Holding a beating heart in his hand, Mabilis carefully examined it as he felt the mysterious aura around it. The dark air surrounding it had reminded him of Iracia, whose power explosively raised after she fused herself with the bloodline of the demon.
Although the great body of the demon had gained his interest, Mabilis still threw it towards Iracia as she also sent a hand watch flying to him, exchanging their spoils mid-air. Compare to the treasure in his hand, the blood of the demon was far more inferior in his eyes.
Two different sorcerers that had secrets would not fall out at this moment, and they also knew that their partner had a different priority than themselves. Although the hand watch was the best treasure Mabilis could get, the beating heart of the demon was far more essential for Iracia and her demonic body.
Before the two could agree on how to split the loot that they got from killing the guardian of the vault, the realm of the forest suddenly trembled faintly, showing a slight instability in its circulation of Elements. As the quake took place, the sky rapidly fluctuated between day and night as if the mystical method that controlled the time of the day got damaged.
"I reckon that the end is nigh. After those two inherit the last rewards of the Door of Hope, the Fleeting Emotions Ruin would close itself once again." Mabilis spoke in his soft tone as a small light seeped out of his Third Eye, emitting the ancient and mysterious aura of time.
"We should only take the important parts of the guardian before picking up treasures within the vault. I propose that we went to the Gate of Choice after this to avoid getting kicked out unexpectedly." Iracia added in with her opinion. After cooperating with Mabilis for so long, she had naturally known that his predictive ability was top-notch, vastly exceeding her in term of calculative scheming.
Mabilis also agreed to leave quickly, not desiring for the unique treasures or hoping for even more valuable legacy hiding within the vault. They both knew that the Fleeting Emotions Ruin was fair, and it would not reward someone for more than what they overcame. If they fought against something that they almost had no chance of winning and managed to defeat it, they would get an extraordinary legacy that could directly promote them to advance a small stage within their rank.
However, Iracia and Mabilis did not feel any sense of threat from the guardian, and they did not have any unexpected moment where it could threaten their lives. So, when they finally defeated the guardian without any real danger, their rewards would not be too extraordinary. The chance of having legacy inside the vault would be as close as zero.
Instead of taking more uncertainty to explore the world and risking having thrown out of the Fleeting Emotions Ruin at the critical moment, Mabilis and Iracia would prefer to prepare themselves to enter the Gate of Choice and accept some rewards before leaving.
...
"What do you mean by the Taboo Existences?" Forus frowned as he heard the mutter of the Witch, stopping his assault for a moment before yelling out the question. Although he had no intention to attack at the moment, his body still positioned itself in an aggressive stance that would leap out to swing his black blade at a moment's notice.
The Witch paused for a moment before she conjured speculation within her mind. Not only did she not answer Forus, but she also attacked him with her icy spikes.
Forus naturally prepared himself and deflected one of the spikes and leapt backwards, landing further behind the Witch as he flung his blade towards her, creating a ripple of wind that traversed at speed faster than sound.
Although Forus had thrown many black weapons towards the Witch, they could not compare themselves to the black blade that Forus had just fired. The black weapons that he quickly created did not possess the condensed quality of the said black blade he carefully created.
After landing onto the target, the average Death Aura weaponry would dissipate in pure Death Aura. However, the black blade would remain steady and deal more penetration force than them.
The Witch knew about this simple concept of having higher grade weaponry as the essential one, and she would not take the direct hit from it without risking herself getting injured by its annoying decaying power. Although abruptly moving would cause her sealed wounds to rip open, it was far better than having another large hole on her body.
As the Witch rolled to evade the trajectory of the black blade, a black shadow suddenly descended from the sky and becoming bigger beneath her. Every passing second, the Witch could sense a suffocating air above her as she felt the dreadful aura weighting on her mind, threatening to ruin her.
Without any hesitation, she gritted her teeth and coughed out her blood. However, the colour of said blood was blue and glowing, containing some essence of Ice Element and her sorcery energy. As soon as the blood vanished into thin air, a giant pillar of ice broke out from the ground as it pushed the fragile body of the Witch out of the radius of the dark shadow and stood tall to resist the impact.
The great tremble echoed outwards, and not long after, the freezing winds also followed its path and touched upon everything within the surrounding. Although the ice pillar was not anything special and thus could not withstand the impact against the Leaning Tower of Frost, it had already fulfilled its mission by gaining a tiny gap for the Witch to leap away from the point of impact.
If the state of the Witch before the leap was like a terminal illness patient who could not recover, then at this point, she had already half-stepped into the coffin without any chance of prolonging her life.
The damage from the blow of the giant pillar, which was as wide as multiple adults, was overwhelming. It had broken some of her bones, causing many internal bleeding as well as external injuries. Coupled with the rampaging will-infused Elements and the devouring Death Aura, the Witch's body was in the state of utter chaos.
