Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

Chapter 484: Cooperative Casting - Markets and Multiverses

The next thing I did was focus on my communication bracelet. I had already sounded my warning - what I needed to do now was alert my friends to what was happening. I screeched a second warning into the communication bracelet as loudly as I could, since a mental shock would probably wake my friends up much faster than a physical sound. Since the butterflies were using sleeping magic, I needed to be as shrill and annoying as possible.

The first one to respond was Anise.

<Whaaa? Whirrr… huh?> Anise’s sleepy mumbles through the communication bracelet were on the verge of being totally incoherent, and the moment she finished speaking, I felt a sudden deadening of the communication bracelet, as if Anise had fallen back asleep. A moment later, Felix mumbled something into the communication bracelet from his end, but it was even less coherent than Anise’s words.

I readied myself, and then started shrieking incoherently into the communication like a banshee. I did the exact same thing with my physical voice, in order to give the town as many chances as possible to survive. Despite my mental and physical wail being annoying enough that I wanted to shut off the communication bracelet and cut the sound off, it still took an alarming number of seconds for Felix, Anise, and Sallia to drag themselves back into the land of the awake.

<What in the world was that? I heard - ah, that was you, wasn’t it Miria? What’s going on? Some kind of mental attack?> Asked Anise.

<The entire clan is under some kind of mental attack. It seems to induce sleep. There’s also a horde of rats attacking the village.>

<Got it,> said Felix. <I was wondering why I was having such a hard time waking up. Any other effects?>

<Not that I’ve noticed. The only effect of the mental attack seems to be to induce sleep. That doesn’t mean there are no other effects, though - it could just be subtle enough that I haven’t noticed it yet.>

<The effect seems much less potent once you’re aware of the effect,> said Sallia. <But it’s hard to say how much of the town has woken up, even though you’ve sent out a few waves of warning calls already. My parents are still fast asleep, and I don’t hear the neighbors moving around, either.>

My heart sank. If Sallia’s parents and neighbors weren’t waking up despite the racket I was making, many other villagers were likely in the same state. Those with higher [Resistance] stats were probably waking up, since that stat helped govern resistance to mental attacks as well as physical attacks - but weaker combatants in our clan would still get massacred by the rat horde without any chance to fight back. Worse, plenty of other warriors wouldn’t wake up either. After all, there were plenty of clan-defending warriors that focused more on their offensive abilities rather than their defensive abilities - and those types of combatants would seriously struggle to survive being attacked while they were trapped in a coma. Typically speaking, in this world, people tried to maintain some balance in their stats, but they still prioritized a few stats and used that as the core for their build.

I also realized that this monster seemed to target the weaknesses of this world’s typical builds a bit too well. People with high [Resistance] tended to have low offensive power, which would make them totally ineffective at killing the massive wooden butterflies causing this attack. The only people who could remain awake right now would have no way to stop the source of the problem. If this situation wasn’t addressed now, it would only be a matter of time before our entire clan alliance was overwhelmed by the horde of rats.

For a monster to show up, that explicitly exploited this weakness, didn’t feel random at all. It felt like the enemy had designed a new monster specifically targeting our problems. My heart sank further into my chest.

We had waited too long before launching our counterattack. The enemy had already prepared for our resistance, and build weapons to deal with us. I looked at the giant wooden butterflies in the distance again. They had far too much life force for me to extinguish. The only thing that could kill them would be high-level combatants, or a coordinated assault from dozens or hundreds of ranged combatants working together.

Just as I started to panic, Felix’s voice resounded through the bracelet again.

<Anise, this feels like a mixture of absorption and manifestation essence. I imagine they used binding essence specifically to make it hard for people of this world to counter - after all, the System itself runs on absorption essence, and people have no way to enhance or interact with absorption essence on their own. Can you and Sallia meet up near my house? If so, I think I could use binding essence to help you manufacture a spell that can counter this sleep effect. If we can wake up the rest of the clan, we might be able to wipe out one of those butterflies, wake up more clan warriors, and start a counterattack,> he said.

<Got it! That’s a good idea. Are you confident you can make it work?> asked Anise.

<Not in the slightest, but we’re in a bad situation.>

<I have a spell that might work as a good base. It’s a big ‘sanctuary’ spell. I was originally thinking we could use it to make big barriers for camping next time we went on a journey together, but it should work well here, too. Miria, how much do you think you can alter a spell if I work to help you control and modify it?>

<I can do some manipulation of a spell’s effects, as long as I’m not trying to create a totally new spell from scratch.>

<Got it. Sallia can provide us with raw absorption essence, so we can use that as a source of fuel. All four of us working together should be able to create a customized spell quickly.>

<Heading towards you now!> Said Felix. Sallia and I sent our own affirmation messages.

I dashed into my father’s room and grabbed my sleeping father. My attempts to wake him up hadn’t had much effect, so I started yelling into his ear as I sprinted out the door.

Outside of our new sleeping hut, the darkness of the night sky obscured almost all of the activity in our surroundings. However, in each direction, I could see the eerie glow of butterfly wings lighting up the night around us, giving the entire area a dreamy, half-hidden quality. It was beautiful, and in any other circumstances, I might have actually found the sight rather charming.

The beauty of the glowing butterfly wings obscured how deadly the attack was, though. Even though I could barely see anything, I could hear the scuttling, gnawing, and skittering sounds of rats swarming through the town. They hadn’t reached the hut my father and I shared yet, since we were near the center of town - but they had already eaten their way through many of the people on the outskirts of our village-bearing beast. The sound of gnawing and tearing filled the air, along with the occasional cry of pain and sound of metal striking wood.

Clearly, my alarm had helped some people wake up and start fighting back - but it was far from enough. Without a critical mass of warriors and mages working together to hold off the rat tide, the rats had nearly free reign to attack our less powerful clan members, and the results were devastating.

I gritted my teeth as I saw soul after soul from our clansmen wink out of existence, but I dashed through the streets and towards Anise’s house. As much as I wanted to stop and help the individuals I could see dying to the rate horde, we needed to solve this problem at the root, or dozens more would die for every second I delayed. Fortunately, the rats hadn’t reached our area yet by the time I arrived at Anise’s house, with my still-unconscious father in tow. I mentally apologized to him, before I dumped him by the entryway of the house. He wasn’t hurt, and other people needed my help right now.

I dashed towards Anise’s room, where I saw her own parents dumped unceremoniously on her bed. Felix was already there, but Sallia was missing.

<Sallia? Where are you?>

<A minute away! Rats are starting to try to besiege me!> she yelled into the communication bracelet. I cursed, and checked with my soul sight. It only took me a moment to identify Sallia - she was the only human soul dashing towards our location at full speed. She was also carrying her parents, though it looked like one of them was injured due to the rat swarm. I used my healing magic to give the injured parent a quick boost, while Anise stepped out of the house and started launching fireballs at the enemy.

Half a minute later, Sallia finally managed to flee into the house. She slammed the door shut as several angry squeaks sounded through the cracks in the door.

“We’re all here. Good. Let’s start,” said Anise.

The rest of us nodded. It was time to do the best - and most inventive- spellcasting of our lives, before our entire clan was slaughtered by these monsters.