by TurtleMe
Was there really no other option? As my mind began spinning for possible solutions, I see Professor Glory receive a pretty large blow to her right arm.
‘I’m almost there Papa! Hold on!’ Sylvie’s voice gives me an idea.
That’s it!
“Curtis! I need your help right now!” I roar across the battlefield.
“Arthur, I don’t think I can afford to…”
“Come, NOW!” I bark back before he can refute.
Curtis was a bloody, grimy mess, but from the shallow wounds on his body, it was obvious that the blood on him wasn’t his.
“What is it?” He pants heavily. I could tell he was exhausted by the wear on his face and body. His shield was badly dented and his sword looked dull from the repeated use.
“Do you think your beast will ability, World Howl, is strong enough to clear the rubble?” I turn his head to snap him back into attention.
“Arthur, I don’t think I have the mana to even be able to go into my first phase.” He shakes his head hopelessly.
“Just answer the question. Is it strong enough?”
“Y-yeah, if I had enough mana, I could potentially produce a blast bigger than the one on the mock team battle where you, um, got injured.” He scratches his head, confused by where I was going with this.
I thought about maybe directing the blast at the Queen Snarler but even if it were strong enough to maybe kill it, it would be impossible to accurately get only the Queen and not Professor Glory. It was safer to just go with this plan.
“Okay. I want you to not question what I’m about to do and just focus on going into your first phase and producing the blast strong enough to clear that mountain of rubble. Got it?” The amount of urgency and authority must have gotten through to Curtis because he just nods and turns around.
Taking off my seal and putting it in my dimension ring, I make sure to control the amount fluctuation in the mana as to not tip anyone off. Everyone is occupied with the Snarlers but if I don’t control the mana release like Professor Glory did after she released her seal, I would draw attention from the Queen Snarler.
Feeling the untapped pool of mana that I now had access to, I place both my hands on Curtis’ back.
From the amount of mana I will into Curtis, the Prince involuntarily drops to one knee before he’s able to adjust his body to the sudden bombardment of mana.
Mana transference has been studied for many years according to professors and many of the books in the library, but it was a hopeless cause for them. They believed that if a mage was fire attribute, receiving mana from another fire attribute mage should be possible, but after countless tests and failures, they deemed it as implausible; the reason being that even if someone is a specialization, the mana inside their bodies aren’t purely of only that element. Hypothetically, if someone was able to condense and refine their core to highest sense, then with another one of someone of that same level and element, they could transfer mana to each other. Other than that, it would be impossible, except for me.
The fact that I’m able to manipulate all four elements allows me to adjust and mimic and input the types of mana and the ratio of each element of the person I’m transferring it to. It was sort of like what I did for my sister and Lilia when teaching them mana manipulation in their body but on a much bigger scale. Of course I haven’t perfectly mastered this so I’ll be wasting a lot of mana, but this was probably our best bet.
As I began slowly controlling and limiting the amount of each elemental mana particles I transmit to Curtis, I can’t help but grit my teeth in self-deprecation at the turn of events.
There were so many small signs that I chose to ignore, thinking that it would work out fine, and that I could handle it. Was I treating this life I had right now for granted? Being fortunate enough to have this amount of power at my age has definitely made me lose my past sense of rationality to a degree.
No longer a King, tied down by rules and politics as well as not being tied down by my own physical capabilities, I’ve become careless. In this world, the limits to my potential were boundless. Reaching the White stage or even further wasn’t a dream but a matter of time and effort.
The thing that appalled me the most and what I hated to admit was that, I was, in a sense, a bit like Lucas. I was nowhere near as much of a jerk as him and I had people I actually cared for beside myself, but I was becoming arrogant, like Lucas, arrogant to the extent of carelessness.
“I-I don’t know what you just did, Arthur but I feel great. I think I’ll be able to go into my first phase!” The Prince says, bringing me back to reality. I sense the change his body is going through internally sense I’m the one transferring my mana to him.
“King’s Wrath.” Curtis let’s out a growl as his body begins to change.
*CRACKLE*
I jerk my hands back in pain as Curtis releases his first phase of his Beast Will. Confused, I try transferring mana to him again but the rejection from his body is even stronger than the first time.
Did the mana from his beast will reject my mana?
Before I had the chance to try again, Curtis began gathering mana for his World Howl technique.
He crouches, lowering his center of gravity to withstand the recoil of World Howl, the mana from both his body and the atmosphere gathered in front of his open jaw.
During this time, I rush to where Tessia was curled behind the front line and scooped her up. Getting Tessia out of here would be priority. I was partly to blame for this mess. I should’ve done a better job to prevent something like this from happening in the first place.
