Magical Engineering

The strength of the shields I put around each of the Pachydresti in view was far more than anything I had ever been capable of before. I was almost taken aback at just how much mana I had infused each of these shields with. My pool had gone from nearly full to less than a tenth left nearly instantly. I really hoped this worked, because if it didn’t, I was going to be useless for the rest of the fight.

In front of me, the Pachydresti seemed briefly confused by my shields, and then turned to look at me as I held my hands up and started to compress them. Now here was the problem. I couldn’t actually hurt them in this way, but I needed them to think I could, so I made sure it went nice and slow. I hoped this wasn’t something known to be impossible, but considering everything I had seen so far, I highly doubted it. The scramble that followed my hand gestures seemed to suggest they also thought it was entirely within my capabilities.

Immediately, they all turned on each other, attempting to hit the shields with everything they had. Just as I had wanted them to, they thought that if they could destroy the shields fast enough, it might save them from my actions. They had no idea just how incredibly wrong they were. Every attack sent mana back to me. Even better, they couldn’t use their weapons that were able to bypass the shields, as that would just hurt their allies. No, they thought they were stuck needing to use the entirety of their mana reserves to stop what I was doing.

I poured the mana right back out, keeping the shields reinforced, draining them even more while at the same time healing Connie and Elody as quickly as possible. Elody, seeming to realize just what was going on, turned to her own defenses as well, several new layers of a gleaming shield appeared, coating her body in a substance similar to her swords. An alert from Beta told me the missing three had just appeared from the dust cloud.

That was exactly what I had been waiting for. I collapsed the shields on the six that I had them around. Several of the Pachydresti managed to hit each other accidentally the moment I dropped it, but they all looked exhausted from the mana drain. It was now time for the second part of my insanely dangerous plan.

As Corey kept the healing up on everyone on our side, and putting new, stronger shields around each of them as well. I quickly opened my mana orb menu and invested twenty-five ranks into Overwhelming Strength. I had finally thought of a use for it. “Elody, Connie, hold onto the tools!” I screamed, telling Beta and Gamma the same thing in a quick chat.

At the exact same time that I enabled Overwhelming Strength in myself and the tools, I also channeled both my fire and aether orbs together, focusing as hard as I could on a goal. Two things happened in my mind at the same time. One of them was the intended result, the other a total surprise that I had entirely forgotten about. “Atmosphere begone!” the words yelled in my head as the first part of the spell triggered.

The entire dust cloud vanished, along with all the air that had been there. And since nature abhors a vacuum, the area around us was wracked by an implosion pulling all of the other squad into the center of where the dust cloud had been moments ago. They crashed hard into each other with the force of the pull. My own use of Overwhelming Strength was working to keep me rooted to the ground as I braced against the force. Gamma and Beta, who were under the same effect, managed to hold Elody and Connie.

Keeping everyone away from the heart of the implosion was important as the second part of my spell triggered. “Ignite the atmosphere into a firestorm!” The words again rang out in my skull, empowered by both my overclocked core and my synergy effect, the area the Pachydresti had been pulled to ignited into a fiery inferno. Immediately, I canceled Overwhelming Strength and Overclock, trying to reserve what little mana I had left in case we needed it. The roar of the firestorm made it impossible to hear anything anyone was saying, not even Connie’s orchestra could be heard over it.

I let myself risk a moment to read the other notification that had popped into my menu. It was something I rarely got anymore. I had completed a quest.