Immovable Mage

– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 218, Season of the Setting Moon, Day 74 –

Under a dark cloudy sky, the rain pelted a large ship made of dark inscribed wood and surrounded by a green glow. The long corpse of a mana-corrupted giant squid was lying bound at the deck’s center and many skeletal warriors were roaming around to handle various tasks.

An elven woman with blonde hair and dark leather armor stepped to the ship’s wheel. “Looking forward to being home, Boss?”

The man turned the wheel to steer towards the riverbed. His billowy shirt was already soaked from the pouring rain, but the cold didn’t bother him. He grinned lopsidedly and the slight wrinkles at his eyes compressed. He adjusted his tricorn hat and replied: “Don’t we all, Intira.”

“Shall we drop you off at the usual spot while we take in the ship and move the more sensitive cargo towards the smuggler’s den?”

The man’s grin widened. “We’ve been out for months. What do you think? Don’t expect me to come in for at least a week.” At this moment, the ship was about to run aground and he stomped his knee-high boot on the wooden floor. Immediately, many death knights emerged from the ship’s blast ports and crawled down into the water.

Instead of running aground, the ship continued on land on the shoulders of countless death aura creatures. The image of the dark ship floating without water and carried by a creepy green glow scared off any lost soul wandering the area.

The man stared into the distance. His eyes were brightly illuminated from mana use. He smiled longingly and muttered: “Can’t wait…”

***

Terry was darting through the twilight of the morning sky and frowned.

Again?

He was used to the occasional overconfident or desperate folks looking to rob the cargo he was transporting for the merchants of the craft district, but he had figured he was done with that.

None of the fools had ever managed to lay a finger on Terry. He had discovered and warned them before they could even try to act stupid.

After his clash with the hunters, there were a few days when none of the usual suspects dared following, but it appeared that something had changed again.

Stronger than the previous ones…

Terry sighed with no one to hear around. He was half-certain that at least some of those cloaked signatures belonged to the hunters.

Probably looking to cast two spells with one cast. Get back at me and get access to the valuable cargo.

He was tempted to test his dungeon-tested pummeling therapy on them to vent his frustrations. He sure had enough frustrations to vent. He had not been able to sell any of his dungeon loot since the incident.

He compressed a part of his mana bubble and rotated it into a sequence of focus refractors to douse the pursuers in a dense net of spell slicers.

A warning.

Any person with mana sight would find the intensity blinding. Any person using mana would find the contact with the disrupting slicers uncomfortable. Any person with any sense would get wary after being detected despite a perfect cloaking.

Terry knew his warning was received when the pursuers backed away and he grunted with slight appreciation. As much as he would like to pummel the hunters for his current income problem, he did not want to waste his time. Unless pummeling them made gold coins fall out, he would rather finish the cargo transport mission that actually paid him.

Terry had seen enough local storage items to doubt that robbing the robbers would be more profitable in his current situations. People tended to use their money or keep it at one of the banks. The kind of person engaging in alley robbery appeared even less likely to carry around much cash.

They might carry valuable items, but since Terry was blocked from selling, he could not realize their value and turn them into money.

Better to scare them off instead of messing up his time schedule for the day.

***

Terry entered yet another merchant building in the trade district. He had nearly tried all of them. Everywhere, he had been rebuffed. After asking around, he had heard rumors that one of the merchants saw the cooperative’s rules less strictly, more like guidelines.

The shop was smaller than most, but for some reason, the number of guards was higher.

Terry had already known about the guards inside thanks to his mana touch and he did not pay them any mind while walking up to the counter.

Another peculiarity of this shop was that there was no employee dedicated to handling the counter and dealing with sales. The man behind the counter did not display the usual amicable smile, nor did he wear any branded uniform.

“I’d like to sell some mana cores from the dungeon,” declared Terry.

“Of course, just place them on the counter,” said the merchant.

At least I’m not being refused outright. Progress.

Terry placed one of the valuable cores from the inscribed earth giants on the counter. He did not waste his time. If this shop did not have the funds to handle cores like those, then he did not need to bother retrieving the rest.

With the merchant fees, the cores of flash geckos would not make much of an impact towards his goal of paying for the dimensional portal fee, especially after the owners had increased the price once again. If they kept racking up the prices, then Terry had to think of something better to outearn the inflating target.

