"What is that?" Lucan had come out as well, looking up at the night sky he had known for as long as he could remember, as if it were an alien entity.

Well, it wasn't that the whole lake was really in the sky, per se. It was the water that was.

When Rowena lowered her eyes to the ground, she could see the water ways from her position. There was nothing in them, it was an empty space.

This city, which should have been built on endless pillars, floating on the water, was now high above dry land. The missing water glistened in the light of the moon it obscured.

As beautiful as it sounded when described in words, its implications were just as terrifying. If the water was floating among the clouds, how did it get there?

There was no sign of Mana until they opened the doors and stepped outside. Now they were directly hit by it.

'It's an AoE attack,' she thought, 'an Absolute Space.

Since Mana was originally an energy brought by the Visitors, a Numbered's magic couldn't be detected outside of its range. Rowena sensed the doings in Eisenwacht because it must have been done by a contractor, which was clear since it involved the dead.

Unholy Ground could be felt and understood to have been done by a Visitor, but that was also due to the lack of profile the residue had. They couldn't trace it back to the person who was inevitably at the center of the magic circle that caused the blessings to be spoiled.

'So the range is just the water?' Her head almost shut down completely as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. "It's that fucker from Eisenwacht, isn't it?" The thought of that tidal wave made her stomach churn.

Her mumbled words were drowned out by the sounds of more and more people coming out to see what was happening, only to get scared and call for help. Panicked, they pushed through the doors and tried to run to their wagons, as if that would get them far away.

But there was one person who did hear them. 'It must be Leviathan.'

'That doesn't sound nice.'

'It is the Ruler of the Seven Seas. He is not known to be particularly nice.'

'What Number?'

'34.' Another primordial.

First Chronos, with the implication of Chaos, and now this guy, all within the first hundred. They weren't supposed to show up this often.

"Crap." She really took this information with dignity. "Where's Lucan?"

As her head whipped from side to side, the Crown Prince was nowhere to be seen. She had left the garden, carried by a bad feeling as she ran toward the gate of the palace, where there was a vast area of nothing but water, connected to the rest of the city by waterways and only one bridge.

She recognized at least two of the frames in her sight. 'Why is Alan out there? And Lucan too?' She must have been deep in thought, not even noticing that they had run ahead of her earlier.

And as if her thoughts of fear had conjured it up, an earth-shattering screech startled everyone on the plateau before they collectively began to lose their footing.

At first, it was a vibration, then it became rougher as one impact after another hit them. The ground shook violently as more sounds were heard. Wailing, howling, and horrible growls - inhuman sounds coming from beneath their feet.

Sweat pooled on her forehead, while her throat felt too dry to even scream. In the distance, from the empty pit that was everything under the city, she could see something, a movement in the dark.

It was then that she knew her worst fear had come true. If all the water that had kept the Visitors from invading Kadena suddenly disappeared into the sky, then the sky would become the ground, and what would the ground become?

"It's hell," one of the knights who had appeared ready to face any threat said in a trembling voice, "we are doomed.

'Way to instantly lose hope.' But then again, he wasn't wrong.

There weren't as many Visitors as one would have imagined in an unblessed area the size of Lake Iota. But the Visitors didn't just slip through the Surface on a whim, either.

They would realize that there was prey waiting for them if many humans managed to get close to the unblessed area. But just because a closed area had suddenly become open didn't mean that many Visitors felt invited.

Despite that, they had come through instantly, which was eerie enough, adding to their instinct to attack the pillars upon which the city was built. How? Usually, it took them a while to locate the Life Force, and one shouldn't forget the distance between them and the living at the moment.

Although these pillars were strong enough to withstand masses of water, no one had ever deliberately tried to destroy them with direct force. It would only be a matter of time before everything collapsed if they couldn't make the water fall back to the ground.

'What was his Gamble?' If the Gamble's goal was to kill the Emperor or the Crown Prince, they could have done it already. Instead, they were literally trying to shake them down.

The goal must have been something else, something simpler, and that's why he had to use the Absolute Space to do it. 'The quality of his gambling perk must be in the shitter for real.'

There were passive abilities that were granted by a contract as well as active abilities, but sometimes they weren't that different, because for those cases, "active" meant they were stronger because one had to pay to use them.

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However, some forms of "Area of Effect", or "Absolute Space", were more like the magic she had seen in fantasy movies than any other. Not many outside the organization knew of them, so even people in Celia's world wrote these stories thinking they were fictional.

It was like a spell that could only be used if one knew its name. And that name could not be obtained without someone telling the contractor about it, which was usually done by the Numbered as soon as they felt the human was ready.

If his space was the water itself, that would explain the large area he could control. There was no end to the missing water. 'If it's that much, he might not be able to do anything else. No fancy water spears or drowning us one by one, he can just hold it up,' she reasoned, 'it's literally heavy lifting, but not much more than that, if we are lucky.'

It must have been like that, because nothing else had been tried. But she had a terrible feeling thinking about the water under Kadena and its recently discovered use.

She made her way to the edge where her brother was, trying to assess the situation. It was then, as another blow sent her stumbling, that the white stones began to crack. Helpless screams echoed through the night as a deafening rumble abruptly ended their struggle.

Rowena grabbed hold of herself in shock, bracing her bones for the impact. It was all happening too fast for her to react any more than that. All they could do was try to at least survive the fall.

Crashing down more than a few feet and landing on a pile of freshly produced rubble, Rowena couldn't even feel where she hurt anymore. Her ears were ringing, but it was oddly quiet otherwise.

