Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 83
🕑 Added 2023-07-05 13:01:00 +0000 UTCWith everything he had wanted to do in the auction done, Felix initiated the teleport back to Trenus. He appeared back in the city council building and immediately touched his pocket home marble to a wall. He walked in and illuminated the area with a spell then pulled Nova out of his robes and lightly tossed them.
Nova floated to the ground slowly as if they weighed almost nothing and as if they were a real cat, landed on their feet. Felix began dumping all of the random materials he had bought in the first stage to the ground. Nova sat there staring at everything he placed down like a well trained dog until Felix gave them permission to consume any and all of it.
Nova wasted no time in expanding their jaw to a ridiculous and monstrous extent then sucking in the materials like a vacuum cleaner. Felix paid a bit of attention to the emotions pouring through their soul bond and smiled at how elated Nova was with all the new materials. It actually made him excited to see how Nova would react to the Demitium. Instead of just dropping it right away, Felix waited until Nova had consumed all the other materials then made sure they were paying attention as he pulled it out of his inventory.
Nova didn’t quite give the reaction Felix was hoping for. Instead of excitement or elation, he felt just confusion. Felix carefully lowered the lump down onto the ground and gave Nova permission. They walked up and pawed at it, sniffed it and even licked it. After circling it a few times, Nova grew into a large metal panther who’s head was almost as tall as Felix was even though all four paws touched the ground. Nova swiped at the material with bright claws and was immediately launched backwards a couple meters from a burst of Fire, Sound, Lightning, Light and Force all at once.
Nova rolled to their feet and cautiously paced back and forth while staring down the lump. After almost a minute they finally approached again and licked the material once again. Now, Felix finally felt something he had been hoping to feel, hunger. Nova finally wanted it so Felix assured them it was all theirs.
The boulder was almost spherical and it’s diameter was at least two thirds of Felix’s height so it was rather massive. The only reason he was able to hold it outside of his inventory was that he was the one holding himself to the ground, he still didn’t have any gravity in his pocket home. Given it’s size, Felix wasn’t expecting Nova to eat the entire thing in one bite but he also didn’t realize, until now, how that was a problem. If Nova tried to take bites out of it, it would fight back.
Either, he or Nova would have to completely drain the material or separate it into smaller pieces in a non-violent way. Luckily for him, Nova seemed to already know what to do. They hopped up, reverting to their kitten form in the air, and landed on the Demitium lump.
Nova curled themselves up and started licking at the material. With each lick, a small stream of the material was sucked off of the lump and into Nova’s maw using their control over matter. Ultimately, it was going to take a while, but eventually they should be able to consume the entire thing.
Felix checked with Nova and made sure they were ok with staying in his pocket home without him then he walked back out into the city council building. He saw Noah talking with Amelia at the table and approached them just as Amelia kissed Noah then walked towards the exit. She waved at him and he smiled, nodded and waved back.
Felix approached the now lone Noah, “I promised Amani I would help her with something as soon as possible so I’m going to go do that. Do you need anything from me right now?”
Noah just gave him a slight nod, “How long is it going to take?”
“Probably just a day or so if I had to guess. Maybe two.”
“Will you set up a permanent portal while you’re there?”
“Yeah, this can be our test run or initial prototype. Figure out the kinks before we expand.”
Noah nodded, “Okay, have fun. Don’t forget about the batteries and molds for the wall shields you promised me.”
“I don’t remember promising you, but I’ll give them to Henry as soon as I get back.”
“Fine. Have fun, don’t die.”
“Thanks, likewise.”
Felix quickly rushed over to Henry’s forge and got his help making the first prototype of a permanent portal anchor that he could test and iterate on. He made two, one for Orselle and one for Atalus. Felix stowed the Orselle anchor and quickly ran the Atalus back to Noah who would keep it safe for now. Once the portal network was opened up, they would put it somewhere outside the city but for now, it would only ever be Felix himself using it so there wasn’t much risk of it being using nefariously.
