Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 176. Sixth Golden Rune.
“Runic Magic?!” Quite a few people in the close vicinity to Laien repeated after him. The group included Sirius, who was in utter disbelief as he continued to stare at the massive sigil in the south-east which filled the entire area of over a dozen kilometers in its radius with an ominous red light.
“Don’t tell me,” Sirius murmured absent-mindedly. “The Faren Republic’s Mage Protector is here? How can it be her? But, there isn’t anyone else in the world who can control runic magic on this scale,” he thought absent-mindedly. Hadn’t that monster stepped down from her position and given up all her power and influence a decade ago? “For what reason could she possibly…” he asked himself, but then the revelation struck him like lightning. What was the name of one of those two women upon whose request Laien and Yin claimed to have worked back in the City of Palee?
“Flora!” Sirius almost choked on his own spit. Since Mustafa had told them not to bother with those events, they had never dug in deeply and only knew that Laien and Yin had acted to rescue some friends of theirs. They had learned the names of Flora and Claire along the way, but back then, he hadn’t thought much about it and later, he had completely forgotten about the entire matter. Yet, if his reasoning was correct, then one of those kids those two had saved from the harems was Flora’s grandson! They had avoided a disaster of fighting a desperate Runic Master without even knowing it!
“Reinforcements?” At the same time, Casimir’s eyebrows furrowed. He had been a step slower at it than Laien, but there was no way he wouldn’t recognize the famed Runic Magic of that old hag. The north and the south of Eulene had been in conflict for centuries, but he hadn’t heard anything about that stubborn bag of bones for years now. She hadn’t even shown herself during the events of the Blood Dawn from the last spring, so her making an appearance to take her revenge now out of all times didn’t make sense to him. If anything, he would sooner be inclined to believe that she would swipe both their party and Yimar Maar’s men with her magic than to think she came here to help.
“Slow down!” However, at this moment, Laien’s overjoyed yell reached his ears. In his mind, there was only one reason for Laien to be asking them to slow down. The boy didn’t want them to get too close to Yimar Maar’s lines and be ready to make a turn, so did it mean he was confident that the old hag had come here to rescue them? But then why hadn’t Laien mentioned her at all when they were discussing their alliance… did he not expect to receive any help from her due to some reasons?
“Slow down!” Casimir still had some doubts lingering in his heart, but he repeated the order despite that. No matter what happened next, it was their best bet to delay until that Great Magic was fired, especially considering how quickly it was accumulating power. A standard Great Magic at any comparable level would require at least half a thousand spiritual masters working together and chanting the incantation for two minutes at the very least. On the other hand, the Great Magic empowered by Flora’s Runic Magic was on the verge of completion mere six or seven seconds after it was started. In war, the difference was like the one between the earth and the sky.
“Heh,” Casimir snorted secretly. “As long as it doesn’t suddenly change directions and it doesn’t hit us, it’s all great,” he thought sarcastically. It was great to have the sole Runic Master in the world as an ally, but if she turned out to be an enemy, then they wouldn’t even have an opportunity to fight their way out of here. Rather, most of them would certainly be felled by this ridiculous force accumulating in the sky. However, it wasn’t like he could do anything else but to trust Laien, so he waited patiently as seconds that felt much shorter than always passed one after another.
At the roughly same time as Arslan’s group began slowing down, Yimar Maar broke out of his shock and started cursing and yelling in a mixture of fury and frustration.
“Runic Master?!” he yelled through his teeth, his face long since having changed to a deep shade of red, soon to turn purple. “Why is the Mage Protector here?! Why now?! Dear Rala, why the !@#$ is she here?!” he shouted in his desperation, knowing fully well that any attempts to send orders over to his eastern flank would be for naught. Like many others, he had been convinced that this monster had kicked the bucket since she hadn’t been showing herself at all for over a decade. Yet, as if it wasn’t catastrophic enough she was actually not only alive, but he ended up facing her in the worst possible way, on a large-scale battlefield!
