On that short dash toward the vault, another man got swallowed by black mist that burst from the dark like a starving tide. Fear hit first; Dean didn’t dare look back.

“Damn it, the door’s locked!”

He saw the spell array etched clear as frost on glass, and he slammed a fist into it. Blood-threaded eyes burned. The black mist rolled at the hall’s far end like a storm front, while a little array blocked them like a thorny hedge.

If I still had Arcane Power…

“Let me!”

The young man who’d shadowed Dean shoved him aside. He reached the door, fingers flying over the glowing lines like a harpist over strings. His Arcane Power wasn’t sealed. Speed told the tale; his touch knew every mark.

Dean wasn’t stupid. He didn’t ask why the young man still had power. He kept his eyes locked on the black mist creeping like ink across paper, and he pressed the boy with a hoarse growl.

“Move! Faster!”

The fog had crossed half the corridor like dusk eating daylight. Sweat beaded on Dean’s brow like rain on stone. He didn’t dare blink, as if the mist were a crouching beast that would pounce the instant his gaze slipped.

The closer it drew, the heavier the pressure hit him, like a mountain wind pressing on his chest. Behind him, no bright click of hope came from the lock.

“Faster!!”

“Got it!”

At a hair’s breadth, the lock finally yielded. All three tumbled through like stones down a slope. The young man slammed the door. The same spell array flared like ice across water, and it walled the black mist outside.

Dean gulped air like a man dragged from a river. Fat drops rolled from his temples. He’d walked a circle with death and staggered back. The elder and the young man looked no better, faces ash-pale and eyes blown wide.

“Damn it. Elder, what was that thing? It was a fog-shaped Plague of Beasts!”

Rage flared first, then words. The rolling black left a scar in his mind, and it overlapped the horrors that roamed the plains like locusts. A thought rose like a chill: it could be man-made, and it worked in war.

“Dean, don’t forget why we came! We’re here to save people, not to mouth off!”

The elder snapped like a whip in dry air. He dodged the answer, face tight as winter bark, as if something sour rose from memory.

“Is this the time? Let’s live first, talk later!”

The young man cut in. His face had the chalky cast of a spent candle. Adjusting the array had drained him like a leaking cask. He leaned on the door, tried to draw Arcane Power up from his core, found only a dry well, and punched the wood with a dull thud.

“Hmph… We’ve made it this far. Getting out shouldn’t be hard. We just need a teleportation scroll…”

“Scrolls? Look around. Don’t you see what’s missing?”

The young man let out a thin laugh. He pointed at an empty stretch in the vault, a patch of ground like a pulled tooth. Despair filmed his gaze like frost.

The hint hit, and Dean finally saw it. The racks that should’ve held Mana Crystals were bare as winter branches. Spell scrolls still lined the shelves like sleeping paper snakes. But the young man’s Arcane Power was nearly wrung dry, and the other two had no ripple at all. Ten thousand scrolls might as well be painted doors; none would open.

It was like standing before a mountain of gold and not being allowed to lift a spade. Worse, the hourglass bled fast; if they didn’t leave on scroll-wings, they’d die caged like birds.

Dean didn’t drop hope. He moved fast to the other cabinets and tore through them like a storm through reeds.

“What are you doing, Dean?”

The elder watched him ransack the place like a man venting grief with both hands. Fear pricked him; he wondered if despair had cracked Dean’s mind.

“There must be Mana Crystal fragments left. There must!”

Dean’s voice was clear as a bell in cold air, and it stunned the elder. At that, the old man lurched forward to help, hands shaking, eyes scanning like a hawk’s. Only the young man stayed still by the door, as if their scramble flowed past him like rain past stone, and he kept trying to coax life into his embers.

They hunted on that thin thread of hope. When they finally met each other’s eyes, both saw the truth written there like ink: nothing. They’d emptied every cabinet in the vault. Not a shard of Mana Crystal. Not even dust.

