Born in apocalypse

To increase the effectiveness of the spell, he first began with the basics of it.

The basics weren’t hard, as all the foundations for the spell were something he had known for a long time, and he just had to learn how to create a perfect equilibrium with them.

With some time in hand, he knew he could do that, and that’s exactly what he had done.

After perfecting the basics, Alaric began to learn how to produce as many tentacles at a time as possible. This part was the second most difficult thing to learn about this spell... but he had done it as well.

Having achieved success in creating hundreds of tentacles at a time, he then began to learn how to command them separately. After experimenting with this, he found that commanding hundreds of tentacles was a bit challenging at this moment, so he moved to the next best thing.

He began to find a general command that all the tentacles would act upon... this wasn’t an easy task either. But eventually, Alaric found a perfect way for him and his tentacles to distinguish friend and foe alike, and the thing was... Mark.

Knowing that anyone worth saving around him would always have the Mark Of Asteri. After finding this, it was as simple as it can be.

Alaric simply had to set his tentacles in a way that they would follow the command, ’Kill whoever doesn’t have the Mark of Asteri.’

Setting the command was simple... but everything after that was horrendous to work with. It had almost taken him a week to have that control over his tentacles so they would follow this command without any problem.

Even after all this, the spell isn’t perfect.

At this moment, he couldn’t make the domain more than 5 meters. Any more than that and the amount of tentacles that he could generate would take a toll... which makes it worthless to increase the size.

Besides the size, the mana consumption of the spell was so much that if he were not in the shadow realm while activating the spell, it would disappear just after a few seconds—of course, this will only happen if he uses the spell at its maximum output.

The only way he could continue to keep the spell up was to absorb shadow mana from the realm.

Even after all this, Alaric knew that the spell was nothing but a masterpiece; he just needed some time, and he would surely perfect this.

Sigh!

’Well, they aren’t valuable at all... why do they have to go against their instinct and open their eyes to see the surroundings..’ Alaric sighed as he found himself disappointed by the actions of these monsters.

Knowing that all of them are dead, he transports all the corpses to the part where he usually collects items. Making sure everything was right, he silently left the realm and appeared in the dining hall.

Appearing there, he observed as slowly but surely people began to fill the area. After ten minutes of waiting, everyone had entered the area. Looking at the crowd in front of him, Alaric opened his mouth, "I hope every one of you is fine... or going to be fine."

Instead of making any sound, everyone nodded their heads. Satisfied with their action, Alaric looked toward Lyra and asked, "Have you found anyone dead..."

Slightly shocked to find that this type of sensitive question had been asked so blatantly, she replied nonetheless, "Thala and his team are still looking, but there shouldn’t be any deaths..."

"Sigh! That’s a big relief..." Alaric heaved a sigh of relief as he found the answer good.

"Now that... the fight is over, I want to know how the attack happened..." Alaric asked, trying to get the full picture of this attack.

He knew that he shouldn’t ask these types of questions in the open like this, but then again he knew that building trust between people is hard to do... and these little things matter the most. He was just trying to make things easier for his master.

Knowing the question is for her, Lyra began the explanation, "We don’t know the exact reason, but sometime in the evening... we heard weird sounds coming from the east direction. Knowing that there shouldn’t be anyone who can produce such sounds, we sent some people to see what it was."

"... to say it shortly... it didn’t take long for us to know that the island has been under attack by the monster. We were quite fortunate that the first and most powerful wave of the monster was handled by his lord Azarex’s undead... if they hadn’t been there... only worse would have happened.."

"After the first wave, the ones on the island—who can fight— began the battle with the monster... and probably at this time, your grace had gotten out of the dungeon..." Lyra poorly explained everything to Alaric.

"Hmmm! What is the well-being of Azarex’s undead... the massive golem, to be precise.." Knowing full well about their relationship, Alaric asked this question.

"Is it heavily injured but not dead? We tried to use healing on it, but unfortunately, it didn’t have any effect on it," Priestess muttered.

Nodding his head, Alaric looked and asked the last question, "Did anyone have a clue how this happened... today?"

Alaric knew that this was about to happen eventually, and they had predicted it as well... but as someone with a brain and the ability to think, he couldn’t help but ask the question: Why today?

Even though he had asked this question, Alaric wasn’t expecting any answer from them. All this changed when he saw a hand standing in the middle of the crowd.

’Hmmm! Isn’t he the one who had crafted a staff recently... what was his name, yes, Zola.’ Thinking this, he opened his mouth, 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Yes, what is it, Zola.." Alaric asked.

"My lord, I know how this happened... maybe I’m the one responsible for this..." Zola answered while keeping his head low.

"What!?"

"How?"

"..."

"...."

’..."

A wave of exclamations began to spread through the crowd as they couldn’t understand how this crafter, who didn’t know anything except his craft, could be the reason for the attack.

Looking at the man who had convinced himself as guilty, Alaric responded, "That is not something for you to decide. The decision is in the hands of his Majesty."