SB: Chapter 252 – A Layered Plan (Patreon)

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After three days of careful work, I had prepared a large enough concealed chamber deep in the mountain. I had Ozy go inside and I couldn’t detect him at all. Even the runes I had layered on the walls and the monster cores used to power it all bled Mana off as background Mana.

A neat little trick I had picked up from the Demonic Runes I had studied. That last part of the plan, hide away, was complete.

That had also given me enough time to think and rethink about exactly what I needed to achieve. Luring the demon away, impossible. Fighting the demon, impossible. Getting anywhere close to the demon, impossible.

All that I could do was slow it down and then tunnel to the sword. A very deep tunnel which would take time. Since the only blind spot would be deep underground where any Mana Ozy or I used would be stuck below ground. Then once I got below where I believed the sword to be, I would tunnel upwards. The plan was a work in progress, but that was what I had come up with so far.

The ambient Mana dispersed in the area from the sword would hide my progress. Once I got the sword, I could put it in the case and retreat through the tunnel. The demon wouldn’t be able to follow me.

It was a good plan that could actually work. The biggest issue was time. With a more developed and sealed cave, we could have warm meals. Such a small use of Mana wouldn’t reveal our location.

But the problem was going from my stealth location all the way out to where the sword was. That would be two kilometers downwards vertically from our position on the mountain to get deep enough underground and then eight kilometers horizontally. Then back up 200 meters. So around 10,200 meters in total.

Ozy could clear about 100 meters a day with my help. By using Alchemic Bounded Field and a cylinder shape, he could push the rock and minerals to the edge of the tunnel to strengthen it so it wouldn’t collapse. The tunnel would be tight, only a meter across in diameter. But it would be big enough for Boris to fit and drag the sword case by the case’s back through the smooth tunnel. Ozy would use up a lot of Mana, but with the Mana cores that I had, he would have enough food to keep going for the 102 days needed to complete the project. That would take us near the end of the dark season.

The problem was how much time it would take to implement the plan. There was only so much time before the demon got to the sword. While I wasn’t sure on how much time, I knew I didn’t have three and a half months.

I needed to delay the demon. The monsters were strip mining the area. So, there was no collapsing the excavation site. I had dispersed the Mana of the sword over a fairly wide area. The only two things that could slow the demon down were killing its monster workforce or the weather. A large snowstorm would make it hard to dig and move.

Attacking was absolutely impossible. The moment the demon sensed an attack it would trace it to its source and crush whatever was attacking. I couldn’t perform any attacks at a long enough range to launch them and remain undetected. Even if Ozy flew up into the air, the demon would either see him, or he would be so high that anything he dropped wouldn’t land on target.

I could risk sneaking out and laying out runic stone plates around the site at a far distance that would drop the temperature even more and draw in moisture. These were basic applications that were part of a more complex weather ward that would layer countless runic circles to achieve a highly stable environment.

I didn’t need anything too special, just lowering the temperature and increasing precipitation. The Mana released would blend in with the background. The College had gotten really good at their weather ward after centuries on top of being on a mountain peak.

Ozy could work on the tunnel as I worked on creating and setting up the necessary runic circles. What was really nice about this plan was that I didn’t need to encompass the entire excavation site. The College maintained a much stricter boundary for their weather ward. The product of centuries of runic innovation.

My runic circles would be much worse which would be a good thing. The effects would bleed out of them into their surroundings. Even if one runic circle was found there would be others, with the cold and precipitation effects bleeding out into the surrounding area. Putting a time delay wouldn’t be that difficult either.

That way even if the demon detected something, I would be long gone from that specific area. And the runic plates would be incredibly hard to detect with the Mana blending into the background and the effects spilling out everywhere. Instead of a single prominent beacon, it would be like countless candles over a wide area.

If I was the demon, what would I do when faced with such sabotage? That was the question I needed to solve. Tracking me back using whatever traces I left behind and killing me. I would work from further out to closer in so the change in weather appeared more natural and set a longer time delay.

