Moving forward to meet Dei in the middle, the Spirit let out a screeching cry that reverberated through his body harmlessly, until it came into contact with the Soul mana he’d kept outside of his [Pandora’s Box] just in case he needed it.
While it didn’t immediately damage him, the cry broke his control over the Soul mana. He realized it was an attack similar to the frog's croak, that would have destabilized his body if he were still a Projection. He allowed his [Pandora’s Box] to absorb the Soul mana, fearing that the spirit may take control over it while it was still within him. Before their clash, he also Identified it with thirty Wrath mana, hoping to get a name and level from it.
The moment it was pierced by his [Identify] it let out a growl, and Dei noticed a small indent where [Identify] hit it. Even with its high Spiritual stat, [Identify] seemed to function well as an attack on spiritual entities.
[Convection Wraith of Shattered Obsidian - Level 214]
He could have gleaned more, but it wasn’t the time for reading, as him and the Wraith finally clashed. It swung out with its right hand, and he ducked under, swinging with the Flesh trap into its gut. As it approached the Wraiths midsection, it split into two pieces, allowing the blade to pass through harmlessly.
Dei jumped back, and they assessed each other again, before moving for another confrontation.
This time, it brought its left claw upwards towards his shoulder, and he dodged right, cutting at the arm. Its other claw moved towards him as well, and he deflected with his hand, redirecting it to the side and grabbing its forearm.
When the left claw disconnected to dodge his blade, it also swiped at him, raking a deep gash across his back and releasing massive amounts of convection mana into him. In the same moment, he pulled on its right arm, forcing the main body closer and stabbing towards the chest in a lunge
In his peripheral vision, he saw the fragments of its legs coalesce into a single sharp point that stood on the ground, then its chest split to dodge the blade. He used the momentum he’d thrown into the swing to shoot past the creature, dodging another swipe of its claws as he passed its main body.
[High Mind] kicked into overdrive to process the information he now had. First, it could independently move the parts not attached to it; Second, it could only split itself twice, and the fragments where its legs normally would be counted as a disconnect; Third, it would most likely use its legs as a surprise attack by launching the shards at him when he least expected it, hoping he would forget about them as simply a “feature of its body.”
The world sped back up as he turned around, facing the Wraith as it again launched itself at him. This time, he tried meeting the claw with his blade, anticipating it to split in half. Midway through the swing, he began to arc his blades curve so it would bite into the separated parts of the Wraiths hand anyway.
As expected, the hand split in two down the middle two knuckles, raking his wrist in its passing, but the Wraith disappeared suddenly
‘Shit, I forgot it could dodge using Spiritual Re-Attunement,’ he thought, redirecting his momentum as he jumped to the side, expecting an attack when it phased back in.
He felt a claw open his cheek, realizing it went for his head, but he partially dodged it. Another burst of Convection mana entered his body, and he saw its tactic now. While it could only land glancing blows because of his speed, it released large amounts of convection mana each time. When it released it into his head, it was hoping to give him an artificial heatstroke by cooking his brain.
He also sensed a small amount of Soul mana in the air, and saw that there was a hole in its hand where he’d swung. It seemed that he could still cut into it, even if it dropped into the Spirit World, with his blade.
Despite the flood of Convection mana and gashes along his body, his regeneration was keeping up with both. The right side of his jaw hung loosely, but he could feel it stitching itself back together already. From experience, he knew that healing as a spirit was not simple.
Charging at it again, this time it swung its right arm, and he caught it in his left. He could almost see surprise in its face at his decision as Convection mana began pouring into him. But he swung his blade to cut off its arm. Breaking it off to dodge, he anticipated the maneuver and lunged for its main body again, this time keeping its hand in his own so it wouldn’t be able to score a strike across his back.
Its other arm came down on him as his blade missed the midsection, but he dodged under it. Instead of jumping back though, he got even closer, cutting at its shoulder.
He’d kept hold of its right arm, and its midsection was still split, so the blade finally found flesh, biting deeply.
It let out a scream, and he felt his body get flung back as it launched its right hand away, taking him along for the ride. He would need to either let go, or get slammed into the wall. Rather than give it back to the body, he fed it to his weapon, piercing it at the wrist and through the fingers.
