‘Not a single moment of peace, huh?’

Distracted for a second by the change behind his back and its likely change of the situation it heralded, Leo nearly stumbled the timing on the array of spells he constructed.

Constructing such an array would be an easy task… If Leo used his mana to both unlock and then properly fill the third and the fourth layers of his second legacy core.

But since he decided not to use his mana so freely so early on, he had no other choice but to rely on just the ability of his own brain.

And so, Leo moved through the path of the least resistance.

Turning just five of the most basic invocations, he arranged them into a mix of double and triple cast, each becoming an element. Those elements, when expanded into just three arrays Leo was extremely familiar with, became building blocks.

Blocks that Leo arranged all over the whole plain.

Barrier block, damage block, amplification block.

With just those three, Lay laid down a complex drawing of pathways through which he could nigh freely steer his mana. And by funneling down its flow of through a closed loop of amplification blocks with merely a few output blocks of barrier and damage…

“Stop!”

Leo screamed out from the bottom of his lungs.

Only a shout that was short and decisive could bring everyone to a halt, decreasing the risk of them freaking out and stepping in the way of Leo’s magic as a result of panicked reaction.

And the very moment Leo registered both of his brothers and Millie freeze for just a hint of a second, he used the only additional spell that didn’t fit the blocky array he constructed out in his mind.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The spell of light crushing, aimed directly at the hand that he supported with the telekinesis of the first core’s layer to keep a hold on all the monster cores he harvested from the second wave.

Leo’s mana surged…

And that was pretty much it.

There were no explosions, tremors, or cries.

No fiend bothered to suddenly explode in a fountain of disgusting, green blood.

Leo’s mana surged through the amplification path, losing only a hint of its force to either establish mana blockades that bounced the flow away or mana releases, where this pure energy would discharge back into nature…

Mana was just like energy. It couldn’t be created or destroyed, only manipulated.

And so, all the amplification blocks of Leo’s array did, was condense it. And whenever a tiny bit of this extremely, extremely condensed mana would leak out either into a barrier or directly into the world, either as a nigh impenetrable but unbelievably fragile barrier or…

Or in the form of an impossibly narrow yet extremely potent magic shockwave that blasted all the natural mana in proximity, be it the world’s free mana or someone’s own mana, out of order.

“Khe…!”

A single, pained cry escaped from the massive mouth of a massive, three-eyed troll as it heavily fell down to the ground, just as if someone cut the wires that used to hold its weighty body up.

Any living being that made use of the mana to circumvent the gaps in its biology suddenly had to face the very reality Leo was born in.

A reality where mana, even if for but a fleeting instant, wasn’t there.

Small fiends fell down to the ground, their brains never supposed to achieve the higher thought necessary to form groups and packs and overloading in an instant when deprived of what kept up the burden on their gray matter aside.

Bigger fiends would simply collapse down on themselves, their bone structure and muscle weave unable to hold up their own weight.

Only a selected few fiends and monsters were born lucky enough to possess a physique that mana only augmented rather than allowing it to work… But even those, like the six-legged panther that lurked in the back of the horde in search of an opportunity to attack, couldn’t handle the shock.

Leo’s damage blocks released bursts of energy only for a fleeting instant… But at a frequency that pretty much made those discharges constant. And after a single second of such therapy, therapy that Leo shielded all five humans ahead from, Leo ceased to feed mana into the loop.

Each of the few damage blocks spat out energy only for a single instant, only using a fraction of the total sum of mana within the loop… But with nothing there to moderate mana’s flow inside of the loop, the mental structure dried out a mere two seconds later, putting an end to the silent, acinematic slaughter.

“Whew!” Leo whistled, lowering his hands on his hips while he stretched his back and glanced at the shocked faces slowly turning to face him.

“Just one more moment,” Leo shouted again, moving his right hand from his hip only to raise it up and snap his fingers.

Tap.

The mass of still-fresh corpses that hardly had the time to fall down erupted in a tsunami of green blood as if there was a small explosive planted in where all of those fiends should have their hearts. And what was even worse, the bulk of the exploding blood surged inward, as if intent on drowning those few daring adventures who had the audacity to challenge the green portal.

The disgusting, green blood covered everyone, Leo included, from head to toe… But brought no further harm to anyone. By the time Rob managed to claim the first place for how fast one could clear their eyes from the sticky fluid, Leo already placed the massive haul of monster cores into the clutches of a simple, illusion spell.

Just in time for the warping of the space behind him to come to fruition and spit out a small team of armed cops.