Pando’s full efforts go to stopping the druids from controlling nature, even in the center of their advancing army. But even if they can’t reach out and do anything anywhere near close to us, they can still retain a minimal level of control over nature in those few square meters.

Runes that I only had a passing familiarity with spin in my mind. Then, I sense half of the druids, a group of thousands, focus on a single spell.

It builds slowly and with few exceptions, the others do their best to simply hold out against our own attacks without letting their mana shields crumble.

I join with Qi to empower our own attacks as a strange mana sphere amalgamation of unknown elements forms in the center of their army.

Lighting, heat and vibrations emanate from a black sphere using an unknown energy in the most ominous image I can imagine. That image builds not on on the reality that I don’t know the properties of that attack, but the hundreds of thousands of mana points being infused.

Then it comes.

That black hole shoots out of their midst and I nearly piss my pants as it aims in my general direction. I open a few portals near its path to give me a better grip on the attack. I simply can’t interfere with it to any meaningful degree.

Controlling even a few thousand qi points is only a fraction of the tens of millions of mana points that this attack carried.

The mages manage to form a crystalline shield in its path in front of layers of solid deep steel to rival the defenses around our fort. Some little better than blobs, others are perfect sheets that our industry was producing and either I or someone with a Faux Inner World carried them from the factories over here. The attack burns right through past all the defenses even a couple of random replacement panels I tucked away for mid battle damage repair.

In the end, however, the attack batters down all our hastily erected defenses. The attack is still almost at full power even after burning through so much matter. Then it hits the main shield. My entire will and that of thousands of magic users back it. Runes that spread over kilometers underground attempt to make an impregnable shield with no weakness to be exploited, but the entire thing buckles leaving a hole.

Then after melting the outer metal layer and reaching the roots underneath, it explodes.

Much smaller than I expected at full power, it still engulfs about a hundred people. One of them is part of the very mages increasing our defenses and as much as I would ordinarily have cursed and felt a wrenching in my heart seeing this many deaths, somehow I feel grateful that we actually managed to reduce the attack to this level.

This could have been BAD. At full power, in close quarters like we are now, 2 thousand, maybe 3 thousand dead. We got away with less than 300 injured, a good number of which could be healed, though their haunting screams almost make me wish they hadn’t lived.

Not even a tenth of a second and the hole in the shield is refilled with power and an even greater amount of mana. Its ‘full power’ mode is no longer enough. We need to put it into overdrive, even if that will force mana to leak through the edges and cause long term damage to the engravings, but those are worries for after the battle. Teams use my seeds to replace the damaged deep steel panels while I survey the enemy.

They have started their own efforts to both link their city’s mana supply to where they are in earnest and also for another attack like this.

“No, you have done way more damage than you should. Now it's my turn to play.”

“Nash,” Paul calls to me. “We, can’t stand against many more of these attacks. Too many losses. Even pushing the shield into overdrive won’t be enough. We can’t just that tens of thousands of people lost an hour is acceptable.”

“I agree and I haven’t figured out how to defend effectively, but I can attack.”

“Are you going to reveal you are alive?”

“Yes, and they will regret it.”

He says something after that, but my mind is fully trained on the enemy now.

I turn over my options, unsure which would be the best possible way of going about it, but with Qi now part of the equation, I just begin to draw it out and let my instincts guide me.

I begin by weaving a story of power, of destruction, and though I fear what it might do to me if I indulge in it, a story of vengeance. It’s a double edged knife, but I need all the power that I can get. The power leaves me even without much conscious prompting.

A set of runes that are different from any I used before, forms in my inner world incorporating aspects from my most used attacks, but also new runes that feel right. It’s a dangerous game that I’m playing, but I had years, decades of practice trusting my gut and instincts and I lean on them once again. The loose idea in my mind gives way to a hyperfocused state and at the last moment I open the portal right above the enemy's attack aiming at 6 archdruids in the central formation.

I pass the Qi through the formation out as if I’m attacking someone only a few feet away and then something that resembles lighting explodes at my prompting.

Even before the reverberations and sound can get to me through normal means, I feel the perception field more integrated than ever with all my senses. It took practice and discipline, but just about everything that I could feel in person, was clear as day to my perception field.

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Then the attack strikes the enemy.

Their reactions are perfect. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years of training ingrained the right responses in being with stats that put even our greatest athletes before the system to shame. It is like comparing children to the fastest humans alive. But to me, their reactions seem to occur in slow motion. A thousand perception points fully trained on the moment. Even if they are faster than anyone without machine assistance could have imagined before the system they aren’t fast enough.

I can feel in the air the potential just on the other side of the portal and I let the thin stream of Aether and a hint of soul scruff flow out freely. This potential is of a higher level skill. Mana manipulation is ready for the next step. Even during the attack as the skulls from four Arch Druids disintegrate in one fell swoop, I strengthen my will.

The feeble system’s response to intruding on the air above their army grows, but I had practiced fighting it and it would need a lot more if it hoped to kick me out.

The system that so helps me and so irks me at the same time.

The system that was sending its own constructs into my soul.

Then it’s over. The power from my main attack is exhausted, my soul fried for the next minute from passing half formed lightning through my portal, 4 of their high level magical users are dead and their attack is suddenly too unbalanced. With the sudden loss of personnel, they can do nothing else but cut their losses before it blows up in their face.

