The world trembled as the sky was set alight with unnatural color. The sound of rapid explosions seemed to reverberate across the entire planet as two figures flitted through the air, flinging vivid projectiles at each other without pause. They flew across entire acres of land in moments. This duel, though impossible to observe from the surface, was, without a doubt, the pinnacle of the arcane.
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Beryl scowled as she teleported for what seemed like the millionth time as she narrowly avoided a shotgun blast of stardust, which would’ve been fatal if it would’ve landed, just like every other attack the Celestial was launching towards her. Forming the high level magic circle has become reflex at this point, which was pretty much the baseline for contending with an opponent that absorbs mana out of the atmosphere at nearly 25 times the rate of her own body. Even with her Prismatic Barrage constantly attacking the glowing blue extraterrestrial, her opponent consistently outmaneuvers the onslaught and still finds the time to respond in kind with a variety of spells, all of which Beryl has ascertained would break through any sort of barrier she put up due to the difference in mana density and rip through her fragile human body. Thus, the battle has been in a stalemate for the last 10 or so hours.
After what felt like an eternity of combat, Beryl finally formed the last piece of her internal circuit. In between every single skirmish, she had been preparing an incredible number of compact magic circles to circulate the mana inside of her body. The entire reason she was dragging the battle across the entirety of Iakkucyre was so that she could cast her spells with the naturally occurring mana in the atmosphere instead of her own reserves. As soon as the Celestial teleported again to continue assaulting her, she cut off all of her other spells and allowed the mana expended on her flight and barrage to be added to the rapidly accelerating flow of mana that encompassed her entire body.
In the blink of an eye, she channeled that highly energized arcane energy into one circle. As she began falling from the sky during the channeling process, Beryl suddenly felt an immense pressure assault her whole body, rapidly speeding up her descent towards the ground. It took her entire focus to not drop her finishing move in the face of the Celestial’s crushing intent. The circle activated, unleashing a torrential, blinding beam of multicolored light that devoured the Celestial whole. As soon as she felt the mana eraser’s presence disappear, Beryl deactivated the circle, then she quickly moved to avoid–
Suddenly, it was very dark, then something hit the back of her head, making her black out instantaneously.
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Sleepy. Groggy. Tired. Cold. Lethargic. Sluggish. Cold. Heavy. Cold-
Beryl’s eyelids lazily fluttered open as she groaned in discomfort. “What the heck? Why did I fall asleep here?” Beryl liked sleeping as much as the next girl – maybe more, actually – but this spot was positively unbearable. She couldn’t see a thing! That couldn’t be good for her resting respiratory rate. If she wanted to sleep during work hours, she would’ve looked for… “Wait. What was I doing again?” Confusion overtook discomfort as she tried to sit up, but something was pinning her in her resting position. Beryl tried to conjure up a small mote of light centralized on her finger, but her mana wasn’t moving according to her will. “That’s mighty annoying. Curse you, morning mana.” Thus, she did the next best thing and focused her senses on her surroundings to try and draw mana from them instead. After focusing on her arcane sense, she realized that the area around her was dense with mana. When she utilized it to light up the room, it flowed easily and without much resistance. As she looked around (and by that I meant rotating her head as much as she could), it appeared that she was completely surrounded by packed dirt and rock. There was barely any wiggle room and no indicator of how she even ended up in the soil. “Well, first thing’s first. Gotta get out of here.” She projected a magic circle upon the earth with a relatively simple force spell, and after activating it, the ground practically rocketed upwards, and after a few seconds she was able to see sunlight shining through the circular hole in the ceiling.
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A moment later, Beryl was launched out of the pit– and landed face first into the grass as the spell she was preparing to catch her fizzled out. After spitting out the detritus that managed to get in her mouth, she took stock of her current situation. She was currently in a forest that she didn’t recognize, with immense trees that were sparsely spread out. The sun, as well as the small glowing solis that orbited it, were illuminating the environment undeterred, as there were no clouds in the sky. No sign of the celestial she was fighting earlier. Probably disintegrated, but that’s something to confirm later. She dusted the rest of the soil off of her outfit and used the closest tree to conjure a mirror.
Even though she was most certainly just buried in the ground, she looked fine, all things considered. Her robe was still glimmering blue, with simple diamond patterns embroidered into its hems. Her face was pale ivory with soft emerald eyes, a petite yet sharp nose, and a pair of thin lips currently drawn in a tight line of concentration. When she tried to detect the mana around her, the air around her was… completely devoid of mana. It was incomparable to the amount of mana in the earth. Concerning. “Something to investigate later, I guess.” She turned her focus inwards to assess her own mana, and… “What the hell?” The state of arcane energy inside her body was bizarre, to say the least. Typically, the mana that resides in living creatures is stagnant, it’s absorbed passively from the environment and is used by the caster whenever they invoke a magic circle.
The mana inside of Beryl was decidedly not that. At first glance, it appeared to simply permeate through her entire body, but upon closer inspection, the mana was moving insanely fast. The series of circles that she used to cycle her mana through her entire body seemed completely intact, forcing the arcane energy into a loop that encompassed her entire anatomy. She wasn’t entirely sure what exactly it was doing, but she could feel that it wasn’t entirely inert, nor would it respond to her attempts to harness it. At the speed it was moving, it would be incredibly dangerous to implement a magic circle directly on the conduit because the effects would be amplified by an obscene amount. She estimated it would be moving at about…
“Wait a sec.” If she can’t use her mana, and the mana in the atmosphere was too scarce to use for spells, while stranded in completely unknown territory, then…
“Crap.”