They continued flying through the evening. Damian kept his mana sense working at full power the entire time, but aside from various ranks of monsters and beasts, there was nothing else. The sun glowed red in the sky as it slowly disappeared beneath the horizon. When they reached another towering rock formation, Damian halted his search. He had enough.
Where in the hell were the others? This was getting nowhere. He might as well just make the liquid mana and open waygates to find them. If they were nearby, they should have met by now—unless they had somehow lost their way and fallen behind.
Atop the highest peak of another rock mountain, Damian created a sturdy wooden structure, enclosed enough to shield them from the wind and provide a roof over their heads. Then, off to the side, in the open he built a small walled compartment, taking out the iron ingots and a runic forge. Lifewarden noticed this and walked over.
"What are you making?"
"More mana. This is useless—only a waygate can locate the others now. If they're here at all.." Damian replied.
"Why didn't you do this from the start?"
"You'd be dead by now if I had."
That shut Lifewarden up. Still, the shameless guy conjured a small stone chair and plopped down, watching Damian work. It irritated him to no end.
"Can I get some privacy?" Damian finally said, turning toward him. "Or do you want me to gift you a cup of my mana liquid as well?"
Lifewarden smiled awkwardly, raising his hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry, I'm going." After taking a few steps back, he added, "I'll fly around, see if I can find anyone nearby."
Damian just nodded and returned to making the generator box piece by piece. Thankfully, the flames were mana-generated, requiring no additional resources. They burned steady and hot. The forge he had bought from the market was top-notch—custom ordered, even.
About thirty minutes later, Lifewarden returned, disappointed, and slumped atop their wooden shelter to rest. By then, Damian had finished the necessary components; now he just needed to enchant some of the pieces to gather ambient mana and compress it into liquid form with a hand cranked press.
Everything was ready.
He spent another half an hour fitting the pieces together, engraving enchantments with his special enchanting tool that helped him make small pieces of his soul. And placing the potassium and base mixture in the right spots. All that remained was to use his aura to generate enough mana to fill a few empty containers. But the sky had already turned pitch black. Damian decided to take a short break and eat before continuing.
He called for Lifewarden, who was still lying on the wooden roof, either exhausted or lost in thought over the sudden upheaval in his life. They ate some fruit, too lazy to cook the monster meat they had collected along the way.
"You done?" Lifewarden asked.
"Somewhat. Still need time to generate mana. The tool is ready."
"How long before it makes enough for a waygate?"
"Hopefully half an hour. But I need more, just in case."
"In case Land Breaker is still with them?"
Damian just nodded. "I don't want to pile more bad news on you, but if that thing is with them.."
"I know," Lifewarden interrupted. Damian said nothing more.
"Hopefully, my friends have a better chance of surviving if the red energy wave scattered us based on the order we were hit," Damian added.
"That doesn't make sense," Lifewarden said. "If you were hit first and I was second—even though I was far from you—then your friends and the second-ranker Highsword knights, who were hit way before us, should be.. way farther south." He pointed in that direction.
"Doesn't matter. With a waygate, I'll reach them in an hour."
Lifewarden nodded and kept eating.
They sat outside the wooden shelter at a small wooden table Damian had crafted, with two chairs. The night air was much cooler than before, making it more pleasant than being inside the enclosed room. Both of them gazed into the growing darkness below the rocky ledge lost in their own thoughts when suddenly—a flash of light appeared where there shouldn't have been one.
The sky darkened further. Purple lightning streaked across rolling black clouds, crackling with energy. It was a sudden, unnatural shift in the atmosphere. Perhaps the planet had strange weather patterns.
But the storm grew stronger.
Lifewarden and Damian exchanged wary glances. Just in case, Damian equipped his armor. This could be the work of monsters beyond the emperor rank. Only they had enough mana to change weather like it was their plaything.
But it wasn't. The reality was much worse.
Before their eyes, a massive red portal, laced with writhing purple lightning, tore open in the air. Through his mana sense, Damian immediately picked up several familiar signatures—Runefather, Worldscribe, the two women from the Neutral Section, Mindseer, Hellseeker, Silverspell—along with Sunkeeper, Shadecaster, Bloodedge, Gravebreaker, and three other Highswords he didn't recognize from the betrayer team.
But none of them mattered.
One presence overshadowed them all.
A single mana signature made Damian feel like a mouse standing before a mountain. A pitch-dark figure emerged from the swirling abyss after everyone fell down—a being of pure, abyssal darkness, its eyes twin red slashes glowing in the void. Its armor, forged of some ominous, shifting black material, seemed to drink in the light around it.
Everyone else was unconscious, falling on the sand dunes below aimlessly.
Everyone except Land Breaker.
The monstrous warrior landed feet-first onto the sand dunes, gripping his massive longsword of pure darkness in both hands, surrounded by the surviving third-ranker Highswords.
"He's here.." Lifewarden muttered.
Damian noticed the third ranker mage's hands trembling. He couldn't blame him. Every one of his senses screamed at him to run, to get as far away as possible. The mana presence before them dwarfed anything he had ever sensed—over a hundred liquid mana containers worth of mana would pale compared to what that thing was made of.
That was a fourth ranker.