SCT-Novel Chapter 118 - 10 Seconds
Chapter 118 - 10 Seconds
"Time to release the built-up mana. I just hope... they will not be scared enough to cancel the selections."
Cael took a deep breath and began to circulate the mana inside his body, matching his own wavelength with the mana that surrounded him.
The air in the clock tower grew still. The moonlight seemed to dim.
After a few minutes of trying, he succeeded. His mana bent and blended with the ambient energy of the world around him.
He was no longer separate from the mana; he was part of it.
Cael had a crazy plan.
If he succeeded, the problem of the wraith invasion would be gone.
The vision would not come true. The stadium would not fall. The corpses would not pile up.
But there were consequences.
But Cael did not care. Even if he thought about them, his actions would save countless lives.
That was enough.
Cael mobilized all his built-up mana. From his toes. From his hands. From his bones, his nerves, his vessels.
Every reservoir in his body emptied into his chest.
His chest expanded by an inch. His ribs strained. His heart pounded against the pressure.
He closed his violet eyes and extended his hands outward, palms facing each other, fingers spread wide.
The air between his hands crackled with invisible force.
Then, with a full swing, he brought his two hands together.
-CLAP
Cael’s eyes snapped open as they shone with cosmic purple.
It was not a simple clap. It was not the sound of palms meeting.
Cael had used all his built-up mana to send out a wave of mana nullification.
-WHOOOOSSSSHHH
The wave spread outward from the clock tower, invisible but undeniable. It passed through walls like they were not there. It passed through people like a ghost.
The entire Golden Scale Academy and half of Arhal City went into a frenzy for exactly... 10 seconds.
....
The blonde-haired boy with the blindfold waited in the shadows behind the girls’ dormitory.
Junior had been here for hours, waiting patiently, barely breathing as he hid.
The cold stone wall pressed against his back, and the faint scent of night-blooming flowers drifted through the air.
His target was Elara Grace, the daughter of an [Adamant] ranker, a [Gold] ranker in her own right.
His plan was simple. Wait for her to fall asleep. Then use his skill to put her in a dream-like future vision, just like he put Cael in it.
It was a technique he had created during his years inside the heavenly book.
Somehow, in this world, that technique had manifested as an SSS-rank skill.
He had waited patiently. Hours passed. The moon crawled across the sky. Students came and went, their footsteps fading into the distance.
Finally, he sensed it. Elara’s mana signature softened, deepened. She was asleep.
Just as he was about to activate his skill, when,
-WHOOOOSSSSHHH
The world went dark. Not the darkness of night, but the darkness of absence.
The lights around him blacked out. His skill stopped mid-activation, frozen, useless.
The air itself felt wrong, hollow, as if something vital had been ripped away.
Junior’s eyes widened behind his blindfold. Horror crept into his chest. He could not use mana at all.
He could still sense mana within him; the heavenly book in his consciousness allowed him that much.
Junior could both sense and see mana, thanks to the heavenly book.
He knew mana was still inside his body, dormant but present. But the moment he tried to extend it beyond his skin, in the form of skills, it was nullified.
Not only that.
He could not sense mana in the surroundings. The air was empty. The ground was cold. The world was silent.
Junior’s whole body trembled as he muttered to himself,
"W-what’s going on?"
As a blind man, he had depended on mana to navigate the world.
Mana was his eyes, his map, his lifeline.
He had never been truly helpless. Not like this. He could not feel where the walls were. He could not sense where the door was. He could not tell if anyone was near him.
For those few seconds, he was blind in every sense of the word.
Then the nullification wave passed as his mana returned.
The world snapped back into focus. He could sense and see again: the walls, the door, the distant heartbeat of a student in the dorm above.
But his hands were still shaking. His breath came in short, ragged gasps.
He pressed his back against the wall and waited for his heart to slow.
...
Inside the faculty building, the instructor’s first reaction was panic.
Chairs scraped against the floor. Papers scattered. Voices overlapped in chaos.
"Are we under attack?"
The barrier had crumbled. Mana had disappeared. They could not use their skills, their techniques, their weapons.
They were utterly helpless.
The strongest [Diamond] rankers in the building were reduced to ordinary men and women with no defenses.
Their minds raced to the worst conclusion. Wraiths. Only wraiths could gain an advantage in this situation.
They used miasma, not mana.
If the wraiths had attacked during this time, the academy would have been a slaughterhouse.
Students would have died in their beds. Instructors would have been cut down before they could even scream.
The instructors scrambled to their feet, shouting orders, checking barriers, and sending out emergency signals.
One of them was already on the phone with the Council, but due to the absence of mana, it was a wasted attempt.
Another was sprinting toward the barrier control room.
No attack came. But the fear remained. It clung to them like a second skin, cold and heavy.
They looked at each other, silent, each one thinking the same thing.
"What’s happening?"
...
Across the academy, lights went blank. Not flickered, just died.
Every mana-powered light, every barrier, every spell, every technique simply stopped.
The hallways were plunged into darkness. The training rooms went silent. The dormitories became caves of shadow.
Students cried out in confusion.
"I can’t use mana!"
"What’s happening?"
"Is it the wraiths?"
Some ran to the windows, searching the sky for signs of attack.
Others huddled together, afraid to move.
A few, the ones with combat training, grabbed their weapons and stood ready, even though they knew their weapons were useless without mana.
...
Ethan, in his room, had been practicing his runic body technique.
Runes glowed on his skin, faint lines of blue and silver that pulsed with every breath. They drew mana from the air to sustain his incomplete transformation.
Then his heart skipped a beat.
He collapsed to the floor, his knees hitting the cold stone first, then his palms.
The runes on his body flickered and died. His chest heaved, but no air came.
Due to his incomplete runic body, he needed mana twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; his body demanded it.
Now, the mana was gone.
Ethan lay on the cold stone, gasping, his fingers scraping against the floor. For ten seconds, he was nothing more than a boy with a broken body.
...
Across the city of Arhal, similar scenes played out in thousands of rooms.
Hospital patients lost their life support. Researchers lost their experiments. Families lost their lights. The entire city was dark.
Only the moon provided light.
Ten seconds of absolute panic.
...
The moment mana returned, signals flooded back.
Emergency calls erupted from every corner of the city. Phones rang. Watches buzzed.
The instructors did not hold back. They reported the incident in full detail: the barrier collapse, the mana disruption, the ten seconds of vulnerability.
To be able to disrupt mana for even a moment was a massive blow to humanity.
Ten seconds was an eternity.
Was this a weapon created by the wraiths? If they had attacked while mana was disabled, the academy would have been defenseless.
The barrier had not yet recovered; the students were sitting ducks.
More than seventy emergency calls rang out across the region.
The Council was alerted. Guilds were mobilized. Even humanity’s [Origin] rankers were startled after learning what had happened at Golden Scale.
This was not a minor matter at all.
In fact, it was... disastrous.
...
On the clock tower, Cael stood with his hands lowered.
His breathing was heavy as his body trembled. His muscles ached as his bones felt hollow.
His mana was gone, completely drained, down to the last drop. He had never been this empty before.
Cael only had seconds before someone came looking.
Without hesitation, he swapped places with his Space clone.
The space clone appeared on the tower, taking his place. Its eyes flashed with confusion before it received a message from the main body.
The space clone nodded in understanding, then the clone immediately teleported into Cael’s guest dorm room, arriving in a flash of distorted space.
Then Cael swapped again as he stood in his room.
He stretched his body, rolling his shoulders, flexing his fingers. His joints popped. His muscles relaxed.
His chest rose and fell with a deep, steady breath as he muttered,
"How refreshing."