Chương 334: B5—Chapter 54: One-Man Demolition Crew (In Training)

Six weeks into my castle-munching, the place was mostly gone—just an empty shell with only the outer walls still standing. A few guards were still posted around, but their numbers had dwindled. On the first nights after the ruler vacated the palace, at least thirty stood watch around the perimeter. Now? Four. One at each corner. I wasn't keen on flying in circles to strip the last walls bit by bit, so I took care of the guards first.

The potion put them to sleep, and I carried them one by one into the guardhouse at the entrance—I didn't want any accidental deaths on my conscience. With the area cleared, I backed off a few hundred meters, then turned and shot toward the outer wall at full speed, legs first. My feet slammed into stone. The wall shuddered but held. A jolt shot up my legs, sharp and unpleasant. Okay, that hurt like a bitch—but nothing broke. Small victories. The second hit rattled the structure even more. The third was the charm.

A section in the middle of the longest wall cracked and collapsed in a disappointing trickle of stone. It wasn't exactly the grand demolition I'd envisioned. Healing took care of the pain in my feet, but looking at the sheer size of the walls and the effort it took to break off just a few stones, I had to abandon the plan. After my core absorbed the loose stones, I returned to my previous tactics. Flying along the outer wall, I worked at reducing it, but it was painfully slow.

Loose stones got devoured instantly, but solid walls, not so much. I needed a better way to bring them down. When I returned, I opened the house for Al and Mahya, letting them crash for a few hours. Instead of joining them, I headed straight for my library. There had to be a better way to bring down those walls. If brute force didn't cut it, maybe I could find an answer in construction engineering books. I skimmed through a few titles, pulling anything that looked promising.

Structural Integrity and Load Distribution, The Fundamentals of Masonry, and Collapse Mechanics. Settling into a chair, I flipped through the pages, looking for anything useful. And then I found it.

"A building's stability relies on the uniform distribution of forces through its foundation. When the ground beneath is uneven, weakened, or eroded, stress points increase, causing differential settlement. This imbalance can lead to structural cracks, tilting, or, in extreme cases, total collapse." That was it—the foundation. I kept researching the subject and learned about failure thresholds, settlement disparity, and the effects of gravity. If I couldn't bring the walls down directly, I could attack the base.

Destabilize the foundation, and gravity would do the heavy lifting for me. I traced a finger over the diagrams in the book—illustrations depicting different scenarios. The uneven settlement created pressure points, stress built up over time, and then… failure. Entire structures could collapse simply because the ground beneath them gave way. The best way to exploit this was to undermine the foundation. If I could weaken one side enough, the entire wall might tip and collapse under its weight.

I just needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. No guards were posted the following night, so there was no need to waste time ferrying them into the guardhouse; the place was mine to dismantle. I lay in the middle of the ex-castle and sank my awareness into the ground. The process moved faster than my previous attempts—training while the gang cleared dungeons had sharpened my control. Within a minute, I reached the bedrock beneath the hill the castle stood on.

A solid slab of rock anchored the entire structure. Mapping its boundaries took longer, but the effort paid off. The slab wasn't an unbroken mass stretching endlessly in all directions. Fault lines ran through it, marking where it met other rock formations. Weak points. This was my way in. I learned that a building's foundation depends on uniform weight distribution. When the ground is stable, force spreads evenly, but stress points form if part of the foundation settles or shifts while the rest stays in place.

If this uneven movement—what engineers call settlement disparity —exceeds the structure's tolerance, cracks appear, walls begin to lean, and at a critical threshold, the entire structure collapses under its own weight. The trick was to reach that threshold—on my terms. I needed to undermine one side while keeping the other relatively stable. That meant targeting the far end of the foundation and lowering it just enough to tilt the weight distribution past the failure point.

