd intervals, heads tilting too far before snapping back.

Their skin was stretched tight over pronounced veins, like thick cords, pulsing visibly beneath the surface. With every sluggish heartbeat, those veins throbbed, pushing dark red fluid through their bodies in uneven surges. Their eyes were completely red. Not glowing. Just filled to the brim with blood. Yet they clearly saw nothing. He stopped at the corner, watching. The shamblers weren't the problem. The barrier was. No visible anchors. No external structure to exploit.

A few strikes from his sword, and they were down. If he wanted in, he'd have to force it.

'Well, nothing to it…' He stepped forward, raising his sword. With the re-breather and goggles masking his face, and armor enhanced by Lucky's transformation, he cut an imposing figure. It didn't matter. The moment his step echoed across the street, every head snapped toward him. Then they rushed him. Sam didn't slow. His blade came alive with void mana, and he unleashed a storm of slashes. Each strike tore through the horde, bodies splitting apart before they could even reach him.

Some of the arcs went wide – intentionally – crashing against the barrier and splashing harmlessly across its pristine surface. No visible effect. Sam moved like a dancer through the chaos. Every step, every turn, every flick of his blade dropped another corpse. Flesh and bone scattered across the cobblestones, while the air around him hissed with clean, devouring energy. The closer he got to the barrier, the thicker the air became. He was only a few feet away when the last corpse fell.

Uneasy silence followed the short battle. He glanced behind him, then released a pulse of void energy. It swept outward, consuming the remains, leaving the street bare once more. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Stepping forward, he raised a hand and touched the barrier. It was smooth. Rigid. Cold.

He focused, mind racing a mile a second, trying to figure out a solution for this conundrum, pushing his mana into it – and suddenly, his weight vanished. His mind froze. His body moved without him, tipping forward as if falling, yet never bending. A heartbeat later, he gasped, lungs dragging in air he didn't remember losing. He stood inside the barrier. For a moment, what he saw didn't make sense. Then reality snapped back into place – and he started moving again. The air hit him first.

It felt heavy and thick, the crimson cloud visibly thickening. The silence was worse. Outside, there had been movement – shuffling, dragging, the faint sounds of decay in motion. Here, there was almost nothing. Just his hesitant steps echoing around. The ground had also changed. Cobblestone still existed in patches, but it was being overtaken. Thick red vines had burst through the gaps.

Some of the vines were embedded deep into the remains of the building, burrowing through cracks, wrapping around beams, forcing their way through shattered windows. Others reached upward. The building itself looked… hollowed out. Where walls had once stood solid, they were now threaded through with organic growth. Red tendrils snaked through every opening, reinforcing, replacing, redefining the structure into something that was no longer entirely man-made. At irregular intervals, the tips of the vines split open.

Not like plants. Like flesh. The surface peeled back in wet, petal-like segments, revealing darker, glistening interiors. For a second, they remained open for a moment before releasing a thick puff of red smoke. It spilled outward, slow and deliberate, joining the already saturated air. That answered where the bloody mist had come from. Sam stilled, letting his mana sense expand fully. Scanning the building from top to bottom. The second floor was empty – nothing but vines surging upward.

The first floor, however, was filled with human-shaped presences. And below all of it was a basement.

'A cliché place to hide, but it seems to have worked out for them.' Out of curiosity, he reached behind him and touched the barrier. Still unyielding. Still absolute. He tried channeling mana into it. Nothing.

'Ah. So it was a trap.' Sam shook his head, a faint smile tugging at his lips. While it was massively annoying to deal with these constant attempts on his life, it was also flattering from a certain point of view. They clearly had done their research. Setting up a situation where he would be drawn to the city, but late enough that most of the attack would be over, then making sure to set up attacks that would require the talents of his most used team.

Then, adding in a situation that only someone with his skill set would be able to navigate at ease.

'That's some quality profiling…' he mused as he began walking toward the broken-down door. Sam entered the building sword first, magic coiled and ready to lash out at the first suspicious movement. Or any movement at all. Anything that moved in this destroyed building could only be an enemy. Yet the only thing that greeted him was heavy, oppressive silence – and the faint light radiating from the pulsing veins of the vines suffusing the walls and breaking through the ceiling.

He carefully stepped around the debris littering the ground – splintered boards, shattered stone - eyes constantly moving, searching for anything. A trap. Maybe an ambush. But there was nothing. Only the foul mana in the air – and the slow, insidious pull coming from below. Right from the direction of where the basement should be.

'Why is it always the basement?' he thought, turning toward the broken doorway leading down, while steeling himself.

'I hate walking into a trap…' He theatrically kicked aside the last remnants of the door with deliberate force – making sure anyone waiting knew he was coming – then started down the rough stone steps. Might as well give them time to prepare a proper dramatic scene… The descent was uneventful, aside from the mana growing thicker with every step, making each breath – re-breather or not – feel heavier. After a short flight and narrow landing, he reached a wider one. At its end stood a heavily reinforced metal door.

