A True Genius Worries

by Sophia Schmidt

  "You see, a healer is bound to know the human body better than anyone else. We know how

  to deal the maximum pain while keeping our patient alive."

  After using Invigoration on her, he located her mana core. According the Alchemy Professor,

  sending mana into someone else's body was like injecting poison. Lith was now curious to see

  what would happen if he injected his mana directly into her mana core.

  Chapter 111 Desperation 2

  Despite he could see it with Invigoration, a mana core wasn't a physical organ. It was inside

  the human body but at the same time it wasn't. During the years spent as a healer in the Lutia

  village, he had cured countless peoples with stomach wounds, but none, no matter how deep,

  had ever affected a core.

  Lith had to rely on his newfound mana sensibility, sending a tendril of pure mana from his

  core to the woman's. At first, nothing happened, her core seemed stable, keeping its yellow

  colour despite the flood of alien energies.

  But a few seconds later, Lith could see that the zone where he had attached the tendril was

  getting weaker and weaker. The yellow was turning to orange, slowly spreading to the whole

  core.

  The woman suddenly started to scream in pain, all her veins and arteries bulging out, as if

  they were trying to shake off her skin. The red of the blood turned blue as the mana that was

  invading her body.

  When it reached her head, she started to bleed the cyan liquid from her eyes, nose and ears.

  The shrieks of agony showed no trace of her previous defiance, only desperation.

  Her voice when from shrill to hoarse, until it didn't sound like a human voice anymore. She

  kept yelling and yelling, until she had no more air in her lungs, but she seemed incapable of

  drawing breath again.

  Lith stopped, leaving her a couple of seconds to recover and feel the temporary relieve from

  the lack of pain.

  "Ready to talk now?"

  Sobbing in terror, the burly woman swore to the gods that if she managed to survive, she

  would have changed her way of life. No more trading lives for money, she would redeem

  herself.

  "My name is Melia." She said trying to establish a connection, to force him to perceive her as

  a person. It was a trick that had worked countless times in the past, even if she had never

  been the one to attempt it, but Rodimas.

  She always said that every man dreamed of being the hero of a sobbing woman.

  And this time, she was sincere, she wasn't just trying to backstab him as soon as he lowered

  his guard.

  "I don't care." He replied with a cold stare. "I mean who are you? Mercenaries? Hunters?

  Assassins?"

  "Mercenaries. We were paid handsomely to come here, kill as many beasts as possible and

  frame the students for it."

  Melia's words confirmed his theory, but didn't trigger any vision, nor relieved his fears.

  "Who sent you here, and why?"

  "I don't know, I swear! I'm just the muscle of the team, Raghul is the one that deals with our

  contractors, while Rodimas is the brain of our operations."

  "Raghul?"

  "That man." She nodded in his direction.

  "It's everything I know, please, let me go."

  Leaving them alive was out of question. They had forced him to use too much of his true

  power, they were a liability. No matter their promises, as soon as they were out of reach, they

  would sell him to the highest bidder with a smile on their faces.

  "Then I don't need you anymore." With a wave of his hand, Lith used spirit magic to twist her

  head 180 degrees, breaking the neck and putting her out of her misery.

  "Now, mister Raghul, we can do this easy or painful. Tell me what I want to know, and I will

  give you a peaceful death. Resist and¡ well. You have seen what happens." Lith removed

  Raghul's gag, allowing him to speak.

  "Wouldn't have been better to leave her alive? To give them hope?" Solos objected. She

  really didn't Like Lith torturing people. Every time he did it, she could sense something inside

  of him dying.

  "What hope? They are professionals, not some girls scout. They know all too well that I will

  never let them live, because that's what they would do in my shoes." ¨C

  "Listen kid, I'm sorry we tried to kill you." His terror ruined his usually flawless poker face,

  making him sound fake like a three-dollar bill.

  "You don't have to do this. You are still young, don't become like us."

  Behind his fake empathy, Raghul only meant to buy time, hoping to find a way out of that

  predicament. But he discovered that his hands were blocked, he couldn't even feel the

  magical stone he hid in his boot in case of emergencies.

  His only hope was to find a crack in the kid's morality and exploit it to escape.

  "Too late for that." Lith ignored his ramblings, placing his hand over Raghul's core and

  forcefully sending mana into it. Raghul had a cyan core, just like Lith, so even if he was

  incapable of controlling it, the core's energies were able to repel Lith's clumsy attacks.

  "So, I can freely invade only weaker cores? It's a pity I don't have the time. It would have

  been interesting to discover what happens to someone once I degrade his core, maybe even

  below the red level.

  Stripping someone of his magic could be a formidable threat, not to mention that it would

  allow me to keep prisoners without having to fear any trick from their side." ¨C

  Taking a mental note to experiment on that in the future, Lith stopped wasting his pure mana,

  adding darkness magic to it. Raghul's defences crumbled like a sand castle facing a tsunami,

  darkness quickly spread to the whole core.

