Chương 88: 155 - Faceless

It had been a while since the icy grip of panic had seized Vivi's heart, but it did so now. If her irresponsible indulgence had only affected her, that would've been fine—but Embralyne might be the one in danger. Without the Sorceress in the fray, the Dragon King would easily be able to swoop down and engage the princess. Having wrapped a [Prismatic Barrier] around the woman, Vivi hadn't been too worried, but only because Cinereus never should've had a reason to focus on the weaker of them.

His sword could most certainly cut through Vivi's barriers; she had seen that with her own two eyes. They might hold him off for a handful of seconds, but not indefinitely. She forced herself to take a calming breath. What had happened had happened, and while she would scold herself furiously afterward, she needed to stay focused on fixing her mistake. If she could figure out the nature of the spell affecting her within a few seconds, then there wouldn't be a problem.

And a few seconds was a long time when she was stretching her perception to its maximum. Really, though. What was this magic? In the worst-case scenario, it would be a strange no-context power like void energy had been. But that was unlikely. The Dragon King had sealed his most threatening abilities. The more probable explanation was that it was typical magic, just applied in a creative and non-obvious way.

She cast her senses outward and strained as she fished around for the barest shred of magic, but intensifying her focus didn't help. She felt nothing. A deprivation chamber, specifically built for a mage. A variant of an illusion? she wondered. That was her first guess. It's possible to hide mana from people. If you couldn't, [Invisibility] would be useless. But [Invisibility] obscured internal mana flows, not external.

Completely hiding both the spell's signature and all the atmospheric mana of the Sky-Pillar Range bordered on the absurd. She wasn't sure she could do that. Plus an [Illusion] didn't properly explain the white void engulfing her. Teleportation? Had she been warped to some specially prepared room? That would explain how thoroughly effective the deprivation was, since she truly could not sense even a bit of mana. And there had to be some around her.

Very little could give the Sorceress even a second's pause in the arcane, so a carefully enchanted area seemed plausible. But how would she have been teleported against her will? Her shields definitely prevented that. She drifted around, trying to find a boundary, but met only open space. Her movement wasn't restricted, but it seemed as if nothing existed beyond her. An infinite void. The anxiety sitting in the back of her mind grew exponentially with every passing moment.

The more time she wasted, the higher the chances were that she would return to find Embralyne cut in half or burned into a husk by her own father's flames. She tried not to grow nauseous at the mental image. Think about it logically, Vivi. Cinereus is a master of magic, but does he have any specialties? Anything he's particularly good at? Destructive magic, I would've thought… fire-based, and derivatives. I don't see how he could've broken through my shields like he did. No, she realized with a full-body jolt.

Not his specialty. Wrong line of thinking. What is the Cataclysm best at? Mind magic. It was a terrifying idea that the creature had snuck past her very best psychic barriers, but really, it had done so to both Cinereus and Solfirus. Plus, circumventing the weak points in her mental blocks didn't mean total invasion.

It hadn't gotten into her brain and taken over, but if it had applied its specialty and really dug in—especially when Vivi had given it as much wind-up time as it wanted—then could it plausibly have done something inside her head? Yes, more than within the realm of believability. Still surprising, but not impossible. She closed her eyes and turned her attention inward rather than outward. Knowing where to look, she proved her line of reasoning correct in moments.

She found the malevolent bundle of mana woven into the sprawling web of her mind, nestled among the threads that represented her various senses. With an urgent snip, she cut the unwanted modification out. Even as the false world and stimuli disappeared, she thought, But if it was just sensory, and I never went anywhere, why wasn't anything attacking me? The world returned around her, and she immediately received an answer.

Because of her visceral worry for Embralyne, Vivi had misjudged what the Cataclysm would actually use his advantage for. Why would he swoop down to attack the much weaker Embralyne? No, he, and every other dragon he had control of, had used the substantial amount of time to prepare their next attack. The instant she was no longer affected by mind magic, Cinereus and his two dozen other high-level subordinates released their strongest spells—each having begun charging them the moment Vivi went senseless.

So much magic flooded the air all at once that even the Sorceress couldn't keep up. Thankfully, the strongest spell that most immediately needed addressing was easy to identify—more by gut instinct than anything. No doubt Cinereus's contribution. A thin red beam no thicker than a finger descended from the sky to slam into [Prismatic Barrier] a foot above her skull.