“Very nice.” The merchant picked up the core.

Good. Seems like he’s not worried about the value.

Terry heaved a small sigh of relief. One merchant would be enough. He just needed one merchant to break rank so that he could sell his stuff.

“Do you have more?” asked the merchant eagerly.

Something made Terry pause. Perhaps it was the greedy look in the man’s eyes or the fact that he had not placed down the core back on the counter.

Terry looked firmly into the merchant’s eyes and replied: “Today, I just want to sell this one.”

“That’s too bad,” exclaimed the merchant. He lowered the hand with the core, and placed it into his pocket. “I guess you can leave then.”

Terry did not move.

“Did you not hear me?” asked the merchant. “You can go. You’re under embargo. High enough on the shitlist that touching you is touching fire, so scram.”

Terry took a deep breath, trying his best not to punch the man. “If you don’t want my business, that’s fine. Hand me back my mana core and I’ll leave.”

“What mana core?” asked the merchant with an innocent expression. Some of the guards snickered.

Terry took a deep breath and growled: “Hand me back my core or—”

“Or what?!” The merchant sneered. “I say it’s my core. Who would take your word over mine? You’re an unperson, foreigner fool. We control what you can buy and sell. You want to threaten me?” He scoffed while some of the guards stepped closer. “I can afford to hire the best assassins if I want to.” He leered at Terry. “I’m the one in power here. Now scram!”

Terry took a deep breath and thought: Fuck it.

He let loose his mana and transfixed the equipment from the guards while he jumped over the counter to stand face to face with the merchant who backed into the shelf behind him.

“You’re the one in power here?” asked Terry in a detached manner. “Is that so?”

“Guards!” The merchant panicked when he saw his guards fumbling with their transfixed equipment while their spells were squashed by Terry’s disruption domain. He quickly changed gears. “Help! City guard!”

“You can hire the best, fine.” Terry continued talking in a low voice. “I don’t see them here though.” He stepped closer. “Are you sure that you’re the one in power here?”

Right at this moment, a pair of city guards entered the shop and demanded: “What’s going on here?”

The merchant’s expression brightened and he wanted to sneer at Terry, only to find Terry staring at him unflinchingly.

“He was just about to hand me back my mana core,” declared Terry without breaking eye contact with the merchant.

“Y— N-no, he’s—” The merchant was muttering anxiously.

Terry leaned closer. “Are you sure they’re fast enough to protect you?”

“You would not dare touch me.” The merchant spoke but did not sound entirely convinced.

“Back away!” ordered one of the city guards.

Terry did not move and continued staring coldly at the merchant. He opened his hand and said: “My core.” While paying attention to the guards with his mana detection field, he took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He did not want to get into more trouble with the guards if he could avoid it, but…

His awareness zoomed in on a particular sensation in the back of the store. There appeared to be a hidden room in one of the storage rooms. Inside, Terry felt a mana sensation he had felt before – from one of the districts that was the center of illicit nightly activities.

Terry observed the merchant who was still hesitating. The merchant was too shocked and afraid to push Terry over the edge, but also too greedy and prideful to just give in and return the core.

“I warned you!” The city guards barked again. “Back away!”

Terry lowered his voice just enough for the merchant to hear. “Since the guards are already here, perhaps I should take them for a tour in that secret room you have behind the shelf in your second storage room. I’m sure they’d be interested in what they’ll find.”

For a brief moment, the merchant’s eyes darted everywhere with his gaze growing increasingly panicked. Eventually, he whimpered: “A-all g-good.” He stated more loudly for the guards to hear: “I was just inspecting one of his cores and am returning it now.”

Terry received the mana core and left. He ignored the embarrassed glares from the shop guards as well as the uncertain gazes from the city guards.

***

“...let’s stop here for today.” Daisy closed the book.

“Aww…” Brandon hung his head before looking at her with upturned eyes. “Perhaps one more? I want to know what happened in the Deep! Did the Veilbinder team up with the Slayer again? Kivis hasn’t appeared since the battle at the Wall Fortress! Just one more, please!”

Daisy just grinned and lifted a hand to mess up Brandon’s hair.

“What’s he doing?” Brandon’s eyes were now on Terry who was sitting cross-legged and with closed eyes on the grass in front of them. Blocks of different materials were transfixed all around Terry.

“Training?” Daisy scrunched up her face. “...or so I guess.”

