Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1793.12.--] [New Year Celebrations]

Sangsu was in charge of the discussion from that point forward. People have asked for a few more details – like how the engraved bones looked like, or how the fingerprints worked – but no one found any glaring flaw in the reconstruction of events that Zeph had made.

Zeph was just resting this whole time. That night was the longest one in his life. The fact that the simplified wadokeis were inactive, due to the end-of-the-year suspension and time-equalizing efforts of the Communication Bureau, wasn’t helpful in the matter, too.

He just felt tired, physically and mentally, after all that happened.

Aisha decided to just put Woongar into a controlled coma and be done with him. In this environment, it just wasn’t possible to investigate him safely.

As Zeph understood it, subduing items didn’t exist in this world for a simple reason – no one could truly stop Mana generation without breaking Soul links, so basically slowly killing the person involved. That theoretical solution would not only require an advanced Soul Arts Specialist, but the whole procedure would be more complicated than actual brain surgery.

Soul links were directly strengthening the matter building the body. Or rather, they were slightly changing the fundamental physical forces related to the atoms that were linked to the Soul, as Zeph managed to guess. Worse yet, the links were connected to regular and Soul-recognizable structures of matter, effectively producing a non-linear area of effect in the physical world. Worse yet, those area effects weren’t even truly correlating with the distance or defined volume of matter – for example, if a link was influencing the radius of weak nuclear forces of every atom in a biological ‘structure’ like a keratin—thus, most probably increasing body’s Flexibility—it was doing it for the whole body all at once. But…

The problems resulting from that fact proliferated exponentially.

Not only the influence from that one link would be spread over the whole body, it would be spread unevenly for some reason. There also was no way to tell which biological structures were being influenced by which links. There were many variations of keratin itself, many proteins similar to it, and all of them had different functions inside different body parts. Add to that the fact that it never was just one Soul link influencing them, and true chaos was but a guaranteed outcome.

At least that was Zeph’s theory on how Passive Enhancements worked after reading quite a little from the Library Goddess collection. He also suspected that not many people had his insight into the topic, even with the General Skills the System Onji was granting them. Quantum mechanics weren’t a part of the standard curriculum on Corora, after all.

The worst part, though, was that one could not simply ‘weaken’ a Soul link. One could either try to break it or hammer at it weakly over a prolonged period of time, causing similar destruction to his own Soul as to the link itself, while the links of their victim rearranged, making the whole procedure fruitless. That part came from Aisha's own mouth, but the old System notifications coming from his Advanced scan in the Shrine gave him more clues as to the exact process.

It seemed that trying to manipulate a Soul of another living being was the fastest way to cause a ‘Will clash’—as well as producing or raising the Tabu Skill—and Aisha confirmed not long ago that interacting with Soul links directly was the worst option for the so-called Soul Manipulators.

His standing theory was quite simple – the Will was fluctuating not only in the physical reality but also in the Soulscape. And what was the only connection between the two? Soul links. Interacting with them would be like interrupting a highway that Will used to move between the two collectives of dimensions.

Will, as an ethereal form of energy, was a mystery to most. But Zeph was slightly different in that area and all his experiences pointed at that exact explanation.

And if that was true, it was no wonder that sending a Soul memory could cause the ‘Will clash’ in normal circumstances. If his and Gru’s method of exchanging them wasn’t depending on sending parts of their ‘cooperating’ Will to each other in order to imprint the data into another’s Soul indirectly, they would be ‘clashing’ violently every time… And actually, something like that did happen a few times in the past. Nothing as spectacularly damaging, thankfully. Probably because their ‘non-cooperative’ parts of Wills were blocking each other instead of interacting – the very reason their Soul-bond connection was blocked – but Zeph definitely remembered the early stages when Tabu Skill was rising and the exchange of Soul memories was as draining as it was painful.

Going back to Woongar – because blocking his Mana generation was impossible, he would have to be interrogated in an isolated, secured room by people capable of subduing him. Aisha would do the trick, but the crowd of weaker individuals around them was a problem right now. Not to mention, his body had to be checked beforehand by a medical specialist. Nobody wanted another gruesome suicide.

After almost two hours, the debate paused as the warriors flanking the doors tried to get Aisha’s attention.

The crowd slowly got quieter, until even the people on the podium could hear the banging and muted screams coming from the other side of the reinforced, airtight doors.

