'Where is Shane?' Jason wondered when he sensed the sword-beam shaking violently. 

The sword-beam released vast mana fluctuations trying to break out of an unknown invisible chain that restricted its speed which decelerated visibly until it suddenly stood still midair.

Turning more unstable, the slower the sword beam became, Jason noticed that the mana fluctuations that couldn´t move freely anymore.

Once it stopped moving, the sword beam turned violent, ravaging inside the invisible shackles. 

Suddenly Jason sensed a somewhat familiar mana, revealing itself in front of the sword beam, which began to slowly envelope it.

While the sword beams surrounding were lightened up, the front was filled with darkness. 

Not a single speck of light was able to penetrate the dark hue and the blade beam couldn't pierce it, as a small hand reached out of the darkness, firmly gripping the white shining blade beam. 

Jason's eyes widened as it looked like the blade beam was shrieking out in fear, trying to wrest out of the hand's grip.

However, everything was in vain and the sword beam was slowly encased by darkness.

From the outside, the only thing that could be seen, was the bright light around the sword beam was turning dimmer, while its struggle decreased over time.

The pressure released by the darkness enveloped hand increased while the sword beam became weaker.

Not much time passed until the hand began to exert more strength, causing the last resistance of the sword beam to break down as cracks appeared on its surface. 

More cracks formed on the sword beam's surface while the mana fluctuations weakened further until the sword beam looked as if it was completely patterned with cobwebs. 

Exerting more strength onto the sword beam, the hand shattered it into smithereens, and the released mana fluctuations dissipated into all directions, brightening the sky without harming anyone.

Behind the city walls, only the luminous crystals lightened up the darkness while the skyscrapers were completely dark, probably having lost their connection to the mana converter that empowered the districts. 

Thousands of civilians, as well as high-ranked guards, looked into the brightened sky. where the sword beam shattered, with shocked eyes as if they had seen a miracle. 

'Was it a dream?' That was a thought that appeared in their mind but the shocking pressure they had to endure with the killing intent that felt was so real, it couldn´t have been a dream... 

But there was nothing left behind and the unknown hand that reached out of the darkness, vanished without leaving a shred of evidence about the existence of both the sword beam and the hand behind. 

Jason and even the Orc who was chained were looking at the shattered sword beam when a sudden voice behind them said

"Your sword beam was not bad. If you were stronger, you might even be able to seriously injure me with that!"  Turning around, Jason saw Shane looking at his hand which had a shallow cut on it.

`Did Shane destroy the sword beam only with his hand? And if he did that, such a small cut was everything the sword beam was capable of?` 

The Orc looked at the old man´s hand and shook could be seen in his eyes, as it began to shiver in fright, knowing that it wouldn´t be able to escape anymore.

"H-how did you survive that, human? Even master would die facing my newest invention head-on!!"

"Just shut up!" Shane said and he didn't even want to exchange a single word with the High-Orc right now

"If you want to die peacefully, you´ll have to tell me all your secrets, otherwise you won't die even if you want to, runemaster!" 

Turning to Jason, Shane said

"This orc is the runemaster that produced probably all higher graded runes. With the information from it, we are able to increase our knowledge about runes by a large margin. We´ll take him with us."

Jason nodded his head, still somewhat flabbergasted and he decided not to say anything as he looked down at the city wall that was almost completely destroyed by elemental spells or physical attacks from the Goblins and Orcs.

The poisonous rain was still pouring down outside the city and the whole landscape was filled with Goblin soldier corpses, bloated and with greenish spots all over their body.

Some Goblin Soldiers were still standing and struggling to reach the city wall but not a single one survived long enough to enter the city.

It took less than a few minutes until mountains of goblin corpses filled the area in front of the city wall, turning the whole atmosphere eerie as it looked like a mass grave.

But the city wall was also not looking as if it was new construction with a few hundred holes destroying the prior aesthetic sight.

Meanwhile, multiple muscular orcs that also had runes on their body shining brightly threw one punch after another, tearing down the city wall with an astonishing speed.

