Chapter 19 - Ambush

  "The best part about ambushes is that they still work. Companies can't keep their [Shielding] up 24/7 unless they have a mana battery mage with them, so you can pop one or two before they even know what hit them, no matter what skills or stats they might have. If they do have a mana mage you use one of these bad boys. Magic bullet, double impact. First impact will break the mages shitty [Shielding] and the second will break their skull if you place it right."

  -Conscript serving out their term in the military.

  Solis threw up – his chest heaving painfully as bile flooded out of his throat. The worst-case scenario had happened.

  Dimitri had spotted the crickets early, but none of them had known that some of the crickets could attack from range.

  The needle hit him square in the shoulder, the foot-long spike getting stuck more than 3/4ths of the way through with vicious barbs, causing heavy bleeding. He hadn’t known to activate his [Shielding]; the projectile had come too fast for anyone to react.

  [Circulation] unraveled. The whirlpools dispersed, and every bit of corruption shot towards the nearest membrane, which happened to be near his heart.

  “Hey!” Solis half screamed, delirious from the pain and struggling not to dry heave. His mana had already flooded the area, and more Crickets had started burrowing out of the ground. Not ten. Not twenty. More. He couldn’t count them, but he just knew it was more running at them. The fuckers had laid a trap. How or why? He had no clue, but he felt the need to taunt them. “That’s not my head! You missed!”

  He solidified his mana, creating a large dome to cut off the majority of the swarm. Many still made it in, clambering and darting forward. Vision swimming, unable to see where anything was properly, Solis collapsed to the ground, shivering and feeling bile run up his throat, but he didn’t need to see. He had his mana sense, and the whole damned area was his.

  He felt the crickets disturbing the space. He could count them properly now. Ten had made it inside. Ira was moving to intercept three. Dimitri was shielding the children behind him and ushering them to the opposite wall, with three rushing the large Russian. The last four split themselves evenly between himself and Samir.

  Solis pushed his [Resonance] to its cap, his [Processing] helping him understand the battlefield better, but also detaching him from his body. He still felt himself unwinding, but it was a distant feeling.

  Ira had already killed one. Her foot didn’t come up or slam down. It just happened to be on one of the cricket's head, pushing down with as much force as five [Body] could bring to bear. Which was too much. The floor cracked and shook, racing towards the wall to break it.

  Solis got there first.

  As soon as the dome broke into mana, he wrapped up half of it in an instant and used his internal mana to make up the difference in forming another dome. Half a second passed between the dome breaking and a new one appearing, but it was enough for some of the crickets to fall partially inside. The monsters were caught off guard, and only the lower halves of their bodies made it inside -- the stone solidifying around their thick necks, keeping them in place as their legs flailed helplessly.

  With three [Divisions] at his disposal, he focused on Dimitri, himself, and Samir, not saving a [Division] for Ira since she seemed to have everything well in hand.

  Hans and Ana targeted the same cricket that led two of its brethren towards Dimitri. The monsters weren’t perturbed by the attacks at all, the knives sliding off carapace and dispersing without much harm. He set an [Anchor] point on two of the Crickets and continually solidified his stone around them, but they were moving with such speed and force that the mana construct broke the instant it was conjured.

  Still, Solis continued, as each time it stole a little bit of their momentum. He started focusing on leg joints, solidifying the moment a foot touched ground or kicked off, causing the two following to stumble.

  Dimitri broke off from the kids, engaging the leading Cricket, keeping close enough to fall back and protect the siblings, but far enough that if the Cricket made a break for it, Dimitri would have time to respond.

  Solis continued to pay attention with one stream of thought, but his other two were busy. Two crickets were charging him, but they didn't matter so much as he manifested a large stone cage around both. With a pulse of will, he turned the now free stream of thought to Samir.

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  Samir was being swarmed by two of the monsters. He dodged, throwing himself to the side in a leap, but they circled around to pincer him whenever they could.

  Every time one would jungle for the doctors exposed back, Solis conjured wall after wall, cutting off a charge or a bite. Samir would survive for a bit if they got hold of him, enough for Ira to come save him. If—

  Solis lost control of his mana as he was shattered out of his [Resonance] trance. Red wetness pooled around his nose, and he hadn’t realized he was drowning in his own blood. He began to roll onto his back to get out of the pool, but the blood just fell back down his throat, filling his lungs. Pain radiated from his shoulder as he pushed to go to his back, but he wouldn’t budge. Then he remembered.

  ‘I got stabbed.’

  The jagged barbed projectile still jutted from his shoulder, stopping him from rolling the rest of the way onto his back. He let himself fall back down into the growing pool of blood with a crashing plsh. Too much time had been wasted. [Body]. [Body] would save him. At least for a little bit. He activated [Body] and focused all his attention inwards.