In a direct one-on-one fight, he wouldn’t fear her, but in a battle involving thousands, there was nothing more deadly than a true Runic Master. He had no idea what prompted that old freak to act now out of all times when she had done nothing when her country was being purged, and it only added to his helpless anger. He didn’t know how nor why, but no matter what, every time it seemed as if he was a step away from capturing Arslan and obtaining the entirety of Makarash for himself, something would go wrong! He honestly felt like tearing the hair out of his head as he watched the Great Magic reach its completion…
… but when he saw the absolutely massive stream of flames the crimson sigil had spewed forth, when he felt the horrifying aura of power spreading from it, he all this anger suddenly left him and instead, he felt weak in his knees. The only reason he didn’t fell down to the ground was that he was sitting in the saddle of his horse. Though, once the scene of carnage unfolding before his eyes was properly registered by his brain, he very nearly slid off this very horse. The absolute mass of flames extended mercilessly, swallowing over four thousands of his best people and turning a fifteen-kilometers long and two-kilometers wide batch of lands into a landscape that seemed to be hell on earth. He had no words to describe what he was seeing, it was simply too shocking and unbelievable.
*Gulp*
Even Yimar Maar, who was many kilometers away, was struck speechless by the power of Flora’s Great Magic. It went without saying that those who had been far closer to it, merely two kilometers away from the closest point, were affected to a far higher degree. From this distance, they could clearly see how the abundant fields of wheat had all disappeared, how the ground in the entire batch of land had turned into a bright-yellow river of magma and how the air over the entire path of flames was fluctuating wildly, having been heated-up to an abnormally high degree. The brunt of the spell was directed away from them, but even then, they could feel how the temperature around them had risen sharply, by over thirty degrees, making breathing hard for those with weaker cultivation bases.
“Holy crap,” Laien uttered, his eyes open wide. Weren’t there some elites at the fourth and fifth Realm of Heroes amongst those thousands of men? He had thought that quite a few of them would survive, but the more he looked, the more sure he was that all of them had been wiped out by this Great Magic. He had seen all four thousand of those experts defending in various means, he had seen thousands of martial techniques and spells rising up into the air to meet the flood of flames, but that Great Magic pressed on continuously and even after it had its front bits chopped away, it went on to swallow everything in its path.
Unlike that water-element Great Magic cast by Yimar Furi’s men, this Great Magic wasn’t a one-shot attack but an unceasing stream of incredibly powerful energy, one resembling a river of fire. In terms of destructive potential, Laien judged it to be at least one hundred times above that of other Great Magic he had seen. In fact, the chasm between the potential of those two spells was so great that he hesitated to categorize them in the same realm of ‘Great Magic’. If a Runic Master was capable of attacks on this scale, then no matter how hard and time-consuming it was, he needed to start learning from Flora’s inheritance as soon as possible!
“Hah,” Yin chuckled, then commented with a wry smile. “I guess what goes around comes around,” he said and gave Laien an amused look. He still remembered how he had been against getting involved in unrelated matters back in the Iron Fort, but it looked like helping others could lead to good things along the way, too. Who knows how the past month would have developed had they refused to help Flora back then in Palee City? Would they have ever gotten to know Arslan, then Raphael and Mikaela? Would they have traveled peacefully or would they have gotten into something dangerous and ended up dying without any allies or friends to rely on?
“I must have gone mad,” Yin summed himself up once he realized that Laien was chuckling while paying attention to his thoughts. “It’s all your fault if we die someday, okay?” he mused jokingly and exchanged an amused look with Laien the next second. Laien’s habit of getting involved in every affair on their path was making their lives difficult in many ways, but he needed to admit that he came to enjoy the danger and the challenge coming with it. In other words, he must have gone crazy.
“What now?” While Laien and Yin were celebrating, Casimir was working on the next problem their group would need to very soon face. On one hand, that Great Magic had gotten rid of the entire flank of their enemies and had even caught a portion of the people who were preparing to intercept them on their way out. However, on the other hand, that very same spell left so much fire-element energy in its path that the temperature would kill not only their horses were they try to pass, but anyone below the level of a martial master of the fourth rank would burn to crisp, too.
