The image in Markus ball was slightly unstable. With the fog on which Markus displayed, his memories continued to sway on the little wind that could enter the building, making the image a little distorted.
But it was all in terms of convenience. For the sake of observing the scale of the disaster, this quality was more than sufficient.
"T minus fifteen!" A voice came from the steamy orb. It was the old and common military code. 'Normally, they would need to add units in front of it was about anything but seconds,' Layn thought, observing every last detail that the picture showed.
For a few more seconds, nothing happened. The city in the distance stood magnificently. Even for Layn, destroying it completely would take not only quite a lot of strenght but even more time and effort in preparation.
After all, while magic appeared to be nearly omnipotent, the spells still had to be fueled with mana.
From the vantage point of the observer, one couldn't see the exact details of the city. If not informed prior, Layn would quite easily assume that this was the city... but before the first disaster.
"Now that I think of it, I don't think I ever heard what was the first disaster," Layn suddenly noticed, talking up to Markus.
"Yeah," the former saint replied.
"Ten, nine," the voice in the orb started to count down.
"Because it was all a hoax, a sham to make all the inhabitants leave," Markus added after a moment.
'I wonder how much did the people have to tell about this,' Layn wondered before reining his attention back towards the picture.
"Six, five," the counting continued, proving that whatever was about to transpire was all a planned thing, not some natural and unpredictable disaster.
Something that was set by humans up, as such, capable of being replicated.
'For them to go for such great lengths,' Layn thought, staring keenly into the memory orb. 'Its effects really would have to be so insane that it would be actually hard to imagine,' he added in his thoughts, squinting his eyes once the count got closer to finishing.
"Three..."
"Two...
"One..."
While only Markus knew what to expect, and only Layn had a rough idea of what could potentially happen, everyone watched the image in the orb with bated breath. While by itself, the memory appeared nearly as just a still image, the countdown made everyone feel excited about what was about to happen.
And then it did.
Out of nowhere, at speed greater than a human eye could register, a massive ball of flames appeared in the city.
Both Markus and Layn, along with literally anyone who ever got above the level of fighting cooks in their grandparent's farms, had their senses enhanced with magic. That's why both the image recorded and what Layn actually saw slightly varied from what a common folk would experience.
"The image is dimmed," Markus muttered as the ball of fire appearing to the size of around a thousand camps of theirs started to rise in the air.
'It isn't over yet?' Layn thought, watching how the originally perfectly circular ball of abyssal flames started to elongate and dim out a little as the atmosphere rushed in to fight against the fiery anomaly.
But that was happening all above the ground. On the floor level, the true form of the disaster was finally unveiled.
At first came the shockwave. Everything in diameter roughly five times the fireball's simply flattened. It didn't matter that Manterau, as one of the recently settled cities, was mostly constructed from concrete and magic-reinforced stone. In the face of the overwhelming might like that, the concrete would simply sizzle away.
Then, when everything that could be broken already achieved that state, the second wave of disaster came.
Some fires started somewhere in the rubble. Normally, small fires like that would never be able to set the entire city alight, but that wasn't the case here.
'Is the air... rushing in?' Layn thought, analyzing every last detail of what he was looking at. And soon, he could see how those small fires all over the place, fanned by the draft, quickly devolved the city from an organized living area to nothing more than just a land of a firestorm.
Soon, the entire thing was nowhere to be seen. Any of the buildings that still stood were either devastated by the shockwaves, burned out by the flames, or simply gone.
"Magnificent," Layn involuntarily spoke out. There was this visceral fascination in watching the devastation on this scale, especially when he was aware that what just happened... Had nothing to do with magic, to begin with.
"To think that the world was so close to grasping at the origin," Layn muttered under his nose a moment later. Then, as he looked around the room, he realized just what kind of faux pass he had committed.
Everyone around him was shocked beyond their wits. Only Markus managed to keep a sane look in his eyes, thanks to the fact that he saw this entire thing happen with his very own eyes. The impact of watching it happen from the recording had to be way lesser than experiencing it in the flesh.
"After staring at the flash, I took two years to heal my eyes," Markus muttered, adding another piece to the picture.
"And you are telling me that this is the theory applied to magicless materials," Layn muttered, still too overwhelmed by what he saw and the implication of it to actually speak like a normal human.
"Yeah," Markus replied, hanging his head low. "We hid the truth about this entire thing to prevent others from learning about it." Markus shook his head. "Can you imagine what would happen if those warmongering nations of our time were to get their hands on a weapon like this?" he asked impassively, clearly just looking for an excuse right now.
Because ultimately, his attempt to hide this kind of thing from the world ended up with Layn mistakenly taking the fake information about the nuclear theorem for granted.
"Now it all makes sense," Layn said, biting on his tongue. "If this is the scale of energy unleashed during nuclear reactions, then it's no wonder my gran arcana actually had way more magic than it actually should," he said, lowering his head a bit.
"I had three amplification artifacts and two fueling ones. If I were to eyeball the power of that explosion, multiply it by the amount of mana fuel and then by the amplification..." Layn's words came out slower and slower as the realization slowly started to reach his mind.
"Layn?" Markus raised his eyes, noticing the stifling notes in the archmage's voice. And he knew his friend for long enough to understand how rare it was for the great Layn to speak like that.
"Ever since I realized that there was something wrong with the arcana, I always believed that the difference could be within percents, maybe several times the difference in magnitude when compared to what I expected," Layn announced, barely moving his lips as he spoke.
"Now you sound really scary," Markus said, raising from his seat and reaching for Layn's chin. He then raised it up, forcing the archmage to look at every one. "Tell us what does that mean," Markus ordered, not even using the authority that he had as the member of the council, but just requesting as the friend of Layn he always was and always considered himself to be.
"If the scale was a few times greater than I expected, then the entire world would be swallowed in the spell. But beyond that, nothing would happen," Layn said, raising his eyes as requested. "That's why I could accept you appearing in this time, given how you could shield yourself to withstand the wave of magic rather than riding it like me," he said before standing up from his seat and walking away to the doors.
For a moment, Layn opened the doors and continued to breathe in the fresh air in the silence. Then, once he was done with this strange ritual, he turned his entire self around while closing the door behind his back.
"But with this scale of energy release... The gran arcana reached several times greater magnitude than I expected. No, I said it wrong," Layn suddenly admitted to making a mistake, just as he raised his eyes at the small crowd in the room. "Not by several times... The Gran Arcana was stronger by several orders of magnitude!" he finally announced, revealing the true scale of what had happened all that time ago.
"And what does that mean for us?" Markus asked, already shaking from the devastating realization that started to settle in his soul.
"In hindsight?" Layn asked before shaking his head. "Well, if it was what I expected, then returning to our original time would be an easy job. All it would require would be a sufficient amount of mana," Layn said before shaking his head. "But from what you just showed me, I can be sure about one thing," he added before looking Markus directly in the eyes.
"Invoking Gran Arcana on such scale couldn't end up with anything else but the very fabric of time and space breaking apart," Layn announced, shaking his shoulders.
"And what does that mean for us?" Ation asked, clearly done with how the discussion turned to a professional language he had no clue how to understand.
"In short, there is no going back," Layn said, closing his eyes. "Not because it's impossible," he added before looking Ation directly in the eyes.. "But because the world likely doesn't exist beyond its new timeline, anymore."
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