"You can't pull it like that," said the veteran soldier standing nearby. "The harder you pull, the deeper it burrows."
He was speaking to a very young soldier who appeared to be the most severely injured in the group—probably the kind of unlucky soul who's always the mosquitoes' favorite target. The young guard's neck was splattered with blood—a sight that was quite terrifying at first glance. He was currently tugging with all his might at the tail of a leech that had latched onto his neck, refusing to let go, in an attempt to rip the creature off. The harder he pulled, the tighter the dark green creature clung, looking as if it were burrowing deeper into his flesh.
"Damn it," he muttered. "I'd rather fight a crocodile."
"You're clearly a city slicker," his comrade grinned. "Back home, the streams are crawling with leeches. Livestock wade through them and come out with their legs covered in bites. You've got to slap it like this—the shock to the skin makes it lose its grip."
The young soldier clumsily slapped his neck, but perhaps his technique was off—the leech didn't budge. His comrade reached out to help, but to no avail. Shaking his head, he blamed the soldier for pulling too hard earlier.
"It might've already burrowed under your skin," someone remarked with a click of the tongue.
"Bullshit!" the soldier snapped, kicking the other man.
By this point in the tedious journey, the atmosphere had lightened from its earlier solemnity. The mage apprentices whispered among themselves, the guards joked about leeches and rats, and some even rolled blood-saturated leeches into balls to play with; the plump creatures curled up in their hands like balls, surprisingly springy. Most of them were battered and bruised. The leeches didn't suck much blood, but the bites were slow to heal; the wounds oozed blood, making this otherwise unscathed group look rather bedraggled.
Both the white-robed mages and the wild mages had ways to heal wounds, but now was not the time to use healing spells—just as you wouldn't use precious bandages to treat a nosebleed. Though magic is all-powerful, the mages face a dilemma: their mana is limited, and they have less stamina than mages of the past, so they must conserve their mana for more critical situations. For example, the wild mage Rudolf is maintaining an Area Water-Splitting spell, which leaves him virtually unable to cast any other spells; he can only provide this environmental support throughout the entire journey. Lander's Lantern Vine, on the other hand, is a spell that requires no further control once cast; even so, its caster, Bruno, spent a considerable amount of time restoring the mana needed to activate it.
Mages are somewhat like firearms that need to be reloaded: while their destructive power is certainly staggering, once they run out of ammunition (mana), they're nothing more than a stick of firewood.
Tasha hadn't brought any priests or witches along, just as she'd only brought the individuals identified by the Hall of Knowledge when visiting the Druid sanctuary earlier. According to the records, mages have always existed apart from ordinary people, and their relationships with other professions aren't exactly friendly. Tasha feared that bringing other professions along would only backfire. She'd brought some guards with her, but these guards were ordinary soldiers, not professionals.
After another stretch of trekking, the ceiling rose slightly.
Above them was a gentle, undulating slope, rising from about two meters to over three, then over four, and finally over five meters, making the space overhead feel much more open. The vines remained at their original height, and the light source, now at shoulder level, gradually made the ceiling indistinguishable.
Bruno cast the Light spell. A tiny sun rose slowly, like a lit sky lantern, ascending to hover a meter or two above their heads. "The casting range is limited," the white-robed mage said regretfully, squinting as he surveyed the ceiling, now largely illuminated.
There were strange patterns on the ceiling.
Indigo-blue patterns sprawled overhead, exhibiting a peculiar regularity that, upon closer inspection, seemed utterly chaotic—it was impossible to tell whether they were the result of mineral condensation or human carving. Due to the limited casting range of the Light spell, the orb of light hung only about two meters high, leaving the particularly high crevices unlit. The mage and his apprentices all simultaneously pulled out their pens and began meticulously tracing the patterns above their heads.
"Does anyone have a lantern?" Tasha asked. "I could fly up there holding it."
The group exchanged glances. With such a magical lighting device as the lantern vine available, none of them had thought to bring a lantern down. Some had brought torches, but many of the runes reacted to open flames; to be on the safe side, it was best not to use them for now.
"I don't think there's any need to record this," said Gloria, the alchemist, after about ten minutes. She shook her head and was the first to close her notebook. "These patterns don't follow any rules; they're just natural formations."
The mages discussed it for a while and reached a similar conclusion. They decided they should press on and see what lay ahead.
While they were engaged in heated discussion, the soldiers around them took a brief rest—stretching their arms and legs, running a short distance away to relieve themselves, and many even took off their clothes to check each other for those damned leeches. Setting off again now meant the stop had been much shorter than they'd expected, and the guards hurriedly got back into formation, many of them panting slightly from the exertion.
But this level of panting was a bit over the top.
