The tip of the spear of ice approaches at a speed too fast for the eyes to catch. It would've been too fast for even my eyes to catch if it were the old me. But I am not the old me. I have fought monsters the size of a castle, dragons that breathed poisonous acids and even fiends that charged out of the shadows.

A familiar coldness spreads around my right hand. There is no moment of hesitation as I raise my right hand and smacks aside the approaching tip of the ice spear to my left. The bookshelf on the wall beside me breaks as the seven-foot long ice spear crashes against it, throwing the leatherbound books and numerous trinkets on the floor.

It was an impressive ice spear. Indeed, there was nothing to complain about the power, shape, size or toughness of the ice spear. It was solid and merely being stabbed with the tip could've frozen the victim if one didn't have any resistance to frost.

However, it was still merely an ice spear. If she had any hope of killing me with it, she'd have to cast Ice Chains and Flight of the Polar Birds as well or employ some other similar strategy. But that is something someone who is familiar with the battlefield will do. I have nothing to fear from someone who lives her life in peace and sits in a comfy chair behind an ornate desk made out of holy oak.

Sister Jihan looks at me in disbelief. Her right hand is extended towards me, still covered in a mist of frost but without the ice spear she sent my way earlier. The moment lasts mere seconds and her blood quickly forms another spell.

"Who sent you?" she asks while the magic circuit circulates around her body.

"I don't know! One moment I was on our final battlefield, and the next I was in the Hall of Stellar Radiance."

"Still playing dumb, huh? Alright, I will make it easier for you. Crimson Crusade or Temple of Flames, which one?"

"What? I don't even know who those are!"

"Oh? You don't sound like you're lying. There is another group of thugs out for my blood? Well, it doesn't matter. I survived four cullings, I will survive another. Say hello to your bosses in Halla."

She won't even listen! It seems like she has it set that I'm here to kill her. "Won't you please stop and listen?!" I ask for the last time.

"No. Your friends didn't listen when they cut off my mother's head. They didn't listen when they stabbed me twice and left me bleeding on the ground. Why would I give you that benefit?" She refuses as her magic gets nearer to completion.

With diplomacy failing, there was nothing else I can do but to survive long enough and hopefully show her that she was wrong about me. The pattern of her spell suggests something remote casting and area effect with high damage, which means either Frost Field or Icicle Nova, two of the spells that Erle used quite often. Neither of which is good. Both can be countered, but the counterspell requires a lot of mana, which I in my current form do not have. What I do have, is knowledge.

"Aria!" I grab Aria's hand and pulls her close to me.

"Ah, eh, what... what just happened?" she asks as she recovers from her shock.

Holding her right hand in my left with my right hand on her back pulling her against me, I close her lips with my own. She struggles, flustered at the sudden kiss, but I hope she stops misunderstanding this. This is not anything romantic.

Back in my previous life, there was one time when I arrived at a hidden castle deep in the woods. The residents were friendly and looked just like normal people, but they weren't normal people. They were vampires. On the very first night, my whole party was feasted on. As for me, I attracted the attention of the vampire lord and she attempted to turn me into one of them.

Thankfully, all initiates of Starsilver were imbued with a small amount of Starsilver dust. The head priestess back then told us it was so that we would never lose our way. The real purpose was to keep our bodies pure to prevent all transformations that defile the purity of life. For that reason, my body rejected vampirification, but I pretended that I was turned with incomplete transformation, and there I learned their secret art of life feeding.

Life Feeding is a shameful method of consuming life and mana from another person to nourish the life and mana of the one feeding. It is shameful even for vampires, for a different reason. After escaping from the vampire castle, I swore to never use this technique again. Now there is no other choice. If I do not do this, we will both die.

I am sorry, Aria.

And so I start feeding on Aria, my beloved, my cherished, my only one. I am aware that this may turn bad, but as long as I consume only her mana, she should be fine. It is difficult, particularly since I haven't done this for years, but as long as I stay in the region of 'energy' and stay away from 'life', and not touching the blurry boundary that separates the two, there should be little chance of consuming her life.

While feeding on my dear, sweet Aria, I start preparing the magic circuit to defend myself from Sister Jihan's attack.