The air hummed with energy, and her strongest multi-purpose defensive spell cracked even faster and even louder than when it had made contact with Cinereus's blade. Vivi drew on the Codex for the first time. [Prismatic Barrier] was a three-hundred-sixty-degree defense; there were spells better suited to both target protection and defense against specific types of energy. She threw a specialized shield up, hastily, right before her primary defenses crumbled. But… she was a fraction of a second too late.

Before her specialized shield had finished manifesting, the red beam sliced down, punctured [Prismatic Barrier], and though she twisted out of the way, punched a line through her shoulder. There was a gap in her defenses only for a blink, but that was more than enough time for the plasma ray to completely vaporize a path through the limb. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. For the first time since arriving in this world, she'd taken an actual hit.

Hardly a fatal blow, or even a grievous one, but still. She was too focused on the assault to register the pain. Her mind was fully submerged in pulling together dozens of spellcircles, tossing away her assailants, breaking their debuffs, blocking their attacks, and counterattacking all at once. Throughout the chaotic barrage in which even she struggled to maintain control, the grinding, immense pressure of the red-beam spell continued burrowing down on top of her.

But she'd prepared a proper shield against it, and so it didn't break through a second time. Seriously, though. The Dragon King didn't consider that as being properly in his 'bag of tricks'? The sheer penetrating power was unbelievable. Pound for pound, better than most of her top-tier arsenal selections. Finally, Cinereus's Hail Mary sputtered out, having ultimately failed to cut through her reinforced defenses. It had been a very solid attempt on her life.

Not that Saving Grace had even triggered, but undoubtedly the closest anyone had gotten.

"You live? Still?!" the Cataclysm howled in rage.

"How?"" [Hand of Gaia]." A gigantic green fist scooped the Dragon King up and threw him into the mountainside. Vivi had formed a number of craters with her attacks before, but this one probably set a record; the entire slope seemed to explode, and earth erupted in such enormous gouts it looked as though a volcano's top had been blown off. Not just that, but the titanic green hand followed up immediately by punching into the earth, further crushing Cinereus into the side of Thronemont.

She expected it would knock him unconscious for a moment—she'd gotten a grasp on his durability by this point. Vivi surveyed the rest of the dragons, and, despite how the fight had devolved in a way she never should have allowed it to, she realized that she'd made great progress toward her goal. The Cataclysm had probably recognized that it was outmatched and had told its hosts to pour everything into that barrage.

The various members of the Dragon King's court were all but swaying as they hovered, pale-faced and struggling to keep airborne. They had exhausted themselves completely, exactly as Vivi needed. Though, to be fair, they had drawn blood. And not a pinprick that barely counted, like the Red Tithe with his voidglass dagger. Vivi rolled her shoulder and winced at the spike of agony. A tiny hole had been cut straight through, down and into her upper arm, and out her bent elbow.

Hardly the goriest sight she'd seen, but that was her blood coating her robes and slicking down her arm. She grimaced. With a gravity spell, she slammed the rest of the dragons into the mountain face and took the opportunity to sip from a health potion. Her wound stitched over, though her robes remained damaged. Fixing them might actually be pretty annoying, considering the quality of the fabric. She didn't know if Vanguard even had the required materials. Also entirely your fault, she thought angrily at herself.

She cast her gaze around, seeking out Embralyne. At the start of the fight, the draconic princess had led away three opponents—Vulkarius and two other dragons. It appeared Embralyne had managed to down the two fodder elements of that trio, and even Vulkarius seemed to be at the end of his rope under the princess's persistent assault. The younger sibling never could have dueled her brother and won under normal circumstances, but a near-invincible barrier and potent world-class potions were a rather large advantage.

Vivi's whimsy and excitement for the fight had blinked out the moment she'd realized she might've gotten Embralyne killed, so she grimly closed the distance and began battering Vulkarius around without much ceremony. A handful of powerful spells later, he too stayed down. The rise and fall of most great mages is their love of magic. I keep telling myself that, and somehow keep forgetting. Normally that meant going insane while pursuing ever more esoteric spells, but not in Vivi's case, apparently.

