The air in the Wailing Maw did not just feel cold. It felt wrong. As the caravan pushed deeper into the throat of the mountain pass, the very fabric of reality seemed to be having a low grade seizure.
David Silver sat on the hard wooden bench of the rear wagon. His teeth were aching from the constant and high pitched static that buzzed through the spatial rifts.
Beside him, Old Man Barnaby was currently snoring. His head was lolling with the rhythm of the Grok’s footsteps and he was still clutching that flask like it was a holy relic.
"How anyone can sleep in a place that sounds like a choir of angry hornets is beyond me," David muttered.
He pulled his grey cloak tighter around his shoulders. The cold was biting and the purple light from the rifts made his skin look sickly. He felt the mana in the air pulling at his core.
[System Note: Your ’Static Core’ is acting as a natural antenna for the spatial noise. Suggestion: Stop being a conductor, or start enjoying the music.]
"Very helpful. I will be sure to hum along while we are being eaten by whatever lives here," David thought.
He ignored the blue text in his vision and focused on the path ahead. The pass narrowed until the stone walls were close enough to touch. Overhead, the sky was a bruised shade of violet.
It was streaked with glowing silver veins where the rifts leaked energy. It was beautiful in a way that screamed for people to stay away. Gerrard , the caravan lead, was at the front.
His hand was resting on the hilt of his spiked club. He was not looking at the road. He was looking at the shadows.
Suddenly, the static stopped.
The silence was so absolute it was terrifying. It was the kind of quiet that precedes a landslide or a funeral. Then, a sound drifted down from the peaks. It was a delicate and crystalline tinkling. It sounded like thousands of tiny glass chimes being shaken in the wind.
"Hold!" Gerrard ’s voice cracked like a whip. "Shields up! Do not use projectile magic! Do NOT use projectile magic!"
From the darkened crevices above, a cloud of light erupted. At first, it looked like a fall of diamonds. But as it descended, the diamonds grew wings. These were the Glass-Wing Bats. They were beasts made of translucent and razor sharp chitin.
Their wings were not just for flight. They were literal mirrors. They were faceted and polished to a degree that defied nature. They were not just the ordinary ones, they were the monstrous ones.
"Glass-Wings," Barnaby wheezed.
He was suddenly very awake. He did not look bleary anymore. He looked like a man who had seen this movie before and hated the ending. "Magic eaters. You fire a bolt at them, and they will send it right back into your teeth with interest. They are very rude creatures."
One of the younger mercenaries was named Silas. He was panicked by the sheer number of the swarm and he ignored Gerrard ’s order. He leveled his staff and fired a Tier 3 Fire-Lance at the leading edge of the swarm.
"No, you idiot!" Gerrard roared.
The fire-lance hit the wing of a bat in the front row. The crystalline surface did not scorch or melt. Instead, the bat tilted its wing at a precise angle. The fire-lance bounced off the chitin like a ball off a wall.
Its intensity doubled as it was reflected. It slammed back into Silas’s chest. It vaporized his leather armor and sent him flying into the stone wall in a heap of charred meat. Silas was dead before he hit the ground.
The swarm descended in a roar of tinkling glass.
"Defend the Groks!" Gerrard screamed.
He swung his spiked club with a roar. He was a Tier 3 Warrior and his attacks were physical. That was the only way to hurt these things. But for every bat he crushed, five more took its place. The mercenaries were being carved up.
The bats did not just bite. They flew past at high speeds. Their wingtips acted like blades that sliced through armor and bone as if they were wet paper.
Rose jumped from the wagon and her chest jiggled in the process. She swung a heavy axe and cleaved a bat in two. But more were coming. The air was full of the sound of glass wings and the screams of dying men.
David watched a bat dive toward their wagon. Its wings reflected the dim purple light of the rifts. It looked like a flying shard of the sky.
[Warning: Glass-Wing chitin possesses 99.9% magical reflectivity.]
[Detection: Standard mana attacks will result in ’Self-Elimination’.]
"I gathered that from the screaming guy in the front," David thought.
He ducked as a bat sliced through the canvas cover of the wagon. It missed his head by an inch. "How am I supposed to fight something that hits me with my own power? This is a very bad situation."
[Analyzing...]
[New Skill Concept Found: Arcane Inversion.]
[Description: Phase-shifting mana to vibrate at the exact opposite frequency of the reflective surface, turning a ’Mirror’ into a ’Sponge’.]
"Sounds great. How long to master it?"
[Standard mastery time: 4 months of meditation on the nature of light and shadow.]
[Multiplier Status: 100,000x.]
[Required Practice Time: 1 minute.]
"Sixty seconds? I can do sixty seconds," David said.
He scrambled off the bench and dove into the narrow gap between the wagon and the cliff wall. He was hiding from Gerrard ’s sight. He did not want anyone to see what he was doing.
"Barnaby! Cover me!" David rasped.
