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1382 Words
Camilla, from behind them, spoke before he could continue, “No, Matt. it was all of us. We f****d up. Each of us. You weren’t the only one who wanted to explore the vault. Or the ruin.”
“It…” That was all he got out before Liz jumped in.
“We f****d up, yes. But I think this one was inevitable. We just sped up the process.”
As he opened his mouth to refute her, he stopped and followed the line of logic. He was desperate for anything that would absolve him of the guilt that was boring deeper and deeper into his gut with each passing moment.
“Sure, we did input mana into the system, but remember that the golems started to glow on their own. That was even before we started contributing mana to the ruin. I think that first blow in the fight with the first golem was what started the reaction that eventually led to the ruin absorbing ambient mana. Even if we hadn’t found the ruin someone else would have.”
That made a lot of sense to him, but as much as he wanted to believe her words, it was an indisputable fact that he had sped up the process by nearly two million mana. It was his fault that this had happened so soon if nothing else.
At this point, Aster’s wet nose was pressed into his throat. The sensation jarred him enough to drop the barrier he had maintained between them.
He was immediately flooded with happy thoughts and some haphazardly formed words.
She had been getting better at forming her thoughts into words, rather than feelings and images, as her intelligence increased from advancing to Tier 5.
But her efforts did little to reassure him.
He was far too engrossed in watching the destruction as the ruin passed. His only hope at absolution was a higher Tier on the planet cleaning up his mess. There was at least one Tier 7 group on the planet. They had been in the group that they had arrived on the planet with.
A single Tier of advantage wasn’t huge, but it should be enough to deal with the golems. Even if the Tier 15s in the star system didn’t act, the Tier 7s should be able to avert this crisis to a degree.
With [Endurance] running with as much mana as he could muster, he checked his AI for Liz and Camilla’s mana pools and pushed with everything he had toward them.
Camilla was startled if the noise he heard from behind him was any indication. But he knew that Liz was still hurting, and he couldn’t care less about his secret being exposed when her health was on the line. He had more permissions to her AI and was able to see that her leg injury would be slow to heal, as she was rationing her mana.
They wouldn’t be perfectly healed any time soon, with [Endurance] only bolstering the body’s natural healing. But they could be combat-ready in a few hours, and fully healed in a few days. He was giving them enough mana to keep their respective healing spells going. The bolts hadn’t had any anti-healing enchantments or poison, which simplified the process.
With his emotions still unsettled, Matt moved to his bag. The movement pulled at the wounds on his back with newly forming scabs. They ripped open as he shifted his weight, only to be healed over again quickly by [Endurance].
Camilla moved over and interrupted his brooding. “So…why does my mana regen suddenly a lot higher? I wouldn’t ask usually, but this isn’t normal. At first, I thought it was just an oddity from being in the ruin. But now…”
She trailed off, but the question was obvious.
Matt tried to think of a clever excuse, but he just didn’t have it in him to keep the ruse up, so he told the truth. At least most of it.
“I have a Concept that allows me to pass mana along to others.”
He paused and considered that she had also seen the other half of his Concept. He added, “And can push things away, but that’s a secondary function. It’s a bit more…” He searched for the word he wanted. “Expensive to use.”
“And this won’t deplete your mana reserves or anything? I don’t want you to run out of mana just from trying to keep us going.”
Matt didn’t answer immediately and just watched her. Did she not do any calculations regarding how much mana he was putting into the ruin? He was sure that they had mentioned his abnormal regeneration.
Was she trying to get more information out of him by playing dumb? Matt decided that it was the most likely answer, and just nodded.
“I can put out a lot of mana. Let’s leave it at that. Don’t worry about me, at least when it comes to that. This side of my Concept is easier to use, and doesn’t drain me as much, but I can’t control who gets it yet. Only the size of the area is under my influence, so I won’t use it near others. But this will help us keep going.
Camilla dropped to the ground next to them and said, “What are we going to do? Even if the same thing would have happened with anyone else going into the ruin, we still started it. We’re culpable for what’s going on out there.”
Matt felt the weight of that responsibility fall squarely on his shoulders.
Camilla was right. They needed to do something.
Matt wanted to upload the information they had on the golems, but there was no signal in the area. Just to be sure, he checked his AI and ended up getting a ping from the PlanetNet.
It quickly grew stronger, but before he could send a message on the network, a message came through to him.
The message was a video conference and chatroom. The quality was bad but improving.
The man spoke with a voice that sounded like gravel. Matt thought it was a problem with the connection, but as the video improved, he saw that the man appeared as if he was cut from stone. Literally. He was all hard edges and sharp corners.
“I’m sure most of you know me, but for those foreigners, I am Prince Albert, fourth prince of the Seven Sun’s kingdom. We are currently leading an escape from the northernmost teleporter city.”
The man swallowed, and his crystalline skin rippled with his swallow.
“The flying fortress is headed our way, and we have been unable to stop it.”
The chat, which was moving quickly, started to fly by with repeats of the same messages.
‘What about the overseers?’
‘What about the Tier 15s?’
Those were the two most common questions, and the rest echoed that sentiment.
The prince raised a hand, but as he was speaking to a camera, the gesture was useless. More comments and questions came pouring in.
“We are unable to get help from the Tier 15 watching over the teleporter. He has stated that this is our problem, and to that end, he had restricted access to the platform to incoming teleports only. To further complicate matters, he has captured the Tier 7 teams, and is holding them back from interfering.”
Matt and the others were shocked by that revelation.
It echoed Matt’s greatest fears.
The prince called for calm, but the chat exploded from the new information.
“We apologize for this news. We believe that this is an assassination attempt. As We are low Tier 6, sending a peak Tier 6 disaster like this is within the rules. Again, We apologize profusely for getting the rest of you wrapped up in this. To combat this disaster, We ask that all functional teams move to the designated locations and move to protect each other. We currently are using the reserve satellites to get this message out, as the fortress is shooting down any satellites that venture near it.”
Albert raised a hand to seemingly wipe his face but aborted the motion.
- Writer
