Immovable Mage

– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 218, Season of the Rising Moon, Day 1 –

Lightning roared unceasingly. The never-ending thunder of heaven’s fury had become the new heartbeat of their desperate defense. The raging noise always rang in the death of another group of enemies… but it also further stole their sleep.

An unending barrage of powerful attacks decimating your enemies was reassuring… unless the enemies showed no signs of ending. Because at that point the powerful attacks were just a painful reminder that even this much was nevertheless severely lacking.

“I can’t take this anymore!” A martialist shouted. Despite her injuries, she dashed to charge out. This battle was endless and she had given up on living. She just wanted it to be over. A glorious death instead of this pointless struggle.

“Shut it.” A tall woman blocked the path and slapped the manic martialist. Chun was growing increasingly frustrated with these unstable characters. Their weak-minded outbursts were starting to damage her own sanity and this bothered her more than she would ever admit. She glared at the offending party. “You will rest. There will be time to fight later.”

“Yeah, fight so that you can fight some more. Just great,” scoffed a tired man from the side. “What’s the use?”

“We’re still alive,” interjected Chalita with hard eyes. Her once yellow robes were completely stained with blood. Near her left arm, most of the blood was unfortunately her own. A painful poison-aspected needle had hit her and the wound had bled incessantly. If not for the quick intervention by Zhang and Annabelle, she would probably have died.

“Big whoop,” retorted the man wearily. “Just means we’re going to die later.” He whined. “I can’t even breathe properly here. Cursed Arcanian. How are we supposed to rest?”

The feeling of mana suppression had truly become suffocating. They were basically sitting in a sea of foreign naturalized mana.

“Would you prefer that the spores get in here?” Chalita glared at the martialist. “Or the enemy spells? If you can protect this place another way, go ahead! You should feel lucky that the Arcanian is still standing!”

“Is he?” muttered Zhang while observing the relentless Arcanian. It was true that the mage had reinvigorated their efforts with some newfound power and sheer endless mana. However, something else had begun to change as well. The growing number of injuries among those fighting in the frontline were definite proof of it.

The Arcanian was holding on, but slipping up more frequently. They had been able to hit the enemies harder than ever before, but it was as if Terry was paying less attention to defense and focusing more of his attention on attacking. The martialists weren’t very defensively-oriented to begin with and with Terry’s attitude noticeably shifting, the results were many more dead enemies but also many more martialists stuck in the recuperation area.

Chalita heard Zhang’s utterance and she subconsciously held her injured arm. The needle projectile that had hit her was something that Terry had stopped countless times before. This one time, however, he had messed up. She clenched her right fist and murmured. “He’s getting tired.”

“Or desperate,” added Zhang gravely.

“He’s losing it, that’s what!” A strained voice reached their ears from a new arrival. Annabelle stared at them with incredulous eyes. “I think Terry just hissed at me.” She shook her head. “With bared teeth and everything.” She sighed wearily and sat down cross-legged to prepare her recovery. Without opening her eyes, she continued talking. “Whatever is going on, it cannot be good. We’ll have to think of something in case he breaks down. Before it’s too late.”

“Something, huh?” Zhang muttered quietly. No one replied. By now, they had few cards left to play. Their trump cards had been used up. No more talismans. No more powerful recovery items. No more single-use artifacts that could be used in an emergency.

Over the past few days, there had simply been too many emergencies. Emergency was the new normal.

They still had most of the weapons and armor pieces that the Arcanian had distributed but those ate up a lot of mana. Mana they were all severely lacking.

Well, not all of them.

Nearly a hundred meters in front, at the center of a raging vortex of flames, Terry was holding a glowing soft sword in his right hand. If there had been a weapon spirit in the blade, it would cry tears of indignation at the way it was being wielded. In the hands of the mage, the sharp sword was nothing more than an oversized flame thrower as mana was continuously being forced into it to unleash fierce fire into the troop of elven enemies.

Before the material could get damaged by the extended magic use, Terry placed it on the sheath belt and fluidly exchanged it for the king spear. He never paused siphoning mana and dumping it. Claiming it at a distance. Forcing it into a rotating sequence of powerful magic weapons.

He was vaguely aware that another day must have passed, but even so, he had no room to stop.

How could he?

He had hoped to use the egg-shaped crystal as his last act of desperation. To burn brightly and intensely, albeit shortly. To mirror the Aspiring Soul Curse that was empowering the dungeon constructs all around.

He had hoped to make a difference. Undoubtedly, he did. The dungeon’s forces were pushing the invading army harder than ever. The number of slain enemies each day probably doubled, but the fungus-infested army just kept coming.

Terry was fighting frenziedly with bloodshot eyes. He just kept fighting. It was all he could do.

The area of unbreakable rock he maintained as shelter and safe foothold had grown significantly. Unfortunately, it did not seem to matter how often he succeeded in rescuing his allies. A single failure was all it took and another ally would fall forever.

Terry had made many failures and it was starting to get to him. He had tried to gather more of the enemies’ attention on himself. To set traps and bait them. To put the sheer infinite mana from the fiendish crystal to good use. More enemies in his range meant more enemies slain with the king spear or the other powerful weapons.