Sensing her condition, the Witch did not resign and use her index finger to gently tap the location of her heart in her chest. After she used the secret spell on herself, she softly chanted as her body turned as white as a frozen corpse, devoided of blood and life.
Together with her black blood and a part of her sorcery mastery, the Witch of the Scarlet Snow vomited out a considerable amount of messy substance, losing some of her sorcery energy and life force in the process. After using her last bit of strength, the Witch collapsed onto the floor as her body became warm once again.
Her sorcery mastery had degraded once again into the realm of upper-stage first-ranked sorcerers. However, all of the invading Elements, as well as terrifying Death Aura, had left her body together with a part of her sorcery mastery, saving her from the fate of dying in pain and despair.
Now, the chance of winning for the couple had risen to a great height, having the confidence to defeat the Witch without using the same delay tactic. With Ocelia's explosive strikes and Forus' continuous assaults, the Witch would get pressured to death without any chance of turning the tide.
However, that was if the Witch did not have any more treasures or life-saving secrets like the one she had just demonstrated. The depth and story of a peak-stage second-ranked sorcerer were vast and unending, having withstood the passage of time and confronted many struggles and schemes.
This wariness against the unknown caused Forus and Ocelia to take a safer path of wearing down the Witch slowly, not wanting to take any unnecessary risk. Although this would result in having a long-spun battle, it would be better than getting wounded while trying to finish off a desperate sorcerer.
As the Witch had to evade Forus' strike, the assaults on Ocelia also had to cease, letting her focus on the creation of the Leaning Tower of Frost once more. However, this time, she intentionally divided her mental focus on condensing the floors and controlling the Ice Spirits.
By the will of their mistress, the Ice Spirits formed an encirclement formation that surrounded the Witch of the Scarlet Snow, using their Ice Element to produce icy darts of various sizes before raining them down in bulk. Although one single dart would only create a superficial pain and maybe a slight wound for a first-ranked sorcerer, rains of darts would still cause massive injuries as well as profound bleeding if the sorcerer did not do anything.
While the Witch managed to sustain herself from dying a quick death, she could not find a way to break the encirclement quickly without using her trump card or sacrificing a part of her sorcery mastery. Although she could manage to block the rains of icy darts and counter-attack by picking off some of the Ice Spirits, Ocelia would stop her condensation and replace the perished Ice Spirits almost immediately.
After a moment of struggle, a faint fluctuation of Elements within the surrounding echoed as the silvery mist emerged within the air, covering the entire floor of the Tower of Succession with its ice-cold temperature.
By back-tracking the flow of Ice Element, the Witch found that the origin of the silver mist was from a formation array that Forus had been creating while he did not engage in a battle with the Ice Spirits. While Ocelia and the Ice Spirits were distracting the Witch, Forus took his time to complete his arrangement to increase their probability of winning.
As if something had thrown her into a narrow dark space, the Witch suddenly lost her ability to survey her surrounding when the silvery mist got thicker. When she could only see the faint silhouettes of the Ice Spirits, she could not sense their aura with her sorcery energy anymore.
With the layer of concealment provided by Forus, the mental burden on the Witch suddenly intensified multiple folds, keeping her on the state of high alerts at all time. While she could remain guard and block the icy darts in time, she could not help but become anxious about Forus' black weapons as well as Ocelia's Leaning Tower.
Although time passed only so little, the Witch felt as if she had aged for another hundred years. All the problems she was dealing with was very stressful for her, whose power had fallen to the lowest depth in her past hundreds of years. Couple with her exhausted mentality after escaping the death traps of her nemesis, the Witch of the Scarlet Snow was at her most vulnerable state right now.
Just about when the Witch was going to get desperate, a flash of white radiance appeared from the edge of the mist. A giant cross of light moved towards her at an astonishing speed, creating ripples of winds outwards. The holy sensation caused the silvery mist to retreat as they made ways for it to enter the centre of the formation.
The Witch moved within an instant to complete her spell, creating a giant pillar of ice that shot towards the cross, creating an explosion of Ice and Light Elements, generating a turbulent flow of Elements that disrupted the natural orders of things.
However, as soon as the Witch finished her incarnation, the ground beneath her suddenly trembled as two greenish vines broke through the floor and shot straight towards her arms, warping around her body to restain her movement. With their magical property, they caused the flow of sorcery energy within the Witch's body to slow down, increasing the time to channel her spells or use her treasures.
Not waiting for the Witch to have any time to respond, the temperature of the surrounding raise rapidly as a silhouette of a tower emerged from the void, having a similar design as the Leaning Tower of Frost. It would not take long before the Leaning Tower of Flame to finish condensing.
Although the Witch of the Scarlet Snow wanted to resist and dodge the deadly blow, she could not get rid of the vines. Without any choice, she could only use her last trump card.
