MTLNOVEL Chapter 1711 Waiting for the Moment
--- Lily ---
Lily immediately clamped down on every train of thought. She didn't want to react, she didn't want to say anything. She COULD NOT give away that she even might have found something. *Ok. Let's… let's say that no matter what I find I don't do anything about it for… a minute? Five minutes? The fight is chaotic and moving quickly but I don't know how far into the future Trvis can see! He implied it wasn't as far as he'd like… but it still sounds like pretty damn far.
So does it even matter? If he can see ten minutes into the future that's probably too long for me to sit on this information. Meg is still attacking, Hunter is still attacking. Strdl has started attacking though not very well and Pebbles… not sure what he's doing but it doesn't look like he's given up.
Ideally, considering whatever this is happens to be under the floor… I'd get Pebbles dig down to it and… I dunno maybe try to break it? The problem is with the damn future sight! If it's secretly the key to all of this I could get instantly attacked and might not be able to spread the info depending on what happens to me. Maybe I get frozen in time and can't explain things.
So… what I need to write a note down and pass it off? What if Trvis sees the note and reacts to that? Urgh it's so damned difficult to know what the right play is. At the very least Hunter isn't moving around much so I can focus on this problem. I'm safe here and it's not hard to stay on Hunter's tail when she's barely moving…
But once again that's only because Trvis is allowing it. He could teleport above Hunter at some point and then drop some attacks on her forcing her to move. Which might knock me off or something. HISSSS. It's just… I just don't know what to do here.
No… that's incorrect. Investigating the spot IS a must. We're not making any progress so far and just wearing him down feels like a poor move long term. We need to do something and I've found that 'something'. Regardless of if it works or not it should give us more information… but how do I check it out without getting caught?
Because 'getting caught' can happen before I even do anything! It puts me in such a weird position! It's entirely possible that the orb down there is nothing, but after realising that I find the real cause and as such I'm attacked early to make me think I'm on the right track and instead just waste time…
But that's all I'm doing now! Wasting time! I'm not doing anything productive… and I guess in the end it doesn't really matter if I wait or not. If I wait for... say ten minutes, then I'm still going to get caught minutes before I take action and really I've been wasting time!
Ok… instead of that… maybe try to be sneaky then?* Lily didn't nod, she didn't move visibly. She was trying to be sneaky. Instead she shifted her shadow so that it was underneath some of the debris that had been kicked up so that her actions weren't immediately visible. Summoning a bit of paper as a base, Lily pushed her shadows into the page. It took a bit of effort, and she destroyed her summoned paper more than once in the attempt, but eventually she had something that… might be successful.
Lily couldn't see the paper herself but it was probably correct? Lily could feel the paper with her magic and she could distinguish the difference in the magic where the shadows had joined with the paper. It felt roughly like the correct words. 'There's something below us messing with space. Look for another bit of paper and dig below it'. On the one hand, it was clear and should make sense to Pebbles…
On the other hand it was a note FOR Pebbles and Lily really wasn't sure if the translation function would work on it properly. She didn't write this, and worse she hadn't ever looked at it herself. It's entirely possible that despite the blobs of shadow magic feeling mostly like the correct words it was actually just a piece of paper with black squiggles on it that wouldn't be properly translated. Lily could only hope.
Stay connected through empire
Though first, the second bit of paper. Carefully moving her shadows once again so she had a proper idea of where to target she summoned up a larger bit of paper and left it under the rock, hoping that her stretching of the shadows remained unnoticed as she did so. Already this was burning more mana then she wanted it to, but it she was still above half. For now at least.
With paper in place, and the other written out Lily carefully crawled her shadow over towards Pebbles, making jumps between debris as often as possible and trying to keep any visible parts of her shadow as thin as possible. Perhaps manipulating them at a distance would come with time but for now it was more like she was stretching her personal shadow and using others are points to recharge that limit a bit.
It was enough to get over to Pebbles at the very least. Once she was nearby, Lily kept the paper under a nearby rock and stretched out a teeny shadow finger that tapped on Pebbles leg a few times. At first he didn't react but when she kept tapping he flinched a bit and his eyes did a quick scan of things. Clearly he wasn't getting the message but he had worked out something was going on.
Lily pressed against the side of his leg with the shadow tendril, making sure that the end wasn't sharp of course. The constant pressure let Pebbles notice where it was coming from, and once he'd glanced down Lily retracted her shadow to the bit of rock, and pushed the note out just far enough for the tip to be seen.
Pebbles noticing this slid over while summoning a bunch of rocks to throw at Trvis. Seeing his 'failure' Trvis set up another set of homing rocks nearby that could dash after Trvis… and while they were blocking Trvis' sight Pebbles ducked down and snatched the paper from the ground, hiding it in his hand.
Once done reading he slipped it into his pocket and Lily dismissed the piece of paper to save some mana. Pebbles was looking around for the other bit of paper and not really seeing it, or at least it seemed that way. Lily carefully extended the paper with her mana so that it was just barely poking out from under the rock.
Because of the extra distance it still took Pebbles some time to see it, but once he'd noticed the note in question things happened fast. Pebbles summoned a series of sigils into the air one after another, eventually causing a large chunk of the floor to flow away. Trvis reacted to counter this, throwing out blasts of barely visible energy at Pebbles…
But Meg moved to intercept, knitting needles in front of her she clashed with the beams of grey that seemed to shatter on contact with the weapons… which gained several chips and scratches from being used this one. Still, Meg had clearly noticed something and was willing to risk damage to her weapons.
The stone was continually thrown away as more and more of the underground area was revealed, the barrage of time magic bolts didn't stop until Trvis let out a yell and summoned a bubble of slowed time. It expanded out over the area trying to cover everything. Pebbles set himself into the ground, Meg slammed both needles into the bubble and Hunter backed up further. Strdl shot to the ceiling but she was the closest to Trvis actually, and found herself caught in the bubble with her foot.
Hunter reacted quickly, loading a specialty round and firing it at Strdl, causing a protective cocoon to form around her figure. Meg's slashes into the bubble weren't doing much, instead she was being pushed back. It meant she wasn't being enveloped but she didn't seem to be slowing the bubble down at all. Trvis still wasn't having it and teleported behind her in elbow drop position…
Only for Meg to jump upwards and cut into him, shattering a part of his mutated torso and forcing him to teleport away, causing the bubble to stop expanding… but not dissipate completely.
Even still, it was enough. The hole had gotten deep enough to reveal the spatial distortion, and as Lily took to the air to spot it she noticed Trvis teleport directly over the hole and freeze. "No… no… HOW CAN THIS BE!" screamed Trvis as his form started to roil and shift. As Lily got higher she eventually saw what was inside.
Trvis, a hole in his chest and encased in crystal.