Before the two could do anything questionable, Forus forcefully grabbed Ocelia's hand and used her remaining hand to form the silent gesture, causing Ocelia to halt his movement and looked at Forus confusingly.
"The weaker fire spirits that I sent out, they are all gone." Forus frowned as she spoke. The little monsters that she used as the scouts had the power of the first-layered sorcerer apprentice, which could survive in the ordinary wildness.
However, once the darkness had eclipsed the world, all of them that didn't return fast enough had vanished without any knowledge of the assailants. This new information had contradicted the previous prediction that the world was lacking in life.
Observing the vast darkness that encompassed the space around the icy bonfire, neither Forus nor Ocelia could sense anything beyond their world of light. The couple could hear the mocking resounded from the abyss, echoing around the boundary of reality and illusion.
Looking at the thoughtful expression on Forus, Ocelia snapped his finger before sending out the small icicle that she had created into the darkness. Once the blindness had engulfed the icicle, its connection also broke from Ocelia's mind and silently vanished.
Seeing the strangeness of the situation, Forus and Ocelia immediately changed their priority and guarded the icy bonfire closely, not letting anything came close. If the abyssal environment engulfed them, there would be no guarantee that they wouldn't end up like the previous victims, quietly vanished into thin air.
Quietly, the calm melody travelled from the darkness, uplifting the gloomy atmosphere. The sound from the untraceable music box would occasionally repeat its song or sounded distort due to its poor condition. Accompanied by the soft tone, a feminine voice would sing her verse without end, giving the tone life and blowing the worry of the listeners away.
Inside the dome of light, Forus and Ocelia had practically stood back to back, eyeing the surrounding intensely without any intermission, dreading the entities of the night. The worrying aspect of this situation was the lack of knowledge about the monsters. With the combined memory of Forus Ander and Ocelia Coruscare, the two still couldn't find any description that could be about this monster.
Just when Forus opened her mouth to say something, the darkness that waited outside of the region of luminosity abruptly shook. The instance the darkness shuddered, a string of flaming needle and icy spear accurately hit the said spot. However, the two spells also suffered the same fate as their predecessors, getting absorbed into the blackness before directly disappeared.
Supported along with the tone of the music box and the lady singer, a series of laughter emerged from the darkness, toying with the hopeless little humans. A large hand pushed the boundary between the light and dark away as it slowly advanced towards the source of light. If it could reach the bonfire, all hope would die down as soon as the light faded away.
As if it was the warcry, several smaller shadows also broke the barrier of light and advancing towards the couple, desiring to rip their soul apart and tortured them indefinitely.
Forus immediately swiped her hand downwards, touching the greyish ground with her sorcery-empowered hand. The spell formation activated itself when Forus infused the sorcery into it, actualising the leaning tower into existence. The tower immediately opened its gate, letting the fire spirits of various power to battle against the shadows.
However, the weaker spirits of the first floor would get absorbed by the larger shadows once they touched the said spirits, eating away the fire like they were just snacks. Only the flame of the third floor and fourth floor could chase and burn the shadows off, forcing them to retreat into the shadows.
Overseeing the situation, Forus felt her heart jumped as she turned her vision towards Ocelia. The man was struggling against the terrible shadow that had four limbs and numerous tentacles as its legs, and Ocelia was loosing. His body slowly degenerated by the darkness as Forus watched his skin turned pitch-black.
Although the process was painful, Ocelia didn't even sweat when he got hit by the black limb of the monster, perfectly keeping his calm in the face of the death. Without any second thought, Forus immediately finished her spells and sent out three icy spears towards the monster, forcing it into the defensive stance.
Due to its agile tentacles, the monster could easily avoid the spears, successfully getting out of the assault without any disadvantage. However, it also retreated away from Ocelia, whom Forus had resued and was currently standing behind her shadow. Strangely, the freak looked at Forus, showing apparent confusion with body language.
Forus saw the monster reached its limb in anticipant of something before feeling pain at her back. In reflex, she twisted her body before pulling out a dagger she had hidden to slice the attacker that stabbed her back, before jumping away to the safe distance. Forus could see that the previous wounded Ocelia had stood still and silent, with a smile that ripped his mouth apart from one ear to another, leaking out grey blood as he laughed maniacally.
Without any shadow to relay on, Ocelia quickly melted away as he licked the blood from his hand, savouring the test of the fresh blood, which hadn't appeared since time unknown to others.
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In dazed, Forus sprinted towards the bonfire and used its freezing flame to froze her skin, examining the sensation of pain as she discerned that something was suppressing her senses. Before her eyes, the thin layer of darkness that had previously stuck on her eyeballs began to melt away, returning her vision to the truth.
The black freak was formerly Ocelia that was winning against the monster, which explained why it looked at Forus weirdly after getting attacked by her.
After regaining her vision, Forus and Ocelia grasped their hand together, sensing that their connection was more intimate than ever. Savouring the moment of comfort, the string of fate that previously slumbered suddenly awaken as soon as the imprint of love activated itself.
