[Lifespan Remaining: 2 days, 5 hours, 2 minutes.]
The thought arrived so naturally that even Noct needed a moment to process it.
He entered the Graveyard intending to prevent a catastrophe. Yet, if that never happened, his best plan involved committing a slightly toned-down version of the same theft.
Obviously, between the monster cores that supplied his lifespan and those needed to earn him that coveted first-place prize...There was simply no way in hell Noct, no—even his entire team would be able to get that many in such a short span of time.
And that was when the plan came in.
Fortunately, there were twelve other candidates hunting as well.
Every evening, the groups would return to Base Camp D and deposit their monster cores inside separate crates. The low-ranked cores suffering from diminishing returns would contribute almost nothing toward their final rankings.
To everyone else, those cores were practically worthless. But as a certain proverb went:
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
To Noct, however, he had just found the jackpot. Why wouldn’t he steal them?
Well, Noct was a villain, not a monster. At least he would leave them ten cores to at least pass the exam, anything else was fair game, though.
’It’s not stealing if I leave them enough to escape and pass.’
As for the higher-valued cores...let’s just say that maybe the ’perpetrator’ decided they had enough mana cores and left before they could steal Group Thirteen’s cores as well.
Still, nothing in the examination rules stated that the person submitting a core had to be the one who killed the monster. And this was only for the best-case scenario.
For some reason, Noct felt like there was still a perpetrator amongst them. First, he had to rule out his two suspects first, then worry about everything else. He stopped between two blackened trees and placed a hand onto the ground.
"O earth, reveal to me the secrets below."
?Alter Terra: Solum Ocular? — [Seismic Sight]
[Lifespan Remaining: 2 days, 2 hours, 45 minutes.]
Obviously, he didn’t have enough lifespan to use the 2-Star version of the spell, but just a little bit was enough for his purposes now.
He felt his awareness travel through the earth, locating the graves with precision. He felt the presence of each and every undead enemy there was, even felt their sickening aura.
And well, it seemed they felt his as well.
A few seconds later, chilling green eyes started appearing throughout the fog. Noct raised two fingers, counting them out one by one. "Better get started."
Just like that, the fog gave way to solid shapes as figures charged at him from beyond. There must’ve been dozens, far more than Noct had initially expected.
Still, they were clumped up enough that Noct decided to push Sylpheed’s power further. He remembered the tornado spell that absolutely tore Leviathan to pieces.
’I wonder if I could create a miniature version of that...’
Out of nowhere, a familiar yet cheeky voice echoed inside his head. ’You definitely can, ready to give it a go?’
’Where have you been?’
’Sleeping...it takes a lot of energy out of me after you used [Rex Fae] state, you know that?!’
’Alright, alright. Can you preserve the cores?’
’You want me to create a tornado powerful enough to tear apart dozens of undead, but delicate enough not to damage the valuable parts?’
’Yeah? The great and powerful Sylpheed isn’t able to do such a thing?’
’...You’re so annoying.’
?Magia Gale: Vertex Minuet? — [Miniature Cyclone.]
Currents started spinning rapidly, forming a ring of compressed wind in the area with the most monsters. Then the wind picked up, and one-by-one, they were launched into the air.
Combined with his wind blades from before, each undead monster that entered the ring was completely ripped to shreds. A wind sword tore through an arm, another severed a leg, while the surrounding current dragged everything upward and spun like no tomorrow.
More undead charged from the trees, but their result was just the same as the last.
Rust-covered weapons flew from their hands as tattered pieces of armor peeled away from their bodies.
Within seconds, the peaceful Dead Woods had transformed into a giant blender, even if the ingredients had gone a bit stale and spoiled.
However, just like Sylpheed said, the cores remained completely untouched. Through Seismic Sight and his natural mana sensitivity, Noct could perceive every core approaching the cyclone.
Whenever one entered the surrounding winds, Sylpheed created a small pocket of calm air to protect it.
Several blackened trees bent beneath the pressure, their branches snapping loose before joining the debris overhead. The ground beneath Noct was gradually stripped bare, exposing dozens of graves that had been hidden underneath the soil.
The undead buried inside them never even received the opportunity to climb out.
Wind poured into the open graves and dragged them directly into the rotating blades. One by one, the sickly green energy dispersed into there was nothing but bones left in the cyclone’s wake.
[Lifespan Remaining: 16 hours, 45 minutes.]
Noct felt his legs weaken. A day and some change vanished since activating the spell. Though even that was not as much as he thought it would cost.
’Maybe advancing to [Invoker] lessened the load and took less lifespan out of me? So the cost was reduced by around half...?’
Even if Sylph lowered the resources needed to around the level of a 2-Star spell, with Noct’s natural prowess, the power was on the level of a 3-Star’s.
Whatever the case, had he used something like this against only one or two monsters, the cost would’ve been ridiculous. But the cores now circling within the calm center of the cyclone told an entirely different story.
’How many?’
’I dunno, maybe a hundred?’
A few seconds later, the cyclone weakened until it disappeared, carrying only a small loft of wind that brought the cores down safely to the ground.
Noct admired the cores on the floor, like a dragon looking at the gold it had accumulated in its nest. He had no idea how much lifespan he would get.
There were 1-Star monsters, and even those could almost be considered 3-Star monsters in the pile, so his guess was as good as anybody’s.
Still, there was only one way to find out.
Noct extended his hand and use the currents do deliver all the mana to him at once, fitting into the same cooldown limit to be more efficient.
〔Mana-Lifeforce Synthesis [★★★★★★★] — Activated.〕