novelraw Chapter 222: Emergency
Chapter 222: Emergency
Two years, seven months, eight days, six hours, and fifty-two minutes.
That was how long it took until it was finished, as Rory and the rest of the artisans stood back.
“I think that’s it,” Rory said, before a laugh escaped. “I think we did it. Void Gate, complete.”
It was an utter marvel of magical engineering, and one that Rory hadn’t even been the main brain behind. Oh sure, he’d cleaned things up, but the general idea had been born from those he’d brought with.
They were inside a large room, a perfect sphere with thirty-two pylons jutting out of the circular walls at equidistant, save for the far ‘wall’ where a circular ‘portal’ that looked as if it had come straight out of Stargate was installed into the wall, several feet deep of tunnel. The walls were made of a grey, nearly black, glass-like stone, not all that different from obsidian in appearance. Alchemically transmuted stone, isolated to contain only concepts of integrity and durability that had been melted down alongside a large amount of monster cores, with the final addition of a large helping of liquid pneuma. While it sounded relatively simple in practice to make, the interplay of the materials when they were introduced released a byproduct, a ‘wave’ of invisible energy, only visually detectable by the refractive effect it had on light.
Said energy was also enough to instantly vaporize lower tiers, something Rory had realized when a gust of it had hit him, a tier eight, and he’d instantly had a layer of flesh removed from his face.
Throughout the walls were grooves or ‘veins’ that had been carefully planned and detailed, made to geometrically balance out the influence of the energy required to operate the gate in the first place.
Then there were the pylons, functionally the ‘heart’ of the entire system. Each pylon was stacked with not one, not two, but ten pearlescent cores, as well as a heavily modified pneuma crusher system. That was one of Rory’s iterations, born from his own thoughts on how exactly one could create a system that would automatically condense pneuma into higher states without wasting the ‘gains’ from refining the pneuma in the first place.
Each core was essentially a bound space within, or rather, the pearlescent cores could house bound spaces with very careful modifications, something only Rory could handle. If he were being absolutely accurate, they weren’t truly bound spaces, more like 99% bound spaces, as he still couldn’t figure out a way to open and close a bound space without requiring rebuilding it from scratch each time. The pearlescent cores had a very similar degree of isolation, and while the tiny bit remaining was also technically the most important, the benefit of a pearlescent core made from a monster core was that its natural ability to refine and store pneuma made up for what was lost in that final percent.
While there were more details regarding the entire system, they ultimately boiled down to ‘lots of inscriptions, alchemical transmutation, and material science that had required a full team effort over the last few years.
But what mattered was that it was done.
Or, theoretically speaking. They hadn’t tested it out yet, after all.
With the final pylon carefully inserted, they would have time to test it out, careful boot-ups that would-
Emergency Message
Sender: Apostolos, Chief Protector of Ehkorrus
“Rory, we’re under attack. Or, the undercity is under attack. It’s been isolated from our ability to access. We need you, and maybe that Founder friend of yours.”
“Fuck,” Rory muttered the moment he saw the message. He’d given Apostolos a method to reach him, but it wasn’t to be used except in emergencies.
Such as now.
“Change of plans!” Rory called out as the crafters with him seemed surprised. “Emergency.”
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.
“Ehkorrus is under attack, or the undercity at least. Get this shit fired up.”
“But Lord Founder, it hasn’t even been tested yet.” Gon Rong protested.
“Doesn’t matter,” Rory shook his head. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Where are you going?” Annabeth asked.
“I need to fetch Zoey.”
Closing his eyes, Rory sent his senses outward. Having claimed the territory, it was easy to pick up on her signature, as a moment later, Rory vanished, reappearing over thirty miles on a floating island just off the ‘shore’ of the main mountain chain they called home.
“Holy shit!” Zoey yelped as Rory suddenly appeared. She was in the middle of strangling what looked like a fiery deer, the surprise giving the deer a chance to bolt, leaping into the air and turning into a fiery wisp before flying away. “What the fuck, dude?”
“I need your help,” Rory said bluntly.
“Must be something major if you’re appearing like this,” Zoey answered.
“My place is under attack.”
“And your people can’t handle that?”
“No, they mentioned something along the lines of space being isolated.”
Zoey’s eyes instantly narrowed as she put two and two together.
“Your Bane.”
“It’s the only thing I can think of that should be capable of doing something like that.”
