Adrian reached for his quill. To his accelerated perception, his hand moved like lightning while everything else crawled.
He dipped it into the modified ink. The white-grey fluid responded instantly, coating the tip in perfect proportion.
The parchnt stretched before him like a canvas awaiting masterwork. His hand moved, and the world blurred around the motion.
Lines appeared on the page faster than thought. Complex symbols flowed from his quill in streams of liquid precision.
What should have taken an hour was compressed into seconds. This was not only the result of the ti spell, but also due to his knowledge having grown by reading volu 3.
It made his inscription speed much faster.
Not only that, his mana reserves felt expanded multiple tis than he could rember 30 minutes before.
But, for now, he focused only on inscribing.
Dorian's head turned slowly, his eyes widening as he witnessed the impossible. The boy's hand moved in a golden blur across multiple sheets.
"What in the depths..." Dorian's voice stretched, each word drawn out by temporal distortion.
Adrian smiled, his lips curving in real-ti while the old man's reaction crawled forward. He was inscribing legendary runes as easily as breathing.
Spatial Blink. Advanced Healing and Barriers. Each scroll erged perfect, flawless, ready for imdiate use.
Dorian's hands trembled as he stared at Adrian's completed parchnts. Spatial Blink, a legendary rune. That alone would have been enough to stagger him.
But then he saw another scroll. A healing rune. Yet not the crude, advanced versions humanity had inscribed for centuries.
This one felt deeper. Fuller. It wasn't rely advanced, its structure carried the sa weight as a legendary rune.
Dorian leaned closer, his breath caught in his chest. The characters shimred with aning, like the fragnts he had struggled to comprehend in Volu Three.
Runes of life itself.
"How..." His voice rasped. "How could you even—"
He broke off. No words fit what he witnessed.
He was the one who had given Adrian the third volu, thinking perhaps the boy might scrape so fragnts over years of study. But this? Understanding it in half an hour?
Translating it into scrolls already? It wasn't possible.
No human comprehension could be this fast. And yet here it was.
The door to the hall creaked open, and Mira slipped inside. She froze as she saw Adrian's desk.
Scrolls stacked like towers, each glowing faintly, their presence filling the room with pressure unlike any runes she had ever felt.
Her wide eyes darted between her father and the boy. For once, her cheerful chatter failed her.
Together, she and Dorian stood in silent awe, watching the boy's hand blur over parchnt.
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Every scroll he finished made their own efforts feel childish. Dorian glanced down at the healing runes he had been laboring over and nearly scoffed.
Compared to Adrian's creations, they were nothing.
Hours passed. By the ti Dorian's smart device chid, signaling the approach of the next wave, more than two thousand scrolls lay completed.
Each one legendary.
The monster wave was nearly at the walls. Without disturbing Adrian, Dorian gathered the scrolls into a massive bundle and rushed to the command hall.
Scarlett and Renard turned as he laid them out, and their eyes widened instantly.
Even the barrier runes thrumd like artifacts.
The mont their eyes fell on the inscriptions, their breath caught. Even without activation, the scrolls radiated power.
"These aren't... ordinary runes," Scarlett said, voice low, almost reverent.
"They're Adrian's," Dorian replied simply. His weathered hands trembled. "I don't even understand them fully."
There was no ti for questions. The scrolls were distributed.
Scarlett wasted no ti. Orders were given. "Raw mana is enough to trigger them," she instructed.
"Conserve your reserves for when it counts."
Defenders stared in disbelief. So hesitated to take them, but then clutched the parchnts like lifelines.
There was no ti for questions, no ti for doubts.
Because the sea had turned black.
The wave struck.
...
From the sea ca endless beasts, crashing into the lines of defenders. A thousand Defenders locked shields, their formations trembling as claws scraped and tentacles whipped.
Hundreds of C-ranks bolstered the line, fla and lightning filling the sky.
Dozens of B-rank monsters surged forward, serpents and tide-fiends, their roars drowning the clash of steel. Lysara leapt among them, water crashing at her command.
Scarlett herself strode into the fray, ice-blue eyes blazing as her water affinity surged like a tidal storm.
But Renard was absent from their side. His eyes were locked on the horizon.
There it was. The A-rank sea beast.
It lingered at the back of the tide, vast as a mountain, eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence. Scales shimred with abyssal light, and tendrils of darkness trailed from its maw.
Its very presence bent the battlefield, and unlike lesser beasts, it did not rush. It waited, watching. Calculating.
Renard's smile thinned. "An abyssal leviathan. Darkness affinity. Figures."
Renard knew the truth, A-ranks didn't just command. They sched. He would not let this beast enact its plan.
He blinked, vanishing from sight. Space folded, and suddenly he was in front of it.
The leviathan's roar split the sea, darkness spiraling into lances that tore across the battlefield.
The Leviathan fought with intelligence. Its strikes weren't random, they cut supply lines, severed formations, and blinded ranged defenders on the walls.
Each sweep of its tail was tid to Renard's steps, each attack baited him into disadvantage.
Renard gritted his teeth, his space-rending strikes tearing chunks of sea apart, but the monster pressed him with tactics no beast should wield. "Clever bastard," he snarled, dodging a tendril that sought to wrap around his throat.
anwhile, the fortress groaned under the weight of the wave. Without Renard's aid against the B-ranks like the last wave, the defenders faltered.
Shields shattered, spears snapped, and blood spilled across the ramparts.
And then, the first scroll flared. A brilliant flash of spatial energy erupted from the front lines.
A soldier, cornered by a beast's jaws, activated a Spatial Blink rune. In an instant, he vanished, reappearing safely on the battlents.
His wide eyes filled with disbelief. "It worked… with raw mana."
His voice shook. He nearly collapsed in disbelief. "Space magic… with raw mana."
Another Defender triggered a Barrier rune. A do of radiant force expanded, vast enough to cover a squad.
Claws and fangs raked against it, but it held. Stronger than any advanced rune had ever held.
Then ca the impossible. A cry went up, one defender, arm severed, stumbled back.
In desperation, he clutched a scroll and poured raw mana in. Light flared, and in an instant, his arm regrew, whole and strong.
Jaws dropped around him. Gasps rippled through the ranks.
"He just... he just regrew his arm," soone whispered.
Scarlett, fighting through a cluster of B-rank monsters, saw all these from distance. For the first ti in years, laughter bubbled from her lips, sharp and fierce.
"This is it, Humanity will rise!" she shouted over the roar of the tide. Her water spears pierced through three serpents at once.
The words rippled through the battlefield. The Defenders who had felt despair now surged with new resolve.
With every miracle rune they used, their courage hardened, their morale soared. Voices began to chant, weapons raised high.
Arms raised, voices roared. The impossible scrolls turned the tide, their effects cascading across the battlefield.
For the first ti, the Bastion of Tides did not just hold. It pushed back.
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