Chapter 282: Solar Destruction

Sanchez was right about the wind. Later in the afternoon, the wind shifted, bringing fresh air from out over the ocean, and the wildfire smoke was blown away, revealing the devastation in its wake, and the unrelenting glare of a supercharged sun on the ash plains.

It was getting hot again, and the crackling on the shield was much worse than it had been, but the mana draw didn’t seem to be any higher than it was before.

Which suggested that the electrical discharge was not the part that was actually dealing damage, but the underlying radiation that the ash clouds weren’t blocking.

That wasn’t exactly good news.

But it wasn’t bad news either, as their barrier was holding, and presumably protecting them as the solar storm raged, and the world outside slowly rose to scorching temperatures before the sun hit the horizon, and the temperature plummeted with the breeze coming off the ocean.

Even that was much warmer than it should have been, with the water storing an immense amount of heat, but it was tolerable.

That reality set the schedule for most of the residents of upper Marimgar for the next few days.

They would rest during the days with the storm shutters sealed tight, and the lights on, just in case something got past the city shield. Then, they would work through the evening. The only consideration was that enough people had to be awake to keep the barrier up during the day when it was taking constant damage, and some of the shops did run twenty-four hours a day.

Like the textile mill, and the greenhouses.

Most of the greenhouse work was normally daytime work, but even with the auto-tinting function on the greenhouse glass, it was nearly unbearable in there during the day today, so they had put up sun shades for shelter, and to keep the workers from sweltering.

They simply weren’t made for this level of light.

This whole world seemed to be suffering from some sort of imbalance, and it really made Kalli wonder if something had gone wrong other than the System activation.

It really did feel like the trials were a setup for whatever came after them, and with the constant string of natural disasters, it seemed pretty obvious to Kalli that whatever was going to happen next was not going to be great for the planet itself.

Everything from magnetic field collapse, tectonic instability, massive climate shifts, and the arrival of alien species had altered the world to an unimaginable state. Even if you assumed that the original world was the one that belonged to the monsters, and the humans had been brought to it.

That seemed quite possible to Kalli.

Everything had changed after the first trial, and the city had completely vanished.

To her, that suggested that they might not actually be on their own world, but one that had the same basic continental layout, and they had simply been transported to it. Of course, Divine Intervention to merge two worlds was always an option, but that one made her brain hurt.

She wasn’t the only one thinking it. The Professor was thinking the same thing, and he had a Doctorate in a related field.

This couldn’t keep up, or the planet itself wouldn’t survive.

The only hope that they had was that things were going to stabilize after the trials ended, and they could finally begin getting on with life afterward.

Neither of them shared their concerns with the people around them, it was better that such things weren’t spoken out loud.

After all, the planet failing the trial before they did wasn’t a good ending for anyone, and it wasn’t something that they could do anything to stop if that was what was destined to happen. They just had to hope that the System would intervene and stop things from going that far.

The next morning dawned to a crackling against the barrier, but a slower rate of damage than it had been suffering the day before.

That was taken as a good sign that the event was slowing, and that soon they would be able to go out and have the water affiliated mages put out the last of the fires. There wasn’t a lot left in easy sight of the city that wasn’t scorched, but two hours after the sun came up, it wasn’t so ridiculous that the reflections were scorching anything.

However, as the morning wore on, it wasn’t getting better. So, they were through the initial surge, but the solar storm was raging, and they were going to have to suffer through it.

Fortunately, the wind continued to come from the east all day, bringing them ocean fresh air, instead of the smoke and haze.

But that only highlighted how bad the haze was everywhere else.

Then, things began to get dark.

Very dark.

The storm ended as abruptly as it had begun, with the sun seeming to drop far below its usual intensity for a few minutes, leaving only the smaller second star in the sky to light the world.

Or, did something pass between them and the sun, large enough to block it out?

There was a light cloud cover, so Kalli couldn’t see it clearly, but she also couldn’t get any satellite feeds either. The storm had taken the last of her satellite data network offline, and she wasn’t having any luck establishing contact again.

That just meant that this was going to be a very long day, as she was going to have to rebuild her surveillance network. At the moment, she didn’t have any information that wasn’t from the city’s own limited operational cameras.

The barrier was still up, and that interfered with the camera feeds outside the walls, so most of the clear footage was only of the city itself.

Without the satellites, they had no idea how the rest of the continent had fared, though the outcomes were fairly predictable in the volcanic ash plains. The region that was coated by the fallout of the triple volcanic eruptions had suffered severe fires, but for regions that had more plant cover, the actual damage from the solar storm shouldn’t have been severe.

She just had to wait for things to stabilize enough that she could send speeders out to scout the area.