MiP B2 Chapter 59: High-Speed Chess

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Princess Lornera Kalor watched, feeling anxious in a wholly unfamiliar way, as Carlos and Amber joined the fight. She should have been up there in the sky herself, taking direct action as the nigh-invincible warrior that she was. Even with them having a royal soul plan—a revelation perhaps even more stunning than the supreme enchanter's treachery—this battle was no place for a pair of mere Level 50 people to get involved. She should be helping and protecting them, not the other way around.

But she couldn't. If she exerted herself enough to matter, her barely-scabbed-over soul wound would split open again and cripple her. She could only watch, wait, and hope. She felt helpless in a way she had never known was possible. Not for her; not for a royal. Her eyes followed the pair as they flew up and toward the battle, but her mind was spinning in circles, trying to think of something she could do to help.

She had four—six now, with House Carlos's loaned mentors here—royal guards that she could order to fight, but that would be just throwing them away. They would obey. They would gladly sacrifice themselves to serve the Crown; all royal guards would, if the Crown's needs called for it, just as she herself would. But that would be as pointless as trying to douse a wildfire with a single thimble of water, and she refused to waste their souls. They would need the numbers of the palace garrison to make any difference here, and it was clear by now that the garrison could not receive their call. Oh, how she wished that they had brought a royal mage, who could teleport by their own power to carry the message past Nyralis's sabotage!

Lornera even considered spending herself, accepting the crippling that her exertion would cost, but her potential for the future was more important for the Crown than the trifling contribution she could make to this fight—and if the worst happened, if Nyralis soul-killed her father and siblings, then escaping to recover and someday return to execute him would be the best way she could serve the Crown.

Lornera saw Amber's Force Drill hit Nyralis's protections, and she distantly noted that the ripples it produced were surprisingly strong for the Level disparity, but most of her attention was focused on thoughts of how she might possibly escape if it proved necessary. It would be difficult. She would have to not only flee, but also obscure both her presence and her trail from the formidable detection and tracking spells and items that Nyralis undoubtedly possessed.

Then her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sight of golden light filling the sky. Two brilliant beams of it struck Carlos's and Amber's defenses, and somehow, impossibly, the light split and scattered. Lornera stared in shock at the result. She had expected them to at least try to dodge, possibly by teleporting in the manner that Nyralis was doing. Failing that, she would have understood if their protective barriers had simply blocked the spell. She would have been surprised that they had enough strength to do it, but she would have understood.

But this? Light splashed against the spheres around each mage, momentarily glowing like miniature suns. Each beam split and scattered in several directions. Golden light seared the ground in a few spots, burning new pits into the surface of the old craters, while other beams criss-crossed the sky, a total of seven lines radiating in all directions from the two scatter points. It had to be a specific counter for the precise spell, but how could they possibly have such a thing? They hadn't even heard of it before she told them just moments ago, and her description was just a layman's summary!

Her father struck again, trying to punish Nyralis's moment of distraction, only to be pushed back once more by an eruption of sharp soul-cutting edges. Nyralis aimed his wands at seemingly random spots in the sky this time, and golden light beams shot out. The light turned sharply, as if bouncing off of something, to hit Carlos and Amber from the sides. Rather than repeating its previous scattering or any of the outcomes she had originally expected, however, both beams bounced straight up into the sky without even touching their outermost Force Bubbles.

An unfamiliar spell of some kind lanced out from Carlos, cast so quickly it was almost instant, and another, different, unfamiliar spell came from Amber at the same time. The dungeon mana in the air tried to eat away at the two spells in the brief moment before they hit, but it was like water trying to erode steel. Both spells hit Nyralis's defenses squarely, only to break with no more effect than a few ripples in the mana. Those ripples were still more direct impact on the spell's integrity than her father's efforts had yet achieved—though Elston had caused far greater drain on Nyralis's mana supply—and Nyralis scowled at them in response.

Nyralis teleported a quarter mile to the other side of Carlos's and Amber's approach and snapped off a pair of Fireballs. They cast something before the spells hit, and the raging explosions of heat and flame cleared in a quarter of the time they should have taken, if even that long. Nyralis had left an impressively-life-like soul decoy in his place, and he used the precious moments before Elston realized it to volley several more spells at each of them.

Lightning split the sky and strangely drained away, leaving an impotent rumble of thunder as its only trace. An ethereal whisper of death blew on the wind and was canceled out by a similar whisper of vitality. Ice crystallized all around Carlos and Amber, but cracked and evaporated before it could touch them. Two dozen steel arrows with enchantments to pierce nearly anything and ignore all wind flew at them, and they finally teleported to dodge.

Lornera's shock grew with each spell and counter. How could they possibly have that many perfect counter spells? Even for noble mages, learning spells designed to counter specific esoteric attacks was usually a waste of time, effort, and soul knowledge space. Even if you happened to encounter the specific attack the spell was for, you would still need to have the correct counter prepared, identify the threat, and activate it almost instantly. It was incredibly impractical and unreliable, but somehow Carlos and Amber were doing it as if it was as basic as interposing a shield! How?