The two lonely souls began to tangle with each other, sharing the feelings, emotions, memories and thoughts collectively, letting each other took control of the physical bodies.
"Looked closely, dear Ocelia. I shall teach you how to control and use the Death Aura." As if Forus was the teacher and Ocelia was the student, Forus slowly raised the hand of the male body, letting Ocelia felt the process of chanting and the thought that ran through Forus when she was performing the spell of the Death Aura.
The deadly black flame began to expand under the manipulation of Forus, burning away the flesh and skin of the male body. Although the previous times Forus used it, he would feel constant pain, but this time, Forus and Ocelia could only feel the warming sensation of the flame, brightening the spirits of the two and calming their soul.
The burning flare of Death Aura would not release heat or cold wind but would cause everything under its influence to decay and rot away. Aiming at the large shadowy hand, Forus used his filthy hand to grasp at the air in front of him, creating the crumbling rays of black flame that shot towards the hazy claws, piecing into them forcefully.
The hand unexpectedly took the hit head-on. However, it violently struggled after it recognised that the power within the light was strange enough to affect it, stretching its pure-black skin, dropping a drop of liquid on the ground.
The sound of the music box spontaneously turned distorted and high-pitched, resembling the screaming of countless souls integrated into one. The singer also stopped her verse and began to cry, sounding hoarse and misleading, as if her voice was emotionless.
The sound of mocking also died down, turning into the pitiful cry of the unfortunate beings. The change in the atmosphere caused the shadowy monsters to retreat, fearing the wrath of the angered one. The hand that got damaged by the Death Aura froze still in the air, releasing the sinister aura stronger than before.
One after another, the fused soul watched as undeterminable greyish eyeballs manifested in the darkness, looking intensely at the bonfire. They could feel the crazed power that hid behind the night, waiting for the cage of light to break down and consume the world into the abyss again.
The hand slowly moved again after the pause, meeting with the manipulator of Death Aura directly. Like before, Forus and Ocelia created the black light and sent it travelling towards the mighty hand, crashing into the stated hand, transferring the shocking impact into the surrounding, causing the icy bonfire to flicker.
However, this time, the hand accurately grasped the speed of the light, catching it with its fingers before pinching it into nothingness. The shock wave sent outwards and dimmed the fire even more.
The shadow cast by the black hand vibrated faintly, extending from the ground and built itself into various lines, forming the blackish tendrils. They rapidly devoured the weaker fire spirits and fought to the standstill with the stronger fire spirits, altering the situation to worsen more than before.
Although the two could use their Death Aura to stall for time or, with some preparation and sacrifice, annihilated the shadowy hand, that would have used too much of their precious sorcery energy, forcing them into their weakest state. The potions were gradually decreasing like water due to their crisis, and they would use them all in less than a month.
Conjuring another light, Forus willed the male body to aim at the hand again. However, the sudden interruption of chaotic information disrupted the body's rhythms, causing it to slow down and released the light at the wrong timing, exploding in front of the male body and burnt the foul hand into ashes.
The tentacles exploded toward the absent-minded feminine body, using that moment of failure to wrap around her and struck her body, devouring her with its abyssal power. The skin that made contact with the corrupting tentacles would turn dull and lost all energy, becoming like all things in the realm, lifeless and soulless.
The fusion between souls was powerful and mystical, but the aspects of the soul were not something the lowly first-ranked sorcerers could peek into its secrets. Only with the mystic features of the imprint of love and the mysterious force within the grey soul could the two fuse with each other. However, the sorcery energy required to power the fusion was too much for the reserve of the two first-ranked sorcerers.
The symptom of dizziness was just the beginning of the consequences of using something beyond one's power. If Forus and Ocelia couldn't finish the battle quick enough, the two souls might irreversibly merge and become one, fusing the two personalities and two memories into one.
Sensing the depletion of the sorcery energy, Forus decisively burnt all of the male body with the Death Aura and disregarded the icy bonfire, jumping towards the hand and punched at it. The speck of black flame would fly outwards as the strikes landed, burning the bothersome tentacles that couldn't avoid the blaze in time.
In the meantime, Ocelia also controlled her feminine body and unleashed the flaming breeze that scorched all the tentacles on her body before she gritted her teeth at the pain of cutting the grey flesh out of her body. The dull skin would never heal and would need to be cut off. With many of the healing potions, she could quickly heal the missing tissue.
During the chaos, the sound of the music box steadily grew louder, turning more calming and soothing. The echo of the melody instantly drove the tentacles crazy, twisting violently before disregarding their fear and charged at the couple without any hesitation. The calming harmony also manifested the formless pressure onto the pair of sorcerers, causing their movement to slow down and their flow of sorcery energy to stall.
The hoarse cry slowly turned into silence and once again began to sing her chorus, brimming with passion and emotions. The voice of the lady would cause the body of the two to experience the happiness and relaxation, alleviating their mind with the relaxing song, weighing on their soul, telling them to let go of the pain and embrace the nighttime.
The night, which was full of love and joy, hate and fear, would continue. At the end, who would remain the same?