"Have a nap first."
In almost an instant, Nanoda knocked the two guards unconscious without taking their lives.
She had already scouted the area before making her move; there were only these two guards nearby, so no one would see Nanoda committing the crime.
"Alright, time to run."
Nanoda reached out and grabbed—rumble—and hoisted Qual, who had turned into a stone statue, directly onto her shoulder.
Different from what she imagined, he was actually quite light.
However, as expected, this barrier did not prevent Nanoda from leaving, but Qual was stuck inside. After circling halfway around, she realized she would have to crack it by force.
Sighing, Nanoda decided to unleash Severance Magic, wanting to end the battle quickly.
"A barrier, huh? Should I slice it in half like a watermelon?"
To be honest, Nanoda couldn't quite imagine how to slice a barrier open.
After thinking about it, Nanoda took out a broken horn. She prepared to break the surface by focusing on a single point. Using the same principle as Severance Magic, she condensed the originally compressed mana onto the tip of the horn, and then chiseled down with all her might.
The slashing attack transformed entirely into a single point of impact. As the barrier, composed of hexagonal blocks, emerged, it shattered inch by inch. Like cracking an egg, a corner crumbled away, and Nanoda yanked Qual out.
Seeing that the Sage of Corruption was in hand, Nanoda carried Qual, whose body was more than half a size larger than hers, and walked as if flying, galloping away like the wind.
The remaining problem was to find a place with no people to figure out a way to lift the seal and how to subdue Qual.
Shortly after Nanoda left, the originally shattered barrier began to repair itself.
Southern Lands. Frieren, who was lying in a field of colorful flowers, suddenly felt her eyelid twitch.
She faintly sensed that the barrier established in imitation of Flamme had been breached by someone.
"So troublesome. Let's send Himmel to take a look."
Mana condensed in her hand into a carrier pigeon. The pigeon flapped its wings twice and gradually flew far away into the sky.
Frieren closed her eyes again. After a short while, she opened them once more.
"I'd better go take a look myself."
Carrying Qual on her back, Nanoda crossed several hilltops and arrived at a desolate, uninhabited wasteland. The earth was scorched yellow and the vegetation was incomplete; it appeared to be a place abandoned after experiencing the chaos of war.
She put down Qual, who had turned into a stone statue, and began to study the seal.
For Nanoda, who did not understand human sealing magic, this was a difficult task.
She knocked on it with her hand; it was indeed as hard as rock, motionless like a statue.
"Jail Qual, Jail Qual, this is Jail Da. Do you copy?"
There was no movement at all. Nanoda didn't think Qual could hear her speaking.
Nanoda also thought about hacking at it with Severance Magic, but if she accidentally shattered him like a stone, the loss would outweigh the gain.
Ultimately, Nanoda placed her hand on the stone statue, attempting to analyze the seal through the flow of mana.
The composition of mana in this multiple-layer seal was extremely cumbersome, and the varieties were very numerous. Those completely unrelated manas were actually arranged together harmoniously in an ingenious manner.
Petrification Magic served as the main core, driving many negative magic effects with different functions to constitute the seal. At the same time, this seal was rooted in Qual's mana; wanting to reverse-engineer and lift it was truly difficult.
There was still a way to deal with the Petrification Magic, but Nanoda couldn't make heads or tails of those linked negative effect magics. The mana of these magics flowed and intertwined extremely fast. Unless ten or so skilled Mages operated on different parts together, it was almost impossible to find a way to analyze it.
Mana that failed analysis would be repelled by the seal, flowing backward to injure the analyzer.
Although Nanoda could rely on her endless source of mana to forcefully wash away and destroy all the spell formulas of this seal in one go, it might cause Qual's mana to collapse along with it.
Just when she thought she was helpless, Nanoda sensed that a trace of impurity was actually mixed into this sealing magic. Soon, she discovered that this should be Qual's mana.
Trapped in the seal with a hazy consciousness, Qual was manipulating this microscopic trace of mana to wander between the seals, as if attempting to analyze these dozen or so spell formulas.
But relying on such weak mana and such slow speed, it would be impossible to complete without seventy or eighty years.
Nanoda decided to make a bold attempt. She wanted to turn Severance Magic into the size of mana particles, invisible to the naked eye. She would mix these tiny slashing attacks into the seal to sever the flowing mana, thereby separating those spell formulas from Qual's body.
By separating a portion of the spell formulas and simplifying the seal, perhaps she could speed up Qual's breakout.
This was an operation more precise than surgery. If it failed, she herself would be implicated by the seal through the mana connection.
To ensure the success rate, Nanoda decided to try it on physical objects first.
In modern knowledge, matter is composed of atoms. Mana particles should be something similar to atoms, or perhaps even tinier.
Turning the smallest mana particles into slashing attacks, rather than constructing slashing attacks out of mana particles—this was Nanoda's idea.
If successful, when encountering complex sealing-type magic that couldn't be analyzed, she could just forcibly cut it away.
Finding another safe cave as a hiding place, Nanoda wiped away the mana traces along the path and began to concentrate on her research.
After repeatedly experimenting day and night for a month, Nanoda completed this magic. Rather than calling it magic, it was more like a more granular manipulation of mana.
Because this modified version of Severance Magic had to maintain the sharpness of the tiny slashes, the consumption of mana was very large. It used the consumption of quantity to transform into a small portion of absolute sharpness.
As Nanoda waved her hand, releasing the modified Severance Magic, the tree that was struck first split into two halves, and then was gradually ground into dust from the fracture point. This was caused by the advancement of countless tiny slashing attacks.
As long as one was cut by this move, the mana accumulated within the wound would transform into microscopic slashes invisible to the naked eye, eroding inward like maggots on a tarsal bone.
Feeling that she had mastered a divine skill, Nanoda couldn't wait to use Qual as a test subject.
Placing her palm on the stone statue, Nanoda's mana slowly invaded the seal.
Nanoda stayed motionless for the better part of a day; this elaborately crafted seal was simply too secure.
After excising a portion of the spell formulas, Nanoda clearly felt that the seal's suppression of Qual's mana had weakened by a large margin.
The mana seeping out began to become more and more abundant. Cracks appeared on the stone blocks on Qual's surface, giving a faint sense that they were about to peel off.
She estimated that within a day, Qual would be able to break the seal.
Nanoda, who had been tired for a long time, decided to take a nap.
Just as she opened her eyes again, sleepily, a pair of black eyes met hers.
"Where... is this old one?"
The voice was old yet high-pitched. Stone blocks fell from Qual's body one after another, and a majestic surge of mana gradually rose up.
____
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