Chapter 142: Entering the Void; Taking Center Stage

"Attention! Analyze the situation immediately! There are critical fluctuations emanating from the quicksand barrier. All parameters are in chaos. The mana from the internal magic circuits is all converging toward its center—it's as if part of the barrier was just struck with immense force!"

The Nightblades technician handling the quicksand barrier was visibly tense, his skin flushed with agitation.

After roughly half an hour, they had finished analyzing roughly half the barrier. The next steps were further adjustments and fine-tuning. It was only a matter of time before they fully cracked it—but in the last ten seconds, the technician had watched in horror as the section of the barrier he was responsible for rapidly thinned. The mana within was being redirected to other parts of the barrier.

According to the feedback from the observation spells they had set up all around the barrier's perimeter, mana from other areas was also rapidly converging toward a single point—the very center of the barrier.

"Warning! The overall mana within the barrier is being depleted rapidly to counteract an extremely powerful impact. The critical threshold for triggering quicksand destruction has been breached!"

The technician roared in frustration. The situation had escalated too suddenly. No one could have predicted and effectively responded to such a drastic change in mere seconds. Much of his anger was mixed with helplessness and irritation.

"Should we forcibly inject an external mana source to sustain the barrier? If the barrier is destroyed by the internal impact, all our efforts will be useless!"

A colleague beside him was sweating profusely. The wildly fluctuating measurements on the potentiometer and the technician's shouts made his heart race. His tools shook as he clenched his palms around them.

The technician's colleague quickly began to draft a somewhat feasible plan: to forcibly sustain the barrier they were supposed to dismantle by injecting an external mana source into it, thereby preventing quicksand destruction.

"It's too late..." The technician put down his potentiometer. One of the parameters they were tracking had dropped to zero, indicating that a node of the quicksand barrier had been completely breached. After about twenty seconds of resistance, the barrier was ultimately destroyed by a powerful impact from its center.

"Boom!" The translucent shell of the crimson barrier shattered like broken glass, disintegrating before being reduced to pure mana by a surge of energy erupting from underground.

At the top of the quicksand barrier, a thick, scorching pillar of fire burst through the barrier, shooting into the sky and piercing through the heavens.

The crack torn open by the pillar of fire continued to expand. The intensity and scale of the flames kept increasing, creating larger and larger breaches until a critical node of the barrier was completely destroyed. The quicksand destruction had begun.

Once one node was destroyed, the mana shockwaves from the collapse would race through pre-established mana pathways and be rapidly transmitted to all other nodes on the barrier, causing a domino effect.

The barrier's secondary magic circuits, poised to collapse in an overload, sent all that mana returning to its source at the center of the explosion.

The mana began to condense and compress rapidly as it destabilized and spun out of control, forcibly triggering a quicksand-like effect that gave the barrier its name.

As the barrier was completely destroyed, the mana would transform into pure destructive energy and target whatever lay within—that was, the entirety of Stevenson Academy of Magic.

Under the influence of the Silent Forest curio, which had stripped the academy of all its magical defenses, Stevenson Academy would be sucked into the void along with the collapsing barrier. The Nightblades' efforts to dismantle the barrier had been rendered meaningless.

"Evacuate! Evacuate!" the logistics team shouted, dragging away the stunned technicians who were still analyzing the barrier. The collapse of the quicksand barrier wouldn't just destroy what was inside—anyone near the barrier would be caught in the indiscriminate destruction and blown sky-high.

The lead technician glanced reluctantly at the cracking and shattering barrier. He was one of the Nightblades' ace technicians, with countless cracked barriers to his name.

Most of his peers had been deployed to the front lines, but he had been chosen to remain in the capital as a senior Nightblades member. His role was precisely to prevent such situations from unfolding.

Clearly, he had failed in his duty. Though it wasn't entirely his fault—he had done everything he could to the best of his ability—the lack of other top-tier technicians to collaborate with made it nearly impossible to quickly decode an unfamiliar barrier in such a short time.

His frustration wasn't about failing the mission but about the lives that would be lost in the explosion.

"Damn it! Isn't the Nightblades' mission to protect the people of the kingdom? First, the Hellgate incident, and now this. What have we actually accomplished? Damn it, damn it!"

He clenched his inscription pen so tightly it creaked, his frustration tangible.

"What are you standing around for? Evacuate now!" His colleague tugged at him, snapping him out of his self-reproach with a look of urgency.

"I'm sorry." He was filled with regret, but senior Nightblades like him were far too well-trained to lose their composure easily. Without further delay, the technician chose to follow his colleague and evacuate. Pointless sacrifice was meaningless.

The potentiometer in his hand suddenly began beeping loudly at a rapid clip. One of the parameters he had been tracking was skyrocketing to an absurd level.

