Chapter 171: In Front of Namaran’s Wall (2)
Swooosh! The wind brushed past his ear. Everything in front of his eyes shrunk as the extreme speed overwhelmed his vision. It was incomparably faster than the rollercoaster he had ridden before. But he felt fine and wanted to know why.
It’s do or die now!
Lloyd exclaimed internally. The situation demanded swift action now that the wall was up and more people inside the city were collapsing to the ground with every passing second. He didn’t have any hesitation left after having that thought. But did he feel that way because he was a man of justice?
To be honest, no… It’s just that the person who’s paying me is in there!
Namaran could not be destroyed. What was more, Count Namaran could not die. The two had to be protected, and the construction had to be completed, so he could get paid. Burning with such determination, Lloyd gripped the shovel in one hand and lowered his body as Ggoming made a steep descent.
Let’s go!!!
The ground neared, and he saw a black-robed man standing there, his outstretched arms facing the wall. There was a mysterious and gloomy mana flowing around him. Lloyd was certain that he was a dark magician. Lloyd’s eyes glimmered.
“Ggoming, now!” yelled Lloyd.
“Ggoming!”
Lloyd gave the saddle a hard tug, and Ggoming spread out his wings, shifting to horizontal flight after a vertical drop. Ggoming leveled out just above the ground, carrying the speed of the drop straight toward the magician. When Ggoming brushed past the man, Lloyd immediately lifted his metal shovel and wielded it to strike the warlock’s thigh.
Got you!
The blow was impossible to withstand. He was likely to collapse to the ground, grabbing the foot. Lloyd would then figure out a way to neutralize the wall after suppressing him. It was at that moment, that moment when Lloyd drew that hopeful picture in his head, that his metal shovel bounced with a massive repelling force.
“…!”
Lloyd almost lost the shovel as his right grip went numb. In all seriousness, had it not been for the shovel skill and his mid-level sword expert status, the shovel would have left his hands.
“Argh!”
However, holding on to the shovel turned out to be his misfortune. His shovel recoiled and he was forced to bend backward, pushing Ggoming to do just the same.
“G-ggoming!”
Ggoming immediately lost his balance, and his right wing jerked when Lloyd’s torso violently tugged to the right. As the direction drastically went to the left, Ggoming lost both altitude and balance. He flapped his wings in a hurry to restore balance and fly up. But it was too late.
“Ggo…ming!”
“Argh!”
In a split second, the ground neared him much too roughly. Crush!
“…!”
Drop. Crash. Twist. The ground and sky swirled around Lloyd dozens of times. He couldn’t pull himself together. Lloyd was only able to open his eyes once the rough greeting came to an end.
“Argh…”
His whole body was sore. But he felt comfortable, and soon, he learned that something soft, warm, and comfy had wrapped around him. It was a pair of wings.
“Ggoming?”
Lloyd spoke, goggle-eyed. Ggoming must have wrapped Lloyd with his wings while they were falling. Ggoming had his eyes closed, and so, Lloyd wondered if his friend took the brunt of the fall on his behalf.
“Hey, Ggoming!”
Lloyd’s heart sank. He hurriedly shook Ggoming. He slowly opened his eyes.
“G-ggoming?”
“Ha. Are you all right?” asked Lloyd.
“Ggoming!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Ggomiming! Ggoming! Ggoming!”
Ggoming wasn’t hurt. He was completely fine. But contrary to his confident words, Ggoming couldn’t rise up easily. Lloyd checked on him, and thankfully, he didn’t have any major injuries. It looked like Ggoming simply needed some time to recover from the fall.
Ha. What’s seriously going on?
Feeling slightly relieved at last, Lloyd shook his head as his muscles screamed in pain. He then picked up the shovel tossed nearby and turned to look at the warlock. A scoff escaped Lloyd.
“Hahaha…”
The warlock still looked perfectly fine, even though Lloyd had definitely hit him with a shovel earlier. The man still had his arms stretched out toward the sky. In other words, he was completely unharmed.
Wait, is he using a protective spell?
