A Journey Unwanted

Chapter 487 - 475: They’re everywhere

[Realm: Uhorus]

[Location: Galadriel]

[Western Outskirts]

"They really are everywhere..." Victoria murmured, her voice quieter than usual. Dressed once more in her elaborate armor with her golden hair now properly combed—falling straight down her back—she stood still, blue eyes fixed upward. Her gaze was not wandering; it was anchored on a particularly large tear in the sky, one that pulsed as it continued to spill that unnatural black liquid.

They stood on an open plain, the kind that would have once felt peaceful in its simplicity—rolling stretches of green, broken only by the occasional cluster of trees scattered unevenly across the land. Now, it felt hollow. The sky above twisted unnaturally, the tears hanging like wounds that spilled blood. No Astorothians lingered here, and no animals stirred in the grass. Whatever life had once occupied this place had long since fled, leaving behind only silence and the viscous dripping from above.

Lucinda trailed a step behind Victoria, her posture composed, though her attention was anything but relaxed. Her red eyes narrowed as she lifted her gaze, studying the tears more intently. The longer she looked, the more her pupils contracted, her focus sharpening beyond what was visible to the naked eye.

"My Chthonia still can’t make sense of them..." Lucinda said after a moment, her voice carrying frustration she didn’t bother to hide. She tore her gaze away, as if forcing herself to stop staring into something that refused to yield answers, and looked back to Victoria instead.

"I’d wager we’d have to get much, much closer to glean anything meaningful with your eyes," Victoria replied, her tone assuasive. "The Abyss, in particular, resists observation. Even the most refined analysis spells struggle to interpret it properly. It’s not merely complex; a better description would be that it is incompatible."

Lucinda gave a small nod, accepting that without argument. "Then are we just here to study the tears from a distance? Or is there something specific you’re looking for?"

"Yes—look." Victoria gestured idly toward one of the nearer tears, her hand moving swiftly despite the weight of her gauntlet. "That one." Her eyes sharpened slightly. "It’s smaller than the others around it. Not insignificant, but not among the largest either. This is one of the tears that primarily produces Abyssal Creatures rather than transporting them directly from the Abyss."

Lucinda’s gaze followed her gesture, settling on the tear in question. Her expression shifted slightly, curiosity edging into it as she looked back at Victoria, clearly expecting more.

"I want you to do something," Victoria continued. "Flex your mana. Don’t just release it; I want you to focus it. Shape it into something that can be felt from a distance. Make it obvious, a beacon that pierces the sky."

Lucinda blinked, caught off guard by the request. "...What?" She tilted her head slightly. "Why would I—what exactly are you trying to provoke?"

"You’ll see," Victoria said simply.

Lucinda studied her for a moment longer, searching her face for further explanation, for any hint of what she was trying to confirm. None came. Victoria remained as she was—composed, slightly expectant, and frustratingly vague.

Lucinda exhaled quietly through her nose. "You really do have a habit of withholding the important parts," she muttered under her breath, though there was no real bite to it. After a brief pause, she relented. "Fine. I’ll trust that this isn’t pointless."

The shift was immediate.

The air around Lucinda seemed to tense, as though the space had become aware of something building within it. A small distortion rippled outward, small at first—then violently pronounced as a surge of blazing red aura ignited around her.

It erupted without pause.

The aura expanded rapidly, swelling outward with overwhelming intensity, its heatless force pressing against the ground beneath her sabatons until cracks began to spiderweb outward across the earth. The grass flattened, bending away from her as if pushed by an invisible gale. The red light intensified, thickening and condensing until it rose.

A pillar of concentrated mana surged upward, twisting as it climbed, its form unstable yet powerful. It tore through the air, carving a path skyward with sheer presence alone. Higher and higher it climbed, until it pierced into the warped expanse above, a red lance cutting through the space between the tears.

The surrounding area was bathed in red, shadows distorted and stretched unnaturally by the intensity of her power.

Victoria did not flinch.

Her stance remained steady, though her hair and the lighter fabric elements of her armor whipped violently in the pressure of Lucinda’s aura. Her eyes, however, were locked onto the tear she had indicated earlier.

("I’ve read countless reports about these tears over the past month...") Victoria thought, her mind moving quickly even as her body remained still. ("Patterns and reactions are always a given. Behavioral anomalies, the Abyssal Creatures that manifest in greater numbers tend to do so in response to concentrated threats—groups, formations, and Inheritors like Mirabella and Agatha...") Her gaze narrowed slightly. ("A defensive response. Not seemingly random.")

The pillar of mana continued to burn skyward, its intensity unrelenting.

("So if something greater, something significantly more threatening were to present itself, something that could, hypothetically, interfere with the tear itself—seal it, perhaps—then the reaction should scale accordingly.")

Her thoughts cut off the moment it happened.

