In the aftermath of my attack, the enemy starts to retreat back towards their headquarters, the Spacers Guildhall. I push my spatial senses out towards Loranor but find that he must have already teleported away because he wasn’t in the kill notifications and his spatial perception field is gone. Looking over, I can't spot him, and his forces are slowly retreating back towards the Spacers Guildhall.
I start to push forward with my group, but Morah stops us as she walks over to me and Daniel.
“We’re letting them get away for now. If we push too close to the Spacers Guild, they will surround us. Spend the next hour resting back at the Necromancers Guild. I’ll come get you two for the infiltration mission when you’re needed.” She says before quickly leaving to go talk to several members of the leadership of our army.
Corvax, and Stella all continue on without us. They are going to keep fighting in the streets, slowly whittling down the enemy numbers while Daniel and I will try to infiltrate the Spacers Guild. We head back to the Necromancers Guild with Duncan and Clark, after loading about ten dead bodies into my storage core for them.
Back at the guildhall, I turn off all of my skills completely and just focus on regenerating mana while Duncan examines the fresh corpses. Daniel joins me in resting. During this time, I check my progress, and put all six of my free stat points into mana capacity, raising it by twelve.
[Ray Alder] - [Self-Made Space Mage] lvl 36
Race
[Human]
Active Skills
[Space Control] lvl 23
[Mana Shaping] lvl 23
[Concentration] lvl 21
[Gravity Manipulation] lvl 4
[Barrier] lvl 6
Passive Skills
[Mana Sense] lvl 20
[Mana Stabilization Field] lvl 13
Traits
[Adaptive Affinity]
[Beast Mana-Heart]
[Mana-Body Synchronization]
Constructs
[Mana Concentration and Circulation System]
Affinities
[Space]
[Gravity]
Stats - Body
[Strength] - 32
[Dexterity] - 38
[Constitution] - 39
Stats - Mana
[Regeneration] - 130
[Capacity] - 84
[Resistance] - 36
Seeing the gravity affinity makes me smile more than anything else. I don’t know if it’s because it’s an adjacent affinity to space, or something else, but gravity just feels right to use. And the new skill, [Gravity Manipulation], feels much closer to the power of [Space Control] than [Gravity Shift] did. It responds faster and lets me push much more mana through it, and it's only level four.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from NovelBin. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
My mind wanders to the future and what I’ll be capable of in a year from now, or a decade, or a century. Even with all that I have now, I know that I’m still just a child when compared to people like the emperor, or that council that he killed, or even Merrick. The reality of the war hits me hard, and the fact that at any moment my life could now be cut short by an assassin's blade or some skill that I never saw coming. It is both terrifying and exhilarating, this new life I live.
Morah walks in half an hour later, after my mana has regenerated to about three-quarters capacity. She has Halon and Elsie with her, who are both dressed in plain black cloaks that cover nearly their entire bodies, only leaving their feet showing.
“Are you ready?” Morah asks me in a serious tone.
I can’t help but laugh at that. “Ready? Fuck no, but I trust your planning over anything I could come up with, and I trust that you’re not sending me on a suicide mission.”
“Good enough. Come with me. We’ll go over the plan quickly.” Morah leads us to the war planning room.
Merrick is already in the room waiting for us with the two artillery mage twins, and now a third sibling based on age and resemblance, this one a female. The sister has a class called [Spotter Scout], which makes me think that she scouts for her two brothers. I wonder what kind of skills an artillery mage has and what their range is. I know that modern artillery can reach dozens of miles away, but with magic involved? I think it will take a single mage a while to fully surpass modern technology, but when it does, Earth will have a new problem to contend with. Just another reminder that if I ever get to go back to Earth, it’s unlikely to be the same world I left behind.
Morah introduces the three siblings as team Triple Threat, Maril, Gradil, and Floril, with Gradil and Floril being the identical brothers and Maril being their older sister. They do most of the talking, as they have been the ones scouting and keeping track of enemy and friendly movement to the best of their abilities. They quickly go over the path we will take to the Spacers Guild and then let Morah take over for the actual explanation of the infiltration plan.
