The flesh of the fallen ghouls started to smoke, the spell animating them came undone upon their end.
“Killing the summoner is the only way to stop them.”
"We should hurry before we have to face a whole army."
Killing ghouls was pointless, even worse, our magic was being wasted. We had to find him fast. We ran down the main hallway meeting no resistance. We soon arrived at a large staircase leading up to hundreds of doors and corridors.
The carpet right before them had the same vile eye symbol brooded from a crimson filament. Screams resonated from above, the next moment packs of ghouls ran toward us, they all fell to Jinhyung's blade as fast as they came.
We started to ascend the stairs opening all of the doors we met, checking if anyone was there, nobody. This palace made no sense, why were there so many empty rooms? Waves of lesser undead kept coming, we couldn't see yet from where exactly, we lacked light.
"Give me your light, I will do something."
Between two slashes he took his diadem off and threw it at me. I quickly took out the jewel and started to imitate it’s magic flow. In my other hand, I had the ‘Empty Grimoire’ wide open. The magic sequences replicated by my spirit slowly wrote themselves on the first pages of the spellbook. When I finished I threw away the little stone.
"Fuck, Fred, I see nothing."
"Give me a second!"
I held the book above me and started to quickly fill it with magic. Soon an orb appeared, its shine was so bright, only the sun itself could rival it. It was so strong the whole tower was illuminated in a moment.
"They are coming from the top!"
I could control the orb of light at wish, without even holding the book. I stored the book in my cloak as usual. I then reduced the light in order to not blind ourselves and to economize some magic.
Who could imagine that my first use of the grimoire would be a flashlight? Such a life saving purchase, did Jinhyung have that good of an intuition or was he lucky with his guesses?
He ran very fast, and without any signs of exhaustion at all, I could hardly follow him while maintaining the light orb. Soon we arrived at the top, the passage led outside the tower, to a large interior field. Many tombstones were shattered with their interior missing, but some remained intact, it was their fodder reserves.
[Oh you found me, interesting]
A tall, thin, white-haired, man standing at the other side of the graveyard. He talked, he was sentient, he was probably the one who made all of the ghouls.
Jinhyung immediately ran across the field without hesitation for a second, his courage was impressive. I felt something magic moving. Sadly, I only had time to scream a single word.
"UNDER!"
A large pillar of ice emerged where he was a second ago. Luckily, he reacted to my warning without delay. I couldn't follow his movement at all, he became a blurry figure dashing to the side, dodging the attack.
[Pretty fast, but still human] The vampire mumbled to himself, but somehow his cold voice resonated in my ears.
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I too ran toward the monster, I left the light sphere suspended under the ceiling increasing its light a little, it served as a little sun lighting up our way.
Jinhyung dodged again another ice pillar, but then a giant amalgamation of bones arose itself from the ground forming a giant hand. It punched him with tremendous might. He couldn't dodge it; with a dull sound he flew into the stone wall.
While the necromancer was distracted by Jinhyung. It gave me the opportunity to get into melee range. I stabbed him with the survival knife from the starter pack, but like my fists before, I filled it to the brim with magic energy, so much in fact, blue arcs formed between the small blade and my palms.
Vampires were a lot faster than humans, even though I caught him off-guard, he had the time to react and protect himself with his arm. The knife penetrated his forearm, I quickly jumped back, I didn't even notice it, but another ice pillar rose from the ground where I was a moment ago, he certainly was fast.
In about half a second, the magic imbued knife exploded, taking the vampire's whole arm with it. He shrank back from the kinetic wave, while he was stunned from the damage, Jinhyung who somehow got back on feet cut him in half. Even halved, the vampire waved his hands trying to summon his last bits of magic. But Jinhyung was faster, he stabbed his lower stomach and in a large flash the swordsman released a large amount of energy from his blade, completely burning the fiend's core to ashes.
Before we could recuperate, or even talk, three armoured giants, three meters tall, broke in from the coloured windows near the ceiling. They landed heavily on the ground and ran toward us, screaming.
“Troll!” Yelled Jinhyung, pushing me aside from the trajectory of a spear.
I had no magic left, Jinhyung was supposedly injured and looked quite fatigued too, I had no other choice than to use 'it'. I put my hand on the now warm 'Witchstone Pendant' and started to desire its 'release'. Items seemed to work when a strong 'intent' was applied. It quickly became as hot as molten metal and in a moment, my body was overwhelmed with energy.
This power was so terrible, at least a third of it got out of my control. I decided to quickly channel it into the light orb spell before everything was lost. The sphere flashed brighter than ever and the intruders were stunned, trolls appeared to be weak to powerful light.
Jinhyung chugged a small flask of red liquid and quickly beheaded one of them, its body fell to the ground. I used my explosive punch trying to strike their cores and cause a chain reaction, but after three hits I dealt no damage to them, their bodies were slightly bruised but they quickly healed themselves. At least I broke some of their armour.
Blood dripped from my fists, the drawbacks of the technique were getting bigger with each punch. Soon after, they began their riposte.
Their counter attacks were parried by Jinhyung who quickly came to my rescue. I retreated toward the headless enemy. Jinhyung's movements were getting slower, he was able to land some slashes but none were lethal. Even through wounds and fatigue he wasn't losing, yet. What an impressive man he was.
Then, something grabbed my leg, I looked down and the beheaded foe was moving again. What monstrous vitality, the only way to finish them was to destroy their core huh? I tried to free myself by kicking the arm off but I was getting weaker by the second. My energy was drained, smoke started coming out of its neck and I could just observe in fear this macabre spectacle. The troll’s skull, muscles, and brain were slowly reconstructing. Was this the end? No, not yet. I had one last trick.
I got on top of the monster and grabbed its chest before his head completely regenerated. I suspected that without heads they were rather mindless and couldn't control their inner energy flow. I started to push my energy inside his body. By breaking his usual flow, I could weaken his magic defense and inhibit his regenerating abilities.
I lifted his chest plating and started punching it without thinking. With each hit I could feel my fists breaking down more and more, it hurted like hell but I had no choice. It was my only chance to destroy his core before he would come back to life. Every bone in my hands were slowly and painfully shattering.
Finally, his core lost its integrity and all of the magic within exploded. I was blown away, my frail body was effortlessly thrown against the stone walls. My vision got increasingly blurry until everything faded away.
I couldn't see anything anymore but I still heard the clashing of steel between the remaining two enemies and Jinhyung.
"Sorry Friedrich, but I have to use this technique right now."
He had a last card up his sleeves, interesting, what a shame I couldn't see it. But why did he ask for forgiveness? It scared me even more, what would this reckless psycho do? Please, do not die.
A strong magic aura filled the entire room, a painful scream was heard, Jinhyung's scream.
“INCOMPLETE DAWNBRINGER STANCE”