Tasha turned to look at the soldier beside him. He had just finished relieving himself in a corner and, upon running back, had been panting heavily ever since, as if a lump of phlegm were stuck in his throat.
It was the same young guard from before. The bleeding from his neck had stopped, yet his complexion looked even worse than before. In the light of the lantern vine, the young soldier's face was as white as wax, and he was panting heavily, yet not a single drop of sweat appeared on his face or neck. He walked forward with a calm expression, seemingly oblivious to the labored breathing that sounded like a bellows.
The people around him didn't really notice either; the sound wasn't loud, but it was quite distinct to Tasa's keen hearing. The new body she'd gained from the elemental extraction didn't just include wings, claws, and horns; her senses were far keener than those of ordinary people, and it seemed there were other advantages as well.
Was it a certain scent? A certain sensation in the air? Or something else? She couldn't quite put her finger on it—it felt like sensing a chill draft in front of a tightly shut window, without knowing which tiny crack it had slipped through. Tasha felt something was off, like a cold hand gently plucking at her nerves.
"Are you all right?" she asked the soldier.
The young soldier turned his head, his expression clearly flattered by Tasha's attention. He shook his head hastily, but Tasha felt a sinking sensation in her heart.
The ominous premonition hovering over her head had now come to pass.
As he shook his head, a faint clinking sound came from inside his skull—the kind of sound you hear when a glass jar is shaken in mid-air, the liquid sloshing against the sides.
The soldier opened his mouth to say something, but his tongue wouldn't obey him. The soldier gaped in confusion; finally, his tongue began to move, and that fleshy mass shot upright like a cobra raising its head. The tip of the flesh-snake no longer bore its flesh-colored camouflage; it had turned dark and was poised to strike.
At the same moment, Tasa's foot had reached the soldier's chest, and he kicked him violently away.
The towering figure was sent hurtling toward the ceiling, flying in an arc like a kite whose string had snapped, instantly propelling him far from the crowd. The black-robed mage Miranda's spell followed close behind: "Acid Splash!" With that rapidly chanted incantation, a glowing green liquid shot toward the soldier, piercing through his skull.
The guards, initially bewildered, roared in fury, but they soon understood the reason for the attack. The soldier's head warped under the corrosive acid, the skull cracking open. What spilled out was not brain matter, but a pool of pink liquid connected to a "tongue" that was nearly torn from his skull.
Inside the skull, it had been a similar red and white as the brain matter, but as soon as it was exposed to the air, it writhed and lost its color—only then did people realize it was not a liquid, but a soft, gelatinous mass, like a snail or modeling clay—transforming into a colorless, transparent substance. The "tongue" also began to fade, and the gelatinous monster started to fall, seemingly about to plunge into the water and vanish without a trace.
But the soft-bodied monster began to thrash violently in midair.
Corrosive green darts burst open within the skull, and the splashing acid struck true, clinging like flesh-eating maggots to the monster attempting to shed its skin. Charred blackness spread rapidly, stripping the transparent substance—which had sought to blend into the background—of its disguise, draining it of moisture, and charring it into a pile of cinders. The scene was like an invisible bolt of lightning striking; before it fell, the unknown creature dwelling within the soldier's skull lost its final vestiges of movement, shriveling into a lump of charcoal before crashing heavily into the water.
Only then did the gasps of those around her sound. Tasa's senses suddenly expanded outward; her ears picked up every breath, pausing at the sound of another heavy, labored breath—as if something were lodged in the throat. Tasa leaped upward, spread her wings, and dove toward the other host.
She landed on the soldier's head; the hollowed-out skull burst open under the impact, like a fully ripe watermelon. The soft-bodied creature dwelling inside crawled out first, attempting to coil around Tasa, but it could not penetrate the hard shell of the dragon's claws. Scales encased Tasa's limbs below the knees, and her mutated claws sank into the soft creature like daggers, gripping it firmly, much like a goshawk pouncing on a venomous snake. She tore the creature in two; the two halves scrambled to escape in opposite directions, vanishing into the soil with a swish.
Tasha heard the alchemist gasp sharply.
"Everyone, look down!" Gloria shouted.
She pulled out a pouch, scooped up a handful of powder as shimmering as her robe, and scattered it upward.
The mage's slender hand couldn't throw it very far, and the fine powder was certainly not easy to hurl, but it suddenly shot skyward, as if carried by an updraft. The glittering powder burst open like fireworks, halting a few meters from the ceiling as if it had struck something.
It wasn't "as if"—it had indeed struck something.
The ceiling, which had appeared empty, began to writhe, its patches of color shifting chaotically and its patterns twisting. Tasha felt an inexplicable sense of déjà vu, as if she had seen this scene somewhere before. A moment later, she remembered.
