Archmage Draven smiled, and at that moment, the archlich felt like it was looking at a fellow pair of hollow eyes. Its interest, that had dissipated and had been waiting for the archmages to try something new, was piqued once again.
‘Ninth Circle - Drop of Divinity!’
With the spell was casted with his massively increased pool of mana by the former honorary Count of Eldoria instead of by two eighth circle mages with barely enough mana for one ninth circle spell, a ball of golden liquid materialized before Archmage Draven, a quantity several times the small drop by the two eighth circle mages.
He swallowed it with one great gulp.
Beneath his skin, blood vessels glowed gold, and a resplendent holy aura began to emanate from his figure with an outward explosion of mana from him!. He had forced his way into SSS-rank!
The archlich’s interest was piqued.
‘Eighth Circle - Blink’
The one blink brought the archlich behind Archmage Draven, somehow leaving the Mother Tree of Rot in place high in the sphere as he did to continue riddling the sphere with rapidly moving tendrils, not bringing the Tree as it blinked. His pale, bony hand extended outwards to touch him casually, when-
‘Ninth Circle - Banishment!’
The wave of Archmage Draven’s staff conjured a gold magic circle, usually blue, at the tip end of Archmage Draven’s staff, which began to darken the archlich’s world. However, the archlich had escaped this trick before, and could easily do it again.
‘Fifth Circle - Spatial Lo-
‘Fifth Circle - Spatial Lock!’
The archlich retracted his hand in a hurry, slightly bewildered. Before it could cast its own spatial lock on the entirety of the region within the sphere, Archmage Draven had done so within the small radius surrounding the both of them first, without even looking behind him!
The human had outpaced the one who had left its own humanity behind!
As Archmage Draven turned,
‘Ninth Circle - Annihilation!’
Point-blank!
The archlich hurriedly cast several layers of structured barriers in the thin space between itself and Archmage Draven. How could the archlich cast so many structured barriers in such a short period? This was the emergency defense of the archlich. It would keep several defensive spells stacked on itself to use in a dire situation, such as now.
The annihilation broke through two, leaving five barriers unbroken.
As the beam wrought havoc, Archmage Draven first dismantled the spatial lock and mimicked the archlich almost immediately after. He knew the beam would not break through the archlich’s barriers. He left the small golden circle that had spawned a person-sized annihilation beam in the spot that it had been created, and blinked behind the archlich with that confidence, then cast his next spell.
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‘Fifth Circle - Spatial Lock!’
With that, Draven sealed teleportation.
The archlich had canceled an additional defensive spell and attempted to teleport away when it detected Archmage Draven blink behind it, believing that spatial lock had to have been dismantled for such teleportation to be possible, so it would be able to do the same. However, it found its mana rebounding onto itself, instantly depleting a tenth of its still growing spirit due to the blocking of teleportation.
With deception, Archmage Draven had forced his opponent to harm itself, doing more damage than Annihilation would've done even if it had struck.
“Cough!”
A mouthful of blood sprayed outward. Being mere meters away from the archlich, a few drops of Archmage Draven's blood even flew towards it, though it was not visible on the black robes of the archlich. Archmage Draven grit his teeth. He was running out of time, but he was not done.
As the archlich teleported behind Archmage Draven, he began to think of every trick he could do stop the archlich and also teleported. Another game then ensued.
The frequency at which they began to blink around the sphere was multiple times beyond that of Archmage Lirael as she kept Archmage Seraphina and the two fainted eighth circle mages safe. Mere afterimages were all that was left in the wake of the two, and resplendent beams were left in their wake wherever they appeared and vanished dozens of times a second. All this while the overwhelming number of black tendrils chased down Draven relentlessly.
One, a forsaker of humanity, and the other, a human who had forsaken himself, held nothing back against each other. Blow for blow, magic circle for magic circle, mana roared, trembled, screamed and cried out in every possible way under the might of the two. They were like twin stars, orbiting around each other, their clash illuminating the dark-red sphere like celestial beings. The tendrils were not spared, the isolation barrier was not spared.
But how could just an archmage, albeit one that was burning the wick upon which his life burned, finish off an archlich alone?
“You two! Plan Z!!-Cough!”
Archmage Draven’s roar, though almost cut off by a bloody cough, sent the needed message.
‘Ninth Circle - Might of the Future!’
‘Ninth Circle - Grand Spirit Possession!’
Archmages Lirael and Seraphina used their preferred enhancement spells respectively, spells that burned up their life in exchange for absolute might.
Plan Z - Preservation of all life was to be thrown out the window.
All life. Even that of the army, or that of the two eighth circle mages. The isolation barrier was no longer of any importance. The limp bodies of the two eighth circle mages were dropped and began falling towards the bottom of the sphere.
‘Ninth Circle - Annihilation!’
‘Ninth Circle - Annihilation!’
‘Fifth Circle - Spatial Lock!
A lock to prevent rapid escape through space-based movement and annihilation spells at the speed of light.
Today, the three archmages had come to the understanding that if they did not wipe out the archlich, it would reign rampant and bring untold destruction.
They would thus stake everything to crush it here.
Before the two limp bodies could hit the floor of the sphere, the barrier cracked, and the annihilation beams that were expected to break the barrier and escape into the night sky with a reduced intensity were found to travel into the sky unimpeded. The barrier had broken before the beams had even hit the barrier. With a sound of illusory glass shattering, the sphere was reduced into what looked like shattered glass, which rapidly faded away. The dark-red but well illuminated sphere was suddenly lit up with a mysterious orange light with occasional flashes of blue below both the archlich and the three archmages under the night sky. When they all looked down almost simultaneously once the archmages put some temporary safe distance between themselves and their adversary, they were left stunned at what they saw.
Below them, with only a hilt of a sword, a girl stood with two bodies over her left shoulder, her right arm holding a hilt. Out of that hilt was what looked to be a mere lump of mud extending out of it, But orbiting close to it were rocks and other small dust particles at hyper speeds, such that massive amounts of heat and light was created. This heat caused an orange light, black smoke, and occasional static discharges. All in all, the girl appeared to be holding a five meter long volcano mid-eruption as a sword.
Volcanic Swordswoman, Former Hero, Mia.
“I was wondering why Evan asked me to check this place out, but things really went bad here, it looks like.”