Eldrian's counter, calling the general a fool, got to the general. His smile disappeared and turned into a glare. "I assume you won't be coming willingly."

  "I've no interest in being a guinea pig," Eldrian replied, wishing that mana on Earth was just a little more abundant. That was when he got an idea.

  Kicking the old nearly decayed wood below his feet, Eldrian caught it and quickly drew the rune of hardening while feeding it a bit of his personal mana. He didn't have much, and it took a lot of time to recover. He had to think carefully when he would use how much.

  His only other option was using spirit magic, but that had dangers he didn't want to risk. He also wasn't really in the right mood to cast spirit magic spells that would be effective. A little caveat of spirit magic that was easy to forget.

  Seeing his strange act, many of the soldiers froze. The stories about Eldrian made him out to be quite a monster, yet he appeared like a normal person. If only with slightly more pointed ears than normal.

  "Are you hoping that magic will save you?" The general asked while observing the wooden board with curiosity. "We've learned a lot since your escape. Mana is scarce on earth, right? You can't really cast spells freely, can you?"

  "You're right, it is scarce, extremely so. Which is why it is so dangerous. I don't get how you guys seem to overlook it every day while it is staring you right in the face." Eldrian countered while smiling internally that the general seemed to want to gloat.

  Granted, who wouldn't. The squad below Eldrian was just a small division that had surrounded him. Just a block away there were five tanks, and there were also three helicopters a bit further away. Eldrian assumed that there would also be drones somewhere. And that was ignoring all the soldiers hiding throughout the entire neighborhood.

  'Something must have happened, possibly they found a way to detect mana or something and while upgrading my mana network my real body might have mimicked some of it. I do feel stronger, so maybe I sent some sort of signal?'

  Unfortunately, Eldrian didn't have time to dive into his auras to ask Tranquility what was going on.

  "It is a pity that I was tasked to preferably take you alive. So I must ask, will you come peacefully?"

  Diving behind his wooden board, Eldrian felt the impact clearly. "Shouldn't you fire after my answer?"

  "Oops……" The general smiled and signaled the troops to all open fire.

  Hiding behind his hardened shield, Eldrian jumped back into the building. He already knew there were people waiting for him inside. Luckily, light and dark were two of the elements that actually were present on earth.

  Making use of the latter, Eldrian simply summoned a bunch of darkness into the room. He didn't have a particular plan, only hoping for it to give him some more time to think.

  This couldn't even really be called a spell, or it would be considered Tier 0 at most. What he was doing was similar to when he would summon Nidia or Floga and increase their size. He was now just doing it with Skia, and making use of all the mana in the environment that he could.

  'Okay, so elements are too few to cast formal spells. Light and dark even, I can manipulate the density but that is about it. Can't actually form proper spells.'

  'Runic magic works, but I have very limited amounts of mana. I'm heavily outnumbered, and it seems that they somehow got a grasp of my basic capabilities……' Eldrian frowned, someone in the guild must have shared what they knew about him. Or they already had a spy in Kynigo.

  'They won't know everything, but they might be able to piece together a few key pieces of information. I didn't exactly keep the disadvantages of spirit magic a secret, adding to the information they have already……'

  'My best bet would be to simply escape, but it is the middle of the day and they took their time planning this.'

  Luckily, calling upon the element of darkness and summoning it forth did more than just make the area darker. It also blocked night vision and infrared means of detection. Seeing as it was literally the absence of light and both these still require light, albeit in much smaller amounts and of different wavelengths.

  Moving quietly through the building, Eldrian made sure to give everyone a wide berth as he continued to brainstorm. When the general started announcing that he should simply surrender, Eldrian actually smiled.

  'I see, you can kill me but you need my body as intact as possible. So I don't have to worry about you exploding the building while I am inside.' Eldrian smirked, realizing that if he had not abandoned his room then they might not have blown it up. Though, he hadn't had any traps, so it would not have helped.

  With this thought, he suddenly felt chills again. Bringing his shield to the front, Eldrian grunted as he felt it slowly crumbling under the barrage of bullets.

  'How?' Eldrian cursed and suddenly switched between dark and light, blinding everyone as he dashed into the basement. Certainly not the ideal place to be, but better than being under fire.

  'Sonar?' Eldrian wondered as he summoned a ball of light and quickly looked around the room. Sadly, there wasn't much he might be able to make use of. But there was a bunch of discarded old construction tools.

  'And to top it off, I am sooo hungry.' Eldrian's stomach growled as he confirmed that there was only one entrance to the basement.

  'They are either going to storm in, or they might even try to wait me out. Though, considering they would want to keep things quiet I doubt the latter. Such a massive move in the middle of the day is certain to draw attention already.'

  'Good a time as any.' Eldrian thought, moving to the door he added a? few explosive type runes to it and also to the steps. Doing so took nearly half the mana he had. How Eldrian wished he had 3k to play with now.

  Waiting and prepping, time slowly ticked by. After ten minutes, Eldrian heard a commotion. Closing his eyes and focusing on the noise he slowly made sense of what was going on.

  It appeared like some sort of robot was being prepared.

  'They really did come prepared, but sadly for them, they don't know all that I can do.' Eldrian mumbled as he continued working on the tunnel. Having made use of the tools available to quickly break through the wall and now busy tunneling.

  Due to the lack of earth elements, he couldn't try to simply make a tunnel via magic. Instead, he needed to make use of runes smartly. Hoping that it would all work out, he enhanced his own speed through the skill augment.

  The increase wasn't massive, but it helped more than just simply speeding him up a bit. It made him more agile in the general sense, helping Eldrian get the right angels while working on the tunnel.

  Once he made significant progress into the tunnel, he added fortification runes to the dirt to stop the tunnel from collapsing.

  AN: A big thanks to everyone who supports the story on Webnovel.