Novel Full Chapter 262: Flower of Iron [2]
Chapter 262: Flower of Iron [2]
“Any ideas, Astrea?”
For the first time since boarding the Eisenreich, Vice-Admiral Neuschwan acknowledged him at all as someone whose judgment was worth asking.
“Leylines operate on rules,” Vanitas said. “Before we even think of attacking, we need to understand which rules this one follows. Only then can we decide how to deal with it.”
Just like the Lily of the Valley, every leyline obeyed a system. They were not mindless phenomena, nor were they something that could be overpowered through brute force alone.
Break the rules, and survival was possible.
Misread them, and one was guaranteed a gruesome end.
Unlike the Cthulhus it had seemingly triggered, the Iron Lotus itself showed no signs of hostility.
Vanitas adjusted the spectacles resting along the bridge of his nose. As the lenses aligned, layers of information unfolded through his peripheral vision.
[Iron Lotus]
Classification: Mythical Leyline Structure
The Iron Lotus exists as a constant, immovable structure rooted deep within the sea that radiates pressure as a byproduct of its sheer existence.
.
.
Vanitas frowned and began sifting through the strategy guides.
[There are many ways to deal with the Iron Lotus…
The first entry immediately caught his attention.
[Frost Bloom Strategy by Player @iwillLickAstridsToes]
[Alright, since people keep DM’ing me about this every time the Iron Lotus comes up, I’ll just put this here in one place.]
A crude name, but the contents were anything but.
[What is Frost Bloom?]
[Frost Bloom is an emergency-only, one-time suppression strategy for the Iron Lotus. This is NOT a farm method, NOT sustainable, and absolutely NOT beginner-friendly.]
The Iron Lotus, according to the entry, could be forcibly halted by overwhelming its mana circulation through temperature suppression.
By continuously freezing the surrounding leyline flow, the Lotus’s petals would lock into a dormant state, crystallizing its mana channels and preventing further convergence.
And not just freezing, but lowering the temperature near the theoretical absolute zero.
The guide was blunt about it.
It was not a sustainable method, but a single-use strategy meant for desperate situations that treated the Iron Lotus less like a structure and more like a living organism forced into shock.
The risks were listed immediately after.
[Risks (READ THIS OR DIE)]
[Listed exactly as experienced:
Extreme hypothermia
Cellular frostbite
Total mana circulation failure
Permanent nerve damage
Game over.]
Basically, it ruined further player experience.
Even the environment itself would turn hostile. Anyone within range without proper countermeasures would be frozen solid in seconds.
Player iwillLickAstridsToes emphasized preparation in bold lettering.
[REQUIRED PREPARATION (NON-NEGOTIABLE)]
If you skip any of this, you’re trolling yourself.
[Mandatory:
Heated artifacts (plural)
Thermal-regulating enchantments]
[Strongly Recommended:
Secondary heat source in case the first fails
Tertiary heat source if you value your playthrough.]
Vanitas exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Heated artifacts…”
There was no need for such things.
Aboard this ship was someone known as the greatest Pyro Mage in history.
“What?”
Iridelle frowned the moment she realized he was looking directly at her.
And for ice, there was only one answer.
“Uhm…”
Who else could embody ice if not Karina?
Vanitas noticed it then. Throughout his time aboard the ship, Karina had been deliberately avoiding him.
Though it was somehow different from before. Back then, she would look at him with clear malice in her eyes, but now, it was something bordering on avoidance, perhaps even shame.
Of course, the Frost Bloom was not the only viable strategy. There were others that demanded a different balance of resources and preparation.
On paper, some were even safer. But in practice, Vanitas lacked the means to execute them flawlessly. There were too many dependencies he could not control, too many variables that relied on resources he simply did not have at hand, unlike the Frost Bloom.
By contrast, Frost Bloom offered the highest success rate if executed correctly.
Vanitas turned to Vice-Admiral Neuschwan. “Can you gather all Aqua mages proficient in ice and Pyro mages as well?”
Roman Neuschwan blinked, clearly taken aback. “Both?”
“Yes. I need those who can suppress mana flow through extreme cold, and those who can sustain heat output without fluctuation.”
Silence fell for a moment as the Vice-Admiral processed the request. Then he nodded.