“Why? Didn’t you fight it fair and square last time around? Didn’t think it could pull a bitch move like that, you know, tit-for-tat.”
“That’s what I thought,” Rory said. He could feel an unease building, like static at the back of his neck, an unease that felt removed from his own, a collective pool.
“Wait, if you need me to come along then-”
“Just finished. Literally just finished it,” Rory said. “It’s completely untested. I can understand-”
“Oh shut the fuck up and let’s go.”
Grabbing his arm, Rory nodded to her, and a moment later, they teleported back.
“Lord Founder, Lady Ascendress!”
He’d only been gone a few moments, but things had already changed dramatically. The artisans, all but Gon Rong, had fled into an isolated control room. The ‘tunnel’ or gateway had begun to spin, as energy crackled from the pylons before being siphoned away, a null light flowing through the channels throughout the spherical room.
“Anything going wrong?” Rory asked, glancing around as he scanned his surroundings for any glaring issues.
“Energy levels are fluctuating more than we might like, but if we don’t have time to test it-”
“We don’t.”
“Then it’s just going to have to be something you endure.”
“No problem here,” Zoey said. “Game?”
“I’ll survive,” Rory said, waving his inventory bracer. “I’ve got my buffer here.”
“Good, then, well, best of luck, Lord Founder, Lady Ascendress.”
Bringing his fist into the palm of his other hand, the man bowed to the two of them before scurrying out of the room.
“Lots of oblivion energies,” Zoey dutifully noted as she examined the room. “Lots of oblivion energy.”
“Without a proper Null Window or anything of the like, it’s needed to carve a path through space-time. Even then, it’s not fine-tuned enough to choose a destination freely; it’s essentially linked to my city.”
“And we aren’t going to be erased into space goop?”
“Probably not. Maybe. Hopefully. Guess we will find out.”
“Ehh, why not?” Zoey sighed. “Let’s do this.”
Walking toward the rapidly spinning tunnel, the room was blindingly dark, the null light of the oblivion energies causing havoc on the ordinary sense of sight. Building to what felt like the bursting point –they were essentially in a massive oblivion bomb if a single thing went just a little too out of control— the oblivion energies suddenly were sucked inward like an imploding submarine, concentrating within the very center of the spinning tunnel. Instantly, the spinning stopped as a beam of null light shot outward from the tunnel. While ordinarily it would have burrowed straight through the rock of the volcano, it instead speared through space-time, the tunnel now a rift that revealed the familiar darkness and streaks of light beyond, as it had when traveling through the Null Window.
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Well, it worked. So far.
“Let’s go,” Rory said. The rift opened wasn’t omnidirectional; it pointed at a specific location, far, far away.
The moment of truth: the two stepped into the tunnel, turned into energy, before zipping through the darkness. Unlike when Rory had stepped through the Null Window in the past, there was no sense of ‘wiggle room’ or area to detour. They were on a track, and for better or worse, they were whisked along it.
The other main difference was the pain.
Fuck, energy levels are way too high for practical usage.
It was a good thing it was he and Zoey who’d been the first to try. Both of them, being tier eight, were able to handle the sheer energy they were bursting with during their travels.
Lasting only moments, a lifetime compared to travel between Ehkorrus and the Maw, it vanished a moment later as Rory found himself blinking, in a mostly familiar location.
“Rory!” A voice shouted, one he recognized instantly.
“Apostolos?” Rory asked, blinking his eyes. They were within the Null Window station, Apostolos, Irene, and a few others standing about.
“Thank goodness you arrived in one piece. And, uhh, you must be the Vanguard.” Apostolos gave an awkward nod to Zoey, who was also blinking her eyes.
“Wild,” Zoey said as she took in the scenery. “Inside a building. Haven’t been in a proper building in fuck off long time.”
“Situation,” Rory snapped, the unease had exploded, a direct sense he was feeling from elsewhere.
“We got a notification that the Golden Plains were under attack. We tried to mobilize people to pass through the Null Window and provide reinforcements, believing at first it might be another Khan. Except, we can’t punch through; it’s like there is a wall in the way.”
“My bane?”
“We think so,” Irene answered. “It had control over spatial warping, and it’s tier eight now.”
“Fuck,” Rory muttered. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Apostolos said, a look on his face that screamed bad news to Rory.
“Roxy is there.”
“Move people, move!” Roxy ordered, flaring her aura.
The situation was dire.