The pile she was on was particularly high, so she could see a deformed creature watching her from a safe distance, trying to find a way to climb up to her.

Where was everyone else? As she looked around, she would finally understand why it was so quiet when there should have been mayhem down there. There were a few people lying among the pieces of stone, some with armor, some without. Over the noise in her eardrums, she could hear metal clashing.

'One here, one to the south, two east.' The two Visitors to the east were trying to get through the swords of her first brother, the Crown Prince, and one of the Royal Knights.

The three of them were protecting a handful of unarmed civilians in their midst. It wasn't high enough for all of them to die, especially since they had all, at some point, learned to use Mana before. Still, everyone was damaged to some degree.

"Run over here!" she shouted to get their attention, "Come to me!"

She had nothing with her, she was powerless, what could she do? Now it was her time to panic.

Her heart was beating loudly as she shuffled to her feet, dirty and bruised all over, but at least nothing was broken.

Alan, who hadn't even noticed that his sister had been on the platform, had a shocked expression on his face, as did Lucan, but neither of them could afford the distraction, so they kept their reactions largely to themselves and began to move in unison.

The next thing she knew, a group of knights were standing on the ledge, looking down at her, right underneath them, scrambling to reposition themselves and plan a rescue mission. The Emperor couldn't fall into a panic, he had to make a decision. That decision could not include sacrificing his son, that was for sure.

"We have to help them up, get a ladder at once!" he ordered and went out front, looking up at the water from the lake, barely visible in the darkened sky. "I know you are there! What is your objective?"

He might not be a master, but it would take a blind idiot not to understand who was to blame for this. At least what was to blame, if not who.

Parading a madman, a hooded figure emerged from the mass of water, cackling maniacally. He descended slowly, like a god among the living. A thin layer of water covered his lower body in a circle around him, and even some under his feet.

'So, he can at least still do that much after all,' the noble lady thought, as her brother and the others had arrived next to her.

Under his black hood, his features were indecipherable, but as he came down, there was a slight breeze that moved the fabric enough for Rowena to see a patch of brown hair and a pair of hollow cheeks. His overall haggard appearance, even visible on his pale hands, was off-putting.

It was as if he was saying there was no reason for him to fight physically, so he didn't need to look healthy. Though he was probably so thin because of the amount of Mana he spent.

The water kept the Visitors away, so he could just stand there and watch.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, another figure made a move while hidden in the shadows. "I just have to spread it around, right?"

A tall man, also veiled, nodded from beneath his cover. "That's all. Your Mana will do the rest, just like we trained before."

He hadn't been sure about this particular technique as he thinly spread the Mana he had gained from a Gamble. The ground had been untouched for such a long time, there was nothing to interfere with him as there had been in the mines before, when a newborn Grade 3 was his limit.

It didn't take long for his Mana, which had the qualities of a top-tier bait, to bear fruit.

It felt like there was a terrible stench in the air. Rowena couldn't breathe as her skin crawled, feeling something eerily familiar. Though she had never fought it herself, it still felt like yesterday when she was hiding in the trees with the other members of the Support Division.

Her hands trembled as she felt the ominous aura of that particular Executor. "It's the Pied Piper. I know it." She knew this wasn't normal. Like Uriel, who had seemingly come here after losing her contractor in Celia's world, this one had done the same. 'What is wrong with this world…?'

"What is the 'Pied Piper'?" Alan asked, looking at her sternly though she didn't answer.

'Hmm…' Even Pan seemed to be lost in thought at the revelation.

But there was no doubt, it was the Pied Piper. Well, that was the nickname VAULT had given it, but in reality it was a Visitor that looked like a doll the size of an adult. It wasn't the kind of doll you'd want to play with, though, no matter how pretty it was.

Lilith, Queen of the Tethered, bestowed one particular ability: Crowd control. And not just any crowd control, but control of the Restless.

If there had been few Visitors before, the amount of them rising from the Surface set her heart ablaze. She could barely breathe as she looked over at the guards fumbling with a ladder made of rope and wooden planks. Would it be enough to run away and just wait for the two contractors involved to lose their wager or run out of Mana?

'At least she's not within the first hundred. She's 101. Because that's so much better.' It would still make her that much stronger, and the Mana she provided would be enough to last a day. 'In any case, they must have given a Gamble with a tight schedule, in order to gain that much power off the bat, unlike Leviathan over there.'

A Gamble couldn't be given a time limit that would last a whole day, it had to be limited, but the longer you set the time limit, the lower the quality of the Gamble would be. The tighter the time limit and the bigger the goal, the more power you could get. Technically, this meant that they would have to survive for ten to twenty minutes at the most.

An Absolute Space didn't depend on the Gamble, because it was the epitome of the Numbered's existential power and being. In other words, it was their original ability, as they would manifest it at their peak, but probably not as strong. It was more of a test of endurance. If a contractor could handle the pain, they could use it.

Despite the artificial-sounding laughter, sweat dripped from the water bearer's chin. He was in pain. A lot of it. It felt good to her to know that he would at least suffer for what he had done.

But there was no time to dwell on petty feelings as the rescued civilians were helped up the ladder.

'Just what is their goal?' she still wondered. They didn't even physically stop them from getting back up.

"What is it you want?" yelled Lucan when he finally caught his breath after sending Rowena up the ladder and following her. Only Alan remained.

'Now I know why they came up right away and how they knew to destroy the pillars first. But why aren't they doing that anymore?'

Her question seemed to find an answer as a flaming whip cut through the ropes hanging from the platform, dropping her older brother back onto the pile of rubble as a Grade 4 stood next to him, looking right at her as it aimed at him.