Chapter 134: Chapter 129: Surgical Strikes

“Amelia, thirty seconds and then we go.” Rose said.

Amelia nodded, turning her attention towards the group she had picked as most likely to be next to fire. She drew up a spell to teleport herself and Rose over there, then halted the execution, waiting for Rose’s signal.

“Now!”

Amelia executed the spell, and suddenly the two of them found themselves in the midst of a group of very shocked-looking mages. “Surprise!” She exclaimed, smiling maliciously. “Oh, and welcome to the winning team!”

Rose rolled her eyes and tapped the ground with a foot, causing roots to appear and entangle the stunned mages. It was a rough situation for the mages; with a spell of the magnitude and sloppiness they were casting, attempting to stop the casting early would be met with not-insignificant backlash, but if they did kept going they get the spell off at the cost of being captured without a fight.

It seemed that whatever training or instructions they had dictated that they continued on with their spell, and that was quite possibly the worst decision they could have made. Amelia’s quick look around indicated that there were no enemies of any considerable threat nearby, and that meant she was free to insert herself into the spell.

That was the major flaw with group spells; since they were collaborative by nature, anyone with the know-how and technical skill could aid or hinder the casting of the spell, and Amelia had both skill and knowledge in spades. So, she forced her way into the spell, and immediately began to alter it.

Much like with Izumi’s Garden of the World Tree, the first thing she did was wrest the rights of the spell away from the others, locking it down and making sure she was the only one who had any say over when they would finish casting the spell, and if they wanted to stop. The first times she had done it, it had been a stalling tactic; a way to buy herself a little time while she did something else.

And then she realized that no one she had tried it on was able to do anything about it, or was even able to replicate the feat. At first she had assumed it was because she had yet to meet anyone actually skilled with magic, but as of late she had been coming to realize that, in fact, it might be something only people with a very solid grasp of the inner workings of the system might be able to do. As such, it caught just about everyone off-guard the first time they experienced it.

These mages were no exception. As they belatedly began to realize something was wrong, Amelia reconstructed the spell, adding in two relatively simple clauses. The first simply sucked in about ten thousand Mana from each caster, and the second was one she added to almost all of her spells. In essence, it would allow her to safely cancel the spell, and, more importantly, refund all the Mana spent in its casting, deposited directly into Amelia’s Mana pool.

It was slightly tricky since the poorly-constructed spell didn’t adhere to any of Amelia’s design philosophies, but the result could not have been any less striking; the mages could only watch in mounting horror as all of their Mana was rapidly transferred into Amelia’s own reserves. It was gratifying to watch, but unfortunately the effect wasn’t as much as Amelia had hoped.

For one, she had to expend about five thousand Mana to make those modifications, and for two, of the twelve or so mages in the group, only three had more than two thousand Mana left. When combined with the fact that this entire time Amelia had been casting magic to keep the surrounding soldiers at bay, she really only ended up breaking even from this little trip.

That aside, everything went well; in the span of less than one minute, Rose had cocooned the mages and a couple of the surrounding soldiers, the mages’ Mana had been drained, and Amelia teleported the group back to where they had started.

“That went well.” Rose said. “Did you do something to the mages? Their spell didn’t explode when they broke concentration.”

“Yeah.” Amelia confirmed. “I took it over and used it to siphon their Mana before cancelling it safely.”

Rose shook her head in disbelief. “Only you could do something like that.” She said, smiling slightly. “What are your reserves looking like?”

“They’re a little less than I had when I started, like by a percent or two.” Amelia said. “I’ve got plenty in me for another go.”

“Good. Teleport us to one of the other groups, then.”

Amelia nodded, casting a quick spell to bring them over to one of the other groups. This time, however, things were different; the group was in the middle of dismantling their spell, and it seemed that some of the surrounding troops had been hastily called in to help protect them. This, however, was of little consequence; if they wanted to actually overwhelm Amelia and Rose, they would need ten times the number of soldiers than they had diverted.

It went much the same as the first group had, save for the fact that Amelia had to expend more Mana to deal with the interfering soldiers. And, when they teleported back, Rose once again took the time to check in with Amelia. “How’s your Mana?”

“Worse. Probably lost five percent that time.” Amelia said. “Still got plenty in me for the remaining two, though, even if I can’t siphon their Mana.”

Rose paused. “How long would it take to scry the location of those two groups, and how expensive would it be?”

“About ten seconds and about one percent of my Mana, since they actually have anti-scry measures in place. Not sure why they don’t have teleportation wards, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Do it.” Rose said. “And they don’t have the wards because mobile teleportation wards are incredibly Mana-intensive and mostly pointless, since most people can’t teleport to any given point outside of about one hundred meters.”

“Lazy.” Amelia replied, then cast a quick scrying spell. “The other group are about the same.” She told Rose. “More soldiers keep coming, though.”