One moment, she’d been working on some gems, preparing for her most recent project; the next, monsters unlike anything she’d seen before were everywhere, tearing people to shreds.
And it wasn’t just the adults. Visions of children, fucking children, torn apart haunted her, crawling centipede monsters bursting from their chests, and other horrific scenes.
But Roxy would rather those images haunt her the rest of her life than accept her demise.
The Golden Plains had turned into a warzone, snakes, hundreds, thousands
, pouring out from any nook and cranny as the full force of the Khan of Blue Lightning’s territory fought back against the sudden invasion that had appeared from nowhere, warped monsters everywhere.The issue was that even a glance was enough to see they were outnumbered ten to one.
How? How so many?
The tiers ranged massively; it was impossible to get a firm grasp, except that the strongest of the regular monsters appeared in the tier seven range.
That is, ignoring the two monsters that were currently facing the Khan himself.
A massive boom erupted, a shockwave exploding far away where the Khan faced off against the two monsters.
The first, she instantly recognized from the tales told of it.
A bane. Her father’s Bane. Wearing her father's very appearance.
The second was almost more alarming, given what her examination of it revealed.
Bane-Warped Khan of Fallen Blight
Once the proud Khan of Wretched Blights. Slain and remade, it is now the powerful pawn of an even more terrifying existence.
For some time now, there had apparently been questions as to why not a single Blight monster had been seen for some time after her father had originally returned to Ehkorrus. The generally agreed-upon answer was that with his protection, the Blight Khan had realized it was futile and changed direction.
That was wrong, as Roxy now understood the true terror of. It hadn’t left them alone because it decided to.
It had left them alone because it had been killed.
Whatever the full details were, it didn’t matter for now. The battle the three were waging felt as if it would tear the world apart; the fabric of space seemed to shudder. Bolts of heavenly lightning ripped through the air, tearing into its foes. The former Blight Khan was especially vulnerable, but it was still two against one.
Just do what you can, Roxy!
She couldn’t afford to waste time thinking about the scale of that battle, like gods waging war one against the other. She was simply doing her best to usher as many people as she could to safety.
Or what ‘safety’ could be found.
“In, in!” Roxy commanded her small group, ushering them into the isolation room in one of the crafting buildings, normally made to contain dangerous forces. It was hardly a safehouse, but it was better than nothing.
“Lady Roxy,” A man turned to her, eyes wide. “What about you?”
“Just get inside,” Roxy ordered. As a tier six, she was one of the strongest around from a tier standpoint. While there were a few other tier six crafters around, she was the only one who also had some skill as a fighter.
Thank you, Tsarina.
Waving her hand, her aura shifted, folding, then folding again, and again, until she held a straight-edged ‘blade’ of pure folded aura.
Reinforce it.
She still hadn’t mastered projection magic, not even close, but she could use ‘reinforcement’ magic, a sort of precursor. With her blade of folded aura, she imagined the struts and folds of a real blade, as the blade of folded aura seemed to grow just a bit heavier and stronger.
Holding the blade of folded aura upward in a high-guard stance, Roxy took her position in front of the door.
Not a moment too soon, as the front door slammed open, a small swarm of locust-like creatures flooded into the building.
There was no time for fear.
But.
But there was still a part of her, the child in her, that cried out.
Dad… Save us.
“Wretched!” The Khan roared, his heavenly energies washing outward, pushing back the wave of tainted blight and corroding space. “I drove thou away once, I shall do it again!”
“Foolish,”
The enemy in black screeched, a maniacal glee that the Khan could feel from its aura. “Foolish!”“Perhaps!”
As powerful as the Khan of Blue Lightning was, a territory alpha within his own territory, the enemy in black brought power bordering the ninth realm, fully unrestrained, stronger than even the last time it had attacked.
Except, this time it also brought an army of another khan, warped into its image.
“Perhaps!” The Khan of Blue Lightning roared out once more, pain erupting from its back as the enemy in black appeared atop it, driving its claws deep into his flesh as if his scales meant nothing.
“But I shall not fail those I stand with!”
The Khan felt nothing but outrage. The enemy of his sworn friend attacked once more, a coward looking for underhanded advantage, a dark reflection.
It wasn’t just the enemy in black that assaulted him, as suddenly the bane-warped former blight-khan appeared in front of him, its many trunk-like lower appendages grasping the Khan of Blue Lightning as its massive crane-like claws tore into him, corrosive blight liquid seeping into his body as the Khan roared out in pain, all the while the enemy in black raced up and down his spine, tearing him apart.
