As the bomb shuddered in his hands, in the split second before it exploded, Rhys found himself with a choice. He could keep running, be the hero, and get rid of it for sure, or leave it in the hands of fate. Release it, and let the ocean do what it would.
Is that even a question? He’d never been a jump-on-the-grenade type. Rhys pulled his arm back and hurtled the bomb away from him with all his might. It struck the barrier and passed through, into the ocean. He half-expected it to bloop to a stop the second it hit water, but though it deflected a bit due to contact, it kept going. He was strong enough now that throwing something from air into water didn’t fully kill its velocity. It did slow significantly, but it continued to fly, even as the energy blasted out of it and pierced through the water.
Oceanwater boiled on contact with the orb and its fierce mana, all the energy of mana poured directly into heat and destructive force. The energy exploded outward, hurtling toward the barrier.
Rhys breathed out, relieved, then jolted. Hold on. That barrier isn’t defensive, it’s just therapeutic, meant to maintain the atmosphere Aran needs to survive. If that energy hits the barrier, the barrier will burst, and then… and then Aran will be really miffed and that’s about it, but come on! I’m a guest here! I can’t drag a bomb into their house and then let it destroy their barrier! That’s worse than dropping a metaphorical bomb in a friend’s toilet and running away when it clogs the plumbing! I’d know.
Besides, it was Aran’s complicated and permanent medical barrier. Maybe it would be a serious hit for it to go down. He wasn’t an actual magic doctor. He didn’t know. All he knew was that it’d be rude to destroy it now, due to his stupid, willful actions.
He charged forward, throwing out a modified version of his impurity barrier. Rather than wrapping it around himself like an orb, he shaped it into a thick shield and pushed it out in front of him. The shield struck the water and pushed through onto the other side of the barrier just as the fierce energy from the orb reached it.
The fierce mana smashed into Rhys’s shield and shattered it instantly. The energy that touched it negated the impurities, but the impurities likewise negated the energy. Rhys reformed the shield the second it shattered, wincing back as a blast of fierce energy battered against him. It was destruction, pure destruction. If he let up, the energy would absolutely shatter the barrier, and might even take out the sandcastle while it was at it.
So I won’t. Resolutely, he planted his feet. The second shield shattered, but he formed another, and in the split second before it shattered, created another behind it. That one broke, too, but it gave him time to generate another two. He walked forward, forcing the energy back and away while the energy repeatedly broke his shields and rushed toward him. Generating shields as fast as he could, he barely stayed ahead of the explosion.
Beyond his shield, the energy roiled outward. It burst under the sea, boiling water and killing anything it contacted, whether fish, seagrass, coral, shrimp, or something he couldn’t identify at all. The heat was enough to kill most of them, but the few that had some kind of cultivation or mana were able to resist for long enough for the fierce mana to directly shred them apart. It was a brutal process. One layer at a time, the fierce mana flayed them to death, ripping off skin, muscle, shattering open bone and ripping out the bone marrow, all the way through their bodies until there was nothing left but red scum on the waves.
In the face of that, Rhys kept pushing out shields, stubbornly refusing to let it reach the barrier. A few of the servants noticed and rushed over, but they wouldn’t arrive in time. Rhys pushed out one shield after another. The air around him smelled strongly of salt, fish, and filth. The fierce mana crackled, fighting to get past him. A whip of it burst through the barrier and smashed toward Rhys. He raised his arm, taking the hit on his forearm, and almost buckled under the weight of the blow. His arm crunched as one of the bones broke. Blood spurted out, running down his arm and shoulder. Rhys shoved the whip away, then chased it out with an impurity shield, quickly healing the broken arm with his own methods.
Still, for it to break his arm… that was some seriously dangerous energy. He bit his lip, realizing the magnitude of the bomb for the first time. If that had gone off inside the barrier without any sort of mitigation, it would’ve flattened the castle and killed everyone below Tier 4, maybe even Tier 5. It’s almost like a nuke. A magical nuke.
A magical nuke, huh? Nukes released a funny little thing known as dirty energy, a special, corrosive kind of filth that could kill for years into the future. If this energy was similar to a nuke and dirty, then didn’t that make it trash?
He turned back to the bomb, his eyes shining, only to find himself barricaded from it by a half-dozen shields and the energy fading just as rapidly as it had appeared. He retracted his shields and whatever impurities remained after the blast and sighed. He’d have to wait to encounter another of those orbs before he could test that hypothesis.
His eyes drifted upward to the ships overhead. Unless…
“What was that?” Lira demanded, looking from the location of the explosion to Rhys.
“A bomb, I think.”
“You think?”
“I was less sure, but now I’m pretty sure. I mean, it could’ve been some other high-energy-density object they self-destructed in an explosive manner, but yeah, I think it was a bomb. Ninety percent.”
Lira shook her head, and Rhys raised his hands in defense. “I can’t be sure! I can’t be sure. I didn’t get enough time with it!”
“It exploded. How much more information do you need?”
