The Insider System

Chapter 201: Believable Failure

From where Lake and his Metal Temple followers were hiding they had had a front row seat to the flesh tendrils that had slowly covered the city. It was very clear to him that whatever the Demon Worshipers had been planning to do was happening and when he saw a massive wave of rust colored mana wash a section of the city clean off the map, he knew his communication device would activate relatively soon.

"So that\'s what those balls of skin were." Lake didn\'t like the way balls of skin sounded but he was happy to see one of his mage friends had something to say so he asked. "You think that\'s what they used to make the formation huh?" The formation had already started to activate so it was clear that had been what happened but he still wanted to hear what the dwarf had to say.

"Yeah, as long as that skin can make and hold mana it\'s perfect for forming a formation and since it\'s not outside of the body it\'ll be much more stable than one out in the open." Lake nodded and was about to ask if they would be able to do anything to it now that it had started to form when his communication device started to shine.

Lake looked at the place he was supposed to attack that was now just a gross tangle of flesh and said. "It\'s, um, time for us to move in." Right when he said this he felt the mana in the air start to change. He was pretty much right in the center of the Mana siphon part of the formation so he understood what was causing the Earth and Metal mana in the air to disappear.

Turning to look at his dwarf companions, Lake could tell they weren\'t doing so hot and when he guessed the reason it made him kind of question why the Temple Head had even sent them with him. Their mission had been to attack the trap part of the formation that was hidden in the mana siphon so the fact that these dwarves were useless if the mana siphon was on made no sense.

When he saw one of the dwarves start to get back on their feet Lake guessed he had counted them out too soon. "Are you three ok?" The one who had already stood up started to nod before saying. "Yeah, it\'s just that was the first time in years we\'ve been without Metal mana. It takes some time to adjust."

That made sense to him but he still needed to ask. "You guys can still make formations?" That was what these three were here to do so he needed to make sure. "Yes we can, but they will be less effective since they won\'t have as much metal mana to power themselves."

"Can you not use another element?" Lake knew almost nothing about formations so he was really asking if sealing formations were a Metal specific thing. "We can\'t, no." He had already wasted too much time since the device had said it was time for him to move so he said. "Alright well let\'s still give it a try."

Lake went and opened the door that would let them get outside but one of the dwarves said. "We can just do it from here, no need for us to get any closer." Lake nodded and went to close the door but the dwarf stopped him again by saying. "Leave the door open, we need line of sight."

Lake could tell he was just in the way at this point so he just backed off and let the three of them start their formation. He would usually have stayed where he was to protect them but since the flesh had stopped moving after all the tentacles had weaved together he wasn\'t really too worried about an attack.

While he was waiting for the dwarves to finish he saw that his communicator had started to flash again. Lake had no idea how he was supposed to be able to tell what it was saying since all it did was light up so he just took it to mean they needed to hurry up. He was sure the dwarves were already moving as fast as they could though so he didn\'t say anything to them about it.

After a while he saw the formation they had been making start to lift off of the ground and stick itself to the closest tentacle. The tentacle didn\'t react and after a few seconds of watching Lake could tell why, the formation wasn\'t really doing much to it. "Once the mana siphon goes down it will do its job better."

Turning to the dwarf, Lake asked. "Are we done here, or do you plan to add a few more formations here before we move on?" He would understand if they wanted to make a few more before they moved on since they had seemingly done nothing to affect the grand formation they were trying to destroy.

"Well considering we hadn\'t foreseen the fact the formation would come in this form there isn\'t really anything else we can do unless you want to risk attacking." Lake remembered the fact that what he was doing and what the Temple Head were doing needed to mirror each other as closely as possible so he decided them attacking wasn\'t a good idea.

Once the Metal mana returned all the formations they set from here on would activate around the same time. This would make the effect the Temple Head wanted even if it was slightly out of order. Originally he was pretty sure they were supposed to destroy this intersection before the Mana siphon but they would have to make do with closely after now.

It was pretty clear to him that they had pretty much failed in stopping the formation so it didn\'t really matter what happened to it from now on since by the time they could get rid of it they would have probably already fought off the Demon Worshipers and their new army that had just been summoned.

He hadn\'t really made up his mind if he would be staying for all of that though. Turning to the dwarves, Lake asked. "Where to next?" The plan needed to change since the dwarves were pretty much unable to use Metal magic now that the siphon was on so he would leave it to them. Hopefully they would want to retreat and Lake could use that chance to disappear into the chaos.

If he was able to do that he would still get credit for what he had done so far if they were able to beat the Demon Worshipers as long as he showed up again at the end and acted like he had helped throughout and just been off doing his own thing.

With how much time he had spent on this he wasn\'t willing to lose whatever money he had been able to rack up under his name in the past few days even if it was looking like he wasn\'t going to be able to claim any of it. Thinking this Lake couldn\'t help but think back to the Master who had recommended him to come here because the money would be better.

He knew Master Dean or whatever his name was had been telling the truth and hadn\'t been aware of how bad it was about to get when he had told Lake to come here but he still felt like he had been tricked and it had caused him to lose money. "We should either go towards the summoning formation to try and help kill whatever was summoned or stay here and wait for the people who are going to try and destroy the mana siphon to help them."

Since Lake wanted to slip away he felt going towards the fight would be the best way to accomplish that so he said. "Let\'s go help fight, for all we know the people coming to destroy the mana siphon might not even show up." Lake was alluding to the fact that there was a good chance most of the people that had been sent down here were now dead and would never come to attack the siphon.

"Yeah, you\'re right, we can\'t afford to wait all day." It seemed the three of them were in agreement so Lake led the way out of the house and onto the street. Once he was outside he took a quick look at his map and headed towards where the summoning formation was.

They weren\'t even able to get all the way there before he was able to see what had been summoned. He didn\'t get a very good glimpse of it but he saw some black skinned beast dragging a person into a building with a few others of its kind right behind it.

Lake didn\'t like the look of them but he was happy they were monsters because he had found people were harder to gauge before a fight started so you never knew if they were weak or strong but monsters usually were all around the same strength so after he fought the first one he would know what he was dealing with.