With the final hope of outside intervention extinguished, the four of us made our way back to the city in silence. I could practically feel Scout Leader Nells’s frustration radiating out of him, but I didn’t know what I could say to make him feel better. Frankly, I was also disappointed. I knew that many cities relied on their patron deities in times of need, at least when they were awake, and the territoriality of dragons when encountering outsiders was a crucial reason why cities beneath the earth could survive.

Unfortunately, the outside creatures hadn’t wandered close enough to annoy the white dragon. And the creature evidently didn’t care if we were annihilated by the Orukthyri. However, I had no time to rail against our city’s unreliable god. Since we couldn’t rely on the white dragon to help us, we needed to find a way to stand up for ourselves instead.

After returning to the city, Sallia and I met up with our respective masters, as well as Anise and Felix. Everyone seemed glad that the two of us had returned alive, especially when we talked about what we had encountered during our time hunting Orukthyri.

Anise, in particular, seemed terrified of the idea of thought worms, and shivered in horror when I mentioned that they had wiped out a huge chunk of the scouting force. Seeing Anise’s discomfort, I glossed over the rest of that part of the story, since I didn’t want to give her nightmares. However, I saw Felix giving me curious looks out of the corner of my eye, so I promised myself I would discuss the strange creatures more with him later. It seemed that Felix was beginning to develop an interest in strange biologies, in addition to crafting.

After Sallia and I told our tale of the excursion to the fallen city, Lauren and Ella seemed thoughtful for several minutes, before they began discussing the odds of the city surviving the final confrontation.

Lauren remained optimistic about the city’s odds. As long as the warband was on the smaller side, the city’s soldiers shouldn’t collapse, and the first several skirmishes had definitely favored the city’s forces far more than the Orukthyri’s forces. In the fight at the border cavern, less than a dozen soldiers had died to drop four Orukthyri warriors and one caster. In most other skirmishes, things had generally gone our way, thinning out the Orukthyri numbers while the city experienced relatively less painful casualties. Lauren seemed more worried about what state the city would be in after the battle. Even if the battle seemed to favor the city, the aftermath would be a nightmare of dead and injured soldiers trying to defend a huge number of border caverns. He felt that it was likely we would need to abandon some of the outer caverns and shrink the city’s territory until we recovered, which might mean supplies would drop much lower than usual. In the worst case scenario, directly after the Orukthyri horde, we might face a famine if we lost too many food caverns.

Ella, my own mentor, was a bit more worried about the fight itself. She felt that, given the unusual magic resistance of the Orukthyri, a head on battle might end in our loss. These Orukthyri might be dumber than the average Orukthyri, but their improved magic resistance also made them a nightmare for us to fight. The biggest advantage Orthanoids had over the Orukthyri were our higher numbers of trained spellcasters, and the fact that a normal spellcaster who could only cast third circle spells was usually able to seriously injure an Orukthyri with a spell. Unfortunately, these Orukthyri were almost immune to third circle spells, the overwhelming majority of the city’s spellcasters immediately became useless in combat. Not many Mages could handle the mind-numbing amount of runes they needed to picture and control at once in order to cast a fourth-circle spell, even if they theoretically had the mana reserves for it. That meant we were working with a rather limited amount of spellcasting for the fight. If the Orukthyri stuck to the main tunnels, the terrain advantage we usually enjoyed when fighting Orukthyri would also be reduced significantly, since no matter how we tried to manipulate the tunnels before the fight, they would either resist our manipulation, or quickly remove any ‘blockages’ we added to the tunnels.

My mentor seemed very worried about the fight, and I didn’t blame her. I hoped that the city would win, and I believed we had a chance. However, there was also a definite chance things would go horribly wrong here.

If things went poorly, this could very well be the end of my time in this world. I thought of the surface that I still hadn’t even seen yet, and felt a tremor of nervousness.

Would all of my plans to see this world’s surface go up in smoke, just like this?

I sighed, but turned back to the city.

I would do my best to defend the city. I had parents and siblings here who I didn’t want to see get hurt, and Ella and Lauren were also fine people. Scout Leader Nells seemed like a decent person, although I didn’t know him too well. And the scout leader and the other scouts had died trying to keep this city safe. That counted for something.

I wanted this city to survive the approaching horde, and I would work to make it happen.

