The layer disappeared quite easily. We have to thank Ira for this. But spending 500 years dispelling these barriers just because of the ramblings of that potato village. She might not be mad about that but I’m slightly annoyed that what potato village told her might not even be true and wasted 500 years of her time. She might seem hot-headed and want to take over the world but the fact that she believed that shows either naivety or that she is unable to mistrust random shady cultists. She is violent but besides that, she falls in line with what I know about spirits. In general, they are nice and friendly maybe also naïve creatures. Except for that edgelord, I hope he is enjoying his time in the spirit world. I started on the next layer.

I was relieved to find out that it didn't have an obnoxious puzzle. Barriers could have various conditions to lift them. To make a barrier truly strong it needs an obvious weakness and this weakness gets covered by some kind of restriction or requirement. The previous layer was covering it up with an obnoxious puzzle. A barrier could be made that can only be lifted by someone under the age of 15 but then it can be covered with something that nobody under the age of 15 can pull off. That is the general gist of how barriers get protected. This stupid prison has 7 obvious weak points which are these roots but the roots themselves are protected by barriers and stuff. Well, you see where this is going, to protect the holes with more barriers and protect those holes with more barriers or seals or guardians. It is the perfect strategy to annoy someone or waste their time. I can't really figure out what the weak spot of this barrier is.

That is annoying. I guess it is time to brute-force it with frost magic. I will have to carefully read the magic runes that make up this barrier and find the correct ones to freeze. This is theoretically easier than all that other crap. Find the correct rune and freeze it and done. In practice, I will have to read hundreds of lines of runes and find out which relate to which and which are dummies which ones are traps that either attack me or make the barrier stronger, etc. It is like lifting seals but way harder and more complicated, for this, I need the assistance of Gregory because I can't remember what every magic rune does in relation to which. He does for most cases but there are also various nuances depending on the style of the caster of the barrier. In short, it is a royal pain in the ass, so much so that I would have a hard time deciding to brute force open it or do an obnoxious puzzle.

-That rune there is a trap ignore it. - - I rerouted the mana and deprived it of mana, if another rune is linked to it at least it won't blow up on me. -

- Smart, you are getting better at this. - - I don't have much choice, do I? What about this rune, it looks suspicious, as if someone took too much effort in making this look like a trap. -

- Bust it! - I froze the rune and shattered it. The barrier became notably weaker.

Hey, Raishin this barrier became super weak, can you bust it with a nuke? I stepped away.

How much? Hmm oh, something like a 50.

Ooh, Just the strength of my amped-up [Lightning beam] Here we go! Raishin hit the barrier and it started to crack. I moved water in the cracks and froze it causing the barrier to shatter.

Thanks, Raishin. Go prepare to one shot the guardian together with the root. Let's not make things too troublesome. After the barrier breaks just send it! I can use [Fusionado]?

If you give Gregory and me enough time to protect us then sure. Yes!

Now this barrier seems super strong, this one might take the rest of the day. I guess that works out right? We are supposed to destroy this root tomorrow.

I guess. I started to check this barrier’s runic lines but there were a stupid amount of them.

-How is the dispelling of curses going? I really need you on this. - -I got rid of almost 300 curses, I think we are in the clear now, I will come over and help. - I started running simulations in my tail to figure out which runic lines would be the best to tackle first. Gregory walked up to me and inspected the barrier.

Ugh, this is almost like the barrier covering the town. That one has way more juice though, I don't think we can break that if we manage to break this.

Ugh hey, can you do markers in your eyesight? Uhh, I think I can wait let me sift through my filters. Hmm not this one, nope not this one either.

Ugh, can you slow down with that? Now I’m getting a headache. I’m sorry. I think this works.

Right, how about you analyze this part and I do this part? This middle part seems to hold the two together. I don't know why but we might want to want to understand these parts better. Ugh, those teachers in Hourai could have gone more in detail about this stuff.

Well, I’m glad we at least got the basics down pretty well but it seems from here on were on our own to figure out the nuances, it doesn't help that every barrier user has his own style. Hmm, I don't understand what is going on here, I might not be great at this but this looks like the maker was a total amateur. Or it is so genius that it looks like it's made by an amateur.

Hmm same with this part, surely parts this large can't all be dummies? The creator must have balls of steel to make this much of the code a dummy.

Or stupid, let's assume that the creator is a genius. This is the last layer after all. Agreed. We spent the whole morning and a big part of the afternoon studying the composition of these parts. I managed to knock out some traps and get rid of some redundant runes but I had still 90% of my part untouched. Gregory had better progress with 70% untouched but it was a long and tedious progress.

Hey, how is it going? Quite poorly this barrier sucks.

So, what is the problem? We have no idea what keeps this barrier running, what its weakness is nor what part of these sequences are important to the barrier.

Can't Agnis just suck the mana out of it? Barriers have many traps and mechanisms in it to prevent something like that from happening. Frost magic is rare but there are magic skills targeted at draining mana from things like barriers, seals, and wards.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Don’t those traps make those skills useless then? Hmm, not really, like in our current state if we can disable most traps or make them blow up so that they don't harm our progress we can drain the whole system and lift the barrier. We are trying to do that but this code is so fucking long!

If it is that hard it must have taken forever to set up the barrier then… Creating barriers is something you do before you actually make one. You make the limitations, the specifications, the strength, the traps, and the dummy mechanisms way before you put the barrier down. Putting a barrier down is almost as easy as using any magic spell, creating a barrier yourself needs what we are doing but in reverse. I don't think he gets it. Oh, I knocked out a row of dummy runes.

Hey, what if this is the obnoxious puzzle? Gregory and I paused.