“It looks like he’s creating mana balls…” Brandon strained his mana sight. He was practicing every day, but he was normally not able to see mana that was further away than an arm’s length. Whenever Terry challenged him to a mana game, they had to limit the range of the playing field accordingly.

The fact that he could see the mana ‘balls’ around Terry even though they were much further away spoke to the mana’s intensity.

Terry was breathing deeply and concentrated on maintaining his small disruption fields. Thanks to his practice in the dungeon, he was getting better at maintaining and compressing them. He had initially thought that his primary progression path for the technique would be to improve his proficiency at moving the fields before increasing the size he was dealing with.

By now, he was able to move the small fields around slowly. As it turned out, he had already discovered the basic building blocks in his fight against Vicious. Back then, Terry had created a rotating disruption field for building up the quantity and intensity of spell slicers before converting it into a straight disruption rush to destroy the hexagonal barrier as a surprise attack to damage Vicious’s channeling anchor.

The trick to moving the disruption field was in abandoning the rotation while moving it. The challenge was in the slow down that resulted whenever he wanted to reestablish the rotation.

Rotation. Dense protection of spell slicers.

Rush. Movable but in exchange the slicers all moved straight and left gaps that wouldn’t be there when rotating.

Rotation. Rush. Rotation.

The faster Terry was when forcing the rush and establishing the rotation, the more frequent he could perform the switch while keeping up the speed. He could control the trade-off between speed and disruption density. The only way to increase both simultaneously was in mastering his control and increasing the frequency.

He had made a lot of progress but it had felt unsatisfying. The main frustration was that the technique’s usefulness appeared limited to the weaker creatures in the dungeon. At least until he learned to pull a field as large as his disruption domain. Large enough to protect him in battle.

In all of the unpleasant aftermath of his vindictive visit at the hunters’ headquarters, there had been a single redeeming reward, a promising light of inspiration to offset his frustrating financial situation: He had successfully utilized the disruption field to grind away the inscription and with it its reinforcing effects.

Tearing apart the central spell structures inside of imprinted items had become quite easy for Terry, but inscriptions were generally a lot harder to damage. It required more than just overcoming a shielding and a good tug at some mana inside. That was one of the reasons that inscribed items were more expensive than imprinted ones whose spell created a comparable effect.

Terry opened his eyes with active mana sight to observe the results of his experiments.

A way to damage inscriptions was useful, but Terry was aware that his application with the building was not the norm. The building was stationary. Targeting inscriptions on personall equipment would pose similar movement and intensity challenges to targeting the cores inside dungeon creatures.

But what if he combined the idea with his unstoppable shift combination? The question made him grin.

An attack that went beyond the mana realm. Beyond damaging inscriptions, although that would work too. Ripping into the inscriptions directly was just one way to damage them. Shifting their physical foundation to mess up the carved mana lines would achieve the same result.

With his combination as the starting point, the target could be assumed to be stationary thanks to his Immovable Object spell.

The unstoppable shift’s main limitation was the time it required. Even if Terry managed to keep up with the mana expenditure, he was still working with the world’s smallest chisel.

His compressed disruption fields were finally offering a promise to possibly overcome that limitation. Rotating the same spell slicer repeatedly into the same transfixed object allowed reusing the slicer which was faster than starting from scratch. Compressing the rotation into a small sphere caused shorter rotation times and therefore a higher frequency of impacts. A higher frequency of unstoppable shifts and that with comparatively little buildup time.

The targeting of his various disrupting grinders was less precise than his regular disruption discharges but it was still much more accurate than the huge disruption rush he had used against Rafael’s defensive artifact in the battle for the altar. Terry had hope of further improving both precision and accuracy by progressing on further compressing the disruption fields.

Already, the shifting grinders were performing well enough to grind holes into all of his test objects.

Terry documented his observations in his notebook. The goal of his experiments was to determine if there were any factors to consider for the effectiveness of the unstoppable shifts. He extrapolated from the factors influencing the Immovable Object spell’s activation delay and wanted to test different materials as well as different oscillating mana ratios.

One benefit of his newly developed shifting grinders was that Terry could finally conduct the experiments to learn more about the interactions. Without them, the required time would have been prohibitive.

Terry was deeply immersed into his observations when he suddenly raised his head and squinted into a particular direction. His proficiency in utilizing his mana detection field had increased significantly. He had gotten a lot better at filtering out the relevant changes in his periphery.

