Chapter 274 – Swirling Mists

Chapter 274 – Swirling Mists

“Hurry!” Kai ignored the warning from Hallowed Intuition and ran toward the looming shadow. His skin tingled in the cold air. From the echoes of the frantic scream, Kea could be in danger at this moment.

The mist thickened till he lost track of what he thought was the tower.

Dammit.

Everything was covered in a veil of swirling white. He squinted and strained his ears for any other screams. “Do you see anything?”

Failing to get an answer, he turned to his companions only to find an impenetrable wall of fog. Over half the ambient mana had turned into Water motes with a considerable chunk of Shadow and other churning elements he couldn’t quite identify.

“Flynn? Rain!” He shouted at the top of his lungs.

No one answered. Not the shadow of movement or a faraway echo. Nothing. They had been following right behind him, and the siren would be quick enough to stop him if they didn’t wish to come.

“Fuck!” An eerie silence dampened his voice. He couldn’t see his own feet, and Mana Observer was restricted to a few meters around him.

The mist around the lake had muffled his senses but nothing to this degree. It couldn’t be a coincidence it worsened just as they heard the scream coming from the tower.

Did that girl at the Hall set us up?

Belice couldn’t have known they’d run straight here. The trap must have been for Kea’s team. And if it wasn’t designed for them, they’d have better chances to escape.

To tell the truth, he had no idea who or what had arranged it. It could even be some kind of magical phenomenon of the Lake of Myst or the mist wraiths that guard mentioned.

And that’s why you look for information before acting.

Not that foresight would have made him behave any differently. Kea’s group had come here yesterday; there wasn’t time for an extensive investigation.

“Can anyone hear me?” His calls were answered with silence. Kai tried to run in a straight line for five minutes; his surroundings remained unchanged. While Hallowed Intuition’s whispers lingered, they offered no clue as to how to get away either.

Great.

He crouched with a sharp exhale and lay his palm on the wet grass to scan his terrain with a pulse of Earth Magic. He furrowed his brow at the result. The spell expanded a little more than five meters before it fizzled out, devoured by the ground itself.

If it was some kind of mist creature, how could it also affect the ground? Even a stray yellow beast from a higher area shouldn’t be capable of something like this.

Hallowed Intuition would have gone crazy if that were the case…

Channeling more motes into the ground slightly increased his range at the price of consuming several times more mana. There was no way to brute force his way through with an orange skill.

What do I do?

Even his bond with Hobbes was somehow muted as if he had moved a thousand miles away. Kai meandered aimlessly through the swirling mist, hoping to lure out the entity responsible for the trap. If the mastermind was watching, they must have decided to wait till he exhausted himself.

The potential danger to his sister pressed his thoughts.

Fine. You aren’t the only one with tricks up their sleeves.

Kai waved his hand through the chilly fog. It was nothing more than water vapor. Clenching his fingers, he ripped a chunk to condense it. The dense ambient essence squirmed under his grip as if it had a will of its own.

This can’t be natural.

This time brute strength worked wonderfully to net him a fistful of droplets. His triumph was short-lived when the fog rushed to refill the empty spot with no noticeable change.

I can’t empty the Lake of Myst a handful at a time.

Pushing back the mist brought similar disappointing results. He could clear a bubble around him, but if he expanded the range more than a couple meters, the pressure spiked the cost out of control.

I can’t see through it, and I can’t destroy it…

Kai channeled his Nature mana through his legs to probe the grass; the ambient density resisted him again before he could reach much farther. Frustrated, he sprouted a path of weeds in a straight line.

If I keep going, I must get somewhere eventually.

The mist couldn’t erase physical objects as far as he could tell, and the shadow of the tower had looked relatively close. Hope was swelling in his chest when he noticed his path of weeds on the ground ahead of him.

Dammit. I’m walking in circles.

He must have slowly curved the path and looped around, tricked by the dense mist obstructing his vision.

It’s so much easier when I can cleave a beast in two to solve the problem…

He could try growing a grid of vines to slowly work his way out. But that would take hours if not days. Nature mana was scarce and there were no trees to drain.

“Are you scared or what?” Kai taunted the fog. “Come out, you asshole!”

Predictably, no one answered. He was like a caged mouse, waiting for the trapper to deal with him. It was grating on his nerves.

Stolen story; please report.

Just you wait.

Kai was about to shred the ground and mist apart in the hope of provoking a reaction when he realized his bag of tricks wasn’t empty yet. Shadow would be of no help, but he had one other element.

Space Magic was so clunky to cast that his mind automatically excluded it. This might be the perfect opportunity for it. If he couldn’t rely on his physical and mana senses to orient himself, perhaps he could look at the fabric of reality.

C’mon, I didn’t push you to Yellow for nothing.

To teleport an object, he couldn’t always aim with sight alone. Closing his eyes, Astral Pathway made the iridescent motes beneath the veil of reality flicker to the forefront with neon colors. There were no spatial disturbances he could detect—whatever created the mist worked on different principles.

Now for the hard part.

The Guide called Spatial Attunement an instinctive understanding of the cosmos, while Zervathi called it a crutch for his lacking intellect. With every other element, Kai could use his knowledge from Earth to cast more efficient spells; Space Magic was different.