You can't be serious. That could be quite plausible.

If that is true this should have some sort of set of rules. Hmm, you said you knocked out a row of dummy runes, eh? What if we need to chain combos?

Ooh, I like that you’re starting to think like me now! Not sure if that is a compliment or an insult. The simulation of one of my tails came with a similar conclusion.

There are so many parts in this structure that would multiply the effort needed to create this puzzle by 4-fold. So, the only reason I can see why someone would do that is to make some dumb puzzle. Do you see these 2 runes that I marked? My simulations told me that whenever the 2 appear in this order they are traps.

Right, time to reroute the mana away from them! After some trial and error, we managed to disable most of the traps and knock down all the dummies.

Ugh, this is exhausting. Yeah, but at least those 2 parts are done, let's leave the middle part for tomorrow. We worked on this obnoxious puzzle till well past midnight so we had decided to stop for the day. Raishin and Ted left some fried fish behind for us. We ate some, and discussed things we learned about this barrier and about the composition of barriers in general. We both decided to run some simulations in our tails to come up with a half-decent barrier.

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Day 5: Gregory woke me up and we started working on the barrier again. after 2 hours we got rid of all the traps. The only thing that needed to be done was to drain the mana out of the barrier. I went to wake up Ted and Raishin. How much time do you need to one-shot the root and the guardian? I don't know… Really Raishin?

Well, I first need to make rednadoes and then let them eat each other and after they turn into an orangenado they will turn into a fusionado. Do I even want to know what that means? Right let's set up some strong walls and defensive skills first, I can drain the mana from this barrier from a distance so we can just let Raishin set up his [Fusionado] and then lift the barrier. After this obnoxious puzzle bullshit, I don't feel like dealing with this guardian. We set up multiple earth walls shadow walls and frost walls. Gregory would use his shadow dome after some of these walls broke. Raishin started spamming tornadoes and as he described they started to cannibalize each other.

Raishin come here! I’m lifting the barrier! After we were all safe behind our walls, I drained the mana from the barrier. The guardian woke up but got up slowly.

“Oh, prey has appeared! I am Anachong the guardian of the Pi root. Let me show you the power of a 1000 suns which I have gained by absorbing a shard of Zarrazax!” That was cool and all but he was so slow that the [Fusionado] completed and hit the guardian and root. The [Fusionado] suddenly disappeared.

“Ha! Now I have the power of 1001 suns!” Raishin used his [Raishin kick] on the slow guardian. This is the perfect opponent for him, he can’t possibly miss this! This is the first time I see his [Raishin kick] and its impressive. It does a lot of damage but I don't know if it’s because the guardian is slow but it doesn’t notice the damage it is taking. What a weirdo.

“Now! will unleash…” Raishin finished his combo which ended in a kick and sent the guardian crashing into the root, after which he made another [Fusionado] and managed to destroy the Guardian with the root… What was that about? Probably something that would give us a headache. Our heads started to ring again.

Talking about headaches!

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We were back at Raishin's hut. We all came into action to deal with the shades but there were none. That is odd. We went outside and nothing seemed to be off.

Is there anything catastrophic going on? Hmm, everything seems normal. Which to me is abnormal. I don't like this I don't like this at all. Maybe we got lucky?

Lucky how? We have no idea where the last root is. Can you look around again? If you haven't found it by tomorrow, we shall try blasting the pink broccoli again, maybe then it will appear. Just don’t overdo it. I think he should just not try to do that because he will see to it that he overdoes it.

Fine, I will relax. I had quite a nice rest last timeline but it got reset… I’m sure that today is possibly the only time I can rest. We all made sure to patrol the town to make sure nothing was wrong. Gregory took this opportunity to draw the teleport circle. He sent a clone to go underground and draw one to properly receive the targets of the teleport.

A result of a simulation came in. I could use up all the remaining illusion layers I had left after we destroy the tree to cast powerful illusions on us that can create the effect that any witch or god that is looking for us will be unsuccessful. It can have the side effect that nobody can find us only by coincidence but I think that is a risk I’m willing to take. I don't think our mothers are great at being covert so if they are looking for us, we will probably notice. I ran another simulation to try and refine this. I looked through various filters. The dimensional fabric looked beat up but not to the point at which I had to fix it. There weren't any dimensional bugs so I wouldn't be able to fix it properly anyways.

Some data about this timeline seemed to be glitching. This is the one we are going to get stuck in. I’m starting to become even more worried. After confirming that nothing seems wrong, I headed home. I yet again apologized to Philip and Hera and spent some time with them. I don't know if I will be able to after this. I wanted to tell them that we will be escaping but with everything going on I don't know if it is a good idea to tell them. I went to my room. I decided to write a letter and leave it behind when we would finalize our escape. I paused. Maybe I should also consider that I might not survive this. I rewrote the letter with this in mind. I rewrote this letter over 8 times.

Writing a letter is hard. I wrote a slightly longer letter. This is the one. I burnt the failed letters and went downstairs to the living room. Hera and Philip seemed to have gone to their room. I put the letter on the table and cast an illusion on it to hide it. It would appear in 5 days or when I die. I went back upstairs and sat on my bed. This felt like the calm before the storm. I took out my tails and brushed them. A simulation was completed. The dimensional anchor was ready. Maybe a bit late but maybe I would have use for it. I fidgeted a bit with it and managed to make a complete one with a tether and all. I managed to anchor myself to this space. Using 'dimension' is confusing. I anchored myself to the Mainfloor, yes that's it. I wonder if Isi managed to work things out with Ira. Which reminds me! I need to vaporize potato village! I will do that tomorrow if I have the time. With the feeling that tomorrow will be a clown fiesta, I dozed off.