Discord: discord .gg /eHuxNeZfyS [Come chat with me]
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
You.tube: @KeanuEugene [Giving away all my writing knowledge]
CHAPTER START---
Standing at the front of the ship, Oberon sees the rocky coast in the distance. Under the light of a full moon coast, he uses Telescopic Lens to look at the shore, seeing a barren and desolate landscape with low-hanging black fog a few miles inland.
Moving his gaze along the coast, he sees a small abandoned city with a singular tall tower in the middle of it.
"I see the lighthouse, but everything is abandoned," he reports to everyone as they gather on the decks.
"Any grass?" Rixian asks.
He focuses his Spell to search the coast, finding patches of greenery. "Yeah, the Death Magic hasn't reached this far yet. Our information is still good, for now. But looks like it's only a few dozen miles out. The mountains on the horizon inland are black and rocky, dead dirt."
Osian sighs, tapping his chin as he considers their next moves. "Alright, we'll head straight for the settlement. Are you fine moving the three ships?"
"Yeah, it's no problem," Oberon says as they close in on the coast, seeing the destroyed docks. Where all the places that should have been were gone, decayed by the Death Magic infested ocean below.
As they get to the docks, Oberon raises his hands, lifting the three ships with ease and floating them inland. Rixian takes out a journal, reviewing the notes their intel division gathered and directing him to move them through the city.
Above the buildings, they come to the middle of the city where the decrepit lighthouse is, noting the massive plaza below. The streets and buildings leading to the plaza are all cobblestone, yet the ground in the area around the lighthouse was solid dirt, the obvious work of Earth Magic.
"Do we knock?" Oberon asks as they hover above the buildings low to the plaza.
"We need more space, the ships won't fit there," Rixian says as he leaps off the ships, descending the hundred feet to the dirt and aiming his pistols at nearby buildings. He squeezes the trigger a few times, and each shot releases his Bullet Magic.
Specially enchanted bullets that create different effects, these create massive horizontal vortexes that blast and tear away entire city blocks, clearing space for Oberon to lower the ships.
Osian leaps to the ground beside his son, placing his hands on the ground and using Earth Magic to create mounds of soft dirt, shaping it to cradle the ships as they gently rest within, then reinforces the solid dirt to handle the weight.
"You should be fine to let go now," he says to Oberon, and the boy leaves the ships to enter the plaza.
Unlike Rixian and Osian, he doesn't have the Purifying Flame Enchantment on his hand, instead, he is protected from Death Magic due to the strange properties of Cosmic.
"That Magic is still pretty cool," Oberon says to Rixian, while the Wizard Saint walks past them to the dirt.
"Says the boy with the Ultimate Fairy Magics."
"Doesn't mean yours isn't cool…"
After a few moments, the large dirt area moves, and an Earth Golem emerges from the ground. Its twenty-foot-tall bulky figure looks around, and none of the expedition members take a fighting stance.
Instead, Oberon tries to memorize each movement, and Osian gently waves to it. "We brought supplies. Your friend made it to Ishgar, we're here to help," he says to it.
The golem nods and melds back into the dirt, and a minute later a tall man in a tattered military uniform rises from the dirt. Before he can speak a single word, Osian draws his blade and slashes at it from a distance, faster than anyone here can react.
A wisp of white flame slams into the man and cloaks him, enchanting him in its power to protect him from the Death Magic.
"A defensive Spell," Osian says, sword already back in the scabbard before anyone can process what happened. "It protected us from the Death Magic so we could make it here."
The man looks at the mark floating above his hand, glowing white and warding off death. He pushes aside any other thoughts, only taking these people at their word, for any help is worth risking his life.
"Thank you for coming here. But we should speak inside. The rain carries death," he looks up at the clouds. "And tonight appears dangerous."
"We need to get our ships inside," Osian says. "Your messenger told us about the entrance, but I don't want to accidentally collapse your bunker."
The man nods and clasps his hands together, creating a large glowing brown Magic Circle that encompasses everyone in the plaza and the ships. The cobblestone ground becomes soft dirt, then descends like an elevator, taking them hundreds of feet beneath the earth before sealing above them.
For the final hundred feet of the shaft, the man swaps to Stone Make Magic, using solid stone to reinforce the place below hard dirt, better protecting them against the dangerous Death Magic rainwater.
Oberon studies his actions thoroughly while everyone hops off the ships, now deep underground at the mouth of a large stone tunnel with a bright light at the other end of it.
"We have supplies for your people, and some equipment for our mission. Just show us where we can set up…"
---1 Hour Later…
In a city-sized underground cavern, reinforced by massive stone pillars and solid walls on all sides, hundreds of small buildings are closely packed together with an underground river flowing through the middle of the settlement.
