As the battle in the heavens raged above them, far too high and intense for any of them to risk interfering, lest they upset the fragile balance in their enemy’s favor, the fight on the bridge was just beginning.

  The four knight constructs that Eire had built immediately proved their worth by forming a defensive line around them, becoming the first barrier the wyrmlings would need to break through to reach the more vulnerable humans.

  Orion made the most of the time the statues provided, channeling mana from the Field into the CC.

  It was more of a struggle than he expected, as the storm still howling around them was not purely natural and had enough power of its own to alter the local composition.

  Light mana was scarce under these conditions, weakening his most powerful spells, but in a way, that was fine with Orion because he had yet to truly test the most dangerous combinations. Having less mana wasn’t as bad because it allowed him to focus more on controlling the power he managed to wield better.

  [Infinite Laser] slammed into a lunging wyrmling, whose maw was ready to bite the nearest soldier, and pierced its soft palate, though it didn’t go all the way through.

  “That thing is tough,” he muttered, watching as the knight took advantage of the hiss of pain the draconic creature released to slash with its sword.

  Instead of aiming for the head, which was the goal, the knight’s blade skated across the thicker scales on the wyrmling’s neck, sending sparks in the air instead of drawing blood.

  The creature twisted, snapping its jaws in anger, and exhaled a cone of blue-white fire that hissed like acid and that [Hypotheticism] told him would melt through regular stone without issue.

  Eire snapped her fingers, and a gray wave spread out, freezing the flames mid-air, which then fell as fragile slag, shattering on the bridge with a loud noise.

  Orion didn’t let it distract him from his purpose, no matter how impressive it was. He fired another [Infinite Laser] through a wyrmling’s palate as it opened its maw to roar, and the beam pierced the flesh but lost power when it reached bone.

  On a normal creature, that would have still been enough to kill or at least heavily injure, but the wyrmlings were made of tougher stuff and only hissed in annoyance before lunging, forcing him to switch targets as they engaged with another knight.

  [Hypotheticism] lit up like a switchboard at his urging. Incidence angles, polarization drift, and micro-ridge spacing all became clear to him, and his mind showed how each scale was designed to reflect foreign mana.

  Unlike the orcs, whose resistance came from thick skin, fat, and a high regeneration ability, the wyrmlings actually deflected magic through multilayer lattices, refractive discontinuities, and a complex technique that split coherent mana into harmless bands of energy, which the scales could then release back into the Field.

  The CC processed his observations, reviewed them carefully, and, with his support, found a new way to apply his magic that wouldn’t be ignored by the biological armor.

  Though an incredible example of natural evolution, the scales were still limited by the mana frequency bands that their species had encountered. This meant that if he could narrow the coherence window further and spike the polarization enough to push his spells just outside the typical spectrum, he could disrupt the scales’ micro-prisms of mana so they couldn’t reject the energy.

  He unleashed a thinner beam and cursed as it still diffused at the last moment, despite lasting longer than previous iterations.

  The Local Field was just too turbulent right now; the storm had flooded it with water, wind, and lightning mana, overwhelming his light alignment, shortening his coherence length, and forcing the CC to keep adjusting to avoid corrupting the pure light.

  He could produce a piercing pulse now, yes, but he couldn't provide enough stabilized light to breach the physical defenses under these conditions.

  The wyrmling he’d harried reared up and vomited another stream of corrosive fire in his direction, clearly intent on removing the annoyance at its source, but a knight stepped in, and the plume etched a black scar across its chestplate, doing more damage in a single attack than anything Orion had seen so far.

  Eire flicked her wrist, and the wounded guardian returned to its original, unblemished state, with the corroded areas sealing over with a dark gleam.

  Seven more wyrmlings found them, swooping toward the loudest source of noise and light in the storm beyond the titanic battle raging above. They snapped at moving shields and attacked the stone spearmen, trying to overcome their defenses.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Eire didn’t let them. She was everywhere at once, freezing a forelimb mid-pounce, turning a spray of water into a brittle spike that pinned a tail, then shattering it so a bleeding merchant could crawl free from under a ruined carriage.

  Pauline vanished into the darkness, the only one in their group benefiting from the current weather conditions.

  Shadows cloaked her as she slipped beneath a wyrmling’s belly, and although the beast lashed out, sensing something was wrong, it could do nothing to stop her, as her magic didn’t scatter like the light spells.

  She slid along the underside, cutting into joints and attacking sinews. Ritual knives appeared in her hands and flashed like lightning, briefly illuminating the bridge, forcing a wyrmling down, where a golem speared it through.

  Another monster peeled away from the carriage window with a frustrated screech as spectral darkness snagged its hind feet. Pauline hauled it away on a hooked shadow-line, tore the door frame wider, and dragged a boy from the wreckage by the back of his tunic. On a second pass, a young man tumbled out, coughing and clutching a badly burned arm.

  Pauline pushed them toward Orion’s side of the cordon. “Stay low!” she barked, and they wisely obeyed, even though they were clearly scared.

