After smashing a few wooden planks, the results were in: the floor was connected to the ceiling. This mirror space was dungeon wide instead of room by room; falling through the floorboards would drop you from the ceiling on the opposite side of the mansion and vice versa.
While the girls tried their best to think of ways to resolve the issue, En stepped up with an idea, “To create an enclosed space like this, you need mana, and it has to come from somewhere. If it’s a ritual or a curse, then the source needs to be inside, so we could try to find it and destroy it.”
Sofia shook her head, “I have seen a few curses, this doesn’t look like one. Curses are usually visible to anyone with developed mana senses. You know how you can see the dust in the air when a ray of light shines in an otherwise dark room? Curses look a bit like that but instead of dust particles it’s small hairs of mana. It could be a ritual though.”
“What if it’s a skill?” Shaily asked.
“For skills, if this works like barriers, then there are two ways,” Sofia explained, “The caster can be inside or outside. If they are inside, something as simple as trapping them inside of another smaller barrier to cut them off from sustaining this one could work, or straight up killing them.”
Topaz narrowed her eyes, “And if they are outside?”
“Then you five better pray that the barrier’s caster does not have enough mana to sustain it against my attacks from inside… But as this barrier redirects things instead of blocking them, it might be more mana-efficient than a regular barrier, so who knows if that might work.”
Hearing this, Opal raised a hand. The group waited for her to write on her notepad.
‘If the entire floor is mirrored, then the mansion should be falling, but it doesn’t feel like it, so there could be an anchor point holding it up?’
“That’s an idea. There might just be a weak point like this somewhere even if we don’t find the fuel source of the barrier. What do you all want to start with? Demolishing all the walls?”
“Let’s go demolishing!” En happily confirmed jumping in place with her ears folding up and down.
At least one of them isn’t worried at all.
“Hmm… Pareth explored the place and it is quite wide. This might take a while… Unless I use the big spells. Would you mind sitting in a box for a bit?”
After a quick explanation of the dangerous nature of the rot Sofia was about to use, she got the five girls to sit inside of a large bone cube with a lightstone for lighting. The box was anchored by a bunch of bone to a large wooden pillar and had plenty of space to walk on the side, just in case it started falling through the ground due to the lack of an ‘anchor’. The shades were all bunched up together inside of a smaller bone box on the side.
With everything read, Sofia started blasting rot everywhere. The old wood got devoured fast. The rot spread out throughout the entirety of the mansion floor, and in just two minutes, there was nothing left except the bone structure and big clouds of black dust falling forever in the middle of an infinite white nothing, its ‘reflection’ showing up in every direction. The last bits of rot and wood eventually disappeared.
Just like putting something between two mirrors. Everywhere I look I can see myself, even above; that’s crazy.
Are we actually falling? It doesn’t feel like it, at all, but who knows at this point.
Sofia opened the bone box, “I have good news and bad news. Good news is nothing went terribly wrong, we’re all alive. Bad news is, well, you can see.”
Observing the student’s reactions, there were audible gulps and visible shivers. The realization of the mess they were in started to down on them. Lola and the twins were very pale, En was the only one who still looked unaffected, while Shaily seemed worried but was also looking expectantly at Sofia and Pareth.
En held out her hand, “What with all the black dust? Is it a curse after all?”
“No, that’s just what’s left of the wood. A bit like how there’s charcoal left after a fire. I have an idea. I’ll make a few handles, all grab onto them, just in case. I’ll fly away from the platform and try something.”
Sofia didn’t really fly, actually just walking on nothing until she reached the edge of the ‘barrier’, where the images were infinitely mirrored. Since the barrier was a large rectangular box, there were corners. By being right in the corner, Sofia could see three copies of herself, standing in a circle. Sofia crouched down, she brought out a bone and slowly brought it to the point where the three sides of the barrier touched into a point. She stabbed the bone right through the corner. The bone shattered, torn apart from being redirected to three different places at once.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
This put a smile on Sofia’s face. Crouching lower, she thrust her hand at the corner, and readied [Heat Death]. Her hand was about to suffer the same fate as the bone before it, and Sofia tugged on [Heat Death]’s mana circuits more to activate it. But it failed, and her hand was shredded into bloody bits. She did her best to not scream, she didn’t want the students to panic more. But internally, she cursed.