In the back, multiple guardian- and magical-ranked goblin mages combined their mana to form a fireball the size of a detached house. 

Throwing the fireball, Jason looked worriedly at Shane who looked like he didn´t want to stop the fireball as it crashed into the city wall, tearing it apart.

Humans cried out in pain, as they ignited, while others fell down the collapsing city wall, surviving while sustaining shallow injuries.

Jason became worried, seeing thousands of magical and a few hundred guardian ranked goblin lords, mages, orcs, squeezing through the small torn apart city wall, trying to massacre Cyro city.

Looking pleading at Shane, he could only helplessly reply, slightly annoyed

"Why do you even have mana eyes, if you don't use them? Can't you see that all goblins and orcs that enter the city are injected with darkness transmuted mana, injuring their mana cores?" 

Do you want me to do everything alone? Am I some kind of welfare or what? If they can't kill weakened guardian ranked orcs and goblins, they wouldn't be able to protect this City which is above a large natural mana vein!

Furthermore, I can't reveal myself. So bear with it or kill them yourself, if you can!!" 

Jason nodded, with red cheeks…

He really didn´t notice that all Goblins and Orcs that entered the city wall had Shane´s darkness transmuted mana attached to them, attacking their mana core innately, weakening them tremendously and Jason could only complain about himself inwardly.

This was only because he didn´t activate his mana eyes all the time, because it was taxing and scanning one´s cores was even more so.

Jason had only occasionally activated his mana eyes to look at a few goblins and other beasts that interested him because he was in a beast breakout with millions of lower-ranked beasts while at least a few thousand were at the magical and guardian rank.

The higher his mana core rank became, the easier it was for Jason to use his mana eyes.

However, right now blood leaked out of his eyes as he wanted to reaffirm Shane's declaration.

Obviously, what Shane said wasn´t a lie and Jason grew even more curious about the old man he met at the Beast Pagoda in Artes-City for the first time, or rather Shane Blair, a being above the Lord rank? Who was he really and why was he hiding? 

Jason didn't know anything about this individual next to him but he did not seem to have evil intentions, even if his teacher and Old Drake seemed to be scared of him.

He was still looking at the battlefield of weakened goblins and orcs against humans with his mana eyes activated while they continued to bleed without the slightest hint of stopping.

Somehow, for Jason the whole fight seemed stage as the humans were now obviously at an advantage as the inflicted darkness mana inside the goblins and orcs showed their true color, causing their strength to decrease by more than 30% instantly.

Before the goblin's strength decreased, Magus and Grandmagus ranked humans were overwhelmed and pressured by their opponents might, but this pressure lessened over time, causing the humans to be able to fight back turning over the fight to their advantage.

It was unavoidable to secure the surroundings while magical and magus-ranked beings fought against each other without considering Guardian and Grandmagus ranked being.

Cyro-City´s guards tried to draw the fights to the outside the city if possible or to the ghettos, which were already comparable to noble districts of D-grade cities if there was no other way to avoid fighting within the city walls.

Nevertheless, houses were ripped apart by elemental attacks, Orcs charged towards their opponent, killing hundreds of innocent civilians without caring about them.

More time passed and when Jason saw the first skyscraper collapsing, his eyes turned gloomy, as more than tens of thousand humans were most likely within.

"F**k" Jason only said with grief in his voice, as he thought about Shane´s strength.

However, Shane couldn't do something without drawing attention to himself, and probably even blocking the sword beam was already considered too much, even if Jason didn´t know why the old man next to him had to avoid attracting a commotion.

Sighing deeply, he could only helplessly see innocent citizens crying out in pain and anguish when the Magus and Grandmagus humans began to completely overwhelm their opponents.

The outcome of the Goblin tide was already obvious and Jason lost his interest in the staged fight. He was sorry for the innocent lives that were lost and didn´t know what to do with his emotions, as he tried to change his train of thoughts.

This caused him to look straight into Shane´s eyes with his golden shining eyes piercing into him, trying to find out more, while fresh blood poured down his cheeks.

"Who are you?"