“Will it blow up if I touch it?”
“Why ask after touching it? You don’t need to worry, though. It’s completely empty of magic power right now. There’s no risk of it activating or exploding.”
“That’s good. But, so, why don’t the people of Visril use this? If it’s out of juice, can’t they just refill it?”
“I can’t imagine how much energy is needed to power a whole city, but perhaps it requires a special way of adding more mana. Maybe it had to be Forge’s magic or something.”
“Wow, what a picky device...”
“It’s not terribly complex, really. It’s basically another type of magic artifact—just an incredibly large one that encompasses the entire city.”
“So it’s like a magic artifact, is it?”
Sofie’s words reminded me of something. In my training to master Guide of the Holy Sword, I’d practice channeling the holy sword’s power into magic items. They were all so fragile that they broke immediately, but...surely this amazing core thingy could handle it, right?
That gave me a brilliant idea. If I tried pouring energy into the power core, I might learn the secret to controlling my sword. See, every obstacle is just opportunity in disguise! It was fate that I’d stumbled across this artifact here and now. If I awakened to Guide of the Holy Sword’s full potential like this, I’d be able to take care of the soldiers coming after us.
“Hah!”
I started channeling Fractus’s power through my palms. It never flowed very smoothly with regular magic items, but now it strangely felt like it was permeating through the sphere—almost like the device was sucking my magic out of me.
“Huh, okay. I think I’ve almost got the hang of it.” I tried channeling my full power into the core, then suddenly, the room trembled. “What is that? Feels like the whole place is shaking.”
“It’s an earthquake,” said Sofie. “Let’s stay here until it passes.”
“Right. There’s nothing to fall on us in this room, so it should be safe.”
“But the shaking’s not stopping. In fact, isn’t it getting stronger?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, it does feel that way.”
“Perhaps this is no normal earthquake.”
“Do you think Note and the others are okay? I’m worried.”
“I don’t know, but they’ll probably be fine— Roslia, what are you doing?”
Sofie looked my way in shock. It kind of startled me. Was something wrong?
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You’re still touching the core...”
“Oh, this? I was just pouring my holy sword’s magic energy into it as a test—” I stopped mid-sentence when I realized...the core was glowing! It was humming with a dull sound as it activated! What was going on? “I’m not doing anything other than channeling magic into it, though!”
“Are you stupid? Why would you put magic into it?!”
“I figured it’d be fine! I had no idea this would happen!”
“It shouldn’t normally! Get your hands away from it and stop feeding it magic already!”
“Right!”
I withdrew both hands and retreated to Sofie, but the core continued whirring away. It was glowing like it would blow at any moment.
“What should we do?! It’s not gonna explode, is it?!” I asked Sofie frantically.
“I don’t know...” she muttered.
“Tell me it won’t! You have High Appraisal, don’t you?”
“My skill can’t tell me everything. You’re the one who made the core glow. You fix it.”
“Sorry, no can do! I may have put magic into it, but I don’t know how to take it back out!”
“Why did you do something you can’t undo?!”
We fell back to a corner of the room, but it was probably too late. The core was steaming and churning at full speed. I unwittingly clung to Sofie in fear.
“What is it doing?!” I yelped. “What’s about to happen?!”
“The fortress is about to move because of the holy sword... I think.”
“What happens when the fortress moves?!”
“If I knew, we wouldn’t be in this predicament right now.”
“You’re so useless!”
“I don’t want to hear that from the person who initiated this!”