A portal that allows people to cross tens of thousands of miles in an instant warps space. The mana pool from fields of connected elves plummets and I sense a bridge across space forming.
I have to stop it. At ANY cost, I have to stop it.
It seems like an impossible task and it might be at that.
Preparing to pit my soul against the system, I fly ahead at top speed to get within range. At this distance, I can easily see their city with my perception field but that relied on the root network kilometers underneath. I need to manipulate space and mana and that will benefit from the proximity of opening a portal of my own. With the longest tendril of the inner world just a couple of kilometers short, I don’t even have to enter deeply into their territory.
I leave tendrils of will inside my little island of peace trying to draw some of its properties outside, though I know that at this stage it’s a mostly psychological gesture. Still, this is my legacy in the truest sense of the word. Maybe I will one day be able to project this power in the world. The seconds are interminable, as hundreds of millions of points of mana are drawn in every second by the system and I know that even if it looks to be a direct line going through the Earth, I can only interfere with them near the endpoints. At any instance from the cities that line grows more and more intangible.
The space warping finishes connecting both places together even if the path is still turbulent.
My soul and will enter their territory. Getting closer would only matter if I was only a couple of meters away. As it is, a hundred meters or a hundred kilometers is about the same with portals as long as I can open them.
A few seconds later I turn around in my mad steam rocket propelled travel. I shouldn’t get too close to their city and safe zone. A zone I could see, with the incredible perception field completely free of system interference, but opening a portal is another matter entirely.
I pit my will against the system’s restrictions trying to open a portal.
And all my power splats like a fly hitting a windshield.
An unmitigated failure and it isn’t even close. All my training and preparation for every contingency and I fail before I start.
Still, I pick up my broken will and reform it. I won’t allow the implicit and explicit protections of the system to stay my hand. They came to our world to bring death and destruction and I will stop it at any cost. Maybe I will fail today, but at the very least I will learn.
I push, trying to concentrate my entire strength on a small area, like a pencil, but it bleeds over. Hitting reveals the clumsiness of my efforts. I’m effortlessly rebuffed by the mere presence of the system. I simply can’t put all my will behind a portal that small.
Panic floods my veins, but wise words come over me. Words that even with all my mental stats and memory techniques, I can only loosely paraphrase. But their meaning clears in my mind.
“If the only answer you can muster is in panic, an unmeasured response, you are not the right person to be in power and to make decisions. If the only solution you have to a problem is to be given all the power to solve it, you are limited. If you use fear even against yourself to justify it, you are a tyrant.”
In the entire world, there is no one else that can rival me. The few that might are still in the instance, so the contest isn’t even close. I have to forge myself into someone who can properly analyze the situation and respond accordingly.
I have to be measured and controlled.
I gather my will behind a portal as small as I can make it, now no longer even the size of a syringe needle, but the size of the bore inside such a needle.
My will, like everyone else’s, used to be incorporeal and spread out. It had undergone a partial change inside my soul to keep it contained in the facsimile of a body, but outside it didn’t change. I can’t punch at full strength if I’m trying to concentrate on a single finger, but I don’t even need all that. I should focus on strengthening that finger and measuring my actual limits instead of trying to put all my weight behind it. That will only leave me with a broken finger.
Direct special manipulation and the runes that I usually don’t rely on back my efforts. Mana from well over a thousand seeds and their efforts back me. I don’t strictly need them to open a portal, but their support is welcome. All my practice trying to imitate the seeds in forming portals comes to the rescue. Even my creation skill, which I use for so much is twisted out of shape to help me. To make my direct portal creation greater and bring it into reality somewhere I'm not supposed to be able to access.
My perperception stat floods my brain with adrenaline and time slows down even further. I power a few runes around me to increase my stats marginally and I start to spin a story.
A story enhanced by tendrils of Aether. Wielding the three forms I was most proud of along with the pure Aether infused into my veins trying to both enhance the confluence of this moment and the careful balance that I found while extracting insights for the future.
