Chapter Four: Potential
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Bly must have taken all of thirty steps before the explosions began.
Tremors erupted through the corridor, and he could feel the weight of the guildhall above him as the stonework quaked. Stumbling to the ground somewhat, he caught himself before he could be laid out flat. Which was all for the better, because no sooner had he grasped at the wall for stability, did several various sized chunks of stone rip away from the ceiling and crash down around him.
“Swift shield!” Bly shouted in haste, raising his free hand above his head just in time.
The verbal trigger jolted his mana pool into action, and before long the spell had siphoned its fill of magical energy. White-hot mana churned, before bursting from his fingertips as it took on the defensive shape of his mind’s eye.
Stone scattered across the barrier, causing him to stagger somewhat against the impact. However, the spell held firm. Bly was momentarily grateful for Bartolo’s persistence that he adopted acceleration techniques into his defensive spellcraft, wondering if he’d have been able to react in time otherwise. But the relief lasted only a moment, for a split-second later the next round of explosions stared.
Before Bly could even respond this time, his body was ejected twenty feet down the corridor.
There was no spell in his repertoire that could have absorbed the pain he felt slamming into the wall. It hurt his ribs just trying to take a breath, but he forced himself to sit up straight, nonetheless.
Directly ahead of him was nothing but fire, as well as collapsed stone and wood. Pieces of the guildhall’s floorboards jutted down from above and were set ablaze, strewn across the narrow corridor. Bly wasn’t oblivious to the fact that he’d just been standing in that exact spot several seconds ago, but he was also more concerned about how he was supposed to make it out of here in one piece.
“She’s going to kill me…” Bly panted, but shortly had to remind himself that he was already a dead man walking. If by some miracle he got out of here alive, Miss Crane would probably be the one to thank.
Glancing to his right, Bly realized that his body had been hurled down the corridor in such a way that he had a good glimpse of the L-shape bend he remembered being led down all that time ago. The stairs leading up to the main hall were surely right there at the end of the corridor, he just needed to get up and start moving.
But that’s when Blychert saw him… Administrator Caelus, stumbling out of a nearby room.
It was unusual, but he’d never seem an administrator look so grotesquely disoriented before. Then again, he’d never seen an administrator bleed either. Administrator Caelus had a streak of black-colored blood running down his face and neck, seeping down into the collar of his robes. Bly could have sworn his expression was one of pure grief and anguish.
That was, until his eyes turned and locked with Blychert’s.
“You—!” The Administrator punctuated distastefully among the sounds of mayhem, raising his right arm as he pointed one of his long, boney fingers at Bly. His face contorted into abject disgust, and Bly thought he might vomit, “This heresy is your doing!”
Bly shook his head slowly, then faster, and the fear that he’d experienced before meeting Miss Crane suddenly filled him once again. The paralyzing terror from before began to lock his body up completely with each limping step that Administrator Caelus took towards him.
“Oh yes…” Caelus nodded frantically, “I see it so clearly now. To be so different, but so utterly the same—the same wretched creature as the rest of them. I should have known better than to offer amenity in your final, miserable hours. Oh, blessed Divine, give me strength. Allow me to strike this heathen down in your name!”
Administrator Caelus opened the palm of his hand slowly, and Bly could see a bright glow beginning to form the shape of an orb in his hand. His eyes grew wide, and Bly knew in that instant that his own life was balancing on a knife’s edge.
“!#l[*q]—a][p[t—00[@!!1” Administrator Caelus hissed in a series of unintelligible noises, but the radiant energy that bloomed in his palm was unmistakably similar to the divine magic Bly had seen Annie practice time and time again, albeit much more potent by the looks of it.
Bly’s whole body ached, and his arms trembled, but he lifted them out in front of him all the same. He knew the risks of what he was about to do, that dual casting while amplifying was the surest way to deplete his mana pool in record time. But here he was about to squeeze everything he had for all its worth, there was simply no other choice.
“May the four guardians grant me this artifice. Shield, twofold lattice—!”
There was barely enough time to finish casting his spell before Bly felt the sheer impact of the Administrator’s magic rain down upon him.
Even at twofold strength, Bly’s barrier spell was still only a couple of inches thick. It might have been enough to tackle an intermediate spell—a less powerful advanced spell if he was lucky—but Bly was suddenly facing down the full might of a blinding sphere of pure, heavenly magic, blasting him from the ground at full force.
The grinding sound between the two magics was immediately piercing, unlike anything Bly had ever heard before. It was as if a thousand metal blades had begun spinning and scraping, super-heating and whistling to such volumes that he could barely hear his own screams above the chaos.
Gritting his teeth against the tumultuous force of magical energy now thrumming between him and the Administrator, Bly tried to hold his position and steady his mana flow. Smoke had quickly begun to fill the hallway from the burning debris of the guildhall above them, and Bly found himself choking on air somewhat. The smell of acrid, sulfurous mana burning around them was also growing to be too much to bear, but Bly persisted… that was, until the first lattice shattered to pieces.
Stolen story; please report.
Time seemed to stand still in that moment, even though it had only been less than twenty seconds worth of casting. Once the first lattice went, the second wouldn’t be too far behind. But more importantly, Blychert was teetering on the edge of mana exhaustion.
It was worse than that, thanks to his dual casting and latticework combination, he had begun to push so far past his short-term mana limits and into the realm of total annihilation, that his body was beginning to reject him. The pain in his fingertips as the flesh burned away practically broke his mind with how excruciating it was, and yet all he could do was squeeze even more, clutching on for dear life as best he could.
Was this the closest to real power he had ever gotten? Had it taken him practically killing himself to see the extent of his own magic? Well, it was over now anyway, forget about escape. Maybe he wouldn't meet Miss Crane again. Did that make him lucky, after all? For some reason, that was the only thing he could think of in the moment, even as he was slipping down into the deep place where no spellcaster could ever return from.
