He reveled in the silence, enjoying the absence of booming explosions and crackling fires in his surroundings. He doubted he would be able to hear much if there were, though, being fairly certain that his eardrums had burst at some point during that last battle. He had been so focused on surviving, lost in the plans and maneuvers of battle that he hadn't even noticed when it happened.
He slowly lowered himself to the ground, using his axe as a crutch as his control over his body flickered. His Spirit was even more exhausted than he was, having been shaped into forms far from the ones it was naturally meant to take many a time. The last use of his Power had actually cancelled half way through, though he had already re-merged with the remnants of the Spirit left in his weapon after that last attack.
He would allow himself, and it, a bit of time to recover but he had to remind himself that it wasn't over yet. Ander Phyris' Title had clued him onto the existence of the Lich's Phylactery. He would have to find and destroy it or else the enemy that had almost brought his death would be raised from its grave again and in his current state he knew he wouldn't be able to beat it again.
His injuries weren't too bad, and quite a bit of his Stamina was restored thanks to the Healing and Recovery effects associated with increasing your Stats through a Level Up, but his mind was utterly spent after that last gambit. He wasn't sure how many Levels he had gained for emerging victorious, but the Willpower gains weren't enough to refresh his emptied motivation enough to even lift a finger.
Eventually, he could justify delaying no longer and slowly picked himself up off the ground. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he still had to look or else he would be trapped down here until the Lich came back to make him one of its minions. He shuffled along, first inspecting the ritual table and everything on it before hobbling away to search the rest of the hall. There has been some interesting things on the slab, but now wasn't the time to be checking them out. Not when he was on a time limit.
The pillars and the areas around them proved to similarly be a bust, and the alcoves along the walls of the room proved to be empty as well. He was starting to think it wasn't anywhere nearby and he'd have to search the entire length of the catacombs for it when he had an idea. He'd been trying to consider things from the Lich's perspective but that had just led him to think the Phylactery would be on the complete other side of the Catacombs until he remembered the ritual it had been trying to complete to break out.
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If he was split in two, then he wouldn't want to just free one part of himself, he'd want both parts unchained from the dungeon. That thought led him to where he was currently standing, in front of the stone slab the Necromancer had been doing itd ritual on. He cleared the various bits from the top of it, lamenting the loss of his pockets since most of his clothes had been hacked apart or reduced to ash, and readied his axe. Then, with a heave, he brought it down and shattered the slab apart. The stones tumbled to the ground, revealing that it was hollow and contained a construct of bone that glowed blue with a concealed light.
It looked almost like a birdcage with how the bones were arranged, and a flickering blue flame hung, suspended in its centre. It was quite dim at the moment but as he observed it he noticed that it was slowly growing brighter over time. Comparing its luminosity to the light that had come from within the Lich's skull he worked out that it was about a third of the way towards resurrecting it, which gave him a short while to work out if he wanted to do something other than destroy it.
[Analyze] returned nothing but question marks when he used it on the object, but Liam noticed that some of the runes carved into the bone inside the cage glowed slightly when he made the attempt. Whilst runes that concealed things from [Analyze] would certainly be useful to know, he knew that he would be unable to use them to anywhere near the level of the Necromancer since his Path did not align with them and he was sure that none of his Progenitor Titles included runes in their scope for boosting his talents.
In the end, he realised he couldn't afford the risk of Ander Phyris resurrecting and cleanly split the Phylactery in two, scattering the flames inside. It was surprisingly brittle for such an important object, but he figured that there had to be some drawbacks to the ability to come back from the dead or else the Multiverse would be infested by swarms of Lich's and whatever the equivalent for the other Paths were.
As soon as the flame was truly gone, he felt a tug from the weapon in his hand. A faint feeling of hunger and desire radiated off the axe, making it's want for the Phylactery's remains known. He wanted to feed it what it wanted but he knew that if he jumped the gun and it evolved from eating the bones in front of him, then it would be more picky about the veritable banquet that lay scattered around the hall and might not make the most of it. After all, there was no guarantee that he would be running into creatures with such, apparently, delicious bones once he got out of this place.
So he went around the hall, starting from what he remembered to be the weakest enemy and worked his way up feeding them to his axe until he got to the Lich, and then it's Phylactery. After it ate that, it seemed satiated and began to form a bright white, crystalline cocoon to evolve in. Liam grinned and laid it down so it could complete its transformation in piece, only to be startled when a notification appeared in front of him.
[Do you wish to Soulbound this Armament?]
[Yes/No]