The trial candidates had pulled back from Elias by half a step, and Elias noticed it without turning his head.
He sighed inside his head. The fragile camaraderie that had been building up between them was laid on shaky foundations, and he was not surprised that when push came to shove, cracks would begin showing
Sera's hand had not left her sword, but her grip had changed. She was no longer holding the hilt to fight; she was holding it to leave.
This was all the sign that Elias needed to see that the people he had called down here with him were preparing to leave, and he could not blame them.
However, Elias needed them, and so he could not just let them leave.
As much as he wanted to tear his way through the horde in front of him, the truth was that when enough drops of water can wear through stone.
His Lumina Constructs and all of his talents could technically make him fight forever, but that was if every piece fell into the right place at the right time.
As much as he would like to believe he was invincible, he was not; his body would wear out, and he would pay the price.
There was a reason that he slept for hours, even days, after he had strained his talent, and that was because he was using a resource he could not yet quantify.
He could heal and fight for weeks, his talent giving him stamina and vitality, but Elias suspected that if he did something like that, then he would need to sleep for months just to recover.
That was not a serious problem, but what was concerning was that he did not know if he would collapse during the battle.
Elias knew that his status screen could not tell him everything about his condition, and the fact that when he was a mortal, he needed to kill just so he did not rot to death had not disappeared. Now, it seemed as if he needed to sleep after exerting himself.
He had been fighting for hours above the ground, and even though he was in top shape, that invisible sleep was creeping up on him.
If he fought alone against these hordes, he could spend weeks here fighting this fight, and if he suddenly felt sleep crawling into his senses, he would be helpless to resist.
Elias's mind whirled around, trying to figure out what he needed to do to keep these five here with him.
He had perhaps fifteen seconds before fear stopped being a feeling in the four behind him and became a decision.
Elias did not think he could call on their pride, or fears… then he glanced at the mountain of flesh, the womb from which all of these creatures were being produced, and a thought occurred to him.
Why is this so similar to the trial I had inside the Fragment of Divinity? If that is the case, then perhaps…
His perception swept forward, and he smiled when he got his answers.
He turned, but his movements were slow; this was deliberate because he feared that sudden movements would trigger the flight response in these young Siphons.
Elias had a weird relationship with death and danger, but he was smart enough to know that not everyone shared his madness, and learning to deal with other people with a different mindset than yours was winning half the battle.
"Look at it," he said.
Elias kept his voice low, but since he was no longer holding back the deepness of his voice, it was like his voice was a command from the heavens themselves.
Everyone here was a genius, and Elias had noted that they were all at the Mist Phantom level, which was a ridiculous achievement for such young Siphons, but again, this was what talent and resources could do.
"Forget the number of the hordes," Elias said again. "Tell me what stage it is."
He could see realization beginning to enter their eyes, and Theron whispered,
"It's… Mist Phantom?! But how can that be? To produce such a number of children, then this creature should comfortably be at the Void Sentinel level if not higher."
Elias did not know if this was the work of the Commander or if the candidates here were familiar with the Heavenly Restriction, which he suspected had suppressed the abilities of this creature, but he remained silent because he had already planted the seed, and now it was up to them to water it by themselves.
"Mist Phantom," Sera spoke, her words coming out flat. Then it came out again, slightly disbelieving. "Mist Phantom."
She turned her head a fraction toward Theron, who was still frowning despite this revelation. "Theron. Look at it. It's at Mist Phantom."
Theron did not need to look because his perception as a Beast-Speaker was broader than a Siphon's because they had to listen for the small lives in the dirt as well as the big lives standing in front of him, and broader senses meant he could read the size of the thing in front of him faster than Sera could.
He had detected this wrongness, and he knew that everything about this creature and the size of the horde was not making any sense, and he did not want to have anything to do with it, but Elias had called out its stage, and with this, he knew that he could no longer run.
"Is this what I think it is?" He said, finally, with a sigh, "I know all big cities have it, but the fact that your Heavenly Restriction can penetrate this deeply into the earth is astonishing."
Tarian finally spoke after a while, "What, do you believe that my father would have sent us all down here to die?" He took a step forward, drawing all eyes towards him, "Stormfall is a Level Three city, and without being registered into the Central Rune Authority, the Heavenly Restriction caps every expression of power at Mist Phantom, regardless of what is actually under the skin. The thing in front of you is bound by the same rule that binds every other thing in this city. It can act at Mist Phantom. It cannot act above it. Not while the Restriction holds."
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