“WORLD HOWL!” Curtis unleashes his powerful breath attack, but the mutated Queen must’ve sensed that something was wrong because it immediately changed its target from the wounded Professor Glory to Curtis.
“Oh no you don’t!” Bellowing at the top of her lungs, Professor Glory leaped up and grappled the mutated Queen in flight in hopes to deter it from reaching Curtis.
“BOOOM!”
As planned, my mana transference paid off as Curtis’ trump card blasted a large hole through the rubble, clearing a path to the now visible stairway entrance back to the surface.
“EVERYONE! HEAD FOR THE STAIRS!” I roar through the sound of rocks falling and Snarlers growling.
“GO! NOW!” Professor Glory shouts too as she struggles to hold her own against the Queen Snarler.
The exhausted class makes one final push towards the entrance as Professor Glory holds the Queen at bay while the wall of Snarler corpses keeps the ones alive at bay for the brief moment.
“Claire, I’m trusting Tess to you.” I hand Tessia over to Claire, who seemed to be in the best shape right now.
“You’re not planning on staying, are you? You can’t be serious. As your commanding leader in the Disciplinary Committee I forbid…”
“Just go…” With the limited amount of time that we had, I release a sharp killing intent to get my point across, making her flinch backwards in surprise.
Helping the drained Curtis back to his feet, I push both of my Disciplinary Committee teammates towards the front entrance of the cave before turning back to where Professor Glory was fighting.
“Why the hell did you come back, Arthur.” I could almost feel the amount of frustration in my professor’s voice as she snapped at me through gritted teeth.
“We’re going to need both of us to kill this thing.” Taking Dawn’s Ballad back out from my dimension ring, I unsheathe it.
“You better hope this thing kills me because you’re going to be regretting not following my orders.” She responds, blocking a blow from the Queen’s sharp claws.
“Hey, I’m a professor too, remember?” I give her a weary smile before making a sharp swing with my blade.
“You’re too smart for your own good, Arthur.” She smiles back while shaking her head. The situation didn’t seem too good as the mana transference made me use most of my mana. If it weren’t for mana rotation, I probably would�
�ve gotten backlash already.
While battling the Queen and keeping her busy enough so the rest of the class could get out safely, I notice that the last one is Lucas. Our eyes lock in for a brief moment before he turns back his head and disappears into the entrance.
I could’ve sworn I saw him snort before he turned away.
“GRAAAH!” As the fight continued, I managed to sever one of the Queen’s wings so it wasn’t capable of flight any longer, but its thick fur was preventing us from doing anything more than giving it shallow wounds. This mutated Queen, which was almost 3 meters tall on its hind legs, was filled with wounds from both Professor Glory and I, but it didn’t seem to bother it at all.
“I don’t think we can kill this thing.” I shout to Professor Glory, who was on the other side of the Queen Snarler.
“We’ll need to at least bind it somehow so we can escape. I don’t think the Queen will follow us out of the dungeon!” She responds as the Queen howls in anger.
“I need you to keep it busy for 5 seconds, professor.” I reposition myself so Professor Glory was in my view.
“Okay.” She doesn’t question what I’m about to do as she unleashes another burst mana out of her core.
As Professor Glory leaps towards the mutated Queen, I put my sheath back into my dimension ring and grasp my sword with both hands. With the seal gone, I use the last of my mana to will lightning into Dawn’s Ballad.
“HAAAA!” Without mana strengthening my body, my dash towards the Queen Snarler feels like a crawl.
“Move!” At my signal, Professor Glory dashes out of the way as I stab my sword into an already existing wound that I managed to inflict just earlier between its shoulder blades.
*CRACKLE* *CRACKLE*
“KRREEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!” The sudden shock seemed to be effective against the Queen as it began to spasm.
“LET’S GO!” Without even being able to pull my sword back out from the Queen Snarler, Professor Glory grabs me by my waist and carries me towards the front entrance.
As the hordes of Minions got in our way, Professor Glory cleaved our way through until we reached the front entrance.
“GRAAAAAAAAAAH!”
“H-HOW?” Professor Glory could only gasp as both of us looked up. The Queen, with my sword still embedded in its spine, somehow recovered enough to make one desperate leap to keep us from escaping.
“Hurry!” I was currently dangling on top of my professor’s shoulder as I tried to snap her out of her shock. With the mutated Queen Snarler almost upon us we just managed to avoid her sharp claws before she landed hard on the ground.
Without the luxury to even look back, we made our way past the minions and into the hall when I see the mutated Queen crawling her way towards us. I guess my last attack did some damage because it wasn’t freely mobile as it awkwardly limped towards us, using its claws to drag its body.
Reaching the end of the hall where the stairs began to ascend, I noticed something odd about the Queen Snarler that was just a couple meters away from us.
