Chapter 257: Nailed Footage
———Lynda———
<1: 17 pm>
“What the hell?” I muttered while staring at the article. I’m not hallucinating, am I? I know I started drinking a few minutes ago but I’ve been pretty conservative on that front. I don’t want to look like a mess a second time today. Giant ball of light above and then… It’s weird to see this being a breaking news when it’s something that happened in that country. Let me look at the footage someone captured of the incident.
The video I’m looking at seems to be taken far from the site of the incident. It’s way before the actual explosion itself. That giant ball of light with a purple tint to it looks really ominous as it makes it look like it's suddenly morning over there, that’s how massive the ball of light was.
And then very suddenly, the sky around the area somehow turned even darker in the dead of night, engulfing everything in darkness even as the bright ball of light stayed there, being the only thing clearly visible in the fog of darkness that surrounded everything.
A pair of eyes suddenly appeared in the sky, staring down on everything as the footage became blurry as the recorder was shaking in fear.
The ball of light then shattered into what looks like over a thousand blades of light and started moving everywhere, and the recording ended there. Obviously the fact that the footage was uploaded at all means the recorder came out of that alive. Still, I have no idea what happened.
The best guess I can give is that the raw ball of energy was converted into thousands of swords that rained down on the area the darkness reached. For what purpose, I still don’t know, but the consequence is pretty clear once everything is settled. Many areas in Russia were badly damaged by the attack, and it seems to be purposefully hitting certain parts of the country. It’s hard to find much footage and testimony at the moment despite how big of a deal this is, everyone is probably still panicking and not sure what was affected. No one even knows who the perpetrator was.
It all seems to happen in less than three minutes. That’s all it took for an attack that covered such a massive nation to take place. Nothing in this world should be able to affect such a wide area in such a short amount of time. I pity whoever got caught in the crossfire of that, it’s clearly not something anyone could’ve predicted to happen.
I look around and it doesn’t seem like a lot of people have noticed the news. It doesn’t have quite the same impact as the morning's incident that we haven’t really talked about. There’s an elephant in the room that we haven’t discussed… More than one, even.
“By the way, Histon. How did that mission go again?” I asked, since he didn’t really elaborate on it aside from it being easy.
“Huh? I told you all already. Easy peasy.” That’s way too little information to go off on!
“I mean like… more details than that? You picked a fight with a division of a cartel? Right?” He wasn’t being super clear about it. It sounds like he was tasked with destroying a part of the organization and nothing more than that.
“Yeah. All of them were hella wimpy. Most of them can’t even use mana.” He remarked. So that’s why he deals with them so easily. They’re no warriors or spellcasters, so the gap is massive even if he’s not the biggest fish on this side. “I don’t have any explosive spells so it was faster than I thought it would’ve been. Could’ve gotten more points from that if I had something.”
“And you said that you should be specialized…” Trener snarked at him for it.
“Hey! Why don’t you try out one of the missions and see how it went?” Histon argued. “Seriously though. I would’ve expected those guys to be the type to train up. Aren’t they into violence?”
“We still don’t really know why so many groups prone to violence don't take it seriously.” Kroin interjected. “Most of us think it is due to complacency, but even that falls short with many new violent gangs that sprouted up from nowhere.”
“Hey. If a nerd like you doesn't have a good idea then what are we even supposed to say?” I pointed out. I think we have done a lot of pondering to pad out the conversation already. “Speaking of nerds. You know what this is? I sent it into the group chat.”
He then pulled out his phone to check it while the others also checked it out due to curiosity. It’s the video I just looked at earlier. He might know what that weird thing in the sky is.
“…I believe that is a Reality Phantasm.” He answered surprisingly quickly. Now what even is that? There’s an actual term for that?
“Quite a fancy name.” Trener remarked while checking the footage himself.
“Think of those reality warping abilities seen in stories, bringing out their inner world and giving themselves the home field advantage.” Kroin began explaining. “From my understanding of it. It’s a very mana-intensive technique and not something anyone can just learn. The effect of one is usually related to your core principle or memory. It takes a long time to develop and the effect can vary greatly between people. It’s not something we can ever hope to achieve within just a few years.”
“It sounds… pretty weird. Isn’t magic all about being flexible and doing the impossible?” The strict rule on what your Reality Phantasm would be like is rather odd…
“It’s just the nature of the technique. It’s like asking for a fire spell to shoot out water. That’s not a thing.” He replied. Is it seriously like that though? “Admittedly, I haven’t read on that particular topic for a while now, but my understanding is that it’s very heavily based on who you fundamentally are, and it’s hard to change that intentionally.”
“...How many can of worms did you find in those readings that you just never told us?” I asked, since he even knew about something like that.
“Surprisingly little. Of course I haven’t looked through the entire library.” He answered. How big is that damn place anyway? He always said he’s nowhere near done looking through the contents. I swear the last time I visited it it wasn’t that much bigger than the old library, which was already quite big. “So this footage. Seems like someone pissed off someone with a lot of power. Is there more information on that?”
“If only there was. It happened not even half an hour ago, we don’t know shit.” This is something that only time can solve. There’s no way for us to know more than that.
“Looks like there are already some confirmed casualties.” Kroin remarked. Is there already an update on that front? “It seems like all the military bases were wiped out from what I’m reading, or at least were targeted. I think a lot of government buildings in general?”