“They probably have someone high-level en route.” Rose mused. “How much Mana would it take to teleport one group to us?”

“Um…they’re not willing, so accounting for attempts to dispel…ten percent, give or take a bit?”

Rose bit her lip for a moment. “How about for both?”

“Uh, twenty five percent tops, and I have about forty five percent left.”

“Leave them be, then. We can always do that later, and I’d rather save your Mana for more dire situations.” Rose replied. “This should keep them off of our backs for a little bit.”

“We can still just go to them.” Amelia suggested. “I assume we were always planning for them to have reinforcements.”

“Sort of. I was hoping they’d be slower about it than they were. Right now we’re just going to overextend, and when this whole thing was likely a ploy to drain your Mana in the first place, we’ve accomplished our goal. Still…I hadn’t considered your ability to drain Mana from others. Perhaps we should focus on making some monsters that are basically walking Mana batteries.”

“Let’s have Lia tinker with it after this battle.” Amelia said. “She’d be the one who’d actually be able to make it efficient.”

“Good idea. Now, let me know when your Mana is above sixty percent, until then we’re going to be reactionary, okay?”

---

Gallus, general of the Sapphire Empire, scowled down at the map of the battlefield in front of him. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t understand what the swarm was playing at. Even though they had the initiative in prompting this battle, they were being overly cautious, and it was costing them. In the majority of reports he had received, the swarm began their battles by sending in squadrons of monsters, followed by their actual troops.

Yes, this theoretically minimized sapient casualties, but it weakened their fighting force overall. If they sent both the people and the monsters at the same time, they would sustain more casualties, but they would instead be able to be much more aggressive in attempting to disable Gallus’s troops without killing them.

Were he in their shoes, it was what he would have done. The unique nature of the swarm meant that the number of people injured or killed would be offset by the new recruits, and the battles would be over quicker. And, with less time in battle, they could focus more on taming new monsters to replace the ones they lost.

That was another issue; it still wasn’t fully known how exactly the swarm did what they did. They seemed to be using powerful mental magic to brainwash their victims, but Gallus simply couldn’t figure out how. To have fully taken over The Glens and Aura like they had claimed, they would need legions of powerful mages to work that magic, and Gallus wasn’t sure that many powerful mages even existed. Amelia could do more work than a normal person, but not that much more work. Like Octavius had said, if she could, then this war would already be over.

Likewise, he didn’t believe for a second that each member of the swarm was capable of adding another to their ranks; that was clearly just a lie told to rile up the commoners. Anyone who had any level of understanding on how the world worked would instantly know that you needed some sort of magic-based Job to be able to do that.

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Still, it hopefully wouldn’t remain an unknown for long. Gallus had ordered some of his best rogues to capture weaker foot soldiers alive, to be interrogated later. It was a risk, yes, but so long as they targeted those with low levels, it was an incredibly minor risk. Numerically speaking, it was next to impossible for most people to stand up to someone fifty or sixty levels higher than them, and having a few weaklings around posed at most a risk of them being used as relays for some sort of scrying magic.

So, as long as their guards were over level one-hundred, they could be kept safely, and the interrogation mages would be able to pick over their mind and determine what exactly had happened to make the person part of the swarm. And…theoretically, once they knew how it was done, they could begin working on ways to cure the person, and perhaps even use those same techniques against the swarm.

“Sir!” A messenger cried out, throwing open the flap of the tent. “We’ve lost contact with mage squadrons one and four! Eyewitnesses claim that Rose and Amelia teleported in, restrained them, and then teleported out with them! We’ve had squadrons two and three disengage as planned, and their previous locations watched, but no further attacks have come!”

“Already?!” Gallus exclaimed. “I thought you said we had people dedicated to obscuring their locations!”

“We do!” The messenger said. “They seem to have been ineffective!”

Gallus paused for a moment, frowning. “Have squadrons two and three retreat for the time being, and send their leaders to meet with me.” He ordered. “We can’t afford to lose any more of our mages. How were their attacks?”

“As expected, Amelia countered them all.” The messenger replied. “Though notably she did so by redirecting them instead of outright dispelling the magic.”

“Was anyone able to analyze her while she was attacking us?”

“No, sir. Both her status and Rose’s status were completely impenetrable to our attempts.”

“Understood. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, sir!”

The messenger left, and Gallus’s frown deepened. He had expected Amelia and Rose to be an issue, but he hadn’t expected them to be this quick in their work. Hopefully the leaders of the mage squadrons would have some insight on how this had happened, because if the two Heroes were left unchecked it would surely spell disaster. But, on the flip side, once they were defeated, the rest of the swarm would likely crumble, so the moment their weaknesses were revealed, they would turn from an asset to a liability.

