Chapter 187 (2/17): Mana Wall

When Beitra’s subordinate elemental led them to the leaders’ meeting, Camilla found that Beitra had erected a table and eleven chairs around it. He was already seated in one while Cadaelia sat in another. Celrantis had three B-ranked leaders, Trista had one more, and the other cities sent a combined five B-rank parties. The last seat was for Ismelda, but with all eleven seats filled, there was none left for Camilla and Kagriss.

In the end, Camilla and Kagriss stood on either side of Ismelda. Beitra glared at them, dissatisfied with their presence. “What are you two doing here? You weren’t invited!”

Camilla glared right back. “What if I don’t want to leave? Are you going to wait until I do for as long as it takes? Or are you going to have someone drag me off?”

The questions left no room for Beitra to maneuver, and he was stuck with scathing words stuck in his throat, unable to come out. What was wrong with him today? First, he met Ismelda and was told to shut up, and now a measly subordinate dared oppose him as well? But he couldn’t say anything, or he’d be playing into the minion’s hands.

He gritted his teeth and looked at Ismelda. “Are all of your subordinates so disrespectful? Do you allow them to speak when their betters are talking?”

Camilla was expecting Ismelda to explain that they were not her subordinates, but instead, Ismelda grinned and fired right back at Beitra using a hole in his logic. “Weren’t you the one who spoke to her first? How can you fault her in replying?”

She ignored Camilla’s burning glare, but when Kagriss put her hands on her shoulder and let a bit of undead mana pass through her palm into her shoulder, Ismelda shivered. But for the sake of annoying Kagriss, she shut her mouth and refused to correct Beitra’s misunderstanding.

With a completely straight face, she brushed off Kagriss’s hand, all while holding Beitra’s gaze evenly.

Beitra didn’t look very happy, and even his usually passive face morphed into one of rage. He opened his mouth, about to reply to Ismelda, but Cadaelia quickly slapped her wand onto the table, producing a loud smack.

“Okay, okay, that’s quite enough,” she said, adjusting her glasses once all eyes were on her. Even Beitra recovered. “Are we here to quarrel like children or are we here to discuss a solution?”

Camilla had to hold in laughter. So much for the captain of the First Division. From what it seems like, Cadaelia seemed more like the true leader behind the scenes, acting as an advisor to Beitra. Not to say that Beitra was powerless. Why tell a lie that was so easily proven wrong?

Her words poured water on Beitra’s boiling anger, cooling his head instantly. With just a glare at Camilla and Ismelda both, he smacked the table. “Alright, let’s start the meeting. What do we know?”

“Wait, do we know?” Ismelda echoed, before anyone else could speak. “Obviously that there’s a wall of raw mana ahead of us with unknown interactions,” she said. “Looks like we’re going to have to find a way past it.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Beitra demanded. “The question is how we get past this level!”

One of the other leaders raised his hand. “We expand the tunnel sidewards, or up, or down. Maybe we were just unlucky that we hit a wall?”

The other people looked at him like he was stupid. He quickly looked away, blushing.

But with him standing out first, more and more people began to follow his lead, leaving their suggestion on the table.

One of them picked up a rock, wrapped it around a strand of hair, and tossed it at the wall. It bounced back with no change whatsoever. “The wall looks relatively safe if you touch it. No exchanges, no burst in mana. No nothing. Why can’t we just continue as is or are you somehow unable to dig past the wall?” he asked Beitra.

“Of course I can go past the wall! I also touched the wall. It didn’t feel like much, but I still don’t like it.”

“What if we break open the whole from a distance and then send a scout through for a few minutes? If everything is fine, then it’s safe for us to come,” another leader suggested. “That strand of hair doesn’t prove anything, especially when the mana wall isn’t even exposed. Having a live person try and go through the wall is more suitable for our needs. If something bad happens, we could pull them back.”

Instantly, several of the gathered leaders nodded at the suggestion. It was a toned back version of the reckless move that the rock-thrower preferred. Beitra looked around, looking for dissent. His gaze landed and focused on Ismelda, who looked unconcerned.

The only thing she cared about was humiliating Beitra in this meeting. Everything else was just extra for her now. Naturally, she wasn’t opposed to the plan. With one of the two most prominent individuals agreeing to the plan, the solution was half set in stone already. However, Beitra could just disagree without a better plan of his own, and he didn’t so he nodded.

