While Fudge was having fun manipulating the events behind the scenes, Michael took it upon himself to liberate the people of the Grafted Cluster from the tyrannical rule of Bulren Inc. and Flarecorp combined.
He descended into the shadows and arrived at a discreet corner of the street of the central town of the Grafted Cluster, one of the territories isolated from the world. He looked up and saw a flaming sphere covering the entire area, preventing even birds and clouds from trespassing onto their property.
The whole town was divided into two sections. One was made out of wood and natural resources and the other was made out of stone. This was indicative of the two brothers' rivalry against each other, with Barcus controlling the wooded area and Bulren controlling the other.
Despite being the central town of the Grafted Cluster, the whole place was as deserted as Neo Orcus before Michael arrived. People were hiding in their houses, barricading their doors and only peeking out their windows once every so often.
There were soldiers stationed in each street, each of them wearing orange armor with fla carvings jutting out of their chests. Michael noticed that they were quite strong to be locals. Each of them had the strength of a 4-star warrior, which could be considered quite rare in the isolated Grafted Cluster.
This ant that these soldiers were probably from the infamous Flarecorp.
"Lunch ti!" one of the soldiers said, carrying a crate of dried at and jerky.
The residential houses reluctantly opened their doors and peeked out. Michael saw a thin woman co out from the door and beg the soldier for food to eat. Two little kids peeked out from behind their mother and eyed the food with longing.
The soldier then took out a piece of jerky from the crate and motion brought it closer to the woman. But before she could pluck it out from his hands, he reminded her of sothing she completely missed.
"Where's the paynt?" the soldier asked.
The woman hurriedly took out a few silver coins from her pouch and gave it to the soldier. Once the paynt was received, the soldier gave her a handful of cured at and beef jerky.
How despicable, Michael thought to himself. Without any other rchants allowed inside or outside the territory, all the foods can only be found from Flarecorp itself.
Michael used [Fabric Manipulation], making the soldier's own handkerchief to wrap around his head. The soldier struggled and tried to shout out loud, but found that no noise ca out of his throat. As he tried to take off the handkerchief from his head, he suddenly tripped backwards and hit his head on one of the crates, making him unconscious.
The woman and her children looked on with worry as Michael ca out from the corner. They were wary of him.
But then, Michael commanded his shadow to float above the woman's door. The shadow opened up and created a portal back into their headquarters in Angora City, allowing five different crates of fresh fruits and food to fall directly towards her.
The woman eyed the crates with wonder, with her children imdiately picking up the fallen apples from the crates and taking a bite of each.
She looked at the symbol stamped onto the crates.
'R'.
Once she realized what happened, she looked up and tried to thank Michael for his kind gesture. But once she did, he was already gone. It was as if he was never even there in the first place.
…
…
…
Michael floated up in the air, looking down at the central town with a wide view.
He used his Supre Skill to sense the flow of magic in the air.
The flaming do surrounding them was filled with aggressive Fire mana. The magic theory was constructed in a way that created the most amount of repulsive force.
Michael squinted his eyes, seeing through the different dinsions of mana. Unearth the layer of reality, he saw small strings of Fire mana flowing down from the topmost part of the flaming do.
These strings all connected down, near Bulren's mansion of stone.
With his masterful sensitivity of mana, Michael saw the Light mana signatures of all the people inside the house, including the five wizards whose hands connected to the Fire strings of the flaming do.
These 6-star wizards were the barrier's source of mana. They continuously concentrated to keep the spell active.
Now usually, disrupting a concentration spell would require Michael to physically disrupt the wizards casting them. He had to disrupt their focus thereby changing the flow of mana into the magic circle above.
But he didn't have to do all of that.
He could see the invisible strings of Fire mana connecting the wizards from their spells.
He simply had to raise his hand and beckon the mana to flow towards him instead.
The individual fuzzy balls of red mana suddenly found themselves drawn towards the golden-haired boy floating in the air. They went through their life practically invisible from the eyes of humans, yet it seed as if this boy could actually see them in real life.
They felt compelled to go towards him. Even though their very nature was linked to the wizards that summoned them, they couldn't help but disobey their own nature and follow the commands of this strange boy instead.
One Fire mana left the flow, then two, then four, and eventually, thousands upon thousands of mana strayed from the line.
The mont this happened, the five wizards below were imdiately alerted.
They all opened their eyes and looked at each other. They saw all of them ditating in the sa place as before.
Disbelief started to paint their faces as they realized what had happened.
Sohow, their concentration was broken without losing their focus.
They felt their control of the barrier weakening by the second, making them cringe.
It felt as if their own arms were getting ripped away by an invisible force! It was not painful…it was worse than that; it was shaful.
They imdiately got up from their seats and exited the dungeon underground Bulren's mansion.
They were placed there as a matter of safety and security, but it seed that all of these precautions were for naught. The spell was still broken.
The wizards ran up the stairs and forced themselves inside Bulren's office.
"Wha?! Why are you guys here?!" he asked them.
The wizards, still catching their breaths, pointed towards the window behind his desk.
Bulren turned to the side and peeked out the glass. His eyes widened. He pushed his face closer to the glass, smushing his face against it. But he didn't care. He wanted to see if what he was seeing was true.
The flaming barrier was flickering in and out of existence. The fire was turning into cinder before dissipating in the air.
It wasn't long before the flaming do flickered out of existence permanently, brightening the entire town as the sun finally shone above it.
"How did this happen?!" Bulren scread out. "What am I going to do?"
Bulren was at a complete loss. He never would have thought that Flarecorp's infamous barrier would suddenly disappear without warning.
He turned to the wizards. "Where is Hestu?!"
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