The Insider System

Chapter 281: Second Circle

Seeing their turn to attack was here Lake watched the barrier fall and the other formations including one that hadn't been used yet light up to send the spells at the Demon Worshipers barrier. Lake paid close attention to the formation that hadn't fired yet and the ball of light it had sent at the barrier.

Seeing the demon Worshipers barrier wobble slightly as it was hit by the ball of light, Lake wondered why they hadn't used it up until now. He then heard someone start to talk about what happened. "It looks like we almost had the balance right so they'll probably change it next time."

Lake wanted to ask what they meant but he decided to wait till this was over since they might be one of the people controlling the formations and he didn't want to make them mad by distracting them from the fight.

Like the guy had said the next time they fired the same formations at the Demon Worshipers barrier nothing happened and he could tell by the faces of the people around him that this was a bad thing. He didn't know if it was bad because it meant they would lose though; it could be that they were just unhappy with how long this could take like he was.

There was a good thing that had happened though, it seemed each round was getting faster as they went. He had no idea why but the time between when the attacks started and ended and the barriers came back up was getting much shorter. After a while he saw that another combination of spells that they had fired actually had an effect on the Demon Worshipers barrier and by the amount of shaking that happened he was pretty sure it had been close to breaking.

He didn't think the fact that they had gotten close would matter though since last time they had to start the process over again. Looking at the person who had talked the last time they had made an effect on the barrier, Lake could see they looked annoyed and knew he was right about this not being a good thing.

Starting to get really tired of watching this, Lake looked towards Helain and wondered if she was doing anything. She seemed to know at least a little about formations so there was a good chance she could explain what was happening. Walking over to her lake wanted for when they were inside the barrier and asked. "Are you busy?"

This was the first time since he had caught up to them that she wasn't swarmed by people looking at the formation so he was pretty sure he wouldn't be getting in the way of anything but he still wanted to ask. "No. Sorry about that earlier, I didn't want to chase you away like that."

Lake liked the fact that Helain felt guilty over something she had nothing she could have done about because he liked people who were constantly apologizing. Not wanting her to stop this behavior he said. "It's no problem, I know you didn't have time to talk." After he said this he looked at what was happening in the fight for a second before he turned back and started to ask her some stuff about what was happening.

"I've never seen this kind of fight before, what's happening right now?"

"We're trying to find a combination of elements that will disrupt their barrier enough to make it collapse."

"Why aren't they just firing everything at once and doing it slowly?" This was his main question he had wanted to ask so he couldn't wait till she explained. "It takes a while to recharge formations so if we use everything we won't have anything to kill the Demon Worshipers with before they erect a new barrier."

They had a lot of formations of various colors and they were only using four or five of them at a time and this was leaving almost half not used so he felt like there had to be another reason they weren't using more to break the barrier leaving only one or two to attack. "Is that the only reason? There are a lot of formations that haven't been used at all yet."

"Those aren't attack formations." As she said this she pointed at some of the formations he had been thinking were being unused for no reason and said. "These are defensive formations that do things the barrier cant. This one for example lets whoever is controlling it detect people on the other side of the formation so we don't get attacked from behind when we drop the barrier. If it wasn't here we wouldn't know that someone had snuck up behind us since the barrier cuts all of our skills off from the outside world."

Hearing this put a lot of the stuff he had noticed during the battle make sense. If the Demon Worshipers had something like this it made sense that they hadn't worried about the arrow he had flown at them from behind. Not only had they probably sensed him flying it around them they had known there was no one over there.

"So how many formations are there for attacking?" If there was such a low number he had no idea how it was taking them so long to find the right combination and the fact that they were firing the same exact ones a few times in a row didn't really make sense to him either but he would ask about that next. "There are six elements that have an effect on barriers made of Unholy and Dark mana that we have access to with the people here so these six are the ones for bringing it down."

Hearing this Lake realized they were only leaving one or two formations to attack with after their barrier came down Lake realized they had been doing exactly what he thought they should. "So why are they firing the same ones multiple times in a row?"

"These are barrier breaking formations and have the ability to change the exact spell they're firing to better break the barrier they're firing at but it can take a while to get it exactly right and with the fact we're kind of taking turns it makes it seem like they're just doing the same thing over and over again but they're being tuned."

Like always anytime there was something about magic he thought didn't make sense there was a perfectly sound explanation and with him being out of real questions he asked. "Are you able to do something like that?" Lake pointed at one of the formations as he asked this and after Helain looked she said. "I'm not able to make things that big yet but I could make a smaller version."

Lake wasn't surprised by her answer because Helain had made a small replica of the huge formation in the Metal Domain but he really didn't understand if the reason he thought she could only make small formations was right so he asked. "Is it because the bigger the formation is the more mana you have to control?"

"Yeah. I'm only barely in the second circle so I'm not good enough to make a formation big enough to help." Hearing her use a term that was used to measure how skilled someone was in magic Lake asked. "How long did it take you to get to the second circle?" This was a good question that would allow him to get more information without having to say he didn't know what she was talking about.

"It's been about three years since I started but I'm not particularly skilled so that's only thanks to the Temple Helping me to get ready for the transformation test." Lake knew that the transformation was her becoming a Metal dwarf which most members of the Temple seemed to want.

"Are you allowed to talk about how the transformation works?" Lake would like to know more so he hoped it wasn't against the rules to talk about it with outsiders. "I can't tell you much since I've never been through it, looks like we're about to try to take down the barrier again."

Hearing Helain change the subject, Lake took the hint and stopped asking about the transformation process. He was sure there were other sources of information on the transformation process that he could find so he wasn't going to push Helain even if he felt he could get a bit out of her.

Seeing the barrier of the Demon Worshipers bend out of shape before disappearing completely Lake guessed they had finally gotten the balance right and watched as the two other formations that hadn't been used to break the barrier fire at the group of Demon Worshipers Lake used detector to see if any of the Demon Worshipers had been killed.

"It looks like around half of them are still alive." Lake hadn't thought about the fact that both barriers were open and he could have used this time to attack to finish the rest off until a new barrier showed up around the Demon Worshipers. "It looks like we didn't get the one making the barrier."

At this point Lake had stopped worrying about how much time this was taking so he just silently celebrated the fact that they were closer to winning. He could already see that the Demon Worshipers had less formations on their side so it was only a matter of time until they finished the rest of them off.