One part of Terry’s attention was naturally always on the Flower House. After all, he was being paid to protect the inhabitants. Just because he wanted to make the best use of his time by incorporating training into his work time, it did not mean he wanted to neglect his duties. Even if he was technically working as a Guildhead now, he still remembered his work as a Guardian. Or rather he remembered when Isille had drilled into him that he was representing them while on a mission and that he should act accordingly.

Terry’s current shift in focus was triggered by something else though. His subconscious awareness had bubbled up a particular sensation from his widely stretched mana detection field.

The arrival of new mana signatures in the city was nothing unusual. There was a constant flux of refugees reaching the city. Powerful signatures or well-cloaked mana users were a regular sensation as well. Even the amount of death-aspect signatures would not cause Terry to bat an eye, because it appeared that many locals and refugees were dabbling in death whispering and necromancy.

Terry blinked at the direction of the sensations and waited. He still had to discern why those signatures had caught his subconscious attention.

He scowled as soon as he realized the reason: The signatures were headed for the Flower House and it made him think of the hunters again. Thinking about the possibility of this being the overture to the hunters’ revenge for collapsing their building, he involuntarily growled.

Terry immediately stopped his experiments, packed up his equipment, and headed inside to inform Jasmine.

Just in case.

Not long afterwards, Terry was standing at the main entrance door and leaning on the doorframe. His king spear was placed at the sheath belt on his back and hidden by the shadow fabric that formed a cloak from his magic brooch. He asked in a low tone: “Are you sure this is nothing to worry about?”

“Pretty sure,” replied Jasmine calmly.

“Then why did you tell Lavender and the others to stay inside?” asked Terry flatly. It was more out of shallow curiosity than anything else. Even if she was wrong, it wouldn’t change anything. He couldn’t control how other people acted, only how he reacted.

“I trust my judgement,” said Jasmine confidently. After a pause, she added: “But I am me. One thing you learn if you are in charge of people you care about is to consider the consequences of being wrong, no matter how much you trust yourself.”

Guess I have a headstart on that.

Terry could not help but think he was rarely that full of trust in himself to begin with. Failure was always at the top of his mind. He might have gotten more impulsive after being trapped with battle-crazed martialists and losing his patience, but that only meant he sometimes acted before his thoughts had an opportunity to let self-doubt take over.

Terry relaxed slightly when he perceived that one of the signatures separated from the rest. Only that single individual continued heading to the Flower House. Nevertheless, Terry did not feel like returning the king spear to his storage, because that single individual appeared to be the strongest of them all. Strong enough that Terry would like to avoid a fight if possible.

Eventually, a man with a tricorn hat and black clothing arrived with wide open arms and an even wider grin: “My beautiful Jasmine! How I’ve longed to see you!”

“Thiago, stop,” shouted Jasmine in a cold voice.

Thiago halted and looked confusedly at her. “My lovely darling, what’s wrong?”

“There will be no service for you here,” declared Jasmine.

“What…?” Thiago’s expression shifted from stupefied to crestfallen and back before settling on disgruntled suspicion. “If that’s a joke, it’s a damned poor one.”

“I’m not joking,” insisted Jasmine. Her eyes never left Thiago’s.

“What…?” muttered Thiago quietly before yelling in a pleading tone. “Darling, don’t do this to me! Look!” He gestured with his hands towards his lower body. “I have to place my feet so far from each other, I can barely walk properly. I need you!”

In spite of herself, Jasmine showed an amused smile at the man’s antics. She managed to force a stern expression and replied: “If it’s really that urgent, then I’m afraid you’ll have to look for someone else.”

Thiago gasped and actually looked offended. “Darling, I don’t want anyone else!

This time, Jasmine’s smile was warm. It came from her heart and it took her longer to return to her previous stern expression. “Then you better hurry to your hunters and straighten them out. They’re the reason why I will not see you.” She looked at him for a second longer. “Farewell, Thiago.”

“Farewell?” Thiago was stumped and mumbled quietly. “Darling, you make it sound like…”

Jasmine glanced back. “There is no us if I lose trust in your principles.”

Thiago frowned. “What did those numbskulls do?!”

From beginning to end, Terry had observed the man. It turned out that Jasmine was right. That man would not attack the Flower House.