A fraction of my full power comes down. Only as much as I can actually control. My will is concentrated from a bag of sand, hitting the ground at 50 miles an hour into a 2 oz hammer Mithril hitting a diamond the size of a grain of sand.
All that force is instantly transferred on the tiny spot and is spent in a fraction of a millisecond as the diamond disintegrates between two unyielding pieces of Mithril.
The system is not prepared for my attempt, controlled, measured and with a decent portion of my power in such a small area while all the seeds trying to help act as distractions.
I punch a hole through space and time I use that minuscule bridge, that single rope atop the wall to lead my invasion on the fortification of the enemy. I pass part of my will to the other side, not only in their city but at the heart of their invasion: their ‘safe zone’.
The system’s pressure mounts and coalesces around the portal, but while that might have managed to stop me from breaking through in the first place, now it is as useless as trying to cut a thread that passed through a crack in a window by pressing it between my fingers. If the system tried to scrape my will against the edges of the portal as if it were sharp glass it might succeed, but simple pressure is no longer enough.
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That’s not the system’s way, it wants me to give up, but I have my fingerhold.
I force myself to look at the warping of space with a perception field, but somehow unlike the other space phenomenon that I felt in the past, this time only gives me a faint headache.
There is a realness and smoothness to the portal as it builds steam. But even the small imperfections are slowly coming down, leaving something that will be able to transport people safely. Each second a few more ripples fade, reducing their mana consumption to something they will be able to sustain indefinitely. Our own efforts had been stymied and the system now helps them. But considering the system’s hand in it, this level of precision and efficiency is to be expected.
My mind seems on the verge of grasping it all, but my gut knows that there are layers on top of layers to something as complex as a proper portal.
I think of pushing my Qi into it and trying to disrupt it. With time, I might actually learn how to replicate a portal, but for now, “all” I will do is study it, feel the effects and decide how to best interfere with it.
Not a single one amongst the enemy is looking in the portal’s direction even as the system’s gaze is blanketing the area and building.
I try to let my own sense of space and my will to manipulate it be dragged into their black portal sucking in all light.
After a few seconds, without trying to actively interfere with it, I deepen my connection as my class makes itself manifest and the entire thing becomes a part of me.
I finally understand. Only the very first layer, but I UNDERSTAND.
These insights aren’t even a fraction of what I need to replicate even a local portal let alone a long range one. The system’s work is impeccable, but today I take whole bounds forward instead of looking for handholds in virgin solo climb sheer rock. I hope to remember everything after inspiration has left me, but even a fraction is gonna be amazing. All that is only an idle thought that vanishes as my full concentration has to remain on what is happening.
I sense the string of space thousands of kilometers in length reaching into a higher dimension to make the thousands of kilometers only a single step. With the right tone, dissonant to what the system is clearing, I can make their mana consumption higher, maybe much higher than normal.
So I sing, not trying to follow a beautiful melody, but the simple state of reality. Sound as it relates to the physical world and the note I pick is the resonant frequency of that spatial structure.
The system keeps increasing the pressure and on the edge of my perception, I sense the second Arch Druid looking for my presence, but even as he speaks he is the only one and the derisive tone of unbelief from the others is clear as day to me. After a minute he just looks in my general direction, not at the portal that might have spelled doom for my actions, but where the scouts probably reported my location.
That fades from my mind once again and I concentrate on building the amplitude of the resonance, even as I sense my will growing stiffer with the system’s increasing pressure. Like I’m dead hanging with tons of weight tied around my waist and my hands don’t have the blood needed. My nervous system keeps pushing my muscles to its limits in this battle. I will eventually lose against the nigh-infinite system, but as long as I can delay, I will.
I start experimenting, striking not only the resonant frequency but a few of its prime multiples. Double, triple, quintuple the frequency. I fight to make the endeavor as expensive as possible as the system tries to find the minimum.
This is everything I can do and it won’t be enough, they will still be able to use the portal.
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Second Arch Druid’s POV
“Find him,” I order yet again. The gaze of the system is overpowering around, but that wasn’t so alien, but considering the extra mana consumption…
“Who?” Asks a pair of my guards and I finally realize my mistake but there is no time.
