Ha, What a Beautiful Day to Start with a Boarding Action!

Ha, what a beautiful day to start with a boarding action!

Manson basked in self-satisfaction as he held the star staff, polished from a marvelous beast bone.

He wasn't entirely sure where it had come from, but it was a "gift" from the Friends of Dusk.

They said it had been made from the remains of a colossal beast that had gone extinct ages ago. It was highly sensitive to astral and spatial energies, making it the perfect core focus for casting a spell like Astral Rift.

Manson had never imagined that simply tearing open the boundary between planes could have such a terrifying effect on the material world. It wasn't until he narrowly escaped the disaster at Blackflame Pass that he finally understood the essence of Transian warfare: making sensible use of every weapon at their disposal.

He was truly grateful, from the bottom of his heart, to Governor Murphy for creating that absurdly enormous astral rift at Blackflame Pass in the name of revenge. Its presence had destabilized the boundaries between the nearby planes, making it much easier to cast Astral Rift under these conditions.

Of course, they didn't have the complete knowledge required to cast Astral Rift.

The principle behind the spell was indeed simple, but putting it into practice was another matter. Otherwise, Astral Rift would have become the favorite method of attack among the mainland's many cultists centuries ago.

Still, though Manson, as a Gold Priest, couldn't match Grand Duke Triss's decades of experience with psionic powers, he had his own way of using them. A precise spell like Astral Rift might be impossible to master perfectly in a short time, but once he understood the principle, he could achieve the same result through the brute-force method of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.