Chapter 327: Remnants, Off-Field Assistance

"Wang Yu, over here!"

Avia’s voice drifted from the side of the Truth Supervisory Council’s shattered building, calling him over.

As he reached the girl, he found Sieg and Icarus already there. The elven researchers stood by with grim expressions, staring at the third of the building that had been reduced to rubble, debating what course of action to take.

"Mr. Wang Yu, I must trouble you to repair whatever alchemical apparatuses can still be salvaged. Most are likely beyond saving, but we must minimize our losses as much as possible."

Icarus’s mood was clearly abysmal, yet he still managed a smile as he asked for Wang Yu’s assistance.

Wang Yu had no objections; the power of the Chariot was perfectly suited for such restorative work. The alchemical constructs of the Sky Mechanical City had already visited once when the accident occurred, but they had only patched up the damage to the streets.

The Sky Mechanical City provided no compensation for losses caused by the spontaneous accidents of the society itself. When the Abyss Mage had broken free and escaped previously, Wang Yu had at least received a payment afterward.

He unleashed the power of the Chariot. Under his command, the surrounding matter began to warp and shift. Fragments of brick and stone turned into a substance resembling soft clay in his hands, which he slapped onto the pockmarked walls, autonomously filling the craters and restoring them to their original form.

Currently, Wang Yu was the only one capable of this work. Earth magic could achieve similar results, but magic was strictly forbidden in this area for the time being.

The air remained thick with volatile wind elements and residual mana. Calling upon magic in such conditions might trigger a secondary disaster; only the Chariot’s power, which carried no additional elemental attributes, could be used safely.

"What exactly happened here? Given the scale of this destruction, if I didn't know better, I’d think the Truth Supervisory Council had been under attack."

Wang Yu lifted a fallen ceiling slab with brute force, tossed it upward, and used the Chariot’s power to fuse the fragment back into the original structure, casually questioning Avia as she stood beside him.

"Mr. Lancer was conducting a super-magic experiment when it suddenly spiraled out of control. A second-tier Wind Blade spell surged while he was channeling mana, ultimately shredding him and several assistants, along with this entire section of the building."

Avia gestured toward the ruins, summarizing the tragedy for Wang Yu. Even now, void energy began to flicker in the girl’s hands.

"This... a Wind Blade spell?"

Wang Yu remembered the researcher named Lancer. He was the one who had registered them at the front desk when they first joined the Truth Supervisory Council, and he was also the one who handled the operation of the giant staff.

He recalled him as a composed, middle-aged man—the type unlikely to cause an experimental accident. This had to be a fluke.

Lancer had been on good terms with Icarus, so it was understandable why Icarus was so distraught over his death.

However, Wang Yu was surprised that a common second-tier Wind Blade spell could possess such terrifying destructive power after being "super-magicked." Previously, only Avia and Sieg had participated in the research, while Wang Yu had merely served as a "workbench," so he wasn't well-versed in these details.

The giant spells released by the giant staff were merely simplified versions of "super-magic." The research Avia and her team were conducting was the true form of it.

The section Wang Yu was repairing belonged to the outer layer of the laboratory. The area where the mana surge had actually occurred, along with the researchers and equipment within, had been pulverized into dust by the super-magic Wind Blade. Even the Chariot’s power could not restore what had been erased.

"Mr. Lancer was a very steady researcher. Even with a super-magic Wind Blade, it shouldn't have caused such destruction without an excessive injection of mana. Although our super-magic research has made significant breakthroughs, it is far from perfected. He shouldn't have done that."

Avia’s tone was laced with confusion. She couldn't understand why Lancer would inject such an excessive amount of mana into the spell, triggering this catastrophic accident. She needed to see what had transpired, and she began to cast a spell she had been preparing.

Fourth-circle Sorcery: Retrograde. The void acted like a recording device, overlapping with the material world. As the background canvas of reality, it recorded everything that occurred within it. By communicating with the void, one could often uncover the secrets of the past.

Void energy flowed from the girl’s hands, forming translucent, silent scenes in the air, filling the gaps in the ruins and reconstructing the events leading up to the accident.

The footage began about half an hour prior—the maximum duration Avia could reach. Five minutes before the disaster, the translucent figure of Lancer could be seen walking through the lab with his assistants, recording various parameters with alchemical instruments.

He recorded the experimental data on specialized paper in a notebook, checked it once, and then placed it into a filing cabinet nearby.

Saving and sealing previous experimental conclusions before proceeding to the next step to avoid confusion was a good habit that Lancer and the other members of the Truth Supervisory Council strictly maintained.

"That filing cabinet with the previous data must have been destroyed in the Wind Blade surge. We have no way of knowing Lancer’s final thoughts. If that data still existed, perhaps we could have caught a glimpse of the truth."

Avia shook her head, regretful. The super-magic Wind Blade had completely shredded everything in that laboratory. The cabinet, while sturdy, was not specially reinforced and certainly couldn't have survived.

The greatest loss for the Truth Supervisory Council was Lancer himself; his accumulated experience and capability were irreplaceable. The experimental data came second, while the building and equipment Wang Yu was repairing were the least significant of all.