No, that was the wrong idea. I needed to work from close in while the demon was ignorant of my presence and then go further out. Ozy had the specific instructions for the tunnel and I would leave enough supplies for Boris in our hideout.

With Ozy reshaping the stone he was removing, I would be able to make 20 runic weather plates every day. I would take 10 days to make as many as possible and have them with a time delay of one day. I should be able to lay out 200 in a single day. It would be a long day and risky, but worthwhile.

Without having to go at a slower speed, I could move quickly once I was further out. I would use 5 kilometers as the closest distance. Any closer and I risked detection. I would have to loop around the excavation site several times, but it would allow me to spread out the runic plates.

Once snow began falling in earnest they would be completely hidden. If I was back on the Eldarin continent, this kind of attack would be easily located by an elite with the right skills. While it might take a few days, the range of sensory skills was much higher back home. The beastkin might have strong sensory skills and specialize in that area, but the range of sensory skills they had was limited. They relied mostly on smell, not Mana.

Also, such a technique could easily be countered with other runic arrays. The weather ward at the College of Advancement was designed to have a strict barrier to the outside, one of the major reasons a wall was built around the College. It allowed a massive runic circle to be built, not just for the weather wards, while maintaining a high level of precision.

The costs weren’t cheap in terms of Mana cores, but they weren’t ruinous like they had been in the past. Over time the Mana consumption had decreased massively. That was the power of innovation over hundreds of years. The College didn’t just conduct mathematical modeling, they also were working to improve runic structures and efficiency.

It was also why I was almost always using Eldarin Runes and not other runic languages. Also, why the College was trying to create a more streamlined runic language, but hadn’t been successful. Eldarin Runes were the most modern runic language available.

Eldarin Runes were quite good at what it did, since the runic language was more structured and there was less chance of variance. But with other runic languages it was a lot more hit or miss in terms of result. Eldarin runes tried to reduce those factors, while other runic languages tended to overpower small inconsistencies.

That was why elemental effects and now creating weather effects weren’t that much of a challenge. I was working off the experience and knowledge of the countless individuals who had come before me.

Now if I needed to come up with something novel or unique, that would be much harder. While nowhere as dangerous as a ritual, there was a reason why runes and rituals had overlap, since runes were often used to help steer the Mana in a ritual.

I did consider if what I was doing would turn into a ritual and other effects that might go out of control. The main risk was the sheer cold that would impact everything for at least 3 months. That was how long the weather wards would last, about the length of the dark season.

Large scale weather control had been used in the past to counter desertification on the continent. A practice pioneered by the Eldarin Empire and also favored by my father for the Burnstock Duchy during certain extremes in weather. Knowing his history, it wasn’t a surprising course of action. 

If certain areas became too hot or cold, that would cause a lot of damage to the crops depending on the time of the year. It made the start of planting and the harvest a lot more controllable as well.

Doing what I was going to do, would be considered something the Dark Cabal would do if it were anywhere but the Great White Wastes on the beastkin continent. It would only make the climate worse long term. Instead of leveling things out, I would be spiking the climate in an extreme direction.

I knew there would be long term effects, but I hadn’t seen this particular use case covered. Probably because no one had been crazy enough to do such a thing on such a large scale and it was too easily detected and disrupted.

But it would work while also keeping me safe. That was the power of all the skills I had learned, I had options. I just needed to use my brain. That was something people often forgot, stats and skills might help in thinking faster and knowing more, but most didn’t directly help with coming up with solutions to complex problems. Critical Thinking was a skill, but it wasn’t an instant solution to a problem. While it helped boost using skills in different ways or understanding a novel situation, I still had to come up with the solution myself.

Beating an opponent that was far beyond me was the greatest challenge of my life so far. I had to win. While one could dig deep physically, digging deep mentally was much harder. It was something my mother had talked about, but now I truly understood what she was trying to convey. You weren’t defeated until you were dead or gave up. One needed the mental courage to have enough tenacity to persevere no matter the odds.

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