Daniel, Merrick, Halon, Elsine, and I are going to try to covertly sneak into the guildhall and either destroy or sabotage their long-range portal controls before Barad’s Siege Barrier drops and they can bring in reinforcements. If we are successful, we should be able to take control of this guildhall’s long-range portal array. The layout of the building is known to us as Morah, being the citylord, has the blueprints for every building in the city. The main issue is that the control room is deep inside and is guarded by several layers of wards and magical defenses and almost certainly guards. The good news is that both the portal controls and the controls for the building’s defenses are in the same room, so once we take control of it, the rest of the building should fall easily.
“Worst case scenario, we just need to get this past the second ward, activate it, and get the hell out.” Merrick says as he puts a box on the table and opens it to reveal a basketball-sized sphere made out of metal with mana stones embedded all over the surface and connected by gold wires.
As soon as the box opens, I can feel the hum of mana coming from the item, a lot of mana. The box must be suppressing it.
“What is this?” I ask as I [Inspect] it.
[Collapse Charge]—A magical bomb designed to release the Void in a large area upon activation.
“This is the “If I can’t have it, no one can” solution. If we can get it past the second ward, it should do enough damage to get the job done, although it hopefully doesn’t come to that.”
“A void bomb. Scary.” Daniel comments from my side.
“It’s the last-case scenario.” Morah tells us. “The long-range portal array is our real goal here. Only blow it up if you absolutely cannot take control of it.”
“Can you even use the array? If they’ve managed to keep the technology to themselves for this long, it probably needs a space mage to activate it.” I say, which causes everyone to turn and look at me. “Ah, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“Exactly, you are probably one of the few people on this planet not in the spacers guild that can properly use the array. All we need you to do today is shut it down and keep it from activating until we take full control of the building. Any questions?” Morah asks.
After a few moments of silence, Morah nods, and we all get up from our seats. I put the Void-bomb in my storage and pray that it won’t explode in there and send me to an early grave. Merrick gives Daniel and me black cloaks and dons one himself, causing the entire five-person infiltration team to match. After, we all leave through the back of the Necromancers Guild and head towards our target.
Halon puts his hand on my shoulder and activates some kind of skill on me. I feel it start to wrap around my body and clothes, even my mana arm, and soon after I turn completely invisible. I can’t even see my own body, and I feel my presence is less obvious in my spatial senses than it usually is. A split second later, Halon also disappears, but he keeps the hand on my shoulder as he keeps using the skill on us. If it weren’t for him physically touching me, I don’t think I would know he’s there.
Elsine does the same to Daniel, although I can feel that her skill is slightly different than Halon’s. They both end up with the same effect of hiding one’s presence nearly completely but go about it completely differently. I wonder if it would be worth it to look into obtaining a skill like that, one for stealth.
Merrick, left on his own, activates one of his skills, which causes his presence in my spatial perception field to immediately disappear while I can still see him with my eye. He then takes out some kind of amulet and puts it on, causing him to turn invisible. I can still feel a vague area of nothing where he stands, but I don’t think I would notice it unless I was looking for something.
The five of us slowly stalk through the dark streets of Barad, avoiding both enemy and friendly forces on our way to the Spacers Guild. After nearly fifteen minutes of some of the most heart-pounding moments of my life, we reach the starting point of our infiltration. A building a few streets down from the Spacers Guild. I expand my spatial senses to the guildhall, finding a barrier around it that stops all magical perception abilities in their tracks.
I know that the outermost barrier doesn’t physically protect against anything from the morning we woke up on their roof, so I create a portal above the barrier and one on the floor in front of us. The drop is about thirty feet or so, but it will get us past the first barrier. I just have to hope that Halon and Elsine’s skills are good enough to hide us from the barrier’s trespassing detection system, like they said.
“That’s as close as I can get us.”
“Well, let’s get in there, then.” Merrick says with a smile as he turns his invisibility back on and drops through the portal.