Chapter 493: The Hitting It a Bunch Plan (2/2)

Neil groaned and stomped off.

“He misses Jason,” Gary said, approaching Sophie and Ken. “Such a tsundere.”

“You know I don’t like that term,” Sophie said.

“That’s because you are one,” Neil called back.

“You can participate in the conversation or go off and sulk,” Sophie told him. “You can’t do both.”

“Watch me!”

Gary poked the artificer dangling unconscious from an overhead beam.

“Are you done with this one?”

“We are,” Ken said. “We’ll continue through the remaining survivors but I doubt that any will talk here. We’ll take them back to the Adventure Society to be questioned properly. They’ll break eventually.”

“Is this really necessary?” Humphrey asked. He had been looking at the carnage with a grave expression. “Killing enemies is one thing, but torturing them is another.”

“What do you think is happening to people when you set them on fire with your abilities?” Sophie asked him.

“I know that,” Humphrey said. “But this doesn’t feel right. Fighting the enemy is one thing. Stringing up helpless people and making them suffer is another.”

“You’re sweet,” Sophie said, placing a hand on his arm. “We’re definitely torturing the evil zealots, though.”

“It won’t be torture,” Ken assured Humphrey, stepping out a puddle of blood left by the man he’d just tortured into unconsciousness. “Torture is, as a means, unreliable and inconsistent. I’ve only taken this step here in the hope of extracting critical and timely information from people who do not want to give that information up. The Adventure Society has more humane and effective methods.”

“It’s always easy to find an excuse,” Humphrey said, stepping up into Ken’s face. “Your questions are over.”

Belinda slid up to Sophie, speaking to her softly.

“Is it just me or does Humphrey get kind of sexy when he goes all ideological?”

“Oh yeah. Jason used to do it too, but he just came off as kind of a prick.”

“You know we're all silver-rank, right?” Neil asked. “Just because you're whispering doesn't mean we can't hear you.”

A blushing Humphrey desperately looked at Clive to change the subject.

“What have you found?” Humphrey asked him.

Clive glanced at Belinda, who shrugged back.

“This place is collecting magic,” Belinda said. “We knew that going in. We thought it was all being used to hide the valley from magic detection but that’s only expending part of the power, the rest of which was being collected.”

“Like water behind a dam,” Clive added.

“This new power source, coming from the valley, is very new,” Belinda continued. “It’s not an ongoing source, either. It came in one big lump and the dam’s magical processing is being used to refine it. This lump only came in a matter of hours ago. When we leaked the attack on the valley to potential Purity and Builder spies, it seems they immediately moved into the final phase of whatever their plan here was. They’ve been rushing to some final stage where all the power from the dam and the valley is being sent out and used for… something.”

“Something?”

“The power collected here,” Clive said, “both from the dam itself and the valley, is being refined and then sent back to the valley for whatever is going on there.”

“The place where we sent a bunch of teams on a feint attack,” Neil said.

“Yes,” Clive said. “We have no idea what we’ve sent them into.”

“What about the original plan?” Humphrey asked. “Can we still use the power flowing through here to blow the dam up and flood the valley? The team leaders all have magical devices to shield their teams from the floodwaters. Won’t that stop whatever the Purity church is up to?”

“Even if we don’t know what they’re doing,” Neil said, “I’m fairly certain that stopping it is good for us.”

“There’s not enough power left to destroy the dam,” Belinda said. “They’ve been sending it all into the valley for whatever it is they’re doing. We can’t repurpose that power from here anymore.”

“What can we do?” Humphrey asked.

“Well,” Clive said, “we think they couldn’t avoid needing this central device here to regulate the magic being fed to whatever is happening in the valley. We can’t redirect it, but we could potentially disrupt it.”

“So, we could just hit this big magic thing a bunch,” Sophie said.

“We don’t know what that would do,” Clive said.

“We know that it would make whatever’s going on down there not go the way they want,” Belinda said. “I like the hitting it a bunch plan.”

“Again,” Clive said, “we don’t know what that will do. It’s reckless.”

“As is failing to act at all,” Ken said.

“It’s happening right now, right?” Gary asked. “If we’re picking between what the evil zealots want and something else, without knowing what either choice is, then I choose the something else.”

Humphrey turned to Ken.

“The Adventure Society put you in charge of this team,” he said. “The choice is yours.”

“Stuff that,” Sophie said. “I say vote. Hands up who wants to smash the crap out of this thing?”

Her hand was joined in the air by Neil, Gary and Belinda.

“That’s a majority,” Belinda said.

“Whatever the Adventure Society might say, your team is not mine to command,” ken said. “Whatever you choose, I shall abide, and it seems that your members have spoken, Mr Geller.”

“Great,” Gary said, hefting his hammer. “I’ve been wanting to hit these big magic machines since we got here but Belinda wouldn’t let me. I'm going to start with one of them big crystals.”

In the mist-shrouded valley below the dam, a picturesque rural village was being splashed with blood and death. Purity loyalists were desperately defending against teams of adventurers.

“Keep them away from the ritual site! It’s almost complete!”

As the battle raged, huge waves of magic surged from the woodland reaches of the valley. Transcendent lights of blue, silver and gold rose out of the forest canopy at points up and down the valley. Each of the large magic conglomerations twisted into a ring shape that floated high in the sky.

Streams of magic continued to rise up, feeding the rings’ power as huge portals opened within them. Winged, angelic beings started to emerge from each of the portals, filling the sky like a plague of sexy, feathery locusts.

The fighting below stalled as the battling forces watched the angelic creatures emerge. The adventurers were filled with confusion and the Purity loyalists with triumph until the streams of energy feeding the portals started to flicker and pulse. The portals became unstable and the angelic creatures started flying swiftly away from them, even as more came through.

Finally, the portals exploded. Violent eruptions of magic shot in every direction, turning angels into red mist and blasting craters in the ground. Adventurers and Purity faithful alike fled from wild blasts of magic shrieking through the air and thundering into the ground. Everything turned to chaos and destruction as the ground was thrown up in clouds of dirt, shattered houses and trees. Ear-tearing explosions smashed into the people on the ground and the angelic creatures in the air, their broken bodies raining from the sky.

Eventually, the magic faded. The survivors had escaped; adventurers and Purity loyalists on the ground and the angelic creatures through the sky. Dust clouds still lingered, most of the village and the surrounding woods now a devastated moonscape of craters and desolation.

Inside some of the craters, people started regaining consciousness, naked and hairless. These were not survivors of the battle, instead somehow left behind by the wild explosions triggered by the breaking of the portal rings.

One of these people was a man with chocolate skin and a pro-wrestler physique. He came to, the dirt scattered over him falling away as he stumbled groggily onto his feet. Looking himself over, he saw his nakedness and ran his hands over his bald head. He talked to himself, disoriented, his high-pitched voice not matching his imposing physique.

“What the hell, bro? I’m in the nicki-noo.”