Even just facing the enemy in black on his own would have been against the odds, its full unreleased power standing even above his own.
But two?
Two top-tier opponents. It was more than anyone could face, even a powerful khan such as the Khan of Blue Lightning.
But he was one who sought the heavens.
“I’ll take you all on!”
An explosion of power radiated out from the Khan of Blue Lightning, energy unmatched, as both the enemy in black and the corrupted Khan were forcibly dislodged. For decades, the people of Ehkorrus had been constructing and bringing pylons to the Golden Fields, meant to aid the Khan of Blue Lightning in completely submerging the territory in his own aura and casting out the vile filth that existed outside his influence.
And while those pylons could cast his influence out, they could also call power in.
More and more heavenly energy manifested, thousands upon thousands of bolts of heavenly lightning striking his main foes, but also eradicating their forces where he could
Heavenly lightning twisted into coiled serpents of blue energy, racing out and tearing into the former Blight Khan as it shuddered with pain, the heavenly energies pushing back. The same electrical blue serpents hounded the enemy in black, but it vanished, flickering away briefly.
Losing track of the enemy in black, the Khan of Blue Lightning took a moment to eradicate swathes of the invading forces, his clan so vastly outnumbered they needed any help they could get.
For a bit, it seemed as if the Khan of Blue Lightning was pushing back the entirety of the forces arrayed against him all on his own, the tide shifting.
I must not fail. I must not fall.
But life was hardly fair.
The enemy in black had vanished, the bane-warped fallen Khan forced to take the brunt of the assault. Tracking the damned fiend was near impossible; it could simply appear and disappear as if-
There!
Massive eyes widening, the Khan of Blue Lightning sensed exactly where the enemy in black had suddenly appeared, given it was directly next to the one specific person the Khan had been trying to keep an eye on.
Just outside the small shelter where his sworn friend’s daughter was currently holding off a small army of lesser realms on her own, valiant and defiant.
It would kill her; there was no doubt in the Khan’s mind.
For not even a moment did the Khan of Blue Lightning doubt his decision. Self-preservation was the way of all monsters, scrambling for the top. The obvious choice was to take advantage of the momentary reprieve to deal with the bane-warped fallen Khan.
But the Khan of Blue Lightning was not scrambling for the top. He sought the heavens, and one who would abandon his sworn friend’s child was one who would never reach the heavenly ascent anyway.
Without hesitation, the Khan of Blue Lightning simply acted. Reaching out with the full might of its authority and dominion over his territory, he ripped at the enemy in black, bindings of celestial lightning yanking it back through space. The sheer power to force a monster of a higher degree than his own, with greater mastery over space than his own, was staggering. In doing so, for a moment, just a single moment, his attention waned.
And in that moment, the fallen Khan flickered, reappearing as it suddenly grappled with the Khan of Blue Lightning, pinning him in place.
The deranged enemy in black grinned, an expression worn with twisted pleasure at inflicting suffering on those aligned with the Architect.
A trap. A trap that the Khan of Blue Lightning had barreled straight into.
A trap he would gladly barrel straight into a hundred times over if need be.
“Die.”
Instantly, the power of the fallen Khan invaded his body, some form of magic or skill the Khan of Blue Lightning did not understand. Ordinarily, such a tactic would be foolish; completely emptying oneself of every ounce of energy would leave one on death’s doorstep, such energy losing effectiveness upon invading an opponent’s body. Perhaps it would be costly, but the foreign energy would eventually be forced back, a suicide attack with zero gain.
Except in this case, the former blight khan was already dead for all intents and purposes, a mere pawn to be used and discarded. Flooded with blight energy, the Khan of Blue Lightning was temporarily weakened to an immense degree.
So weak in fact, that there was nothing he could do as the enemy in black reached out, claws stretching through space and time, a combination of physical strike and magical conceptual offense. No amount of tensing up, of struggling, would save him.
And thus, the great heavenly serpent did fall, his titanic head severed from his body.
As the darkness of oblivion followed, had the Khan of Blue Lightning been capable of smiling, he would have, as a single final sight played out before his eyes.
There, standing atop the temple from which teleportation in and out of his territory was possible, stood two figures, and one in particular that mattered.
I leave the rest to you, my friend.