  Two of the knights were losing ground. Another wyrmling had slithered in from the storm, heavier than the others, with bright copper horns and mirror-polished scales. It crashed into the shield wall with enough force to temporarily break their formation, but they managed to regain their footing before it could pierce through.

  Orion used the reprieve wisely. With light mana being suppressed in the Field, which made his preferred spells difficult to control, and any attempt to use wind or antigravity against the creatures was doomed, at least without a more thorough study of their defenses.

  But that didn’t mean he was out of options.

  He set the CC to create a new lattice using all the data he had collected, incorporating it into a spell he’d been avoiding for too long.

  He didn’t rely on intent for this, only on cold, hard numbers. His mind stayed focused as each constant was verified in turn.

  The CC locked each component in place, accounting for the energy limitations of his body, forming a radius so tight that only light could pass through it, and even used phase dampers to prevent the spell from self-amplifying in the storm’s charged air.

  Finally, he stole a small charge from the lightning mana in the Field—just enough to energize the channel—and settled into a stance, pointing his open palm in the wyrmlings’ direction.

  “Take cover!” he shouted, and Eire pulled her closest knight into a kneeling position, positioning its bulk between Orion and the largest wyrmling, likely sensing the buildup. The boy Pauline had rescued cowered behind her hip, eyes huge with fear.

  The copper-horned wyrmling lunged again. A second wyrmling piled on, jaws locking around a stone shoulder. A third came from high right, mouth a furnace of corrosive flames.

  Orion fired.

  For a moment, the storm faltered, its howling cut off abruptly. A white scar divided reality, so bright that no darkness could exist in its presence.

  The bridge’s wards groaned, flexing into existence for the first time, but held firm.

  The air tasted metallic and strangely clean, and sounds resumed only a few seconds later.

  When the blinding light faded, Orion found himself on his knees, breathing shallowly. The CC’s facets felt hot under his palm, but for the first time since he had ever struggled into that forbidden expression of physics, the spell had obeyed him.

  Where the copper-horned wyrmling once lay, there were now two lumps: a partial skull and a torn tailbone, edges fused into glass. A dozen smaller fragments of dragon flesh scattered like hail, hissing upon impact with the wet surface and evaporating into steam.

  The golem was mostly gone, not because Eire dismissed its animation. Those who hadn’t been hit directly stood frozen mid-guard, arms melted and slumped, torsos scorched by heat lines, heads tilted down, while the one who had stood guard was simply no longer there.

  SYSTEM NOTIFICATION

  +2 Attunement

  +111,000 Exp

  Orion attempted to laugh, but only managed a croak. He reached for [Light Exoskeleton] to steady himself, feeling some strain but still able to cast. He paused as the bridge shuddered under a pressure unrelated to the storm.

  Above, silver rent the clouds, and Asteria filled the gap. Orion felt it like a tuning fork in his chest, as her power intensified, with something in her sanctified craft propagating in the echo of the magic he’d cast, as if a familiar part of the world finally opened to her.

  The violet shells she raised no longer simply withstood Behenien’s blue fire, but absorbed the corrosion effortlessly, allowing her to keep fighting back.

  Vials shattered in her hands, releasing streaks that carved sigils across the rain, transforming the geysers of draconic breath into harmless ash plumes. Boluses of alchemical silver cracked and then exploded into sprays of needles right where Behenien swooped, forcing the dragon matriarch to retreat, lest she become caught in the alchemical trap.

  Asteria hadn't become stronger than the dragon; rather, the dragon was suddenly playing with Asteria’s rules.

  Something about the spell Orion cast had opened a breach into the Field, allowing light mana to manifest much more easily.

  Behenien noticed that too. Blood, real and steaming, dripped from the torn edge of one wing. Her next roar was not born of hunger but of anger.

  The Matriarch leaned back, her massive body moving as smoothly as a ship in calm waters. Blue hellfire flickered in her mouth again, then vanished as she closed it. She lowered her head, flattened her horns, and went into a dive.

  For a moment, Orion thought she was heading toward the middle of the bridge. If her real goal was to destroy the greatest symbol of alliance and friendship between the Sanctum and the Collegium, then everything would make sense.

  But that wasn’t the case. It quickly became obvious that Behenien was neither aiming for the midpoint nor for the bridge itself.

  Rather, the faster she fell, the more Orion realized the dragon had one goal in mind, and one goal only: eliminating the source of “taint” within the Field, to gain the upper hand again.

  Asteria was already reacting. Great jets of silver mana shot down, but the she-dragon only needed to release a portion of the fires she held in her chest to free herself from their reach, becoming engulfed by her own power, and all the more terrifying for it.

  Eire also tried her best. Stone moved at her command, forming a dome with countless runes carved into it, glowing with intense light.

  It wouldn't be enough. Orion sensed it instinctively. The dragon was gaining too much momentum; her power was too overwhelming.

  He couldn’t even try to cast another [Gamma Ray], as the previous one had already overstressed his body. Attempting it again would mean dying at his own hand, and while that was somewhat tempting when the alternative was dragon fire, he decided he would not die today.

  Behenien was on them, and he raised his hands, taking his chances on something he didn’t even know if it would work.

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