In the back of my mind, I watch the 40 seconds they spent on this second attack go to waste. The remaining magical users and their Elder push it upward just above their own shields. It explodes at nearly full power causing such a mana drain that it chills me.

I try to engrave everything about this moment in my memory as my mind turns to my soul intent to both recover and more important: to get a glimpse at the system constructs for crossing the threshold with mana manipulation.

The constructs are simpler, yet they carry a deeper meaning. I fail to reach my chair, but even with my frayed soul my forearms are strong and I manage to hold on for dear life to the ether chain on the edge of the exclusion zone. At 99 meters from the action I get just above the worse possible viewing experience, but I’m still close enough to witness it in full.

I get a nice glimpse from a different perspective paying attention to different things with more of what is happening in my field of view. I imprint everything on my memory palace and barely 4 seconds later my attention is back on the fight.

Qi answers almost on its own, easier than ever before, as I can almost feel that in one sitting I broke through both layers of the threshold going from 99 straight to level 101.

Then I sense the ‘elder’ staring at me. Those eyes that can see even through layers of stone dirt, steel and roots.

I wonder how I gave my position away, but finding me shouldn’t be that much of a problem if he was looking with a hint of luck. He believed I was dead and so he didn’t bother wasting time looking for a dead man, but that had changed.

Not the dramatic entrance I wished for, but sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I wave to him like he is an old friend and that infuriates him as I sense other things come. A moment later, he starts to retreat and their movement speed is even faster than the scouting groups. It takes barely a minute for the main mass of troops to reach their territory. The Elder Arch Druid, however, doesn’t stop running accompanied by two Wind Runners aiming to get back to his city at the fastest possible pace. Faster than I thought a caster like him would be able to, but I also sense more complex skills surrounding the trio and a boatload of mana.

I wonder what he could possibly want, but I take the opportunity to access the damage. My second mind turns to the command center as I try to go over what I gained while witnessing the upgrade of my new high level skill.

My mind is frazzled, but simply keep spinning a ball of Qi while I draw out shapes with it. The exercise is familiar and I can easily keep it idling away and even the results that anyone else would consider perfection reach a step higher than that. The Qi lines become that little bit sharper and takes a bit less of my attention.

I start to feel how I can leverage my stats in even more effective ways, but then my mind turns to the other main thing that is likely to be important today:

The instability that I forced on their attack.

Before, I hadn’t expected that it wodl be vulnerable to that type of pressure, but after witnessing it I’m starting to understand a little more what that thing is and how I could not just do something on that level but reach even more.

While I’m good at making new things, as my class Creator not only attested to, it prompted me to reach a higher level. I’m also well suited to throwing wrenches in the precise stop to not only stop the gears of a machine but bend the axles, blow up the bearings and generally just make the maintenance exceedingly time consuming and expensive. Maybe even beyond what that very machine was worth.

I try to capture whatever that was, gifting a hint of a hint of Qi and exerting my full control over it. Enough Qi that I would barely make a spark ordinarily, but something that my perception field could easily sense.

Then I do something foolhardy, I stop working just with my Creation skill and go into Free form magic in its full glory.

Not a single instant passes as my mind shift the focus and my heart becomes focus itself. I need to learn how to defuse a nuke. One wrong move could cost me way more than I’m willing to pay, but my mind is sharp and the situation pushes me to great heights. Failure and shyness now, with the possibility of facing that attack again dangling in front of us would be expensive.

Even if I consider a ‘perfect’ response that could mitigate even more damage from them, that is way too little, but my mind turns over that strange element and I call it forth.

It comes, like a spark from hitting flint and steel. That tiny mote of energy threatens to pull a hundred Qi points and I instinctively know that it manages The force would be multiplied a thousandfold past anything I could stop.

That reaction surprises me, but my reaction is instantaneous. I put a stranglehold on all my Qi. Instead of the deft touch that handling a minute amount required, the raw and unmitigated power of my stats flare up.

The spark suddenly grows to the size of a grain of rice then it explodes millimeters away from my hands.

A burning sensation overcomes me. A direct hit on my nervous system and I look down to see a small divot of skin.

“Mother…” asdfaaaaaaaa

---

Pain that I wouldn’t believe if someone else had told me considering how much I had endured since the arrival of the system, but a steady stream of Life regrows it without anything hindering me.

Then I grow my living wood armor back.

“Blackwood warned me about the dangers of toying with free form magic, but even now I’m still putting myself at risk by using it. Not without a lot more precautions.”

Still, my mind turns and this third example of that same type of energy and my perception field could feel the same nature. One amongst the seemingly infinite types of energy out there.

Coming from me, having had a hand in the creation and witnessing it with all my senses, I come to UNDERSTAND. I learn a little more about the intricacies of this new attack. I know the best wrenches and where to put them.

Then my other half with his amazing multitasking abilities calls to me and I get a hint of danger from his voice.

“Take a look at the Elder.”

Instantly my mind is back on him, then unbidden and completely without conscious thought I curse out loud:

“Fuc….”

My senses take in the same instruments that nearly killed me last time and helped the other druids to control pieces of nature.

“That is gonna suck.”