"He’s not in the shadows, Kayden," Felix said after a few seconds. Kayden continued looking for the monster; the problem was that he needed the enemy to use mana from somewhere more often.
Kayden just waited as he watched his guild members use elaborate techniques to defend themselves. Aqua used reactive water that swallowed the skulls and rendered them useless for a few seconds. Shiva launched fire attacks that consumed everything until nothing was left. The twins applied support and healing spells to their allies. The problem was that this felt like a battle against time; they weren’t going anywhere with their defenses.
"I’m going to get rid of the fog for a few seconds, take advantage of this time," one of the twins began chanting a strange chant and manipulating the mana around him. The wind became restless. Within a few seconds, a huge gale began; a tornado came out of where the twin was and began to rotate everything toward its center. Not just material things; Kayden even felt his grip being tugged slightly by the attack. The fog gradually lifted, and soon they were left without any sign of it. The environment was destroyed, with trees and other things melting into a green liquid. Kayden was still intact from all of this and looking for any sign of the attacker.
In the meantime, he felt some runes on the ground. His knowledge was limited, but he told Felix and asked for help. The feline focused on the runes and left the rest aside.
"If you see the light, I see you," Thomas threw a ball of light into the air that lit up the entire place. Kayden, even so, found no sign of the attacker. Soon after, a spot began to become bright. A body made only of bones started to light up on the ground. With dozens of corpses lying around, no one paid much attention to them, but these seemed special. The bones were slightly different in appearance.
"Finding my body won’t help you kill me." Kayden finally understood that they were fighting a lich. How unlucky was he to encounter one of these monsters in his first dungeon?
Kayden began searching everywhere for the lich’s cursed item. If they could not break the object containing the lich’s soul, this would be a losing battle. Shiva threw dozens of red goo at the skeleton. This goo was a fire in its solid form, a type of high-level spell. Anything that came into contact with it was melted to smithereens. The lich dodged everything just using mist attacks.
Gnar began to transform from a small being to an immense Goliath almost 4 meters tall, with muscles on all sides. The creature materialized a huge rock and threw it at the lich. Again, the wizard disintegrated the stone with some flames.
"Pathetic." The lich spread his green mist everywhere. Everyone managed to get back to the protection of Thomas’s bubble. In fact, not all. Gnar was caught midway by hands made of bones. There were thousands of hands holding her body. Then, several skulls began to appear around Gnar. Instantly, several parts of the giant’s body were eaten and destroyed into pieces.
Gnar let out a howl of pain as he felt his body disappear with several bites. He couldn’t even react before a large chunk ceased to exist. The pain came from the lack of meat and not from the bite; he couldn’t feel the bite.
Desperately, he used his strongest technique and his body shrank to just one meter tall. The flesh was compressed, and his strength tripled while maintaining his giant state in a smaller body. This bought him valuable seconds to run back to the bubble.
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"Don’t get bitten by those things, Felix. And if so, expel all the mana from your body." Kayden watched as he saw the mana in Gnar’s body begin to turn green and slowly turn into mist.
"Thomas!" Kayden shouted, drawing attention to him. "Throw Gnar out of the bubble, he’s infected." The group looked at Kayden with strange eyes; he was asking them to sentence one of his companions to death.
"You should have listened to your friend," the lich’s voice boomed as Gnar’s body burst like a balloon, filling Thomas’s bubble with mist. Everyone felt their bodies start to deteriorate.
Most had defensive spells and quickly placed them on themselves. The weakest part of all this was still Malphite, who again received dozens of holes in his body. Fortunately, Aqua was by their side and raised a barrier over them.
Even with some damage, none of them suffered to the point of facing any risk. The only problem was that his defenses were worn down. They were all geniuses capable of performing many complex and powerful spells. However, the lich was almost a ghost; without a target, your spells became useless. The skulls attacked again before anyone could enter Thomas’ bubble. The floating skulls focused their blows on the twins, as one of them was visibly weakened.
Kayden didn’t move a muscle as he watched the skulls devour the barrier and subsequently eat the two twins alive. They even put up other defenses, but they were destroyed by the skulls. There were many and with a very strong attack. They even tried to put up a wind and water barrier that complemented each other perfectly. Its defense was perfect against physical attacks, but unfortunately, the skulls’ attacks were on a completely different level and only destroyed the spells alone.
The two twins died quickly without being able to do anything. The situation began to become desperate. Thomas’ group was panicking. One of their friends was killed in front of them and they couldn’t even help in the slightest.
The fog was negatively affecting everyone’s minds and further increasing the negative emotions in the group. Even though they had a real chance of winning this battle, their emotions were shaken.
The next person to pull a card from his sleeve was Shiva. His eyes turned red and several of his veins began to bulge as if they were on fire. Then, red clouds appeared in this enclosed space. A kind of red water began to fall to the ground. It was hot and at the same time it did not release any heat to the outside; only when it touched something, the heat was released. Furthermore, it pulled all the heat from the environment into the spell, causing the outside to become cold.
Mass destruction began to be wrought on all sides. Practically every corner of the room was melted. The trees and walls were completely liquefied by the temperature. This action provoked the lich enough for him to cast another spell, forcing everyone to go on the defensive again. The mana in the surroundings began to change and become mist-like. This was done subtly. Kayden was the only one who noticed again. This time, he just stayed quiet as he watched the situation unfold. It was better to just gather information. Thomas’s team lacked any tactical capabilities; They looked like little ducks carrying big guns.
The lich realized this and the first one he tried to kill when an opportunity arose was the twins, as they were the two who passed strong auras to experienced combatants. As for Kayden, he has not achieved any success with his attrition techniques. Kayden’s domain was very well crafted; the skulls were met with dozens of small fake points and useless mana points. Ninety percent of the effort from his attacks was useless against Kayden.
Thomas again performed his spell and highlighted the bones that this time were floating in the air a few dozen meters away from them. Aqua used a ball of compressed water that remained in a solid form that was not ice, another very high-level spell. The ball of water traveled dozens of meters almost instantly. As soon as it hit the ribcage made of bones, a small explosion happened, and the water spread throughout all the bones, then it began to shrink and compress the body of bones.
The sound of bones being broken was heard for a few seconds, but soon after, everything returned to normal. Kayden saw that the lich’s body was destroyed by more than 70% and yet the skull was still floating and regenerating its body in the air.
Everyone spent a high amount of mana and began to regenerate mana using that of the environment. Thomas was the only one who could purify this mana perfectly before putting it into his body. This made him the only one who did not become contaminated.
The first to succumb was Shiva; the woman was the one who drew the most mana for herself. As soon as she tried to use the contaminated mana, she felt her body begin to come apart from the inside out.
"Don’t use your mana! She is contaminated!" the woman shouted these words through clenched teeth. The remainder had already absorbed too much mana to stop, but they were still unique geniuses and were able to isolate this tainted mana. Unfortunately, this made his reserves even smaller.
Author’s note: I don’t know when I’ll be back with the bonus chapters, my life is in chaos right now, I completely understand if you prefer to donate to other works