Reluctantly, Blychert closed his eyes.
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{SAGE --> Raven System Alert}
- - - Threat Level exceeds minimum Authority Level; Progenitor credentials confirmed; SVAC auto-activation sequencer initialized - - -
> Operator Status: dormant; null bind parameters detected - - - extract
> Run bypass… diagnostic scan []
> Critical mana depletion detected
> Critical physical trauma detected
> GEM Structural Integrity: < 60%
> Primary ability parameters detected… engage
> Ability unlock chain decoded… ‘XP Transmogrifier’ initialized
> Run bypass on ability synthesis
> Run bypass on experience threshold limiter
> System Command: activate ability, XP Transmogrifier; Spell [Shield, Basic] will consume [xp] to reinforce Spell [Shield, Basic] by [1000%] at a rate of [10 xp] per second, until Threat Level is normalized
> Link to active resource [experience points]
> [Experience Points: 4,084]
> Execute
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Blychert's eyes shot open.
The rip-roar of his defense spell suddenly intensified in ways he’d never experienced, the sheer power of which increased the collapsing lattice to over two feet in thickness. Blychert barely even noticed that his Sage terminal had begun to go completely haywire, coming to life in order to access screens and secret system menus of its own accord that he knew nothing about. What he was able to witness out of the corner of his eye, however, was the sudden and rapidly decreasing number in his experience point total.
The last fifteen years of his life were quickly draining away, and he didn’t care. He was still here, and he was still holding on.
Seemingly bolstered by his strange new ability, Bly lifted himself up onto one foot, and then onto the other. Suddenly, he was standing again. The Administrator still towered over him, but Bly saw a look in his eyes now that he didn’t think he would ever forget, at least, if he made it out of here.
“What is this… abomination? You will die and be silent—!” Caelus shouted, and his eyes twisted until they started spinning around in opposite directions. His entire face contorted like clay, exaggerated features and all, and he flung his radiating hand at Bly seemingly with everything he had.
But the Administrator’s magic simply ricocheted off Bly’s reinforced shield, so much so that it shot into the air and punched a beam of radiant energy straight through the ceiling. The ensuing explosion erupted above them. And as if compelled by the sudden lapse in assault, Bly leapt passed the Administrator and bolted down the corridor, the sound of stonework crashing down behind him in the blink of an eye.
Glancing back, the Administrator was nowhere to be seen beneath the smoking rubble.
But before Bly knew it, he was scrambling up the stairs and stumbling through the main portion of the guildhall. Gasping for air with streaks of tears on his face, he tried to yell for help but the pain in his ribs returned.
Though it scarcely seemed to matter.
The guildhall was in complete and utter ruin. Fire was everywhere, holes blasted through the walls, the roof, down through the floor until parts of the subterranean sections were completely exposed.
Blychert dragged himself across the chamber, hardly receptive to the dead bodies of several of the attributors strewn about, whose black blood was smeared in small pools across the floorboards, as well as a dozen guild sentries. Whatever had happened here had been brutal and violent, though Bly didn’t have much sympathy to spare.
His mind was hanging on by a thread at this point, but he still couldn't help but wonder how on earth Miss Crane had managed to do all of this. And why?
It hadn’t really been to save him, had it?
Bly couldn’t say, and he shook the thought out of his mind as he finally climbed over the toppled double-doors, feeling the outside air on his face at last.
It was dark, later in the evening than he thought it would be, though he supposed that only spoke to the time he’d lost down in that room.
Bly could hear the fire bell tolling, but nobody seemed to be drawing too close to the guildhall just yet. There were scores of people standing much farther away, watching as the hall burned down around him. He could see their small faces through the heated haze, looking towards where he stumbled forward, all of them probably in as much shock as he was.
There was no chance he could go towards them any more than he had already though. Even if they didn’t mean to kill him themselves, he couldn’t forget what had happened earlier. At any rate, he couldn’t know if these people— the one’s he’d grown up around— really hated him, or if they would turn him over, but he wasn’t going to take that risk.
Bly was on his own, but at least his mind was thinking somewhat clearly again.
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{SAGE --> Raven System Notification}
- - - Threat Level normalized; critical resource [experience points] low; SVAC auto-activation sequencer terminated - - -
> Operational conditions set to [normal]
> [Experience Points: 1,034]
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Bly had almost forgotten that his shield spell was still active, until the terminal prompt issued an alert. Suddenly, the spell stopped firing, and he was immediately overwhelmed by the abrupt headache that came with having exhausted his entire mana pool.
His fingers were raw and completely burned, but somehow the pain of that paled in comparison to what he’d just experienced.
What the hell was that? Bly thought anxiously, starting down into the palms of his hands. He was certain that whatever the system had just done to him, it had almost certainly saved his life. Even still, it had taken out three quarters of his experience points. Bly doubted he’d need them though, seeing as how he would never have a class, which begged its own questions, but it was still shocking to see just how quickly it had all happened.
Was this a piece of that divine intervention he was so skeptical about before the selection ceremony? Bly couldn’t say, and it was impossible to think that the Heavenly Principle was looking out for him, given everything he knew about the classless, and everything Miss Crane had told him.
It was at that moment that he remembered what she had told him to do, to get back to Bartolo's tower, and right now he had to get out of town, and fast.
Bly glanced up and took one last look at Darskaart, noticing all the people watching him, or maybe they were watching the burning mayhem behind him, it didn’t matter. He looked at them for a long moment, wondering for a split second if his friends were standing in that crowd somewhere, before scrambling to his left towards the edge of the forest without another glance.