Selicia kept searching until she found him, a tiny black speck between massive flares and debris. She couldn't tell if he was still alive or not, the lack of movement said something at least.
'Dammit, Magic Vision isn't giving me anything, the mana is more chaotic here, it's just a massive maelstrom ...', without a choice, she descended for a bit before deciding it would be better to be invisible, yet the moment she activated her spell, her camouflage came undone by the chaotic magic in the air.
Here, the mana churned ceaselessly, as though an unseen force was deliberately fanning the flames of its chaos.
Her camouflage interacted with her surroundings, if one was in chaos, the other would in turn join them. It would be difficult to conjure any kind of spell that needed a certain structure since it would most definitely break.
Seeing no other choice, she summoned her dagger laced with a deadly poison and landed far away from she assumed to be Lucas. There weren't any unique features on a scorched body, making it difficult to identify.
The air reeked of scorched earth and burnt flesh, each breath a sharp reminder of the inferno enveloping them. Taking no chances, she summoned a Pure Mana Spear and threw it.
It landed on the corpse's back, penetrating it. She stood there, watching as the body didn't react in the slightest and the spear slowly lost its form due to the surroundings breaking it apart bit by bit.
Since there was no reaction, she checked to see if the wound would be healed up instantly, yet the gaping wound stayed as blood slowly flowed out.
As she stepped closer she noticed the massive dried blood stain around the body as if it bled out multiple times. The amount of blood was more than what a human body could've contained.
'The heat must've evaporated it.', she tried to stay as calm as possible, but her heart still feared the worst. She knew what he was capable off, was this truly it?
Every step felt heavier than the last, her dagger ready but her instincts screaming to retreat. What if the charred body was just a decoy, a snare set by a man too cunning to die?
Judging by the amount of blood that covered the place it seemed that he had tried to replenish his blood as it drained from the cracks in his blackened skin. 'I've seen this more than once, this is a classic case of a desperate mage trying to keep living. He's dead, he has to be. There's nothing to be afraid of, what can a dead body do to you?'
As she took her first step on the dried blood stain, she instantly backed up and readied herself. Since the blood was created through magic, there was a high chance for it to be a trap.
She tried to inspect it, but her magic vision was sadly useless in this place, everything was covered in mana, there was no way to distinguish between different types or origins.
Nothing happened as the flames around them kept on draining the life out of the surroundings. She swallowed her spit as she slapped herself.
'He's dead, he has to be. Or else you would've already attacked me, right? Right?! Yeah, that's it! You can't attack because you're already gone from this world. My plan worked, and you fell right into my trap! I know I'm right!'
But even as she said that, her body stayed in the exact same place, not moving an inch forward. Gathering the courage she took a step forward again.
'You're dead, a Rank 3 would be dead, you're nothing compared to them. You're dead!'
Nothing happened.
She took another step, her foot landing on the edge of the dried blood stain.
Nothing happened.
'See, nothing happened, I'm just walking towards a corpse.', she took another smaller step towards the steaming corpse.
Nothing happened
'I knew it, I knew it!', she took another step, and another one, each step bringing her a little closer to the corpse of her target. Each step solidified her belief that he was already long gone.
Step, step, step, each one increasing slightly in speed, giving her more and more adrenaline as she kept moving forward.
Nothing happened.
She was confident now, 'The best place for a trap would be a few steps back, he's done for!', at a certain point she wasn't even realizing she was walking forward as all her attention was focussed on the corpse right in front of her.
The moment it would even twitch in the slightest, she would jump away and fly high.
All she needed to do was plunge the dagger into his head and everything would be over. Grabbing the knife with both hands she held it above her head and plunged it down.
As the knife came down her heart raced, but in the end, nothing happened. The knife reached the head and bore through the black charred skin before
CLANG
"Huh?", the blade collided with the head of the corpse, but after it penetrating the broken and cracked skin, it bounced off like she hit metal. Out of surprise, her heart stood still as she took a step back, landing in a puddle of liquid.