Lloyd wrinkled his nose. It looked like so. The blow he just sent to the magician was substantial. Ggoming had ramped up his speed to the max with the drastic drop. There were also his and Ggoming’s weights to consider. On top of everything, it was infused with the mana that came from his manaheart. The blow carried enough force to crush most heavy cavalry lancers. It was comparable to being directly hit by a van.
But all that power completely bounced off him. And thanks to it, we crashed to the ground.
Lloyd trembled when he thought how his bones could have been crushed and shattered without Ggoming’s protection during the drop. So, he checked on Ggoming as the latter recovered from the impact.
“Thank you,” said Lloyd, “Just wait here for a moment.”
“G-ggoming!”
Lloyd left Ggoming alone and approached the dark magician. If hitting him didn’t do, he would use the mana blast to defeat him. Thinking so, he tightened his grip on the metal shovel.
“Grrr!”
“Grr!”
But Lloyd was immediately stopped by the appearance of two creatures. Neither had a head, and they reeked of rotting fish, assaulting Lloyd’s nose. They were zombies. Worse, they were headless zombies.
“I saw from the sky that they were scattered about in groups of three. So, it seems like there are two zombies and one warlock in each group.”
It appeared so, indeed.
This is a little overwhelming.
Lloyd shrugged, his shoulders flinching as the pressure to fight against the zombies weighed down on him. Right off the bat, it was harmful to his mental and eye health to see the gory creatures in real life. Then there was the stench.
Goodness, I wish I could just cut my nose off right now.
If he was guilty of anything, it would be that he rose to become a mid-level sword expert. Now that his senses were sensitive by multifold, he feared that his nose cells would rise up against him and beg for their destruction. However, Lloyd knew that he could not retreat, and there was no reason to, either. After all, he held an excellent optional skill for suppressing zombies. Hurriedly opening the skill window before the zombies jumped at him, Lloyd activated his optional skill of manaheart.
Ding dong.
[Manaheart Skill Option ④: Zombie Domination has been activated.]
“Grrr?”
The two zombies jerked visibly right before they charged at Lloyd. But that was it, and nothing more. They soon turned hostile. Simultaneously, a disappointing message appeared in front of him.
[The two zombies that were targeted for domination do not have heads. As such, they cannot “face” you. The important condition of Zombie Domination has not been satisfied.]
[You have failed to dominate the zombies.]
“Grrr!”
Bam! A headless zombie charged at Lloyd, who was reading the message in the background. He wrinkled his nose.
“Oh, come on!”
He didn’t want to fight. However, he wasn’t going to stall if it was inevitable. Hell-bent on taking them down, Lloyd avoided the attacks from the zombies charging at him like a bull. He slid his shovel and pushed them to the side, putting them to bump into each other. Their legs got caught on one another and fell to the floor in one lump.
“Grrr!”
They let out another ferocious roar and flailed to get to their feet. But that was the last movement they could manage. Before they touched the ground, Lloyd blasted their bodies with his mana blast. Kaboom!
“Gr-!”
The mana blast that shot out from the metal shovel penetrated their bodies until it began to expand, growing 20 inches in diameter in just mere seconds. Everything within the range took the effect of the blast.
Boom! Their bodies vanished. That was the end of them.
“Tsk,” clucked Lloyd.
Though it was a relief that the zombies were taken care of, he felt worse. If he was being honest, the zombies didn’t do anything wrong. He was rather sorry for them.
Technically speaking, they’re the bad guys.
Lloyd’s gaze traveled to the warlock standing some feet away. That warlock deserved to be beaten to death. That evil figure was nothing but a pest. A horrible menace to society who killed innocent people to use them as zombies and put up a strange wall that sucked the life out of those inside it.
So, one blast for you too.
He would take the warlock down but not kill him. Instead, he would beat the daylights out of him until he confessed the method to neutralize the wall. Flashing with deadly determination, Lloyd stared at the warlock as he got ready for another blast. And he shot.
Kaboom! The violent wave of rough mana came out from the outstretched shovel and made its way as it pierced the space. It then hit the warlock’s leg. But it bounced off him. Plop!
“Huh?”
Lloyd widened his eyes in disbelief. It was a mana blast!
Did it bounce off?
He struggled to believe what he just saw. But he couldn’t deny what happened in front of him.
Is this real life?