The octopus, which blended seamlessly with its surroundings, took on this dazzlingly terrifying appearance whenever it changed color in response to a stimulus.
High above everyone's heads, the massive mollusk began to writhe; the alchemist's powder had prevented it from continuing to change color and hide. Indigo patterns spread across its soft body, constantly shifting with its movements. Some soldiers broke out in a cold sweat as they realized the creature's dangling tentacles were only a few steps above their heads; moments ago, its color had blended seamlessly with the background, making it virtually invisible under the dim lighting.
Now, looking around, the air was thick with tentacles. They had entered a place that felt as though they were standing beneath a giant jellyfish.
The guards roared in terror, thrusting their weapons with all their might at the soft-bodied monster's tentacles. Swords and blades slashed at the translucent appendages, but the squishy, repulsive things merely buckled aside, like slippery vines. Polearms were thrust upward, piercing the creature's body as if into a swamp, only for translucent liquid to gush downward. Someone let out a horrified scream when they realized what was flowing down wasn't the creature's blood, but a part of its body.
In other words, the thing was crawling up the weapons toward them.
"Drop your weapons and get down! " Tasha barked.
Most of them quickly dropped to the ground. The short skeleton soldiers dashed about among the crowd, attacking the tentacles curling down toward them, occasionally getting swept away by them themselves. The mages remained standing, chanting incantations and performing a series of complex hand gestures in an instant, as calm as if there weren't a deadly transparent web descending overhead. Tasha circled overhead, her twin blades and the sharp demonic wings on her back slicing through the tentacles and flinging them aside. Just as the mages had trusted, not a single tentacle fell upon their heads.
The first massive fireball rose into the air, cast by Laurien, Bruno's apprentice—the white-robed mage's direct disciple, who currently knew only this one spell and had mastered it to perfection. Ruby powder scattered through the air as a fireball the size of a crucible rose from thin air, crashing heavily into the soft-bodied monster and leaving a vast charred area as it extinguished. Miranda's acid arrows followed close behind, just as successful as before; the corrosive effect spread over a radius of several meters before gradually subsiding. The necromancer's spells were not limited to the summoning school; crocodile bones gathered along the way transformed into sharp bone spears within the incantation, piercing into the slime monster's body…
The radiance of dark magic and white magic flashed in succession; both were effective, yet neither could secure victory. The damage they inflicted was considerable, yet the wounds were swiftly swallowed up. The entity overhead resembled a pool of extremely thick mud; the injuries were absorbed into its body and vanished without a trace. Tasa noticed a severed fragment crawling back; it merged with the tentacles and instantly returned to the main body.
"Link complete!" Rudolf's voice rang in the ears of all the spellcasters.
The wild mage Rudolf had not participated in the battle. While maintaining the Area Water Division spell, he began preparing a spell called "The Antan Conference Table" according to the contingency plan. This spell establishes a mental link channel among practitioners within its range, allowing them to communicate rapidly.
"Is that a liquid construct?" Rudolf asked.
"Foolish! That's a Fluid Guardian!" Even through the link, Miranda's voice sounded gritted with fury. "This is the guardian of the mage tower most favored by the ancient mages—a Fluid Warden capable of devouring flesh and reshaping itself! What they obtained back then wasn't some black-robed mage's treasure vault, but a sealed mage tower from an era far predating that one!"
The White Tower mages of that era had obtained an ancient mage tower that had long since lost its master.
"I get it!" Gloria exclaimed excitedly. "Although the outer door is still unfinished, the inside has actually been torn open halfway by the Spatial Disintegration spell! The sub-space containing the mage tower should have sealed itself off once the magical environment dried up, but this half-demolished mage tower has become extremely unstable. The forcibly torn sub-space has become stuck to the Material Plane, The mage tower is wedged between the sub-space and the Material Plane, like a collapsed pillar. It has preserved a portion of the magical environment within the collapsed triangular zone—the magical environment here didn't just recover in recent years; it has always been this way—which is why the Fluid Guardians have remained active until now!"
"Thanks for the background explanation in the middle of this crisis," Miranda said irritably.
"The Fluid Guardian is a pure creation of black magic," Bruno said. "It should react very strongly to white magic, not like this—where its reactions to black and white magic are virtually indistinguishable."
"A modified strain?" Miranda asked uncertainly. "The Fluid Guardian has been lost to history for centuries; I've only ever seen it in books."
"But look! " Gloria said, "That rune that's come to life now is clearly from the white magic branch of modern alchemy, isn't it?"
Tasha looked up. Now that the Fluid Guardian had ceased its disguise, the indigo-blue patterns on its body began to shift, their depth fluctuating as if constantly fading and reforming.
"White magic runes simply cannot coexist with a Fluid Guardian!"
"A Fluid Guardian could never be imbued with white magic runes!"
