Minor Prison Riot (1/2)
Warden Prella watches her surveillance mirror with a straight face. She's in too much shock to really react properly, though this isn't enough to hide the livid fire in her eyes.
After a moment, she starts calling various Floor managers through a whole roster of far speak medallions she keeps on her walls, "Where're your soldiers!?" "Get fighting!" "You're overrun? Don't worry. I'm getting ahold of the Floor 15 and Floor 10 Barracks. Reinforcements are on the way."
While she's busy issuing orders, she gets a call with one of her direct subordinates telling her, "The Floor 25 armory has been emptied, and the enemy's somehow hijacked the teleportation portals on Floors 25 to 34, minus Floors 33, 21, and 20. We got there in time to save 20 and 21, and 33 obviously HAS no portal."
Warden Prella snatches that far-speak medallion off the wall and tries not to shout as she says, "How long until we can get the portals running?"
"That's the thing," he replies, "those portals don't have their spirit thread tethers. I think they destroyed our circles entirely and just rebuilt them. I'm afraid we have no control over them anymore."
"Rebuilt them? REBUILT THEM!?" Prella finally loses it. "That monster's isolated from all these Floors. How could he rebuild them all!?"
It has to be said that when using remote magic, the farther away the spell is from the caster, the less cost-effective it is on the mana – kind of like how a rock is more taxing to hold the further out from your body you hold it.
The exact physics of it is that every time you double the distance between yourself and the object you're holding, you effectively double the burden on your arms. The same applies to magic.
…And this is why Haalfrin can't extend his Aura all the way to the surface, despite having more than enough Aura to stretch that high.
Anyway, the point is that Prella still doesn't quite understand that each of these Wills have their own mana pools and their own magic crafts. In her mind, it makes no sense for a mage to do so much advanced magic from so far away.
Now that her understanding of the man has been broken again, she quickly accepts the new truth and calms down again.
"All right," she orders, "Since that man gets stronger by killing people, we need to minimize losses… Evacuate Floors 20 and 21… As well as the next 10 floors above the armory, just to be safe."
"But Ma'am," the officer refutes, "What about the prisoners? We can't leave that many maximum security prisoners unattended!"
"Obviously, we can't let them become fodder to that monster's growing power. Release them all from their cells and lead them out of the teleport circles."
"B-but," the captain stutters, "What if they escape?" Some of those criminals are powerful wizards who are kept under restraining boulders for a reason.
"Do as I say NOW, captain!" she growls, "I don't care if there're some important political hostages down there. It's better to let a few of them escape than to let that monster loose on the world!"
"…When the emperor gets angry with me, I'll be the one to take the blame. Don't worry," she finishes with a softer tone.
The Warden finishes her orders to that one captain, then she picks up the far speak medallion for another order. "Captain Gulan. I need you to send your platoon of golems away from the front gates and send them to the lower teleportation gates. I want them on Floor 26 as soon as possible."
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"Yaaah!" thousands of bandit Wills shout out their guttural, nonsensical battle cries as they stampede their way through the narrow hallways, slaughtering anything and everything in their way.
'For some reason', a lot of these Bandits feel strong emotions while looking at prison cells. Being more agitated than usual, they're fighting with much more fervor and strength than they're used to.
On the other hand, the "lawful" Wills are understandably more reluctant to kill the guards, though they have no problem killing the prisoners in the cells. These Guard Wills are a lot more defensive and careful in their fighting, and they usually only kill the prison guards and servants when they're attacked first.
On top of that, the Guard Wills are still extremely unwilling to work with the bandits, so when Kaalhyme had assigned them all floors to control, he was sure to keep the bandit and guard Wills separated.
Unlike Haalfrin's very first escape attempt, there aren't just a measly 3 dozen armed Wills – most of which didn't even have any magic. Back then, they could be suppressed with a single platoon of guards – most of which were either mages, or were armed with enchanted armor.
However… countless years have passed spent bathing the army of Wills in Death Aura – baptizing them as one into the fold of mages.