The familiar scream rang out as he felt Soul mana rapidly begin draining from the hand that lost its integrity, flickering, before it disappeared entirely as he bounced along the ground, skidding to a stop right before he would have slammed into stone.
He was sweating hard, all the Convection mana cooking his organs.
He was also surprised to note that fifty or so Soul mana entered him through the roots of the Flesh Trap, the planting sending him a message that it was full. Now, it would pump the rest of the mana into him.
The Soul mana he received from the plant could be pulled into his [Pandora’s Box] despite him not producing it, so he allowed it to do so.
The Wraith was not looking to be in a good condition, content to take a breather too. A gash nearly separated its left arm entirely, and it had nothing from its right forearm down. While it might’ve been wise to stay back and allow more time to heal, he knew the Wraith would be more unstable if he damaged it without letting it repair, and it was rapidly regenerating. It would be also easier for him to score hits if he didn’t let the Wraith grow its right hand back.
Overheating but far from out of the fight, he threw himself back into the fray again.
The Wraith tried something different this time. Rather than allow Dei to get closer, the swarm of shards its legs normally split into flew towards him. He began deflecting with his blade or blocking with his arm, taking gashes along the back of his hand he’d used to block with.
Two of the shards that were launched at him were cut in half by his blade, becoming fully consumed in their destruction and fed to him through it, bringing forty more mana into his pool of Soul.
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Dei watched it draw the cloud of shards back and begin fragmenting its arm in different ways, experimenting with different sizes of shards.
It's learning. I can’t forget that it's a newborn, and doesn’t yet know its limits. I can't allow it to test them either.’
It attempted to stave him off again with the cloud of fragments, willing to sacrifice more Soul Strength in return for time to experiment with its limits. It was doubtlessly regretting immediately jumping into a battle without leaving itself more time to figure this all out before.
He blocked and parried where he could, but focused more on bull rushing it than defending himself. Several shards bit deeply into his extremities, only taking the time to stop those that would hit vital organs.
On top of it in seconds, he began slashing at it. It flickered in and out of the physical world, stopping him from following all of its movements.
It made several swipes at him with its reformed claw, and took several more.
After one seemingly innocuous phase out of reality, he ducked down quickly as his soul sense pinged him of something behind him. When the Wraith phased back into view, several shards shot over his head. It had quickly broken itself apart mid-intangibility, hoping the rhythm he’d built up would lower his guard behind him.
He was faster than it in every way, blocking almost all of its attacks and controlling the flow of battle as they went. While it flooded his body with mana, he never let the Convection aspects of it reach a critical mass, where he would begin slowing down. He would need water soon, as he was dripping with sweat.
He’d absorbed around two hundred Soul mana from it at this point, but knew it had more than enough to keep going. Every time he damaged it, there was a flicker in its defenses, and he was able to measure its integrity. Visually it was covered in cuts, but he knew from experience that wasn’t what killed Spirits. It still had around eighty percent soul integrity, so he’d hardly touched it, and expected it to be some long drawn out fight.
Which is why he was surprised when something shifted in its stance. Rather than striking out, it began backing away rapidly, firing multiple projectiles from its fragmented limbs, before he felt it activate [Spiritual Re-Attunement], this time using its body as the fuel to move down into the Spiritual layer.
It was running away.
‘No the hell you don't!’ he thought, splitting his mind into two equally sized parts. One of the parts began casting [Astral Projection], while the other continued controlling his physical body, laying on the heat to try and disrupt its movement downwards. If he let it get away, it might come back stronger than before.
He managed to delay it a moment, just long enough for a Projection of himself to split from his body. The Identity in his soul split as well, which was a weird feeling, as his Identity duplicated itself to enter both the [Projection] and his body.
His projected self flew downwards, into the Spiritual realm to confront the Wraith. The Wraith, on the other hand, just kept moving down, not stopping at the first layer.
Down, and down they both went, the Projection chasing until the Wraith stopped a moment to look around.
His projection sensed it too, that they were as deep as the two of them should go. It was the fifth layer, and the spirits were all just barely stronger than both his Projection and the Wraith. It hesitated to keep moving downwards, and that hesitation was all he needed.