Gravity would do the rest if I did it right, pulling the walls inward instead of outward, keeping the debris contained rather than spilling into the streets. I "grabbed" the rock on the far side with my magic and tried to guide it down, deeper into the earth. The resistance was immediate. The bedrock was solid and unyielding and refused to shift. At first, I tried to guide it, nudging the earth with magic and coaxing it to move, but nothing happened—no reaction at all. I had to rethink my approach.

Directing the earth like I did with other elements wasn't enough. Earth was too stubborn and immovable to be led gently. It needed force—not brute strength, but pressure woven into the guidance itself. I pushed harder, pouring more magic and will into the effort. Every centimeter resisted, fighting back with the sheer weight of the world behind it. My mind strained, and my magic scraped against something vast and unmoving. This wasn't just shifting earth. This was trying to tear apart a piece of the world itself.

I pushed harder. A sharp pain lanced through my mind, like a thousand splinters threading through my thoughts. It wasn't a physical pain in my body but a deep, searing strain inside my mind power orb. My magic wavered, flickering under pressure. The rock barely budged. More. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The pressure built, my whole body tightening as if I were physically straining against an immovable weight.

The bedrock resisted, flexing but refusing to give way. My thoughts blurred, the edges of my mind fraying as my magic fought against something too massive to yield. Then, a crack. Not in the stone. In me. Something in my awareness fractured—the mental equivalent of muscles tearing under unbearable strain. A sharp jolt shot through my entire being, not just pain but something deeper, like my magic itself was splintering apart. I lay there, panting, heart pounding, scared. Had I damaged my mana orbs?

The sensation went beyond my mana channels—something more fundamental. I wanted to check but was too woozy to focus. Then, a wave pulsed through me—a familiar clenching, then release, like something letting go. A surge of heat followed, spreading through my entire body. I knew what that meant. My mana had increased. Mana: 4, 810/13, 100 A hundred units? That's it? That pain had felt like at least a thousand! I shook my head, forcing the frustration away. No point dwelling on it. I had work to do.

Pushing forward, I pressed my magic into the rock again. This time, there was no more breaking sensation. No more tearing. Just steady, unrelenting force and pressure on my part. And then—movement. The rock shifted a little, but it was enough. Like a book nudged from a shelf, it teetered on the brink. I felt it. That moment of instability where weight distribution tipped past equilibrium, where gravity took over and became the actual force at play. This was the point of no return. The failure threshold.

I didn't recognize it from books or theories—I felt it through the earth itself. My magic was woven into the stone, pressed against it, listening to the weight, the tension, the resistance. The ground spoke in the silent language of pressure and balance, telling me where the strain held and where it was ready to give. I nudged it past a certain point—not by force alone, but by understanding. The foundation had been holding itself together in a fragile equilibrium, carefully distributing weight and pressure.

My earth magic felt the moment that balance wavered, the exact point where one more shift would tip it over the edge. With a final push, I let it go and pulled back instead. If I stayed any longer, I'd be caught in the collapse. Staggering to my feet, I barely had enough mana left to get airborne. My head pounded, and my vision wavered from the mana depletion, but I forced myself to fly away, mental and physical muscles trembling from exhaustion. The walls hadn't fallen yet, but they would.

The castle's remains would come down when gravity finished what I started. Sadly, I was too exhausted to stay and watch. People say trouble comes in threes. Turned out, so do achievements. The following day, I arrived at the clinic in the early afternoon, still tired from the night's activities. The moment I walked through the door, Rima tackled me, nearly knocking me backward. She wasn't that heavy or strong, but I hadn't expected to be assaulted and wasn't braced for it. She hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you." I patted her back.

"You're very welcome. But can I know what I'm being thanked for?" She let me go and bounced on her feet.

"I got a spell! I made a spell! I'm a healer." She stopped bouncing for a second.

"I didn't get the class yet, but I'm a healer! I healed with magic!" Apparently, she inhaled some spit in her excitement because, a second later, she was in the middle of a severe coughing fit. Still, even with the coughing and tears streaming down her face, she kept bouncing and trying to hug me. I escaped. Having her cough directly into my ear didn't sound great. I handed her a bottle of water, and when she finally got her coughing under control, I asked, "What happened?"