The old man looked at him. His bleary eyes were narrowing. He did not ask what David was doing. He simply shifted his position on the bench. His massive coat provided a perfect block. "Do not take too long, kid. The Groks are starting to look like pincushions and I do not want to walk to the Maw."
David closed his eyes. He ignored the screaming and the smell of blood. He ignored the terrifying sound of glass wings slicing through the air. He focused on his core.
He visualized the Static mana not as a sludge, but as a wave. He began to cycle it in a reverse spiral. It was a technique that felt like trying to swallow his own tongue.
[Practice Initialized: 1 second... 5 seconds...]
Inside his mind, the 100,000x multiplier turned those seconds into weeks. He felt the phantom sensation of a hundred days of failure. He felt the mana snapping back and bruising his body. He adjusted the frequency.
He felt the resonance of the wings of the bats. It was a cold and brittle vibration. He tuned his mana to the exact opposite. It was a warm and jagged pulse.
[40 seconds... 50 seconds...]
The static in his head grew to a roar. His Static Core began to spin. The Dread-Seal was groaning under the pressure. He was forcing a Tier 4 concept through a Tier 1 body, but the multiplier was doing the heavy lifting. It was dragging his proficiency through the dirt until it reached the summit. His face was pale and drawn, but he did not stop.
[60 seconds. Practice Complete.]
[Skill Developed: Arcane Inversion (Divine Mastery).]
David snapped his eyes open. A bat was diving directly at him. Its wings were angled like a guillotine.
"My turn to reflect," David whispered.
He did not fire a beam. He did not use a shield. He simply reached out and tapped the air in front of the bat. A pulse of Inverted mana rippled outward. It was not even visible to the naked eye. It was just a slight distortion in the air, like heat rising off a road.
The bat hit the ripple.
Normally, the mana would have bounced off. But because of the Inversion, the bat’s wing did not reflect the energy. It absorbed it all at once! The crystalline chitin was not designed to hold energy. It was designed to deflect it. The bat’s wing instantly reached critical mass.
SHATTER!
The bat did not just die. It exploded into a thousand microscopic shards of glowing glass!
David stepped out from behind the wagon. Gerrard was on one knee. His club was broken and a dozen bats were circling him for the kill. The other mercenaries were huddled under a wagon.
Their magic was useless and their swords were chipped. Rose was struggling to stand as three bats dove toward her heavy chest.
David raised both hands. He was not David Silver right now. He was the Wraith. He was a Vessel. And he was very tired of the noise.
"Arcane Inversion: Shatter-Wave," he rasped.
He unleashed a massive and wide angle pulse of inverted mana. It swept across the narrow pass like a ghostly tide. Every bat it touched underwent the same failure. Their wings turned into their own executioners.
The sound was like a million lightbulbs breaking at once!
The air was suddenly filled with a fine and flickering dust. The swarm was decimated in a single heartbeat. The few remaining bats turned and bolted back into the dark crevices of the Maw. Their instincts were finally screaming for them to flee from the predator.
Silence returned to the pass. It was broken only by the soft and tinkling sound of glass dust settling on the mud.
Gerrard looked up and his face was covered in shallow cuts. He stared at the glittering air. Then he looked at the cloaked figure standing at the back of the caravan. "What was that? Who did that?"
David did not answer. He felt the Void-Rot in his veins pulsing. His mana core was cooling down from the massive discharge. He climbed back onto the wagon bench beside Barnaby.
The old man was back to nursing his flask. But he was not snoring. He was looking at the glass dust on his sleeve with a look of quiet recognition.
"Anti-reflective resonance," Barnaby murmured.
He spoke so low only David could hear. "That is an Old World trick, Ghosty. It is a trick for people who hunt the things that hunt mages. You are becoming a very complicated passenger."
"I am just a guy who hates chimes," David muttered.
He pulled his hood lower. He did not want to talk about it.
[Quest Complete!]
[Reward: Mastery of [Arcane Inversion] confirmed.]
[Relatable Humor: You just turned an apex predator into glitter. I bet the surviving bats are going to need therapy.]
"Move out!" Gerrard ’s voice was shaky.
The veteran’s instincts were taking over. "Check the wounded! If you can walk, get to your station! We are not staying here for a second swarm! We need to move before the mountain decides to eat us again!"
The caravan lurched forward again. The Groks were groaning as they stepped over the remains of the bats. David sat in the silence and watched the purple rifts above. He had saved the caravan, but he had also used a high-tier concept in front of a Tier 8 drunk.
He looked at his hands. They were steady. The 100,000x multiplier was no longer just a tool. It was a part of him. He was rewriting the laws of magic one minute at a time. As they pushed further into the Wailing Maw, David realized that the Glass-Wings were just the beginning.
Something was hunting the swarm. Something bigger. It was waiting for them in the dark. He could feel it watching from the peaks. He just hoped his next trick would be enough to kill it. He closed his eyes and waited for the next attack. The journey was far from over.