Now? Who can possibly beat this legion? Never mind the impossible numbers, Kaalhyme has already figured out the ideal terrain for armed Wills to fight – narrow corridors.
With the floating weapons taking up significantly less space than a human body, the Wills can pack themselves together in extremely tight spaces.
You see, while Haalfrin had been focused on training up his Names and providing Death Aura to the Wills, Kaalhyme had been focused on getting more Wills on his side, coming up with new tactical formations, then training up all new subordinates to be the perfect killing machines.
And so, the moment Kaalhyme knows that all the Wills have started their killing, Kaalhyme shouts out an order, "ASSUME WALL FORMATION!"
The "Wall formation" Kaalhyme came up with long ago has a simple concept behind it.
First, you put the shield and armor bodies in front. If they're fighting enemy mages, then it's best to have the strongest Wills in the shields using their spells to block the enemy attacks. An army's durability is USUALLY the most important, after all.
The second part of the formation is to put spears, swords, and other stab-type weapons behind the shields. Axes and other slashing-type weapons are better suited elsewhere, as well as daggers, which have a short reach.
The Wall formation is especially lethal in narrow corridors. Since the Wills don't have to have feet on the ground, they can float up and cover the entire hall from floor to ceiling, and they can pack themselves together extremely tightly.
Being closer together means more weapons can stab at the same person – making dodging or blocking basically impossible. As for the shield Wills, each of them are mages anyway, and with smaller areas they each have to cover, their individual mana shields and durability enchantments will be stronger.
Normally, it wouldn't matter if they get in formations anyway, simply because there are so many of them. The enemy doesn't stand a chance either way. However, with this formation, they can cover the same amount of ground with fewer Wills.
This way, Kaalhyme can spread out his forces further apart from each other and not have to worry about them being wiped out. With more ground to cover, they can wipe out their respective floors faster.
Of course, being faster is important because once they're free, they can go over to other floors and reinforce the Master Mage as he tries to open up access to other floors.
With this formation placed, the Wills become a giant wall of death that sweeps through the hallways, leaving nothing alive. The Wills can fly faster than a man can run, so the screaming doesn't last long.
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Haalfrin stirs from his reverie, and he briefly opens his eyes.
"Why're you smiling?" Orland asks Haalfrin.
"Oh... my Death Aura just doubled. We just got a lot closer to escaping."
"Really!?" Orland smiles happily. "How? Wait... What's going on up there?"
"...Just a minor prison riot," Haalfrin curtly responds before closing his eyes again. "Anyway, I'm concentrating. Don't ask more questions."
When Orland goes and tells the other prisoners the good news, many of them aren't happy.
"Why the frowns?" the older prisoner asks. "Don't you want to get out of here?"
"Haalfrin suddenly getting a ton of Death Aura at once isn't necessarily a good thing," one of the middle-aged women says. "If thousands of people are dying up there, then that means something really drastic is happening. It's unlikely that an outside force is invading the Pit, which means the Wills have probably been discovered and are fighting back."
"Yeah, an older lady adds. "What if Haalfrin's Wills lose the fight? We might never escape then."
This possibility shuts Orland up, and he goes back to his room, slumped over and worried.
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A young, dark-skinned girl around 12 years old is huddled in a barrel, ducking her head under her hands and trying her best to keep quiet while she hears the agonized screams echoing in the halls like long-lost memories.
Unbefitting of the circumstances, the girl is holding perfectly still, and her breathing is calm. For some reason, the black mist filling the corridors gives her a strange sense of comfort – like a piece of home she's never been to before.
All around her, she knows that the mysterious assailants are spiritual entities – not through any learned arcane knowledge, but purely through instinct. Because of this, she's sure the spectral black hands and floating weapons will surely be able to find her, since spirits can see through physical barriers.
…However… minutes pass, and as the screaming dies down, the little girl finds herself alone and undisturbed.
And so, with no Wills to find her, this nameless little child becomes the only survivor on Floor B32.