Chapter 304: The Fog Rising

"But if that's the case, shouldn't devotees who remember such a god be consistently transmitting their faith to It? Why would these 'new followers' suddenly have appeared?"

Wang Yu frowned. His earlier hypothesis now seemed to have a gap. But then he recalled a familiar experience of his own.

"Out of range..." Before the Lady of the Night's power had grown, Avia and the others couldn't contact her when they were too far away. That, at least, explained how a follower who could ‘remember' her might suddenly emerge.

"These followers must've returned from outside the ‘service range'—or perhaps they severed their link to their god through some method. Like that priest in the Forest of Fog mentioned long ago... fragments of the God of Terror could disrupt his connection to the God of Light."

The threads were starting to weave together. Piece by piece, Wang Yu unraveled the mystery surrounding the Lady of the Night's strange change.

"Someone has reappeared. That much is certain. So listen—don't tap into any power that doesn't belong to you. Instead, reach out to the Church of Nightfall's followers. See if anything strange has turned up lately."

Scratching his head, Wang Yu gave the Lady some advice while pulling out his identity card. He quickly sent a message to Avia and Sieg through Skyborne City's arcane network, asking them to return as soon as they could.

He had a working hypothesis now—but he was no expert. He'd need the scholars to weigh in with something more authoritative.

"All right. I understand. I won't make use of the power that isn't mine."

The Lady of the Night nodded, taking Wang Yu's words to heart. Then, after a brief pause, she brought up something else.

"As for strange phenomena... The followers traveling with Elliot are now in the lands that once belonged to Selwyn and are now occupied by Aleisterre. A fog has begun creeping inland from the coastline. It refuses to dissipate."

"Fog?" Wang Yu's brow furrowed.

That certainly struck him as wrong. Many supernatural powers took the form of fog or mist, which embodied ambiguity and obscurity. Fog, at its essence, was interference with perception.

"Can you show me what this fog looks like?"

"Got it."

She waved her hand, summoning the same curtain of liquid shadow she had used earlier to share her visions with Wang Yu. But this time, something went wrong. The darkness faltered. She froze in place.

"What is it?"

"I've lost contact with a portion of my followers... with Elliot and the others," she said slowly. "The fog from the Endless Sea has crossed the St. Anna Snowfields."

The Lady of the Night frowned. She couldn't quite understand how such a thing had come to pass.

"...What?"

If the Lady of the Night didn't understand, then Wang Yu certainly didn't. But one thing was clear now: this fog, born from the Endless Sea, was without a doubt connected to that ancient god of darkness—and the new followers who had appeared within the Lady's domain.

"That power that doesn't belong to me—it's growing stronger. I fear that ancient being may awaken within me."

There was a hint of tension in her voice now. As she spoke, she revealed a new vision, a glimpse of the void.

Within the celestial Tree of the Night, a manifestation of her power, there was now a region where the stars had vanished. In their place was utter darkness. A blanket of endless shadow had smothered the starlit firmament.

And from within that abyss... a hand reached out. Only a few fingers had formed so far, but Wang Yu recognized it instantly. It was the same hand as in the vision, the one that had swallowed the sky and crushed the stars.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath.

Meanwhile, Icarus led Sieg, Avia, and Noelle through the Council of the Arcane's laboratory. As they walked, he spoke of their pioneering work into "hypermagic."

"This is the core direction of our research—understanding the relationship between magic and elemental forces. Beyond that lies something more: the distinction between inert mana and hyperactive mana."

Just as he had said, numerous Liaheim elves worked alongside them. They greeted Avia and Sieg warmly before returning to their research.

To the elves, the pair who had saved the Tree of Life were trusted allies beyond question.

"Normally, mana activates elemental channels through circuits and runes, allowing us to cast spells. But when mana reaches a certain intensity or operates in a particular state, it can manifest as magic even without drawing upon the elements.

"The best-known example is the arcane missile. It has no elemental component. It's pure magic, invoked through force of will and structured mana.

"We refer to the element-dependent form as inert mana, and this element-independent form as hyperactivated mana. Our goal is to find a way to reliably harness that latter form. That's what we're calling hypermagic."

As he explained, Icarus led them to a colossal staff, the one they had glimpsed earlier.

"If we can skip the elements entirely, then magic will become independent to the environment. It will no longer fail where elemental flow is weak or depleted," Avia murmured. She narrowed her eyes.

"And without relying on elements," Sieg added, his gaze fixed on the enormous staff, "there's no elemental feedback, which means no secondary effects and no resonance. That must be what you wanted to show us, isn't it?"

Sieg's eyes were glimmering.

"Exactly." Icarus nodded with satisfaction. "Hypermagic would lead to another breakthrough: non-interfering mana circuits, circuits that won't disrupt each other even when packed tightly together. They won't collapse under magical turbulence. They won't burn out under overload.

"That's why we chose Arcane Missile as the default spell for this staff. It's already a hypermagic spell, so we can amplify it without worrying about elemental instability. We just pour in more mana, and it hits harder."

He was clearly impressed by how quickly Avia and Sieg had grasped the key points of this research project. Their insight would accelerate the entire research effort.

Avia narrowed her eyes again. The principles of hypermagic reminded her of some design issues she'd faced in the Spellweaver's Tome and of something Wang Yu had once mentioned to her: microchips.

If hypermagic could be stabilized, then it might become possible to etch incredibly complex mana circuits onto tiny metal wafers without worrying about density or burnout. Arcane chips might no longer be theoretical.