From the flowing black liquid within the nearest tear, something shifted.

At first, it was insignificant—a distortion in the way the substance poured, as if something within it had displaced the flow. Then, suddenly, a mass broke free.

A large, formless blob tore itself from the tear, its shape unstable as it surged downward through the air with unnatural speed. It dropped, as if drawn. It struck the ground with a wet, heavy impact just several inches away from them, the sound thick and unpleasant as the mass splattered slightly before pulling itself back together, writhing.

Lucinda’s eyes widened slightly as the pillar of her mana began to recede. The crimson beam thinned, collapsing inward as the overwhelming aura gradually diminished, drawn back into her body.

The red glow faded from the surroundings, leaving only the dull, oppressive light of the fractured sky.

Her gaze remained fixed on the writhing black mass before them.

("That Abyssal Energy...")

Lucinda’s gaze sharpened the moment she truly looked at it—not just at the shape of the thing, but at what surrounded it, what fed it. The formless mass did not simply exist; it bled something into the air around it, a suffocating presence that pressed against her senses.

That malevolent energy clung to it like a second skin—dense, excessive, and almost swollen in its concentration. It did not disperse naturally. It seemed to linger, pooling outward, as though it wanted to occupy more space than it was allowed. Even standing several steps away, Lucinda could feel it brushing against her awareness, invasive and making her jaw tighten ever so slightly.

"Well, that’s one theory tested," Victoria murmured from beside her, her tone light—almost too light for what they were witnessing. She didn’t step back or even tense. If anything, she looked slightly pleased, as though a piece of a puzzle had slid neatly into place.

Lucinda didn’t respond immediately. Her body had gone still, shoulders tightening just enough to betray her focus as the black mass continued to writhe, its surface shifting in pulses, like something trying to stabilize itself.

"What do you mean?" she asked at last, her voice low. She didn’t turn to Victoria. Her eyes remained locked on the creature, tracking every movement it made.

"Defense mechanisms," Victoria replied idly, folding her arms beneath her chest, posture relaxed despite the tension in the air. "The tears aren’t passive openings. They react and assess in their way. Different stimuli, different responses. What we’re seeing now..." She tilted her head slightly, watching the mass with interest. "...is one of those responses."

Lucinda’s brows drew together slightly as she processed that, her attention turning briefly toward Victoria before returning to the creature. "So that’s why you asked me to release my mana like that..." she said slowly, the realization settling in piece by piece. "You weren’t just testing the tears themselves—you were testing how they would interpret me making my presence so apparent."

Victoria’s lips curved into a small, approving smile. "Exactly. Though I’ll admit..." Her gaze lifted briefly, scanning the tear above them again. "...the results are even better than I anticipated. You most likely never had to output much mana, so the tears did not need to react as vehemently." She nodded upward. "Look."

Lucinda followed her line of sight immediately, her vision sharpening again. At first glance, the difference was small. A few of the surrounding tears still hung in the sky as before, but their behavior had changed. The steady spilling of the black liquid had lessened. Some had slowed noticeably, while others had nearly halted entirely.

But that wasn’t the most important part.

Her eyes narrowed further.

"The threads of mana..." she murmured, more to herself than to Victoria. "They’re not stable anymore." There was strain—visible now that she knew to look for it. The small, almost imperceptible lines that connected tear to tear trembled slightly, as though pulled too tight, as though too much was being demanded of them at once. "They’re being redirected."

Victoria nodded once, clearly satisfied. "They’ve prioritized you," she said plainly. "Whatever governs this system—whether it’s instinctive or controlled—it recognized you as a significant threat to warrant a shift in output. Instead of continuing standard production..." She gestured loosely toward the writhing mass at their feet. "...it redirected its energy. Concentrated it and created something meant to respond to you specifically."

Lucinda’s eyes widened slightly, the implications settling in faster than she would have liked.

"These are the tears producing the Abyssal Creatures..." she said, her voice quieter. Her gaze turned between the strained threads, the slowed output, and the creature before her. "If they’re diverting that much energy just to create a countermeasure, then their primary function is compromised."

She exhaled slowly, the realization solidifying.

"Then they’re vulnerable," she finished, almost under her breath.

"Exactly," Victoria replied, her smile widening—not with excitement, but with the satisfaction of something finally making sense. "If we can force enough of them into that state and consistently trigger that defensive response, then we create openings. And in those openings..." Her eyes glinted. "...we may finally have a chance to seal them."

Victoria’s attention shifted back downward, her expression flattening slightly as she gestured toward the creature still writhing on the ground, its form now beginning to stabilize with its presence growing more defined.

"But before we get ahead of ourselves," she added, her tone returning to a more casual one, "how about you deal with this particular eyesore? It’s starting to offend my senses."

Lucinda didn’t respond immediately.

Her gaze lingered on the creature, studying it one last time.

"Right," she said softly.