Chapter 172

The personnel below immediately tensed. Some even raised their shields as several of the projectiles flew close enough to make them nervous. But none of them struck a person.

Every single projectile curved downward at the last moment and struck the magical herbs below. One after another, the green shots disappeared into the plants. For a few seconds, nothing happened.

The workers exchanged confused looks. Then one of them noticed something. "Wait..." A small magical herb near his feet had begun growing.

Its stem thickened.

Its leaves unfolded.

Then another plant beside it began doing the same. Within moments, the effect spread across the field. The magical herbs began growing at an astonishing rate. Stems stretched upward, leaves expanded, and several plants that had looked barely mature only moments ago were suddenly reaching their full size.

The workers simply stood there staring.

Nobody had expected that.

One of them slowly lowered his shield. Another crouched beside a fully grown herb and examined it with a completely stunned expression. "What... the hell?" Even the people who worked with magical herbs every day had never seen anything quite like this.

Above them, the enormous formation continued hovering peacefully, firing streams of harmless green mana into the fields.

Max watched it all with a satisfied smile.

It worked.

Delgado stared at the fields in shock.

Zerena was no less stunned.

The moment the green mana struck the herbs, their growth accelerated at an almost absurd rate.

Some plants rapidly matured and began producing flowers, while others started developing fruit right before their eyes.

A few of the magical herbs underwent an even more remarkable change.

Their ranks advanced.

Plants that had been relatively ordinary suddenly became far more potent, while herbs that were already mature continued developing until they reached an even higher stage.

The entire field was changing before them.

And all of it was happening because of the formation Max had just modified.

Both Delgado and Zerena slowly turned toward Max, staring at him as though they had just discovered some kind of monster.

Max, meanwhile, was grinning happily as he watched the construct do exactly what he had designed it to do.

To him, the whole process had been surprisingly familiar.

It reminded him of writing code for one of the bosses in a game he had played back in the day.

That boss had possessed a wide-area attack that covered practically the entire battlefield, leaving players scrambling to find a safe spot.

A lot of players had ended up crying in frustration after failing to dodge it.

Compared to that, controlling this formation wasn’t particularly difficult.

In Max’s mind, he had basically done the same thing again—only this time, instead of coding an attack pattern, he had built it with runes.

The only real difference was that Max had chosen to nourish whatever the attacks struck instead of destroying it.

But he wasn’t finished yet.

Max switched the formation out of its rapid-fire mode and redirected the remaining energy toward the central cylindrical section. The spherical core began glowing brighter and brighter as it gathered the leftover mana.Everyone in the field looked up, wondering what the hell was happening now. A moment later, a large glowing orb shot out from the center of the formation.

It flew across the farmland and toward the edge of the nearby forest, before striking a tree at the very boundary.

With the amount of power packed into that projectile, a normal attack would have vaporized the tree on impact. It could have left a massive crater and probably destroyed dozens, if not hundreds, of nearby trees in the process.

But nothing of the sort happened.

There was only a brief flash of blinding green light.

Then it vanished.

A second later, the area where the projectile had struck began changing.

The ground cracked as the tree’s roots rapidly expanded beneath the soil. Its trunk thickened, branches stretched outward, and new leaves unfolded at an astonishing rate.

Even the trees that were already bearing fruit weren’t spared.

Their fruits continued swelling, growing larger and larger as the surrounding vegetation surged with new life.

What should have been a devastating attack had instead turned the entire area into a burst of accelerated growth.

Then, without warning, Max released his control. The enormous formation suddenly broke apart. For a split second, the entire construct flared with an intense green light before—

BOOM!

It wasn’t an explosion of destruction. There was no shockwave tearing through the farmland, no shattered trees, and no crater. But the sheer burst of energy was enough to make everyone in the area feel as though their lives had just flashed before their eyes.

Their hair whipped backward. Clothes fluttered violently in the sudden surge of mana. Several people instinctively covered their faces, while others stumbled back in surprise. For a moment, a few of them were completely blinded by the green flash.

Then it was gone.

Silence returned to the field.

Slowly, the workers lowered their arms and looked around.

Nothing had been destroyed.

Instead, an indescribable warmth had settled over them. Their bodies felt lighter. Their exhaustion seemed to have vanished, and even the aches they hadn’t realized they were carrying had faded. It was difficult to describe. It simply felt like their entire bodies had been refreshed from the inside out.

Healthier.

As though they had just been given a new breath of life. Several workers looked at one another in confusion, unable to understand what had just happened. And somewhere above them, the last traces of green light from Max’s formation slowly disappeared.

For several seconds, nobody said anything. The workers simply stood there, checking themselves as if expecting to find some hidden injury. One of them suddenly stretched his arms and rolled his shoulders. "My back doesn’t hurt anymore..."

Another looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers with a confused expression.

"I feel... really good."

The others quickly began talking among themselves, their initial fear replaced by bewilderment.

Meanwhile, Delgado remained silent. His eyes were fixed on the farmland, then slowly shifted toward Max. The formation was gone. The massive construct that had taken Max only a few hours to understand and recreate had disappeared as though it had never existed. Yet its effects remained everywhere. The herbs had grown.

The trees had matured. And every person caught within its range seemed healthier than they had been before.