“...I’m surprised there were already reports on it. I thought that country would’ve been way more secretive about it. Wouldn’t this be massive world news?” Who is even reporting all of this? They are going to be on the government shitlist, right? That sounds pretty darn dangerous. I heard they all got sent to prison for even saying anything remotely bad.
“I don’t know who is reporting on it either. There is also footage that seems to be from a drone view?” He pointed out before sharing it in the chat. Yeah. That sure is a destroyed… I never saw what a military base is like, actually. I shouldn’t provide a comment on that.
“Looks like it was hit by a bunch of bombs or something? I thought those were swords?” Histon remarked.
“Those are swords made of light to be fair. Probably something closer to bombs in the shape of swords.” I pointed out. Looks like it exploded on impact or something. Now is there any more update on this? Anything jui… Oh. Oh what the hell is that? Let me screenshotted it real quick before it could possibly get deleted. It’s pretty gory so it probably won’t be shared around much. I think I recognize that face… Is that guy still squirming? He can’t be alive for long like that, right? The live video keeps going and the guy is still squirming, nailed to that pole. This isn’t some fake stuff, right? This looks way too real, and I don’t think anyone in their right mind will fake this… scratch that. I don’t think anyone can come up with something like this not even an hour after the calamity occurred.
I don’t know the language so I can’t really look it up if that live footage is real. The caption shows the location and who is nailed on that pole, so it shouldn’t be too hard to verify.
“It seems like the target was mostly those things, and no talk about civilians being hit. It’s very precise, so that Reality Phantasm probably has some sort of powerful observation-based ability.” Kroin speculated. So that thing isn’t for doing any damage? Then those attacks are probably something the perpetrator can naturally do, which is actually more terrifying since it means they can do it whenever they want with no warning. “Hmm… Based on the testimonies on social media of anyone from that area, it seems like they feel a heavy pressure on them, so it’s unlikely that it only has one effect.”
“That still makes it sound rather unimpressive, right? Or am I missing something?” Histon asked.
“The fact that we weren’t in the eye of the storm when it happened. If we were there I could probably comprehend what the ability of that Reality Phantasm was, but we weren’t. Footage like this is far from enough.” Kroin explained. Shouldn’t it be ‘eyes’? You know? “I think with the current anecdotal… What is that?”
“Lynda what the hell are you watching?” Histon said, looking at the live footage I discovered earlier. It’s now being hosted on a website of its own. Just for this. No idea who the uploader is. The account was made not too long ago and now redirected here. “...Isn’t that the leader or whatever? What the hell happened?”
“That’s what I want to know. Based on what happened I would’ve thought basically all the important figures were killed by the attacks. I didn’t expect the one at the top to still be alive, albeit barely.” Kroin explained. They all take the sight of a man with most of his body skinned and nailed in a public area quite well. I guess when you keep seeing blood and gore from monsters the resistance to such a thing naturally builds up over time.
“...So are we just not gonna talk about the country-wide attack happening in three minutes or so?” Trener pointed out. I think the output is technically not that high since the attack is very precise and only hitting where it needs to for the most part.
“I would be spooked out by that if we didn’t hear about someone destroying a city not too long ago, and not being the only time as well.” Kroin pointed out. “All things considered, the methodical nature of the attack makes it less dreadful in my view. It shows restraint from the attacking party. I can’t say the ball of light at the beginning doesn’t make me feel like they were planning on just nuking the capital city and be done with it, but that ultimately didn’t happen.”
“...Anyway, this is hella eerie. How is he still squirming and resisting like that? No way he’s staying alive for that much longer, right? I know he ain’t bleeding, but he’s definitely not cozy like that.” Trener asked while the others looked at it with curiosity.
“Perhaps some sort of enchanted object keeping him alive, just enough to be conscious.” Kroin gave us his hypothesis. “We’ll probably know the reason sooner or later… Hmm… That’s someone new coming into view.”
He has a phone in his hand and is looking around, occasionally looking on his phone before moving around a bit more and then noticing the camera used to capture this live footage. He seems to be taking pictures of it? Someone is being daring, who knows if the camera has some sort of hidden function to it, considering everything that happened so far it wouldn’t have been surprising.
Anyway, he quickly ran off once he noticed something. Those seem to be… The uniform looks formal and quite heavy, probably the police? That guy doesn’t want to be detained for snooping around, I bet.
They walked up to the pole that man is being nailed into and looked unsure of what to do. Anyone would be in that situation when it looks like the guy wouldn’t last long even if he was freed. Seems like a problem they couldn’t solve as is.
One guy then suddenly struck the bottom of the pole only for his entire body to be set on fire in response and badly burned by the time the fire went out.
“Whoever put that guy there made sure to have some failsafe, it seems.” Kroin remarked. It does look like simple brute force wouldn’t work, there is an enchantment on that pole that makes it retaliate against anyone attempting to damage it. Considering the scale of the attack, the kind of power and mastery needed to rescue that man would probably be too much for most to achieve.
I think that’s enough pondering on someone’s misery. Despite everything that man did, I don’t want our group to look like a bunch of callous jackasses if I could help it. Let’s shift the topic to something more innocuous.