Tanya's mental realm was a mess and just being within had Melinda attacked from all angles with conflictions mostly between her wish to rule and uphold her family as well as her jealousy for what she felt she was giving up by going against Hal...
Faced with it all, Melinda was not shaken and just pushed forward in her search for what she came here for; The connection that Tanya had formed with the Monument gem and hence forged with the Monument of Ordinances.
The conflictions she moved past were mere distractions that Melinda did not put past Tanya to have placed here to deliberately distract from her goal.
"Have you no sympathy?"
Melinda had not completely moved past the distractions that she heard Tanya's voice and when she turned to face the mental apparition of the Crown Princess, Melinda had to say it only now struck her how much Tanya had changed in regards to looks ever since her in-depth use of the gem.
Tanya's mental apparition looked as she had looked before she decked her forehead with the Monument gem and she lacked all the crack lines currently marring her skin.
Tanya had a sweet smile on her face but even if her heart was softening while faced with that smile, Melinda retained a frown.
"Sympathy for what?" Melinda asked.
"As you can see, I am extremely flawed. As focused as I appear to be, my every action is hampered by conflictions. I am not as sure of myself as I wish to be... And yet you wish to ignore all that just to accomplish a singular goal?" Tanya asked and immediately after, Melinda responded,
"Yes,"
"That's cold," Tanya said.
"It's necessary," Melinda retorted.
"Still cold,"
"If you say so. However, I find it pathetic that your strategy is to seek mercy much less when you had so many chances to choose right," Melinda said and turned away from Tanya's mental apparition to continue her search for the connection she had come for.
"Don't turn away from me!" Tanya's mental apparition said.
"I have nothing more to say to you," Melinda said and made to move when her eyes widened and her senses were perked.
Slowly, she turned around to come to face with the smile of the apparition who was glowing with a significance that Melinda understood even before Tanya's apparition said,
"I meant to say, don't turn away from me for I am what you seek. I am the connection to the gem... The connection to the Monument of Ordinances... I am Tanya's mental stability."
Melinda stretched her hand and summoned an apparition of her Life-sundering sword but Tanya just chuckled,
"Your confidence amuses me. You seem to not have understood that, here, as the infiltrator, you are weaker while I am the embodiment of all of Tanya's incredible mental abilities.
Her Astral sense is mine to wield and this entire region is mine to manipulate."
As the apparition spoke, the 'ground' Melinda had been standing on vanished, and her ability to fly appeared to have been seized as she began to fall indefinitely without the ability to stop herself.
While she fell, she was met with clashes against mental platforms, and every contact got rid of a good bit of her mental essence.
Within Tanya's mind, the concept of cosmic energy was absent. Every attack was made with mental energy and every repercussion was the loss of mental energy with the ultimate defeat being a complete collapse of the mind.
In here, they both could summon apparitions of abilities they had in the physical world but the impact would all be mental.
However, Tanya had an edge that went beyond the fact that this was her mind and that was that she had access to Astral energy which in itself was mental energy able to take physical shape or form and every attack that Tanya made was thick with Astral energy and this had more repercussions for Melinda than simply the loss of mental energy.
You see, to enter into Tanya's mind, Melinda had needed to forge a connection between both of their minds but only the mind of someone who possessed Astral sense could withstand getting touched by astral energy...
... And so every astral energy strike against Melinda's Astral sense-lacking mind was poisoning her mentally. It would therefore take Tanya less effort to break Melinda's mind as compared to Melinda.
Tanya was aware of this and it was why, as Melinda fell continuously seemingly with an inability to take flight or stop her fall, the apparition of the crown Princess arrived with two weapons of Astral energy to complete the job her platforms of Astral energy had already begun.
However, Tanya had underestimated how strong Melinda was mentally.
It was true that the White-eyed beauty lacked Astral sense but that was not a prerequisite for a strong mind and the best example of this was Harlyn Haron, the Empress of the Haron Empire who had tutored Melinda.
*BAM!* *BAM!*
Melinda knocked the weapons to the side and stabbed her sword into Tanya's chest.
Tanya had not reacted fast enough to avoid getting stabbed but she did manage to reduce how deep the sword got into her as well as how much mental energy she lost.
She pushed away from Melinda who was suddenly making use of two golden foot holds which she pushed off of to stab her sword at Tanya yet again.
Tanya manipulated the terrain and a massive wall stretched between them but before she could relax or truly take advantage of the reprieve, Melinda stabbed her in the back.
"Ack!" Tanya groaned and with a snap of her fingers, she created a massive platform of Astral energy that she slammed against Melinda.
*BAM!*
The hit was successful but Melinda brushed it aside to showcase incredible movement that the Crown princess could not follow and did not expect an outsider to have within her mind.
*BANG!*
"Ahh!" Tanya yelled after getting hit and she had only let out the sound that she was stabbed in the jaw and kicked into a golden platform that Melinda had made appear.
As she smacked into the golden platform and lost even more mental energy, Tanya realized three things;
One, Melinda was not actually moving fast... Not exactly. The white-eyed beauty had simply created multiple golden platforms that she could push herself off. The more she pushed off the platforms in quick succession, the faster she was.
Being stuck to one of the said platforms, Tanya was able to map out where Melinda had planted many more of them and she could not help but be impressed by how Melinda had used them to evade and attack her.
The second thing Tanya noticed was that the golden platforms held enough hints of divinity to be completely out of the level she had any hope to manipulate.
The third thing she noticed was that all of Melinda's attacks had been precise and a systematic cut-off of the connection she had come for.
As Melinda approached, Tanya manipulated the mental space and increased the distance between them to give herself time to get free.
She succeeded and wretched herself from the platform holding her but as she fell downward, she was smacked by a golden ankh that put her back in the trajectory to be stabbed in the sternum by Melinda's sword and pushed back into the platform.
Tanya created a dagger of Astral energy and stabbed it into the side of Melinda's head before making the blade longer and wider so that it burst right out.
Poisoned by Astral energy and after all of the punishment she had previously received, Melinda's mental health was hanging by a thread... And should she lose within this mental space, there was no way her Life-locking spell would still be active in the real world.
The gravity of the situation was not lost on Melinda and Tanya but that did not stop Melinda from grinning or stop Tanya from grimacing because Melinda's sword stab had been to the very last link to the Monument gem that she needed to cut.
Melinda pulled out her sword and immediately pulled her mental perception into her own mind where it could begin to recover all the mental energy lost.
While she healed though, Melinda kept her hold on the Monument gem and pulled it out of the Princess' head to which Tanya's eyes opened wide and she let out a scream that was heard all over the Dane Duchy Capital,
"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The scream, which was reminiscent of her brother's when he lost the gem, announced her loss but so did the wave of multicolored energy that the gem let out as it was wrenched away from yet another host.
The wave of energy had no effect on Melinda who now has the gem in her palm and stared at it with an almost tempted expression on her face.
The gem had enough sentience to promise power but Melinda had a stronger backing that encouraged her to shake off the temptation and scoff at the measly amount, it even dared to offer her.
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