Underworld - Book 4 - Chapter 14

I wasn’t exactly sure what I imagined the bowels of the Underworld would look like, but a column of fire and ice rocketed toward me. The Wraith’s Wind cloak wasn’t just for show. It now bulged behind his shoulders, funneling its power and unique elemental characteristics into both columns of magic, pushing the fire and ice toward me at an even more unthinkable speed.

Shifting to my right, I stepped into the path of the surging fire. Leaning into the wind-powered flames, I braced myself. There was no time to do anything else. The impact was unlike any wind or fire I’d ever felt. There was no give or wading through it. I was thrown back. The wall embraced me like a windshield embraces a bug that doesn’t get out of the way on time.

-36,047 HP

So this is what it was like to get hit by a train. The column of fire didn’t stop but held me against the wall. It was a combo spell that complicated the nature of elements, blending them with extreme quantities of mana.

Without hesitation, I healed myself. Finding a firm footing at the base of the crater, I launched myself up. My horned skeletal helmet bashed into the stone above, but it didn’t stop me. I tore through the rock as I climbed awkwardly into the air. My wings burst from my back, as the Wraith’s column of ice reach me. Mana Sight had given me plenty of time to prepare.

My Magma Fist swiped at the spell from above. It met the Wraith’s mix of Wind and Ice with a red hot glow. Using a combination of my own, Alpha and Wail of the Banshee jumped from my palm as the enemy’s spell connected with my hand. The Combination of magics acted like a springboard, tossing me up and over the deadly spell. Momentarily out of reach, my wings were finally fully formed.

I once again lifted myself into the heights of the room to keep my distance. The speed of the Wraith’s magic was almost at Aeris’s level because of the addition of Wind. That was going to make what I needed to do much more difficult.

Looking at my MP, I had 592,311 remaining. My fight with the Elementals had taken most of what I’d already used, which still left me with almost three times my normal amount. Dropping Magma Fist, it was time to figure out how I was going to reach this monster. The speed of his magic was enough that he didn’t even have to move. Trying to overwhelm one of his columns of magic seemed like a waste of mana. Sure, I could probably match the power behind one, but for how long? It wasn’t just a mob I was fighting here, but this Wraith had an entire dungeon’s worth of mana at his disposal. It was a fight I couldn’t win. If I did meet its magic head on, it would have to count for something. I needed an opening for my Light Magic. Now only to find one.

Even at this distance, dodging its columns of magic was difficult. It didn’t help that I was still little more than a newbie at flying. As I darted about near the ceiling, trying not to get shot out of the sky, I feared the Wraith’s magic would knock holes in the rock above me and send rubble down on my head. Instead, I found that its columns were only reaching so far before dissipating. Either its magic had a limited reach, or it had a frightening level of control. I’d examined the ceiling before. It was domed with ridges at the corners of the room. There wasn’t really anything special about it, but I suspected that the Wraith had his mana collection system spread out above the surrounding area, including the ceiling above our heads. I’d seen how jealous he was to guard his creation.

Taking aim at the elemental column closest to me, I fired off Alpha Bolt, which now cost me almost no MP at all, but provided me with a bowling ball of energy that did decent elementally neutral damage.

It surged toward the pillar only to be cut off by the Wraith’s column of ice.

I grinned to myself. The pillars reached all the way up to the ceiling and the Wraith was down on the ground. Let’s see how fast you really are.

With Alpha channeled through both hands, Alpha Bullets, the Bolts smaller cousins that traveled even faster, began to spew out of me as fast as I could cast them.

The columns of ice and fire appeared between me and the pillars. I didn’t just take aim at one or two of them but moved between four of them at random.

How the Wraith managed to follow so many projectiles I couldn’t imagine, but he knocked every bullet out of the sky.

The Fire, Ice, and Wind pillars glowed brighter the more he cast. They were providing the Wraith more and more energy.

My barrage lasted a good twenty seconds as I sent hundreds of Alpha Bullets flying toward the pillars and yet not one hit its target. Finally growing tired of the game, the Wraith dropped his pillar of fire, only to send an even greater pillar of ice into the air.

As it climbed into the air like an avalanche that had forgotten which way gravity worked, a number of my Alpha Bullets hit home, striking the Fire and Earth pillars. The pillar filled with Fire mana cracked and pieces broke off, but the Earth pillar seemed mostly unaffected. It must have possessed some of the same nature as the kind of mana it possessed making the Earth pillar much tougher.

The avalanche of Ice Magic missed me entirely but blanketed the Ice and Wind Pillars with a coat of ice meters thick from floor to ceiling. The Fire Pillar blinked a few times before going dark. He lost the flames on his left arm.

He’d purposely given up the Fire pillar and known that the Earth pillar could take the impact of my spell, so that he could protect the other two remaining pillars. He was no fool. Fire was obviously the element that I was the most adept with, so it was an acceptable sacrifice.