As he ran, the technician glanced at the device and then widened his eyes in disbelief. He turned his head. The interior of the academy, previously obscured by the crimson barrier, was now visible.

Apart from the weakening pillar of fire, everything inside the academy was enveloped in a hazy red substance.

The ethereal quality of the substance and the skyrocketing void energy concentration the potentiometer was detecting left no doubt that the academy was under significant void influence, to the point where it was close to being dragged into the void.

No, it was being dragged into the void. That was the enemy's goal. The Silent Forest's anti-magic properties had prevented them from probing the interior with magic, and the quicksand barrier had blocked direct entry.

The time bought by the barrier had allowed the enemy to succeed in their plan to destroy Stevenson Academy by sucking it into the void—or had it?

Something felt wrong. If the plan had really been going that smoothly, the collapse of the quicksand barrier would have been unnecessary. And once the academy was in the void, it couldn't be destroyed by the collapse of the barrier, either...

His thoughts were a mess. As he ran, the technician tried to piece things together. The image of the pillar of fire shooting into the sky resurfaced in his mind, along with a faint memory. Hadn't he seen that pillar of fire before at Stevenson Academy, albeit on a much smaller scale?

The technician's thoughts became muddled. He felt like he had grasped key information but couldn't connect all the dots. His lingering frustration was now compounded by the agony of seeking answers he couldn't find—until something flew across the sky before him.

"A reality anchor!" As the airship flying toward them came into view, a mental switch flipped. He abruptly stopped, standing still despite his colleague's bewildered and slightly angry look, and gazed toward the academy with a spark of excitement in his eyes.

"Whoever you are, you're the real hero..." he murmured. He didn't continue running because he knew that someone—or someones, as it turned out—inside the academy knew what they were doing. Their actions might very well save Stevenson Academy.

"The void rift is accelerating the destruction of Stevenson Academy. The outer portions of the academy have already begun to peel away from reality and enter the superficial layer of the void. The quicksand barrier is about to collapse!"

Avia focused intently on the miniature void rift in front of her that Wang Yu had created.

Once again, Wang Yu had used the Wallbreaker's Hammer to pierce the boundary between reality and the void, creating a rift so small it was almost meaningless.

Wang Yu's capabilities were limited. The void rift he created was too small for even the tiniest void creature to pass through. Only with the help of the Lady of the Night to widen the gap would it serve any purpose.

Now that the entire space of Stevenson Academy was saturated with shockingly pure void energy, the academy's virtualization was aiding Wang Yu in widening the rift.

The space around them had detected the void rift Wang Yu had created and was now attempting to widen it so that it could become a passage into the void. This, in turn, accelerated the process of virtualization.

"It's going to work!" Avia encouraged herself as she glanced at Wang Yu's weakened body crouched beside her. Wang Yu still needed to deal with Erphine within his mindscape; Erphine would be incredibly difficult to kill.

Meanwhile, she had to stabilize the array that Selwyn had originally engraved to drag the entire academy into the void. At just the right moment, she would let the quicksand barrier collapse entirely.

In the mindscape, Wang Yu stared coldly at the twisted mass of flesh constantly changing its form on the endless lake. His guess had been correct: he would need to handle Erphine here.

All void entities required a vessel in the material world, or they would be banished back to the void. Entities like the Lady of the Night, whom Wang Yu was somewhat familiar with, required believers. Without them, such entities would fall dormant.

Wang Yu had once allowed the Lady of the Night to reside on this lake within his mindscape, suggesting that it could serve as a vessel or temporary respite for such entities.

He still didn't fully understand the nature of this space or its connection to him, but that didn't stop him from using it.

Now that the interior of the barrier was saturated with pure void energy hostile to Erphine, and with his physical vessel reduced to dust by the flames from the Mountain Forge, Erphine had nowhere to go but this endless lake within Wang Yu's mindscape.

"I remember you looking like an old druid..." Wang Yu spoke his third sentence to Erphine since the start of the battle even as he ran across the surface of the lake.

Though Erphine's body had already begun to mutate even back then, it wasn't as grotesque as it now looked.

"That was just a shackle, a shackle placed on my life by those arrogant beings! I have broken free from those shackles. You cannot comprehend how fragile humans are. You're just seeking your own death!"

Erphine swung down at Wang Yu with his grotesque limbs.

"Shackles, huh...? More like you've been bound by new ones," Wang Yu muttered. The Lady of the Night had used the same term, and he had some suspicions about what these shackles entailed.

Erphine's tentacles slammed into Wang Yu but simply split apart upon impact. They failed to even slow him down for a single moment. Wang Yu continued running as he closed the distance to Erphine's massive, distorted form. Using his body, he pushed against Erphine, forcing the latter to move despite the fact that he was over ten times Wang Yu's size.

