YM778.TV Chapter 173: Close Fight
A soft chime of a bell rang with the wind, but neither of us paid any more attention as I shot closer to the Lich closing the distance. The Lich was smiling, and a green orb rose from her hand as I launched myself at her, and she sent it my way with a simple gesture. Her confidence made me dodge that ball by leaping to the side and launching myself forward again toward her.
Milliseconds had only passed, Lich\'s smile grew brighter, and I felt a chill on my spine. A staff rose in black smoke, and I leaped to the side as tendrils of smoke rose in a barrier around her trying to snatch at me. I leaped back into a rift, regaining distance from her, and tossed a ball of thermite at her.
The dust lasted a second inside its sealed state before blowing open on the tendrils surrounding her. A bright flash of light blinded those unprepared, and I heard the lich grunt over the wind.
What came next, though, as I fired an icicle behind a thermite bomb towards the Lich, was something that made me tendrils seemed to come from the Darkness and rose to spread out from the barrier, and the Lich grabbed onto the staff. Chills ran through my body, and I knew I needed to change my combat style back to close distance or anything other than long distance as the world seemed to go dark.
The sky darkened, and the Lich smiled brightly, "Bunny-kin, you better stop holding back, or I will kill you accidentally!" She cried out, "WORLD OF LIFE!" The Lich suddenly commanded, and the Darkness seemed to surround us my skin goose-bumped, and the Darkness surrounded the ship. I no longer could see water or the sky, and tendrils started to slither in from the Darkness.
The Lich wasn\'t done with something so controversial that it didn\'t make any sense what she did. Instead, more and more green lights started to dance around her, and those green lights started to appear all around the boat. Then she lifted the staff and pointed it at me.
"Life begins with death," The Lich spoke, her voice very feminine and quiet, but those tendrils started to move, and the Green lights started to shoot around.
Watching all of this, I felt almost frozen. I was having trouble understanding what was happening, but whatever was freezing me ended, and I felt like I was in a dire situation. I could not touch that, and I couldn\'t even understand the space I was in now. My mind was busy trying to grasp what the fuck was happening, but I didn\'t have time to understand what this magic was.
I needed to act, and so I opened a rift. I dropped into it just as those green lights buzzed past. I appeared on another part of the boat only to see those green lights surrounding me a second later as she pointed the staff in my direction.
Fear shivered as I partially understood the consequences or assumed that the staff was moving the orchestra. I rifted out and appeared not far away as those lights reacted together, following where the staff pointed.
My mind whirled, and I realized I still had some advantages. My mana burst to life, and I went into a rift and appeared several feet away from the glowing orbs. The orbs moved faster and faster, and I had to move faster and break the void into rifts faster and faster to compensate.
That was when I made a mistake, and a scream ripped from my throat as I felt my skin rotting as one of those tendrils seemed to catch my leg. Some of it rotted away, and I rifted out and away, but I instantly realized that I had a problem. I looked around in the short moments as I moved, and I realized the area I could move to become smaller and smaller, and now my leg hurt.
At this point, I was spending all my time thinking of retreating. The last weeks of building new martial art with my mana were wasted as I no longer even thought that any of the tricks I practiced could work here. My mind raced, and images of rifts moved the mana in my body over and over.
I tapped into the whirlpools of immense mana I had and jumped from place to place as the Lich smiled, making me run all over the boat.
"Run, Bunny, Run!" The Lich chuckled, her feminine voice echoing in the Darkness as the Darkness closed in on me slowly. Tendrils reached out slowly and crept closer and closer. My mind spun, but my head was blank of solutions.
Wasn\'t I a genius?
I was always a genius, wasn\'t I?
Wouldnt a genius be able to escape this and figure out how this all worked?
But I couldn\'t figure this out.
My mind was stuck on that point, and I couldn\'t figure out what this all was and how to counter it.
My mind blanked, and I dodged a tendril that almost caught me as I conjured an image to move to, and I closed the distance.
Still, no solutions came to mind, and I cast ice, freezing the ground. The Tendrils decayed the ice instantly—the black water decaying in front of me. I didn\'t understand her mana or the method she did it.
Why do I have to figure out how it works?
My mind suddenly asked this while I dodged a green ball of mana that made my body shiver as they neared second after second. I flashed around the ship that was seemingly smaller and smaller with every passing second, and I came to a realization.
I couldn\'t understand everything.
I didn\'t understand illusion magic.
I didn\'t understand mana at all.
I didn\'t get the logic of this world.
I didn\'t even understand the void as I ripped into the fabric of reality to move quickly.
My mind skipped, and I used lame muscle memory to dodge a ball of green light, barely with exaggerated movements before I could conjure up another image and rift out slowly, almost ending with my death. My brain was spinning, though.
Maybe I was limiting myself with logic.
Logic didn\'t create illusions. They didn\'t run on a mirage-type system.
What if mana is something more fundamental?
My mind didn\'t have time to think individual thoughts as I dodged twenty balls of green mana. Instead, I powered my body more, and the mana changed inside of me.
I no longer powered myself with pure mana and embraced a different understanding I didn\'t get but that I could imagine. It wasn\'t based purely on the logic that I held so dear. The logic I was taught in my previous world held true so well up to this moment, and my hair started to rise.
Still, I had to experiment, and my mind conjured the first image and fragmented and fragmented down as much as possible. My body started to freeze, and my skin turned blue. My blood ran cold, my skin seemed to freeze, and I opened a rift pressing my mind over its limits. My mind seemed in chaos as I held so many images simultaneously.