Dei grabbed the spirit, activating [Spiritual Re-Attunement] and pulling it upwards.
He burned through significantly more of his Soul strength than moving alone, each jump taking five mana rather than one, but successfully dragged it kicking back into the physical world, where his body stabbed at it using the blade.
The Wraith began getting desperate, pushing its body further than before as the fight recommenced. Dei and his projection danced around it, slashing and hitting at it, overwhelming it quickly. It cast the scream again that disrupted Dei’s spiritual form, but his Physical body pushed the Wraith harder, giving his Spiritual Identity time to recollect the lost Soul mana and reconstitute itself fully.
The Wraith started sacrificing copious Soul mana to regenerate its limbs fully, then breaking off larger and larger portions of its body. Rather than a single crack along its arm or midsection, the crack would cause half its body to explode, and it would send swarms of cutting shards around it in a hurricane of glass.
It was not limited to breaking itself into three pieces, but limited to shattering itself twice. Two cracks, but those cracks could split its body into multiple pieces.
While his Spiritual form didn’t have a blade to strike with, the [Natural Claws] it had were much the same. It was susceptible to significantly more damage though, hiding behind his real form when the Wraith would send out massive area attacks in an attempt to disrupt the Spiritual form.
Several times it attempted fleeing downwards, each time interrupted by his Spiritual Identity. When it focused on the Spirit, as that form was more vulnerable to the Wraiths own [Natural Claws], his real form would lay into it.
He took more hits, as his mind wasn’t as quick as it was at the start of the battle while being split into two pieces, but the Wraith was dying fast. It had more strength in it than he initially expected, but the two of them worked together to rip into it.
He thought it would only have the around eight hundred or so mana he’d sloughed off while in the Convection Convergence, but it still had thirty percent integrity after he’d taken almost a thousand Soul mana from it. He wasn’t sure how much his Flesh Trap had taken, but The Wraith had clearly gained a boost of Soul mana from all the dead monsters it was born from.
Time after time, it tried to escape or overwhelm Dei, but it could find no purchase. He danced on a knife's edge, balanced between giving it no respite and not collapsing on himself. He was the tank, absorbing blow after blow, while his Spirit form was the damage dealer, taking massive chunks out of the Wraith with each swing. The Wraiths Spirit stat helped it resist such attacks, but it could not fend them off entirely.
Once it hit ten percent integrity, it let out one more scream and exploded into twenty pieces. Rather than attack though, each piece flew off in another direction. It was another attempt to run.
In unison, him and his Spirit form fired off eighteen rapid shot [Identifies] using all of his MP, each one disrupting the shard it hit, causing an explosion of loose Soul mana.
His Spirit form flew quickly after one shard, Dei ran after the other, each of them catching their targets.
Meeting back in the center of the original battlefield, they smiled at each other, the shards in their hands vibrating and squirming, trying to get away. They could both feel the absolute hatred from the Wraith fragments, a promise that it would find a way to kill him. Dei knew immediately that if he had let it run, he would’ve come to regret it.
“Ready?” Physical Dei said to Spirit Dei. He’d been afraid to split his mind in half and send one off in a Projection, as he didn’t want to create an identity crisis as one of them tried to kill the other, but he knew that was absurd now. They were not separate Identities, each a fragment of himself, a part of his full Identity.
“Ready.” Spirit Dei responded, and they crushed their fragments at the same time, finally slaying the Wraith.
[EXP gained for killing the Convection Wraith of Shattered Obsidian (Level 214). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]
“I wish I could go sit down and rest now. That was fucking exhausting” Physical Dei complained.
His Spirit form chuckled ‘If only’ it responded.
They’d both seen what monsters resided on the deeper Spiritual layers, and how one such monster was attracted to their fight, hoping to pick off the weakened victor of the battle and take all the spoils for itself.
Dei had learned from his battle with the Lorpee’s though, saving the mana in his [Pandora’s Box] for any scavengers that might appear when he was weakened.
As one, they turned towards the mass that bubbled mid air, constituting its body using its own [Spiritual Re-Attunement], but neither Dei’s would allow it to do so, charging in for round two.