Embralyne searched the area, saw no other combatants in the air, and hesitantly flew over.

"You're bleeding."

"I'm fine. I was an idiot." She shook her head, not wanting to explain.

"I doubt your father is exhausted yet. Probably a little more work to be done there. But we should be wrapping this up shortly." She patched the princess's [Prismatic Barrier] up—it had suffered a decent amount of damage, actually—and turned to where the huge plumes of dirt were still clearing. Cinereus's impact zone.

"Stay back, just in case," she said as she left. The Dragon King was struggling upright when she floated down next to him. The expression on his face was pure madness, hatred and rage so thick she felt equal parts disturbed and sad. What was this thing, anyway? It had some level of sapience, clearly, twisted and beyond saving as it might be. Had it been human once? The Dragon King lunged for her, but he was slow and flagging, and he hadn't been able to keep up from the start.

The only reason she'd taken any damage at all was because she had stood there and deliberately let him charge up and deliver his very best attacks. She drifted sideways and zapped him with a tier-20 lightning spell. He took ten seconds to get to his feet again. A tomb of ice held him for nearly a minute as he struggled with all his might. He did, eventually, break free, only for a boulder to drop onto his head and shatter earth a mile around them. He stayed down. Vivi settled onto the ground and frowned at him.

When he didn't rise, she ascended and surveyed her surroundings. The mountain was littered with craters, and the Palace too, but 'total destruction' would be an exaggeration. Still, she'd hoped to keep the Palace in better shape. After a full minute in which none of her opponents flew up to meet her—Embralyne obeying by watching from a distance, apparently the more responsible between them—Vivi decided she'd accomplished her goal.

The energy reserves of the Cataclysm and its hosts had been drained to her satisfaction. She landed in front of the Dragon King and fished out the Fourflame Amulet. She didn't let her guard down as she crouched next to him—she'd made one huge mistake this fight already, thank you very much—but the dragon wasn't playing unconscious as some ploy to catch her unaware. A mental scan confirmed that the Cataclysm was still infesting Cinereus's mind. It probably wouldn't give him up for anything.

Why would it, when the monster clearly thought it was unkillable? We're about to put that to the test, and my money is on Cinereus. The Dragon King didn't seem like the kind of person to claim to have an 'ultimate, guaranteed killing measure' that wouldn't live up to the promise. The issue was, he had asked her to extract and contain some portion of the Cataclysm.

She had no idea what the creature was, whether it had a diffuse existence where it lived partially in each of its hosts or whether it possessed a main body somewhere, but she had sensed more than a simple enchantment when she had dived into Cinereus's mind. Full possession, after all, wasn't standard mind magic. Usually that branch of the arcane was built for influence and suggestion, not inhabitation. The Cataclysm had invested a part of its true self into its most promising host.

She pressed the amulet to the Dragon King's forehead and activated the artifact. Four primal energies burst from the jewelry and began swirling around, then detonated so loudly that Vivi's magic-ears were left metaphorically ringing. Black goo oozed from Cinereus's eyes, mouth, and other orifices, pouring out to pool behind his skull.

It was a rather disturbing image, frankly, but Vivi kept her sensibilities and scooped the sludge up with [Telekinesis], yanked it to the side, and began encasing it with her highest-tier containment spell." [Cage of the Sunless Sanctum]." After that, she used one of her weakest abilities—the one everyone had access to. She hadn't been given a name when she had asked, and she wanted one.

"[Inspect]."

The Faceless Legion Lv. 1990 A frown pulled at her lips. Not even as powerful as the Ashen Hierophant, and it'd given her trouble? Then again, that 'trouble' had been entirely of her own creation. She sighed inwardly yet again. A part of her appreciated having seen no fewer than three truly fascinating spells that she now had a foundation to begin steali—redesigning, but she still felt sour about how her enthusiasm might have hurt Embralyne. Killed Embralyne, she corrected. No point in softening it.

If it'd just been Vivi herself at risk, she wouldn't have cared much. Amazing new magic was worth a hole through the shoulder, and honestly a lot more besides. But she hadn't been alone, and she'd risked a woman's life. So Vivi was disappointed with herself. She pointed her staff at Cinereus and incanted, "[Awaken]."