“I mean… that is some pretty conclusive evidence, but…lots of things can explode. That doesn’t mean that’s their only purpose.”
“How many things do you know that can just explode?”
“Phones. Transformers. Cars. Potatoes. All kinds of things.”
Lira squinted at him. “What? What’s a phone? Or a transformer? Car?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just now realizing I lived in a very explosive wo… region before,” he said, finishing the last of the sentence as a mutter to himself.
“I know what a potato is, but I’ve never seen one explode.”
Rhys nodded. “That’s because we weren’t microwaving them or baking them. If you heat whole potatoes rapidly without puncturing the skin first, there’s a good chance you’ll hear a boom.”
She gestured at the ocean. “A boom like that?”
Rhys followed her gaze. There was half a circle carved out of the ocean floor where the bomb had gone off, where nothing living remained. The sand had been patchily transmuted to glass around the edge of the circle, with the ground dug deeper where the patches of glass were. If Rhys had to guess, it was likely where the whips of energy had lashed out and struck the ground, as opposed to his arm.
He shook his head. “No, not really. It’s more of a minor kitchen mess.”
“So it’s kind of a big deal, then?”
“Yeah, a little bit. If they have more of those things, we’ll be in trouble.”
“I meant the explosion part of your maybe-not-a-bomb, but sure,” Lira replied.
Rhys stared up at the ceiling, where water shimmered overhead. Distracted, he replied, “Yeah.”
“You’re not listening to me, are you?”
“Yeah.”
Lira huffed. “Well, if you do something stupid, I told you not to.”
“Lira, where’s Ryota?”
She paused. “Huh?”
Rhys pointed. “The swords. There’re no more golden swords flying toward the sky, but there’s still fighting. What happened to Ryota?”
Lira stared up, then raised her brows. “Huh.”
Rhys looked over his shoulder, at the fierce energy that had so much reminded him of Ryota’s fierce mana, then back at the sandcastle. A faint spark of strange mana burst out on the other side.
“What’s that?” Lira asked.
Rhys took off running. Lira watched him go. She started to chase after him, then fell back. “Why am I following him? He only ever runs toward trouble.”
Leaving her behind, Rhys ran toward trouble. He sprinted across the exposed ocean floor, sand flying up behind him. The spark of strange energy surged, growing stronger, and something—or someone—roared from across the barrier. Kicking off the earth, he hopped the sandcastle, flying a little to scoot over the roof’s peaks, and hurtled down on the other side, landing in a blast of sand. Ryota stood before him, hunched, panting hard.
Rhys ran toward him. Did I get here in time? “Ryota!”
A guttural roar was his only answer. Ryota straightened, baring his teeth and clawed hands at the sky. Fierce mana blasted from his body and raged all around him, flickering with yellow-gold light.
Rhys clicked his tongue. Too late. He’d missed the window. Ryota had gone berserk, and now he faced a war on two fronts.
At least it’s not a land war in Asia? Wait, this is kind of… hmm. Uh oh.
No, no, wait, we’re underwater! Safe! It’s a water war, not a land war!
One or two of the servants looked at Ryota nervously and began to approach, but Rhys waved his hand at them. “I’ve got this.”
They glanced among themselves, then nodded and fell back.
Rhys whistled. “Hey, big boy! Over here!”
Ryota turned, glaring at Rhys. He screamed in rage, which, though unrelated, was an appropriate response to Rhys’s call, and charged in.
Rhys ran over the beach, leading Ryota away from the sandcastle and toward the ocean. Ryota chased after him, locked on like a heat-seeking missile. He was at least easy to kite, which Rhys appreciated, but right now, he was also fully charged on the fierce mana. If anything, he was hypercharged. If he’d been gold-haired and aura’d up before, his hair was extra long and his aura was double now. He wasn’t quite pink or blue haired, but he was definitely even further beyond. Actually, it was exactly the kind of powerup that would have fans fighting for years over whether it was a real new power level or just that vegetable guy being pompous for no reason to have one over the carrot guy, but not actually a higher level of power.
All that to say that he was stronger. Not insanely much stronger, but stronger. The bomb had instantly put him at one hundred percent. Whether he’d ever been at one hundred percent before was debatable, but this was for sure a full charge.
I can handle it, but it’s going to be messy. It was going to hold him up. He couldn’t go chaos any of the other ships while he was dealing with Ryota.
It raised a lot of questions. Did they demolish the bomb to stop Rhys from studying it, or to set off Ryota? Fifteenth knew about Ryota’s condition and Aran’s situation, so the fact that the bomb would have blown up Aran’s home and set off Ryota at the same time was probably deliberate. Did he have another bomb? Was there another purpose to the bomb? Was Fifteenth still throwing bodies at the problem, or was he retreating now that his bomb had failed?
He had a lot of questions, but he also had a berserk Ryota on his ass, and one of those was a little more urgent. He’d have to worry about his questions later.
Rhys skidded to a halt and spun around to face Ryota, raising his hands menacingly. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”