It was hard to tell, whether spells accidentally or intentionally hit the soul orrery with the size of its spell circles. Though regardless the girl had to repair the damage done to it or she would also lose the souls trapped in the damaged parts.

At least the constant barrage of spells and deaths saturated the environment with mana which helped her in regaining building materials and accelerate the charging of her spell a bit.

The mage finally felt the war.

Though she could have lived without the experience.

Another spell hit. Another part of her orrery was disrupted. More souls she had to recapture. It wasn't the usual fight one would expect in a war, yet her tasks were important nonetheless. While even the complete destruction of the orrery wouldn't stop the cast, it would delay everything and she had no idea whether she would just lose the collected souls or more.

Fortunately her skill wasn't linked to her to such an extent, that she would feel its destruction.

And while the size didn't seem to affect the skill all that much, her permanent need to repair parts of it granted her at least a level.

[Your Soul Orrery skill has reached Lv 3.]

So continuing on, the attacks got slowly more numerous. Likely because her defenders were slowly pushed back. If she had to guess a reason, it was the combined might of the beasts of the realm and their human reinforcements. But so far they hadn't reached her yet, and with them getting closer, she was also getting more souls and mana. Similarly, the repairs took more of her mental capacities, but she could deal with it and she didn’t have anything else to do.

However that changed as a certain arrow was fired at her orrery. To her mana sense it seemed quite powerful, even though it was still far away. Not taking any chances, the mage tried to shift her spell circles, but as though it was attracted to her spell itself, the arrow simply realigned itself. Running out of time, she resolved herself to take the attack, yet once it hit her orrery, all the mana in the arrow was released in an explosion, destroying a sizable part of her skill and damaging even more.

Now scrambling to restore the lost parts, the girl didn't even want to look at how that attack had influenced the remaining time. Repairing the only damaged parts first and then recreating the rest, she soon noticed that a lot of souls seemed to be lost. The mana must have either disturbed or annihilated them.

Unfortunately, before Sarah could collect more souls from the fallen to let her skill reach its old glory, another arrow was fired.

Not taking any chances and now well aware that she wouldn't be able to reclaim the souls, she quickly sacrificed the targeted portion of her orrery to at least get something out of it. However as it turned out, that was the wrong move. But the mage noticed it too late. The arrow itself was made out of mana, so it was now attracted to another part of her skill.

In a last attempt of damage control, she tried to space out the spell circles in that area a bit more, though as they were already covering a rather large area to optimize the mana absorption, there wasn't that much which could be optimized to increase her defenses against the ensuing mana explosion.

And so another part of her orrery was destroyed.

Again racing to repair what could be salvaged, the girl also tried to come up with counter measures. However, as she had to admit, the use of pure mana was rather effective. All her own skills, which attracted the resource, made attacks using that element basically impossible to dodge and while she could use her orrery as protection for her body, she didn't have any means to protect the skill itself.

Well, maybe she could come up with a solution for the issue later, but at least for the moment, she would need to improvise.

Delving into her connection to the spell she was casting and the stored mana, Sarah checked her progress. Ignoring what Eas judged an adequate amount, she did her own calculations.

Then she came to a conclusion.

"Tell everyone to fall back and leave the Realm!"

She didn't want to speak to the strangers which were part of her faction, but neither had she time to think of good excuses to not talk to them, nor could she just ignore them. The latter would be an easy way to lose any support in future endeavors.

"But..." One of her guards tried to interject. They were a few of the more defensive focused faction members, who dealt with the more stealthy enemies, which tried to sneak past the front lines.

Also as Sera was still away and playing around, Nia had to also take part in the defense. Well, the rather squishy assassins which did appear were easy marks once they were exposed and rooted.

"Just go and take everyone with you unless you all want to die!" The mage forced out. She nearly started to add a long explanation, but stopped herself. She had other things to do, now with her responsibilities to her faction gone.

First, the girl started to reroute a part of the mana she was still gathering. Her destination? The traps. The didn't have much utility against enemies around level 100, but she wasn't planning to use them in a normal way.

"... Shouldn't we also leave?" The guide asked. She somehow knew that she wasn't actually supposed to go with the rest of the faction.

