Chapter 1301 — Fell Right Into It!

"The sky!?" Benjamin was greatly startled, but when he raised his head and looked around the vault of heaven, he saw only the stars twinkling as usual. "What's wrong with the sky?"

"Mana-sight," Morgan reminded him in a low voice. At the same time, a pale blue shimmer had already surfaced in his eyes. The old mage raised his head and slowly swept his gaze across the clear, cloudless night sky, and in those special eyes of his, augmented with magic, a hazy, dense "cloud net"—as though formed of countless crisscrossing strands of mist—was covering the sky above the land. Those hazy, illusory lights showed a very pale, very faint blue, utterly invisible to ordinary people, and even mages needed exceptionally keen powers of observation to catch the vaguest trace of them.

At Morgan's prompting, Benjamin switched to mana-sight as well, and after a long while of careful scrutiny he finally noticed those things floating in the sky, which startled him greatly: "What is that?! Some kind of enormous structure among the stars?"

"No, it's inside our atmosphere... Look closely, it passes through the mountaintop to the west," Morgan said sternly. "These things seem to have risen from deep within the earth and are floating in midair. They're interfering with our astronomical equipment..."

Benjamin blinked hard, muttering to himself as he tried to see more clearly: "This thing looks truly sinister. I've never encountered a sight like this in my life... Shouldn't we report this to the imperial capital?"

"Of course we should report it, and immediately—" Morgan began, but halfway through his sentence the hazy, floating net of mist in the sky suddenly vanished, as though dispelled from a waking dream, leaving not a trace behind.

The old mage rubbed his eyes by instinct, his mana-glowing eyes sweeping the night sky again and again, but beyond the restored clear night and the stars filling the heavens, he could no longer find any of those "foreign objects" he had seen moments before.

A broadcast device near the observatory roof crackled to life, and one of the assistants' voices came through: "Masters, the image has returned to normal! Did you fix the lens assembly?"

Benjamin and Morgan looked at each other—they had not done a thing yet.

...

"I didn't do anything! I just fish a few things out of here every day!" The siren with pale purple hair floating in seawater condensed from pure water element waved the light-wave battle blade in her hand and spoke urgently to the commander who had come to inspect the situation. "How was I supposed to know this thing would suddenly change its flow and hurt an elemental lord passing by!"

"I can vouch for her," said the sentry Vera, who had long blue hair, raising the tip of her tail. "Corrine is the number one 'cube dredger' here—she's pulled out six whole cubes so far!"

"That's not what I asked you to vouch for!" Corrine's eyes went wide as she looked at her comrade. "I asked you to vouch that I didn't knock these flowing 'deep-blue veins' off course!"

"Oh, then I wouldn't dare say," Vera said at once, waving a hand. "I don't understand that stuff."

"You..."

"That's enough, that's enough." An "Abyssal Commander" who had come to inspect the situation could not help but interrupt the two noisy sentries, a headache coming on. This fish-tailed siren, clad in close-fitting alloy armor and with crisp short hair, had been dispatched personally by Queen Pythia, her task to investigate a sudden injury incident that had occurred near the Boundless Sea outpost—

It was said that a deep-blue vein near this outpost had suddenly changed, and the drastically altered energy flow had severely injured a water elemental lord passing nearby. The victim believed the incident was connected to the siren sentries stationed there, who often "dredged" things out of the vein, and to keep this matter from inflaming the relationship between the sirens and the native water elements—which had only recently begun to ease—the queen had sent her to investigate and to mediate.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed, the Abyssal Commander glanced toward a spot not far away. She saw that the unlucky water elemental lord was still floating in the seawater, his enormous elemental body almost split in two from the middle; the vortex-shaped lower half was still straining to twist itself back together with the upper half, but no matter how one looked at it, it would be hard to preserve—noticing the Abyssal Commander's gaze, the water elemental lord immediately turned his head, the vaguely defined face at the position of his head taking on a vicious look, but beyond that vicious look he could take no action at all—the very picture of someone who dares to rage and dares to speak but cannot win the fight.

And around this elemental lord were gathered many elemental guards who dared to rage and dared to speak but could not win, and even more lesser water elements who dared neither to rage nor to speak and could not win besides.

The Abyssal Commander looked in another direction, toward a vast blue stream of light that gave off a faint blue glow deep in the seawater and surged like a rushing river. It was the culprit behind this incident: a "deep-blue vein" that ought to have remained beside the outpost—the soldiers there, it was said, took the greatest daily pleasure in dredging those black cubes out of this vein—and now it had for some reason suddenly changed. The water elements living nearby suspected the sirens of being behind it... which was, all things considered, quite reasonable.

But the Abyssal Commander believed this was probably not the fault of the two sentries before her.

They had no ability to interfere with the operation of a "planetary power system" like the deep-blue ley network—and that unlucky water elemental lord not far away probably understood this himself.

"I heard you say there were other changes when this vein changed course earlier?" the commander mused, turning to look at the sentry named Corrine. "It also split?"

"Yes, many tiny branches suddenly spread out from the main trunk, running all the way through the seawater—no telling where they reached," Corrine said, recalling as she spoke. "But it lasted less than half an hour; soon all those branches disappeared—yet the remaining 'main trunk' is still in its changed-flow state to this very moment."

"Suddenly splitting into many branches... and then vanishing..." The Abyssal Commander frowned and muttered, "I wonder whether the deep-sea witches will be able to make anything of it."

Then she looked at Coraline and asked curiously, "You're the one who fishes the most 'blocks' out of this ley-line current on a regular basis—how do you do it?"

Though she did not believe Coraline was the cause of the changes in this ley-line current, a necessary inquiry still had to be made; she had to show the attitude of an investigator.

"Oh, that's easy," Coraline immediately wore a smug grin, raising the lightwave blade in her hand as she demonstrated, "I just use this. I wait nearby in advance, and when I see something coming, I strike it down, like this—"

With a forceful swing, she thrust the lightwave blade into the deep-blue ley-line current and stirred it hard a couple of times: "It's really simple—"

A swift black shadow suddenly appeared in the surging blue lightstream, and Coraline was so enthusiastically explaining her own unique technique that she did not notice the thing's appearance at all—amid a loud crash, the black object slammed squarely into the blade in Coraline's hand. The sudden, tremendous impact prevented her from borrowing its force to steady herself as she usually did; instead, it directly destroyed her balance in the water,

and with a cry of alarm, the purple-haired siren who had been so excited a second before tumbled entirely into the surging, rushing blue lightstream!