Mark's thumb pressed against the side of the tonic's cork until it popped off and fell to the ground. He swallowed the contents down and the system belatedly responded.

Source: Tonic of Spirit x 3 (+45 Prana)

Mark let the vile fall beside other empties that littered the destroyed room.

Once they had gotten their heading, everyone had gotten ready to leave but Sam had another idea.

"Listen, Mark, if I helped you how long do you think you could keep the cloaking spell going."

Standing up Mark glanced up at the hearty afternoon sun through the massive skylight they had made.

"It's going to have some gaps at this stage in the day but I can probably keep it up for a good few hours with your help."

Sam nodded and looked around.

"Then that's what we'll do. I'll cover our scent so let's get out here. We don't know whether there are more ambushes out there so it's best to this seriously."

Mark nodded and when everyone was ready he began casting [Light control], reminding everyone to remain close.

That familiar perimeter of light wrapped around them and Mark did his best to match his wall of light to the sun bearing down on them.

Sam stepped up beside him and using the link she matched herself to Mark's will, providing half of the Mana needed to keep it stable.

At the same time, she used [Joint casting] to smooth out the ripples in the cloaking spell, and hedged them in with another shell of air to prevent scents and sounds from escaping.

From the outside, it suddenly looked like the five of them had simply disappeared from the ruined room, but something was still bothering Mark.

If this were before the fall, he could say with confidence that even people standing right next to them wouldn't be able to see, smell, or hear them.

But things were different now, there were all sorts of spells and detection skills out there now, so he had to find a way to block those too.

Mark was hesitant to leave until he'd figured it out and Sam could tell what he was still thinking, so when she suggested he modify the corruption ward he'd come up with so long ago, he was ecstatic.

The ward Mark had created was intended to stop the Corruptions 'scent' from seeping beyond himself.

So if he could apply that function to the other energy types then it would be difficult for even the most powerful of skills to track them down.

Figuring this out Mark started with Mana and because he was so in tune with the energy it didn't take much to spread out a thin construct and seal in all the Mana pouring off each of them. Prana was next and it took no more than a thought to seal that in too. The hardest one was definitely the Aura but Mark eventually figured out how to block the energy with a little help from Jonathan.

Then, when Mark was certain he'd sealed in them all he adjusted the cloak and had them mesh together.

Mana-wise [Light control] took very little power to maintain, it was just mentally taxing. On the other hand, containing everyone's different energies proved to be far more of a challenge. Especially since every one of them was giving off enough power to make them look like small nuclear reactors in Mark's vision. Sam could rein in her own Mana so it made things easier on Mark, but he could not sustain this type of cloak forever.

"Alright let's get out of here. When we're far enough away I'll switch back to just blocking light but as it stands we should theoretically be invisible to anyone outside."

As a team, they rose into the air, and from the outside, it looked like the faintest heat shimmer rising from the building, but with the rest of it in flames was easily overlooked.

With Sam's help, Mark managed to keep any gaps from forming in the cloak, so there were no sudden glimpses into their shell.

The world below went rushing past as they flew over the buildings and large expanses of land. Jonathan and Jason were on the lookout as they searched the surroundings for any movement below that may point them toward the culprits, but the only things they saw were Corrupted creatures of all shapes and sizes heading toward the origin of the explosion.

It was a good thing they'd gotten out when they had because another twenty minutes and they would have been set on from all directions.

As it was they encountered a wave of Ghasts moving in the direction they had come from. Mark was less worried the creatures were out in the daytime and more trying to maneuver them through the swarm.

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Mark's pulse quickened at one point when a ghast had bumped into their shell. They all held their breaths as it passed, but luckily not a single Corrupted turned in their direction.

The Ghast went spiraling out of the air and by the time it had recovered and screeched, they were already a block away.

Mark sighed in relief when they had passed, glancing at Sam with a victorious grin, which she returned.

Once they had proven it covered them, they accelerated their speed, completely ignoring the Ghast nests as they flew right through their territory.

Sadly good things didn't last long these days and eventually, Mark couldn't hold in everyone's energy any longer.

The pressure had gradually built as they flew over the area, but when it reached his upper limits, Mark's construct popped like a soup bubble. What he had hoped to avoid was the sudden flood of power rippling outwards. To most, it meant nothing, barely something the average person would even notice. But to people with the ability to track energy–of which Mark had only heard of a couple– it was like a very obvious breadcrumb left out in the open. With the amount of energy they had just released It'd take a couple of days for it to fade completely.

