Chapter 544. Walking Around (Permitted): Things I Say While Holding Back a Flood

Chapter 544: 544. Walking Around (Permitted): Things I Say While Holding Back a Flood

The wild mana was no longer just a phenomenon; it was a predator. It surged out of Ellie’s back in violent, rhythmic waves that didn’t just fill the room; they assaulted it.

Each pulse pushed against the walls with a physical force that made the floorboards groan, and each wave crashed against William’s skin like a breaking tide.

He could feel it in his teeth, a high-pitched whine that vibrated through his skull. The intervals between the surges were shrinking.

The deadly rhythm was accelerating.

’If it keeps building like this,’ William thought, panic clawing at the edges of his composure before he shoved it down, ’the next surge will shatter her consciousness.’

’And the one after that... she won’t be left with anything at all.’

’Just an empty shell.’

He couldn’t stop the growth. He couldn’t heal the skin.

But he could contain the pressure.

William made a decision. It was a desperate, reckless gambit the kind of move a man makes when he’s already decided he’s willing to die.

He shifted his grip, leaning forward until his chest nearly touched her shaking shoulders.

He took both of his hands and laid them flat against her back, positioning them on either side of the makeshift bandage, careful to avoid the glass-like protrusions but close enough to feel the heat of the eruption.

Then, he opened his own mana.

He didn’t try to shape it into a blade or a shield. He had no weapon for this kind of catastrophe.

Instead, he reached deep into his own reserves and began to pour his power outward through his palms.

He attempted to build a dam, a broad, steady bank of mana, around the edges of her chaotic surge.

He imagined it like a man piling sandbags against a river that had already breached the levee, trying to channel the flood rather than stop it outright.

It was a clumsy, improvised technique. He had never attempted anything remotely close to this in his life.

He was improvising magic in real time, relying on a raw, desperate intuition: that raw power could be contained if something stronger than panic stood in its way.

Then, the flood hit him.

It wasn’t like a wave; it was like being struck by a freight train made of lightning. The force slammed into his palms and tore up through his arms, flooding his veins with liquid fire.

For several terrifying seconds, his lungs seized. He couldn’t draw air; his diaphragm was paralyzed by the sheer magical pressure.

His ears rang with a sound like grinding metal, and a sharp pain exploded behind his eyes.

He felt something warm and wet trickle over his upper lip. He swallowed instinctively, and the metallic, unmistakable taste of blood filled his mouth.

His nose was bleeding. His capillaries were bursting under the strain.

Deep in his solar plexus, in the sacred space where his mana core resided, something began to protest. It was a low, grinding groan of spiritual agony, the sound of a support beam cracking under a load it was never designed to carry.

His very soul felt like it was being stretched thin across a frame.

[Warning: Mana transfer has exceeded safe limits.]

[Critical Alert: Risk of core damage: 41% and rising.]

[Recommendation: Cease transfer immediately to prevent permanent magical impairment.]

The system’s words flickered in his vision like a death sentence. The numbers ticked upward with cold, mathematical indifference: 42%... 43%...

"No," William hissed through clenched teeth, the word tasting of copper and pain.

He ignored the warnings and ignored the searing agony spreading through his shoulders. His muscles screamed, tendons straining to the point of snapping as he fought to hold the magical dam in place.

"Not yet."

There was no safety net. No divine intervention, no miraculous system buff, and no Harem Boost to cushion the blow.

Ellie was not one of his bonds; she wasn’t a piece of his power he could siphon from to reinforce himself. There was no golden surge of borrowed strength waiting to double his capacity.

All he had was the raw, unvarnished reality of what he had built from nothing: a body forged through two lifetimes of violence and a mana core that had been cracked, scarred, and pushed past its breaking point more times than he could count.

It would have to be enough. It had to be enough.

William set his jaw so hard he felt a molar grind against another molar. Blood continued to drip from his nose, spattering onto Ellie’s ruined shirt, but he didn’t blink.

He shoved deeper into his own reserves, reaching for that reservoir of power that lived beyond the pain, and pushed it through his hands with everything he had.

"Ellie, listen to me," he growled, his voice straining against the supernatural pressure. "I need you to talk to me."

"Don’t look at the light, don’t feel the pain... Just talk."

"Tell me about anything... Tell me about that tea you made for the kids in the village last month."

"I can’t..." she choked out, her body convulsing as a fresh wave of gold light threatened to tear through his magical dam. "William, please... it’s too much..."

"You can do it... You’re stronger than this," he countered, his palms burning as if he were holding two molten coals. "Tell me."

"What was in it? What did it smell like?"

"Chamomile," she whispered, her voice so thin it was almost lost to the hum of the room. "And honey... and a little... mint."

"Good... That’s good."

"Keep going, Ellie... Don’t stop. What else?"

He knew he couldn’t just be the dam; he had to be the anchor. He realized that his voice was the only thing piercing through the psychic noise of her agony.

So he began to talk. He talked like a madman, weaving a tapestry of mundane bullshit to keep her tethered to the world of the living.

"Remember Catherine’s bread?" he asked, his words punctuated by the wet sounds of his own labored breathing. "The one she shaped like that run-over cat during the festival?"

"Grock called it a ’monster projectile’ during dinner... The idiot."

"A deeply unfair review... That cat had charm."

A shuddering gasp escaped her, but she didn’t shut down.

"And Lia," William continued, the words tumbling out faster now as he fought the mounting pressure in his chest. "I saw her laminated schedule today."

"She actually wrote ’walking around (permitted)’ in the margin in tiny letters."

"Can you imagine? The sheer bureaucracy of it all." He let out a harsh, pained laugh that ended in a cough of blood. "And Kaela... God, Kaela spent ten minutes apologizing to a broken table this morning because she thought she’d offended its spirit."

He talked about nothing. He talked about the way the morning light hit the training grounds, about the stupid way the cafeteria served stew, about the mundane, silly, beautiful details of a life that felt impossibly distant from the nightmare in this room.

Partway through, a terrifying thought struck him: he might never have spoken so much in his entire first life. He had always been the silent observer, the soldier, the man who held his tongue.

Now, his words were weapons. His words were stitches holding her soul together.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her breathing began to change. The frantic, wet gasps smoothed into something more rhythmic.

Then came the crescendo.

The light inside her shuddered. It didn’t just pulse; it erupted.

A final, titanic wave of gold energy slammed into William’s magical barrier with enough force to make his vision go white.

For one terrifying heartbeat, he felt something inside his own chest snap, a sound like a dry branch breaking, and he truly believed the wall within him would shatter, leaving him hollowed out and dead.

The pressure reached its absolute zenith. The room screamed with light.

Ellie’s back arched one last time, her muscles corded to the point of tearing, and William braced for the end.

Then, slowly, the arc began to break.

The violent eruption ebbed. The blinding white faded into a warm, honeyed gold, and then the gold softened into a faint, pale gleam.

The crushing pressure against William’s palms suddenly eased, leaving his hands shaking and numb from the residual heat.

The room seemed to exhale, a long, ghostly sigh that left the air feeling strangely empty. The shadows on the walls, which had been dancing in terror, finally settled back into their normal, still shapes.