The retrograde footage continued. After sealing the data, Lancer sent his assistants to prepare for the next experiment while he rummaged through a bookshelf, eventually pulling down the scroll that had triggered the accident: the Wind Blade template.

He placed the scroll onto the super-magic shaping device the Council had prepared and waited for his assistants to gather the necessary materials before beginning the attempt.

Lancer turned on the machine and adjusted the mana injection levels. Both Avia and Wang Yu watched his operations closely; it was highly likely that this step had caused the surge. Yet, until the adjustments were complete, nothing seemed amiss.

"This...?"

Wang Yu smacked his lips, puzzled. So that wasn't the source of the problem? He kept his focus, watching on. Lancer finished adjusting the data and nodded with satisfaction; the parameters of the alchemical equipment appeared perfectly normal.

Lancer turned to a desk behind him to fetch paper and pen to record the data. It was at this moment that the operating machine shuddered slightly. Lancer and his assistants looked at the machine with confused expressions.

Lancer walked back to the machine, examined it closely, and then his face lit up with realization. After speaking a few words to his assistants—the content of which remained unknown—he placed his hand on the machine’s tuning port.

The next instant, a violent, tearing wind sliced everything in the room into dust. Not even a trace of blood remained in the debris.

The retrograde footage dissolved into a blank void after the chaos. Only after a delay did a few ceiling fragments drift through the image—debris from the building’s collapse. The reason the footage turned blank was that the room itself had been shredded into nothingness.

"It was a problem that occurred afterward? What did Mr. Lancer do? Why would he inject excessive mana into the machine to cause a surge?"

Avia frowned, muttering to herself. The information gained from the retrograde only deepened her confusion. Lancer’s actions seemed bizarre, as if he had blown up the machine while trying to fix it. But could such a low-level mistake really be made by that steady, reliable researcher?

"I’ll take this recording to Icarus and the Professor. Perhaps they will have some useful insights."

The girl gestured to the recording crystal in her hand, intending to show the footage to the others in hopes of finding more clues.

"Alright, I’ll finish up the repairs here."

Wang Yu nodded. He wasn't a researcher; he knew he wouldn't come up with anything useful in that regard. He would just do what he could.

Under his patching and mending, nearly half the building had been reconstructed. He had also dragged a dozen salvageable alchemical instruments from the ruins—those that could be tightened were fixed, and those beyond repair were dismantled for parts.

"Hm?"

As he pried a heavy stone wall from the rubble and used the Chariot’s power to secure it, Wang Yu let out a soft sound of surprise. His perception had caught something noteworthy.

He walked into the ruins, where blood had pooled, hardened, and shaped itself into a shovel. Driven by his Knight’s strength, he shoveled away a pile of debris, revealing a massive boiler beneath.

This item belonged to Lancer’s lab. It was covered in dense, jagged scars—a shocking testament to the super-magic Wind Blade. Due to the extreme density of the metal, it was likely the only thing in the lab to have survived.

The reason it caught Wang Yu’s attention wasn't the boiler itself, but what it was covering: the filing cabinet containing the data.

"Hah!"

With a roar, Wang Yu exerted his strength and hauled the heavy boiler out of the ground, revealing the object underneath—a filing cabinet that had been crushed and flattened.

"Is this just a bit too coincidental?"

Wang Yu placed his hand on the deformed cabinet and activated the Chariot’s power, restoring it to its original shape. He pulled the cabinet door open and found the documents inside were perfectly intact, showing no damage. He raised an eyebrow and muttered to himself.

The cabinet had survived because the Wind Blade had struck the boiler first, knocking it over. The open mouth of the boiler had happened to cover the cabinet, and the sturdy furnace body had acted as a shield, allowing the cabinet to survive the accident.

Wang Yu didn't care about the coincidence. He hoisted the cabinet and walked toward where the other members of the Truth Supervisory Council were gathered.

"I found something. The data inside is intact; it should be useful."

Wang Yu’s words drew everyone’s attention. Having seen the footage and assumed everything in the room had been destroyed, they were stunned to see the cabinet he was carrying, followed by a surge of genuine relief and joy.

...

The three of them walked back toward their living quarters. The girl flipped through the copies of the documents in her hands, a complex expression flickering in her eyes, her regret barely concealed.

"Mr. Lancer had already completed a very deep step in the super-magic research. You can see it in these final notes he wrote. As long as we follow his line of reasoning, we should be able to connect the final piece of the super-magic puzzle."

"He has already pointed out the final path. What is needed now is a bit of inspiration and enough attempts. These documents are of immense value; they can be understood without any prerequisite research. But since some members of the Truth Supervisory Council are currently away, we will need some additional assistance."

"Alas, perhaps Mr. Lancer was simply too impatient at the final step."

As Avia recounted the story of these unexpectedly preserved records, she let out a sigh and offered her theory on the cause of the accident.

Wang Yu did not entirely grasp her meaning, though he understood well enough what the girl meant by extra assistance: a new creation born from the collaboration between Avia and the Lady of Night, built upon the upgraded prayer communication network—the "Void Chatroom." Through this medium, they could seek guidance from various researchers within the Church of Night and the Blades of Night.

One had to realize that the Church of Night was a gathering of all sorts, teeming with talent, and those researchers among the Blades of Night were, without exception, masters of practical application.