  Like for Melia, his veins bulged out, but their colour was black. Melia's suffering had been

  nothing compared to Raghul's, pure entropy was eating at every of his cells.

  When Raghul started to bleed black blood from all his orifices, Lith stopped sending energy,

  but the pain didn't pause.

  "What the heck?" ¨C Lith was flabbergasted. Trying to understand what was happening, he

  touched Raghul again, using Invigoration.

  He was then able to see that even without his command, the darkness was still ravaging the

  mana core, that was now full of cracks, on the brink of collapsing on itself.

  "Seems that dark magic is too powerful to directly inject it. I need a softer approach for the

  woman, or all the information will be lost."

  "Lith, the core is black." Solus sounded worried.

  "What if you just created an Abomination?" ¨C

  Lith refused to believe that accidentally performing such feat could be so easy, but being

  cautious, he kept monitoring Raghul's status while ignoring Rodimas' whimpering and

  sobbing.

  After just a few seconds, the black core crumbled, and Raghul's body when limp, devoid of

  life. Lith sighed with relief. Humans seemed to be no match for him, but Abominations where

  on a league on their own.

  He was already sick and tired of that day, he just wanted to understand what was the source

  of uneasiness he kept feeling, solve the damn vision and then sleep for a whole week.

  Lith had just turned toward Rodimas, pondering about what element use on her, when a

  sudden noise drew his attention.

  Raghul's body was trembling again, writhing like he had a seizure.

  By using Invigoration a
gain, Lith could see that black and red blood were pooling where the

  mana core had been, forming a new one, brimming with dark energies.

  The blood core was sucking all the remaining fluids in the body, making Raghul turn pale as a

  ghost, his eyes glowing with a red light, like a torch was burning behind them.

  Lith could see his canines grow into fangs, his hands and feet breaking free from the stone

  ground as it was just soft mud. He immediately backstepped, conjuring a wind barrier to

  intercept all the rock projectiles flying towards him.

  "What the heck is a blood core?" Solus almost panicked.

  "The bad news is that I think I have just created a vampire. The good news is that at least he

  doesn't shine under sunlight like a disco ball." Lith replied. -

  Chapter 112 Lith¡¯s Monster

  Solus had no idea what Lith had done, to be exact, either of them did. The creature in front of

  them wasn't dead nor alive, her mana sense had never perceived anything like that.

  A normal core was a mass of pure mana, that could be used to interact with the world energy

  to give life to spells. Awakened beings seemed to be the only ones capable of using the pure

  mana to obtain various effects, like Invigoration or spirit magic.

  An Abomination's black core, instead, was a stronger but corrupted form of mana, that

  constantly required massive amounts of world energy just to not dissipate. To do that,

  Abominations gained unique powers.

  The Wither they had faced in the past, had the ability to drain life force even from a distance.

  The plant thing could split his consciousness to overtake and consume the surrounding

  vegetation while searching for animal preys.

  That came at a price, though. Both of them had proved to have a deadly but limited skillset, to

  the point of having lost the ability to use magic in all of its forms.

  The blood core that Lith had accidentally created was completely outside their experience. It

  was a mass composed by blood and darkness magic, with the remains of Raghul's mana core

  somehow holding everything together.

  Based on what Solus could see, it had both a physical and magical nature. The blood core was

  completely messed up, without an internal balance or proper structure. It continually

  expanded and shrank, changing from spherical to ellipsoidal, sometimes it didn't have a shape

  at all.

  It was a creature of chaos, and as such it wasn't bound to last. Every second it would

  rearrange its host body and itself, causing massive amounts of strain on Raghul's corpse.

  When he was alive, he had been a well-built man of average height, with short black hair and

  a well-trimmed goatee of the same colour, that helped smoothen his square features.

  Now his visage was deformed in a perpetual scream of pain, his sharp nose sunk into his face

  until only the nostrils remained. The skin kept rotting, turning green and peeling off, revealing

  the muscle tissue underneath before regenerating and starting over again.

  The body swelled tearing apart the enchanted clothes, his arms became longer and deformed,

  enough to touch the ground, the legs bent backwards with an unnatural angle.

  "That's definitely not a vampire. What the heck have I done?" ¨C

  The young Byk ran away without a second thought, sensing the impending danger.

  The creature started to hiss, watching Lith with eyes full of hatred and contempt. It moved

  with incredible speed, not even using air fusion to its extreme Lith was able to avoid the

  charge.

  Raghul's fingers had become ten centimetres (4 inches) long razor-sharp talons, that made

  easy work of Lith's iron heart protector and earth fusion alike.

  The hook shaped claws slashed vertically, deeply gouging his chest. Finger-sized chunks of

  flesh hit the ground, while blood sprayed around. Everything happened so fast that Lith felt

  pain only when he was already moving to avoid a second strike.

