Another tendril zipped forward, eager to enter the transparent portal and claim the life of the one who had already once escaped its graces.
Only to be cut before it could travel even a mere inch.
When the archlich noticed this happen, it immediately teleported from its position back to where it had been when it first moved its first tendril towards Mia. He then looked at her with a bewildered gaze, though his lack of facial expressions made the emotion difficult to discern.
“How.”
Mia had gaping holes the width of a full inch all over her body where the tendrils that did not go all the way through had pierced her. Through the one in her forehead, brain matter could be seen dripping within it, and similar gore could be seen for the other holes that the tendrils had left. There were no signs of regeneration or even hemostasis to stop blood loss. Her body was clearly rapidly dying, but she seemed to be unaffected by her rapidly dying body as she smiled radiantly while holding the tendril she had cut off with her five-meter long volcano of a sword.
The cross-section of the black tendril that had been exposed when she cut it off was glowing bright orange from the heat of her sword. The cut on it was irregular as if torn off, a testament to the lethality of the weapon being a result of its heat rather than its sharpness. After all, the core of the sword itself was simply a meter long clump of glowing earth and not the five meter long amalgamation of lava, orbiting clumps of earth and crackling lightning that it appeared to be from the outside
“Oh, well, my body is special, you see. Various techniques of inhuman species have been marked onto my soul, not engraved, marked! Um, to engrave onto a soul changes its species entirely, mine's been marked. Yeah, so, uh, yeah, this marking was done with the purpose of allowing the use of unique mana circulation, which ended up altering my spirit in a way that brought my spirit and soul closer, while pushing my body and spirit apart. And, um, that makes my body special? I think.”
“Your spirit…? I see, since the body is not directly attached to the soul and vice versa, their connection via the middleman that is the spirit means that the soul can be distanced from the body by just pushing the spirit apart from the body. And the spirit has been pushed apart from the body due to the dissonance that arises from the inhuman technique used to cultivate an inhuman spirit and the body that has remained decidedly human. Meanwhile, the cultivation of the spirit with a technique marked onto the soul brings the soul and spirit closer, like a child growing up with the habits passed down by their parents and thus developing the same habits.”
The lich paused for a moment, then continued.
“This ultimately means that your total composition resembles that of a possessed body. Your body could approach death farther than others without actually succumbing to it. When pushed to an extreme, you might even be able to live without a body.”
Within the archlich’s hollow eyes, Mia felt like she could see a fanatic glint. Its voice began to rise in volume.
“Fascinating! What would happen if your body were to be separated from the bond of your spirit and soul? Would you experience uncontrolled convergence and truly become a Strange?! What if your soul was separated from you via death?! Would you live on as a zombie, just spirit and body?! No, what if…”
“Are you okay? I think you should consider therapy…”
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Mia’s worried question was drowned out by the archlich’s mad ravings of its pursuit for arcane and scientific knowledge.
“Fascinating! How truly fascinating! I must know, tell me! No, I will find out for myself!”
With that, every tendril was spurred into motion, all of them dashing towards transparent portals in the air. The archlich spread out both arms, then pushed them forward, a motion that made the hundred of tendrils accelerate even further. Yet, the tendrils did not even receive a chance to disappear.
WIth just one arm, she casually sliced horizontally. The slice caused a wave of lava, steam and lightning to emerge forward and leave pure destruction in its wake. The speed at which it moved with the roar of sizzling lava and crackling lightning did not even allow the speedy tendrils to move forward into the transparent portals in the air. All the hundred tendrils that had bounded forward in various directions were burned to charred crisps. The wave proceeded to surge onwards to the archlich, but it teleported away before any substantial damage was done, to a position of lower altitude. Of course, the Mother Tree of Rot was now rendered useless after such heat, so the archlich decided to form another.
‘Ninth Circle - Mother Tree of Ro-!’
“I’m not going to let you cast a ninth circle spell right in front of me with no consequences.”
In just a blink of an eye, Mia seemingly stepped on air and appeared before the archlich. Her feet were spread apart in a lunge position with her sword held above her head with both hands. The volcanic sword began its descent with the wrath of nature, but the archlich swiftly canceled the Mother Tree of Rot spell it was casting and switched to another
‘Third Circle - Substitution!’
The archlich used a spell it had within its stack, bringing itself behind Mia’s back, and it began to cast the spell once again.
‘Ninth Circle - Mothe-!’
Only to get canceled once again. Though this time, it was a forceful cancel, not of its own will. Mia followed through with the downward motion of the sword, removing the foothold of mana she had made for her forward foot and tucking her lower body in as she did so. This allowed her to roll, causing a wave of lava and lightning to surge forward like that of waves that spread out when a pebble was dropped on a calm lake, which struck the archlich point-blank.
‘Ninth Circle - Reconstruction!’
An emergency spell in the archlich’s stack was immediately used to heal the archlich following the baptism of fire. However, with a other blink, Mia followed up with another ruthless attack by thrusting her sword forward, causing a snake of unyielding fire to burst outwards.
As the snake rammed into the archlich and passed through the archlich, the archlich was trapped within a continuous attack of extreme heat. A spell that would replenish its own health when damage was taken was used from its emergency stack instantly.
‘Ninth Circle - Mother Tree of Rot!’
However, the black tree was instantly melted from the heat of nature’s wrath as bright and hot as the core of the earth. The small bit of healing received by the removal of death was completely and utterly outweighed by the embrace of it within the heat.
‘Ninth Circle - Reconstruction!’
The last ninth circle spell stored in its stack activated, but the damage immediately undid the healing. Fortunately, with just a split second left for the archlich, it found enough time to cast an escape spell with the time bought by the two Ninth Circle spells.
‘Sixth Circle - Teleportation’
With the robe having both thinned and shortened, it seemed like only ten percent was left of the archlich. The once proud being looked nothing more than a slightly more translucent skeleton at this moment.
“Girl, listen to-”
“I’d rather not.”
She stepped on the air once again and zipped the distance of an entire football field so quickly she practically teleported forward, then a final wave of lava, lightning and debris erupted out of her sword with another horizontal slash. Just like that, the archlich, an entry-level SSS rank creature, perished. All because of its avarice to hunt down a former Hero.
There was no grand celebration or fanfare when the figure once known as Archmage Gradias, a revolutionary in human magic when he was still alive, died for the second time. The world moved on just like that.
“Archmage Seraphina, you can take the barrier down now, we shoul- oh, Noah’s calling me with that talisman I gave him.”
“...Before that, would you like a healing spell?”
"Oh! Thank you! I don't know if I need it though..."
"I insist. I'm not looking forward to nightmares for the next week."