Keron
patreon
Chapter 168 - Crushing Force
🕑 Added 2025-03-31 17:00:07 +0000 UTCEmily ravenously devours the first fruit, feeling soothing water mana spread through her body, soothing the damage dealt to her magical pathways as her magic circles slowly recharge back to full.
The real boon, however, is the gentle whisper of inspiration the calming sensation brings, pushing her to further explore the element.
She shuts her eyes, standing up and focusing on the fleeting feeling as she catches the two remaining fruits before they can fall. She sets them down on the throne and walks forward, slowly sinking into the pool around her.
The gentle, welcoming caress of the cold liquid helps her focus as she falls into a trance, cycling mana through her body and calling to the water around her. It quivers in response, swirling in responsive patterns that continue for hours.
When the trance from the fruit fades, Emily pushes herself back to the glass steps using a smooth current, rising into the open air and casting her gaze around the room.
“Still nothing after six hours,” she mutters to herself, ignoring the irritating whispering in the back of her skull telling her they didn’t bother checking if she was dead.
Frowning, Emily picks up one of the remaining aquacillis fruits and focuses on her cortex, finding the turbulent energy still raging away in her emotional centres, barely reduced over the course of six hours. Her machina reserves have refilled during her trance, but they’ve stopped increasing a thousand points from their maximum, leading her to believe the energy distorting her mind is indeed still her machina.
“There’s got to be a key to fix it that I’m missing,” she mutters, biting into the second fruit while stepping back into the water.
This time the lucid state only lasts for three hours, but several new spells form in her mind within that short time, waiting to be used against the coming intruders. As Emily leaves the water again, she settles onto the throne with the final fruit set in her lap, relaxing against the chilled glass and staring blankly at the far wall.
Two raw fruits and I still can’t complete an elemental connection. It doesn’t feel like the next one will get me closer if I let it work naturally. I’ll use it to focus on healing instead.
She finally turns her attention to the lacerations covering her body and the lack of flesh on her back. Despite the return of her mana and her unnaturally fast regeneration, barely any of Emily’s wounds have shown any signs of fading.
The reason is blatantly obvious as she can feel the potent, malicious mana embedded in the injuries, along with several shards of solid metal in the case of some. Luckily, though it’s still blocking the healing process, the mana is lying dormant, without showing any intention to work its way deeper. If it wasn’t, she would already be dead.
Emily breaks a chunk from the fruit and sets it on her tongue, holding it in her mouth as it melts, slowly drawing the mana from it, in a similar rotation to Technomancer’s Breath. She guides the energy to her injuries, using it to slowly push out the shards of debris and wash away the foul mana, layer by layer.
Every time the pool in her mouth empties, she breaks away another chunk of mana-dense flesh to replace it.
The hours slip by, and as the counter on her quest finally ticks up to one out of three complete, Emily opens her eyes again, feeling refreshed.
She reaches out her bare arm, crisscrossed with pale scars, intentionally left as a reminder of her mistakes, and releases a thin burst of mana that draws the pool around her into a solid pane of water. She snaps her fingers, and a chilling air bursts out, instantly freezing the pane into a glistening mirror.
She meets her reflection calmly, ignoring the almost unbearable scream from her emotional core that sends tears to her eyes as her gaze passes the stub of her left arm. It looks much better than before, when you could still count the opened blood vessels at a glance, but the darkened scarring covering the end still twists her guts.
Unfortunately, even with the extra help from the fruit, she’s unable to regenerate the limb.
Emily pushes herself to stand upright, tearing her eyes away from her arm and taking in the rest of her body instead. Her body armour is completely ruined, with barely a few scraps of metal plating hanging onto thin strips of tattered fabric. The sandworm-skin trousers that once covered her legs now hang in shreds, revealing more of her pale skin to the world.
She runs her hand across the scarring on her abs, which looks like a heavy beast has tried to tear her in half, before spinning to look over her shoulder. Her back is traced by long lines from top to bottom, as if she’d had wings ripped off.
Emily grabs at the fabric half covering her shoulder, tearing it off and tossing the scraps of her body armour away. Next, she rips away the tattered remains of her trousers, stripping naked and turning to face the mirror in full.
Her cortex buzzes, her entire neural network alight with activity as one of her cores performs dozens of calculations in an instant, creating a dense, active matrix of runes in her mind. Unlike with compressed casting, she doesn’t release any mana, instead carefully holding it in as she spins threads of power throughout her body, forming runes through her bloodstream and turning herself into a moving magic circle.