'Puddle?!', she hurriedly looked towards her feet to find all the blood flow around her heel. The blood quickly found its way along her legs, solidifying in an instant, grasping her tight.
She quickly conjured her flight and aimed her hands at the ground to summon an Ice Spear, but from the blood came two long tentacles that restricted her arms. She panicked as her movements got restricted in a split second.
Her mind went in overdrive, thinking on what she could do. Out of fear, she unleashed her aura. The tentacles seemed to falter slightly, but then suddenly grew a ton in power.
Another tentacle appeared behind her, it was sharper and contained spikes on the side. It quickly forced itself together and like a spring, shot forward and pierced her lower abdomen. She had summoned a bunch of shields, but the blood covering her legs were so fueled with chaos that nothing structured could take shape.
"Ghaah!", the tentacle pulled itself out of the stomach, grabbing something with it. The tentacle then quickly turned back into a blend of blood and mud as the other two tentacles weakened.
They started to turn back into mud as well, freeing Selicia, but she was frozen in place. Her biggest fear came true. Placing her hand on her stomach, she felt the great pain inflicted by the tentacle, but she wasn't even that worried about the pain.
Her biggest worry was the fact that she couldn't feel her core anymore. What would she do now? She was doomed to die, even if she got out of this hellhole. The fact that she was still standing proved to her that Lucas also didn't have any more energy, but neither did she.
Without her core, she couldn't use magic, and with the wound in her gut, she wasn't exactly brimming with life. Collapsing on the floor, she put pressure on her wound, but felt that it didn't even matter.
Her life as a mage was over, and her life as a human being was slowly coming to close. She didn't know how long she would be able to lie here, bleeding out. She could probably gather energy to attack Lucas again, but if her knife was useless, she had no way to attack.
Laying in a puddle of blood from both Lucas and herself, Selicia regretted coming down here so unprepared. She was certain that he would've died, yet the one on death's door is her.
It didn't take long before she felt that her life would end before the blood surrounding her gave her a tiny bit of Light mana, repairing little, but enough to live just a bit longer. Realizing the charred husk of a man next to her was keeping her alive only demotivated her.
The time passed slowly as the world around her burned away. Looking up at the Stars, there was a slight spot where there were no longer any Stars. It looked artificial and wrong, as if the world had punished her for messing with its beauty.
'All of this... for nothing... I should just...'
She took a long look at the knife before raising it above her throat. What was the point of staying alive? She could tell that Lucas kept her alive to extract information to because he wanted to toy with her. If that was the case, would he be kind towards her and put her out of her misery or torture her?
Losing strength in her hands, the knife fell beside her. Even if she had the strength to plunge it into her own heart, she didn't have the courage. She started to cry, tears gliding down her cheeks as reality finally settled in her mind.
The flames died down eventually, simply because there was nothing else to burn anymore. The fire had spread in every direction and died when the there were no more trees left.
Eventually, she heard the cracks from the black body. The first motion sent a shock through her, her breathing halting. Slowly, the cracks spread more and more as the body moved ever so slightly. His hand, stuck in position suddenly clenched tight, breaking the charcoaled layer.
Charred skin flaked away, revealing raw, steaming flesh beneath. Each motion cracked the burnt husk, releasing a pungent, stifling steam. Slowly, but steadily, the body moved, standing up, each movement accompanied by the breaking of its husk. With each crack, steam shot out.
The sound was horrifying, but the man who survived the entire trap and still managed to come out on top terrified Selicia the most. His hand reached towards his face, pulling off the black charcoaled skin, a fresh one was layered underneath.
A sticky substance still kept the two layers of skin together, so he had to pull hard. Like pulling off his own skin, the face underneath grimaced as he slowly removed piece per piece of his burned skin. A disgusting, surprisingly slimy, affair, no more, no less. The slime quickly turned into hot steam, covering the area in its pungent smell.
The smells emanating from the skin he discarded, and the fresh one were enough to force bile to rise in her throat..
"Haaah...", a long emphasized sigh, followed not long after by a scream of pure life. A testament to his desire for survival, Lucas bellowed out in anger and fury to let the world know he wouldn't be brought down just by this alone.