Someone decided to ignore Aisha’s orders and didn’t follow them to the hall. And now, they were paying the most painful price. After that much time, even post-100 people would have problems with keeping the caustic gasses away. Not because it was impossible – Makani showed the potential of Air filtering Spells many times before, after all. No, the problem was in the nature of the substances and Mana itself. Zeph could only guess what exactly was unleashed outside, but any exothermic reaction would attract Mana, increasing the potency of the substance’s volatile properties. And the Mana density in the building was rising.

He knew for a fact that the Guild’s Mana-gathering system wouldn’t be sending anything to the city network at this time. As everyone knew beforehand about the monster’s attack, not only would the Mana be wasted if the city’s Mana-transferring system was damaged, but they needed to power their own contraptions that would be used in the defense. Zeph wasn’t informed about the surface Mana-insulation that, most probably, was applied to the whole building, but thinking back, it seemed only natural if Kwan, Ghrughah, and P’pfel planned a total purge of spies and bugs placed by them.

What happened in the laboratory, will stay in the laboratory, he chuckled to himself, despite the heavy atmosphere in the room.

Returning to his more serious thoughts, he was more worried about the equipment left behind. If it was obliterated, Zeph would call for a refund. Because he was never informed beforehand, the ‘purge’ that Aisha somehow started might have been the last resort, which meant it was potentially more damaging than he would have liked.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

An especially loud scream reached his ears, and a moment later the building shook slightly. A few seconds later, another impact could be felt through the shaking floor. It seemed that whoever was left outside their room, wasn’t going to pass away without retaliating. Something was luring Zombies in and the attacks were becoming more frequent by the second. Thankfully, nothing as heavy as the first impacts.

His questioning gaze landed on Aisha as she evidently was more informed about the possible procedures. She was frowning in consideration.

“You have a plan for that, I hope?” he asked to get her attention.

“Not really. But whatever was used to stir the Undead should dissolve soon...”

Zeph raised his brow skeptically. “You’re sure about that? Because it certainly would be a shame if they were to poke a hole in the walls right after all the hard work we did. If someone is observing the building, I am sure they will try to use that chance to harm us.”

She sighed in irritation and stood up. She sat heavily near him and activated some kind of Skill. What brushed over Zeph’s Veil was hard to describe, but he could feel the temperature around him rising. An alternative privacy Skill, maybe? he tried to guess, but the idea just brought more questions.

“You are right that we should make a move, but the trip outside is risky. Counter-trap is one thing, but it could prove difficult to keep our unconscious informant alive. On the other hand, I would rather not leave him alone. We know too little about his situation to be sure he doesn’t have other surprises for us.”

“No way around the locked tunnels?” he asked for confirmation.

Aisha shook her head. “Not after I started that procedure… We either stay here or go to the roof. Also, it’s impossible to open that hatch from outside. Not without breaking it. If we leave him here, it won’t be easy to return if something happens.” she said.

Zeph nodded desolately. It was, indeed, a difficult decision to make. The human enemies outside had a perfect opportunity to hit them hard by helping the horde a little. That was another danger of leaving Woongar behind – they would have to make sure that there was no breach at any point in time because returning to this room would be very difficult. The caustic gases wouldn’t be as effective on already dead Zombies or people with appropriate specializations if they weren’t locked inside, so it would just hamper them instead.

Tactically, it would be much better if they reacted, too. Waiting in hopes that the growing commotion outside would die down on its own was just wishful thinking.

“Let’s change his clothes to something a normal warrior would wear and send two or three people to bring him to Kwan. It should look like they are transporting someone heavily wounded, I hope.”

Aisha thought about it for a second and nodded. Truth be told, it would be much faster and safer if she was the one transporting the traitor, but Zeph understood that she was reluctant to leave him, and her whole squad, without direct support. Too much could go wrong without her strength.

They stood up and Aisha immediately started organizing people. Woongar was disguised, his face covered with a full helmet, and the body painted with some leftover blood they had from the fingerprint endeavor. The fingerprints and the severed arm weren’t needed anymore as almost everyone in the room examined them. With that number of witnesses, hard evidence wasn’t necessary. Sadly, they didn’t have space to get rid of them before leaving, so they were handed to random people for safekeeping instead.

After confirming that everyone had weapons at the ready, Aisha instructed them to move away from the corner near the bar at the back wall. After activating a few switches at a black plate hidden in the wall nearby, a part of the ceiling dropped half a meter down with a loud clank. A cold wind flew inside, bringing mist and snow with it. Strange, distorted cries from the Undead could be heard in the background music of flesh hitting wood and stone.