The fungus-infested army just kept coming. Terry’s group, together with the dungeon, had held on well, but all the mana he had dumped and naturalized was a giant reminder of the shifting situation. His mana sight might not have been enough to notice it, but his mana touch unmistakably felt the accumulating damage in the dungeon constructs.

There was no healing for constructs. There was no quick way for a dungeon to repair them either. In theory, a dungeon could reform one of its creatures from the mana core alone, but that required mana, a sphere of influence, and an undamaged core.

The dungeon was still throwing new creatures at the invading army, but Terry was well aware of the diminished rate of new arrivals. He had not shared this particular information with his martialist allies yet. He saw little point in demoralizing them any further.

Terry had hoped to make a difference. Unfortunately, the only prominent difference he could detect was himself. He had been confident in his mana control. He had used his best tricks to keep the fiendish influence at a distance. However, after days of utilizing the fiendish crystal, he was unable to deny that it was getting to him.

Terry knew himself well. Ever since his first encounter with dungeon shenanigans, he had been very wary of his own mind. Being trapped in solitude with nothing but ghouls had shown him the ugly thoughts waiting in his head. The monstrous whispers that had been gnawing at his confidence and resolve. He had learned to refuse them and to firmly anchor himself onto the person he wanted to become.

Following this future vision of himself demanded him to constantly look inwards and act as his own judge. With a habit like this, it was impossible to not notice his shifting mind. He knew what was going on, but what good did this knowledge do him?

He could not stop. Or, at least, he did not think he could.

Without the mana from the blue crystal egg, Terry would bottom out. He would collapse. Right here. In the middle of enemies. Further from the safe fortifications than he had wanted to go. A slight shift in battle attitude had left him in a position where it was questionable if he could stop.

Or is this thought itself also a sign of influence? Terry’s inner Academy student blurted into his mind.

He inhaled deeply and tried to consider his options. Without mana, their recuperation would be threatened with attacks from below again. Normally, the mana cost for maintaining an Immovable Object spell was negligible compared to his mana regeneration, but at this point, his lack of sleep and nourishment were wolfing down his mana at a ravaging pace his own regeneration was incapable of maintaining.

Terry grimaced when he heard another chorus of hissing sounds invading his mind. The noise had first appeared a few hours ago. Since then, the time between each hissing was constantly decreasing. It was beginning to make it harder and harder for him to concentrate and think.

The one lucky break in an otherwise unlucky situation was that the repeated distraction presented by the invading hissing sounds did not impair his battle. He pushed through the fight through instinct and trained reflex alone. Or at least that was what he thought.

There was a tiny paranoid corner of his mind that did not stop to pester him that instinct and reflex might not be the only things moving his body to keep it from harm. Terry did not like this corner of his mind. It was bringing up problems without offering any solutions. He was both unable to refute the possibility and to do anything about it.

The last thing Terry thought was that he hated mind games.

Mana rushed from the blue crystal egg into his mana channels at a pace higher than his own absorption. Even if he had been fully conscious, he would not have been able to stop it. His mind was drifting off…

Then a white flash of light jolted Terry from his daze. He felt the foreign mana being sucked out of his body at once. He breathlessly collapsed with utter exhaustion on the ground. He could only make out a blur of grass in front of his face when another sensation was pressing itself onto his consciousness…

His left hand that had previously tightly clenched the blue crystal egg was being forced open by… something.

Something squishy.

It felt weird.

Even stranger was the fact that the squishiness seemed to well up from his own hand.

Terry mustered all his remaining strength to slightly tilt his head and see. His sight was still blurry, but he could see a translucent white substance forcing his hand open. He could not help but think himself insane or dreaming.

He saw a memory from some of the worst days of his life. An unremarkable creature in a dungeon of ghouls.

He did not feel the hard crystal surface anymore. He was being shielded from the blue crystal by a white viscous substance. The substance contained a mana core.

The ungrateful blob?

Terry had trouble believing this was real. Seeing a slime in a dungeon was not hard to believe, but seeing this particular slime in this particular dungeon stretched his credulity. He did not even know why he was so certain that this was the same slime. It did not look the same. It was bigger than he remembered.

It FEELS the same!

Terry saw the slime wiggle reassuringly.

Wait, how do you wiggle reassuringly?

Something amazing unfolded in Terry’s mana sight. The slime’s fluid body began dissolving the crystal egg and then the brightest flare of mana flashed for a fleeting instant. The only reference Terry could compare the intensity to was the mana signature of Devon, the vessel for the Devonian Lord, but even that connection barely matched the mana dissolving into the dungeon creature. A sheer infinite ocean of mana manifested and compressed into the unassuming white slime.

When Terry saw the slime mysteriously vanish along the skin of his palm, he involuntarily thought that whatever was the original source of the fiendish mana must be pretty pissed right about now. He himself was left with complex emotions for the lingering sensation of squishiness in his hand.

He knew that the slime was responsible for cutting off the fiendish influence.

