"No more." You take the necklace off with a flourish, snapping it off and unsealing your great magical power. Now you know that you have mere seconds before Zouken notices your deception, the ambient energy you release from taking off the necklace is enough to change the atmosphere of the room. You place your hand on the floor of Sakura's Room, visualizing the entire area. "I am Truth given form." You utter the first line of your aria, and you can feel your magecraft become more receptive to you. After visualizing the room, you apply a concept upon it. A concept that prevents absolutely anything from entering for as long as you keep the effect up. While you can exit the room freely, this room should be completely inaccessible to everything that exists.

The manifestation works, but you soon come to a terrible realization. It's taking far too much of your energy to keep manifested. As of right now, you won't even be able to make a cinder to clear Sakura of the worms, never mind an inferno. You keep the effect manifested regardless. Hopefully you can disable it when Gray and Monica have dealt with Zouken, but you can't actually hear anything going on from outside, just silence. Fifteen minutes of keeping up the manifestation, Sakura still squirms in pain, and strangely, it feels as if the air is getting harder and harder to breathe. You check your body to make sure you haven't taken any damage, yet you don't find anything. Could Zouken have managed to find a way through your defense? No. Impossible.

Another five minutes pass, and you are forced to kneel down on one knee. You feel... weak. It's all you can do at this point to keep the barrier around the room manifested. What is happening? This isn't the result of overusing your magecraft! That feels completely different! Then it hits you. The terrible terrible error you made. You made a room in which things can leave, but nothing can enter. You didn't restrict it to people either. Right now, this room is completely sealed off from the rest of the world. Of course, nobody can enter the room, but what also cannot enter the room is sound, for all you know, the battle between Monica, Gray and Zouken has already reached it's conclusion. But even more important than sound... is air.

You only have the strength in your body to attempt to change the manifestation once. You still can't disable it, otherwise Zouken might get in with his worms and it would all have been for naught. You have no idea what's going on outside, so it's just too risky to allow that to happen. Though as you crawl along the floor, you seen realize just how hopeless things are. You just... don't have the energy left in your body to make such an alteration to the room now. It's not a problem of magical energy either. But a problem that has arisen from depriving the human body of oxygen for too long. Things start to go blurry, and then you can no longer sustain your consciousness. The whole world goes pitch black as your body dies as a result of being deprived of it's most basic need.

DEAD END

Part 6