She started bouncing again, words tumbling out almost as fast as she moved.

"When Mahya got back, she—she brought someone with a broken leg! I set the bone like you taught me, was bracing it and—" she clapped her hands together, nearly vibrating with excitement.

"Then I got this idea! To push with my mana! I didn't even think, I just—just knew it was the right thing to do, so I did it!" She suddenly froze. Her excitement changed to hesitation as she looked at me, worried. I nodded for her to go on. Her words spilled out again, faster than before.

"I know you said not to just push mana 'cause it won't do anything, but—but I knew it would! Like the mana told me! I—I wanted to help, to fix the leg, and I—I pushed it, and—and—" She gasped for breath, eyes shining, and practically squealed the last words." The bone healed!" Now, I hugged her.

"Congratulations." She squealed—directly into my ear. My head jolted back on instinct. Rubbing my ear, I asked, "Did you get access to your personal information?" Her face fell.

"No."

"So how do you know it's a spell and not just you controlling mana in free form?" She blinked at me, her excitement momentarily freezing into a blank stare. A few seconds passed before her expression cleared.

"Oh! Al said only wizards can control and manipulate free-form mana. It has to be a spell!" She stopped mid-bounce, tilting her head at me, eyes narrowing.

"Wait… did I miss something?" I had no idea, so I just shrugged, spreading my hands in a classic no clue gesture. She studied me for a moment, then her excitement came rushing back.

"I cast a spell! Me! I healed someone!" I hugged her again, congratulated her, and waited for the excitement to settle. When she finally stopped bouncing and squealing, I suggested, "We should work on more spells." Her eyes lit up.

"Yes!" Either her success had shattered the last of her reservations about letting me in, or something else was at play—something I wasn't aware of. Whatever the reason, I didn't care. What mattered was that, for the first time, I could easily grab her mana and direct it into the spell pattern. I cast Healing Touch about ten times, guiding her mana into the correct pattern each time. Just as I was about to cast it again, she stopped me.

"I have it." I raised an eyebrow.

"Did you get some kind of indication? A blinking red light?"

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"But I know I can repeat it. It's not hard, just really… elaborate. But I can do it. I feel it." I hesitated, unsure if letting her cast it on someone was a good idea. Then I facepalmed. Why do I need someone for this? Rima stared at me, confusion written all over her face. Yeah, she definitely hadn't expected the facepalm. Without another word, I pulled out a scalpel and sliced the back of my hand.

"Heal this." She didn't hesitate. The spell activated, and the wound sealed up. I felt it—her spell was weaker than mine and burned through more mana, but none of that mattered. She did it. She learned the spell. I looked up at her, ready to celebrate, but she wasn't bouncing this time. She stared into space, hands trembling.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I… I have a red blinking light," she whispered.

"Come on! Click on it!" Her fingers twitched.

"What if it's not a Healer class?" I scoffed.

"You got it after healing my hand. It's not gonna be Blacksmith. Open it!" Her eyes flicked right to left like she was reading, and then—she tackled me. Hard. My back slammed into the wall. This time, there was real force behind it.

"I got it! I got it!" she screamed into my ear. I hugged her back, lifted her off the ground, and spun her around. She kept squealing the entire time—nothing intelligible, just high-pitched sounds of pure joy. Not wanting to dampen her excitement, I resisted the urge to cover my ears, despite the sharp pain my heightened Perception was causing. I could suffer through it—for a good cause.

When Rima finally settled down and stopped assaulting me with shrill sounds, she gave me one last hug, kissed my cheek, and bolted for the door.

"I'll go heal some more people!" she called over her shoulder before disappearing. I opened my mouth to point out that we were in a clinic—meaning the people who needed healing would come to us —but then just sighed and waved a hand dismissively. Whatever. Instead, I headed to Roda's office to let her know she now had a healer.