___

Carlos watched closely as Nyralis's next attack assembled itself seemingly in slow motion. He knew the apparent slow speed was actually because of how quickly his own perceptions were running, but it didn't feel that way. First came the most basic core framework of the spell, the intimately familiar shape of taking mana and pouring it into a series of effects. It was a shame he couldn't build a spell to break that; he'd tried, and it felt like the system itself had specifically rejected the very concept of it. On the other hand, a universally-applicable perfect counterspell for everything would be incredibly broken, and he would hate to ever face an opponent who had such a thing. A system-wide ban of it might be for the best, really.

Second, Nyralis's spell added the scaffolding of its organizational structure. This one was a composite of a few things: a wide area effect, something on the boundary of that area, and something extra inside it. Then the effects started filling in, and Carlos understood the purpose of the combination. A dimensional lock on the area to prevent teleportation, a spherical barrier around it to prevent physically fleeing, and crushing force inside to obliterate the actual target—which was not directly targeted to prevent direct soul resistance from interfering with the spell.

The decompiled code of the spell joined his database, and he hastily considered how to counter it. He could create a customized spell to modify Nyralis's attack in any of a wide variety of ways, but he wanted to hide the true extent of how far that capability could go. He could rely on Purple's domain to contest the dimensional lock so he could teleport, but Nyralis might resort to extreme measures if he knew he couldn't prevent Carlos from retreating. An alternative idea came over his link with Amber, wordless as a pure conceptual impression: He could change the barrier's parameters to give it a weak spot, and combine that with an effect to cut a hole in that weak spot. He mentally nodded to himself and sent back agreement.

Carlos's spell templater rapidly filled in the details, aided by more other soul structures than he cared to list, and he immediately cast the spell with a mere flick of willful intent. He was tempted to smirk as he flew through the new gap in the barrier meant to contain him, but he resisted the temptation. Despite all the advantages he and Amber had, Nyralis was still incredibly powerful and dangerous.

Before Nyralis could send yet another attack their way, King Elston finally caught up to Nyralis's new location. The king moved at a speed Carlos could barely even track, despite how fast his perceptions were going now, but Nyralis still flickered to the side before Elston's attack could land. Carlos was pretty sure that must be a contingent effect to be reacting so quickly, but details were hard to discern through the layers upon layers of various kinds of protective barriers around Nyralis.

Nyralis glared at Carlos and Amber, then at Elston, and finally shrugged. "I'll deal with you two later. Elston, you wanted my attention?" Nyralis aimed his wand at the king once more and fired another three Golden Beams at him all at once.

Elston cut two of the spells out of the air and tanked the third, gold light slamming into his aura and being rebuffed. While he did that, some unspoken signal passed between the royals, and Brenelle and Patrimmon charged Nyralis from behind. Their armblades struck as one, splitting the air with a crash of thunder from their speed. As always, Nyralis's Force Barriers stopped them cold, but this time the spell wobbled. It was a minuscule motion, the barest hint of the spell being strained, but Elston smiled triumphantly and brandished his own armblades.

Carlos frowned mentally. Something felt off about that wobble. He called up the memory of the wobble, just a moment past and crystal clear in his perception snapshot cache, and reviewed it. Yes, as I thought, the wobble happened just slightly too late for their attacks to make sense as the cause. The impetus for that wobble… Ah, there it is! It came from within. Nyralis wobbled the spell himself.

Carlos couldn't move his mouth fast enough. Elston was already moving. Carlos hastily cast a spell to shout for him, and even had it speed up the words for the enhanced perception speed he knew House Kalor had. "IT'S A TRAP!"

Elston ignored the warning and flew straight at Nyralis almost faster than Carlos could see. Elston's right armblade hit Nyralis's Force Barrier point-first, and this time, the armblade pushed into the barrier. The barrier clung to the blade, patches of it starting to turn sticky like glue while microscopic hooks dug in all over, but Elston had eyes only for how deeply he could push the deadly tip of his blade. He was barely three inches away from cutting Nyralis when his right armblade stopped moving any deeper, and he responded by joining his left armblade to the attack. That gained him another two inches. Then Nyralis sprung his trap.

Nyralis's Force Barrier, already wrapped around the full length of both of Elston's armblades, surged forth to wrap itself around the rest of Elston's body. Elston tried to pull back, but the barrier and its trap came with him, attached to him by the hooks and glue it had covered his blades with. In a blink, the barrier had enclosed Elston entirely, and sharp points and edges started emerging from its inner surface and hacking at him from all directions.

Elston yanked his armblades far apart, and Brenelle and Patrimmon struck the section between them from outside at the same time. The trapped bubble shook and stretched, and the section the three of them were jointly attacking thinned and even broke a few gaps in it. Carlos could only sigh as, all too predictably, mana surged from Nyralis, the gaps closed on the armblades poking through them, and two more traps wrapped themselves around the two Kalor scions.

These people have never fought a true peer who wasn't practically a mirror, have they? They have no sense of what kinds of nasty tricks they need to actually be wary of.

Meanwhile, another of Carlos's minds was looking through a teleport-like sensory pathway that he had, with help from Purple's growing dominion over the aether environment, snuck past Nyralis's barriers. I really should name that spell at some point. Anyway… Wow, he's really gone all-out on item dependency. He's barely cast any spells directly himself, using items for almost everything. Makes sense for the leader of the enchanters guild, I suppose. Now then, can I mess with any of this, or is hacking his spells as far as I can go?

Wait a minute, why do several of his items seem so familiar in the same way? They remind me of… Suppression cuffs?

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