Chapter 164: Suffocation
Altair's chest burned as she continued to attempt to move her arms. She still couldn't see anything around her. The Mana Fog had completely taken over her vision. Despite that, she was also completely submerged in the pond. She could feel the Manamium around her seeping into her body at the rate she was familiar with. She also felt like her entire body was wrapped up in some kind of burrito that she was powerless to get free from. She couldn't even roll over because every time she tried, there was a sudden burst of strength to hold her back in place.
Her Body Reinforcement Magic wasn't doing her any good to get free either. She had already burned most of her remaining Mana to attempt to get free with it but it wasn't helping her at all.
'I shouldn't have assumed they could only blow up,' she mockingly thought to herself. Altair didn't think that a bunch of air could grab her and pin her down. It was unthinkable to her.
She didn't even know what the Mana Fog wanted from her even now. It just buried her in the pond and kept her there like she was some kind of treasure, or that's how she felt anyway. She didn't really want to give in and let it continue to drown her.
But, at this point, she was starting to panic. She could feel her body screaming at her for air. But she was underwater and couldn't breathe. She also couldn't break out with the amount of Mana she had with Body Reinforcement Magic. She was sure that it would just result in her being out of Mana.
In her panic, she had not considered to drink some of the water filled with Manamium to restore her Mana and use that new Mana to break free.
Instead, she went the harder route: attempt to make new Magic on the fly to not drown to death.
She roughly knew how the circulatory system worked but there was a huge problem. She was aware that, due to the circumstances she had first arrived at the Empire in, she did not need oxygen to breathe. As a result, she wasn't aware of what gas she was actually taking in replenish the vitality in her blood.
But that didn't matter. She didn't believe she had much time so she would just force things and hope for the best.
She burned her Mana and sent it to circulate through her veins like blood, hoping it would just work.
Naturally, it didn't do anything except make Altair feel like she had more energy. As a result, her heart rate increased and it made things worse for her as she began to panic even harder.
'Is this how I die?' she thought to herself. The irony that she would drown in a pool of water that only came up to her knees was not lost on her. Even she had learned how to swim in the past it wouldn't help her now.
Her Shadow Magic was useless. She could create a Garden but the problem was that she was in the center of the pond. She suspected this was where the Mana Fog originated from. If she created a Garden here she would just be locked in with the source and that would do what exactly for her situation?
She couldn't use her Thread Magic to try and pull herself out because she was completely disoriented from getting tossed into the water in the first place. She had no idea where anything was so she wouldn't be able to find herself or anything reliable to grab onto.
Her Body Reinforcement Magic didn't have the fuel required to free herself.
She didn't know what was worse: drowning here in the pond or getting dragged off and made into an invalid until she died by those androids.
She really hated getting stuck in this situation. It shouldn't have been like this. She was supposed to take in the Mana Fog, as she had done when she was running downstairs, and use the Mana it gave her to get rid of the android that killed Din. She had recovered most of her Mana in the few moments she was free but she had already squandered it trying to break out of her new prison.
Her panic rose and she tried something she would have found foolish if she was in a state of mind to think properly: she forced her Mana into her blood cells in an attempt to change her situation.
Surprisingly, Altair felt much better when that happened. It was like she had been breathing the entire time. Her lungs still burned, but the rest of her body was suddenly content. Her brain registered that she was suddenly fine.
It caused Altair to blink underwater.
'What?'
She burned some more Mana to shove into her blood, a tiny bit as she didn't have much left and repeated the process. Nothing changed, she still felt completely fine.
She had no idea if she was really drowning because her mind was starting to die on her or if she was actually alright. In either case, she was now able to think clearly and she remembered that Manamium enriched water restored Mana.
She opened her mouth without a second thought and took a couple large gulps, more than flooding her Mana reserves. She then pumped all the Mana she could into a dozen stacks of Body Reinforcement Magic and struggled anew while taking another gulp as her Mana plummeted from the activation.
The Mana Fog that was binding her started to get loose but it wasn't enough. Altair kept drinking and adding more stacks, however. She had gotten up to an absurd twenty three stacks, which she had never done before, when she burst free from the Mana Fog and shot to her feet.
The moment her head broke the surface of the water, she dismissed almost all of her Body Reinforcement stacks. She wouldn't be able to hold that many up for even a second without a constant supply from the Manamium enriched waters. She then took a deep breath as the Mana Fog flooded into her and started to refill her Mana that had been drained to half. The amount she got back from that one breath paled compared to what she got from drinking it right from the source.
However, it was enough for her to immediately burn away all of the Mana she had, including the Mana she just took in, while taking another deep breath and burning most of that Mana as well. Effectively, from what she could tell, she had just burned away more than her pond could even hold.
And it was all just to make a massive Garden.
The black cell poured out from under her immediately, absorbing the pond and flowing beyond. It ran underneath A2 and A3's feet and stretched into the building while the walls were brought up behind Altair. It continued to stretch further and further, the Garden reaching four storeys up before it started to close a top over it. The shadow stretched across the property and consumed the entire vacation building and a good chunk of its surroundings.
In total, the Garden stretched up roughly seventeen meters and went out twenty meters to either side of her while the distance to the furthest wall was sixty meters. It could be seen from far away and the operations team was completely stunned when they lost contact again and the black agents notified them of a mysterious cube that formed over the operation area. The Juggernauts were still booting up and hadn't gotten there yet.
However, the only things inside that could be classified as possibly alive were Altair, A2, A3, the Mana Fog, and the pond of Manamium.
Altair still couldn't see due to the Mana Fog floating around her. She couldn't tell if it was doing anything right now but that didn't matter in the immediate moment. She wanted to get revenge for Din and, as far as she knew, there were three others in this Garden with her. But she couldn't designate specific targets with her Magic because she couldn't see them.
That didn't mean she couldn't attack them with her horde though.
Because of how Number One and his team had been, in Altair's mind, completely wiped out, she figured that all of the workers of the house had also been killed. This thought was reinforced when she saw the other two SND Neutralizers. With that thought in mind, she gave a general command everything she started to create within the Garden: kill everyone and destroy everything that isn't me.
In the next moment, hundreds of Shadow Creatures began pouring out of the walls, crawling up out of the floor, flying off the ceiling and upper parts of the Garden. It was the same mix she had sent last time to A2, including the aerial creatures and archers. However, there were more mixed in now as well.
She had added giants, nine meter tall brutes with massive clubs, and the Mechas she had been practicing with, except they were expanded to be twelve meters tall. She wanted them to destroy everything and didn't care if they took the building along with them. That is why she commanded them to kill everyone and destroy everything except herself.
She knew, from personal experience, that larger enemies are harder to kill than just cutting through them. They had a massive weight and reach advantage that would cause A2 to have a hard time. Even if he fired that shoulder cannon at them, she suspected it would take more than one shot to take down the giants.
Or at least that's what she hoped. She couldn't see then right now but she could hear the sounds of battle coming from ahead of her. She also heard the building getting thoroughly smashed apart too.
Before her, the Mana Fog started to condense as she had seen it do before. She figured it was trying to blast her away and she was going to have none of that. She created a shadow wall before herself and curved it around the Mana Fog itself to protect herself from any blast it would try to do. She really had no idea what its goal was but she didn't care. If she couldn't bring the Mana Fog within herself to replenish her Mana, it didn't matter. She still had plenty of Manamium enriched water below her to drink from.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone