Felix quickly slept a few hours then ran through his daily routine. With that done, he excitedly flew over to the castle to check on the spell formations he had set up about a day ago.

He started climbing the road to the front of the castle then shot off to the side and decided to go around when he saw that there was still steam pouring up from the lake around the castle. Using the steam as cover, Felix reached out with his mana senses and felt at the difference between the density of the aether inside the castle compared to outside. Inside the castle, the aether was about 50% denser than it was outside, which wasn't nearly enough for what Felix needed.

Shit. It should have been faster. It's like the aether is sluggish around here. Is that a thing?

I don't know. Grim said along with communicating a shrug.

Agh. I don't have time to wait any longer and even if I had another day, at this rate it wouldn't be enough. I need more than just a few hours left after I figure out what's inside the castle. This will only deal with the guards, then there are still the Devoured monsters along with whatever's inside the castle itself. I need to save the last day or so to make any preparations I need for that.

So new plan?

No. Same plan, I can make it work. The spells I already set up are supposed to collect, distribute then contain mana around the castle. It's not collecting it as fast as I'd like, but it's containing it just fine. Standing next to it, I don't feel any leakage. It's just the collection that's slow.

So?

If it can contain mana, but can't collect it, I'll just have to add mana myself.

Felix didn't elaborate, instead he shot up into the air, cast a couple of channeled lights and spun them around him. Immediately, the guards spotted him and started firing volleys of arrows as he darted around over the castle. His Mana Shield blocked all the arrows that would have hit him which meant he could focus on the rest of his plan.

He figured it would be easier for him to set up the spells now, while the guard's volley was still manageable, then add mana afterwards because the spells needed to be placed precisely, mana didn't. The mana he could just spray around wherever so he didn't need to focus on it.

Felix dove down towards the ground and dropped scrolls as precisely as he could while dodging and weaving through the arrows. He focused on the tighter sections first, between the buildings, and avoided the monsters. Once the monsters mindlessly rushed to his old position, he darted around them and placed scrolls on the other side of the camp.

He made sure to activate the spells on the scrolls before he dropped them, but they weren't doing much with the low levels of aether. Once the areas between the buildings and near the walls were covered, Felix rose up higher into the air, to avoid the tentacles and chimera tail, then started dropping a steady stream of scrolls with the larger area of effect.

It didn't really matter if they overlapped, what mattered was that as much of the area as possible was covered by at least one scroll's radius. The last area to cover was the hardest. Felix flew over the top of the wall as fast as he could while dropping scrolls onto it and using force spells to knock the guards around a little. He had though about starting with the wall, but he wanted as many of the guards as possible to congregate in the courtyard, trying to hit him while he dove.

Once Felix had placed all of the scrolls, the stream of guards exiting the buildings and castle had mostly ended, which he hoped meant that almost all of them were in the courtyard or on the wall. The volley of arrows had become more difficult to deal with, but with the flying Devoured still disabled, squawking uselessly at him from the courtyard, it would only slowly whittle him down.

For the last step, Felix started circling in the skies over the castle, dodging and weaving the arrows as best he could, though it didn't do much due to the shear volume of arrows in the air. He retrieved a mana battery from his inventory, held it in his left hand then crushed it both physically and using his mana control. The battery exploded shooting Felix's hand back in the process.

He learned from his mistake and pulling out the next one, he moved it's mana back into the aether before crushing it, completely avoiding any damage from the resulting explosion. With that figured out, he started pulling out two at a time, crushing one in each hand as he darted through a seemingly infinite sea of arrows.

His mana was slowly dropping as he flew, he only had half left, but the spells hadn't quite activated yet so he kept crushing the batteries as fast as he could. The aether was very quickly growing denser around him and thankfully seemed to still be contained within the castle's vicinity.

Felix had crushed almost 30 batteries when he started having to dodge more than just arrows. The disabled flying Devoured, that had been hopping around this whole time started to jump higher and higher having finally managed get in range of him. They started to bite at his heels but didn't have the same mobility in the air as they used to.

Felix dodged past them but didn't dare fly higher because he was worried the mana would leak out if it was further from the containment spells. The mana was less useful the further it was from the scrolls he had placed and considering how sluggish the aether was, he tried to keep the mana as close to the scrolls as he could reasonably manage. It took 50 batteries for Felix to start seeing the effect on the guards but he didn't stop, in fact he sped up as much as he could. His desired effect was much greater.

At first, the flying Devoured that had been previously disabled started to jump progressively higher as Felix crushed the batteries. It was an unintended side effect but didn't matter in the end. Given that they were born to fly, their bones were hollow and their bodies light, so the spell affected them first.

As they jumped towards Felix, they started to jump higher and higher until they reached him, but then kept going. They started to jump well past him, and then they stopped falling back to the ground. A couple dozen batteries after them, the guards feet started to slowly hover off the ground, rising just an inch or so at first then they slowly started to ascend.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Felix noticed it almost immediately because it made it hard for them to shoot at him. The arrows started to fly all over the place instead of the constant stream that surrounded him. The guards feet slowly rose an inch off the ground, then slammed back into it when they fired an arrow. Then they would rise a couple inches, and slam back into the ground. They hovered higher and higher until the arrows weren't enough to bring them back down anymore and instead just spun their weightless bodies around in the air.

At that point, the volley had basically ended since they were incapable of orienting themselves to fire at Felix. Some of them tried and a few arrows hit his shield every second, but it was far from the hundreds it had felt like before. Felix continued to crush batteries as he flew around and when he had consumed 70 batteries, the Devoured started falling, upwards.

