James immediately ran to try to get into the Gate to save the kids, but a Phantom from Jason’s Legion appeared and stopped him. James shouted at the Phantom and told the Phantom to let him go!
"Let go of me! We have to help them!"
But the Phantom refused and pointed at itself. James realised that this meant the Phantom was going to go inside to help out, and James took in a breath before begging the Phantom to hurry. The Phantom nodded, and it sent a message to Jason before entering the Orange Gate with five Pawn-Rank III Moonlight Wolf subordinates!
Inside the largest air carrier, back on the battlefield, Jason slashed his sword across the neck of a Machina before slapping away another attack and dashing forward to slam his knee into the face of a second Machina! A third Machina at the side tried to use an axe to split Jason’s skull, but a Machina subordinate appeared from behind and shot the third Machina in the back to kill it! Jason rose slightly and put his hand forward to form a shield that blocked various plasma rays from the Machina in front of him, and he raised a brow as he got a message from one of his Phantoms telling him that an Orange Gate had opened on this world. That was strange. Did this world even have enough mana to open a Gate?
[The presence of the user as well as the Machina in this world has forced a lot of mana to seep into the atmosphere, and this has not only created the appearance of Gates, but it has also forced the young humans to begin undergoing biological changes that would allow them to develop gifts.]
’Huh, I didn’t think something like that could happen so easily. I guess this is how Earth also gained mana.’
Jason didn’t really know much about how Gifts had first appeared on Earth, but he figured that it was something similar to this. The abundance of mana in the atmosphere had forced humanity and the world itself to evolve, and that was what caused everything to change. Jason sent a message back to the Phantom and told it to make sure the Varigans weren’t killed in that Gate. Most of Jason’s subordinates were busy dealing with the Machina, so the Rook Rank Phantom and five Pawns would have to somehow find a way to handle the Gate on their own. But thankfully, the Phantom was a Rook with a B-Rank [Independent Action] ranking, so it could make decisions and lead easily, and since they also had the [Remote Resurrection] skill, they could gain more allies as the battle progressed. There was nothing to worry about in an Orange Gate so long as they were careful.
Jason deactivated his shield and dodged to the side as someone rushed at him, and he slashed his [Qi Sword] across their neck and decapitated them before stabbing his sword through another Machina and using the Machina’s body as a shield as he continued moving forward!
Twoom! Twoom! Twoom! Twoom!
The Machina around Jason continued to fire at him, and Jason spoke up calmly!
"Resurrect."
Doon!
Jason suddenly unleashed a wave of mana to all the dead Machina around him, and the dead Machina jolted as their souls began to rise from their bodies!
——
The user has killed [82] S-Rank Machina
+123,500 Kill Points
——
The user has killed [27] SS-Rank Machina
+135,000 Kill Points
——
The user has gained [22] Rook Rank II subordinates
+66,000 MP
+0.1% Strength
+0.2% Stamina
+0.1% Agility
+0.1% Durability
——
The user has gained [12] Rook Rank III subordinates
+150,000 MP
+0.1% Strength
+0.2% Stamina
+0.1% Agility
+0.2% Durability
The user’s [Cybertronic Gene] has grown stronger
——
The user has lost [175] Rooks and [592] Pawns in the current battle. The system suggests that the user resurrect the dead subordinates in order to gain the upper hand in the battle.
——
Jason saw the new message from the system, and he frowned when he saw the last suggestion. Jason knew that resurrecting the subordinates would be a big help, but Jason was still waiting on Azrael’s analysis of this rune, and Azrael had asked Jason to preserve mana as much as possible since he knew they would need a lot of mana to break the rune sequence. Jason was only willing to use mana to resurrect some of the Machina because he knew that resurrections didn’t take up that much mana, but bringing the dead Rooks and Pawns back to life would be too much. Jason Legion was still capable of standing up to the Machina even with their reduced numbers, so once Jason gets a report from Azrael and finishes working on the Rune, he would resurrect his subordinates to finish the battle quicker!
Jason threw away the body he had been using as a shield, and he gave a simple order to the new subordinates he had just resurrected.
"Make a path for me."
Jason’s order immediately pushed all his subordinates into action, and they rushed forward like demons straight from hell and began firing at their former comrades! The intensity of the attack completely shattered the formation that the Machina soldiers had been using to attack previously, and they slowly began to take steps back as they felt fear creeping into their hearts! Jason had one hand in his pocket as he walked forward calmly, and in his other hand was a Qi blade that pulsed with power. As Jason walked, his subordinates forced the Machina soldiers to move to the left and right, and this created a straight path in between them! The Machina tried their best to fight back against Jason’s Legion, but even though the Machina had been augmented with mechanical parts, they were still mortal beings underneath all the machines, and this meant they were creatures that still feared death! And that fear of death immediately placed them one step behind Jason’s Legion! Because the Legion did not fear death, and the only way you could face the Legion on even footing was by abandoning the fear of death completely. But Jason knew that these men would not be able to do it. There were very few mortals who were capable of discarding their own desire for life!
’My King, I am finished analysing the rune. It appears we were right about its origins. It is a weakened version of the Domain Lock created by Runemaster Vox. I am currently in the process of creating an anti-rune Key that would interfere with the sequence, but I don’t think I possess enough mana to supply to the Key. The Machina used well over one million mana points to create the rune, so we will need to supply at least two million mana points to break it.’
Azrael’s voice reached Jason through their mental link, and Jason glanced down at his tab.
[Mana Points: 1,723,253/3,723,141]
Jason hummed when he saw that he was just under the required amount, but he could see that his MP was slowly climbing, and it wouldn’t take that long before he reached the two-million mark again. But Jason also knew that using up so much mana at once was going to leave him very vulnerable. If Jason just used up all two million mana points that he had, that would drop him all the way down to zero at once!
’I’ll have to use one of my Mana Storage Runes.’
This thought crossed Jason’s mind before he told Azrael to go ahead with the anti-rune Key and tell him when it was done. Jason had been creating a lot of runes over the past month, and one of the runes that he made the most of was Mana Storage Runes for himself and Gina. These were Third-Rank Runes that were created by someone named Desire Fluer from an unknown world, and they could siphon a steady flow of mana from a mage’s body and hold onto that mana until it was needed. The moment you deactivate the rune, all its stored mana would be released, and this would either replenish the mana of the mage that drew the rune or act as a catalyst in a magical reaction.