Fragments bound and broke, and I appeared in front of the Lich; my fist headed toward that tendril barrier, and the Lich was smiling.
"This is the fight I was expecting!" The Lich exclaimed. "Hehehe," The Liches feminine voice echoed as the fist pressed against the tendril. "You will have to do better than that!" The Lich exclaimed and shifted to point the staff at me again, and the Green orbs that scared me rushed in my direction, some killing skeletons and Zombies making them rot into black water.
I moved, and my image of a frozen body started to shatter, and I created new images. The rotting wouldn\'t affect fire. I couldn\'t picture it, and I didn\'t understand it. Logic told me the fire had to burn something, and if I was to hold that image, the only thing I could imagine was my body.
Those orbs followed me, and my mind spun quickly again. "Come on, Where is it?" The Lich complained, "Quit running and FIGHT ME!" That feminine voice complained.
I felt the need to confront her with everything I had as I rifted out, and I wanted to slap my head and conjure the image of fire. Every cell in my body started to heat up, and mana began to burn as I used it as a fuel source and I rifted toward the Lich, roaring as the fire started to burn my arms.
I used the same fist and my body collided with the tendril barrier that began to rot, even the flames covering my hand. I screamed in fresh pain as I dissipated the flames and I rifted away.
I made a mistake as I came back into reality, one of the orbs was lagging behind, and I screamed even harder as it hit my leg. My body spasmed as the rot started to eat away at the muscles inside my leg. I clenched my teeth, and I rifted again.
I appeared and disappeared all over, and my mind was in chaos as the pain was wreaking and sapping my strength. I needed to change something, and I needed to attack. This Lich was doing things I didn\'t understand, and I couldn\'t understand why she wasn\'t introducing new factors into the situation. The walls around me were closing, and those rotting tendrils were nearing.
I needed a last-ditch, and I decided that I would go for it. My hair began to turn a dark purple, and my mana turned much the same way as I moved through the void. My arms turned purple, and the image I held was something of inspiration than logic. Suddenly I appeared in front of the Lich.
"Reality is broken by the void," I told her, and my image solidified in my head. It was instinct; my hands reached forward and almost looked like claws as I reached toward her as she pointed the staff at me.
What happened as I fueled my body with the same power that opened the void? The image in my head was abstract and undefined even to me, even as it was solid. My fingers reached out and gripped; I felt like they gripped a fabric. I didn\'t have time to do anything else but pull that fabric, ripping it to show the actors behind the curtain.
My mind was barely registering as the Lich screamed with that feminine voice. Reality broke apart in front of me as the tendrils broke apart, and my mana was draining faster than I had ever felt it leave my body. The Lich shattered into six pieces with clawed reality, breaking that pale blue skin and shattering the Lich into pieces of meat.
Still, I held that image up until the moment that a green orb broke my concentration. I screamed as pain erupted from my back, and the reality in front of me started to mend, showing me even in greater detail that her body was shattered as my mana drained, but then I noticed her staff aimed at me as it fell unbroken by what I did.
They were briefly aimed at me and those orbs began to hit me as I reacted to late. Orb after orb smashed against my back, and I screamed as my back began to decay. My legs and ass were hit, and I screamed more.
"Chelsea wins!" Queen Mira declared a moment later as only a second had passed from me destroying the Lich to the orbs hitting my back. I screamed as the world was no longer black, the tendrils disappeared, and the blue skies reappeared.
Mira took me and tossed me out of the way from the orbs, which hit the ship repeatedly, destroying the ship\'s stairs and into the back heel.
My mind barely registered as I realized I needed to heal myself. I reached into the void and opened my inventory inside the void. I reached out to the case of nutrient bombs that I used on my journey. I pulled them out, swallowed half a dozen of them, and closed my eyes as I laid on the deck of the Galley, and I brought myself inward and began the healing.
My mana surged and forced the nutrient bombs down my throat while I sought out and destroyed the damaged areas of my body. The rotting was continuing and the affected areas needed to be removed.
I tore into my body, destroying it with fire and ice as I ripped into muscles infected with whatever the rot was. I mercilessly destroyed my body in order to save it. My focus was all over my body, tearing in my legs and back, and I couldn\'t help but thank the gods that none of them hit my head.
I scrambled and destroyed more and more without pause as I inflicted what would be fatal injuries to others to myself. Blood poured out of my body before I took all the rot out of my body. My leg, where I was initially hit, was the worst but also the least life-threatening. Still, I ripped it out and destroyed the rot as it tried to enter the bloodstream.
Once it was out, I began to mend my body, replacing muscle tissue and skin as fast as possible. My immense mana helped a lot, but my whirlpools were even starting to slow down. I still constantly used my mana in order to heal and provide nutrients to the most affected areas of my body.
I lost track of time, and I healed myself without pause. Even as my body was picked up, I felt the wind against my skin. I didn\'t stop healing myself and didn\'t let something like worrying voices penetrate my concentration in the least. Then more nutrient bombs were forced down my throat, and I wanted to thank whoever did so, and I continued the repair of my body.
It was a close call as I realized I had ripped out part of my kidney, and I also worked on repairing that. With a third of my liver gone, I also worked on that as well. I had a lot to heal, and I had to maintain my body\'s functions.
This, unfortunately, would take a bit of time.
It was almost like the Dwarven Kingdom all over again.
----
Merry Christmas, Enjoy!