Chapter 18

In the soft morning light filtering through their bedroom window, Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, his expression unusually heavy. Faith, perched beside him, noticed immediately.

“What’s wrong, Marcus?” she asked, her voice steady but concerned. She knew her husband well enough to tell when he had something weighing on him. She was now turning into the glue that held her family together.

Marcus ran a hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “I got word from the kingdom yesterday. They’ve confirmed something... troubling.”

Faith’s heart sank. “What is it?”

Marcus hesitated, as if searching for the right way to soften the blow. “Our village, Viswall... it’s near one of the monuments.”

Faith’s face paled. “The monuments? You mean the pillars that hold the barrier together? Between us and...” She trailed off, not wanting to say it aloud.

Marcus nodded grimly. “Yes. The barrier between the living and the undead monsters. The kingdom says the one near us will be among the first to fall.”

Faith’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with alarm. “Oh gods... That’s why you told Reshia not to come back.”

Marcus leaned. “I can’t let her—be here when that happens. Faith, we also need to leave. The family... we have to go somewhere safer.”

Faith swallowed hard, her mind racing. “Leave? Marcus, this is our home. Everything we’ve built, everything we’ve worked for—it’s here.”

Marcus reached for her hand, “I know, Faith. I know how much we’ve poured into this life. I’ve been thinking... maybe we could go to your parents’ place. It’s far enough south, away from all this.”

Faith’s shoulders slumped as the reality of their situation sank in. “My parents’ place...” She paused, her voice trembling. “We’d be starting over, Marcus. From scratch.”

Marcus squeezed her hand, pulling her closer. “It’ll be like the old days,” he said softly, a faint smile on him. “You and me, starting fresh, taking on the adventure. We’ve done it before, haven’t we?”

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Faith let out a shaky laugh, “We were younger then, Marcus. And reckless.”

Marcus agreed ,“We were unstoppable.”

Faith smiled through her tears, “You always find a way to make me believe everything will be fine.”

“It will be,” Marcus said firmly. “We’ve got each other, and we’ve got Raul. That’s what matters.”

Faith inhaled deeply, steeling herself. “How long do we have?”

Marcus’s face grew serious again. “About a month. Maybe less, depending on how fast things escalate.”

Faith nodded, “Then we start preparing now..”

Marcus pulled her into an embrace, holding her tightly. “We’ll get through this, Faith.”

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[

Console level =2

Next level up requirement - 70 level up points.

Available level up points - 00

]

Raul recalled he still had an active quest to create a wind blast spell that would give him 30 level up points.

He needed those points to upgrade the Console. Only then would he be able to learn the advanced magic spells that Reshia had been teaching him.

Because of incompatibility , most of these spells were just landing into the Spell Store but could not be downloaded yet.

Reshia had even started reconsidering teaching him advanced combat magic , but he had used his persuasive skills to convince her nonetheless. Fortunately for him , he had picked up a fire attack spell that dispensed a fire attack at a pointed target.

The spell was called ‘ Crimson Current ‘ and fortunately Raul was compatible with it. It however took a huge manna toll on him.

The manna storage in the Console was limited to the current console level. At console level 1 , he had a maximum manna cap of 70.

Now he had a maximum cap of 120. It was good enough to fire one blast of “Crimson Current” . He planned on modifying the spell later on to cut down on the excess manna consumption , but ever since he had seen how complicated the code was , he had been postponing that.

He did not want to find out what harm such a spell could do to him if it crashed . ‘Chimming winds’ , a predominantly harmless spell , had snapped his finger. He didn’t even want to imagine what a botched combat spell like "Crimson Current" could do to him.

He would have to sit down , run the bits of code separately and deduce their worth through analytics until he was sure he had the right thing.

The good thing was that the console had a Safe Mode that worked like augmented reality technology , testing out the probable output of a spell without an actual physical manifestation.

“Alright, let’s break this down,” he muttered, leaning closer to the floating Console.

The spell’s code was a labyrinth of interconnected algorithms, each governing a different aspect of its behavior.

Raul activated the Console’s Analytics feature, which highlighted inefficiencies and flagged potential areas for optimization. The console flagged a mana drain subroutine that accounted for nearly 20% of the spell’s consumption.

“There you are,” Raul said, narrowing his eyes. “If I can tweak this, I might cut the cost just enough to fire the attack twice.”