I just hoped it would be enough. I wasn’t sure if we had the ability to win this battle against the Orukthyri, and honestly, no matter what I tried, I wasn’t sure if this city would still be standing in a week or two. I couldn’t think of a way to turn the tables in our favor beyond what I had already done. I didn’t have a brilliant plan like during our time on the islands. There was no massive sea monster I could lure into attacking the Orukthyri and solving our problem for us.

All we had were the Orthanoids working to keep the city safe.

I just hoped that would be enough.

* * *

A week passed by. In that time, I worked on refining my alteration manipulation as much as I could. I finally put some of my older ideas about refining shaping into practice by tossing out the need for ‘alternate timelines’ altogether. As far as I could tell, at its heart, Alteration was simply about altering. Using alternate timelines was a decent visualization method.

However, during the fight with the thought worms, in a moment of desperation, I had managed to alter the way my rune ability worked. And during that moment of desperation, I hadn’t used any sort of ‘alternate timeline’ visualization. I had simply imagined what I needed, and then forced my rune ability to respond.

This had been the incident that propelled me forward, helping me ‘fix’ the little bits of the alternate timeline visualization method that had always bothered me. I had realized that what I was doing, at heart, was imagining reality as it could be, and then imposing my will on reality. Imagining an ‘alternate timeline’ where reality was slightly different from the present… wasn’t that removed from proper use of alteration essence. It was just ever-so slightly less efficient than the ‘proper’ method of using shaping.

During my week of experimentation, I realized that the biggest difference between using alternate timeline visualization and ‘reality as it could be’ visualization was the possibility range.

Using alternate visualizations as a method of altering the world around me was, in practice, actually much easier than what I was trying to do. It took the components of reality that already existed around me and then slightly rearranged it. It was like taking a jigsaw puzzle and then swapping two pieces that had similar shapes to each other. The final picture created by the jigsaw puzzle would be slightly different than before, but if the pieces were similar enough to each other, it was easy to make everything fit together.

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However, while that was certainly an easy method of using alteration essence to shape the world around me, it wasn’t everything shaping could do.

Instead, if one got creative, one could take a jar of paint and then recolor some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. No amount of alternate timelines would have let me reshape the way my rune ability worked on the fly. Instead, what I had done was take my rune ability and command it to work in a completely different way.

I wondered if I could take this idea and expand it further. For example, what if I changed something bigger? Like turning rocks into salt? Or permanently changing some part of my body to make myself stronger?

I was unwilling to try the second, since I would probably lose some limbs if I messed up, but as it turned out, turning a rock into salt, water, or basically anything else I could think of using my new visualization method was possible. And it was much easier than trying to use some convoluted set of ‘alternate timelines’ to change the world around me. Though the essence cost was quite ridiculous, making it impractical for most purposes, it still let me know what I could do with shaping.

It was also much harder to create the right mental image using my new shaping system. I suspected that if I didn’t have an innate affinity for alteration essence, this would take several years of training to get the visualization method down, and it also required a certain amount of… creativity.

I also noticed that there was a slight difference in essence cost. My new visualization method was slightly more efficient. It wasn’t a big difference, but I save perhaps five or six percent of my essence with this method.

However, when I tried explaining my new visualization method to Sallia and Felix, they had a hard time wrapping their heads around it. For me, alteration was now about defining the world as it could be. Like a painter using the world as one’s canvas and alteration essence as one’s paint.

However, Sallia and Felix had a hard time getting it to work, and so, ultimately, it remained unique to me for now.

Apart from working on my shaping, I experimented with the crude fireball spell I had stolen from the Orukthyri spellcaster. True to its name, the crude fireball spell I had stolen from the Orukthyri caster was rather inefficient and crude. However, it did work. And just like every other time I had cast a higher-circle spell for the first time, I got some Achievement out of it.

Power: Become a Third-circle spellcaster

Achievement +450

Which boosted my Achievement from about 6,750 to about 7,200 Achievement. Since I was very much worried about dying within the next week, every extra little bit of Achievement meant that I was a little less worried. At the very least, if I died, I would have my keyword ability and enough Achievement to buy it, along with a couple stats.

Apart from experimenting with my magic systems, I spent some relaxing.

Specifically, I spent time with my mother and father, as well as my siblings. When Jonathan awoke, I spent some time sitting by his cot and talking to him as well. Jonathan’s arm was healing, but according to the doctor, he would never hold a sword again. He was barely able to hold a spoon.

