Chapter 72 — A Life-Form Reaction?

The three soldiers pinned to the stone ball had already been in a state of deep dejection and tension, and then a jabbering little old man had come along trying to sell them a fortune-changing ritual. They had basically reached the breaking point—and Gao Yang's sudden appearance eased all of it at once. Needless to say, the inspiration a legendary-level Pioneer Knight could give them was enormous (though only the legend himself knew how much water that title held). The three immediately let out long breaths as if they had already been saved. Then the bearded young militia captain craned his neck to one side as best he could. "Reporting, sir—Locke was the first to get stuck. I was standing right beside him in my armor at the time and wasn't pulled in, so I got curious. And just as I was getting curious, I got stuck too..."

The third soldier sighed dejectedly. "Sir, I got stuck when I came over to check on the situation."

Gao Yang looked down at the soldiers' situation and confirmed that the stone ball had indeed seized their armor. A longsword, too, was stuck to the top of the ball. But strangely, on the ground right beside the stone ball lay an iron ring that had fallen off a suit of armor—and that ring showed not the slightest sign of being attracted.

Gao Yang picked up the iron ring and rubbed it against the stone ball, feeling no magnetic force whatsoever.

Then the druid Pi Yun spoke up from beside him. "I examined it just now. This isn't simple magnetism, and their armor seems to have been 'fixed' in place—locked into a completely immobile form, so they can't pull free."

Seems this fellow peddling transfer rituals wasn't completely useless after all.

"Sounds like some kind of magical effect..." Gao Che mused, then turned to Amber. "Try it from the shadow plane. See if you can dispel it."

Shadow coexisted with the real world yet dwelt on a different plane, which made shadow power exceptionally suited to interfering with the magic that governed the real world—even to inflicting transdimensional damage upon it. This was why the Stalker class boasted the greatest number of skills for dispelling magic traps and breaking seals, and Amber, as a darling of shadow power, was a master of such arts beyond compare.

Bringing her along had been precisely for situations like this.

By now Amber had stopped her mischief. She nodded and seriously began to marshal her innate power.

In an instant her body turned hazy and insubstantial, her whole being entering a state between the material world and the shadow realm. Vague shadows stretched out from beneath her feet and gradually merged with the darkness around the stone sphere.

As Amber set about unraveling the effect, Gao Yang tried pushing the stone sphere and found it utterly immovable.

"Wasn't this thing supposed to be incredibly light...?" He frowned, his face full of puzzlement. "Even with three people's weight added now, there's no way I shouldn't be able to move it."

"That's another thing that doesn't add up," Pi Yun nodded. "I heard about the sight when you brought this sphere back—one person could push it easily with a single hand. But now... I'd estimate it weighs at least as much as a block of blackgold stone of the same volume. That abnormally light weight before might itself have been a magical effect. What it has now is its true weight."

Pi Yun had scarcely finished speaking when Amber suddenly "leapt" out of her shadow form and plopped down onto the ground. "Ouch!"

Gao Yang hurriedly reached out and hauled her up. "What happened?"

Amber looked just as bewildered. "I don't know... There seems to be some strange energy field around this sphere. The moment I extended my mind toward it, I was bounced right back..."

"Wait!" Pi Yun suddenly exclaimed. "There was a life reaction just now!"