With all his preparations complete, Felix flew out of the city and up into the mountains a few kilometers then cast the portal spell. With a portal directed at an anchor, the portal required much less mana and was far less complex. He quickly whipped up a simple mold and used his mana control along with some soft inlay material to keep the mana contained to the spell’s channels.
On top of it’s lower cost, in Felix’s short experience, anchored portals were far less prone to errors. As Felix cast the spell, he watched as some minor flaws he had made were completely ironed out as he funneled mana into the spell. He had to fix some initially but once the spell started ramping up, it was like it snapped itself into place. The mana rushing through the spell form pushed itself to one side of the inlay material at the flaws to smooth out the channels.
After a mere 2 million mana, a circle about 2 meters in diameter appeared before him without a sound, flash of light or any other indication of it’s appearance. It did however have light pouring through it from the hot desert sun. Where Felix was, in the mountains near Atalus, the sky was overcast and grey with the sun just a few hours from it’s peak. Through the portal, Felix saw clear skies and a bright, hot desert sun that was a few hours past it’s peak.
Other than the sun and a whole lot of sand, Felix saw nothing. He prepared a handful of spells including a mana shield that would completely encase him then stepped through the portal. He was immediately struck by just how ridiculously hot it was and even put up his hood to try and block some of the light. He looked around the portal and saw a massive sprawling city almost a kilometer behind it.
The walls around the city were made of a sandstone like material and were constantly manned with at least a guard per meter. At the top of the wall, there was a canopy made of wood posts and cloth to protect the guards atop the wall from the blazing sun. Peaking over the wall, Felix saw buildings made of a similar sand stone with canopies stretched across the buildings to block the sun for anyone walking on the roads between them.
He couldn’t see much of the city from his angle just peering over the wall but from what he did see, he was impressed. The only part that stood out to him was the number of active guards. He was pretty sure they weren’t there to stop him, even though they did notice and point him out.
He didn’t approach the city because although Amani should have told them he was coming, he didn’t want to risk them thinking he was an enemy. Luckily, it only took a few minutes for him to spot someone rushing through the desert towards him. He quickly grabbed the portal mold then released his hold on the portal spell and picked up the makeshift anchor he had given Amani from the sand as they approached.
He wasn’t exactly sure how they were moving or who it was, but he saw a mostly humanoid shape rushing towards him. It almost seemed like a ghost made of sand that flowed from the dunes beneath them and billowed out around them.
Eventually he realized it was in fact Amani, in her new armor. She shot over and stopped just a meter to the side of him and surprisingly didn’t spray him with any sand, though he wasn’t sure if she had avoided doing so purposefully or not. The sand around her fell to the ground and revealed her armor which seemed to fit her perfectly, likely due to magic.
Amani just looked at him like she was trying to figure out if he was real or not, “How in the hell…”
Felix shrugged, “Portals. Any interest in setting one up between our cities?”
Amani nodded slowly, “I can see that, I meant how did you create one? Look, how about you help me with this and we can talk about it. Is this what you were busy with while we were in the final vault?”
Felix shrugged again, “Some of it.”
Amani shook her head, “Alright well, follow me back to the city before the next wave.”
Felix cocked a brow, “Wave?”
Amani smirked, “You’ll see.”
Sand twisted up from the dunes and re-encased her legs though left her body visible this time as she shot off back towards the city. Felix flew up a few meters into the air so he didn’t disturb the sand too much then shot off alongside her.
They reached the city in no time and the guards activated some mechanism that caused a small opening in the otherwise seamless wall to turn to sand. As soon as they passed through the opening, the sand reformed itself into the wall leaving no sign that it had opened at all.
Amani gestured upwards then ran, or glided, up the wall with her legs still encased in sand. Felix simply flew up next to her and the guards made room for them atop the walls.
Below the shade of the canopy Felix finally removed his hood then manually shook out his robes to air himself out. Even though his body regulated temperature much more efficiently and even produced less heat as a byproduct, he had still been sweating under the desert sun. He ran mana through his robes instinctively to clean them then remembered, these robes didn’t have that function.
