The project the Order was planning had been intricately detailed in the report An Shen still held. The Seat of Discovery wrote that they would amass an outrageous amount of mana within some suitable receptacle before it would be utilised. The crucial role of storage would likely fall to Lin Qu, Seat of Growth, whose abilities lended themselves nicely to the requirements.
As this collection of mana would likely take an extended period of time, this gave them time to refine other aspects of the project, like the actual process itself.
At the moment of activation, the entire stockpile of mana would theoretically be instantaneously funnelled through a hexagonal focusing lens of multiple high-class barrier spells, to keep the raging energy from escaping into the atmosphere. The subsequent mana beam would then ricochet between the confines of the lens, creating the ideal conditions for the recreating of the desired phenomena Zhao Da had witnessed.
Thereafter, with a little coaxing and luck, a miniscule gash in the foundation of the world would hopefully be formed, through which the Order would be able to siphon as much mana as they wished.
Additionally, as the sheer energy being expended would theoretically keep the rift open for a couple of minutes, it would be a trivial matter to set it up such that a portion of the potentially endless amount of mana obtained from this project could be shunted off to keep the tear stable for as long as they wished.
Ten years was the estimated timeline for completion, after accounting for the daily duties the Order were to maintain during this period. Although it might have been more efficient for the ten members to devote their entire mana pools to this sole endeavour, or even bring in trusted allies to assist in the collection of mana, this approach had been struck off by Zhao Da within the pages of the report.
Secrecy was paramount for the development of this world-shattering new technology. It had to be; for if successfully monopolized, Glint would surge so far ahead of the other two major powers that whatever they could come up with would no longer be considered threats.
Infiltration by the trained espionage agents of Renza to cripple Glint’s command centers? The elite infantry of Anlin breaking through Glint’s enchanted defences, and tearing through their casters like butter? Perhaps a combination of the full strengths of both nations, allied as they aimed for Glint’s throat?
All these scenarios would be reduced to meaningless nonsense in the face of Glint’s newest combat doctrine – the complete eradication of the other side. Deterrence through show of sheer unimaginable power; a stratagem that was the easiest to understand, yet most difficult to achieve.
But with access to a source of infinite mana, the creation of theoretical weaponry once impeded by the lack of mana could be realised within weeks.
High-power disintegration beam arrays that could be projected from miles away. The mass teleportation of daisy-chained mana fusion cores directly into enemy locations. Pressure differential exchange incantations would crush enemy lines with the unrelenting forces of the deepest ocean depths. Saturation bombardments would no longer last minutes; they would last days. Crystalized mana payloads could easily be scaled up tenfold, with resulting impacts that would wipe out entire continents.
War would be reduced to a rigged game where only Glint would prevail, each and every time.
It was therefore of the utmost importance that no one but the Order could know about this. They were the only ones that could contribute to the mana stockpile, and they had to keep up appearances even while doing so, to prevent information leakage to foreign agents. Under those constraints, ten years was the absolute least amount of time required for the necessary mana stockpile to be built up.
“Warmonging maniacs,” An Shen mumbled in disgust as he read the words on the report in front of him. The Order hadn’t been thinking of nuanced discussions or treaty agreements in An Shen’s absence; all they could come up with was kill, kill, kill. They had been presented with the greatest hammer that was endless mana, so every future conflict became a nail in their eyes.
As if that could be sustainable in the slightest.
Eventually the Order would die. Of disease, of assassination, or plain old age; it didn’t matter. What mattered was that eventually these pillars of Glint would perish, leaving the systems in place to the next generation, who could very well be less skilled or less assertive. They might be more lax than their predecessors, carelessly leaving a plan here, forgetting a document there.
Information that would fall into the hands of the enemy.
If the initial opening of the rift didn’t destroy Glint first, the mistake of leaving it open would.
“I must stop them. For the sake of Glint.” An Shen repeated to himself. There was no one else that knew of what was transpiring within the chambers of the Order, no one that could prepare for the coming devastation. No one but him.
