BXBX NOVEL Chapter 228: Seal Rune
As James had expected, no priest or priestess of the church of the night had managed to enter this floor. The only thing that happened was that Aether gained access to the empire.
James was maddeningly surprised by this news. He didn\'t even know how Aether himself had made it to this floor. He had chosen to sleep as he hadn\'t slept for a long time, and when he opened his eyes again, he found himself inside the imperial hall.
All the while Aether himself was able to communicate with Nyx, carrying out orders.
Nothing had gone wrong in the imperial capital, so the idea that the Fallen Gods\' summoners were targeting the imperial capital was completely disproven.
The nobles of the Empire had chosen to leave the palace as soon as they received this information. After Aether\'s checks, it became clear that neither they nor their family members were harmed, which allowed the imperial nobles to take action.
The nobles were already struggling to take action with the information from James, but the orders from their Empress Eve were the last straw for them.
James had managed to pull one artefact out of its mire, but he had failed to do anything in the next six towns.
These seven towns seemed to represent a shape when viewed from the map as if more than 200,000 imperial armies had been built in a circle in almost three days.
When viewed from the map, a heptagon shape was presented to the eyes.
When James saw this, he closed his eyes and started to think how he could not realise it.
When Aether himself came up to James and looked at the map, he put his hands to his head, the old man even chose to pinch himself to see if he was imagining things.
Eve, the Asgardian warriors, and the imperial nobility had become incredibly frightened at the sight of them.
"How long do we have, Aether?" James suddenly asked, drawing everyone\'s attention to the question.
"You broke a seal, sir, the spell will work later. Breaking such an elaborate seal would give you almost three or four days," Aether replied.
James squinted at these words and began to think. If the Fallen Gods were created as a diversion, it meant that this organisation could not only summon the Fallen Gods but also give them orders, unless, of course, the Fallen Gods did not create these events of their own free will.
Anyway, the danger of this event has increased many times over.
The real problem was that there were six more of the seals he had broken.
It was obvious why this organisation had chosen this floor and this region of the empire on this floor. Seven towns are connected to each other and seven artefacts are connected to each other by a complex black magic.
This was a complex formation of a gigantic spell. If this spell worked, it would be completely impossible to tell what would pass through that passage.
It was literally blood-curdling.
"We can say we have at least three days. Aether, I assume you can use rune magic, do you have arcana energy?" James suddenly asked.
Aether nodded, James curled his lip as if he understood, and then said, "Find everyone with arcana energy, show them the runes I\'m going to give you. We have to be quick if we don\'t want the empire to fall to the ground."
The moment James had said those words, the hearts of Eve and all the imperial nobles had literally fallen into the sea, it was easy to tell that every one of them had been overcome with fear.
Especially Eve herself...After all, this woman knew who James was descended from, and the fact that even he was so worried was a great burden on this woman.
After these words, James drew a few symbols on a few pieces of paper and waited. Under the leadership of Aether, people who were skilled in arcana energy gathered and waited right behind James. Immediately after James noticed this, he stopped a few hundred metres away from the entrance of the town they were in and transferred arcana energy to the five fingers of his left hand.
Since arcana energy is something that can be mastered quite difficult, almost two hundred people immediately gathered under the leadership of Aether.
Each of them began trying to memorise the details of the runes James had begun to draw on the floor and the way they were drawn.
After almost five minutes of an incredibly detailed drawing session, James rose from his crouch and wiped his sweat-soaked face.
It was quite difficult for him as he was not a master of Arcana energy, which is why he needed the direct help of others.
"We will draw a copy of this rune in a circle around each town, two rows at five-metre intervals. It\'s something that must exist to prevent the initial impact of these artefacts," James said suddenly.
He took a deep breath and then said, \'In the meantime, I\'m going to try to learn another rune, and if we can learn it by the last day, and if we can place the rune itself at the centre where the black magic is focused, maybe... even if it\'s a small possibility, we can stop the magic.\'
He could see that these words made every single person there smile.
"However, please don\'t take this for granted, this is close to impossible. Even all these runes we will draw will not be enough. We must treat this black magic as something impossible to block and be ready for battle. Remember, these runes will only reduce the incoming danger to a low level, it is IMPOSSIBLE to destroy the thread." James added.
These words seemed to bring everyone back to reality.
"Come on, what are you waiting for?!" James suddenly shouted and with that, everyone got to work.
When everyone was gone, Empress Eve herself and a few high-ranking nobles approached James. The question James had never wanted to hear came to his ears:
"Umbra...How much of the Empire can survive?"
At Eve\'s question, James looked at her and his heart skipped a beat, even though he was obviously scared out of his mind.
"Maybe half...if we try hard enough...just maybe..." James blurted out, lying was obviously not going to help.
Eve and the rest of the nobles stood where they were at these words, they had no idea what to say.
Still, there was really nothing they could do.
James knew this, so he found the centre of the heptagon on the map, in the middle of the towns, and set off towards the centre.
When he approached the centre, he saw that the black magic source had started to rise to the upper levels. Suddenly, sitting on the ground, he had indeed removed his only chance at rune magic from his inventory:
[Beginner Level Ancient Rune Arts Manuscript]
James secretly hoped that he was strong enough to open the next pages. Taking a deep breath, he turned the cover of the manuscript and then skipped to the first page.
When he managed to open the second page, he realised that he could see the information on this blank page again.
James didn\'t even realise that the manuscript itself was a rune that only the most powerful could use, but that wasn\'t even what he needed to realise right now.
Seeing that there was nothing useful on the second page, he forced himself to open the third page and again found that there was nothing useful.
There were a few attack runes on the page that might be useful, but all James needed was a seal rune.
Now he had one last chance. Sweating profusely and the magic drained from his body, he was able to open the fourth page and then smiled in happiness.
There was indeed a seal rune on the fourth page.
With great happiness, James started to hold the manuscript open in his right hand and started to write the seal rune by circling in the centre of the black magic from where he was.
This process would take almost 19 hours.
James did not last a second and used both his main mana and arcana mana to the fullest. The only reason he was able to stand up despite being so tired was because of his aura.
He could have completed this job tomorrow, but he chose to finish it today, despite all the warnings of Vladimir and the others, just in case.
When he returned to the camp, everyone had seen his miserable state. Of course, the other arcana mages and the Aether were also in a bad state, but they had already completed the part they had planned to do today and even added a small part on top of it.
"Sir...are you alright?" Aether said.
James turned to Aether and said, "I have completed the centre seal rune, I will help you tomorrow."
He could not have realised how much those words meant to Eve, the nobles, the soldiers and others.