Willow tried her best to move but her body wasn't responding. The best she could do was move her eyes.
Now Willow knew why Beatrice was smiling throughout their fight, she was just a plaything to Beatrice, a joke, a puppet, a slave.
Now with her out of the fight Beatrice moved towards the area where Gabe and Cole were fighting. Both of them were still at it and had bruises and cuts all over their bodies but the one who had it worse was Cole.
He still could not believe how much of a difference he and Gabe had. Before now, after gauging Gabe's strength on many occasions, concluded that if he used his full strength, Gabe wouldn't last three rounds but the pain he was receiving now told him otherwise.
The beating became so much that he was thinking of using a forbidden art he learned to overload his mana core to get a massive boost in power but he scratched that after weighing the pros and cons, besides, Beatrice was still around.
"Ahogo!"
This was the same spell Willow had used to incapacitate them the time they had broken into the control room. This time it was cast by Beatrice and once again Gabe was choked mercilessly. He was denied the fundamental right to breathe and he could feel his life slipping.
"What are you waiting for, finish him let's get this over with and leave this place, it looks like it will collapse at any moment", Beatrice said.
Gabe was bleeding from his eyes, nose, and ears. Cole stepped forward to get the deed done but hesitated a little. Using that opportunity and scraping together the last bit of will and power he could muster, his hands roamed the floor and grabbed what felt like a small rock then he threw with.
The rock flew at a high speed and the arrival of the rock at its destination was almost instantaneous.
Splitch!!
The destination of the rock was Beatrice's right eye as it busted her eyeball and lodged itself in the socket, becoming a replacement for the eye it had mutilated.
"Aaaah!!"
She screamed in pure agony and fell on her knees. This was the worst pain she had ever experienced in her life, in all her seventy years of living she had never been humiliated like this.
Witches naturally had longer lifespans than humans. Also if one's magic power level increased, their lifespans increased so Beatrice looked like she was in her twenties even though she had already lived for seven decades.
"Fuck! Fuck! Cole you insolent brat, I will kill you and send your fucking body in a potato sack back to your grandpa, you stupid idiot" Beatrice cursed.
She no longer looked refined and behaved like she would soon board a bus to "crazy town".
Cole ran towards her wondering why he had hesitated and Gabe was trying his best to catch his breath and calm his nerves.
When Cole had gotten to Beatrice's side and tried to help her she blasted him away with a spell, leaving him rolling away like a ball until his was lodged in a wall. He could not think straight and there was only one thing running through his head.
'First, it was Gabe who had struck me, leaving me flying to a wall, and now that hag blasted me into a wall when I did nothing to her, I'm going to kill her'
"I do not give out empty threats, when I said I was going to kill you, I meant every fucking word," Beatrice said.
She then slowly stood up, looked at everyone in the room, and started chanting.
It took twenty seconds for the spell to have its effect and everyone in the room, Gabe, Cole, and Willow started writhing in pain. They were all on the floor receiving heavy doses of magical punishment. It was a mental attack.
The spell she used was powerful but in fast pace and solo combat, it was not practical because of the long activation time it had. Why she was able to pull it off here was because everybody was incapacitated so no one would be able to interrupt her as she was in the casting process.
The reason this spell was powerful was because of its effectiveness and efficiency. After cast, the amount of magical energy needed to maintain the spell was little and the caster could use that period to recover lost magical energy.
Beatrice was quite beat up also so she couldn't move and used this time to settle her mind and recover. Also, the cries of the trio under her were like a sweet melody that rang in her ears. It intoxicated her so much that she started giving out information that you normally had to get at a very high price. This was a testament to her evil heart and vile mind.
"Do you guys know what is going on in this facility. You see when that relic, which that brat Cole was tasked to steal, was discovered, many tests were run on it and we learned some of its secrets".
"Humans are weak, they are easily influenced mentally, physically, emotionally, and even genetically. Their genetic makeup is so easily influenced that's why we have vampires, wights, draugrs, werewolves, etc, even witches. The human race is the only race that can procreate with all other races. All these go back to one thing, and that is human greed.
"It's in their genes, humans are extremely greedy and want everything, money, fame, territory, life, and even death".
"From the secrets we learned from the relic, this excessive greed they possess is not a weakness but their biggest strength. In the era in which this relic originates, humans, using the power of greed could alter their genetic makeup at will and gain the powers of any race they want. At that time they were the strongest race".
"How everything went down and humans were reduced to what they are today is a mystery".
After saying this Beatrice stood up and stretched. It seemed she had recovered.
"Times up, it's time we parted ways for good. Now who shall I tell goodbye to first, oh yes, the boy named Gabe, you damaged my eye so it's only fair I repay you first, with death", She said.
She then pulled out a knife, walked behind Gabe, and with one swift motion sliced his neck.
Thud!!
His body lay on the floor motionless with his heartbeat growing fainter with each beat until it stopped.
Nobody paid attention to the box Cole was holding originally as they were all occupied, two with pain, one with the kill she had scored, and one with death.
It disintegrated and then flowed into Gabe's body using every pore of his body as an access route.
*System Online
...