My body jerked into life as the blood splattered on the ground and flowed back into my head, chunks of flesh and bones being magically attracted to my body. Even before my brain had reconstructed, my body already was standing up.

En’yen turned back hastily in surprise, unsure of what was he looking at. A macabre display of gore and death. But above all else, impossible.

The High Arcanist silently observed me, still like his Violet Sky, as I ended up resurrecting.

Alatea’s original spell, Resurrection, lived up to its name. I had defied death. And not simple death like the one I had had on the leyline. In that instance my body had given out, coming back to life was as easy as bumping my heart and brain into motion again by puppeteering it through my soul as a proxy. Yet with this spell, I could even grow a crucial organ like the brain in a matter of seconds.

If the soul remained in this world, death was only a nuisance.

The spell wasn’t without its faults though. I felt incredibly tired, and my physical body had been stripped of all its remaining mana. I was only working now with my soul mana pool.

“How did...” I didn’t entertain Yagul’s questions as I materialized my soul into the physical plane.

A singularity was formed and my soul slithered in tendrils, navigating in a sea of lavender as I had already doused the surroundings with my mana.

Yagul reacted fast, more than I would have liked. My soul tendrils collided against his defenses, ten-star magic. Those weren’t his passive spells, but he had spellcasted them as an afterthought. I wouldn’t be able to penetrate his defenses if he could just counter everything I had. And I no longer had the surprise factor.

Whatever spell he had used before to instantly kill me, it looked like he couldn’t use it again, or at least on short notice.

I began casting Resurrection once more. Something told me I would need the spell more than just once.

Three more Leyline Beams shot out from the High Arcanist’s staff, meaning it was his limit rather than an arbitrary number. It took me a millisecond to spellcast the Slow Fall synergy and shot myself out of the way with force cantrips.

Maybe every spell he used was deadly, but En’yen Yagul didn’t have a great aim or combat instincts. Marissa was faster, Adrian was more graceful, and Fynn more menacing.

Putting inhuman strain on my legs with the aid of Renew, my muscles reinvigorated and gave me that extra push to rush at the High Arcanist with unprecedented speeds. I was currently near-weightless, and the force of my legs was enough to shatter craniums.

Obviously, it would be impossible to defeat a twelve-star mage in melee combat, the passive defenses would absolutely annulate any physical damage I dealt as if it had never happened.

No, my intentions weren’t to dropkick his face, no matter how enticing that prospect may be, but to get close to him.

En’yen took a shy step back by reflex, not having expected a mage to engage in melee combat, but he instantly reinforced his footing and stated his ground. It was clear that I couldn’t hurt him with my body.

That didn’t stop my tendrils from thrashing at him, though.

The physicalized soul violently attacked the deep purple defensive spells, small sparks of arcane lightning splashing around with each strike.

I knew they were useless. More soul mana flooded the hall.

My intention was to defeat him the same way he did to Fynn: with raw mana.

Unlike the mana poisoning from the arcane mana of the leylines, soul mana wasn’t inherently toxic, but it did thin the barrier between planes and allowed me to assault other souls with ease. Or in this case, with less difficulty.

I was one meter away; I extended my hand to touch him. En’yen didn’t allow it. A pulse of unadulterated leyline mana shot from him as the epicenter, the shockwave sending me flying.

That had been a complex spell, even if it didn’t look like it. It wasn’t just a knockback spell, the leyline mana in my body had shot up to dangerous levels. Probably what he had used to end with Fynn.

Then it came to my mind. En’yen wasn’t just an arcanist, but also a leyline walker.

If he remained next to the artificial leyline, he would be free to throw around as much mana as he wanted whilst also poisoning me in the process. Such power wasn’t without its price, though. Slowly, En’yen’s body was building up poisoning, and considering he had been fighting against Fynn for hours. If I could push him to the limit...

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Resurrection’s cast wasn’t near to being finished, but I put it on the back burner to cast another spell. I needed to make En’yen think I had him against the ropes.

For a brief instant, I regretted focusing this heavily on healing magic, but that didn’t mean I slacked on my offense either. Alatea could only offer me healing spells but I, unfortunately, had two mentors.

Eygaz didn’t teach me any new spells, the man hated me with his guts, but I still had access to the dynastic library of the Houtz during these fifty days.

Most spells Eygaz had written on the anthology, the keyword here being: most.

Soul spells tended to orbit around healing, but there still were a handful of offensive ones. The dynastic library’s best and most powerful spell was Phylactery Bonding, as well as the only spell of the eleventh star the imperial family had.

But there were some other ten-star spells besides Mystic’s Dominion.

But only one of those spells was of offensive nature. It was a spell so stupid, inefficient, and wasteful that a person would only cast it as a last resort.

I was that person.

I ebbed the mana in my soul and flowed it unto the corporeal plane. This spell was expensive, but it had an advantage. It had a short casting time. Extremely short. It was a ten-star spell, but it only took me three seconds to cast it.

