'So you are going to create a blizzard?' Nero asked after hearing him talk about freezing the entire mountain.
'The array is called Cryo Stasis, a Sixth Rank single circle array,' Draven said and began explaining what the array could do.
'The array would slowly gather mana and build a barrier all around the mountain that would not only block anyone from escaping, but it would also cut the space connection to the void space, preventing the Spider queen from escaping through the void,'
'Once the barrier is at full effect, the array would fully activate and begin to freeze every atom of mana in the air, including the mana inside the bodies of the living creatures,'
'Their bodies would shut down in a matter of seconds, every cell and vein nearly frozen, and three minutes later, everyone inside the array would be dead,' Draven said, and after a short pause, he continued.
'The best thing is that minutes after the array collapses, the mana would return to its normal state, leaving no physical damage to the bodies,' Draven added, leaving Nero stunned by the sheer impossibility of what he was hearing.
'What if the spider queen sensed the barrier before it was completed or defended against the effects and survived,' Nero asked after a long silence, not because he did not trust the reliability of the array but because he was just curious.
'It should work as I want it to, but if it fails, then we will run away,' Draven said, and while Nero felt eager to ask more questions, he decided to put his trust in Draven.
Draven reached the base of the mountain without any trouble before making his way a few hundred meters away to the location hidden from the presence and scenes of any spider.
Draven sat on the ground, wearing the two space rings on opposite index fingers of both hands, before taking out the rune pen and a single colorless crystal no more than two inches in size.
He placed the crystal tip on the crystal, bringing to life his understanding of runes and his sense of crafting, which he had honed through centuries of work.
The rune pen moved, his body absorbing mana from the surroundings like a sponge. He acted as the conduit of energy used to draw a razor-thin, barely visible line that slowly took the form of a unique word.
It took him some moments to complete the first rune, and in an instant, he placed the crystal in the second ring and took out another mana crystal, writing another word and repeating the same process.
In his perspective, he was barely moving, working as slowly as an artisan slowly chiseling away at an intricate piece, but in the eyes of Nero, he was as quick as lightning, writing runes that seemed to appear somewhat similar to the two hundred words he knew, but also very different, as they were way more complicated.
He quickly realized that Draven was writing words, a combination of letters that were different from the ones he had learned, but that was to be expected since he was working on a Sixth Rank array.
Nero was new to everything, so he understood little about the power difference in each rank and how everything worked. However, he knew his weak body did not contain enough mana to continuously create such complicated runes.
He had also considered this question white Draven was inscribing inscriptions on the items, and with what little he knew about mana pools and recovery, he knew for sure that it was some high-Rank technique that allowed him to recover mana as he spent it.
The big question he had was if such a technique was known to the public and how hard it was to master because even a clueless individual like him knew its worth very well.
Nero watched in silence as Draven calmly drew one rune after another, with seconds turning to minutes and minutes to hours, with him completing six to eight runes per minute, and in four hours, he surpassed the sixteen hundred mark.
If any grandmaster of any runic field saw such progress with such precision, they would be forced to reconsider their life because even a grandmaster would require minutes of complete focus to write a single rune, and he might still fail.
An array of Sixth Rank, even the lowest of quality, required days of work and an immense amount of rare resources, so crafting such a level of array with low-quality mana crystals was something inconceivable.
Draven kept creating more and more rune crystals, his surroundings a puddle of sweat, and only stopped once he reached seventeen hundred and eighty stones.
Draven stood up and drank another invisibility potion, taking a few minutes to rejuvenate his body with mana before he left the area and went to another location hidden from view, at least a kilometer away from the mountain.
He dug a shallow pit using the short sword and buried a small pile of mana crystals inside it before returning to the base of the mountain.
Draven began to drop rune and regular mana crystals on the ground, one at a time. He dropped the rune crystals in the exact sequence in which they were created, and after each rune crystal, he dropped three mana crystals, one every fifteen meters.
He repeated the process as he circled the towering mountain, completing the fifteen-kilometer round trip in little over thirty minutes.
Nero kept his silence and watched things unfold with a mix of fear and anxiety. He felt a sense of relief wash over him as he saw the runes of each crystal begin to dimly shine, and the crystal on which they were carved began to break down, slowly turning to fine gray dust.
The normal crystal suffered the same fate, turning to fine dust that was immediately swept away by the winds. However, the runes stayed, slowly settling on the ground, and moments later, the runes began to dissolve, creating a thin ring of light, a massive circle around the mountain.
As if driven by a will of its own, thin strands of energy began separating and branching out from the main ring, twisting and curving, spreading along the earth in intricate patterns.
The glowing strands intertwined, connecting in complex designs, each perfectly aligned with the others. Twisting runes began to appear inside the small and big circles written by an unseen hand.
In a mere moment, another ring formed at the edge of the circles before the same process repeated, followed by the creation of another ring.
In mere moments the energy formed six concentric circles, each section filled with countless full and half circles, each open space occupied by a rune.
The six concentric circles stretched nearly fifty meters from the original energy ring to the last one before everything faded away, leaving no trace.
A few spiders noticed the sudden appearance of strange circles and lights, but they faded in less than ten seconds, causing little to no disturbance. The few who came looking for what they saw found nothing.
Nero felt his heart drop at the sight of the Array just vanishing into nothing, but Draven was quick to deliver the good news that the array was working perfectly.
Draven rushed back to where he buried the small pile of mana crystals and began to draw another array, slowly creating four major circles before working on the minor ones.
While he was working on the array his eyes never left the mountain, confident that his array would do the work, but still prepared for the worst.
Nero wanted to ask questions about the array's structure or how they would escape if things did work out, not because he wanted to learn but simply to ease his own anxiety.
But seeing Draven so focused, he kept his silence as he prayed for the best outcome. Every second took longer and longer to pass, and after nearly fifty minutes of seeing nothing, Nero was at the end of his patience.
'It has begun,' Draven's calm voice sounded in his mind as his eyes focused on the mountain's base where a few spiders struggled against an invisible wall.
Nero watched the ground get lit up with a massive array made from the six concentric rings, each filled with runes. Their dim shine grew by the moment before the rings began to rise, uncoiling as they climbed higher and higher.
In a mere moment, the rings rose into the air, taking a spherical form. The six concentric rings created near equal distances between each other while the runes inside them spread out wide, the gaps swiftly filled by a flash of energy.
Everything happened so quickly that Nero barely saw the energy closing at the top of the mountain as the barrier fully took form.
There was a momentary silence as the spiders tried to pierce the near-invisible veil while the ones on the other side tried to enter, easily phasing through it like it did not even exist.
But with a quick turnaround, they found the horror of not being able to leave, and as more and more spiders realized it, a wave of panic ran rampant among them, their shrill panic-filled cries echoing through the surroundings.