"Alright, now try the flare breath."
"Understood." Beretta replied to me. In the next moment, a hole opened up in his mask, and a stream of fire erupted from it.
"15,270 degrees. Hotter than the surface of the sun." I commented.
"It could be hotter." Ramiris replied to me.
"Not without melting his face off." I analyzed. Fifteen thousand degrees was pretty hot, in my opinion. "It's fine. Not like anyone's gonna be able to ignore it without a strong fire resistance."
"Still, we should look into making it hotter."
"The only way to do that is to saturate the magisteel throat with a higher concentration of magicules." I reminded her, "It'll happen naturally."
"Still, can't we make it go faster!?" Ramiris complained, flitting around my face like she tended to do when she was being impatient.
"Beretta, let's move on to the sonic scream. I'm concerned about the effects of extreme vibration on the magisteel throat." I said, ignoring Ramiris's antics.
"Understood." The next moment, a high pitched scream erupted from behind Beretta's mask. Normally, it would've rendered anyone nearby unconscious, but I was a slime, and I had a magic barrier protecting Ramiris's tiny little ears.
"Ramiris, can you analyze the composition?"
"Of his throat? Yeah, sure." She replied, closing her eyes to better parse the data. "Well… there are dozens of small injuries all over his face and chest. It's about 70% healed already, though. I'd say that it shouldn't be used aga- What's wrong, Risa?" Ramiris trailed off from her assessment, seeing a strange emotion clouding my face.
"I can't sense Izzy. Or Big Bro." I'd immediately noticed it, and it scared the crap out of me.
"What? You can't sense them at all? That's nuts. Isn't that Izzy guy literally a part of you?" Ramiris wondered aloud.
"Yeah. That's what's worrying me. I can't even tell where he is. Ramiris, I have to go. Right now, I need to go home." I was already beginning my Spatial Motion, but Ramiris said something that made me pause for a moment.
"What about Rimuru? If you can't sense him, isn't he in danger, too?"
"You're right… But Big Bro would want me to prioritize our friends. Plus, Izzy's a lot weaker than Big Bro. Big Bro can take care of himself." It felt like I was rationalizing it, simply making excuses to myself, but I wanted to believe in Big Bro, even if it terrified me inside.
I activated Spatial Motion, with Rimuru City as the target, only to find that it wouldn't work. I couldn't open a Spatial Motion rift inside of the city, at all. That only made me panic more, but I kept my cool, searching for a way around.
Next, I tried the Tamed Monster Initiative stronghold, only to be met with the same rejection. Next, I tried to warp directly into the Sealed Cave. It was only upon this third attempt that the Spatial Rift finally opened, and I stepped through.
Immediately, I found Gabil and Vester, conversing rapidly with Soei in Vester's lab in the very back of the cave.
"Why can't I teleport directly into Tempest?" I immediately asked, "And why are you so weak, Soei?" I added.
"We don't know!" Gabil exclaimed, clutching his head, "Some giant barrier just showed up over the city!"
"We believe that it was created with some input from the Kingdom of Farmus. Their knights just visited Tempest, but, unfortunately, I have no clue what is happening inside the city limits. I attempted to break through the barrier, only to fail and be seriously injured. I lost half of my Replications, but I healed my physical body with my unique skill." Soei explained, "Lord Rimuru is-"
"Unreachable, I tried too." I cut Soei off with that. "Don't worry about Big Bro. We need to get into Tempest. Now. I'm going to go break through the barrier. Soei, I want you to do reconnaissance. I want to know everything that happens in the surrounding area by the time I leave Tempest again, alright? Gabil,-"
"Protect Vester, and create as many potions as possible?" Gabil asked.
"Exactly. I'll be back."
Leaving the cave, I looked up. Pipes from the nearby river flowed through the barrier, but the water inside was all stopped up, Tempest's water system fully stopped on emergency measures. In the water plants on the top of the hill, a handful of hobgoblins looked at the city, clearly frustrated with their powerlessness.
"Looks like a double barrier." I muttered, striding up to the barrier in order to touch it and analyze it better. Yep. It was a double barrier. The outside layer seemed to purify magicules somehow, rejecting monsters. Humans could probably pass right through it, though. Easy as cake. It was ironic, the perfect weapon against a monster nation. Perhaps we needed to recruit more humans into our military one day, in order to combat anti-monster measures like this.
Anyways, the interior barrier simply purified magicules further. Together, they seemed strong enough that they'd likely render D-rank monsters completely incapable of moving, sealing most of the skills of anyone lower than a Calamity. That meant that the only ones inside Tempest right now who could use their skills were Benimaru, Shion, and Geld. maybe Hakuro. Even then, those four should be considerably weaker than they would've been outside the barrier. I had a bad feeling about this. Izzy wasn't even in the city, from what I could tell.
"Raya."
"Yes, Master?" Like the loyal wolf that she was, Raya immediately appeared from my shadow.
"Stay by my side. Don't bother using magic, it won't work." I told her, casting a Multilayer barrier around her and myself in order to resist the weakening effects of the barrier surrounding Tempest.
With the multilayer barrier in place, Raya and I simply walked right through the double-layered barrier surrounding Tempest.