But how could he do anything? The Order had banished him to the role of a figurehead; the Headmaster of a mere Academy. He had no army under his command, nor did he have the capabilities to take on ten master sorcerers by himself. It was an insurmountable wall that stood in his way, unscalable and impenetrable.
No, An Shen. The elder chided himself. Reason it out carefully. This is just like back in the Great War, where survival was uncertain and relief was fleeting. Remember those moments where you cowered there, huddled in the cold and fearful for your life. You managed to crawl out, dodging bullets and bombs. You managed to survive those great odds and kept the flame of your life ablaze!
What are a couple of upstart Order members compared to that hell?
The new Headmaster of Orth Academy picked up the fountain ink pen on his desk with determination, beginning to meticulously record down the wisps of ideas he had with regards to his problem. There were two ways he could succeed in his goal. One, he could sabotage the mana receptacle the Order was using, allowing the mana within to leak out and return to the void.
This had its own problems too. Firstly, it would merely be a setback for the Order, who would quickly seek out the saboteur to imprison them for treason against the state. On top of that, even disregarding potential incarceration, if this mana release was done incorrectly, there was a chance the mana within could react poorly to the method of interaction, causing the very disaster An Shen was looking to prevent. Yet this was also necessary, as the existence of the stockpile itself would raise questions should it not be disposed of in its entirety. Therefore, it needed to go.
And two…
An Shen could kill the entirety of the Order himself.
If there was no one remaining on the project team, the project would never be completed. And if there was no one left in the Order, An Shen could take his own sweet time disarming the makeshift mana bomb in their possession.
Certainly, each were accomplished magic users of their own right; but they only truly excelled as a team, with individual weaknesses shored up by their comrades’ strengths. And even alone any Seat could hold out long enough for the other members to come to their aid. That is, if their opponent wasn’t someone familiar with their abilities. As one of their former comrades, An Shen was sure he would easily be able to pick them off in face-to-face combat.
However, this approach had flaws as well. As soon as he managed to remove a single Seat from the equation, the remaining Order members would rally together to take him down all at once.
An Shen’s pen faltered. Both ideas sounded like the most far-fetched fantasies one could come up with. Sneaking into the chambers of the Order to destroy a large mana receptacle, while bypassing every alarm and ward they were sure to have erected; all without detection? Repeating the events of the night of Darkened Skies, all by himself?
Impossible.
He heaved a great sigh of frustration. For either to happen, he would either have to be specialised in techniques that others would have devoted entire lifetimes to perfecting – like the stealth skills of Renza’s top espionage agents, the acquisition conditions themselves shrouded in mystery.
Or… he had to have immense power; as much power as all ten Seats combined. His spell school was, as Yin Za had pointed out before, filled with drawbacks. A technique of give and take; to obtain a new strength in exchange for gaining a new weakness. To limit that flaw, he would need… well, an unimaginable pool of mana, to activate multiple techniques at a time.
Why, for something like that to happen, he might have to-
An Shen froze in place, inspiration striking. Slowly picking up the report by his side, he felt the pieces click into place, one by one. The solution had been staring him in the face all along.
Yes – if the Order was going to use mana storage to serve their goals...
Why couldn’t he do the same in turn?
~
Headmaster An Shen picked up the framed photo on his desk, a cherished possession of his from just after the Great War ended. He stroked the glass with a loving finger, reminiscing fondly of those days when things were simpler.
He hadn’t wanted to take the picture at first; griping to the others that he’d much rather forget that any of the War had even happened. But after some persuasion and peer pressure placed on him, he’d relented, awkwardly smiling as their commanding officer snapped a photo of the ten heroes, arms around shoulders of friends. An Shen smiled sadly as he gazed at the carefree grins of those brave fighters.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. They were supposed to have remained lifelong friends forever, attending weddings, making toasts, and congratulating each other on momentous occasions.
And yet, it had.
Regretfully, he placed the photo back on his desk.
Today was the day the Order was to carry out their experiment; he was certain of it, for he had consulted those yellowed sheets from a decade ago so many, many times. This was the very last time he could avert a great disaster; one that would undoubtedly result in Glint’s ruin.
