Chapter 327: Aid from Beyond

"Over here, Wang Yu!"

Avia called out from the side of a ruined building, waving at Wang Yu.

He arrived by her side to find Sieg and Icarus there with her. A group of elven researchers stood nearby, their expressions grim as they stared at the wreckage. Nearly a third of the Council's buildings were now little more than rubble. They were deep in discussion and clearly grappling with how to proceed.

"Mr. Wang Yu," Icarus said, forcing a strained smile despite his dark mood, "could I trouble you to repair what alchemical instruments remain intact? Many are likely beyond saving, but any loss we can prevent would be worthwhile."

Wang Yu nodded readily. This was exactly the sort of work that his Chariot excelled at. The alchemical machinery of Skyborne City had already come right after the incident, but only to repair the public infrastructure.

When the cause of damage was internal to a guild or research society, Skyborne City would offered no restitution. On the other hand, when Wang Yu had been attacked by an abyssal magician on the loose, he'd at least received some compensation afterward.

As Wang Yu activated the power of the Chariot, the nearby debris responded like clay in a sculptor's hands. Cracked stones and shattered bricks transformed, softening and shifting to fill the gaping holes in the walls and restore them to their former form.

At the moment, Wang Yu was the only one capable of such reconstruction.

Earth magic might have sufficed, but the area remained saturated with volatile wind mana. Any spellcasting risked triggering a second disaster. Only the attribute-neutral power of the Chariot could safely be deployed.

"What exactly happened here?" Wang Yu asked casually as he hefted a heavy slab of ceiling back into place. "When I first saw the scale of the destruction, I thought that someone had assaulted the Council."

"Master Lancer was conducting a hypermagic experiment," Avia explained, her voice solemn. "But while infusing mana into a second-tier Wind Blade, something went wrong. It spiraled out of control, shredding him, his assistants, and this entire section of the building."

She gestured toward the ruins. As she spoke, a faint shimmer of void energy began to gather in her hand.

"A Wind Blade?" Wang Yu echoed, surprised.

He remembered Lancer well—he was the man who had registered them during their induction to the Council. He was a measured, steady presence, hardly the sort to cause a lab accident.

His relationship with Icarus had been good, explaining the latter's dour mood.

That a simple second-tier Wind Blade could wreak such devastation left Wang Yu uneasy. He hadn't been directly involved in their research. He'd simply served as a "workbench." The true study of hypermagic had always been Avia's and Sieg's domain.

The giant staff used in some rituals that could cast oversized spells was a mere approximation of true hypermagic. The research here was the real thing.

What Wang Yu was now restoring was merely the outer layer of the laboratory. The core site of the explosion had been utterly annihilated. Researchers, equipment, and even the stone itself had been ground into dust. No restoration was possible there, not even with the power of the Chariot.

"Master Lancer was always meticulous," Avia murmured, frowning. "Hypermagical Wind Blade or not, he'd never inject excessive mana without cause. Our research is promising, but far from perfected. He wouldn't take such a risk."

Uncertainty crept into her tone. She didn't understand what had pushed Lancer to overload the experiment. To find out, she began casting the spell she had been preparing.

She had prepared the fourth-tier wizardry spell Recollection. The void, an ever-watchful backdrop to the material world, functioned like a living recording device. By communing with it, one could glimpse the past.

Void energy flowed from her fingers, forming translucent illusions that filled in the gaps of the ruined chambers, projecting ghostly images of what had once been.

The sequence began roughly thirty minutes before the accident—the maximum window Avia could trace back in time.

Lancer and his assistants paced the lab, carefully documenting data into specialized ledgers before storing the records in a cabinet at the side.

It was standard practice to preserve the results of previous experiments before proceeding to new ones, and a sign of caution and experience.

"That cabinet was likely destroyed in the blast," Avia observed, her voice tinged with regret. "If it survived, we might've been able to learn what he was thinking at the end."

The hypermagical Wind Blade had not spared even a shred of the central lab. Any regular cabinet would have been obliterated instantly.

The greatest loss was Lancer himself. He was a pillar of the Council's research, his knowledge and experience irreplaceable. The data was next. The building and equipment Wang Yu was salvaging barely mattered in comparison.