The loss didn’t slow him. His left arm may have no longer been covered in fire, but the Wind of his cloak was still bunched up over his shoulder. Joining his hands together, a column of ice shot at me even faster than before.

With a swipe of my wings, I was out of the way, but the excess Wind churned up the air around it and drove me away. I was missing the Fire column already.

The meters of Ice covering the Ice and Wind pillars was something I could penetrate, but the Earth Pillar was an even more tempting target. But which should I set my focus on? Or should I try something else?

I once again found myself in the struggle of how to manage my mana. A large spell could move mountains—or meters of ice—but using too much mana would leave me vulnerable. Even with my extreme Wisdom and Intelligence stats, I found that there was no clear answer. What I truly lacked was enough experience to be sure of which one of my numerous theories would actually work.

It seemed that eliminating the pillars first would weaken the Wraith, but that might not be the case at all. Destroying the pillars would sever his access to that pillar’s element, but that didn’t guarantee it would have access to less mana. I’d even seen the diagram to the Tomb through Forced Learn and new that each pillar was hooked directly to its central mana battery bank. What I didn’t know was if there was a limit to how much mana that could travel down its Mana Channels. Would the Wraith lose power, or just siphon the same amount of mana through a different channel? If I destroyed all his pillars, it was possible he would be able to continue to siphon the same amount entirely as Dark Mana through the Tomb’s vault door. I’d already tried different spells when trying to get in the first time I was here and knew it would be incredibly difficult to destroy.

If the Wraith received all that mana as Dark Magic, it might make him easier to target with Light Magic, but it would almost make him far more dangerous. Bone Titan’s Defense and Fire Incubus Form would help defend me from direct contact, but his mana was almost unending. I could only guess how much energy he had stored over the last thousand years—or longer…

Whatever I did, one thing was clear. I couldn’t win a battle of endurance. The Wraith had more mana than I did. That meant I needed to strike fast and hard. Anything else was a waste.

Dodging another column of Wind and Ice, I messaged Aeris. “You better get away while you can.”

“I’m in the tunnel.” She replied.

“Further. Get in one of the side tunnels.”

“Elorion…”

“I’ve never tried anything like this before. Please.”

“Give me a few seconds.”

I continued to dodge the Wraith’s magic while peppering the ice protecting the pillars with Alpha Bullets. It kept his attention.

Nine seconds later Aeris spoke again. “Okay. I’m out of range. I love you…”

My mana began to surge inside of me. An inferno raged as 4x Fire Incubus Form took shape, even if only for a few seconds. “I love you, too.”

Trashing my wings against the turbulent air, I bolted toward the ground. Seconds lost their meaning at such a speed. I was near the ground in less than the beat of a human heart. The Wraith’s column of Ice and Wind appeared below me. I was traveling too fast for him to target, so he led me instead.

Throwing out my wings at the appropriate angle, I changed directions. The force strained even my empowered form as I skirted even with the ground. The Earth Pillar was suddenly in front of me when I swooped upward. The pillar was at arm’s reach. My hand had changed back to its magma form and struggled to contain a swelling of mana that matched the greatest I’d ever experienced. I cast Andesitic Magma, the spell’s second rank, for the first time. 200,000 MP erupted from my hand, blasting me back with a force that tore at the joints of my arm. Where my hand ended and the spell began, I couldn’t tell.

Catching myself with my wings after I’d already been pushed back into the middle of the room, I drove myself higher into the room as I splattered the Earth Pillar with great clumps of melted rock. It flickered twice before the glow of Earth Mana went out entirely. I dropped back to 1x Fire Incubus Form, but my Magma spell wasn’t finished.

Redirecting the gushing deluge of magma at the Wraith himself, I saw rage twisting his face as he redirected his Ice and Wind column. His Earth armor was gone.

Our magic met head to head, and instead of pushing his back, my magma flew everywhere. I darted out of the way as a clump of molten rock larger than me was sent flying into the highest reaches of the room. Even then my spell didn’t stop. It was now covering the lower parts of the room like a shower of melted meteorites. There was so much magma that the Wraith couldn’t track me or the second spell I’d been funneling since the Earth Pillar had melted.

I began to climb higher into the room with every flap of my wings.

The Wraith shrieked something in its own ancient language that I didn’t understand. 

I didn’t know what he had said, but I knew how to answer. Before my first spell was finished, I let loose of my second.

A Health Bomb, the size of a small house, flew in from behind me toward the Ireki Wraith at my command. He still couldn’t see it with all the molten rock raining through the air, but he felt its presence well enough to know to run. Jumping the from platform, the Wraith made it to the bottom of the stairs before the mass of Light Magic struck. The last thing I saw as my massive cavity of bone closed over me, encasing me on the ceiling of the room, was a blinding flash. Everything was then dark for a moment, but then,  even the meters of bone wasn’t enough to keep the flare out of my eyes. 

