The spell, 'Ninth Circle - Ninth Hell: Cocytus,' manifested a horrific, icy realm that encapsulated the area, threatening to envelop everything in the isolated world in a frigid tomb. The intense cold clashed with the searing heat of the Hellflame Arrows, creating a tempestuous whirl of steam and ice shards.
The archlich, at the center of this cataclysm, stood unflinching as the Annihilation beams approached, his dark robe fluttering in the tumultuous air.
The Hellflame arrows had come to stop at the edge of the influence of Cocytus, clearly unable to break through the rampaging winds of piercing cold that increased in ferocity the closer the arrows approached the archlich. The varying velocity of the arrows fired by the mages of slightly different levels of skill littered a hemispheric area below and to the sides of the archlich, but even the fastest and largest arrows couldn't even reach the robes of the archlich.
The archlich was now forced into a situation where moving downwards or side to side too quickly was impossible since the winds would not shift the arrows away quickly enough to prevent contact, and upwards was even more out of the realm of possibility due to the isolation of the barrier ceiling almost directly above it.
Like a nail that had stuck out, it had been held in place, and now the hammers were coming to nail it down.
The beams of annihilation were as thick as a person pierced through Cocytus like a bullet through jelly.
‘Seventh Circle - Isola-’
Too late!
An attempt was made to use the spell that currently served as its cage of execution to defend itself, but even the ridiculous casting speed of the archlich could not match up to the blade that had already begun its descent towards its neck.
The annihilation beams converged at the location of the archlich and compounded its already devastating destructiveness.
At the location of the convergence of the beams, it unified into a single beam of absolution, explosively multiplied in thickness, and continued to smash into the isolation barrier. Seraphina instantly felt her mana halve as the isolation barrier begged for more mana to survive.
Meanwhile, the arch was flustered. It was enraged; it was confused.
The archlich had looked down on the mages that seriously fired an annihilating beam and hellflame arrows towards itself. When the archlich first noticed that these attacks had been fired towards itself, it was suspicious of some kind of plan. After all, it was common knowledge, especially for mages, that lich types were invulnerable to such attacks. Hence, in its caution, it had avoided the Hellflame arrows. However, the archlich couldn't help but be filled with a sense of disappointment when annihilation was used on it following the Hellflame beams, suggesting that the mages had planned to trap it all along, meaning the movement of the archlich had been anticipated.
This could only have been so if the mages seriously believed that the archlich would attempt some sort of life-saving measure for the hellflame arrows that would trap it.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
As if the mages believed that the archlich would be in actual danger.
‘It seems the knowledge of the arcane has fallen since my age. Disappointing.’
Thought the archlich, as it took the annihilating beams head-on.
The archlich, which had no pain receptors, calmly stood in the center of the beams, anticipating the reaction of the mages who would realize that their meticulous planning was all for naught in the face of the invulnerability of the embodiment of the peak of human magic.
Was what was supposed to happen.
However, the archlich that looked down noticed its field of vision to be larger than it should have been.
It was almost as if its overflowing robe had been shortened.
No, its field of view was still expanding, so was the robe evaporating?
‘But that couldn't be…that would mean I would be…taking damage! Damnation! Did they get my hands on my…!’
A quarter of the robe was gone now. And it was at this point that Draven slowly pointed upwards, with a subtle smirk on his face—an attitude characteristic of Noah.
The desperate archlich looking for answers caught this movement of the archmage and flicked his gaze to the ceiling of the sphere above itself, despite still being roasted by the blinding annihilation. If the archlich had a face on its skull, it would be wearing one of horrified expectation, as if it already expected to see a certain sight.
“How? How?! How did they get hands on my phylactery?!”
The angered screams of the archlich was inaudible over the roars of the converging beams, that sounded like the takeoff of a jet, only louder.
The pitch-black, tennis ball-like, directly indestructible phylactery floated on the center of the ceiling of the isolation barrier by Seraphina, outside the barrier. Though such magic had not existed when the archlich was a human archmage, it was able to make inferences based on its experience with magic.
‘All magic in this space carries the influence of my phylactery, allowing their attacks to reach me. They've applied a principle to this space...this isolation barrier really is a replica of the Lord's demiplane! They had the audacity to…to insult His Eminence with a cheap copy! How dare…How dare they!’
The archlich was not one to lose his cool so quickly, though it was true that it was upset. It was intentionally letting its emotions run rampant—an easy task now that it had a valid reason to do so.
‘Ninth Circle - Mother Tree of Rot!’
When negative emotions intersected with dying men, this spell birthed a tree that amplified the process that caused it.
It was usually an area of effect spell most effective on armies in war by nourishing the tree with the death and despair on the battlefield, then aiming its amplified products at the battlefield that nourished the tree. A hundred deaths would become a thousand, and those deaths would become ten thousand. This cycle would stop once all life on the battlefield ceased. The blackened tree that was born would touch the heavens after the extermination of entire armies, a silent reminder of the tragedy that had occurred.
The spell could, however, also be nourished with just one target, and death wasn't necessary, only the process of dying.
It happened right as the annihilation spells finally died down.
The dying archlich also nourished the tree with its rampaging negative emotions, and a tree roughly a meter tall sprouted from the back of the archlich.
This was when Cocytus died down. The suspended Hellflame arrows accelerated to their previous speed and crashed into the archlich, adding to another reduction by roughly five percent of the archlich's robe, bringing the total damage to half of the archlich's robe by the mages. At this sight, some of the more keen mages and the two archmages grew wary, though the others began inwardly celebrating.
“Draven, that was a voluntary dispel of Cocytus…right?”
“Yes. He might be trying something.”
Draven and Lirael were correct.
The archlich wanted to nourish ‘the process of dying’ with more damage to itself.
There was no other warning.
A dozen blackened wooden tendrils, the roots of the Mother Tree of Rot, shot out through multiple different locations on the robes of the archlich.
With the speed and ruthless nature of lightning, they found their targets below them, even though the farthest target was up to a hundred meters below it.
The targets?
Hearts.