“Then we’ll do as you say and expand the tunnel past the wall and send a scout for now. Does anyone have anything to add?” Beitra asked.

Someone raised his hands. “Who’s the scout going to be?”

The table became quiet all of a sudden. No one wanted to be the first to say something and stand out as a volunteer. Beitra grinned. His chance for revenge finally came. He stood up. “In that case, why don’t we have Ismelda handle it? She’s a very big proponent of the idea after all.”

Ismelda scowled, but before she could even open her mouth to protest, Beitra clapped his hands. “If there’s nothing else, then that’ll be it for today. Thank you.” He smiled at everyone; his smile was happier than it has been for a while.

Cadaelia looked apologetically at Ismelda but said nothing else. Soon, all the party leaders returned to their parties to break the news and inform them about further instructions, leaving just a red-faced Ismelda sitting at the table with Camilla and Kagriss behind her.

Ismelda gritted her teeth. However, when Ismelda closed her mouth, the sound of grinding teeth was still there, and Camilla realized that it was her who was making the sound. How could she not be angry?

That damned Beitra volunteered them!

She was cautious at heart and did not like taking too many risks, and volunteering as a scout topped the list of things she did not want to do right now. Not with the holy mana so dense in that wall of raw mana.

“Camilla, are you okay?”

“No,” she spat. “I want to rip him apart!” She didn’t bother hiding her voice and several hunters around her looked up in alarm, but she was too angry to care.

“If you don’t want to scout, I can do it,” Kagriss said, patting her own chest. “I have confidence that I’ll be fine.”

“Confidence from what?” Camilla shook her head. “That won’t do at all. I have a stronger body than you had a higher resistance to holy magic. No, I’ll go.” Her mind spun and she bared her teeth, hissing under her breath. “He’s taking my place. Kagriss, give me a hand.”

Although Kagriss didn’t show her anger outwards often, Camilla clearly felt her animosity toward Beitra. It didn’t take long for Kagriss to agree to her plan, and they even got Ismelda to help. With Ismelda helping, the success rate was practically a hundred percent. How many people can resist Ismelda’s full power from behind without warning?

Even if Camilla doubled in power, she still didn’t have the confidence to guarantee that she could. The raw power of a troll was just too much.

It didn’t take long for the various leaders to convey the plan to their parties and a few minutes later, resting time was over. As the main characters in the plan, Ismelda, Camilla, and Kagriss took center stage. The other protagonist was Beitra, who walked up late, a smug smile on his stony face.

“Good luck, everyone,” he said, and nodded at Ismelda.

Ismelda didn’t return the nod. Instead, she merely said what she didn’t manage to say at the table before Beitra cut her off. In a way, the rest of the table was also just as culpable for going along with Beitra’s idea. “I didn’t agree to be a scout,” she said with a dangerous, thin smile.

However, Beitra just laughed. “I guess you’ll just have to sacrifice something for the good of the team! Everyone should contribute something, right?” The last question was directed at the other several hundred hunters, who all nodded in agreement.

No matter what, in a place like this, numbers were a huge advantage. Without sufficient strength, even Ismelda could not go against the decisions of the masses. But she just nodded and smiled. “I understand.”

A look of alarm crossed Beitra’s head, but it quickly disappeared. He merely took Ismelda’s reaction as her giving in, and he quickly went about his job. He walked up close to the wall where he had stopped digging and placed his hand on the ground.

Using the ground as a conduit, he drove his mana into the stone wall and molded the stone remotely, pushing back the material that had suddenly turned as smooth as liquid. As the stone retreated, it revealed a second wall: a most immaterial wall of ghostly material that shimmered in the dim light.

Everyone sucked in a breath. There was enough raw mana in the mana wall to be visible to the naked eye. No one knew what would happen if something passed through.

But they’ll soon find out.

The changes in the rock behind the wall was clearly visible. Instead of looking as smooth and even as the tunnel behind them, the new section of the tunnel in front of them was bumpy on the ground and the ceiling—on all sides.

Beitra scowled in concentration, trying to form the rock correctly through the mana wall’s interference.