  He needed to deal with corruption. There wasn’t another option.

  The corruption had continued to swarm, tearing open the membrane inside of him, letting more and more of the black tar into his body.

  He wanted to scream at the words, but found he couldn’t. The corruption was all focused on his chest, trying to eat its way out, so he didn’t bother with several smaller whirlpools. He grabbed at the nine points of [Resonance] and spun his mana as hard as he could. More corruption came in, but he continued speeding up the whirlpool. Grab, pull. Grab pull. Once the whirlpool formed proper, he layered his work in depth, pushing and pooling at different points, all in an effort to drag as much of the corruption off the wall as he could.

  He had gathered half—

  Force on his skull. His [Shielding] cut in half. He kicked his feet. Tried to turn his head, but it was wedged in place. There was no pain, but a building pressure sent him panicking. He opened his eyes and was met with the gnarled jaws of a cricket. Its front feet moved forward, wrapping its arms in a hug and bringing him even closer, but the monster was still, and he didn’t have time for this.

  He gathered the external mana, filling every crack in space near him, letting his body be dragged forward, then all at once trapped both him and the monster in a thick box of stone. He couldn’t move a muscle, but the monster -- its joints and mandibles stiffened -- couldn’t either.

  Solis, unsure of where he even was now, turned back to his internal mana. The whirlpool hadn’t dissipated, but it had slowed.

  He should be dead, but he wasn’t. Likely because some of the corruption was still trapped in the whirlpool. He spun, and spun, until he had gathered it all in one massive vortex. The corruption coagulated, congealing into a large ball that sat in his center. The mana was having a difficult time breaking down such a large object. How it even fit in his chest, he wasn’t sure.

  Looking at his mana, Solis realized that it wasn’t really a pool. That would imply 2D space, but the pool existed in 3D. He didn’t understand how he had a whirlpool then, something that existed on top of water and then through it. It felt like the 3D space was split into 2D planes. Or maybe it was a spatial warping effect, like those fun space-time visuals at museums.

  Or maybe he was in shock, delirious, bleeding out, and dying.

  He liked museums. He really wanted to go again someday.

  The thought that museums would be the last thing that went through his head before it was turned to mush filled him with mirth even now, but he wasn’t going to die. He was cut off from the rest of the fight, trapped in stone, and at risk of running out of oxygen eventually, but he was a little cockroach -- had been since he was twelve.

  A fucking bug wasn’t going to take him out.

  —

  Ira crushed the last bug, its body covered in cuts and burns. She wheeled around, spotting everyone but Solis, who had encased himself in stone. She had seen what happened right before that. Dimitri had been running to him to pry the monster off, but Solis hadn’t noticed.

  Her heart hammered, and with a glance, she could tell everyone else was physically okay. Her eyes quickly went back to the cube. If she broke it would a headless body and an angry bug fall out? Was it made in such a way that if she broke it, Solis would die?

  She didn’t know, but she knew that more time would only hurt. “SOLIS." She called out as loud as she could, hoping that if he had any left, the boy would activate his [Shielding]. “I’m breaking the stone!” It was the last warning she gave. She punched out, a crack forming for an instant before it all went up in a haze. She saw the cricket bite down and the sound of shattering [Shielding]. Her hands darted forward, grabbing the creature's mandibles and pulling them apart. Then she continued pulling, and pulling, and—

  SNAP. Somewhere between a wet crunch and a loud shattering branch played as she ripped the creature's jaw in twain. Then, with one of the hardened pincers, she brought it down on the monster's eyes, breaking the hard shell. With a twist, she lodged it even deeper in and began yanking.

  The monster curled in on itself and died.

  Solis stared up at her, that stupid fucking smile on his face. Someone was going to punch him because of that thing one day.

  He even had the gall to give her a thumbs-up.

  NEW QUEST!

  OBJECTIVE: Teach spellcraft to the magically attuned.

  REWARD: Your greatest desire.

  Immediately, the prompt made Wilbur suspicious. The reward could be anything.

  Inner peace? Belonging? A cosmic therapy session?

  Wilbur rolled his eyes at the broken System. “Nice try.” What could it possibly offer a wizard at the peak of magical power?

  Apparently, a lot.

  The revised reward? Chronomancy.

  The magic to control time. The thing he’d been chasing for centuries. The missing piece to return to Earth.

  Not the strangely empty, radioactive ruin of the present… but the one he’d lost. Full of cheap takeout, terrible movies, and addictive warm beverages.

  …Of course, nothing this good is free.

  Build a magical school? Check, done.

  Train people to use spellcraft? Easy;

  Convince them to burn the arcane into their flesh permanently? Easy...right?

  Just ignore the Radiant church foaming at the mouth, screaming "HERESEY!"

  Turns out, the hardest part isn't the magic.

  It’s people.