It looked brand new. Sam stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. Of course. He grabbed the pristine handle – with factory-fresh finish – and pushed it down. The door opened silently, revealing a scene straight out of a horror movie. The basement began as intact stone, clearly original construction – but 'someone' had clearly expanded it with crude earth magic, turning it into a jagged, uneven cavern.

At its center stood several humanoid figures in blood-red cloaks, faces hidden, voices raised in an ominous chant. Sam doubted that shade of red was natural. The vines were here too – fewer, but thicker – snaking across the walls, heading upward. Each one led back to a massive, woody trunk rising from a pool of dark red liquid behind a ritual circle. The entire space was bathed in deep crimson light. Everything looked ghoulish. The chanting grew louder the moment he stepped through the threshold.

His gaze swept the room while his mana sense spread outward. The walls were saturated with magic, certain points far denser than others. A steady stream of magic was flowing outward from the blood pool and thick trunk, filling the space with the usual miasma he grew to hate. But the ritual circle? Decoration. No mana, just painted there to set the scene. Sam had to admire the dedication – it looked pretty real.

'Interesting…' The moment he took his second, silent step, the door behind him crashed shut, and a victorious laugh echoed through the expanded basement.

"Welcome, Solar!" one of the red-robed figures called out, throwing back his hood to reveal a grinning, utterly ordinary face.

"To your DOOOM!" The rest of the robed players stopped chanting and began to spread out around the speaker, reaching into their robes and pulling out various weapons, all of them dripping with some dark, viscous liquid. Then Sam felt it. The mana around him seized… Then began to surge unnaturally fast toward the trunk. It drank greedily. His eyes widened as his own mana was dragged along with it, ripped from him in a violent pull.

His hand shot to his chest, grasping at something unseen as pain tore through his body. His ears were filled with notification sounds, but he ignored them, focusing on the situation.

"Hahahah!" the man laughed.

"The great Solar, brought down by planning and a bit of magic!" Sam ignored him. His mana sense was collapsing, losing clarity by the second – but before it vanished completely, he locked onto several dense nodes in the room. He was sure they had something to do with what was happening. Trying to keep upright, he focused on holding onto his own mana and not letting it escape, entering into a tug-of-war with something that wanted everything he had.

Sweat ran down his face, and he could feel his entire body being suffused by unnatural pain.

"Smile, Solar!" the man went on.

"You're live!" Sam's head snapped up, and he looked at the man, hearing that.

"L-live?" he rasped out, his attention still focused on keeping his mana inside and suppressing the absorption effect.

"Of course! What better way to show the downfall of the greatest player in Magic Unbound than a livestream?" the man gloated as the players around him snickered. Sam raised a trembling hand and summoned void mana, shaping it into a crude spear before sending it hurling at the speaker. The mana looked shaky, flickering. The spear flew forward, quickly losing cohesion, falling apart into black pixels, while the man just grinned.

"See? The great Solar, reduced to parlor tricks. Not even your precious void magic can reach me!"

"H-how?" Sam forced out, playing up the pain as he finally stopped the mana escaping his body. It still required almost all his focus, but at least he could use it internally. The man practically beamed. He looked inordinately proud of himself.

"Ahh…. Well, it's not like we can reuse it," he said.

"Might as well tell you!" he declared while looking down on Sam's contorted body. He was clearly enjoying the situation.

"You see, we had trouble figuring out how to counter your stupid magic. But then… I found a fascinating little plant that ate mana." He patted the trunk in the middle of the room with his hand, almost affectionately, causing the dark red veins to pulse on it"As you can see… she is quite a voracious eater," he explained.

"Thankfully… she doesn't care for blood magic." He grinned, looking into Sam's eyes.

"Lucky, huh?" Sam let out a dramatic grunt, eyes darting around frantically as if looking for an escape route.

"Y-yeah…lucky…"

"Hahaha! You wouldn't believe how long it took to set this up! Do you know how hard it is to find a Rune Master?" Sam blinked, but otherwise let the other man monologue. Though for a moment he was tempted to tell him he was technically a Rune Master…

"But in the end, we figured it out!" the man continued.

"And now? You will be the first victim, and then… Deepanchor will be ours!" The players arrayed around him tensed on an unseen signal, and the man calmed down a little. The man tilted his head, studying Sam.

"Hmm… I expected something more…" he muttered.

"Most of my test subjects were usually writhing on the ground by this time." He scoffed, though Sam could detect a hint of admiration in his voice.

"Well, I suppose the great Solar is made of tougher stuff." Just to sell his ruse a little better, Sam let out another grunt and hunched over even harder. Finally, the man ran out of patience and pointed toward him.

"Now! See how the great Solar falls by my hand! Kill him!" he shouted, and one of the red-robed players rushed forward, a dagger held high, aiming directly at Sam's neck.

"Die!" There was laughter and rejoicing from their side as the player flew forward with their weapon, eyes alight with delight. No doubt bragging that he had killed Solar would net him a great amount of clout. Then Sam's head snapped up. His sword flashed. CRASH Steel met steel. The attacker froze, eyes widening as he met Sam's gaze.

"Oh shit…"