This day was why he had done the things he had done – sealed away his own technique to complete a vast mana conduit sorcery, abused his position as Headmaster to seed that spell school into thousands of students over the course of a decade, and even torture a precious student of his own; just to keep the secret from getting out.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
There was no going back now.
This had to be done.
“Sorry, my old friends. On account of our friendship, I will make your deaths as swift and painless as possible.”
Quietly, softly, the Headmaster opened his mouth to chant.
“The rules are done, the game is over.”
“The last men fall as fate runs bleak.”
“A final destruction, naught remains to sever.”
“An ending is all that’s left to seek.”
“Class Expulsion.”
Class System revoked.
All around the world, three simple words appeared in front of the bewildered faces of former Orth students, young and old.
Life sustaining magicks employed within hospitals ebbed away, the patients they supported following behind in short order. Once sturdy Earth Towers that had lasted for years crumbled in seconds, killing the inhabitants within. Adventurers that had been in combat found that their magic vanished without a trace, rendering them helpless to fatal blows that they might have once avoided.
In Orth, the current batch of students simply clamoured in confusion, hounding their equally befuddled teacher for answers as to why this might have happened. These teachers could only babble a couple of excuses to calm their classes down, choosing to offload the explanation to the Headmaster, who they were sure could illuminate the situation for them.
One particular male student, however, simply stared blankly at the blue window for a few seconds. Then, slapping himself on the forehead for not noticing sooner, he took off out of the classroom and towards the Headmaster’s office.
A couple of seconds later, he is followed behind by the timid footsteps of a smaller female student from a different classroom.
An Shen was unaware of all this. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he did know that these occurrences would take place; that the decade-long scheme would be the sole reason for hundreds, if not thousands of deaths around the world. The calculus, however, remained the same; what were a thousand lives, ten thousand lives, compared to the shining future of Glint?
He would take on any burden or sin for the sake of his beloved country.
An Shen claps his hands together, fingers twisted into strange combinations. His mana signature is exuded outwards, invisible tentacles reaching out to grasp the stored mana secreted in the city below.
Mana could be stored in a multitude of ways. There were the crude bombs that Glint produced during the Great War, each containing a woven seed of plant-infused metal. These vessels could retain no more than eight thousand mana a piece, for the greatest conductors of mana were those that were formed from life itself.
When Ting Ren had confronted An Shen, so many months ago, the student had utilised bulbs of yulin, yet to flower. These were ideal for his purposes, as they were hardy enough to resist rot for a great number of days, but would eventually draw nutrients from the mana stored within, and burn it away to push out vibrant petals of green.
If it was Lin Qu, the Seat of Growth would have called up a field of flowers or some other plant in abundance, and secreted the mana within. Her command over the vegetation would halt any possible deterioration of the stored energy, which made her the best choice for such applications.
An Shen had found an elegant solution to this problem in the cemeteries of Glint, filled to the brim with the bodies of the fallen soldiers of the Great War. Bodies that held entire mana circulatory systems, with veins that no longer carried the essence of magic within them.
“An unseen visitor walks amongst strangers.”
“He lurks behind motives grander.”
A scouting spell the elder had used in the War. It manifested an ethereal form that could soar through the skies, highlight hostile presences by sighting the mana circuits present in their forms, backlighted in lines of blue spread throughout their bodies. This incantation was useful, but the use cases were limited – for the spiritual body was unable to interact with the surroundings, nor could it launch a surprise attack on the targets the user had found.
Empowered by billions of MP, however, An Shen was now in control of an invisible avatar that was not only capable of flight and passing through walls, but also entirely able to strike with the strength of an accomplished martial artist.
He willed the form to take off, heading straight for the Order’s location. There was no time to waste here; if he did not deliver a deciding blow before the ten were notified, they would turtle up within, throwing up counterspells and debuffs to blunt his assault.
As he watched through the eyes of the ghostly form, he saw the blue outlines of ten individuals, multi-coloured auras surrounding their forms as they sat in a circle around…
There it was.
A towering tree was silhouetted in the eyes of his spell, the branches of the plant translucent and devoid of colour; but within its trunk lied a sea of mana, swirling vortexes of brilliant shades of blue.
