Chapter 209: Chapter 209

One minute. That was how much time it took him to dispatch a cluster. Admittedly, Tommaso helped him with the last two, and Severa only took about five seconds for each and had already been waiting for him at the end of the corridor. He took this as a personal victory anyway.

“Good job. Finished?” Severa asked without looking back. “If so, hurry up.”

He willed the stones to return, and the remaining Stupenstones levitated back into his satchel.

Around the bend, the corridor constricted. Zan and the Grand Luminary were already there, facing the same chaos that had plagued Fabrisse’s group: gusts of magical wind whipping through the corridor, two Mantis Humanoids, and a dense swarm of Chasm Nymphs.

The wind hit them next, the same gust that made it nearly impossible for Fabrisse to stand straight earlier. The Grand Luminary raised his hands calmly, and his entire body began to glow with an undulating light. It looked smooth and ethereal, completely devoid of the colorful sparks usually seen in Thaumaturgy.

Then the all-powerful wind just . . . bent and twisted around him. The chaotic currents were drawn into arcs, each gust following a precise, ribboned path. The Chasm Nymphs and smaller swarms were funneled along these currents, harmlessly directed away from the two. It was almost like watching a sculptor mold the wind itself.

Zan, slightly behind the older man, glowed in parallel. Her glow was slightly different, more rigid along her limbs like a blade of energy tracing her movements. Her left hand fired bursts of a spell Fabrisse immediately recognized as classic thaumaturgy, a version of Light Lance he’d seen Liene used. It had a focused, linear trajectory, shooting straight at the swarm. But her right hand was something else entirely. Fabrisse couldn’t place it. It was like a flowing stream of water, if the water looked like aurora borealis and bent around the wind. The insects got caught around that stream and just dissipated in the same way the Mantis Humanoid had disappeared earlier under the Grand Luminary’s spell.

“Damn,” Tommaso said. “Does that magic have a name?”

“I believe it’s called the Aural Discipline, though I do not know the inner workings,” Severa replied.

The Grand Luminary angled toward Zan. His lips moved in the same string of words Fabrisse couldn’t understand, but felt the annoyance behind it. Zan’s left fingers froze. She lowered her left hand completely, no longer casting, and redirected all her focus to the flowing stream in her right. The auric energy bent around the gusting winds like water following a riverbed, and the swarm collided with it, evaporating into dust.

The Mantis Humanoids reacted with tar-like shots striking directly at the Luminary. The dark globs slowed as they travelled, and never reached him. Instead, they were redirected by invisible currents that followed the elegant paths of his aural energy, pushing the black projectiles back along perfectly bent trajectories toward the Mantis Humanoids themselves. Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs NoveI-Fire.ɴet

The force of the tar struck the creature’s exoskeleton. A small, smoking puncture appeared on its thoracic shell, before a glowing gust of wind struck at the exact same place. The humanoid staggered, while the second humanoid instinctively leapt back as another tar glob struck near its shoulder, leaving a streak of scorched black across its armored surface.

The next steps were systematic, and the Luminary guided and Zan mirrored him. Together, they orchestrated the swarm and the wind, manipulating the battlefield as if it were a single, malleable instrument. Minute by minute, the two humanoids were forced into a controlled funnel and dispatched without the Luminary ever having to solve any puzzle on the wall.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Severa finally let herself exhale. “Their control over wind corridors is remarkable, but they make it look easy because they manipulate the environment. Their spells aren’t inherently stronger than thaumaturgy; just exquisitely adapted to this one type of battlefield.”

Tommaso chuckled from beside Fabrisse. “We didn’t say it was stronger, though.”

Zan glanced back at Fabrisse, Severa, and Tommaso and angled her head as she spoke clearly in Fabrisse’s language, Raslani. “Please come with us. We could sense the final monster very nearby, and we would need all the help we could.”

Fabrisse hesitated as Zan motioned for them to follow. He glanced at Severa, expecting her to balk, but she stepped forward. She was finally agreeing.

Then the Grand Luminary’s voice rose in a broken, heavily accented Raslani. “Your magic . . . irrelevant.”

Fabrisse hadn’t known the man could speak Raslani at all. The words carried an unmistakable weight, like the man was never in doubt of what he said.

Severa stopped stepping forward. “Irrelevant? How many thaumaturges have you seen?”

The Luminary’s gaze didn’t waver. His own eyes were steady as he returned her stare. “How you killed the mantis man?” He asked, almost with amusement.

And Severa just stared back.

Tommaso stepped in between them, hands raised in an almost pleading gesture. “Uh . . . maybe we can all—”

Zan mirrored his action, tilting her head and spreading her hands in a calming gesture toward the Luminary. “Please. It is not the time to argue .”

But neither Severa nor the Luminary relented. Their stares were locked. He did not flinch. She did not back down.

Finally, the Luminary gave a subtle, almost imperceptible nod toward the corridor ahead, his gaze still fixed on Severa. “See how your magic does next monster.”

Fabrisse took a step back.

Severa’s lips twitched, but she finally exhaled, letting her glare slide sideways to Fabrisse and Tommaso. “We shall see who’s irrelevant when we’re done.”

Tommaso shook his head. “Okay, okay, don’t start the apocalypse before the real one.”

Fabrisse took another step back. They were talking about the final boss around the corner, and this was the sort of co-operation he would expect to see.

As the newly-formed party turned the corner into the final stretch of corridor, he could already feel it. This battle would not end well.

They walked last as the walls darkened. Fabrisse noticed the runes had been wiped clean, leaving only faint scratches in the stone where the sigils had once burned.

Zan walked slightly ahead of her, silent. This was the Zan he was familiar with, always just looking ahead with some kind of hyper-focus while avoiding every possible opportunity for a conversation.

After a long stretch of silence, her voice finally cut in, soft and almost hesitant. “So . . . were you also roped into this?”

“Kind of,” he admitted.

“I didn’t expect to see you again . . . . You didn’t seem . . . the fighting type.”

“Everybody is a fighter in the Jade Kingdom, Fabrisse,” she said. He expected her to elaborate more, but she didn’t.

This was the most anticlimactic reunion ever.

The corridor ended abruptly. Ahead, the dungeon gave way to a chamber so vast that Fabrisse could not see the ceiling. Light—or the closest approximation—spilled unevenly from somewhere far above, glinting off walls streaked with veins of black stone that looked heavily metamorphosed, with layers compressed into almost metallic hardness. This must have existed here for ages, if that stone had occurred naturally.

Severa stopped first, then the Luminary. Tommaso’s usual grin vanished, replaced by a sharp line of unease. A shape hovered in the ceiling’s darkness, vast and impossible to measure, its wings—or something like wings—stirring the stagnant air in undulating waves. It was not insect, not fully materialized, not fully shadow, and the distortion around it twisted the tar black hues into large, gaping voids where you’d expect a head or torso. He could not at all tell which creature he was looking at.

Yet he knew it. This was the real monster.