“I can assemble them,” Neuschwan said. “But I want to be clear, Astrea. If this fails—”
“Why are you thinking of failure already?” Vanitas furrowed his brow. “Do you think I want to die along with you people?”
“You really don’t mince your words,” Neuschwan said. “I wonder how your parents raised you.”
“Are we going to circle around this all day, or are you going to do what I asked?”
The power dynamic was wrong. Entirely wrong. Vanitas was not an officer, not a noble of the Dominion, not even formally part of the chain of command. And yet, he was the one dictating the direction and the outcome.
“…Very well,” Roman said.
“Good.”
Vice-Admiral Roman Neuschwan bellowed an order and almost immediately, mages began to gather, one after another, moving with the urgency of a stampede.
Indeed, his authority was undeniable. Even amid the shrieking wind and the distant roars from the sea, no one questioned the call.
At the front of the helm was Vice-Admiral Iridelle. The greatest Pyro Mage to have ever existed.
Vanitas adjusted the spectacles once more, sifting through the guide. He committed every line to memory before turning his attention toward the gathered mages.
“All right,” he said. “This is how we’re going to do it.”
On paper, the strategy was deceptively simple. Extreme cold and extreme heat, applied simultaneously, like a controlled crossfire. In practice, it bordered on insanity.
He raised a hand and pointed toward the sea.
“Do you see those writhing tentacles over there?”
According to the guide, the Iron Lotus operated under strict rules.
First, anyone who attempted to attack without being submerged in salt water would be seized immediately. The tentacles would wrap around the target and tear them apart before they would even realize it.
Second, the Iron Lotus possessed a fixed aggression radius. Any vessel that crossed within 350 meters would be destroyed outright.
Third, the Lotus itself did not move.
That was the most important part.
All this time, it had never been the leyline that traveled. It was the ocean itself. The waves carried the Iron Lotus, relocating it gradually as it drifted aimlessly through the sea.
It was a frightening realization.
If a large enough tsunami were to carry it toward shore, the Zyphran Dominion would be utterly helpless.
There would be no evacuation fast enough, no fortress strong enough, and no army capable of stopping it once it reached land.
And the rules did not end there.
To put it simply, the Iron Lotus remained anchored to the leyline beneath it like a parasitic bloom. All of its attacks were reactive, and every strike was triggered by proximity, mana fluctuation, or rule violation.
In any case, fourth.
Direct mana bombardment accelerated its growth.
“Any uncontrolled spell feeds it. The more chaotic the spellformulas, the faster its petals regenerate. So I don’t suggest blindly throwing out spells.”
Fifth, its core could not be reached through force.
No matter how powerful the spell, the core would not reveal itself unless the Lotus entered a dormant state.
“That’s where my advised plan comes in.”
Vanitas lowered his hand.
“We freeze the leyline flow. Not the Lotus itself. But the flow.”
The surrounding mana had to be suppressed and forced into stagnation. Once the circulation halted, the petals would lock, and the Lotus would momentarily stop responding.
“That window,” Vanitas said, “will be our only chance.”
He glanced briefly at Iridelle. Then unconsciously, at Karina.
“Pyro mages will maintain a thermal boundary. You will not be attacking the Lotus. You’re keeping everyone alive.”
Iridelle snorted. “So I’m the campfire.”
“You’re the sun,” Vanitas replied. “Don’t let the temperature drop below survivable limits.”
Then he turned back to the Aqua mages.
“Ice mages will handle suppression in continuous output. If you lose control, even for a second, the Lotus wakes up.”
The deck was silent now.
“These are not suggestions,” Vanitas said. “They are rules. Break one, and the Iron Lotus will kill you. Break two, and it will kill everyone here.”
“….”
“We only get one attempt.”
——Yes, sir!
It sounded as though Vanitas had pulled everything straight out of his ass.
It was difficult to believe that a single person could possess such an in-depth understanding of a colossal, mythical existence like the Iron Lotus.
The explanations were too assured, bordering on the absurd. Roman Neuschwan found himself wanting to question the validity of every word, to demand sources, proof, and precedent.
And yet, he didn’t.
The sheer confidence with which Vanitas delivered the explanation smothered doubt before it could even form.