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"No," was the short answer of the mage, her mind now fully occupied with her improvised tactics. "And get yourself and sis close to me once she is back."

Another arrow blasted away the next section of her orrery, but aside from shifting her spells a bit and sacrificing a few of the close by parts to reduce the damage done by the explosion, she just accepted the attack.

The sound of fights slowly lessened, but even though the resistance had mostly vanished, her enemies still didn't approach her, or at least not as fast, as she had expected. Were they warned or suspicious of the suddenly ceasing defense? Well, it didn't matter. Either they would come or they would give Sarah more time and she welcomed both outcomes.

At some point her sister had also returned and the arrows had ceased to be fired, though the mage hadn't paid much attention to it. The slowly regenerating soul orrery and the supercharged traps took all her attention.

And then the enemies broke out of the tree-line surrounding the three last remaining members of the faction.

Though the enemies weren't the only things which "broke".

Mana is usually compressed, before casting a spell, and more as well as stronger compressed mana is needed for stronger spells.

Now, the amount of mana someone has access to is limited and it usually only recharges very slowly, but with the presence of mana crystals and rituals, why don't people cast stronger magic earlier? Because it's dangerous. Should one be unable to handle the mana pressure, they could literally explode. Normally that would only be risky for those close to the caster or ritual, as it would be hard to reach accidentally enough mana to cause greater explosions, however the key word is accidentally.

Causing it intentionally is possible.

While it isn't a good use of mana, as a spell usually directs the potential to cause more destruction, but in case someone just wants to cause widespread carnage without creating a specific spell for whatever reason, it would be an option.

And Sarah did use that option. Neither did she have time to come up with a stronger spell nor could she apply it to the traps now besieged by enemies. So she went for brute force.

Sacrificing the earth mana crystal and souls dedicated to keeping control over the traps, the mana stored in them lost all guiding force. Becoming unstable from one moment to the next, a giant eruption of mana, water, ice and earth shook the realm.

A lot of the attackers managed to defend against the force, but many were still wounded and those unlucky ones who were either at the wrong spot at the wrong time, already wounded or simply chose a class with low defensive options died.

Had Sarah directed the mana better, she might have been able to cause more damage, but a pre prepared spell circle would have likely never been able to achieve such a goal and creating one on the fly was still a bit too difficult for the mage.

Nonetheless, she had reached the goal she had set for this diversion. The back lines were in chaos and the few who had already reached her couldn't attack her, as she used the last mana of the space mana crystal to maintain a barrier.

It would only last for a few seconds against the powerful enemies, but long enough to absorb the freed mana and souls.

A lot of messages also appeared on her log, though she ignored them for the moment.

----------------------------------------

"Why did they send us away? Sure we were slowly losing ground, but as if they could manage to defend themselves alone against enemies even we couldn't handle!" Tanja grumbled as she and her team were walking away from the forest.

"But you still listened, like everyone else, even though she wouldn't be able to force you to go."

"Well, her spell was pretty much destroyed and we also weren't really winning... If in such a situation the initiator tells you to leave, you obviously leave. No need to risk your life. Especially when the bodies dissipate much faster with the increased mana in the environment."

"Don't think it's over... The initiator and her party didn't flee." The normally rather quiet member of Tanja's party interjected.

And as if to underline that statement, the forest they just left exploded.

"I guess... It could have been dangerous if we stayed..."

Half expecting a message from the system, either declaring their success or defeat, she quickly opened her quest menu, as nothing in that regard appeared.

A quickly declining timer greeted her.

[5:06:22:13 remaining.]

[4:42:00:53 remaining.]

[4:24:61:01 remaining.]

[3:60:00:49 remaining.]

The remaining time had slowly crept up with the destruction of the spell above the forest, though for whatever reason the remaining days were now vanishing within moments.

"Let's get out of here or at least to the exit of the realm. I don't want to accidentally become collateral of the spell our faction leader cast, should she succeed."

And with that the three quickly made themselves on their way. The lost urgency after the rather anticlimactic dismissal from the initiator had already been replaced by the fear for their lives.