Chapter 47: Imperial Mana Relay Core
Max saw a Rift Residue Crystal inside the body of the Mireborn Broodmass. It was constantly providing demonic mana to the Mireborn Broodmass.
He believed he wouldn’t be surprised if the Mireborn Broodmass would be difficult to kill, akin to a zombie.
Max fell into deep thought. Rift Residue Crystal is often the result of residual rift energy condensing into a stable corrupted crystal structure. In other words, a rift had really appeared. A rift is always connected to demonic-aligned external plane. There might really be some demons who appeared into this world and left the place immediately.
Max frowned. However, after considering for a while, he doubted if it would be the case.
A massive rift, enough for even a Greater Demon to cross, wouldn’t simply appear out of a magical backlash. It would simply tore open through the space and conspicuously revealed itself.
Yet, the mission only stated that the Watchtower Outpost was the result of magical backlash, rather than an appearance of a space rift.
Max continued to observe and comprehend deeply the history of the Watchtower Outpost.
An idea instantly struck him.
Imperial Mana Relay Core. He thought.
An Imperial Mana Relay Core was a highly concentrated mana-processing structure designed to stabilize the outpost’s defensive enchantments, distribute mana throughout the Watchtower to aid the advancement of different classes, synchronize arcane constructs and barrier systems, and the most important was how it maintained long-range emergency signaling arrays.
Imperial Mana Relay Core was difficult for the Empire to produce, and it was costly—at least, a million gold coins.
Since the Watchtower was definitely the Empire’s biggest advantage against demonic invasion and since it was located deep within unstable marsh territory, the relay core operated continuously to maintain defensive infrastructure.
From Max’s knowledge, it was difficult for the Imperial Mana Relay Core to cause a magical backlash.
However, Max speculated that there might have been a catastrophic mana synchronization failure during an emergency defensive operation.
After all, Imperial Mana Relay Core wasn’t supposed to be in a Watchtower Outpost—a place that constantly received emergency attack every now and then.
If there was a sudden emergency defensive operation—eventually, the Imperial Mana Relay Core would be overwhelmed, inevitably resulting to a mana synchronization failure.
The imperial remains that Max collected had also pointed to his speculation.
At peak instability of the Imperial Mana Relay Core might have briefly tore open a small rift. But the amount of energy is still nothing compared to an actual rift. Hence, the entire system might have collapsed, including the small rift. Nevertheless, it still produced a rift residue crystal, and the broodmass, which definitely came from the small rift, absorbed it into its central body mass.
A Mireborn Broodmass usually needed an ample amount of time to grow larger until it could absorb the rift residue crystal to its body. Hence, the rift residue crystal might have enough time to be openly exposed in the chamber, leaving the chamber at its current state.
Now that Max had a speculation of what had occurred in the past, he now had an idea of the present’s situation.
With his mana sensitivity at the intermediate proficiency level, he barely detected every place and beings that posed a threat to him.
Aside from the Mireborn Broodmass and its spawns, Max detected the unusual, corrupted mana, often concentrated like mana threads, below the flooded floor. Those were connected to the Mireborn Broodmass.
Max understood they were similar to the mana threads.
Then, there was also the environmental disadvantage. The amount of demonic mana inside the chamber was immense.
The demonic mana alone reduced visibility, causing the scout to fail spotting at the rift residue crystal inside the body of the Mireborn Broodmass.
Furthermore, prolonged exposure inside the chamber would cause accelerated fatigue as it also increased mana instability.
Max gazed at the Mireborn Broodmass again and gauged the distance. Twenty-five meters.
He turned around and returned to his party members as Jasper followed him behind.
He glanced at Rhayne, who was grasping the bow tightly. She was excited to fight against the boss, but for the first time, she felt terrified. The Apocalypse Online was too realistic, as though if she failed and died here, she could also die in real life.
Of course, such notion was absurd. Yet, Rhayne couldn’t shake the feeling that at some point, it might really occur.
"Rhayne." Max’s voice startled her awake. She hastily stood up and faced him, waiting for his instruction.
He said, "You might have to spend all your fire arrows in this battle."
Rhayne was stunned. She nodded and cheerfully exclaimed. "Leave the boss to me."
Max shrugged. He turned towards Clara and asked, "Is your purify skills has a continuous effect?"
Clara gripped her staff tightly. She shook her head and stammered, "I-I didn’t have."
Max wasn’t surprised. He already knew that purify skills didn’t have a continuous effect, but he asked out of hope that Clara had since she practiced it deeply.
He inwardly sighed. If it isn’t because they are at D-Rank and have a complete set of equipments, they might just be useless.
He said, "The demonic mana inside is immense. We can’t fight there. We can only use distance. Me and Rhayne will fight in the distance while, the rest will hold against the spawns. They are just weak, just one swing of Eva’s sword is enough to kill them."
Rhayne asked in a grave tone, "but their numbers are immense. It’s like fighting against ants."
Max said, "We don’t have a choice. Do we just let the Mireborn Broodmass cultivate until it endangers the village, then?"
Rhayne didn’t care about the village, but the NPCs do. Their face was grim. They gritted their weapons tightly, knowing this might be their last battle against the demon.
They stared at Max with eyes filled with hope. Even if they would die, they felt assured that Max would continue to fight demons on their behalf.
Max let them process their emotions and thought first before laying out his plan.
At this point, he had already accepted that whatever the outcome, he should accept it.
Even if he might be the only one alive...
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A/N: Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to show your supports by giving golden tickets, powerstones, gifts, and reviews! It means a lot since this is participating for WSA.