The lavender tendrils gathered on top of En’yen, the sudden movement distracting him for the length of a blink of an eye, but enough.

I empowered the spell with everything in my arsenal, not only mana as fuel but also my soul (as I had done with my minefield), Mystic’s Dominion flared to give it even more power, but I didn’t end there. There was still one more resource at my disposal. I opened my mouth as a pillar of lavender swirled around the High Arcanist.

And I shouted.

“Requiem!”

A river of a single soul descended upon the arcanist.

En’yen was able to spellcast an eleven-star barrier, a defense normally unbreakable for basically every mage in the world, and the same was true for me.

But I didn’t need to break his defenses.

Like Necrotic Bolt, Requiem operated in both planes and no matter how strong it was that eleven-star spell, it surely couldn’t block an attack coming from multiple planes as a singularity did.

The High Arcanist screamed in pain.

The screeching suffering was like music to my ears. It was well worth it having spent a tenth of my spiritual mana pool in a single cast. People had non-existent soul defenses, even mages. If Saphar Nay lost consciousness because my soul had done as little as grazed him, how would an inexperienced mage in spiritual attacks react to the might of a soul-fueled, dominion and Xenoglossia-empowered ten-star spell?

After another three seconds passed and the maelstrom of souls generated by Requiem dissipated allowing me to have a look at the afflicted High Arcanist.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Blood came out of En’yen’s mouth, and he looked at a rough state, but he was standing up and very much conscious. He gave me an odious gaze.

My blood froze.

This shouldn’t be possible! Even Fynn reacted badly to Astral Self, and whilst it was a nine-star spell, it wasn’t an offensive kind. Requiem should have put En’yen out of commission!

“That’s it,” Yagul muttered as he cleared the blood out of his mouth with his sleeve.

The leyline behind him shone with a greater radiance than before, the flow of mana coming out of it suddenly increased fivefold.

My body screamed to run away, but my soul was more cynical. There was nowhere to run.

The High Arcanist opened his mouth, the words irradiating with power. Xenoglossia.

“Arcane Providence!”

And the world turned purple as the leyline shifted. The leyline, which until now looked like a simple stream of water or an upwards-falling waterfall now bifurcated into a thousand branches like a tree canopy.

Some of the branches redirected into En’yen. The leyline branches acted like my tendrils, but stiffer, he didn’t have as much control over them. The reason why that was the case was obvious.

The High Arcanist, along with his staff, shone in arcane radiance. An aura of deep purple surrounded him, and it looked incredibly lethal.

I didn’t know what the spell did, but anywhere near him was a very bad idea.

This time, it was En’yen who lunged at me.

And I didn’t have time to move away.

The twelve-star arcanist extended his arm and grabbed me by the neck in a tight lock as he rose me up. How can he be this strong? It was impossible for me to breathe, but it wasn’t like that would kill me. I thrashed around trying to get out of his yoke, even clawing with my tendrils, but the man ignored me.

“I see that you are a healer, a mystic,” En’yen said with a voice it didn’t sound ellari anymore, “but you are also an arcanist. Unfortunately for you, I command the Arcane. How will you fare without your affinity?”

Before I could even ask what he was talking about, I felt something pull on my very being. The essence of what defined me felt stretched out, imaginary strands of violet lingering around. I felt my energies being drained out, and after the High Arcanist was satisfied, he threw me like an old wet piece of cloth.

I impacted the ground with a crouching sound, but that physical pain didn’t matter to me. My soul was in turmoil, and my head was spinning around. I lost control of my body for an instant, and bile came out of my mouth followed by vomit. The stench and the dizziness felt somewhat familiar.

As I tried to stand, to no avail, I discovered what Yagul had done. And I couldn’t believe it.

“HAHAHAHA!” I laughed.

“You finally lost your mind?” The twelve-star mage asked uninterestedly. “Not surprising after losing a part of yourself.”

The High Arcanist had removed my Arcane affinity. Not fully removed, it was still there, but it was meaningless, even compared to the already decreased high-superb level. I didn’t understand how he did it – probably part of that spell he spellcasted – and I couldn’t care.

“You fucking moron,” I said between laughs as I stood up, bile pouring out of my mouth.

En’yen looked at me quizzically, he surely hadn’t expected that response.

My body began to heal at unprecedented rates, my soul tendrils becoming more tangible and thrashing at higher speeds. I could truly only laugh.

“You removed my Arcane affinity to intimidate me.” I wiped the vomit out of my face with the remaining sleeve I had. “But you only made me stronger!”

Arcane was removed from my soul.

The battle had ended.

Stability had been achieved.

Soul won.

My soul grew and grew, faster than it ever had. It was no longer limited by another affinity. I would have once feared such expansion, such uncontrollable and violent movements, but now I could only be elated. Excited by such unstoppable growth.

I had reached new, unprecedented highs. A compatibility with the element most mages could only dream of, let alone even approach. My affinity was no longer superb-true.

I had true Soul affinity.