A few minutes later, two men, the leaders of the mage squadrons, entered Gallus’s tent. “You called for us, sir?” One asked.

“Yes. I need to know what happened with your spells.”

“It was strange, sir.” The first said. “We couldn’t detect any trace of her at all unless she was directly interacting with our spells. Even then, it seemed like there was no location data we could use to track her down.”

“Just before her first counterattack, we believe she stopped trying to counter our spells and handed the job to their mages.” The other added. “The magic used against us was significantly less…overwhelming, and we could sense them interfering with the others’ spells.”

Gallus nodded. “After we’re through here, I need the two of you to monitor the battlefield carefully, and attempt to find the location of this mage group.” He said. “If we can eliminate them and force Amelia to personally respond to our threats, we can effectively tie her down while the rest of the army works. Having experienced her magic firsthand, was there anything we could even remotely use against her?”

“No, sir.” The first said. “Attempting to sustain our spells through her counters was like trying to destroy a brick wall with a stick. She had more Mana than us, and, as much as it pains me to say it, her technique was significantly better as well.”

“I was afraid of that.” Gallus sighed. “Dismissed. The moment you find the enemy mages or have any other significant information to tell me, send a messenger. Don’t do anything that would give away your presence, just watch for now.”

The two mages left, and Gallus heaved a sigh. The fact that the Heroes hadn’t made any proactive moves was worrying. If they would just commit to a fight, he could send out the troops he had prepared to fight against them, but they refused. It just didn’t make sense; they were leaving so much war potential unused, and it was thoroughly weakening their position. Against another opponent, Gallus might have chalked it up to inexperience, but this was purportedly the Ruby Emperor he was fighting against. They had some other plan, he just had to figure it out before it was too late.

---

“So…what exactly are we doing?” Amelia asked. “We’re just sitting here.”

“We’re being threatening.” Rose replied. “I’m hoping they’ll get antsy and commit in an attempt to force our hand, so we can take out some of their high-leveled troops. If they haven’t by the time you’ve reached sixty percent of your Mana, then we’re going to strike.”

“I’m at fifty percent.” Amelia said. “What’s the plan?”

Rose flashed her a smile. “Simple. We teleport to their back line and take out as many high-leveled people and commanders as we can. Once you’re below thirty percent Mana, we’ll teleport back out and observe their response.”

“I can get behind that.” Amelia replied, standing up and stretching. “How’s the rest of the battle going?”

“About as expected.” Rose replied. “They haven’t sent out anyone who can properly deal with Simona, probably because they’re too worried about us. We’re hemorrhaging monsters, but our casualties are otherwise minimal. I’ve got monsters tasked with retrieving all cocoons, so once we finish our work, we’ll give it another ten or so minutes and then call for the retreat.”

“We’re winning, though, right?” Amelia asked. “Shouldn’t we draw it out?”

“We’re never wiping out this force with what we have here. Once we retreat, though, we’re going to let all the new converts finish, and let everyone who needs to evolve. Then we’ll strike again tonight with whatever troops remain in good shape and can see in the dark. How much we’ll be able to do then is going to depend on how many troops we’re working with, but at the very least I’m hoping to catch them off-guard and rescue any prisoners they’ve taken.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Amelia said, grinning.

“I was sort of hoping you could make the biggest, nastiest thunderstorm you can.” Rose replied. “Can you do both? I was under the impression that manipulating the weather is really Mana-intensive work, so I wasn’t sure.”

“The spellwork will take like ten minutes, tops.” Amelia replied. “I can set it to start a few hours after I cast the spell, and I only need about an hour to fully regen my Mana. But, yeah, Mana and the complexity of the spell shouldn’t be an issue.

“Besides, you said we’d be rescuing captives, right? If you just have me focus on that I’d be protecting people and be fully unbound for it. Even if I wasn’t full on Mana, I’d have more just because I was unbound.”

“Will that work?” Rose asked. “I know your Skill has been a little testy as of late.”

“I don’t see why not. As long as I’m efficient about things and not dawdling or trying to do other things in the process, it seems mostly fine. I’ll probably have to teleport both them and myself away the moment I get them in order for it to work, but I think I can cause a lot of collateral damage in my search for the prisoners.”

“Well, the plan was designed to work with or without you, so having the prisoners’ rescue all but guaranteed is quite helpful.” Rose said. “Uh…when your binding is reapplied, if you haven’t spent enough Mana to put you below what you have when bound, do you retain full Mana?”

“No.” Amelia replied. “It’s annoying, but it seems to seal away my Mana in proportion to how much of my total pool was empty when the binding is reapplied. I’ll just empty out most of my pool in the process, it’ll be fine. Anyway, I’m pretty close to sixty percent now, so get ready to go.”

“Alright. Just let me know when.”