Volume 1 Chapter 28 The Prospector’s misfortune

Alexander was not in a good situation, trump card had been used in his fight with the Twin Stars, his pickaxe could use the spell engraved within it once a month without repercussion.

If he used it again in the month to come the spell would produce a lesser effect than the first use, the time needed to recharge would also go from a month to two.

If he chose to use it a third time within the next two months, it would take half a year before he could fully use the strength of the power within the tool.

He estimated that using the spell a fourth time would produce minimal effect and would make the pickaxe useless forever.

As such he could only hope he wouldn’t have to use the spell during the next month.

The prospector walked with difficulty toward the inn he had seen in the distance.

Once he entered he immediately paid for three nights and a dinner, took his plate and keys, went upstairs and locked himself in his room.

The strange Chus that Roy Keith had sent into his body had an insane propagation factor. If he didn’t keep the energy in check, it would start spreading widely.

He had tested the Chus full of Star Path’s principles and it had spread from the region surrounding his thigh to half of his left leg.

He however knew that he could fight it using his own Chus, he had tried two days ago and it had worked.

Alexander had attacked the weird pattern and was able to breach its defenses. The energy had however quickly formed a blockade to stop him from breaking further in pattern.

Yesterday he had tried to attack the same spot as it had worked before and to his surprise the pattern had strengthened its defenses around that point.

The Prospector had chosen to name the weird pattern as SRASMP (standing for Self Reparative and Self Multiplying Pattern).

Problem, it took refined Chus to fight against the pattern and a lot of it. Good thing, he had two Chus storing artifacts that he had fully charged before the fight against the Twin Stars.

He used his third spell.

-Alex. C.: Stone Teary Eyes,

Tears started being produced by his eyes, these tears started turning into a stone layer.

His eyes were able to see through the stone layer and gained the ability to see Chus movements, Chus disposition and could even see minute changes in someone's position.

The craftiness behind the spell was noteworthy.

The spell in itself only forced the body to produce tears before turning them into stone, what was interesting was the stone itself.

The rock layer that is created is a custom type of stone that doesn’t exist naturally. This stone acts as glasses would to a myopic person.

The person gains the ability to see minute changes in everything, when compared to Chus enhanced eyes the uneducated won’t be able to see the greatness behind it.

But to the knowing party, they’ll realize the difference, sending Chus in your eyes allows you to see clearly further than before and to see details better.

But when one looks through this stone layer they gain the ability to see Chus movement and minutes change into one’s position.

The changes in position are different from details, indeed having a good look at the details allow you to see things you couldn’t see before but you won’t be able to see minuscule changes.

And by seeing both the micro changes in one position and the movement of Chus one could effectively predict the trajectory of attacks.

But Alexander Crisk was currently using the spell not to predict attack trajectory but to see the movement and consistency of the Chus in the SRASMP.

He could see that the pattern was like a sphere around a core, the core had branches linking it to other branches which would touch the outer layer from the inside.

It seemed like the core was able to pump natural Chus and feed it to the whole system.

The use of natural Chus (unrefined Chus) was a specificity of Formation Path, he would not have thought that the Cloven brothers had any knowledge on the matter.

The Prospector knew that if he were to destroy the core, the entire formation would lose its energy source and evaporate by itself.

But to reach the core, he would have to puncture the outer layer then progress through the interior of the formation without causing himself a long lasting problem.

The two Vespa Yellow Tourmaline bracelets could both hold four hundred parts of Chus and both were fully loaded.

So the Prospector started directing his Chus to attack near the site where he had first tried.

As he punctured the defensive layer the SRASMP modified its Chus disposition to strengthen the defense around the point of attack.

Alexander stopped his advance, absorbed Chus from the first bracelet before sending an attack right next to the second site.

He did it again and again.

He would attack near the previous site of attack and the SRASMP would move more of the Chus it had at its disposal to defend that side of the formation.

The Prospector continued until he no longer had any Chus left in the first artifact. He started absorbing Chus from the second bracelet.

With his reserves now full, he started again, the good news was that the formation core was overwhelmed by the frequencies of the attacks and wasn’t able to absorb enough Chus from the surrounding to multiply.

Alexander started feeling the temperature rising, he stopped his current attack and looked up, only to realize that the inn he was staying in was currently on fire.

He was faced with a choice, either he could stop his attacks and safely get out of the building but the progress he had just made would have been a waste or he could attack with all he had, destroying the core but potentially causing himself harm.

He chose the second option as stopping now would mean that he would have to waste all the progress he had done and would mean that he had used up all of his first Vespa Yellow Tourmaline bracelet’s reserves.

So he chose to do an all out attack towards the core.

The attack pierced deeply within the core.

His body had been attacked with a heavy attack that would cause Chus poisoning (the very thing he was trying to avoid by destroying the SRASMP) and a physical injury.

But with this last ditch effort, the Prospector was able to destroy the core of the SRASMP formation and to get out of the inn before it crumbled all over him.

He cursed his bad luck, if not for this fire in this very inn he would have been able to safely destroy the core without causing problems for the future him to fix.