"Dad! Look at what I've made!" A little girl rushed through the hallways with a straw doll.
"Lily! Don't run like that!" Her mother shouted from the kitchen with a worried voice, poking her head out with wet hands as she was just washing the dishes.
The girl tripped on the wooden floor, scratching her foot, and rolled on the ground. Her mother and father rushed at her. "Are you okay?!" Her dad cried and the mother brought some water to wash the wound.
Liam flew through the air on the ant, staring at the empty floor beside the kitchen wall, seeing a faint and old stain of blood on the wooden floor. His passive face didn't budge an inch, but he could still sense the spirit's emotion tied to the mana in the area.
"Was it the mother, dad or child?" He mumbled, standing on the flying ant's back instead of riding her. Tentacles rushed at him, but they were immediately struck down. She was terrified of having him standing on her back, for one thing, he looked like a human, but everything about him screamed something else. Animals can sense mana better than humans do, and she could tell.
Albeit the amount of mana in his body is like that of the average human, his control is beyond belief. If magic was a sea and everyone held a paddle to sail it, then the talented had a modern boat. Liam…no Asura on the other hand has hundreds of thousands of turbines, propellers, and pumps ready to move the whole sea at once.
The spirit was intelligent, but not to a human level. It filtered people based on their mana capacity and shrunk them. If it knew what Liam could do, it would've gone for him first before Melany.
Liam could see a locked door ahead of them. "Go there." He pointed at the ant and followed his order, she didn't need to understand his words to know it was best to move in the direction he pointed at. Like when faced with a tiger and he glares at you, you find yourself maintaining eye contact. Ants are social creatures and they understand basic social cues, they are the progenitor of the S-rank monsters draconic ants after all.
The ant flew with Liam into the keyhole, it was a tight squeeze, but they made it to the other side.
A large black magic circle emitted a faint light on the dusty ground as spiders started dangling from the half-broken sailing. This place was a magic lab used by a wizard, and it was already packed with magic items, spell books, and theoretical magic.
Judging by the robe and boots left on the corner, this place was used by a grown man. I say it was the father… but that spirit looked awfully small to be him, was it due to its magic? Liam landed with the ant on the desk and he started reading the notes spread across it.
He was studying spatial and information magic…No, wait… did the world advance this much in a thousand years? He smiled… "Those spells are amazing, broken even…" He giggled with excitement; he had never felt this happy since the old days when he sat watching his creator's work.
"Oh! Nameless wizard, I see it, the work of your life…" Liam said as he turned around. "Out of respect for what you've achieved, and the love I still hold for my old master's work. I'll take the beacon out of your hand and finish those spells, and I'll make sure your daughter rest in peace."
After he saw a note about how the wizard's wife wasn't that fond of his magic, the only one left to be the spirit was the wizard's daughter. Since her father was a wizard, she had a great chance of inheriting a portion of his power.
Magical capabilities, like mana reserve potential, can be inherited and grown. They aren't tied to genetics and can be improved. When a humanoid conceives a child, that new life can inherit some of the parent's magical traits that they had in the impregnation time. It's the reason why wizards tend to form large and long bloodline families of mages and spell casters, to make sure their blood remains saturated with mana.
Liam inspected the spell and determined what happened based on the traces left in the mana circle in the middle of the room.
The father was trying to create a spatial sealing magic and so he was experimenting here. The spell had traces of mana besides the wizard, but quite similar to his, so meaning it was the daughter. She wandered into the room and touched the spell, getting entrapped into the seal and slowly getting crushed.
The second trace of magic belonged to the mother who rushed in to save her daughter and tried to stop the spell. But as she wasn't that versed in magic, the spell fried her instead. Liam could see ash scattered among the dust, she got cremated in the blink of an eye.
But, there was no trace of the father's magic in the circle, he didn't come to save his daughter…but there are traces of shift in the magic… It's supposed to send him the results of the experiment periodically, but the link is cut, meaning he's dead.
"I see…he was an adventurer and that's how he made his living, but upon hearing of what happened back home through magic, he got killed in the fight he was in." Liam sighed.
The ant stared at him, confused as to why he was standing there in silence for a few seconds. "We'll need to destroy the spirit for now, and then bury the family to resolve the curse… That little girl is still crying for her parents. This shrinking magic is probably a remnant of a wish to shrink herself so she won't get crushed."
Liam jumped on the ant's back. "Let's go you. We'll need to deal with the spirit first." He pointed at the door, and they buzzed out.
As Liam went out of the room, he came face to face with Melany getting beheaded by the spirit. It happened in an instead in front of him, even he couldn't react in time. For a fraction of a second, he was about to blast the whole mansion, and even Alice felt a dreaded feeling wash over the place.
"Hehe…" Liam giggled… "You're better than I thought…"
Melany's corpse disintegrated into black mist [Shadow's Form] she emerged from the shadows in the ground, and then lifted her hands up, and smacked them on the ground. "Fine! Shadow, step on her!"
Melany's purple eyes turned black as darkness rushed out of her body and swallowed the whole mansion. A spirit can set a domain in the place of their birth that grants them infinite mana, which makes them the terrifying foes they are. Melany has a shadow spirit, and not just anyone, the spirit was her for years, and had started to consider Melany's shadow as its domain.
My connecting her shadow to all the shadows and shades in the mansion, Melany's spirit can extend its shadow to engulf the whole mansion and push against the spirit's dominion over the place. This clash results in both spirits losing access to their infinite mana, which levels the playing field.
While the two spirits are clashing, Melany can't access her spirit's powers which makes her lose all of her magic attacks. But she could still run and stab the box directly. She ran forward as fast as she could, but the spirit could still use its tentacles, so she sent them at her.
Melany managed to slip between the tentacles and swung one of her swords at the spirit's magic box, but the attack got deflected like before. "What?" Melany gasped, she thought the barrier surrounding the spirit's body in the shape of a box was a protective magic it cast, but that didn't seem to be the case, so the clash didn't nullify it.
Tentacles captured Melany and smacked her on the wall, slowly contorting around her body like a snake squeezing the life out of a rat.
SWOSH! A blade of compressed air flew through the hallway, slashing the spirit's tentacles. Melany gasped, but she could barely breathe.
"MASTER!" Liam had returned to his normal size now that the spirit was being suppressed and so did Alice in the garden. The ant hid inside his ear, he wanted to stop her but didn't have a choice, that's the safest place for now.
He stared at her with a sad face. "I do have a name…"
"Behind you!" She cried and tentacles lunged at him. [Wind Magic] Liam slashed the tentacles again. For any outside viewer it seemed like he was only using wind magic with one hand, and the other in his pocket, but in reality, he was mixing [Hakai] slashes into the spell. And as usual, the hand in his pocket is the one doing signs for [Hakai] so no one would see them.