“Alright, things are almost done. Ismelda, are you ready? Who are you sending? That black haired one, the goldie, or yourself?” he managed to ask, voice strained.

“None of us. Go eat dirt.”

Beitra did not understand what he just heard. Why did Ismelda tell him to eat dirt? How dare they go against the wishes of everyone present?

He tried to stand up, look back to see what was happening, but it was too little, too late.

There was a sound of warning, the flow of mana, and all a sudden a foot slammed into his back, sending him lurching forward. He tried to flail his arms and regain his balance, only to find them bound to his side by two restraints, one gold and one black.

The shimmering wall of mana rose up to meet him.

“Noooo!” he managed to choke out before he fell face-first through the wall and his face slammed into the ground on the other side.

“Beitra!”

“Captain!”

Cries of concern rose from behind Camilla, Kagriss, and Ismelda. No one had managed to react in time to stop them from kicking Beitra through the wall, and by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late.

A few hunters from Trista turned red in the eyes. “How dare you do that to the captain!”

“Don’t think for a second that you’ll be able to leave this place alive!”

However, Ismelda unleashed her full might, the vast power hidden with her body pouring out, rushing over the gathered hunters. “My whole life, I listen to only one person. Whether or not I leave is up to her words alone. You? You’re not even worthy of debating my actions.”

One moment her hand was empty and the next, the long, curved sword sheathed in that beautiful red scabbard was in her hands. Ismelda bent her knees and placed her hand on the sword hilt, preparing to draw her sword in an instant.

All of a sudden, the atmosphere became as volatile as a mixture of polar opposite mana.

“Halt!” An annoyed female voice interrupted them all as Cadaelia shoved her way out of the crowd and stood between Ismelda and the Regalius Litha hunters. “Look, the captain’s fine.”

The hunter looked over at Beitra and found him struggling to his feet, trying to break through the restrictions that Camilla and Kagriss put on him. His teeth were bared and his clothes were disheveled from the fall, but he was very much alive despite having passed through the mana wall.

Seeing their leader safe, the hunters calmed down slightly, but Ismelda showed no sign of putting away her sword.

Cadaelia coughed, trying to calm the hostile atmosphere. “Ismelda, why did you do that?”

“Why not?” Camilla answered in Ismelda’s place. “We merely ‘volunteered’ him just like he ‘volunteered’ us. He just has to ‘sacrifice something for the good of the team,’ right?” She repeated Beitra’s words and enjoyed watching Cadaelia grow awkward.

What can Cadaelia say?

With a sigh, Cadaelia turned to her subordinates and shook her head. “Stand down.”

The hunter who had challenged Ismelda still looked angry. “But they didn’t do anything! The captain already sacrificed so much to dig the tunnel all the way here! What did they do?”

“We provided some motivation for him to test out the wall, does that count?” Kagriss said with a completely straight face. After a moment of silence as Camilla processed that Kagriss told a joke, she burst out laughing. Her laugh was infectious and soon the hunters from Celrantis began to laugh as well, making the Trista hunter even redder.

“Besides, none of you contributed anything either, so it’s not like we’re the only one. Does anyone else want to volunteer? Although there’s no point.” Camilla demonstrated, sticking her hand through the mana wall. All she felt was a slight tingle. She wiggled her fingers. “See?”

Before she could pull her hand back, she felt the restrictions she cast on Beitra break and a hard finger closed around her finger, pulling her through the mana wall. She hit the ground on her back and she immediately rolled away, just in time to avoid a fist coming crashing down next to her face, cracking the stone.

Beitra’s eyes glowed red and a moment later, he punched again, only to miss once more as Camilla simply moved her head.

Clink…

Beitra froze as a white blade appeared next to his neck, pressed into his stony skin. His skin should’ve been a powerful defense rivaling metal, yet the sword parted it with the slightest bit of pressure. He felt a chill down his spine and he raised his hand.

Camilla crawled out from underneath him and patted herself down.

“Don’t blame us for this,” she said. “Learn to be more friendly and less bad things will happen to you.” It took a half second, way longer than Ismelda, but her greatsword appeared in her hand. “I’m not afraid. Don’t think you can bully us into doing what you want.”

Although he loathed to, Beitra nodded, and Ismelda lifted the sword from his neck. He gritted his teeth but said nothing.