The rectangular part of the ceiling that opened up was thick and built from metallic components. It had maybe one and a half meters to each side, but as the front started to drop at an angle, the internal mechanism started to unfold and the platform’s layers slid forward, elongating it. Accompanied by a small cacophony of working gears, the ramp hit the floor, hugging the wall perpendicular to the bar, and almost hitting their improvised podium.

Aisha hopped on it to lead the charge as warriors followed in pairs. Thanks to the disciplined behavior, everyone left in less than a minute. Zeph was last. Before running outside, he touched the black panel to close the hatch. It started to fold back just as he reached the roof.

The scenery was ominous, even before he got closer to the roof’s edge where Aisha stood. The mist was denser now, but everything in the vicinity was illuminated by an eerie turquoise light coming from the streets below. In the distance, he could see other teams flashing in their direction from rooftops. Aisha was instructing her people as to what to send back. Not that they could communicate much with this method.

As he stepped closer to the edge, he finally was able to see the carnage below. The water was covering the whole plaza, and some of it was even smeared on the walls of nearby buildings. It was now glowing much brighter and seemed to move in strange patterns, wiggling almost – like a creature with its own mind. Corpses were lying everywhere and the water seemed to shuffle in their directions. Between the corpses of Chiropteridas, he even spotted remnants of a few aquatic organisms. One looked like a green jellyfish the size of a beach umbrella. The other two looked like a mix between shark and orca whale. They were huge, and going by the size of their front fins, probably could drag themselves on land. There wasn’t much left of them, though. Chiropteridas seemed to like the taste of their flesh, as the few that survived and stayed, flocked around the bodies to take a bite.

Zeph crouched by the roof’s parapet to take a better look around.

The view was even more unreal because of the white strands of Irra’s experiment covering every horizontal surface. They were forming bulky, irregular shapes that flowed like icicles formed by strong, wet sea winds. The ones in the water seemed to dissolve slowly, but the buildings looked even more battered thanks to those Halloween-like decorations. And battered they were – it seemed a lot of Chiropteridas crash-landed during the chaos.

And directly below them, a small horde of broken bodies was shuffling about and pounding on the walls. He even noticed a few human bodies along them. There were around a hundred of the creatures, but it was actually quite a small number when he took into consideration how many were fighting previously.

The air around the small horde reflected light as if they were standing under immaculately clean water – an effect very similar to the gigantic ‘wave’ that he saw over the sea, and a clear indicator of the amount of Organic Magicules, aka. Life Energy, that was flowing all around them.

It would make for quite an impressive shield against Spells. At least he was prepared this time.

“No more enemies spotted in the last hour,” Aisha said suddenly, crouching down to his right. “It seems we just need to clean this mess. The water may be a problem, though. Our marine visitors seem hungry.”

“Arrows?” he asked. If they weren’t in a hurry, he could as well fire some bolts. His crossbow hadn’t seen much action these days. “I think I can land a Spell, too.”

“Nah,” she said dismissingly, waving her hand. “It would be too slow. And you need more training with that spear. Do you see that one?” She pointed at a Chiropterida Zombie that was standing to the back, unmoving. Its body was in slightly better shape than the others and seemed stronger. Its muscles were well-defined, swollen almost, and its posture more stable. “That should be the winner of the eating contest from before. It had to grab quite a big chunk of the Undead Heart because it certainly seems to be boosted and directing the others. Leave it for me.”

He nodded. “So, what’s the plan?”

She shrugged. “I will grab their attention and lead them to a place that isn’t squirming with aquatic organisms. We just need to leave unnoticed. The radius of detection should be…” She straightened her arm and used her thumb to measure the crowd like a painter would. She turned it a few times in different directions, before mumbling out an estimation. “Hmmm, around one boat, I think? Horizontally, I mean. And maybe one-third of that vertically? Yes, that seems about right.” She happily nodded to herself.

Zeph looked around. If the radius was 35 meters, they would have to use roofs to move. Well, everything around was submerged, so they would have to do that either way. The closest building was a good 15 meters away to the left, though.

“Let’s get to work!” She slapped him on the back and stood up. “I need two volunteers and quite a length of rope!” She said loudly to the group behind.

Zeph just sighed in resignation.

I would rather eat my boots than believe this is actually the faster way… He shook his head.