  The shock was so intense that in another situation it could have made him faint, but with his

  life on the line, willpower and survival instinct allowed him to stand it, even if barely.

  Lith could feel the rhythmic bleeding over his chest at every beat of his panicked heart,

  drenching his clothes. It was like having a white-hot branding iron ravaging his flesh, while ice

  needles pricked the surrounding skin, giving him a numbing feeling that was slowly spreading.

  He managed to avoid the second hit, but only because suddenly the creature became

  distracted, making the swing sloppy and predictable. He exploited the opening to get some

  distance and heal his wounds.

  To his surprise the talon marks were brimming with darkness magic, making the recovery

  spell much slower and less effective that normal. The creature, instead, had picked the chunks

  of flesh, playing with them enthusiastically.

  It tilted its head sideways, making most of Raghul's hair fall like autumn leaves in the wind,

  seeming to have realized something important. Then it brought them to its mouth, wolfing

  them down.

  "The good news is that whatever that is, it's not a vampire. The bad news is that I have no

  idea how to defeat it." Lith used light fusion, trying to neutralize the dark energy infecting the

  wound.

  "You can either run away or stall for time. It can't live for long." Solus pointed out. ¨C

  She could clearly see the blood core falling apart, the strength coursing through the monster

  was too much for its body, despite all the changes it had went through. Every move, every

  attack would damage it as much as it did to Lith.

  Maybe it was because the creation of the blood core had been purely accidental, maybe

  because the creature was vulnerable to the sun but being mindless it didn't care.

  Whatever the reason, ingesting raw flesh had barely delayed its decaying process.

  After the hair, all the skin was shed, leaving the muscles exposed, wet and shining under the

  midday sun. All its teeth had been replaced by fangs, giving it an alien look.

  The creature screamed with fury, noticing that Lith had got away, forcing it to decide if to

  hunt the creator for whom it felt a deep-seated hatred, or the helpless Rodimas. The sweet

  smell of dripping blood and the delicious taste of the meat settled the deal.

  While Lith and Solus where still talking, less that two seconds after the first blood, the

  nightmare began.

  Chapter 113 Lith¡¯s Monster 2

  The monster darted toward Lith faster than a bullet, tanking everything he threw at it.

  Burning Prison, Lith's personal tier four spell conjured six fireballs, one above, one below and

  four around the creature, detonating at the same time.

  The head exploded and regenerated, the limbs got turned to shreds but all the pieces

  managed to reattach themselves before the blast could scatter them away. Lightings burned

  its flesh and burst its heart, more icicles pierced its body that needles a pincushion.

  None of it managed to even slow it down. Yet recovering from all that damage took its toll,

  the creature's body had become thinner, while the talons fell, leaving the creature with just

  its fists.

  Fists that struck Lith with the might of a titan, uncaring of his footwork and the technique he

  used to deflect part of their force. Despite being hardened by earth fusion, Lith's right arm

  shattered at the ulna, the humerus and the radius.<
br />
  Bone segments pierced the muscles and skin, the white of the bone glittering under the sun

  because of the blood dripping on them.

  Lith got blinded by pain, his eyes watering like waterfalls, yet managed to remain conscious,

  once again being saved by his restless paranoia. He knew that being a true mage was not

  enough, that being prepared was not enough.

  The new world was a big place, he was bound to meet sooner or later someone stronger than

  him, someone capable of hurting him for real.

  Among his trial and error experiments on himself, he had learned how to use darkness magic

  to cut his pain receptors, an that's what he did the moment he realized that all he had was

  not enough to stop a single punch of the monster of his own creation.

  Lith also jumped sideways at the last second, borrowing the strength from the hit to put some

  distance between them. While flying through the air he kept casting as fast as he could,

  making all kind of spells rain down on his pursuer.

  Even with only his left arm remaining, he managed to land another four explosions before the

  creature caught up, striking again, this time at his chest. Lith felt his ribcage collapse, spitting

  blood realizing that even breathing had become an excruciating torture.

  The Raghul-thing lifted him by the neck, licking every single drop of the precious liquid, feeling

  its strength returning.

  Both of them were wheezing, their expression distorted, but while Lith was desperate, Lith's

  monster was triumphant, using its unnaturally long tongue to lap all the blood dripping from

  his face.

  Lith used that precious moment to wave a final spell, and when the monster opened its

  mouth to tear his neck open, he managed to conjure an icicle inside it, so that when the jaw

  attempted to close on him, it pierced its tongue, palate and brain.

  The creature didn't care for it, not until realizing that not it could not bite. Then the monster

  simply grabbed and pulled the icicle out, uncaring for its own wounds, accelerating the decay

  process.

  Its eyes withered and rolled into the skull, leaving only the red light of undeath behind.

  The fangs finally bit Lith's neck, blood sprayed out his jugular.

  But then the jaw fell off, shortly followed by the creature's right arm, holding the prey no