Without wasting any more time, he took the talisman out of his pocket and placed it directly on Mina's forehead. By this time the priest, Benjamin, had regained his posture. He faced the pair, clearly fuming at the mischief they managed to pull under his nose.
—What's the matter, is a little water all it takes to defeat you? —Aiden made the most of it. By the way… I don't see your partner. Don't tell me she's hiding? How thoughtful. I'd be careful if I were you, you know. She didn't seem like the fighting type. Alone, and while it is so dark, you don't know when you might have an accident.
Needless to say, the provocations were more than effective. Unbeknownst to him, Aiden had stepped on a mental landmine.
—You've had your balls dropped since last time, kid!
Moments later, a flaming sword came into existence in the mage's palm. He threw it in the direction of Aiden, who, instead of evading, did something that none of those present would have expected. He grabbed Mina Neri and, instead of protecting her, shielded himself from the flaming sword with it.
She took the impact that was meant for Aiden full on, in the forehead, where the talisman was. Instead of being impaled or devoured by the flames, the moment they made contact with the mysterious piece of paper, the flames were slowly cleared. As if the force that held them in the air was sucked away and the flame lost its reason to exist, vanishing into thin air in front of the pair of young people.
The hunter himself had said it, Aiden is no wizard. He still remembered the terrible sensation of the fluids in his body working in reverse, as if every vein in his body was going to explode, so no way would he ever try to play with magic again. But doing something as simple as placing a talisman on a hungry monster, "sure, why not?" Thought the silly boy.
The talisman, now empowered, consumed itself to nothingness.
—What did you do! —Benjamin exclaimed.
As if his words had been the trigger, something in the atmosphere suddenly changed. He couldn't quite figure out what, but something was happening with the spell that surrounded them, that surrounded the building itself. Through his connection with his partner, #601, he could feel the sudden changes. And it didn't end there, he could feel that there was something else happening to his partner. She was fighting, resisting, something that was invading her, like a virus, and it was taking up every last drop of her strength, hindering communication between the two.
It was an unpleasant sensation for him, he could not begin to imagine what his partner was feeling right now. Furthermore, it was, essentially, a torrent of information directly injected into his consciousness. Like data, forcibly overwriting another program, corrupting the aspects, unweaving the commands, circumventing the formulas to get unexpected results. So, it is like corrupting a video game, something similar at least. The exception to the metaphor being that the hardware making the program run is a human. A human and, by extension, her partner, who played the role of the player.
—Good. The hacking began —Aiden whispered.
Wary, or being extremely cautious because of what was happening, he opted not to use another fire spell, but he couldn't continue to do nothing either. Next, he pulled out a clear glass vial filled completely with liquid. She threw it straight at the redhead without giving Aiden time to react.
Apparently, it was a poor-quality crystal, for it yielded to the impact, bathing her, just as he had been for Acke a short while ago, but, betraying his expectations, nothing happened.
—The holy water didn't work? Tch. No choice —He said with disappointment; then, proceeded to tear in half a card that appeared in his hand at some point—. Try to absorb the mana from this, monster.
Before it hit the ground, the two halves of the card had been consumed by sudden combustion, and in its place appeared a small glowing humanoid figure. It was no more than six inches tall. Almost in the likeness of a child, it went between walking and jumping towards its target.
Aiden stood up and prepared to receive the creature to cover for Mina. Elemental or fire spirit, an expert would call it, but of such things Aiden had no idea apart from having read the word in some retro video game.
He had a plan well cemented in his mind. When it approached, he would kick it with all his might and proceed to distract the wizard. He lifted his foot and as he was about to unleash all his pent-up anger on the gaming dummy, a word reached his ears. He thought he heard the boy, who had, for some reason, accompanied him from the first to the second floor, say "Stooop!" followed by a tackle reminiscent of a famous wrestling character.
Having had a bad feeling, Acke did not hesitate to intervene. He had no choice but to spear the boy who had given his life to defend an innocent girl, to stop him.
They hit the ground, the dry noise, the result of their bodies crashing against the hard ground, was overshadowed by Aiden's voice.
—Nooooooo!