An Shen bit his lip. Even just a moment ago he had hoped that they had not carried out their foolish plan; that he would not be forced to murder those he shared such a close bond with. But this had to be done.
For Glint.
One of the outlined figures stirred, standing from their position to yell something. The avatar was unable to perceive sound, so An Shen didn’t know what the exclamation was. But he could guess at it, as the other seated figures began to jump to their feet as well. His intrusion had been discovered.
But it was too late. To mount an effective defence against something such as this empowered avatar of An Shen’s, at this range and in a short amount of time… was near impossible. He focused on the figure glowing in green – Lin Qu, he presumed – reached into the centre of her body, wrapped his fingers around what he found there…
And squeezed.
You have dealt 7,253 damage.
Experience gained +3,672
She had to be the one to be taken off the table first, as it was her spell that maintained the vessel. The other Seats could try to interfere with the construction of the magic, curb the introduction of leaks by An Shen, but unlike the originator of the spell they would not be able to stop it completely.
Two figures thrust their hands in the general direction of An Shen’s avatar, balls of glowing mana emitting from their fists, but it was clear that they were unable to perceive his form; as he was no longer there.
With two sweeps of his arms, the heads of the unknown figures rolled off their bodies.
You have dealt 8,164 damage.
Experience gained +3,863
You have dealt 8,453 damage.
Experience gained +3,971
Caught by surprise, facing a foe that outclassed even them, the great Order of Glint slowly perished, one by one.
An Shen felt no joy in this act. One might have assumed that he would have held a grudge over the betrayal he had suffered, but time had eroded away any such feelings of anger, leaving only the nostalgic memories he shared with them. Which was why it pained him to slaughter all nine of his comrades.
He didn’t much care for Pin Qu, though.
The deed done, An Shen willed his avatar to drag the corpses of the ten over to the tree in the middle of the room. He had thought this disposal method through carefully, utilising all the resources at hand.
With his scout as a conduit, An Shen punched a hole in the tree with his fist, absorbing the reserves of mana within. Then, before the sudden influx of mana became too much for the spell to handle, another hand was stabbed into the waiting bodies, the mana pumped into the linked corpses steadily, until… the forms, glowing brilliantly in An Shen’s eyes, burst into flames sharing that same ocean blue.
Mana overload was a phenomenon not readily observed in nature. It had to be encouraged; forced, even. But when achieved, the fire it created burned hotter than anything in the world. It would burn everything down in flames, concealing what had happened here in ashes.
This was the tragic end of the Order of Glint. The citizens of Glint would mourn the loss of their leaders, wail at their mysterious deaths. Then after a stint, An Shen would step up, tell the world that he would take up his comrades’ mantle.
Lead Glint into a new age of-
Ting Ren burst into the office, the door flung wide open against the wall with a bang. He was panting softly as he stood there, eyes manic with excitement. The boy raised an accusatory finger in the Headmaster’s direction, while taking a moment to calm his haggard breathing. An Shen’s eyes widened momentarily at the student’s presence, but ultimately paid this new visitor no mind. Even if the boy had somehow regained his memories… he was too late.
The plan had been completed, and the Order was no more. The boy had to know that whatever he was intending here was pointless. So the Headmaster began to solemnly declare his complete victory to the student in front of him.
“Ting Ren… I see you’ve regained your memories. Yes, you are correct. I was behind this scheme all along, but-”
“…mask…” The boy cut off the Headmaster, forcing out a single word through heavy exhales, a triumphant grin growing on his lips.
An Shen was confused.
“… Pardon; mask?”
The boy grinned, his breathing finally under control.
“I was so thick! I thought, “Oh, the host body has to be close to the Mask thief,” so I guessed that it must have been one of the students; or perhaps a teacher. But duh, of course it had to be in the hands of the strongest person here – the Headmaster!”
“Now, Headmaster,” Ting Ren, otherwise known as Zachary Altair, commanded with all confidence. “Return the Wise Sage of Rikkon back to me right this instant – or I’ll tear it from your corpse.”