Her distributed processing net keeps burning energy, changing the runes with each mana-charged movement of her limbs to keep the spell prepared and balanced, thrumming with power just waiting to be used.
A small smile curls the corner of her lips, the satisfaction of the new revelation temporarily overpowering her storm of emotions.
The circle holds, uncast, for a few moments, before a slight flex of mana to the waiting core activates it in an instant. A thin film of water seeps from her skin, wrapping her body in a fine dress of curling waves as the mirror shatters.
¯¯¯¯¯
Skill created: Mechanical Casting
[Mechanical Casting (passive)]
User can form and maintain balanced spell orbs within their body using their precise mechanical processing.
-Grants +10% stability of spell forms held internally.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Quest completed: Unique Casting
[Unique Casting]
[Rank:] D
[Description:] You have learned a casting method usually exclusive to fourth circle mages, now truly make it your own.
Requirements:
-Create 1/1 unique casting method based on Condensed Casting (Complete)
Rewards:
-Elixir Recipe: Eel’s Blood
_____
She files the recipe away in her mind, focusing on the active spell instead.
She tries casting another spell externally and doesn’t meet any resistance, but when she tries basic internal casting, she’s unable to form a stable magic circle.
That’s why my mirror broke. It seems I’m limited to one internal mana structure at a time. For now, at least.
She has another core prepare a second spell orb, but she’s expectedly unable to activate it until she releases her water dress. The moment she does, a burst of ice spears erupts with her at the centre.
Almost instant casting as long as the form is prepared, even if another internal spell is active until activation. Useful, though it takes a whole core per spell.
Emily disperses the spikes and releases a stream of water from her fingers. It forms into the completed spell orb to reform her dress, which she leaves floating at her shoulder as she sits back against the throne.
Her bare back presses to the cold glass, unhindered by her liquid ball gown, and Emily lets out a tired breath, relaxing her taut, freshly regenerated muscles. A faint stream of mana leaks from her body into her dress and flows down the throne to connect with the water below, slowly enough to keep her reserves sitting near full regardless.
She floats The Clock from where it has appeared in the small of her back without her even noticing to her palm, where she rests her thumb on the activation button, just in case, as the seconds tick by.
***
With only a day left on her quest counter, Emily finally sees signs of life.
Space twists against the far wall, forming a dense gathering of mana before cracking as Emily’s eyes snap open.
She watches the wall morph, taking on the shape of an imposing door that slowly slides open moments later. One particularly strong magic signature, mixed with several others that range wildly in power, leaks through as the first tiny crack parts. Emily’s circles bubble to life, pouring more and more mana out into her dress, letting it tumble out in cascading waves of power that disturb the calm water’s surface.
The door swings wide, giving Emily clear sight down the long tunnel littered with giant scorpion corpses behind a group of two dozen robed Denrosi mages.
They look mostly unharmed, if a little exhausted, and their eyes fall on Emily as she judges them, sitting on her throne in the centre of the churning watery domain enrobed in the currents of her fluid dress. A shiver passes through their group.
“It seems you lived,” calls the leader, from whom Emily can feel the telltale pressure of a fourth circle mage, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in anticipation, despite her lack of weaponry.
“Blowing up mana veins just so happens to be one of my specialities,” Emily replies coldly, letting out a chilling breath as the water surrounding her stills. “You’ll have to try a little harder to get rid of me.”
Without another word, spells erupt from the invading mages. Several of them conjure a solid wall of rock around everyone but their leader, while a few others coat it in a thick layer of water.
Several projectiles of wind and fire shoot through cracks in the wall, while a sweeping gale erupts from the group’s leader, knocking his hood down and propelling his allies’ spells forward in the blink of an eye.
Emily doesn’t flinch, and the oasis springs into action. A flood of water bubbles shoots up, accurately scattering each incoming attack with a distinctive pop.
Emily recognises the fourth circle mage as Everette Dennal, the patriarch of a branch of Denros royalty. His cropped salt and pepper hair and storm-grey eyes perfectly match the portrait she saw in a history book in The Covenant’s library.
His gaze scans the water, finally noticing the endless twisting runes flickering away just beneath the surface.
“I’ve been waiting for you, you see,” Emily whispers, mana carrying her voice to her target as the doors click shut behind the intruders. “And I’m not in a good mood.”
