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So he endured.

He endured the terrible feeling of having his mind invaded. The venom soon making itself present everywhere. A type of viscous miasma seeping through the cracks that the chains created.

Endless it seemed, and with each swing of the chain, more and more forced itself in as the ever-expanding cracks in the barrier edge to this world.

\'Can\'t you do something?!\' Two shouted, desperate. The amount of vicious miasma kept increasing, and while it moved slowly—like lava. It inches forward incessantly.

\'I am doing something!\' Eldrian replied, perhaps with a bit too much force, but the pain filling his mind and eroding his senses was making him cranky.

As soon as he had realized that his soul was being invaded, he had started to prepare himself for a long fight. Expecting something similar to what had happened when he had tried to absorb the revenant heart.

Only this time his opponent was still alive (well, not dead and not alive, but importantly—not dead), and he wasn\'t living anymore. Or at least, Eldrian\'s avatar was dead. His actual body was still alive, so perhaps he could also be considered a type of undead? No, it would be more correct to say he is in-between life and death.

More importantly than that; Eldrian would not have Ziraili\'s help this time.

Eldrian didn\'t feel good about his chances thanks to his past experience, but he had little choice in the matter.

The first thing he had done was analyze the situation. He had never before tried to visualize his entire mind space. It always just felt endless. But upon trying a map had appeared before him, the endlessness contained neatly in a finite space. As it turned out, it wasn\'t endless. Not even close.

In the center of his mind space was the solar system, little more than a dot on the map. Two\'s library was near it, but it was too small to be shown on the map. The edges of this space were filled with cracks and the miasma was encroaching. Only a few meters had been swallowed, but Eldrian could feel he wouldn\'t be getting back what this miasma swallowed.

\'I might just be able to do something...\' As the cracks grew throughout the edges, Eldrian felt his connection with mana growing too. He did not know how, and it didn\'t matter. It was a chance. If he could draw in mana, he would not be fighting with limited resources.

After all, the battles before had depleted his mana soul. At least, all the mana which he could readily remove from the system had been removed. Removing more would cause instability to grow within the solar system.

\'I do not know what the rules are within my soul for that, but this is good news, regardless. At least the lich will not have this advantage over me.\' It gave Eldrian confidence and, most importantly, hope. If he did not have this connection, the lich could simply fight a war of attrition and he would have no way to survive it.

Likely, this was what she had done with those she had captured. But she had kept them alive, a much better state than he was, or rather his avatar was in.

Strengthening this connection as much as he could, Eldrian guided all the mana to the sun. Forcing its expansion as he slowly pushed the solar system higher and higher. Letting the light of the sun shine through the empty abyss that normally represents his mind—an endless darkness which can instantly be morphed into a thought. Light filled this darkness and brought certainty to it.

\'Nothingness is easy to change, but also easy to erode. First, let there be light. Next, there should be life!\'

Like a god, Eldrian started designing this world inside his mind. His work absorbed all his focus and allowed him to tune out the pain of having his soul invaded. He summoned land to fill the world, created great chasms and filled them with seas and added great heights called mountains. He let rivers flow from these majestic mountains and from their nourishment summoned forests to fill the world.

\'This is not enough!\'

By the time Eldrian had finished, the sun shone through half his mind space and the miasma now covered a few hundred meters. Still insignificant considering his mind space had a diameter of more than ten thousand kilometers (almost the diameter of earth), but the edges were nearing collapse.

Eldrian looked towards the solar system. \'The elements! I only have four!\'

Getting to work, Eldrian added realms of fire in the way of deserts and volcanos. And he thought of how the wind worked and considered air, realizing that there was none in this world that was his mind, his soul, his little old mental room. Adding it too to this world of imagination, he took a breath of fresh air and felt revived. Lastly, he added caves and caverns to the mountains to be the realm of darkness.

Eldrian wished to next connect the world creation to the solar system floating over it, but alas, he had no more time. Finally, the chains broke through the edge barrier of his world.

His desperate struggle to survive was about to start.

***

"This is taking too long..." Liuva, the lich, looked towards the elf. Tilting her skeletal head in confusion. Her chains tightly wrapped around his charred, crushed, blood covered corpse. The chains weren\'t physical objects and so didn\'t actually bind his physical form, but rather, his soul. Phasing through the physical.

Or that was how it should have been. The chains should have easily pierced his body, chaining his heart and piercing his mind. Instead, something had stopped this from happening.

Her chains wrapped around Eldrian tried to crush him like a python, but no matter the strength, the progress she made was little to none. The chains trying to penetrate his mind made even less progress. As if hammering stone with one\'s bare hands.

"How is he resisting? He\'s dead... And he\'s so weak... What\'s going on?!" At times like these missed her partner, but most of the time he was boorish. She would still rather have him gone to not interrupt her experiment. Which Eldrian now was. But she also wished to discuss this oddity with someone. Revenants certainly were poor company.

"I must find out what\'s going on! This makes no sense. No sense at all!" Moving closer to the floating charred elf corpse, Liuva placed her hand on his chest. The chains moving to not obstruct her actions.

"His heart truly isn\'t beating. How can the dead put up such a great struggle?" She was used to the souls fighting back, but she hadn\'t even entered Eldrian\'s. The longer it took, the more her curiosity grew. Until it surpassed her anger for vengeance and her sanity to be careful.

***

"Eldrian\'s dead?" Vivian asked, only for confirmation. Theas returning, and Eldrian not being with him, made the answer obvious.

"Yes, no one could survive what he went through."

Vivian flinched hearing the reply. She knew that meant Eldrian had suffered greatly. She prayed it was worth it. "Was it worth it?" she asked.

"We destroyed the ritual location along with your dad\'s body, and whoever else was there with him. The lich hadn\'t tried to capture their souls, so I\'m sure they made it to the afterlife."

Myropsis whipped her head to the side. "Why not! What happened!"

"Everything went according to—"

"No, it did not! Did Eldrian escape?!" Myropsis roared her question, her fury shocking the dwarf, who took a step back. His expression clouding as he realized what he had missed.

Why would the lich not attempt to recover the souls she had lost? Simple: she had found something else to occupy her time with.

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