Chapter 141: Turbulence (3)
After hearing Carisia describe the mana core as “ominous,” I found myself rubbing my temples.
The mana core was indeed the heart of the tower. No matter how advanced the spells or technology around it, if the core was faulty, then the tower itself was no better than a defective product.
*So, the tower that Kynemon’s set to inherit might actually be… a dud?*
“When did you notice this?” I asked.
Carisia and I had a way of speaking that allowed us to cut right to the point, understanding each other with minimal context. She frowned slightly before responding, and her answer didn’t match the timeline I’d expected.
“About three days ago?”
An oddly ambiguous timing. I had thought that this uneasy feeling must have started around the time of my showdown with the Mental Parasite, if not when the Divine Cult began their pursuit.
Three days ago would have been after my “middleman” dealings between Blasphemia and the Divine Cult, and even a while after the priests reported that the Parasite’s presence had seemingly vanished.
Thinking logically, it was likely that the Committee made a mistake while setting up the final trial’s barrier, leading to mana contamination in the core.
Or perhaps they’d overdrawn from the city’s mana network to maintain the barrier, weakening the core’s output.
Still, I had a lingering feeling that it was more than that.
Words like “logical thinking” are dangerous if used too freely.
Had Blasphemia in the Golden Desert behaved irrationally? Not at all. They’d plotted to kill Carisia and me with perfect logic, only to be struck down by an extradimensional storm, an anomaly outside reason itself.
Even the Mage King, who split his legacy with precise care before ascending, likely didn’t foresee his disciples hitting him so squarely in the back.
In my view, logical thinking was a luxury reserved for situations that had reached a nice, clean conclusion.
What I needed now was the type of thinking that matched an irrational situation.
“Well then, if it feels that ominous, let’s go check it out.”
“Aren’t the Tower Lord’s quarters sealed until the end of the Selection?” Carisia’s tone carried a hint of something else—did I intend to beat up all the mages guarding the place, blast open the seal, and storm in?
Of course, I had no such intention. Unlike Carisia, who sometimes seemed to exude a readiness to “return as White No Name” and unleash her fighting spirit, I’d always been a fan of fewer battles, not more.
I chuckled. “For Orthes, chief secretary of Hydra Corporation, it might indeed be a locked door.”
Naturally, my approach would be a “conversation.”
“But what about for Blasphemia’s secret inspector, L13?”
I contacted Niobe, the Blasphemia director for Algoth City.
***
As Orthes shouted a bizarre chant—*“Aha-ha-ha! Power! Unlimited power!”*—with an almost gleeful grin, Carisia prepared to slip unnoticed into the Tower Lord’s quarters.
It was one thing for Orthes to enter the quarters under the pretense of inspection as a secret agent, but it was quite another for Carisia, a known sponsor of Tower Lord candidate Kynemon, to accompany him.
A camouflaging spell wrapped Carisia’s body, bending visible light to cloak her perfectly, without even the faintest refraction or distortion.
After receiving my call, Niobe met up with me in a secluded area.
“Even if it’s your request, this is a risky move,” Niobe began hesitantly. Her hesitation was a good sign; by starting her sentence with “even if,” she was implicitly indicating some trust in my words about the mana core’s instability.
“Couldn’t you wait just half a day, senior? By then, the Selection will be over, and we could go in together as sponsors, no questions asked.”
“I’m only suggesting this because it might already be too late. Normally, yes, we’d wait for a straightforward solution, but in emergencies, we need ingenuity.”
Carisia noticed Niobe’s gaze fill with trust, admiration, and something like reverence, a blend of emotions she found slightly distasteful. But as long as it helped things move forward, she tolerated it.
With her fingers supporting her chin, Niobe sank into thought, a gesture that signaled her agreement.
Anyone hesitating in front of Orthes was ultimately bound to be persuaded.
“One hour. Our people won’t question me if it’s for your sake, but I can’t keep all the Panoptes agents distracted from the Tower Lord’s quarters for long.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be done before then.” Orthes winked.
To Niobe, it was merely a confident gesture, but Carisia saw the intent behind it.
Orthes was ready to open his eyes.
***
“…Huh?”
That was all I could manage as I prepared to enter Amimone Tower discreetly.
The tower had exploded.
Or, more accurately, it appeared destroyed to others, but I could tell that the tower’s fragments weren’t physically shattered.
Space was warping. Objects within the tower—laboratory equipment, artifacts—seemed to float outside, while the tower’s outer walls stretched into the sky, etched like fragments.
It was as if images of the tower’s interior and exterior had been scattered across the sky, like projections on an enormous celestial screen. Soon, these projections began breaking down further: from walls to bricks, from bricks to sand.
The entire space was disassembling. A phrase drifted into my mind: “Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.”
Yet I doubted that the reassembled form would be a “tower.” Perhaps it would be a “monster.”
“Niobe! Get Blasphemia here! Something inside the tower is casting a spell—if we apply mana from the outside, we can at least partially counter it!”
I’d shouted the first effective plan that came to mind. Any magic follows the principle of imposing one’s will on mana. By introducing impurities into the magic, it could fail—or at the very least, be disrupted.
Thus, my command to Niobe was also an indirect request to Carisia, who was hidden right beside me.
Carisia pondered.
“No specific instructions on how to apply mana, right?”
As usual, she liked simple solutions.
Orthes would have called her approach straightforward, maybe even blunt.
“Huh?”
The same exclamation of disbelief escaped me as when I’d first seen the tower explode. Unbeknownst to me, Nastion, lurking in the shadows and watching the metamorphosis, had muttered the same word.
The sky was distorting. Space was bending, similar to the process the Mental Parasite had initiated to merge with the tower and make it part of itself.
But this time, the spatial distortion was certainly not the Parasite’s doing.
Although there was no magical evidence, Nastion could sense it.
Whatever was out there had started to burn Amimone Tower.
The ring-shaped distortion in the sky acted like a convex lens, focusing light into a single point until the brightness grew almost unbearable to look at.
At that critical moment, the concentrated light shifted its focus.
No longer aimed at empty space, it was directed at Amimone Tower.
A beam of light scorched through the skies of Algoth City.
***
I only asked for mana to be applied.
Not for the tower to be incinerated.
Instead of clutching my throbbing head, I focused on observing how the tower responded to this mana input—known to the Ten Towers as “beam attacks.” The disassembly process had slowed considerably, but it hadn’t stopped.
This meant that the mana was still being fed from somewhere. I quickly looked down at the ground. Beneath us lay the city’s mana pipelines, continuously supplying mana to the tower.
The beam had bought us some time, but at this rate, Carisia would exhaust her mana before the tower did.
Off in the distance, I spotted the Blasphemia members Niobe was bringing. Thanks to Carisia’s “death beam” disrupting the Parasite’s transformation, we had gained some precious moments.
We needed to make the most of this time. What moves were available through Blasphemia, and which would be most effective?
As I refined my question, the answer became clear.
The barrier prepared for the Tower Lord Selection.
If we could erect a high-level barrier around Amimone Tower that completely isolated it, we could sever the connection between the mana pipes and the core. The mana sustaining the Parasite’s metamorphosis would naturally be cut off.
That would at least preserve the tower’s foundations, allowing me to avoid the embarrassment of telling Kynemon, *“Sorry, the tower kind of vanished on you.”*
I shouted to Niobe, “Get everyone over here!”
She nodded vigorously and replied with enthusiasm.
“Everyone, attack Amimone Tower, which has undergone extradimensional mutation!”
Hey…
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