The glare was felt like the piercing of a dagger that didn’t go away from a long couple of moments. Thinking it had to be over, I cast Heal on my eyes to try to speed up their recovery. It was a few seconds before I could see again, or my eyes were able to determine that the flare had stopped. I was still enclosed behind meters of bone and it was now pitch black. With a single push with both of my legs, the center of the bone structure snapped open like the surface of a shell. I’d been wrong. There was very little left of my bone defense. Only a few feet remained after the explosion.

What was left of the room started to take shape. I’d funneled another 200,000 MP into my Health Bomb and, unlike Magma which had added tons of rock, my Light Magic had added nothing, withering the room like a thousand years of sun. The pearl staircase was no more. Not even a mound of rubble was left of the platform.

“Are you okay?” I messaged Aeris immediately.

“Yes. I didn’t get experience, though.” She replied.

“That’s because he isn’t dead. But it’s almost over.”

I saw the Wraith lying face-first near the center of the room surrounded by a hill of slush and ice. Somehow the ancient monster had summoned an ice structure that had saved his life. He hadn’t been my target though.

Looking up to above where the platform had once stood, I saw what was left of the Tomb’s vault doors. There was a gaping hole. The other pillars that had stood off to the sides weren’t just inactive, but the bottom halves of all four of them had been blown apart.

I fell from the ceiling, only letting my wings slow my fall. The Wraith was struggling to get back on whatever that was in place of its feet. Landing before it, I threw up a cloud of dirt and ice.

It was hard not to pity him knowing he had been alive for so long, and now it was over. Not that he’d given me much choice. “I told you that you should have answered my questions.”

“Even after I kill you, I’m dead!” The Wraith screamed. He was now standing, but wobbly as if that wouldn’t last long. “Without extensive repairs, I’ll have no defense. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”

“I think I do. Your current form is like a dungeon spirit, right? It’s a projection, but the real you is inside your tomb. If your body is removed and added to a different, ‘tomb’, would you return to life?”

He looked at me blank-faced for a long moment. “I’m no dungeon spirit. But, yes. If my casket, with my body and orb, is moved to a different tomb, I’ll live.”

My Light Magic had yet to rank up, but I think I finally understood why. “I will take your casket and create a new tomb. Then you will answer my questions.”

Even though my offer was his only hope, a great surge of power rose up inside him as a bolt of Dark Magic shot toward me. With a wave of my hand, I knocked it aside and cast a spell of my own. I didn’t use Health Bomb, or Health Bullet, but Heal in its truest form. Using what was left of my excess mana, just over 70,000 MP, I began funneling it into Heal, blanketing the air around him with healing energy. 

Snakes and cords of dark power whipped off of him much like I’d seen from Lady Contessa, but to a much lesser extent. His Dark Magic crackled as it came in contact with Light. In a last desperate attempt, he swatted at my gentle energy with an umbrella of dark strands of power. There was too much Light Magic for it to last. A feather of Light found its way through and brushed against the top of his head. As if being electrocuted he nearly buckled in two.

His dark tentacles failed him, allowing more and more Light Magic in through his defenses until the air was filled with the hiss of magical protest. Heal didn’t just blanket the skin but penetrated his puppet-like body just as it would to heal a creature of Light. I then witness what it was like for the Light to win. He literally shriveled before my eyes until there was an audible pop, and he was gone.

I didn’t need to see the popups to know what was happening next. Fire Incubus Form was canceled without my permission and my skin began to glow with the brilliance of the fullest moon. When I had ascended it felt like my body was changing on its own accord. This was different. I knew what was happening. I understood that my new mastery of Light was simply purifying what had already been done. During my ascension, my talents and nature had blended together. But now, my talent was taking over.

I found myself floating above the ground on a platform of power. It was in this state, free from the corruption of the ground, that my body and mind were being remade. My blood had once been full of Light, it now became Light.

It hadn’t taken extreme measures to reach my Master Rank. It had taken a single spell—the right spell. I knew then what had been missing. My constant manipulation of mana had actually been what was holding the door shut.

You have unlocked True Form, Solar Mage!

You have unlocked True Form, Light Surgeon!

My feet returned to the ground. The Forms the popups spoke of didn’t even include the general changes that had taken place inside me. Even more than in my original Ascension, I was now reborn.

Before checking the rest of my popups I closed my eyes and just felt the life flowing through me. My new levels and changes could wait a few minutes, but this feeling would soon fade. With Mana Sight at full strength, I basked in it. Determined to never forget.

---

Hey guys!

I'm probably going to be giving this one another read through in the morning. We had family over and I'm exhausted, so I'm sure something slipped through. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!

Cheeres!