The vision advanced. Lancer finished storing the old data and instructed his assistants to prepare for the next stage. He perused the bookshelf, finally selecting a scroll: the template for the Wind Blade that would prove fatal.

He placed the scroll into the designated hypermagic apparatus and began adjusting the infusion levels.

Wang Yu and Avia both watched intently—if something had gone wrong, this was likely the moment when. But Lancer's actions were precise, his movements measured. All readings on the alchemical apparatus appeared normal.

"...Huh?"

Wang Yu frowned. Wasn't the setup the issue? They watched on. Lancer nodded in satisfaction at the calibration results. He turned away to jot down notes—only for the machine to tremble slightly behind him.

He and his assistants looked over in confusion. Lancer returned to inspect the machine more closely. A moment later, his expression shifted to one of realization. He spoke a few hushed words to his team, then placed his hand upon the tuning port.

What happened next was apocalyptic.

A surge of violent, rending wind erupted from the machine, disintegrating everything within the chamber—bodies, walls, and instruments alike. Not even blood was left behind.

The vision dissolved into blankness. A few seconds later, fragments of the ceiling drifted past in the image—debris from the above floors collapsing after the explosion. The room had been utterly erased.

"Something went wrong afterward," Avia murmured, brows furrowed. "Why did Master Lancer infuse that much mana? Was he trying to correct an issue with the machine? If so... why such a reckless decision?"

It was baffling. His actions seemed irrational, like someone trying to fix a broken clock by blowing it up. But that didn't make sense given what they knew of the man.

"I'll show this memory to Icarus and the professors," Avia said, showing Wang Yu a crystal shard into which she had transferred the vision. "Maybe they'll have some insight."

"Alright. I'll keep working here," he replied.

Wang Yu was no researcher, and he could hardly help with the theoretical aspects of hypermagic. All he could do was rebuild.

Nearly half the structure had already been restored. He'd salvaged a dozen alchemical instruments from the rubble. Those that could be repaired, he fixed. Those beyond saving, he dismantled for parts.

"Hm?"

Then, something caught his attention. He hefted a heavy stone wall and refitted it with the power of the Chariot. As he did, a flicker of intuition tugged at him.

His blood surged, hardened, and shaped itself into a shovel. With a sweep of his knightly strength, he began clearing away the debris. Beneath the rubble, half-buried under layers of wreckage, lay a massive boiler, blackened and scarred by slashing gashes. It was a relic of the explosion.

Its high-grade metal had just barely withstood the hypermagical blast. The boiler itself didn't interest him; rather, it was what lay beneath it. A file cabinet.

With a mighty yell, Wang Yu wrenched the boiler free, revealing the flattened cabinet beneath. The documents were squashed and creased, but that was it.

"Now that's a bit too convenient," he muttered, placing a hand on the cabinet and using the Chariot to restore its shape. When he opened it, the documents inside were perfectly intact.

Apparently, the Wind Blade had first struck the boiler. Launched skyward by the force, the boiler had crashed down over the cabinet, perfectly covering it with its opening. That fluke of fate had preserved the documents within.

Wang Yu didn't dwell on the coincidence. He hoisted the cabinet up and headed toward the waiting researchers.

"I found something," he called out. "The documents inside are untouched. Might be useful."

The stunned silence that followed quickly gave way to shocked exclamations. No one had expected anything from the central lab to survive. This was nothing short of a miracle.

Later, as Avia, Sieg, and Wang Yu returned home, Avia flipped through a copy of the recovered notes. Her eyes were shadowed with pity.

"Master Lancer had made a remarkable breakthrough. It's clear from these records that he had nearly completed the framework for hypermagic. The rest would just have been trial and error.

"He pointed the way forward. Now, we simply need to follow in his footsteps. But some members of the Council are absent, and we'll need outside help to finalize the experimental setup."

She sighed softly. "Maybe... maybe he simply grew too impatient at the end."

Wang Yu didn't fully grasp the significance of the notes, but he understood what Avia meant by "outside help." It was something they had developed together: the Void Chatroom, a network built upon the Church of Nightfall's Prayer Network.

Through it, they could reach members of the Church of Nightfall and the Nightblades, some of whom were researchers with formidable practical knowledge.