"Of course," Icarus added with a shrug, "this is all just a hypothesis. We don't know yet whether hypermagic is a phenomenon or something else entirely. But at least we've taken the first step."

"No doubt," Sieg said, excitement in his voice. "Even a partial breakthrough here would be revolutionary. It might very well rewrite the entire foundation of magical theory!"

He couldn't contain himself. To a scholar like him, the implications were electrifying. Hypermagic offered a glimpse of new realms—of artificial arcane constructs far beyond today's limits.

"Wait, if that's the case, then—"

Sieg's expression suddenly froze. A shadow of thought passed over his face, as if something had just clicked in his mind. He muttered softly to himself.

Avia jumped in. "I apologize, Mr. Icarus. Wang Yu is calling for us—we'll need to leave for now. Thank you for letting us witness such a meaningful avenue of research."

Avia's voice interrupted Sieg's train of thought. He, too, had just noticed the call pulsing from his identity card. One glance at the message dispelled the haze in his eyes, and his expression sharpened at once.

After offering quick farewells to Icarus, the three of them made their way swiftly back to their residence in Skyborne City.

Far, far away, the goblin merchant Elliot glared at the gray fog surrounding him. On the rooftop of the wagon, the elf ranger Vena stood with eyes closed, using the words of nature to attune herself to her environment.

"...What is this stuff?" Elliot gritted out in frustration. "Wenna, can your senses pierce this fog? Damn it all, I just don't understand—how did it creep up on us without so much as a whisper?"

Scattered at Elliot's feet lay several used scrolls—detection spells, all spent. But the scrolls remained blank and blackened, which meant that not one of them had produced a usable result.

"I can't see through it," Vena replied, opening her eyes and shaking her head. "My connection to the local flora's been severed. It's as if they were never here at all."

She gestured to the fog beyond. Anything more than ten meters out had been completely swallowed. Even using plants as conduits, she couldn't sense what lay beyond the veil.

"Just great," Elliot sighed, his exuberance deflating like a punctured balloon. "Are we all still here, at least?"

"We are, boss. All the Nightfall folks are present and accounted for. The fog swept us all up together—no one's gone missing," Emmon the orc replied. His booming voice cut through the oppressive atmosphere of the camp, which was surrounded by wagons drawn into a defensive circle.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Elliot groaned. "Just when Selwyn falls and I finally get my hands on some prime local wares... I was all set to unload this stash in the Merchants' Guild of the Goddess of Wealth in Beriman—and now this? Fog? Out of nowhere? Damn it!"

He clutched his head in despair and began stomping around the camp in circles, muttering and ranting. The others paid him no mind—they were used to it. Elliot might lose his head in a crisis, but when it came to business, he was as sharp as they came. This was just how he vented.

"If only Lady Darkness were here... With her divine link, she could surely channel the Lady of the Night's power to get us out."

One of the Nightfall Church's half-beastmen raised a hand to the fog, letting it slip through his fingers. It offered no resistance—just a suffocating formlessness. His voice was heavy with longing.

Elliot and his companions were part of the group from the Church of Nightfall that had departed the capital before the great clash between the two kingdoms.

They had roamed from place to place. After Selwyn fell, they had moved to the newly established territories of Aleisterre.

There, they had seized the opportunity to buy goods at bargain prices, intending to transport them to neighboring Beriman for a handsome profit... and, incidentally, spread the faith of the Lady of the Night.

"Incidentally" being the operative word—the canon of the church clearly stated: "Let the faithful first live well, then spread the word."

They had, of course, heard rumors of the fog along the coast. Everyone knew it was strange—but no one truly believed it could cross the natural barrier of the St. Anna Snowfields.

But, as Elliot's caravan made their way toward Aleisterre's border via a path through the foot of the snowfields, the fog struck. Silent, seamless, and utterly unnoticed by any sentries, the deep fog had engulfed them completely.

Every detection spell they tried failed. Every tool, every measure, proved useless against the strange fog that seemed to have come from the Endless Sea.

What was worse, the very terrain seemed to have changed. When the caravan attempted to press forward, their visibility reduced to a range of less than ten meters ahead, they found their route abruptly cut off by a cliff that hadn't been there before.

That was when they knew that they were trapped. They called upon divine power, invoking rites and prayers to the Lady of the Night, but nothing answered. Her miracles no longer functioned within this fog.

"Wait a moment..." Suddenly, Elliot stopped in his tracks. His head snapped up. His eyes were fixed in a single direction within the fog. "I feel something. The Lady's power—I can feel it! There's... an invisible thread. It's guiding me. She's showing us the way!"

The gnome's voice trembled with excitement, edged with disbelief. In his sight, a fine strand of divine darkness extended into the fog, glowing faintly with the essence of the Lady of the Night.

"She's guiding us!"

"Praise the Night! Glory to Her!"

Cheers erupted among the faithful. The camp's gloom lifted in a chorus of whispered reverence and joyful relief.

The caravan moved. Under Elliot's direction, the wagons began to roll forward into the fog.

𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

And slowly, ever so faintly, Vena, perched once more on the roof, saw shapes beginning to coalesce through the fog.

A settlement, perhaps a small town, or merely a village. Its details remained obscured, but a weathered sign near its entrance was clear enough to read.

"Myssos..." Vena murmured, narrowing her eyes as she read the name aloud.