It was not the confidence of a man guessing, nor that of someone bluffing under pressure. It was the certainty of someone who already knew the outcome and was merely informing the rest of them of it.
Against that composure, Roman found his skepticism quietly overwhelmed.
“….”
After that, the vessel got into position.
It advanced just far enough to allow a clean line of attack, then carefully maintained its distance outside the 350-meter threshold.
The Iron Lotus loomed ahead.
Its petals were half-submerged and half-exposed. Its metal veins glinted under layers of salt and mist.
It was waiting.
No, that was putting it lightly. It didn’t even acknowledge their presence at all.
“Now. Freeze!”
Crackle——
The temperature dropped instantly.
The residual heat in the air slowly faded away as the mages acted in unison, forcing the surrounding mana into rapid thermal suppression.
Frost bloomed across the surface of the sea, crawling outward into sheets as the air itself turned brittle.
Breath crystallized mid-exhale.
Steel groaned as the hull contracted, and decks glazed over in a sheen of white. The ocean’s surface hardened in fractured plates as the leyline flow was forcibly arrested.
The Iron Lotus responded at last.
———!
Its petals trembled, then began to descend with a strange slowness. It was as if the air itself had resisted its movement, suspending the massive structure in a warped moment where gravity was nonexistent.
Frost crawled along the edges of its petals, spreading inward in branching veins.
The Iron Lotus was clearly struggling.
The sea below it froze in widening rings. Waves locked mid-swell. Even the wind seemed to have been reduced to a low, strained howl as the temperature plunged further past anything natural.
The Lotus descended another wave of petals. Cracks appeared along its surface. It was fine at first, but then it started spreading as its structure failed to adapt to the sudden thermal collapse.
Vanitas watched without blinking.
The Frost Bloom was working.
But with the temperature plunging to dangerous levels, everyone would freeze to death if it continued.
“Fire, now!”
———!
In an instant, a vast orange magic circle bloomed beneath them. It was the Sovereign spell, Phoenix Curtain.
Under normal circumstances, Iridelle would never have been able to cast it this quickly. But with several Pyro experts synchronizing their mana with hers, the spell manifested in near-instant succession.
Flames surged upward, wrapping around the ship like a fiery mantle. The biting cold was burned away at once. Even so, some had already collapsed, unable to endure the extreme temperature drop before the spell took hold.
However, the timing was critical.
If Phoenix Curtain had been cast first, the Iron Lotus would have responded at full speed, unleashing its attack while still fully active. That was why it had to be frozen beforehand.
The cold acted as a defensive maneuver to force the Lotus into delayed responses.
“Now, steer the vessel!”
The helm was thrown hard to the side. The vessel veered away just as a colossal petal began to descend slowly.
Just like that, the strategy was set into motion.
The cold persisted. Mages on standby rotated in shifts as they funneled mana into those at the front to sustain both ice and cold at once.
But by the fifth cycle, a voice broke through the tension.
“Is it just me,” someone said, “or is it getting faster?”
Vanitas frowned and clicked his tongue.
The Iron Lotus was adapting. The delay between suppression and movement was narrowing by the second.
This wasn’t it.
“Go even colder!”
“W–We can’t!” a mage shouted back. “This is the limit! Any further and our mana circulation will shatter…!”
The truth was obvious. They had already pushed past what should have been possible. The Frost Bloom was no longer stabilizing the Lotus.
“No!”
At that moment, Karina stepped forward.
Crackle——!
The temperatures collapsed into abysmal levels, as if the concept of heat itself had been erased from the space around her.
Absolute zero.
“….”
….No, it was going even lower than that.
The cold plunged into a negative domain that should not have existed.
According to classical thermodynamics, absolute zero was the limit. The point at which entropy reached its minimum, where atomic motion fell into its lowest quantum state.
A state where entropy could no longer increase.
Mana crystallized mid-flow, frozen by the absence of allowable transition.
Flames from the Phoenix Curtain stopped curling. Waves ceased their rise. Even the Iron Lotus remained suspended.
“….”
Time itself had frozen.
Karina glanced around.
The sea had stopped breathing.
Nothing moved except her.
Karina exhaled, and for the first time, the breath did not fog.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
So this was the domain she had crossed into.
“….”
The absence of progression itself.