On the east and west walls are similar tunnels to the entrance through which the river flows, and all around the settlement are people quickly moving about with hope and excitement brought by the newcomers.
Oberon floats above, taking in all the sights, seeing people looking up at him and smiling, waving, enjoying that this is one of the few places where his reputation doesn't precede him.
"Oberon!" He looks down to see one of the Rune Knight Captains calling out to him, waving from a small and newly constructed command post.
On the rooftop, they have the Long Range Communication Lacrima set up, connected to a few devices through cables, and on the ground floor the monks are busy sharing food with the malnourished people of the settlement.
While descending to the rooftop, he sees some of the monks journeying farther into the settlement and to the connected tunnels, ready to call everyone from the other two settlements to share the food.
"Will we have enough food?" he asks while landing on the roof, walking to the man that called him down. "I didn't expect this many people to survive this kind of nightmare."
The man is down on one knee fixing a mechanism in the device, not bothering to look back at Oberon while speaking. "Those big crates are filled with Storage Devices that only have food and water, medicine too. Plus some of the monks that came with us have Food Creation Magic. They can't eat what they make, but it's filling and nutritious for others. Doesn't taste too bad either."
"I'll be sure to learn that one," Oberon mutters. "So, what do you need from me?"
"A jump start?" the man points up at a device connected to the large Lacrima. "This place is a lot deeper down than we thought. The frequency is already set, but we need a big push to get past all this rock and establish the connection above ground, then we can handle the rest with the Lacrima."
"Are you sure? I mean, this is a lot. I'm not really good at holding back my Magic Energy."
"Doubt you could break Etherion. We're connecting to the Satellite Square. It's not just a weapon, it also amplifies the Magic Council's communication systems, and lets us teleport to any place with a marker, but only from Era. Your Magic Energy will be converted and connected to Etherion, then we'll handle the rest."
"Huh, so that's how this little Lacrima can reach Ishgar," Oberon says, studying the carriage-sized Lacrima Crystal. "I was curious about that since I figured to reach across the ocean it'd need to be bigger than the guildhall, since there aren't any relay points between us."
"Etherion is the Magic council's relay point, and we also have special permission to request its main application if needed."
"The energy beam? But, I thought the Magic Council would never use that."
The man gets up and moves to set up the device for Oberon. "They'd never use it against people, especially not at full power. But since Hacot is a dead nation with no life on most of it, if one of Zeref's monsters is causing all of this and happens to be too strong for a pair of Wizard Saints. King Osian will just mark a location and have Etherion handle it."
"Wow, that strong."
"Part of it is that they've had to threaten Alvarez with it a few times, but they've never had a documented use of it. Showing off you're capable by firing a shot is important," the man taps the device a few times then connects a SE-Plug, and hands it to Oberon. "Be gentle, we only brought a few of those."
Oberon places it on his wrist and takes a deep breath, then for a fraction of a second releases a drop of Magic Energy into it. The SE-Plug around his wrist instantly sparks and heats up, smoking on his hand. But the devices instantly connect to the Satellite Square.
The man sighs and takes the destroyed SE-Plug from Oberon. "Let's hope we don't have to do that too many times."
After a few minutes of talking, Rixian and Osian join them at the communication hub, both wearing serious expressions.
"How'd it go?" Oberon asks, and in response Osian takes out a large map and has it hover for everyone to see.
He points to a line drawn through the landmass of Hacot, a few dozen miles north of their current location. "They call that the Death Line. It's where the main Death Magic is, and it's always growing south, toward us.
In simple terms, we have three days to get to the largest mountain on the northern coast, where the capital city was. Then we collect intel and either solve this problem, or return here. Within the week, the weather in this region will create a natural border that isolates Hacot from the most, so it'll be impossible to transport all these people out of here."
"He wasn't happy about that," Rixian says, referring to the man running this settlement. "Everyone here would rather just abandon the country, and I can't really blame them. But the logistics of transporting tens of thousands of people to Ishgar isn't something we can easily accomplish. Killing whatever is causing this will likely be easier."
The Rune Knight Captain walks over and hands Osian a special palm-sized Lacrima. "This is the marker for Etherion. If you can't solve the problem but it can, leave this there and run."
"Bad call," Rixian says as his father pockets the Lacrima. "Beneath those mountains is a whole mess of volcanic activity. We fire Etherion and we need to be ready to say bye-bye to Hacot."
"Only for a minimal powered blast," the man says. "If you take out the entire mountain it should be fine."
Osian coughs to interrupt them. "Changing the geography of a nation and destroying their people's sacred mountain will be the last resort. For now, we need to move out. We have three days to get this done, these people have been forced to live underground for long enough…"
CHAPTER END---
Discord: discord .gg /eHuxNeZfyS [Come chat with me]
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
You.tube: @KeanuEugene [Giving away all my writing knowledge]