Well… every bit of that mutated Queen was odd, but this was different. As it reached closer and closer to the beginning of the staircase where we were, its face and body began pulsating. Tumors began growing sporadically in random parts of its body and face.
Don’t tell me…
“BOOM!”
Before Professor Glory could even turn around, the force of the explosion pushed her forward while she lost her grasp of me, who was still on her shoulder.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the explosion caused by the Queen opened up a large hole.
“ARTHUR!” Through gritted teeth, I heard my professor’s desperate cry as she reached her hand out for me, but it was too late.
“Save Tess!” I call back out weakly before using my last bit of mana I’ve been gathering for the short amount of time to augment my body.
Chapter 67: Widow’s Crypt IV
After what seemed like hours of falling while being knocked between various rocks that also fell down along with me from the explosion, the speed at which I’m dropping down keeps me from stabilizing myself. I spread my arms and legs, desperately trying to find anything to grab onto to stop myself before I become a splatter mark on the ground where I land. Fortunately, my right hand catches onto a jutted tree root. Unfortunately, that was the arm that was dislocated not too long ago so the sudden jolt sends a sharp pain that makes me want to bite through my lower lip.
Dangling with my right arm that feels like its about to rip off, I send Sylvie a mental transmission.
‘Sylv. Are you there? I fell quite a bit down but I’m still okay. Do you sense where I am?’
“…”
There’s no response. I can’t even sense my bond. I immediately start worrying if something happened to her, but with the Queen Snarler dead and the rest trapped inside the dungeon, I don’t think that was the case. It was more likely that I was either too deep down, which I doubt, or that something in this area is warded off and sealed from the outside, or more accurately the surface.
By the extent of how much I fell down, I doubt I was on any of the immediate floors below it. Did the explosion unveil a hidden passage to some room somewhere inside the dungeon?
Speaking about explosions, the explosion caused by the mutated Queen Snarler was odd. The blast was big, but I got the feeling that the explosion wasn’t meant to kill whoever was near it. If that were the case, my body, along with Professor Glory’s, would be in a much worse state than it is now.
“Ugh…” As I continue dangling on my injured arm, I feel myself losing grip. I let out a couple quick breaths to ready myself before I pull myself up with right arm up enough so my left arm could take its place.
“Ergghh!” Through gritted teeth, I resist the temptation to just let go and leave it up to God or the gods or any gods, whatever they worshiped in this world, if any.
As I now hang on my left arm, I test to make sure my right arm isn’t dislocated again. Thankfully, it still seems to be in its right place.
After a quick assessment of my body’s condition, I look around, except all I see is darkness. It wasn’t as simple as it simply being dark; it was pitch black. That feeling of when you shut your eyes so hard that it seems like different lights are oozing around in your vision or that feeling where no matter how hard you squint, your eyes can’t adjust. That was what I was feeling right now.
As I activate my mana rotation, I disperse the mana I have covering my body to only my left arm holding onto the branch. I have to use this “break time” to gather as much mana I can. Augmenting the little bit of mana I have into my eyes as well in hopes of being able to see something, I can only let out a sigh in defeat.
‘I’m not blind… am I?’ I can’t help but think to myself as I augment my eyes again.
Just to comfort my needless worry, I break one of the most basic rules in situations like this. I produce a small fire on the tip of my right index finger.
Looking at the warm red and orange flicker of fire on my fingertip I breathe in relief before extinguishing the flame.
While vision is an important thing, the last thing you want to do in a dark place like this is draw attention to yourself. Now that the enemies here, if any, know of my location, I needed to move.
Since I couldn’t see, I use wind to sense the type of space I was in right now. I had no idea how narrow or wide this hole that I was in was, but I assumed it wasn’t too wide since I hit quite a few objects along the way while falling.
Sending out short, soft bursts of wind, equidistant, around me, I figure out that this ditch, for a lack of better words, had a diameter of about 10 meters. The scary part, however, was that I couldn’t even sense how far down I was and how much further I had to go down until I had a floor to walk on.
What I had to decide now was whether to try and climb back up or make my way down. By how much I fell and all of the other debris that fell down along with me, chances were that the opening at the top wo
uld already be covered. With Sylvie not answering from outside, I had no way of knowing if she could open up an exit for me.
That only leaves me with going down.
*Sigh*
No matter how rational and levelheaded I was, I couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious in this situation. More so than immediate dangers in front of me, a situation like this, where I couldn’t see anything or even sense any life forms made me more edgy. In the case where the army of Snarlers was in front of us, I knew what I had to do and I could think of how to deal with it. Right now, I could neither imagine nor predict what might happen in the next couple of seconds, making me all the more tense.