“Nash. He is here, he can... HE is interfering with the portal. The mana consumption is all over the place. I can FEEL him.”
A snort comes from the leader of my opposition. The others are at least circumspect, but that breaks the composure of a few who let out stifled snickers.
Maybe I should have been more careful. I was known to be careful and reliable, but now that seems so hard.
Still, this isn’t some hyperbole or a fancy of my mind. I can sense Nash breathing down my neck. The Druid portal specialist looks up ready to speak. He is nowhere near a proper space Mage. The system wouldn’t allow something like that for a while, but he is the best we have.
“Space is more turbulent than I expected, which will make the transfer more mana expensive, but if they ever manage to get portals working, the same will be true for them and you know how expensive nonsystem portals are. As long as we can sustain it, anything that makes it more expensive, will be to our benefit.” Those words are another nail in my coffin, even if I don’t sense animosity from him.
“Are you really spinning stories about Nash again?”
He speaks and this time he doesn’t even use a coded message. My eyes bulge out and I almost let my Mnaa flare up to attack the fool, but that would make things even worse, I Need their help. “So your paranoia finally got to you and the imaginary powers of Nash, a strong and weird Aether wielder for sure, but no being of mythology. They are lucky, they killed a few people they shouldn’t have, but this is war and they have some unknown source of knowledge. Worse case scenario we will not be able to completely crush him. But he isn’t a Titan that has let go of their hang up about the system, he is human and we know how to fight humans. You… you are making everything worse. Half of their victories are your incompetence.”
“Noooo, no…. No, I can’t believe you want to do this now, uncoded?”
“We are inside the safe zone.” His words reverberate as he talks with wide moves and the crowd nods in support. “That more than anything PROVES your paranoia. There is nothing that can affect us here. No surveillance system and no lower level Elf that might be a traitor. We are as protected as new integrants inside their own city. Hell more given how the rules are applied at the moment. Inside this place we are the darlings of the system and even if a meteor the size of the moon hit the planet, we would survive. Even if our invasion points run out and reinforcements are cut off, we won’t be allowed to starve or to die. We won’t even stub our toes unless we do that ourselves.” He steps in and whispers: “I don’t know how you convinced the Elder to listen to you, but I have my eyes open. I destroyed the original copies he left and left proof that you were the one that did it to avoid revealing the ‘truth’. You are unhinged. You kept forcing my hand after convincing the Elder to write those words. So if you don’t want a field court martial do not step in my way.”
I grit my teeth, but as I feel a tooth chipping I snap out of it.
The moment slows and the futility of my efforts is all consuming. So with a simple gesture, I raise my fist to the sky:
“It seems most of you don’t trust my judgment, even after what you witnessed with your own eyes.” I keep my hand up, looking at everyone and the reality slowly sinks in. “Not a single one of you will raise their fists to the sky? I guess my time is past. I won’t get myself killed trying to hold on to fickle power. I won’t cause trouble for those that want to follow you.”
I keep my fist above my head hoping against hope that a single elf would support me. I see a few ashamed faces but no one moves, not even closing their fists covertly beside them. I stand alone, in every way possible. Alone against a monster like Nash.
The world passes by and suddenly my words are worth less than a random scout’s report.
I look one last time in Nash’s direction.
I can’t see him like the Elder, but the weight of the moment lets me imagine him with precision I never believed a native could feel.
Your interference achieved more than you could know. My warnings and wisdom will be ignored. The elder’s words are gone and I will fade into a relic on this great invasion. I just hope that the new leader won’t do too bad a job and the price we pay is something we can afford.
Out of everything he said, his insistence on speaking in plain Elvish, even if only for a few minutes rankles me the most. It costs so little, we are trained for years exactly for that for good reason. Why not take the precaution even if my fears only have the slightest possibility of being true?
Through sheer luck and stubbornness, you, Nash, you made me irrelevant. That if nothing else, is something to be commended even if all I want is to simply hate you.