Chapter 87 — A Miracle Even Mortals Could Join

"They almost wandered onto another path midway through," Amber said, an unmistakable note of lingering fear in her voice. "In the end I risked dropping out of shadow state for an instant, and only that lured them back onto this path. But in exchange, they've grown even more volatile."

Gao Yang looked at Amber with some surprise. "...What's gotten into you this time? Where's all this courage coming from?"

Amber curled her lip. "Tch. We've come this far—what's the point of pulling back now? May as well go all in with you. Maybe we'll actually live."

As she spoke, her gaze could not help but settle on the cliff face before them.

This high cliff stood beside the mountain path where they had earlier had their skirmish with the four aberrations; below the cliff lay the very road they had traveled then. Weather-beaten through the ages, the rock face itself was indeed in a rather fragile state, liable to collapse at any moment. And the mountain path below was the only route—when the aberrations passed through, they would inevitably form a long, crowded column, with absolutely nowhere to dodge when the cliff came down. This was indeed a thoroughly excellent ambush site.

If a high-tier magister were present, he too would certainly have chosen to blast the cliff down and bury those monsters. After all, for a powerful magister, bringing down a rock face required nothing more than a single Maximized Pyroblast or one Earth Elemental Disintegration.

But the one who wished to accomplish all this now was a third-tier low-tier mage who could not even aim a Frostbolt straight—along with a great crowd of ordinary stonemasons, laborers, and serfs.

This struck Amber as utterly bizarre.

The translucent Evocation Hand moved across the cliff, smearing the alchemical reagent mixed with mithril powder and amethyst dust onto the stone like paint. Many of the runes had already taken shape, making the whole cliff face look strangely like some uncanny religious totem. And above the cliff, one could still see the simple rope ladders and scaffolds the stonemasons had used before—left in place, neither removed in time nor intended to be removed. The "traces of construction."

Proof that ordinary people had taken part in this incredible plan.

Not far off, the stonemasons and their apprentices were resting. They had expended enormous strength and courage earlier—tying themselves to a few ropes and going out onto the cliff face to dig holes was no easy task, especially with time so tight that they had to work around the clock. Yet they had completed the challenge, which even Gao Yang found a little unbelievable; he had assumed the work would take far longer, and that the degree of completion could never match his expectations.

But Gao Yang soon understood: it was not that the artisans and apprentices had been stirred to some sense of honor, nor had it much to do with the will to survive. It was simply that this was how the poor of this age lived.

Was it so hard to tie a rope around yourself and go chisel holes in a cliff face? Not much harder than tying a rope around yourself to repair the spire of a lord's castle, nor much harder than gathering herbs from a cliff for a lord.

It was said that four hundred years ago, in some of the mountain regions of the kingdom's west, serfs gathering herbs were not even permitted to tie ropes—because in those days, locally, rope was more valuable than a serf's life.

And here, at least, they had a rope tied around them—and what they were doing was no longer solely for a lord.

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