A white pulse emanated from the moons above and he could feel something being opened up to him.

Terry inhaled and the whole pocket realm trembled. Mana rushed into him from everywhere at once. It was not like the fiendish crystal from before. No, this mana did not feel foreign. It was his own.

Terry exhaled and, like the flip of a switch, he felt his senses spread outwards. It took a moment to realize that this was the sensation of his mana touch that was spreading over every inch of this folded space.

Far away, high above, deep below.

Everywhere.

All the mana miraculously converted itself to perfectly fit him. A whole realm of oscillating mana at his disposal. A whole realm within his mana control.

Terry felt absolutely amazing. It was the most awe-inspiring sensation he had ever experienced and it did not stop there. Pushing beyond what he thought possible, the mana inside his channels compressed all the way into a liquid.

His wounds closed. His stamina recovered. His muscles felt stronger and eager to burn the available mana. His senses felt sharper. Time appeared to decelerate in front of his eyes.

With his enhanced senses, Terry noted the way the mana infused itself in a particular pattern and balance. He did not hear a shattering sound, which meant that the spatial lock was still intact and he was beyond glad for it.

Filled with unknown strength, Terry clenched his left hand and pushed himself up. He did not understand what was going on, but he knew that this was a chance to make a real difference.

His eyes were glowing with intense mana and the glint of resolve to make the best of it.

Countless ranged attacks were already flying his way. Many fungus-infested enemies were charging right after. The short moment of Terry’s collapse had been enough of an invitation for everything to be pointed at him.

Terry’s bright eyes landed on the first fungus-invested elf. His mind felt a thought. It was not forced on him. It was more of a resonance between similar sentiments.

A single thought reverberated in his mind as he was gazing on the invaders. This thought was something perfectly in line with Terry and who he wanted to become.

[Repel.]

A giant vortex of mana spread out from Terry in a spiraling fashion. Thousands of spell slicers eviscerated every single fungus-sourced spell pervading the folded space. He barely even needed to rely on chained focus refractors or compressed rotation to achieve this effect. The whole realm of mana followed his will to heights even beyond his own mana control.

After the spell slicers, Immovable Object spells appeared as numerous as the stars in the sky. With the enhanced spell compression and intensity granted by the acquiescing mana, even the teeth and fingernails of the elves had become suitable spell targets. No invader was able to escape.

Immovable.

Terry had not moved so much as a muscle aside from breathing but the whole invading army on this side of the gate had been forced to a halt. Every foreign spell structure was disrupted. Every casting was quenched with mana suppression. Every invading creature was trapped by transfixed body parts.

Terry understood that this was not his own power. He suspected that this was a power granted by the dungeon. There was no doubt in his mind that the dungeon was the true owner of all the mana at his current disposal. He would never delude himself into believing a foreign power was his own. Any power easily given was also easily taken. It was but a fleeting vision…

Even so.

Terry made sure to remember this sensation and to etch the image into his mind as motivation. A vision of a mage standing immovable while fending off an unending army. Terry had given his all. He had fought for days without getting anywhere. By contrast, it had taken the Immovable Mage only two breaths and a single spell to neutralize every enemy that had stepped into this realm.

Terry swore to himself that one day, this would be his own power. One day, he would truly become the Immovable Mage he could currently perceive himself to be. He did not need more spells to follow the path of a mage. A mana foundation to rival the oldest dungeons in existence would do. A daunting goal, but he would persevere or die trying.

Terry raised his weapon and charged towards the opened tear in reality. New enemies were still pouring in and he planned to greet them with a single spell, disruption discharges, and the wrath of his spear. If he had his way, then they would die as quickly as they entered.

Terry was not the only one charging to crush the helpless fungus army. Every one of the dungeon creatures were frenziedly abandoning all defense and cleaving through the enemies with maddened killing intent. Even some of the walking shield constructs were abandoning their shield wall formation to use their spindly legs to crawl up the immobilized enemies and pierce the eyes and ears instead.

The realm quaked from intense lightning while rivers of spore-infested blood were springing up everywhere. The desperate struggle for the folded space had turned into a one-sided massacre.

The martialists that had been holding the frontline and fortifications with Terry were staring with mouth agape and doubting their own eyes at what was transpiring.

The truly stupefied ones, however, were the few remaining martialists that had decided to fight on their own. They had not seen Terry’s hand lighting up like a little sun in their mana sight as the overture to flipping the battlefield.

“What’s going on?” An injured man was shakily standing up. He and his friend had been ambushed by a dozen fungus-infested elves.

“I don’t— Ahh!” The second man was given a fright. The immobilized opponent had cast a spell that had been disrupted just as quickly as it had appeared.

“This…”

“Those are the techniques of the Arcanian, aren’t they?”

“Terry? You mean…”

It did not take long for every single martialist to step out of their hiding holes. They had pent up a lot of frustrations and despair over the past days. They were itching to make someone suffer and these fungus-infested invaders were now ripe for slaughter.

There were few worse enemies in the world than a group of vengeful martialists that did not have to worry about defense anymore.

***