“Should we try to break through at the border of the spell?” Casimir asked himself but quickly rejected the idea. There were still almost two thousand martial masters waiting for them in the south, so no matter how close to the fiery wasteland they approached, those people would have enough time to readjust their positions. As for hoping for another attack of this magnitude to come any time soon and wipe out the second flank of Yimar Maar’s army… well. He wasn’t foolish enough to think it would be possible even for Flora to unleash Great Magic of this level repeatedly.
“Turn left!” he shouted much to everybody’s surprise, cutting the celebrations in the middle. Still, his and Anna’s Royal Guard and the two elite units they had with them obeyed him promptly and changed directions. The nobles and their guards who were in the middle of the wedge formation had no choice but to do the same no matter if they wanted to ask for an explanation beforehand.
“Tighten the wedge!” Casimir ordered, trusting that his people would be able to lead those nobles in changing the formation into a tighter one without detailed instructions. “All martial and spiritual masters of the water element, to the front!” he continued with the orders and as such, he made it apparent to everyone what his intentions were. He wanted to use the ice-element magic and hopefully, those who had some insights into the Principle of Energy to fend off the heat as they passed through that flaming hell at short notice. It was a high-risk high-return gamble, but since most of Julien’s water-element experts were still alive, he trusted they would be able to go through safely.
Of course, the price for that would be having all of their healers tire themselves out, but as far as Casimir’s opinion was concerned, it was still better than attempting a direct break-through against those two thousand people waiting for them in the south.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Wait a second!”
And naturally, Casimir expected Laien to speak up. He had mentioned only martial masters and spiritual masters on purpose since he wanted to preserve the fighting strength of Laien’s. By now he knew well enough that Laien was no weaker water-element practitioner than any of their men, but the boy would be more useful to them later if he could fight alongside Yin again. Thus, he was about to tell Laien to calm down and save his strength for later, but what Laien said next made him choke on his words before they could escape his throat.
“Call them all off, I will handle it with Yin!”
“Hah?!” Casimir failed to prevent the very audible gasp from escaping his mouth. He would still understand it Laien wanted to lead the water-element masters in fending off the heat, but he wanted to basically do it on his own? After all, what use could the help of a lightning-element practitioner like Yin possibly be in this situation? He truly had no idea what Laien was thinking!
“Just trust me, okay?” Laien shouted again and without waiting for a response, started forcing his way through to the front with Yin riding by his side.
Flabbergasted, Casimir could only shake his head. He really couldn’t deal at all with someone as unpredictable and stubborn as Laien. “Those of you who have most of your energy left, come to the front just in case,” he instructed after a second of internal struggle. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust in Laien’s judgment… ugh. To be fair, he really didn’t trust in Laien’s ability to single-handedly make a way through this burning hell for their entire group, so he wanted to have some insurance.
Thankfully, Laien didn’t look bothered by it as he passed with his friend right between him and Anna. “Am I worrying about stupid things in the middle of a crisis?” Casimir asked himself and sighed secretly. Since when did he care what someone would think about his orders or if that person would be annoyed by them? It looked like hanging around those two, and around Laien in particular, was causing his mental state to change in a weirdly uncomfortable way.
“Be sure to say it if you need help,” he reminded somewhat helplessly and had his eye twitch when Laien waved his hand at him without bothering to turn around. Ironically enough, he revealed a resigned smile right afterward since Anna started laughing at him. If it served to lighten up her mood, then he wouldn’t mind getting ticked off by Laien every now and then.
“Okay,” Laien took a deep breath and whilst breathing out, he relaxed in the saddle and emptied his mind of unnecessary thoughts. The usual smile disappeared from his face, exchanged by a calm look of focus. He looked ahead, his gaze focusing on the bubbling magma they would need to cross over. He had stepped up to this task, but it would be no means be an easy one. Were it not for Yin who could help him to a fair degree with his own insights, he wouldn’t have tried something like this without a good deal of support from the water-element practitioners from their group.
