CH576

The second they passed through the gate, Thera wasted no time pulling away the paved stone below them and shaping it the best she could, creating a large basket for them to stand within as she flew them at high speeds to their distant destination while wind whipped by their faces.

So how long until Thera’s going to be in danger of seeing this thing?

<At your current speed, an hour. I’ll warn you beforehand.>

And how long till the world ends?

<Impossible to say. The outsider’s still adjusting to being inside it seems, there could be plenty of strengths to it we can’t see beyond the way its basic existence is affecting the world at large and given it shook the world just coming through, I’m not intending to be too optimistic.>

Fucking great, in that case, if you notice anything major before we arrive then let me know. I’d hate to discover it has some crazy infinite torture ability that only activates when someone resists whatever it’s doing to anyone’s minds.

<The chances of anyone else discovering an ability like that before you get there is non-existent.>

Once again, fucking great.

<On that idea, you should at least relax. The mental harm it’s doing to the life of this world has less to do with an ability than it does its fundamentally foreign nature clashing with minds that could never have evolved to handle it. It doesn’t need to try and cause harm, in a basic sense, to the creatures of this reality, its existence is harm in and of itself.>

Very cool, we’ll get back to that. For now, when do you think we’ll start running into ghosts then?

<Any second.>

Could have used some more heads-up!

<Relax, the outsider is your priority. Without a death mage around the ghosts haven’t been in the mortal plane long enough to properly understand their state to regain their power. They’re practically harmless.>

“Incoming!” Thera yelled out, pulling him from his back and forth with Myriad as she jerked the basket upwards, causing a sudden fireball to hit its stone side instead of their far more delicate faces as the ghost in the distance prepared another, all while Ben directed a flurry of accusatory thoughts to his god.

<Ahem, I suppose it’s possible that thoroughly ancient ghosts may be able to regain some of the power they held in life earlier than expected thanks to all of their time trapped in the hells, though we’ve never seen it before. There aren’t really any examples of them escaping I could draw on for information.>

“Well, we’re sure seeing it now! Thera, give me a second!”

He once more stole a painful quantity of her mana, filling his soul with the stuff before applying a layer of rainbow mana crystal to the front of the cart that left him wanting to heave. Even with his knowledge on the topic and his high skill level, he’d still needed to rapidly take in a tenth of Thera’s insane volume to create that much but he didn’t have time to recover. He was already reaching over the edge to apply the enchantments it needed before yelling a direction for her.

“Any ghosts you see, just ram them!”

Not wasting a second to let their mysterious adversary prepare another spell, she did what he said, shooting them both through the sky to pass through the intangible being, only to watch as it disappeared the moment its form struck the crystal, to be replaced with a flash of light.

“Okay, the soul crystal is properly functioning here, perfect,” Ben muttered. “That just leaves seeing how many it could hold.”

His far smaller, battery-sized crystals were capable of storing about six souls, but combining the fact that he could now enchant with awakened magics compared to when he’d first made a soul crystal with the sheer size of the one they were using and there was no way to be sure how many they’d be able to capture.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

So we’ve just gotta hope it’s enough.