Fuck! I didn’t have enough mana to dispel it!
Someone with more mana than me is keeping this thing up. Likely over level 300. This did not activate Leverle’s protective charm though. Probably because it’s not a spell meant to kill, I’m pretty sure the paper charm was only meant to deflect killing blows.
Would the teleportation to the Margin ever work at this rate?
Disgruntled, Sofia reformed the bones of her hand to hasten the healing process, and walked back to the students.
“Did not work,” Sofia announced, to no one’s surprise, “I might have been able to dispel the barrier if it was weaker, but it seems this is held up by several times my mana, millions of points, likely. This is a high level spell.”
“Then attacking it to drain it is no good? Hmm… I want to try something, can I?”
“Of course, En. As long as you’re not putting your life at risk.”
“I won’t!”
En walked to the edge of the bone platform, summoned a totem, and chucked it into the void. The totem fell down from the ceiling through the ground multiple times at an angle, going further away each time, before eventually reaching the platform again from the other side, where Sofia caught it.
“What do you think of the result, En?” Sofia asked, tossing the totem back to her.
I get where this is going already. En is good at thinking things through in novel ways, I never asked for their classless skills but I could bet she has some high level [Shenanigans] in there.
“It must use mana to displace things, so if we throw something at the right angle and it falls forever, that will end up draining the mana without needing us to really attack, and eventually dispel it, right?” En advanced her theory, looking for approval in Sofia’s eyes.
Lola’s eyes lit up. “Th- That sounds like it could work!”
Sofia sat down in the air. “Give me a minute, I need to think things through.”
I thought about that too but I'm not too sure.
If the skill does spend mana to displace objects from one point to another then yes, maybe, if we can drain more mana per second than the caster regenerates. That might be a tall order. If the skill actually only has a passive cost to link locations and that’s the entirety of the cost, which I think is possible, then we’re screwed.
And if a level 300+ asshole is waiting for us on the other side, we were always screwed in the first place.
Honestly this is doomed, the more I think about it. Be it a monster or a person, whoever is maintaining this can kill me in one it, I’m pretty sure. Or well, two. The kids wouldn’t survive.
At this point it’s weird that they would just trap us inside there and not kill us directly, are they trying to starve us?
Maybe they can’t actually attack us directly? That’s an option, either because they know about Leverle’s charm, or because that would alert Saint Tartaros or the Academy somehow? Through the strength tokens? Or through the students’ uniforms? They are heavily enchanted after all.
Either we flee to Zangdar now, or keep trying to break away, maybe with the drain strategy. I’m unsure about our odds when we exit this place, though.
Or we do nothing?
That might be the safest bet, just do nothing, and wait until the Academy comes to investigate our disappearance. We only have to hold out for a week. They know where we are.
Unless…
What if this was a trap from the start? The teleportation to the forest happened without anyone showing up. I wasn’t suspicious then because that’s what Beryl said would happen, but what if someone hijacked the teleport and sent us here in this trap? No, surely the headmaster would already be aware of it if so… This must be the real thing, just that someone is taking advantage of the opportunity to target me and my students, or that whoever scouted this location did a terrible job.
Ah, I’m getting lost in thoughts for too long, this isn’t good…
“Alright, so, I have decided that I would teleport us to a safe place. The only issue is, we will be trapped there until a friend of mine sends a rescue mission, but I believe it to be better, still. I would rather be trapped inside of a bunker of my own making than inside of someone’s trap. I have enough water to last us forever, but only about two weeks of food, after that you’ll have to eat… Other things; if no one has come to fetch us by then. Are you all fine with that?”
No one was very enthusiastic about the idea, and even less after Sofia explained that the ‘other thing’ they would have to eat was herself, but they still all accepted after Sofia explained what level the person maintaining the barrier would have to be.
Sofia brought her her pre-made bone-slate-ritual for the teleportation as well as the ring, had everyone hold hands, and activated the ring.
Nothing happened. Laughing nervously, Sofia [Identified] the ring to see if it was still charged, which it was.
“Well. It looks like we’re going with En’s plan after all. Let us just hope no one is waiting for us outside of the barrier, if we even manage to break it...”
----------------------------------------