Mark focused on the cloak and kept their invisibility intact but it'd take him some time to recover enough to block their energy again.

When they flew into a fast-approaching nest, Mark could see the immediate difference in the Ghasts. While they couldn't tell they were near, the creatures seemed to know something was up as they became more agitated and flew around in irregular patterns. They never found them, but it was clear that even if they couldn't tell where their team was, the Ghasts had at least some idea something was off in the area.

With Sam's help, the cloak proved to be far easier to maintain than Mark had first expected, allowing them to travel for over eight hours undisturbed.

What was better was that they'd made such quick progress with the cloaking spell active that they might just arrive half a day earlier than expected. When evening came they decided to stop for a rest so that Mark and Sam could recover their energy, not to mention their Aura users who were almost completely out.

Just as they were about to set down for the night Mark found the perfect place.

He pointed towards a large Ferris wheel situated in the middle of a double-storied building. There was a waterslide sticking out of the surrounding structure so Mark assumed it was some kind of amusement park.

Mark touched down on the top of the uppermost carriage and pried open the doors. The cabin was fairly large, easily accommodating several people. There were even benches to lie down on so Mark dumped his backpack on one of them and looked out at the rest of them through the glass walls.

"Come on, Jonathan, Jason, I need to take a look at your wounds." As he said this, Mark wrapped the cabin in a lesser construct. It wouldn't last long if something powerful showed up, but Mark was confident that even if this cabin came crashing down from the sky it wouldn't suffer any damage. Sam was the first to follow Mark in, causing the cabin to rock ever so gently. When Jonathan landed the cabin squeaked as it rocked in the winds.

Mark focused on his wounds again and saw that he was doing much better.

Over the course of the day, Mark had kept feeding a gradual supply of Prana into the man and the skin on his face and skull had begun to heal, while his ear was still not much more than a nub. The burns on his back were the most extensive and that was because according to Sam Jonathan had thrown himself over Sam to shield her from the fire, which he did without hesitation, but Sam had been shooting him glares ever since then.

In turn, Jonathan had been shooting Mark a pleading glance to save him, but Mark just snorted and made sure everything was okay before moving over to Jason

The captain on the other hand had less of his body ravaged by flame, but his arms were almost entirely useless. It wasn't that he couldn't move them if he needed to, he was just unable to hold a weapon at the moment. He's coated himself in a layer of amber and though most of it surrounding his arms had melted, it had kept the rest of his body safe.

Mark was busy repairing the singed tendons in his arms when Wesly plopped down on one of the benches.

"So what do we do if the loyalists really are feeding these new… Corruted information?" Wesley sighed.

Jason looked up from his wounds and scowled.

"I told you, we don't have a mole. They wouldn't send us out here on a mission if they suspected something like that."

Wesley sniggered to himself.

"Oh yes, because they would share that with you."

Jason stood breaking away from Mark's Prana.

"They tell me exactly what I need to know when I need to know it. Someone from NAS, wouldn't understand the type of loyalty that takes."

Wesley rolled his.

"And that means what."

"It means, you people took advantage of grieving men and women to use in your war against these creatures. Your pillar just threw bodies at a wall and caught what stuck."

Wesley was standing now, causing the cabin to lurch slightly.

"We did what we had to because you guys couldn't be bothered to protect the people," Wesley ground out as Aura began to leak out of him.

Mark rubbed his temples.

"Guy's enough. How about you both stop this now, we don't need the attention right now," Mark said in a tired voice, but Jason looked far from ready to let it go.

"No how about you tell them how your faction took almost a hundred thousand souls to their graves in a single night!" Jason said as his own Aura began flowing out of him like molasses.

Mark signed and wrapped the Ferris wheels cabin in a construct, but before he could do anything Jonathan stepped in and grabbed both the men by the fronts of the armors and threw them out the cabin door.

Not expecting the sudden intervention, both went tumbling out into the night air before they caught themselves in mid-air.

"Come back when you two get over whatever this fight is about we don't don't want to hear it."

Mark shot Jonathan a look, but the guy just shrugged his shoulders at him.

"What? You were just about to do something too, don't pretend you weren't."

Mark didn't say anything but Sam was staring at them both with an amused grin on her face.

"Wesley was right to ask you know. What's our plan if it turns out the city really is infiltrated."

Mark shrugged when her questioning eyes fell on him.

"We can't do a whole lot from out here, and right now we have far more pressing matters to watch out for, but suffice it to say that it's not just the loyalist we'll need to vet. They're capable of hiding themselves and they have human-level intelligence, we'll need to be smart about this."

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