“Just like with my ice mist,” he murmured and raised his right hand, pointing to the front with its open palm. “Use Qi and spiritual energy only to carry the insights,” he mused while slowly releasing and spreading his energy out. They were galloping at full speed towards that two-kilometer-wide land of flames, so it wouldn’t be long before they rode into it. The residual heat wasn’t so bad yet for him, but he could guess that Arslan and Johan would soon start hurting from breathing this air.
“First slowly,” he murmured to himself. The illusory shapes of the five golden runes appeared within his soul as he called upon a little bit of strength from all of his insights into the Principle of Energy, while on the outside, he himself and their entire sharp wedge of riders was suddenly met with a wave of cold air. To be fair, Casimir, Anna, and quite a few others were quite startled at first since he had accidentally overdone it a little bit and lowered the temperature to negative thirty degrees. He did, however, notice his mistake very quickly and fixed it before the the fire-element members of their group were forced to protect Arslan by raising the temperature.
“Whoops,” Laien chuckled silently, a small smirk present on his face. He had gotten so used to either directly creating ice with his magic or moving to the extreme levels of cold that once he needed to restrain his insights, he had failed to do so at first. “I’ll need to use them at full strength soon anyway,” he told himself. As seconds passed, he was forced to keep using more and more of the power behind the Principle of Energy to keep the temperature within manageable levels. The difference wasn’t so bad when they were still more than three hundred meters away, but once they passed this mark, he was instantly forced to forsake silly thoughts and fully focus on his task.
“It’s still this hot even after twenty seconds?” Laien frowned slightly while steadily upping the level of force he was drawing from the five golden runes. He hadn’t felt all that many insights from those flames, so he had thought it would be easier. Yet, now that they were getting closer and closer, he was able to probe the area with his aura and he discovered just how much natural fire-element energy this fiery hell contained. Most likely, if no one did anything to get rid of this flaming scar, the ground would continue to burn for at least a few weeks before dissipating in a natural way.
“Yin,” he requested once they were about to charge into the area covered by the layer of liquid magma. It would have been hard for others to cooperate purely through their insights, but he and Yin were a unique case. So, Yin raised his left hand and poured the essence of his insights into the Principle of Energy out, mixing it with the already present Qi and spiritual energy and using them as a medium to carry it over to a larger area.
At this moment, when everyone behind Laien and Yin was tense, when the water-element martial and spiritual masters were readying themselves to use their own techniques and spells, all what of them could see changed in an instant. There was no fizzling sound as they expected, but instead, the entire space in front of their wedge turned white. Thirty meters away, they could still see the bright yellow magma, but just a meter closer the ground was turning black and then another meter closer, it would turn white from the countless very small drops of snow and ice that were falling from the cone-shaped barrier that was separating them from the burning hell outside of it.
Many of them thus watched speechlessly as this unnatural and yet incredibly beautiful scene was laid bare in front of their eyes. However, those of their group who had some relatively considerable insights into the Principle of Energy were awestruck for a very different reason. Not only was the degree of insights they could sense far beyond what they had ever achieved themselves, the manner in which those two boys were applying them was nothing short of miraculous! It wasn’t what they would have done, it wasn’t as if those two were using ice to cool down the heat and it wasn’t even as if they were creating cold to resist the heat, either.
It was as if… as if they were taking all that hot energy and directly causing it to shift to the cold energy. What’s more, they appeared to be doing so in an effortless fashion, without tiring themselves out in the slightest! They couldn’t understand how, but since the process was taking place right in front of them, they couldn’t deny it. They all soon started attempting to perceive something from the way those two were using the Principle of Energy, but how could gaining new insights be so simple, even for elites like them? With one or two exceptions, none of them were able to understand anything essential about the process Laien and Yin were employing.
“Hrm.” Laien smiled happily. “Luckily it looks like changing the Principles behind the natural energy of the world is far easier than influencing the energy refined or controlled by someone else,” he mused in a relaxed manner. He should have known this fact to be true for a long time, but he had never had a chance to freely mess with an extremely hot or extremely cold mass on natural energy like this one. So, while he understood it was easier to manipulate the natural energy, he hadn’t been quite aware that the comparative degree of difficulty was this much lower once the scale grew large enough.