"How dare you?! Stop!" Erphine let out a furious roar as he lashed out with his tentacles to strike Wang Yu—but it didn't work at all. There wasn't even any feedback from the attacks.

"I'm not sure, but this special trait of mine really comes in handy against undying abominations from the void," Wang Yu replied casually. He continued to push Erphine's body forward, step by step, until they reached the edge of his mindscape.

"You're too big to fit through the doorframe, so it's off to the void with you." Wang Yu shook his head and shoved Erphine's massive form out past the edge of his lake. Beyond that was an endless red storm—a world saturated with even purer void energy.

At the same time, in the material world, Wang Yu's weakened body patted Avia's shoulder. Understanding his intent, Avia manipulated a node in the array with her void energy, drastically accelerating the process of virtualization. The entire academy began to fade, and the next moment, the quicksand barrier collapsed completely.

Wang Yu watched on as Erphine's body was engulfed by the intensifying storm. It was time for the final act. He returned to the physical world, sat down beside Avia, and looked up at the sky.

The quicksand barrier was now collapsing in earnest. Boundless mana plummeted downward as it mercilessly crashed into the academy—only to disappear without a trace. All the impact and heat from the collision were absorbed by the semi-virtualized space by the outer edges of the academy and nullified completely.

The virtualizing academy was now nearly impervious to material influence. Mana continued to gush down into the interior of the barrier, but as the collapsing quicksand barrier itself penetrated the boundary of the void, even its own collapse ceased to affect the material world.

"Just what exactly is the void...?" Avia murmured, watching the awe-inspiring scene with a hint of wariness in her eyes, superseded by her burning curiosity and thirst for knowledge.

She was no longer as afraid of the unknown as she had been as a child. Facing it head-on was the ultimate way to dispel fear. No scholar could claim to fully understand the void right now, but who knew what the future held?

"Who knows? If you want to study it, though, I'll help you." Wang Yu shrugged. He hardly shared Avia's academic prowess.

He knew quite a bit thanks to his background on Earth, but he was laughably out of his depth when it came to practical knowledge. Just how did the illogical void work? How did it come to be?

"Thank you." Avia smiled. Even more than researching the void, she cared more about the person beside her, who always stood by her no matter what.

"Next, you should probably find a place to hide. Just stay out of sight for a bit." Wang Yu rubbed his chin and turned to Avia.

"Got it." Avia nodded without hesitation, though she was a bit puzzled. Using the last of her void energy, she constructed a small mound from the pile of surrounding carcasses in which to hide.

Wang Yu, still weak, slumped down against a pile of carcasses as he looked up at the dark, virtualized boundary in the sky. He pulled out some pills from his pocket and popped them into his mouth. They were supplements, not healing potions.

His body was severely weakened. His cells and organs, which had been frantically healing and repairing themselves throughout the overwhelming battle, were now in a state of overexertion. This wasn't something a healing potion could fix—he needed rest, and plenty of it.

The process of virtualization continued. Soon, the entire Stevenson Academy of Magic would be dragged into the void. But Wang Yu wasn't in a hurry. He was waiting for a familiar companion—the primary target the quicksand barrier had been meant to stop.

Massive metal cylinders descended from the sky, evenly distributed across the academy. Material fields blossomed, covering the academy grounds and forcibly locking the material world in place. The process of virtualization unwillingly began to reverse under the influence of the reality anchors.

The darkness all around them began to recede as Stevenson Academy of Magic was forcibly dragged back out of the world of the void. The scenery beyond the barrier came back into view as a large group of Nightblades rushed forward.

"It's Wang Yu, from the special ops team!"

"He took advantage of virtualization to prevent Stevenson Academy of Magic from taking damage from the barrier's explosion..."

"Thank goodness—the academy is saved!"

"Mr. Wang Yu, you're a true hero!"

No one understood what Wang Yu had done better than these technicians. They had a far deeper grasp of the situation than anyone else who had witnessed the event.

Having personally failed to dismantle the quicksand barrier, they knew just how difficult and significant Wang Yu's actions had been.

They cheered for the academy's salvation, celebrated the successful resolution of the crisis, and praised Wang Yu for turning the tide. They rushed into the academy to start the cleanup and prepare for the fallout from the event.

Their relief at Wang Yu's success didn't cloud the Nightblades members' judgment. They knew exactly what needed to be done.

Wang Yu's gaze didn't linger on the approaching Nightblades. Their praise and gratitude didn't truly register in his mind.

Instead, his eyes were fixed on the knights and mages approaching from the distance, as well as those who had already been present. Family crests, royal insignias, guild and organization emblems, unmarked attire—he shook his head, cursing. "I've still ended up on the stage, haven't I?"