Ripping off the remaining pieces of skin, he was born anew, naked and hairless, with his skin still giving off a lot of steam and covered in a disgusting mucus.
Lucas inspected himself for a moment and frowned heavily when he found his rings had also been destroyed in the explosion. His precious tome and the little money and tools he had at his disposal were all nullified and gone. Even his sign of friendship with the Church of Light was demolished.
What annoyed him the most was the fact that the tome was gone, he wasn't completely finished with it yet. It was a massive loss, a genuine massive loss. It was only through the spells and adaptive nature of animals described in the tome that he even survived this whole ordeal.
Lucas stepped towards the woman on the ground, his little trap seemed to have worked perfectly.
"And here I thought I was up against a man. Looks like I'll have to rethink my preconceived values.," Lucas said calmly, as if his current situation was nothing important. He was still a naked man in front of a lady, or a maiden as she calls herself.
But Selicia was just way too terrified. Even after all that, he looked composed and was already thinking ahead. This kind of mind shouldn't exist, it was impossible to stay this calm. Her trap was extremely powerful, it didn't make any sense for him to even be alive, so Selicia had been stuck with this question for some time now.
"How?", it was quiet, as if she didn't want to speak out loud, but Lucas heard it all too well.
"How did I survive your trap? Or your decapitation attempt?", Lucas smiled wide as if he was experiencing the most liberating feeling in the world. He was the victor, he was the one that stood atop the mountain of corpses, he was the one that survived.
While he was suffering from the burn, he still prepared for her arrival, putting a bunch of traps in place. Luckily, only one was needed.
"I'm not going to waste time explaining it to you, if you paid more attention to my movements you wouldn't have been so surprised."
Lucas reached towards Selicia, she tried to back away, but only opened her wound by doing so. "Don't bother," Lucas muttered, grabbing her hand. His grip was vice-like, and she cried out as he tugged at her rings, one twisting her finger painfully as it slid off. She gasped as a loud pop signaled a dislocation.
Having her rings pulled off her fingers dislocated one of them, hurting her immensely. She had tears building up in her eyes, it was clear to her that her life would end soon, the question was how much the man in front of her would toy with her before it all came to a close.
Inspecting them one by one, he found one that contained a storage space. It contained little items that seemed to have no use and a few pieces of clothing, mostly fit for a woman of course. There were a few pieces three times her size, making them too big for Lucas to wear as well.
He grabbed what fit and dressed himself. He patted his head and felt his warm and sticky skin. Slowly but surely, hair started to grow back. It didn't take long before he was back to his normal self, although covered in a slimy mucus.
"I don't know why you're so desperate to kill me, but I lost my tome because of you. I hope you realize what you've done.", Lucas had the look of death in his eyes, the person in front of him was only of vessel filled with the waters of knowledge that he needed so badly. If all the water was drained, it would become a useless container, not worth anything.
"Your skin... The tentacles...", words kept being drowned out by the wind, or perhaps she spoke quietly, but even Lucas was having trouble understanding all her words. It was only after hearing a few keywords that Lucas interpreted her question correctly.
"And here I thought you assassins would study my past. It took a long time, but I believe I was able to replicate his spell."
Lucas spread his arms wide as he smiled, "This entire place has become infected with my aura. You see, my aura thrives on chaos and madness, making this the perfect environment for it. After some experiments I realized that fusing my aura with willpower gives birth to tentacles that try to fulfill my wish. Don't think I've been laying on the ground doing fuck all."
He took a moment to inspect the surroundings, making sure nobody else was present. "You even taught me something. Your aura contained your fear and anxieties, only strengthening my own."
His words were spoken calmly, but the amount of hatred contained within them was enough to put Selicia on guard. "Besides, my blood contained my mana, aura and willpower, it was just dried out. Reinvigorating it wasn't that hard. You're lucky I wasn't able to draw any arrays while in that state, or you would've experienced worse than just a flesh wound."
Harsh as he was, he cracked his knuckles and stepped closer to Selicia, she hurriedly held her bloodied hand out to stop him.