Lloyd pondered if he should use the triple mana blast. But he soon told himself that there was no guarantee. What else should I do? He asked himself, falling into deep thought. And later, Lloyd noticed something strange and unusual about the warlock.
Hold on. That warlock hasn’t been moving since a while ago.
It really was the case come to think of it. Even when Lloyd struck him hard with a shovel in the air with Ggoming, when he fought with the zombies, and when he fired the mana blast. The warlock remained standing like a statue whose arms were stretched out toward the sky. This only meant one thing.
“Hey,” called Lloyd. “Can you not move?”
He sounded the warlock out, slowly approaching him and speaking when he was about five steps away. But no response came from the warlock. There wasn’t any reaction from him either. Actually, there was one, though it was menial. He rolled his eyes to Lloyd’s side, but his whole body stayed frozen.
“Ha,” said Lloyd. “It really is the case. You can’t move.”
Lloyd found himself laughing. The situation started to make a little more sense.
That warlock can’t move while he maintains the wall he’s erected. That’s why he protected himself with a powerful protective spell.
The protective magic was so strong that it bounced the massively strong blow from his shovel and even the mana blast. A sense of confusion rushed through Lloyd when he realized this.
What should I do then?
Lloyd thought hard about it. Triple mana blast? Supercharge? As he racked his brain for a solution, he felt a flow of familiar mana from the warlock.
“Huh?”
Lloyd lifted his head, and his gaze followed where he could feel the flow of the mana. It was in the warlock’s chest. And there he saw it.
“A jewel?”
A dark purplish gem was stuck to his necklace. Lloyd walked closer to him, even openly observing the stone in the necklace. That was when he knew.
It’s the same thing.
The skull he had dug from the ground and the jewel in it. The warlock carried the same kind. Even the mana flow in the stone was almost the same. A mana so drearily and gloomily concentrated was jolting heavily, reverberating the wall around Namaran. So, I was right, Lloyd said to himself, this stone was the means through which the warlocks put up the wall. Now, things were different. From that moment onward…
Bingo.
The corners of his lips rose as he had a lightbulb moment. Lloyd had acquired rich amounts of those gems by removing the mana to the point that he had grown accustomed to their mana structure. And here was a warlock using that in front of Lloyd.
It’s like he set down a meal in front of me to enjoy.
Lloyd didn’t have to needlessly struggle to break the wall. He just had to take care of the magical source that fueled the wall. And in this scenario, there was a better method than merely disposing of it.
“Hey, man.”
Lloyd smugly stared at the warlock after recovering his usual composure. And of course, the warlock didn’t say anything. Lloyd continued to talk to him.
“You must feel very relaxed,” Lloyd asked, ”Confident, aren’t you? You have the protective magic with you, after all. You’re pretty confident and relieved that my smacking, kicking, pinching, and anything else I could possibly do won’t work, right?”
“…”
The warlock shot Lloyd a gaze, the kind wherein he seems to scoff and say, “Duh!” But Lloyd wasn’t affected by this unnecessarily. In a moment like this, the one who reacts first loses. Lloyd simply responded by smiling more, by deepening his crow’s feet.
“Relax. Why should I punch you? I don’t want to waste my energy. Instead, I just have to attack the center.”
“…”
“Oh, what is that? You’re asking me what I mean? Listen carefully. You see this gem you have? I’m going to alter its function.”
“…!”
“Oh, yes, I sure can. I know how to do it,” said Lloyd.
“…”
“I’m serious! You want to see?”
Lloyd held out his hand and grabbed the noctanium stuck in the warlock’s necklace.
“You see, I may not know magic well, but I’m pretty good at absorbing and rearranging mana. Plus, I spent so many hours of my life drawing blueprints that I can do it in my sleep now. You get what I mean?”
“…”
“This gem of yours. I’m going to alter the mana pattern concentrated in it. And so, I’ll change whom the wall will try to absorb the mana from. From the people inside the wall to those who are responsible for it. That is, you.”
“…!”
The warlock’s eyes shone with doubt. Just then…
Ziiing! Still clutching the gem, Lloyd rotated his three-stranded mana circle and ran the Asrahan Core Technique, a skill especially fit for absorbing and rearranging mana.