It had taken far more mana than he had hoped for, apparently having underestimated their weight or misplaced the scrolls too much but with it finally working, Felix basked in the relief that washed over him. If he had placed the scrolls too close to the buildings, they would waste mana trying to lift it instead of the Devoured. He had limited how much mana they could consume so they would only be able to lift a certain weight, but they would still try to push on the buildings because he had no way to exclude them.

He was starting to get really annoyed that he didn't have access to more complex spell components. Worst case he could try and invent some if they didn't exist already but he was sure they did, he just didn't think he'd find them in his nascent, integration universe.

Felix stopped at 90 batteries once all of the guards he could see were plummeting into the skies above. The monsters in the courtyard were much heavier and so they didn't fall, leaving them alone with Felix. With only a third of his mana left, Felix wasn't sure if he could deal with them now, but he figured he might as well try.

He swapped the direction he pushed himself as the spells on the ground caused his gravity to flip as well, and summoned a shield above him. He made sure to keep himself high enough that he was out of their jump range then summoned a shade on the ground behind the chimera. It was so focused on Felix flying through the air that it didn't even notice the shade until it buried it's axe halfway into one of it's two scaly reptilian tails.

The Chimera jumped straight up, almost 5 meters into the air and clearly higher than it had expected, then spun around to see what had attacked it. Felix had already flown off to the side though so the shade was next to the tentacled monstrosity instead.

The shade slammed the axe down over it's head towards the tentacled creature but it's writhing mass simply split apart, allowing the axe to pass right through without hitting anything. In response, a tentacle wove itself around the shade and pierced it in the side causing more than enough damage for it to vanish instantly. Felix winced at the strike and took solace in the fact that he wasn't facing these creatures directly.

He summoned two shades this time, one in front and the other behind the griffin, since it seemed to be paying the least attention. He ran forwards, causing both shades to charge at the creature in unison then struck out with a wide, horizontal swing.

Unfortunately, the griffin was either too lucky or too aware of it's surroundings to fall prey to a trick like that, it simply jumped up to avoid the swing and landed a dozen meters away. It tried to glide with it's wings but without feathers and with a lot of it's flesh missing, it's wings were just long spindly appendages that were mostly useless.

As Felix shot himself to the side repositioning his shades to attack some kind of dozen legged lizard, he saw a mass flying by off in his peripheral vision. Shooting his gaze over his shoulder, he saw that one of the guards plummeting to the ground from some unknown height. It was outside of the bounds of the castle though so Felix sighed in relief that he still had some time before his scrolls started to fail.

He had designed them to fail dramatically instead of their effects lessening as the mana reduced. It had taken some time experimenting until he found the right intentional flaw, one that would cause the spell itself to shatter instead of gradually falling apart.

Ultimately, it came down to the limitations of the spell scrolls. He found that they were limited to channeling a certain amount of mana, he wasn't going to exceed that ever but he could have the mana circle around many times. That way a single spot on the scroll would end up with a lot of use, even if the rest of the scroll didn't. When it failed like that, the spell scroll itself combusted and the spell effect simply vanished, so the guards would plummet from whatever height they had achieved.

Felix refocused on the monstrosities in the courtyard and continued trying to hit anything and everything but mostly ended up missing. He landed a few strikes among the dozens he attempted but they even when they did hit, they didn't seem to have much of an effect

Given how much higher the monstrosities levels were, he assumed he wouldn't wouldn't be severing their limbs in a single strike, but he was hoping they would do more than they were. He wasn't sure how to increase the effects of his strikes more than he already was, adding force to every strike and maxing out the weight of the axe. Instead, he settled on the alternative, if his strikes weren't very effective, he was just going to have to hit more often.

At his current level, Felix wasn't nearly as fast as the creatures on the ground, even with their stats reduced from being Devoured. The difference was so great, that they were able to dodge almost all of his strikes. He only occasionally hit them because he caught one of them by surprise, often right after resummoning a shade, or he managed to corner them using two shades and a wall.

It would take too long for him to keep shepherding the creatures into walls so he settled on a different approach. All of the Devoured he had encountered so far, other than the alchemist general, appeared to only be reacting on instinct, they were not capable of thinking for themselves. Those instincts were also entirely a carry over from when they were alive.

Given that the monsters were both aware enough and fast enough to dodge his strikes, Felix decided to deal with the former. He pulled out a couple of mana batteries, this time crushing them and pulling the released mana directly into his core.

As he flew around now, Felix started raining down explosive balls of light and sound. He didn't want to risk destroying the scrolls he had so carefully littered across the ground so he didn't use lightning, fire or force. He just hoped the light and sound would be enough to trigger their instincts and flood their senses.

Guiding his shades into position Felix struck forwards at whichever creature seemed the most distracted. His hit rate had climbed drastically to about 50% and he had even landed a couple of devastating strikes on the griffin's neck and the tentacle's core body.

He started to focus fire his distractions on individual targets and used the shades to whittle them down instead of raining down upon the entire battle field. It took far longer than he would have liked but he managed to finally kill one of them, a large two headed bear.

Moving onto the next target, Felix saw a couple more Devoured, that had drifted out of the range of his spells, fall to the ground but none that had fallen within the bounds, just yet.

He hurried along taking out as many monsters as he could, focusing on the ones that seemed the most affected by his distractions. The only goal in his mind at the moment was to reduce their numbers so they would be easier to deal with later on. He had made it through three quarters of them using a dozen mana batteries by the time the first guard rained down from above and landed within the castle walls.

In a matter of moments the number of guards falling from the sky made it too dangerous for Felix to stick around so he shot off to the side, over the lake and watched. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .