Liam fell to his knees as knowledge filled him faster even than the mana that was flowing in from the maelstrom all around.
It was sort of like when he was reading a book from one of Baron Riven’s shelves. Only the process was immediate. His mind was filled with all sorts of oddities: schematics, strange drawings, things he felt like he should almost know. But at the same time they came through his mind and went just as quickly as they appeared.
He let out a grunt of pain, but he didn’t have much time to think on the memories that flashed through his head. No more than he had time to think about the garzeth, which was back on its feet and lumbering towards him.
He wasn’t sure he could attribute human emotion to the thing, but it almost looked happy. He almost thought there was a nasty smile on its face with the way tis teeth pulled back, revealing a mouth full of razor sharp spines. It raised its one good claw again.
And still the paths inside him filled with arcane and infernal power. He could feel those magical paths in his body filling, the mana threatening to overwhelm him. He cried out in pain as it filled his arcane core. It was almost too much for him. It threatened to overwhelm him.
He looked at the creature again. He concentrated on the arcane power that moved through him even as he stared up at the garzeth taking its leisurely time preparing to kill him.
It leaned forward, and its massive nose twitched as it sniffed at him. Some of the purple smoke that had been coming off of him from the infernal mana moved into the creature’s nose, and its eyes went wide. All six of them at the same time.
That was a surprise.
And still there was also the pure blue, almost white, of the arcane power also moving through him.
He tried to push it all into his core. Tried to take as much of it as he possibly could. It seemed like it was stretching him to the breaking point, but he cried out and let the power flow through him.
That power flowed through his pathways and into his arm and fist as he brought it up. He wasn’t sure how he did it. Just that he pushed some of that mana into his fist to strengthen it.
He hit the garzeth with an uppercut right to the chin. Which had that mouth full of knife-sharp teeth snapping shut as it snapped its head up. It teetered for a moment, standing above him. The thing still looked terrifying even when he’d hit it with an arcane mana-assisted punch. The thing was still incredibly powerful, and he still thought of himself as an insect next to the sheer power this thing was putting out.
Even if it bore more of a resemblance to an insect than he did with those six legs.
The creature balanced for a moment, its eyes really blinking out of sequence now, and then it fell back. Its chest was still rising and falling as it slammed into the stone behind it, so he knew he hadn’t killed it.
Massive puffs of mana flew up all around it, disturbed by the eddies and flows of pure power flowing from the city into him. Still he sat there on his knees, feeling the power running through him. Filling his mana channels. The two types of mana were almost fighting one another as they filled those channels and stretched them to the breaking point.
Yet they also seemed to reinforce those channels as they fought against each other. So they stretched to the breaking point and beyond, and yet his body wasn’t shattered by the power coursing through it.
He took deep breaths and tried to let it happen. He tried to fight the infernal mana even as he submitted to the arcane mana. It was a balancing act he knew could kill him if he lost concentration for even a moment.
Then the pain from the arcane mana stopped, and again his core was filling. He’d passed another Ascension. He didn’t know how he’d done it. Just that it was a matter of channeling the mana appropriately as it threatened to kill him.
And still those strange diagrams moved through his head. They seemed to be depositing in a corner of his mind he hadn’t even realized was there before. He took in deep breaths as he tried to control it all. As he tried to maintain some semblance of sanity through all the impossibilities happening to him.
Not that he had much time to think about it before the infernal core filled up, and again it was like every creature he’d ever killed was trying to burst out of him and take revenge from beyond the grave. Or wherever it was demonic creatures went after they were killed.
He’d never actually talked to a demon to ask what they thought about life after death. Not that he was sure he believed all the stories the people in the village told about where humans went when they died.
He fell to his side. He couldn’t help it. The pain was overwhelming. The power ripped through his body. Ripped through the passageways where mana was supposed to move along with his bloodstream. At least that’s how it was described in Baron Riven’s books.
Though what he read in those books had clearly omitted some important information. How magic actually worked was turning out to be a very different thing.
He concentrated on the infernal mana. He concentrated on the knowledge pouring into him. He focused on the pure academic essence of what was happening to him, even though he was sure there was no academic text in all of human territory that could tell exactly what was going on with him here.
This was all impossible, after all. Until that bastard cat worked a spell on him that made it suddenly very possible.
Said bastard cat was sitting on his shoulder with a look that was almost predatory, his tail swishing this way and that. Only Liam grabbed hold of that tail and pulled, and held on with all the force of all the arcane and infernal power moving through his body. Apparently it was a lot, because the mage turned cat familiar let out an unearthly yowl. His hair puffed up, and he brought his claws down and tried to dig into Liam’s shoulder.
He’d had enough of the barn cats scratching the ever loving shit out of him before when one of them got a wild hair up its ass that he was well aware of how painful the consequences could be for messing with a cat’s tail.
Only none of that happened now. The claws might as well be running up against armor, for all the damage they did.
That was another point of interest for him. Another academic curiosity he tucked away in the back of his mind along with all the strange diagrams flooding his mind.
Albert kept hold of him with his claws. He kept trying to dig into his shoulder, and Liam kept hold of the damn cat’s tail. He figured if all this was the sorcerer’s fault, then the least the newly feline son-of-a-bitch deserved was to enjoy some of the pain that was threatening to burn Liam from the inside out.
He held onto that academic side as well. The part that was pure knowledge. He turned it in on himself. He watched all those strange arcane symbols flashing past his memory, and he pushed those up against the mana pool inside him. The symbols glowed in resonance with the magic, but then they were gone just as quickly as they came to his mind.
He floated on the arcane mana pulsing inside him. He struggled through the infernal mana pulsing through him trying to overwhelm him. They pulsed in counterpoint to one another. Almost to the point he couldn’t tell them apart. Both types of mana fighting against one another pushed and stretched the channels as they fought each other even as they fought him.
He held onto that. He felt his cores filling up. Filling to a capacity that felt like it was going to kill him. He tried to control it. He tried to ride the arcane mana as he pushed down on the infernal mana.
A touch. Ana was there, floating in the chaos with him. Staring at him.
“You need to show it you’re the master. It’s difficult when you get to higher tiers. It’s especially difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to do it.”
Liam took strength from that. He took her voice and put that into his cores. It seemed odd that a demoness talking to him about an Ascension would give him the strength he needed, but he held onto that burning ember at the very center of his being.
And for a moment, the burning ember that was her voice seemed to be the entirety of his being. He held onto it and he pushed it into his core. He used it as the strength he needed to hold onto his sanity. To hold onto his very life.
His whole reality was her voice rolling through him and over him and all around him. It filled him almost the same as the arcane and infernal mana filled him.
He screamed again, and suddenly the infernal power snapped into place. One moment it was struggling and trying to burn him. Trying to take revenge for everything he’d done to all the creatures he’d killed over the years since he was first able to take up the felblade.
He held onto her. He screamed one more time. He let the power fill him, overwhelm him, and her voice was there with him the entire time. Comforting him. Telling him what he needed to do. That he needed to be the one taking control.
Then suddenly the arcane power fell into place alongside the infernal. One moment it was threatening to drown him as he went with its flow, and the next moment the arcane mana flowed into his core. A core that seemed vast. Like an ocean inside him. Almost too much power.
He didn’t know how anyone could handle that much power. He didn’t know how he was ever going to handle that much power. But somehow it would have to happen if he was going to survive.
He opened his eyes again just in time to see the garzeth once more making its way across the tower. It had two clawed hands out now, and it was almost to the point of regrowing a third. The two it did have were out and ready to go.
Infernal mana streamed from the one that was still wounded. Some of the swirling magic from the maelstrom was filling the creature where he’d relieved it of a couple of his limbs.
He was also surprised to realize something else. There were the two cores pulsing deep in his body, but there was also something else. He could feel something pulsing in time with the infernal core buried inside him. It seemed to be coming from the garzeth lumbering towards them in the same attack it’d done a couple of times already.
The thing was certainly powerful, he’d give it that, but it wasn’t particularly bright when it came to its attacks.
Also? He could feel the pulsing from a core next to him. Not coming from the cat, at least not in time with the infernal magic, but he thought he could almost feel the echo of a vast and powerful arcane core in Albert. Like something vast had been there once, but it was both there and not there any longer.
That other pulsing came from Ana, though. He turned to look at her. She had her hand on his arm and she smiled at him. Provided him a rock in that moment.
None of his cores felt like they were filling quite as rapidly any longer, but that was an illusion. He could feel them pulling in mana both infernal and arcane at the same pace as before, but the capacity in his cores at his current Ascension was so vast that even the mana pouring into him was small in comparison.
And supposedly there were people out there who were far beyond the Third Ascension. It boggled his mind to think of the possibility.
He’d have to worry about that later, though. He needed to deal with the creature in front of him. A creature that would give up quite a bit of mana if he killed it. A creature that was in pain of its own. A creature that seemed to almost be in chains of infernal mana that clouded its mind.
And suddenly that pulsing between them cleared everything up as realization hit him. So he stepped forward and held up a hand to the creature, waiting and hoping he wasn’t doing something monumentally stupid.