Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 74 - Façade

Previously:

After kidnaping Kiel, just as Dusk Rose was about to reach the Muni exit, he ran into Elaru Wayvin. Dusk Rose pretends to be an examinee from the same group as Kiel, and makes Elaru shake his poisoned hand. Elaru offers to show him the way to the infirmary and goes with them. However, after a while, she faints. Dusk Rose catches her body, however, a second later something unexpected happens.

* * *

Dusk's head snapped back to look at his shoulder, where the head of Elaru Wayvin was supposed to be lying.

Simultaneously, his hand attempted to push her away from him.

The redheaded vixen wasn't using his shoulder as a pillow like she was supposed to be doing.

She stared at him with a coy smirk, without any trace of a blush, sweat or any form of sickness.

Not good! Panic flashed in Dusk's eyes as he realized that the arm that was supposed to be pushing Elaru away wasn't responding to his commands.

He attempted to jump away from the girl, but his legs weren't following his intentions either.

They stood rooted to the spot.

This was the moment in which Dusk realized he was in deep trouble. As an elibu, he couldn't use magic to make his body move. All he could do was attempt to attack the redhead with magic so she would voluntarily move away from him.

Dusk Rose's reputation as a Shadow wasn't for nothing. Instantly, he reacted by using a Morph spell on the rock tiles they were standing on. His intention was to morph the tiles into spikes which would erupt from the ground and impale the redhead next to him.

However, in the next moment, the only change that happened was the paling of Dusk's face.

His Morph spell melted before it could fully form, like an ice cream under the hot sun.

Their entire surroundings were covered by a cloud of dense mana.

Her mana.

Dusk Rose already knew that aura of Elaru Wayvin was extremely dense. But only now, when he was forced to use magic inside the area covered by her aura, did Dusk Rose realize just how dense it really was.

What covered their surroundings couldn't be called an "aura".

What surrounded them was Mage Armor.

Since mana naturally seeped out of one's body into the surroundings, mages would contain their mana near their own body to form a dense layer - Mage Armor. The mana which wasn't controlled would drift away aimlessly into the surroundings, becoming an aura. If aura was the water vapor, then the Mage Armor was the whirlpool of water.

Elaru Wayvin possessed such a large density of mana that the scope of her Mage Armor covered not only her own body but her entire surroundings.

Since she was now pressed right against the body of Dusk Rose, she created an area all around them in which Dusk Rose couldn't use magic.

And worse still, if Dusk Rose wanted to use magic outside of the area covered by her Mage Armor, he would need to direct his mana to exit the area under her Mage Armor. However, no matter how he tried to direct his mana to exit the sphere of mana around them, her mana constantly pushed it back towards the center.

He was stuck inside a whirlpool. And the only way for him to use magic was to use it in the area covered by his own Mage Armor.

Unfortunately, his Mage Armor, like the Mage Armor of the majority of mages, only covered his own body.