Lieren eyes were cold, his breathing strangely even. The furious beating of his heart as his brain worked itself like a horse was mind-bogglingly straining.
Death's Edge, the border of life and existence was within his sights.
Then, everything calmed down.
The danger was gone.
The man was dead.
The threat had been eliminated.
…And he was safe.
Rushing back to his Aegis, he felt for his pulse, realized that he did not know how to do that, and activated Manavision.
The world seemed to grow brighter and more vibrant as his eyes unconsciously drifted to his hand.
It was faint, close, and oddly comforting. As if this was how it was always meant to be.
'What.. what is this?'
Chains. Soulsteel chains stained with someone's blood wrapped around the young boy's left wirst. It was cold and inviting, eliciting an astounding premonition of power and authority. It clung to the boy's left wrist like a snake. Peering deeper with his mana-enhanced eyes, the young boy noticed that it did not actually clung to him like a snake. Rather, it was emanating from his inner self, the spiritual construct that embodied his existence… his soul.
It grew out of him, seemingly naturally. There was a… fitting sense of sovereignty contained in every loop of those chains, connecting him to his Aegis and setting a ruthless wall between them.
The soulsteel chains reached for Harita's heart. And though the chains seemed to only stretch for a short distance, Lieren knew that it could reach much, much farther than that.
Concentrating on that link, Lieren felt with his soul the condition of his Aegis.
"Come on… come on…"
Seconds seemed to turn into eternity as the boy cursed his own heart, confusing him.
Then… it happened. Faintly so.
Harita was still breathing.
Feeling a great divine weight befall him all of a sudden, Lieren slumped to his back, letting out a deep, tired breath.
"Thank gods."
Frowning, Bian walked over to him. For some reason, she looked more irritated than earlier. As though she had just seen, or heard, something extremely odious.
"Is he still alive?"
There was no attachment or any sense of hope in that voice. Only the most obvious of dark expectations.
Lieren tilted his head to the side, tiredly muttering:
"Yeah, he is. And don't think I did not notice the way you said that. I know you two are sort of in a love-hate relationship right now, and that this is a bit of an ask, but could you tone it down a bit? I'd like for THAT kind of talk to be among yourselves and not me."
Bian visibly flushed. There was apparent anger in her face as she furiously shouted:
"What did you say?! You little brat… We are NOT like that! Got it? …Besides, do you… are you even aware of what you just said? Or are you just muttering baseless nonsense?"
Lieren raised a curious brow. If he could tilt his head anymore, he probably would have already.
Too bad he was lying on his back, too exhausted to do anything.
"What do you mean? It means "to have a relationship that goes up and down at irregular intervals," right? Don't make me out to be a fool. I've seen the way you two look at each other. With those switching smiles and flipping cold stares. It couldn't be any more clear."
He couldn't understand why, but Bian's face contorted as though she was possessed.
"You… what… what the hell are you talking about? Are you nuts?"
She sighed heavily.
"…Of course you are. Who wouldn't have a few, if not most, of their screws loose when hanging out with this guy? I only fear what his longtime companions is like."
Bian shivered and closed her eyes, imagining the crazed companions of the mysterious man.
"Anyways, we…"
When she looked back, she unconsciously stopped speaking.
The naïve boy, Lieren, was looking past her with an attentive gaze, at the bedraggled corpse of the insidious Mistcaster.
Glancing back, Bian caught sight of that macabre scenery once again.
At first, there was blood. Lots of it. As though it refused to be a part of the Mistcaster's circulatory system, refusing its presence and leaving it. In truth, however, it was nothing more than the calamitous effect of the young boy's spell, ripping the man from within, exploding in a rush of red starting from the man's heart, then his lungs and ribs, before finally tearing through muscle, nerve, and skin, devastating the man's entire left chest and cutting off his arm entirely from his body. Which flew away and slammed against the wall of a nearby building with a solid thud, staining it with the man's blood. The crimson liquid looked strangely deeper and richer, as though of a higher grade than normal.
There was no more light in the man's eyes. In fact, there wasn't anything in it. The light of whatever power it was drawing from was entirely gone, replaced only by a deep darkness that seemed to swallow whatever the man was.
With the solarsteel strings long gone, Bian walked over to the man. She summoned Weeping Maiden just in case.
In a sea of bright sparks, the silver rapier appeared in her hand, within her grasp almost instantly.
Her eyes narrowed coldly as a creeping sensation ran down her back.
Noticing the palpable sensation in the air, Lieren chose this moment to stand up, putting himself in front of Harita and concentrating on his spell, stacking its power.
With cold sweat running down her face, Bian took a reluctant step forward, her gaze focused on the corpse.
Something was coming.
Straining his eyes, Lieren focused on his Manavision.
…Wishing that he hadn't.
A blood-red aura was emanating from the forsaken corpse, seeping out of the man's chest as a smoky essence the same shade as the man's blood, rich and vibrant with something beyond this world.
With innumerable bells of alarm echoing in his head, Lieren casted his spell.
With the invisible arrow, came the flash of a silver rapier. Dashing forth with gale-force winds, Bian thrust her rapier forward, aiming at the demonic entity.
The two spells hit the same time, cutting the entity apart... is what they expected to happen.
True to its appearance, the demonic entity did not seem fazed whatsoever. The arrow tore a hole in the smoke and exploded, while the rapier pierced through the back… only for the smoke to reform once more, its body impervious to any damage they could achieve.
The demonic entity was incorporeal, not quite having a physical body while still displaying the ability to occupy material space like any other object, living or otherwise.
As if to add more to the nightmare, the entity took the shape of a ghastly face, thin and angular, with hollowed-out eyes and toothless mouth.
"Cover your ears!"
Following Bian's words, Lieren covered and fortified his ears.
'This is going to hurt.'
A ghastly shriek pierced the atmosphere.
Lieren's ears began to bleed, with the inside of his head ringing with the baleful cries of the demonic being, vibrating through his skull and shaking his bones, as if it was pulverizing him from within.
Bian seemed to be suffering all the same, perhaps even more.
She did not have the same Resistance as him.
Seconds bled into eternity, with each one becoming more and more painful, filled with endless suffering.
…Then, as if to mock their integrity, the shriek abruptly ended.
And when they looked up, the demonic entity was gone.
Bian was flabbergasted.
"What… what the hell was that?"