Her mana rages and the oasis erupts, sending a churning tide of pressure towards Everette. The front of the wave shifts into dozens of sharp points, with spears and tridents raining down on their prepared defences.
Everette releases a powerful burst of wind, forming a twisting tornado with himself at the centre as the tsunami crashes against him. The water weapons shatter against the violent winds, but the main wave parts, pouring around him to target his allies instead.
The protective water layer does nothing, only joining Emily’s wave in adding crushing weight to the thin shield of rock beneath. The rock shatters quickly, shocking the two third circle earth mages supporting it from inside as they’re swept away with their weaker allies.
Everyone cowering behind the shield is smashed into the wall by the crushing force of her attack, twisting their limbs and cracking their bones.
Emily holds the dense water over the fallen bodies, watching air bubbles rise through the liquid filled with her mana as her disoriented enemies’ lungs slowly fill with water.
Everette disperses his protective twister and looks back at his allies in horror, raising his hands and muttering a chant. He weaves together several rapid hand signs and produces a sweeping blade of wind to lash out at Emily, trying to break her focus.
Unfortunately for him, the oasis’ water holds a large-scale array carved into it, so it maintains its hold of his allies without any strain on Emily’s mind as her dress ripples, launching her up above the throne to draw his attention away from the glowing crystal heart now visible, embedded in the stairs below.
His wind blade curves through the air, single-mindedly chasing after her, so Emily parts her dress into watery tentacles, slinging them out to cling to the wall and pull her away. Everette makes the mistake of turning his back on her to send a powerful blast of air through the oasis water, affording his allies a momentary breath of air.
Emily calls upon her lightning connection as she hits the wall, coiling her legs like springs and flooding them with crackling charge.
Everette hears the hiss of lightning and starts to look back, but Emily fires out from the wall and arrives next to him with a raging orb of water spinning above The Clock clasped in her palm before he can blink.
A small green orb floating in the small of the Denrosi mage’s back bursts as if prepared for her shocking advance, coating him with a thin layer of fiercely vibrating air that shatters her water orb on contact.
Everette sneers confidently, but he’s completely taken off guard as Emily stops with shocking precision, her hand never reaching his threatening barrier as he expects it to. A stream of plasma pours from her fingers, tearing streaks across the barrier and trapping Everette in a cage of lightning.
It slowly encroaches on his space, heating the air protecting him so much it starts to slip from his grasp. He panics, accelerating his blade of wind towards Emily’s back.
Emily ignores the coming blade, moving some of the oasis water he dispersed back to cover Everette’s attack squad and charging it with lightning, stealing the last of their air. The rest of the crushing tsunami rushes over to wrap around the duelling mages, smothering the coming attack in the process.
Everette starts chanting another spell in its place to try to break his temporary imprisonment, but Emily steps back, touching his barrier with the dense mass of water and activating the final attack mode of the array.
The water begins compressing in on itself, pulsing with mana and shrinking around Everette, growing darker and darker in colour until it’s almost impossible to see through.
Emily takes the free time to gather all of her remaining mana to her left stump, pouring her focus into forging a limb of sizzling plasma, screaming with the cries of a thousand birds.
She pants with intimately familiar mana exhaustion tugging on the back of her mind like an old friend, the poisoned whispers from her emotional management core completely drowned out by a raging fire egging her on to keep fighting till collapse.
She draws back her burning-hot limb, grinning madly before thrusting it into the watery cocoon.
It passes through, hitting no resistance until the quivering wind barrier, which holds together for a moment, shatters into pieces.
Emily’s phantom limb continues into Everette’s chest, flying off her bubbling stump which suffers several fresh, deep burns thanks to the dangerous levels of lightning she’s channelling through the limb. She doesn’t turn off her pain receptors this time, basking in the pain and the fading, racing high of battle that numbs her mind.
Having exhausted its mana, the oasis water vanishes, dropping Everette’s crushed corpse to the floor and leaving Emily alone in the silence of her empty throne room.
Comments
Ember
It reminds me a lot of the behavior of the MC from Practical Guide to Evil. I figure she'll be able to fix it but feels the reminder is necessary to keep her from making the same mistake again.
Quendolayne
Very nice, thx. But why disfiguring herself is a good thing only Emily knows and maybe she needs therapy. I mean she got surprised bc the story demanded it and not bc her mistakes and errors were really, really significant.