His dreams of exploring the surface and becoming a swordsman were over.

At least, in theory.

Jonathan, instead of giving up, began desperately trying to regain the strength in his arm he had lost. With the help of my healing ability, his arm recovered rapidly, and then he began trying to run his arm through exercise after exercise to regain some of the grip strength he had lost. And shockingly, he was getting some results. His grip strength was improving, and after three days of desperate arm exercises and healing, he could grip a spoon and eat with it again. Which was impressive, considering how bad of a state his arm had been in after getting hurt.

I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, in the end. But there was a chance, and I dearly hoped that he could overcome this issue. Of course, if we lived through the final battle, I would create a rune ability to help fix the permanent damage. But the more work he did, the easier it would be to help him recover. I had never tried healing permanent damage before, and I honestly had no clue what I was doing. So the more work Jonathan did, the better the odds he had of actually regaining his arm someday.

Finally, a week had passed since Sallia and I returned to the city.

The Orukthyri horde approached. Within eight hours, the final battle would begin.

Since I had gotten permission from Scout Leader Nells and the army, I was allowed to join in the defense of the army against the Orukthyri horde. With some luck, I could snipe a spellcaster and then seriously a few Orukthyri using my shaping abilities during the fight. My whirlpool might also distract a few Orukthyri at critical moments during the fight. It was a long shot, but in theory, I might swing a few corners of the battlefield in our favor by helping out. It was all I could do.

Half an hour later, I found myself sitting next to some soldiers in one of the main tunnels, waiting for the Orukthyri horde to arrive. The scouts had already confirmed that they were coming. The only question was how many hours they had left.

We sat, resting and waiting for the enemy to come upon us, when a scout ran to one of the leaders from one of the side tunnels.

The scout said something I couldn’t quite make out, since my Perception was still, sadly, stuck in Grade 4.

The commander grimaced, and ordered all of the soldiers to rise up as one. I realized the time had come. The enemy was nearly upon us.

I did a final analysis of the troops we had available, and the terrain of the battlefield.

There were about a thousand trained soldiers on our side, all fitted with well-made steel armor and weapons. Along with that, we had around two hundred volunteers who were tacked on to part of the army. These were far less well trained than the other soldiers, and also had much less useful equipment. However, about a week ago, a small surge of citizens had asked to join the soldiers in defending their home. These two hundred were the ones deemed to be more helpful than a hindrance on the battlefield by the army leaders.

Apart from that, we had about seventy fourth circle spellcasters on our side, and a few fifth circle spellcasters as well. Due to how incredibly difficult it was to construct all 85 runes one needed for a fourth circle spell inside of one’s mind at once, it was actually quite rare for a spellcaster to reach fourth circle, even if one had the essence reserves needed to theoretically cast fourth circle spells.

Most third circle spellcasters in the city had no real way to contribute to the fight, although those that had muscle-enhancing spells had tossed some boosts onto the soldiers on the front lines before leaving.

Finally, Lauren and a few sixth circle spellcasters were in the group, and I had heard that the Overseer would participate as well, although I couldn’t see him from my position.

The tunnel we were guarding was wide enough for about ten Orukthyri to stand side by side, and, unfortunately, tall enough for the Orukthyri to stand at full height and swing weapons around.

I resisted the urge to curse the long-dead Ortha, who had made this tunnel so pointlessly tall and large, and made it so incredibly difficult to tamper with the terrain. There was no reason at all to bother doing so, and because of the damn magic keeping us from changing this tunnel’s shape, we couldn’t fix the tunnel into some terrain more suitable for us to fight in. If we had been able to just dig some pits or collapse the tunnel, this fight wouldn’t have needed to occur at all.

Then, I heard distant rumbling and snorting sounds, and gave the armor I was wearing over my dress one more look. Since my dress didn’t cover my entire body, I had opted for some lighter metal armor to protect me from any stray bits of projectiles that might get flung my way. Felix had managed to whip together some decent quality armor for me using his attunement and his budding skills as a craftsman, and it was certainly better than nothing.

I steadied myself, and then glanced at Sallia, Felix, and Anise, all of whom had come to help as well.

I looked into the distance one final time, and, in the far distance, saw the first Orukthyri round one of the bends of the tunnel. It was too far away to hit with any spells or arrows, but it was a sign.

The Orukthyri horde had come.