88. The Heretic Cult and the Capital's Urban Barrier

At dawn on the day the capital descended into chaos from stampede precautions—still dim with night.

"Over here," the man says.

A group of five men in black robes sprint through the capital’s underground sewer tunnels.

At the city's center lies an unremarkable stone building adjacent to the temple. No one knows what it is. To citizens, it looks like a warehouse, so they assume it’s the temple’s storage.

A large stone tile beside the building quietly shifts.

From below, the men emerge.

"Over here. That building ahead."

Following the lead man, they move swiftly. Their destination: a cylindrical structure attached T-shaped to the warehouse.

Surrounded by several large trees, it’s mostly hidden from view. A small iron door, locked tight.

The man swiftly pulls out a wire, picks the lock with practiced ease, and opens the door, stepping inside.

Inside, a spiral staircase descends deep underground. All move in silence as they descend.

At the bottom, a door awaits. They open it to reveal a room.

In the center stands a pedestal. A crystal about a meter in diameter glows faintly. Beneath it, silver-metal pipes connect, buried into the ground, extending somewhere unseen.

"This is it. Shatter this crystal, and the barrier should collapse."

The man explains to the others.

"Can we even break it? And what happens when we do? No explosions, right?" Another man asks.

"No, breaking it won’t cause an explosion," the man explained. "The light—ah, that’s mana flow—just stops. The pipe at the end connects to a ward artifact. The artifact itself isn’t something you can destroy easily. But this mana relay? That’s doable."

"Got it. So we all channel magic into it?" another man asked.

"Right," the leader nodded.

"Extraction immediately after destruction. Let’s begin!"

The men lined up against the wall with the door, chanting in unison. Then, shouting:

"For our guardian deities, Satias and the Dragon God!"

They unleashed their spells at the crystal.

Multiple fireballs struck the crystal directly.

With a sharp *ping*, the crystal shattered.

An instant later, the room flooded with light.

At once, the men groaned.

"What…? Could it be mana depletion?" the leader muttered.

Then, all of them lost consciousness.

After the men collapsed, the light lingered for a while. Ten minutes passed, the glow dimmed, and then faded completely.

The sudden shattering of the crystal caused a surge of mana flow. The high-density mana filled the room. Because the room itself was sealed with a mana barrier, the concentration compressed, turning into Miasma.

The men lost consciousness from mana depletion—but nobody had anticipated that possibility.

Meanwhile, in the capital, people noticed the ward had vanished.

First, the gatekeepers and guards noticed it. The usual feel of the ward was gone. The report spread to the temple, the Adventurer Guild, the Mage Guild, and the palace, plunging everyone into chaos. A ward that had endured for centuries vanishing—something that had never happened before.

The miasma leaking from the buildings caught the attention of temple knights, who found the unconscious men collapsed at the temple's mana relay station. They were arrested and locked in the dungeon, but remained silent, stalling the investigation.

Still, one knight recognized the leader—a cleric who had once served in the royal capital's temple. That was enough to identify him quickly.

They were from a scattered settlement, and worshipped different deities: a dragon and a satyr, not the goddess Firumia. Over time, devout clerics of Firumia began referring to them as followers of a heretical faith. The rumor spread.

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