Currently, of all the people here, professor Crumb was the only one who had a proper feeling of how powerful he was.
Currently, he looked extremely strong, taking control of most of the magical elements in the air around them. Yet in reality, he didn’t do so good. His control wasn’t like a ball as it should be, it was like a balloon instead. When you touched it, it seemed sturdy, but you only had the pierce the outside for the entire thing to explode. His power was unstable.
Back in the third central war, Julius Reptinan Vallia was one of the ten most powerful people on the central continent. Near the end of the war, he was in the top five.
But in the final battle, they lost. The monarch died and Julius got mortally wounded.
In order to keep living, he had to use a secret technique in which he split off his soul from his body and use it to infiltrate another one. At that time plenty of people were willing to give his life to him and so he found a good body.
But the price to pay was heavy. No matter what, doing this will destroy a piece of your soul, and your web with it. If he only had to do it once, it would’ve been alright, but this wasn’t the case.
Any body would try to expulse a foreign soul, over time the body would weaken more and more as it rejects the soul.
Since the end of the war, a hundred-and-fifty years ago, he had been forced to change in vessel five times already. At this point, his soul was weakened considerably and a large part of his web was destroyed.
He knew he didn’t have long anymore. Professor Theodore Crumb was always supposed to be the final person to give their life for him. After that, he would rest in peace, taking his secrets with him.
But then, he found an exceptional boy. One that was intelligent, ambitious, and talented. It was a boy that resembled The Monarch in everything but ideals. And he recalled the task The Monarch had entrusted him with.
His legacy wasn’t to be given by someone who simply believed in The Monarch’s ideals. It was to be given to one as ambitious and talented as herself. To someone who had his own ideals and dreams.
At first, Julius figured he was only thinking this way because he was getting old and desperate, but the boy continued to impress him and before he knew it he began caring for him.
And so now he stood against Granolf Mafoli. A person that should be amongst the hundred strongest people alive today. He couldn’t help but sigh, he already knew the results of this battle before it began. But he would not let the boy he cared for get killed, he simply had to win.
And so, spirited he stood before the boy, looking at his opponents who were looking back at him. They didn’t make the first move, it was clear they would rather wait for reinforcements than anything else, but he couldn’t let them.
Yet, just before he made his first move, he felt a soft magical fluctuation in Villin’s body, the kind one would emit when casting a spell. He could only barely feel it while standing so close to the boy which made it clear that the spell was extraordinarily simple confusing him, yet a moment later he got surprised.
Seeing the two enemies standing opposite professor Crumb, Villin wanted to help, he couldn’t.
He could feel something in the air, the stench of death yet to happen. He didn’t know why but he recognized it, and it scared him. He could feel that the professor was prepared to die but he would not take that deal, he wanted, more than anything, for professor Crumb to live. Then they could silently think back on this moment and pretend nothing happened, they could study runes and the professor could look at his runework sternly, correcting his mistakes.
He wouldn’t let him die, and with that, he looked at old lady Cassio. The structure in his web was already formed, and so he cast the derivatory ‘Mentallage’. After a moment he could feel a bridge connecting their minds, allowing his magic power to pass through and attack her mind.
Knowing that she would also be able to attack his mind in return, he didn’t cancel his spell but instead put more and more magic power into it.
He knew professor Crumb had noticed he cast a spell and it wouldn’t be long before the old lady noticed the connection he had formed, and so he attacked with everything he had.
He connected the nodes in his web that were generating magic power and he connected them to the passage, then with the first wave, he sent in all his available magic power.
Through the passage, Villin could now feel the outer parts of the old lady’s mind. Her memories were messy, as they were for all people. Attacking one’s memories wasn’t a straightforward process, you couldn’t just send magic power in and expect the enemy to get hurt, and so Villin’s power quickly began moving through the layer of the mind.
Yet, at this point, old lady Mafoli noticed his invasion of the mind. She didn’t have time to tell Granolf about it who was looking at professor Crumb and quickly tried focussing herself on her mind.
Looking into her mind, she could feel foreign magic power moving through the outer layer of her memories, by the time she fully realized what was going on, it had already made it halfway to the second layer.
This was the first time in her long life she had to deal with an invasion of the mind. She had always been careful and the serious fights she had been in could be counted on a single hand.
But still, the amount of magic power she had was massive, much, much more than a boy like Villin had.
Since she used equipment to lock the second layer of her mind that held emotions, her own magic power also had to come from outside, as there was no way from the first layer of the web to the third layer of the memories in her case.
Without a problem, Villin made it halfway through the memories, he tried to avoid any obstacles in her mind and did so with ease until he made it halfway through the outer layer.
It was then that the situation became a lot tougher to deal with. From the outer reaches of her mind, a massive wave of magical energy came. It began attacking his own magic power without hesitation, moreover, for this force moving through the mind was natural, it didn’t have to avoid things such as memory fragments as they would automatically more out of the way.
Like this, it began consuming Villin’s magic power, starting from the tail of the snake. Any bit of magical power caught in this wave would be mercilessly annihilated.
Facing this massive threat, Villin could do nothing but keep moving, trying to keep a decent force until he reached the second layer and attack then, before his magical power was completely annihilated.
And he saw hope, he tried to calculate the speed of his own magic power and the magic power of the old lady and even though hers was much faster, it wouldn’t catch up completely until a little bit into the second layer.
And it seemed that overall about twenty percent of his own magic power would survive until then.
And so, the mental chase continued. Neither party realized their techniques were so primitive it was laughable in the eyes of someone that actually knew how to attack or defend the mind, they simply continued in their primitive ways.
Yet then, Villin felt his hopes get crushed. At this point, some of his magical power was close enough to the second layer that he could see it, yet all he saw was a shield. The second layer of the lady’s mind was shielded from the first. The shield was massive yet transparent, completely different from the one he created on his own. In some way, it seemed artificial.
Villin considered if he should still have his magic power simply rush into some of the memories before them but he knew it wouldn’t help and he refrained from doing so.
Knowing that he lost, Villin simply let his magic power go ahead, when they crashed into the wall the magic power would surely dissipate, or so he thought.
When the very first, tiny amount of foreign magic power touched the shield, it suddenly cracked, then the entire shield fell down.
The shield around the second layer of Isabelle Cassio’s mind wasn’t there to protect it from intruders at all. In fact, it had not the least bit of defensive properties. Instead, it was there to quarantine the second layer of her mind. Stopping it from sending impulses to the brain. All of its power was focused inwardly and so when Villin’s magic power attacked it, it broke.
Yet, in reality, this also had an effect. Professor Crumb looked completely stunned when he noticed that the necklace around Isabelle’s neck cracked and then turned to dust. With this, the entire situation changed.