From beginning to end, Thiago had not paid Terry any attention. The curses he threw into the air while departing caused many parents to close the ears of their children. None of them dared to reprimand the man.

***

“Do something!” One of two women kneeling on the floor hissed to her boyfriend. “What kind of man is unable to protect his woman?!”

They were all held in place by others. All six of them. Four men and two women.

The man with a scar on his throat was scowling. He desperately turned to his brother, but the man was showing no sign of interfering despite his apprehensive expression.

Thiago was sitting at a table in front of the kneeling six and was slowly cutting the meat on his plate. He placed a piece in his mouth and chewed with closed eyes while savoring the smell and taste. After swallowing, he smacked his lips and then asked: “We have rules in this family. Without rules, there is no family.” He wiped his mouth with a white table napkin and leaned back in his chair.

Thiago moved his eyes over the six offenders. His gaze lingered a moment longer on the man with a scarred throat. He clicked his tongue and continued: “I don’t think our code is too long to remember, do you?”

“What’s he on about?” The woman hissed again at her boyfriend. “Who is that—?”

“Shut up!” Her boyfriend hissed back.

Thiago cleared his throat and took a sip from his wine. He swirled it while saying: “We do not harm children, nor any women that are with child.” He looked at some of the people standing around and lifted his chin.

The hunters forced the six people closer to the table and forced their left arms to the table.

“For those that have forgotten our code, we will have to leave a memento,” said Thiago and nodded.

One of the hunters with a long sword staff holding an oversized blade stepped forth. In a single swipe, he cut through six forearms at once.

On Thiago’s hand that held the wineglass, two rings lit up with different lights. One isolated the screams. Another created a barrier to block the blood from reaching him. He calmly watched the agonized expressions while taking another sip from the wine. He sent a glance to his left-hand man and searched for any sign of rebellion inspired by the punishment for the man’s brother, but there was nothing.

Thiago cut another slice of meat and chewed while coldly staring into the eyes of the crippled people that were bleeding out. Eventually, he gave another nod and healing spells activated, but only to close the wound and to stop the bleeding.

Thiago swallowed and looked towards the severed hands on the bloody table: “You have lost the privilege of those limbs until I am convinced that you don’t need any more mementos to remember our code.”

Most of the six just stared at their bloody stumps, but the scarred man managed to squeeze out: “Thank you, B-Boss, for your m-mercy.” His girlfriend sent him an outraged glance but was silenced by the gaze he returned.

“Take them away,” ordered Thiago while picking up his wine again. He held up his free hand for the last person to be punished to see.

“Boss,” muttered his left-hand man gravely.

“Hector, you’ve always shown affection for family and that is one of the reasons I chose you,” said Thiago without looking at the man who stood slightly behind him. “But never again dare to put your brother over our family. I’ve trusted you and you’ve disrespected my trust.”

“...understood,” said Hector with resignation. He stepped forth and kissed one of the rings on Thiago’s hand that was held up. An ominous dark purple light glowed around the ring and a streak of black appeared on the man’s face.

“Your first offense.” Thiago lowered his hand and now firmly looked into Hector’s eyes. “There won’t be more than three in a lifetime.”

“Understood, Boss,” said Hector. “I will not disappoint again.” He bowed slightly and then inquired: “What are we to do with the Flower Protector?”

Thiago scowled and ate several more pieces of meat before he answered. “Call off the hunting squads.” He took a sip of wine. “Not like they’ve demonstrated much use anyway.” He shrugged.

“Are we just going to let that man off?”

Thiago grunted. “No. I liked that building.” He smacked his lips. “And he has disrespected our family. That cannot go unpunished…” His scowl deepened when he muttered quietly. “...even for my Jasmine.” He finished the glass of wine and continued: “But given how it started and considering that no one has died, I want it to stay that way. Continue the embargo. That should be enough to teach a lesson.”

“Do you believe she will be satisfied with that?” asked an elven woman in leather armor who was also standing slightly behind Thiago. Intira’s tone was slightly teasing.

Thiago rolled his tongue over the inside of his cheek. “I believe I’ll get my point across.” He uncomfortably shifted in his chair and adjusted the position of his legs. “I’ve given her no reason to doubt my principles in this matter. No bodily harm will come to the Flower Protector from this, but the rest is a separate topic.”

***