A gruff looking man in plated leather that made no sense for the climate grunted in his direction, “Nice ter see yer a person.”
Felix looked over at the guard that had spoken to him but was at a loss for words.
The man grunted again, “Y’appeared in the middle of the desert outta portal wearing all black. We thought you might be death itself coming to claim our souls.”
Another guard chimed in over their shoulder as they walked by, “We weren’t sure what to do with you until Amani came running and told us she knew you.”
Felix just looked at Amani, “You didn’t tell them when you put the portal anchor down?”
Amani rolled her eyes, “Oh, is that what that was? And no, I didn’t. I was a little rushed mind you. You handed me a random magic item you crafted on the spot. I didn’t know it wasn’t a bomb.”
Felix frowned, “You really think I’d hand you a bomb?”
Amani shrugged, “I can’t be too careful.”
Felix rolled his eyes.
The gruff guard who had initially addressed Felix suddenly yelled out, “Wave incoming! Get yer’selves ready for battle!”
Felix figured the answer to the question he was tempted to ask was right behind him so he simply turned around and looked out into the desert. Right on the horizon, Felix saw a massive cloud of sand gradually approaching them.
He assumed it was actually moving very fast given how far the horizon was on Trenus, but it was hard to tell for that very reason. As it got closer though, it became much clearer that the encroaching cloud of sand hid, or rather was caused by, a massive stampede of creatures.
It didn’t take too long for their forms to become clear enough for Felix to start identifying them. In general, their levels varied from around a hundred to all the way up to 300 with the average around 250. The wave was also an odd amalgamation of creatures with giant wasps, worms, scorpions, rabid dog monsters, some two legged ostrich looking dinosaur things and everything in between.
Honestly, it was an odd sight. In Felix’s experience so far, it was rare that multiple species especially of such vastly different levels co-existed without trying to kill each-other in the multiverse. He couldn’t really think of another situation where he had seen multiple species just ignore each-other unless they were vastly different levels and not even worth the time. In this case, he would have expected them to try and kill each-other but either they all had something more important to do, or they didn’t want to for some reason.
As the wave approached, Felix saw the guards on the walls setting themselves up for battle out of the corner of his eye. Though none of them were high D grade or anywhere near the highest level creatures in the stampede, they prepared themselves anyways. They set up cannons, nets and ballistae then pulled out bows and other long and medium range weaponry including some larger siege equipment.
As soon as the first monsters in the stampede were a few hundred meters or so away, the guards started firing the cannons. At first Felix had thought they had terrible aim but he realized that wasn’t the case at all.
Surprisingly to Felix, they didn’t fire the cannons at the creatures at all, instead they aimed in front of and to the side of the creatures. The creatures in the front, which tended to be some of the lowest level creatures, immediately reacted and changed course. As the rest of the stampede approached, Felix realized this was the goal, simply to redirect the wave of monsters instead of trying to fight them head on.
For the most part, it worked. Catapults, cannons, ballistae and casters with large spells diverted the majority of the wave and convinced them to go around the city. There were stragglers, slightly more tenacious beasts that continued to head directly for the city. Most of them were higher level around 300 but with the combined focus of a couple cannons, some casters and a lot of arrows, they were quickly slain.
Overall the wave of monsters was dealt with far faster than Felix had expected. It had only taken them 20 minutes or so to divert everything and another 10 to deal with the more stubborn creatures.
The guards on the walls seemed to have solutions for everything that came up. When a flying monster approached, they had an explosive shot that would explode midair to divert it. When a creature burrowed under the ground, they had ballista bolts that vibrated when they struck the ground. Even through the sand, the vibrations were enough to divert them.
None of the initial wave tried to actually fight back but some of the stubborn monsters far in the back did. The guards had large metal plates they pulled up with ropes to block the strikes and sometimes the wall would morph into sand to eat the attack.