The Hydra Clan absorbed Arcane Power and elements unlike any other race. Put one Hydra clansman and one ordinary human at zero power. Feed both with a Mana Crystal. A human might need a whole stone to reach his peak again. A Hydra, born with a grip on power like a snake on prey, could do the same with a single shard.

Now both men stood numb. The elder kept mumbling “Impossible, impossible…” like a broken wheel, then he sagged to the floor, boneless. The lack of a single crystal hit him like winter rain.

Dean’s eyes flushed scarlet. He went back to the cabinets, not to search, but to smash. He raised his arm like a hammer.

“Containers that stored Mana Crystals must hold Arcane Power too. Break them, release what’s inside, and we can—”

“Stop,” the young man said, glancing over with a long sigh, like wind over grass. “You can’t sense power now, so you think the cabinets are full. To me, they’re hollow.”

“Then what do we do? Say it! Our people are still under that bastard’s control. If we don’t save them, who will? They could face a slaughter next!”

The words cut his last brace like a knife. Dean seized the young man’s arms and shook him hard, rage and grief surging like floodwaters, as if shaking could shake loose an answer.

“Right—you still have power. Just overdraw more body and life!”

He latched onto the earlier memory of the array. Hope flared again like a guttering candlewick. If the young man could recover a little, then burn some life…

The young man saw that hope in Dean’s eyes—the kind that can fall off a cliff in the next heartbeat—and he almost couldn’t bear to break it.

“No. My Arcane Power survived the seal because my talent’s strange, and only a trace stayed. That’s why I could do basic things. Now even holding it is like holding water in a fist. Recovering enough to ignite a teleportation scroll? That’s a dream.”

“Then tell me… what do we do…”

The shaking slowed. Tears sheeted Dean’s face like rain on slate. He knew it too. If the young man had a way, they’d have flown already, racing to other outposts to save their kin. Why would they be drowning here?

The young man went silent. Dean let go, hands falling like broken wings. He walked to a corner and folded into himself, breath hitching, a sob escaping now and then like a bird from a thicket.

The young man sighed. He stopped looking at the two stalled men across from him. He rose, brushed dust from his clothes like pollen from sleeves, and drifted to a cabinet. He started sorting scrolls with steady hands, as if order itself could stave off night.

While the trapped few clawed for a way out inside the bunker, soldiers outside worked with mages to raise a vast barrier like a glass dome. It wrapped the bunker tight, a bell over a flame.

“My lord, almost ninety percent of the Hydra clansmen inside are dead,” said the Dragon Mage, his voice cool as a blade. “A few still struggle, but it’ll end soon.”

He had taken over the magical surveillance from an arcane trooper. He reported to a middle‑aged man who yawned like a sleepy lion, lids heavy with fog.

Yes—the man who’d been giddy at the start had soon crawled back to his pavilion and slept like winter earth. He hadn’t cared to watch the bunker’s tides—until the Dragon Mage came calling.

“Good, good… Well done,” the man murmured, voice thick as honeyed wine. “How many of the surveillance arrays we planted are still up?”

“Loss is under twenty percent. We’re still watching the bunker.”

The Dragon Mage offered a monitoring scroll with both hands. He highlighted the damaged spots with a flicker of power, a few simple motions that still wrung sweat from him like rain from eaves.

The scroll was his lord’s invention. He’d woven it into the arcane network like thread into a net, linking it to every node. If any node failed, the scroll lit the wound like a lantern, and it watched without blinking.

Because of that, the Dragon Mage spoke with care, afraid a single misstep would be a crack of thunder.

The middle‑aged man took the scroll and fed it a breath of power, thin as smoke. He watched the bunker like a hawk over fields. When he reached the trio trapped in the vault, he stared a beat, then lost interest like a cloud losing rain. He handed the scroll back, yawned, and lay down again.

“Come find me when they’re all dead.”

The Dragon Mage clutched the scroll, bowed like grass in wind, and backed out of the pavilion. He didn’t dare ask another word.