Thinking about it, he chuckled quietly. For a moment, he had expected to be met with a great challenge, but instead, he and Yin were given an easy to obtain lucky chance instead. It wasn’t often that such a mass of natural fire-element natural energy appeared in the world, after all, so the opportunity to actively influence it was a valuable experience to the two of them.
By the time they grasped the best way to smoothly influence natural energy with the Principle of Energy, the two of them found the sixth golden rune taking shape in their souls. Simultaneously, they both wondered if perhaps stripping down the refined or controlled energy from its shell and directly influencing the natural energy it was created from wouldn’t produce some good results. Yet, they knew that there probably wouldn’t be enough time for them to try this idea out anytime soon.
“It became even purer?” Sirius uttered unconsciously as a chill of excitement went down his spine. He was further behind in their wedge formation, but he was one of the two people who were able to make use of this opportunity and comprehend some new insights. For the first time in centuries, he felt his spiritual energy stirring as his insights began growing once again. He suppressed an exclamation of happiness that pressed itself to his lips and stopped at showing a broad smile.
Given a few months to meditate in peace, he was quite confident to advance to the sixth Realm of Heroes! He had thought it had long since been the end of the improvement he would make in his life, but who knew he would suddenly gain enlightenment? This way, his lifespan would also be extended by over a century! He wouldn’t need to worry about dying of old age before seeing the growth of those youngsters through to the very end, so this awareness made him quite happy indeed.
Meanwhile, while Sirius was rejoicing and the entire Arslan’s group was making their way across the path of flames, two more scenes worthy attention were playing out.
First, at a point furthest to the north-west, Yimar Maar was in the middle of furiously spitting curses while leading just about four thousand of his men to cut Arslan away from the north. However, unlike Arslan’s group, he hadn’t chosen to go right through the scorched ground and was making his way around the far-end tip of it. With how scattered his forces were it was likely a good decision on his part, but the awareness that they would be losing time was still eating away at his sanity.
He had no idea if Flora was alone or if she had any considerable number of allies with her so giving Arslan any more time to flee freely could potentially turn out to be disastrous. Yet, he had no choice but to lead his men the safe way around unless he wanted to risk Arslan escaping into the forests to the north and getting much further away from his grasp. As for the southern path that was leading to the Ruishi Federation, he could only leave it up to the commanders from Abdain’s private army. With seven thousand or so elites at their disposal, they should be able to cut off the south reliably enough.
Secondly, the next important chain of events was playing out in the very center of this grand and chaotic battlefield. As Abdain was facing off against Julien and Reian, he was no more happy to watch the development of this battle than his master. Forgetting the men he had lost to Mustafa’s army and the potential loses this Great Magic must have caused, he lost almost a thousand of his best people in the course of those battles, with the last ten minutes responsible for more than half of those numbers. If Arslan ended up escaping after his group froze their way over this patch of burning land, he would be infuriated beyond belief. As much as he owed Yimar Maar everything he had, he would make sure that his master would never again be in command of any large-scale battles.
“Tch,” he clicked his tongue once Reian finished off the few experts he still had left nearby. Like that, the six hundred elites he had entered this battle with were all gone, annihilated almost to the last man. The only exception was those few who had given in to fear and chosen to flee westwards, in the opposite direction of where Arslan was heading, and as such avoided being cut down by Reian.
He wished that he could at least kill one of those two damned men, but just as he expected, once Arslan’s group made their way through the field of flames, Julien and Reian both turned away from him and started fleeing eastwards. With their cultivation, it wouldn’t be hard for them to pass through the flames on their own and with their speed and agility, he couldn’t stop them if they wanted to run away from him. Feeling helplessly angry, he stomped at the ground with all his strength, causing a large crater to appear below his feet.
“I should chase them regardless,” he told himself and sprinted after Arslan’s group. He wouldn’t be able to stop Julien and Reian directly, but sure as hell he wouldn’t let them join up with Arslan’s party without paying the price in blood and sweat. Their side might have lost its advantage, but unless that old hag brought a great force with herself to help Arslan, then they still were in the stronger position!