The white-robed and black-robed mages present spoke in unison. As soon as they finished, they exchanged a glance, looked up at the ceiling again, and suddenly realized.
"So that's why the pattern was still visible when the Fluid Guardian was invisible," Miranda exclaimed, her eyes lighting up.
"Looking closely, they are indeed white magic runes, but they've been swallowed up so completely that they're barely visible—you can only see them once they've been reshaped… This is a disintegration spell that draws its power from devouring! Good heavens, this pairs perfectly with the Fluid Guardians!" Bruno exclaimed. "That isn't a single entity—it's a battlefield!"
Fluid runes and indigo runes are not the same thing at all; on the contrary, they are enemies.
The mages of the White Tower had obtained an ancient mage tower belonging to mages of old, and they intended to dismantle it. The White Tower mages' runes latched onto the mage tower's guardians; the former devoured the Fluid Guardians' energy, while the latter reshaped themselves using the flesh and blood of creatures that burst through the rifts in the sub-space. Having lost their respective masters, their battle became endless and ceaseless, a stalemate that persists to this day.
When a large group of flesh-and-blood outsiders—a rare occurrence—entered this place, the Fluid Guardian desperately needed to consume something to gain the upper hand.
"In that case, we just need to ensure that rune prevails!" Gloria said excitedly.
"The Disintegration Rune is nearly complete; the two are evenly matched. A simple amplification spell would be enough to finish it," " Bruno said, "And the Disintegration spell targets the core—the densest concentration of runes is right at the Fluid Guardian's core."
"We must first use a freezing spell to control the flow rate inside the Fluid Guardian, then strengthen that rune during the moment it cannot move," Miranda said. "Does anyone have an enhancement spell with a range exceeding five meters?"
All the mages fell silent for a moment.
"No, we'll need a medium," Bruno shook his head. "Can Dolores's necromantic minions climb up there?"
"No," the necromancer replied succinctly. As another skeleton was crushed in her hand, her frail body swayed slightly; she was only kept from falling by her apprentice's support.
"I can." Tasha said.
The mages' minds worked as efficiently as their spells. Leading a group of mages through a dungeon required no special consideration on her part; they had already swiftly ruled out possibilities, found the answer, and devised a solution. Tasha only needed to fill in the gaps and provide a little extra firepower.
The final plan was settled in a matter of seconds.
The channel at the Antan conference table fell silent once more as the mages chanted their spells in unison, their slender fingers slicing through the damp air. The last skeleton soldier was crushed beneath the tentacles. The necromancer, having fulfilled his mission, fell backward, caught by his apprentice as they both collapsed to the ground. The soldiers lying on the floor stared in terror at the snarling ceiling. With the skeleton soldiers and the barrage of spells no longer blocking the way, they watched helplessly as the unstoppable transparent web descended.
The chilly sewers grew even colder, and frost began to form in the air.
Freezing spells from various schools of magic were unleashed simultaneously—ice beams, frost bands, and rune of frost… They intertwined on the ceiling, weaving a sudden, bitter winter. The constantly shifting ceiling was suddenly frozen solid, as if a river had encountered a sudden cold snap, its waters turning to ice and sand. The massive fluid guardians still moved stubbornly, though slowly—very, very slowly.
Tasha paused in midair for a moment, then surged upward.
She plunged headfirst into the fluid guardian—or rather, "stomped" into it. Her agile demonic wings allowed her to spin mid-air, turning upside down with her claws pointing upward. Her dragon claws dug deep into the frozen flesh. Still under the freezing effect, the fluid guardian moved far too slowly; it could neither replenish itself in time nor transform back into a fluid to escape Tashan's grasp.
The sensation was like driving an ice pick into solid frozen sand. Tasa's claws pierced straight through to the highest point, the very core—the area covered in runes.
What damage could two claws possibly inflict on a Fluid Guardian? It was like trying to kill an elephant with a needle; even if the claws were as sharp as daggers, a dagger entering without a handle would achieve no more. Therefore, her purpose was not to inflict damage; on the contrary, this attack was intended to "enhance."
The claws were not aimed at the Fluid Guardians, but at the Fracturing Runes.
What if the casting range was insufficient? No problem—simply channel the spell's effects through a medium. All spellcasters had entered into a Basic Contract with Tarsha, and through this bond, she served as an exceptional conduit for their magic.
Earlier, Tash had paused briefly in midair, allowing the mages' amplification spells to coat her body. By the time she reached her destination, the power of those spells surged through her and into the rune.
The Fracturing Rune—which had been locked in combat with the Fluid Guardians for centuries—suddenly burst into brilliant light. The shattered rune, like algae overfed with nutrients, exploded outward in a rapid, sprawling expansion.