Aurelius was currently in a hideous amount of pain, again. In comparison to actual death, his current situation was clearly WORSE.

  His flesh had stretched so thin over his hand, with more and more of it pulling and attaching itself to this greedy godforsaken orb. He could visibly make out the blood pulsating through the veins and count the capillaries sketched underneath his skin.

  The noise around him was unbearable as well.

  In fact, his eardrums had burst a few minutes before. And he actually couldn’t quite ‘hear’ anymore. Instead there was a horrifying buzz of explosions resonating around his chest, and tinnitus decorating his useless ears, where blood continued to leak out like a broken faucet.

  Overall, a terrible experience.

  He really needed to die as soon as possible. Not even to restart the loop, but to be put out of this infernal misery!

  ???

  Varian Greenwich had targeted one of the larger evacuation shelters in Tlacualtzin.

  Situated under one of the larger merchant streets in the Northern district, Vecius Street was rather close to his former employers at the Sorcerous Academy of Aethernalis.

  The Commission had expanded the pre-existing shelter after the increased foot traffic in the merchant streets above in the previous few years.

  However, the city was still in the process of coordinating with the Royal Underground to expand the pathway to enter this shelter.

  Given that the renovation would have required the temporary pause in the warding around the Underground section, the Commission had put off the matter, instead focusing on other more important projects.

  After all, the difference in evacuation time that this bottleneck would create would only be on the scale of 10 to 20 minutes.

  However, for Varian Greenwich, this had presented an interesting opportunity.

  Teleportation worked through a spirit contract, where the contracted spirit would open a small gap in the spirit realm and the physical realm through the mystical connection of said contract.

  This process was, however, rather mana intense, and required at least middle tier spirit world denizens to act on efficiently.

  Higher tier spirit world denizens could, of course, contract to teleport mages and civilians with more ease, with mass teleportation of groups being a possibility.

  But the Commission was an organisation with huge, but still limited resources.

  And these inefficiencies arising from these bottlenecks had compounded in the Vecius Street shelter so that there were around a thousand civilians yet to be evacuated, at least, according to some of his very own divinations.

  He had already taken care of several smaller shelters, each carrying around a few dozen to a hundred civilians. But this shelter had the potential to be one of his larger hauls for the night. And it would be a lie to say that Varian Greenwich wasn’t pleased with the development.

  The lich, with his ivory staff, created a writhing mass of soul and crafted a magic circle on the debris that once composed a popular and well frequented street.

  With a thud, the rubble swirled around him, allowing him to descend down into the ground with ease.

  Ordinarily, mana would have been disrupted in the spellcasting process by the warding around the shelter and the Royal Underground. But Varian was not some run-of-the-mill mage!

  He was a lich, and it was time to reap some souls…

  “Disgusting fae dog.” A voice rang out in the corridor lit with dim emergency lighting, accompanied with the sound of a snapping wooden stick.

  Without a single pause, a thousand needle-like icicles pierced the air, whirring towards him fiercely.

  Without even a glance in the direction, Varian Greenwich blocked the attack with a basic defensive spell, ‘Aegis’.

  “Haa… The Commission is far too efficient.” He sighed, adjusting his gross mustache as he turned to face the burning eyes of the troublesome and foul-mouthed individual known as Sage Yeltz…

  ???

  The Fae Queen peeled off layer after layer of her tower of iron and obsidian, creating a circle of death for the golems charging her way.

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  She sent them at different heights, with some even phasing through the hotel to hit the reforming targets in the distance.

  Archsage Andrew looked rather annoyed at this, and with a simple tap of his staff, he created a shallow bloody wound on his palm.

  And without even so much as a pause, he summoned a… rat into his now bleeding palm.

  He took command of the creature, letting it lap the blood off his palm.

  Then, with a single snap of his fingers, the rat compressed unto itself into a ball of flesh and bone, then into a golden ball of mana.

  With another snap of his fingers, every golem in the distance paused its advances against the countless slashes in the air, and without a word, every single golem crumbled into thousands of smaller creatures.

  Rats. Or rather, ‘rat-golems’.

  They had a gold ring, as well as a blue ring of light wrapped around their rocky bellies, creating a sea of strange flickering lights across the rubble.

  They didn’t quite have heads or tails, and looked really weird up close, being a torso of a rat ending in stumps on both ends.

  Then, the Archsage snapped his fingers once more, twice in quick succession, as he summoned a horrifying amount of rats out of thin geometric shapes in the air.

  The Fae Queen smiled maniacally at this display of raining rats, and disintegrating golems.

  Not ideal.

  She had barely shaved any ‘lives’ of those damned constructs! And now they were all too small for her to hit with her pillar.

  The Fae Queen, annoyed by the display, sent 5 layers of her tower towards the man with disgust.

  Another snap rang across the ruins, coming from Archsage Andrew.

  The rain of rats paused temporarily for the moment, as the furry creatures hung in the air helplessly.

  The man then jumped into the air, avoiding the first slice aimed at his feet, and miraculously shielding himself with magic in time for the second.

  And with a shattering noise, the shield promptly broke into pieces, leaving the remaining 3 to continue hurtling towards him.

  Oops, was he going to die?

  “Idiot.”

  The 3 blades melted against a dark, empty void.

  It was Archsage Livia, materialising out next to Archsage Andrew nonchalantly.

  Archsage Andrew, without missing a beat, snapped his fingers once again, and with the exception of the few dozen mice sliced up in the previous attack, every single mouse exploded in the air, decorating it in viscera and blood.

  With a clap of his hands, all of the viscera draped behind his back coalesced into a single green dot of mana in the air, and faded, creating a 3rd ring to form across the bodies of all rat-golems.

  The third ring started to fuse with the golden ring, creating swirls of green to form on its surface, and creating a darker, yet more intense colour of gold to form across the ruins.

  With another snap of his fingers, Archsage Andrew teleported away to the distance a few hundred meters more above the air, landing deftly on a newly conjured plate of metal.

  Archsage Livia, on the other hand, kept the barrage of fireballs going, mostly at the expense of her devils, of course… And she teleported in and out of the battlefield, guided by one of her devils to avoid the incoming barrages of metallic circles of death.

  “Troublesome.” The Fae Queen mused.

  With a tap of Her heels, 50 layers of Her tower melted off in an instant, and formed several thousand identical spears tipped with frighteningly sharp obsidian, which promptly started to orbit around the goddess menacingly.

  With horrifying sounds of broken sound barriers, the spears started to shoot through the air, piercing the bodies of tiny golems on the ground, and returning at equally frightening speeds.

  However, even She could not keep the rats at bay for too long, as several hundred already started to phase in and out of the warded hotel.

  Some of these rats even started to crawl up the tower of iron and obsidian…

  “Boom. Boom. Boom.”

  A new kind of explosion tore through the air as these offensive, creepy creatures started to explode in a spark of magic all around the Fae Queen’s tower.

  Some of them had also started to explode against the hotel, creating a cloud of dust to obscure its facade.

  “Hmm…” The Fae Queen mused as Her tower started to tilt at an angle, the spears still shooting off from her orbit and returning at beyond the speeds of sound.

  And with a disgruntled expression, the Fae Queen raised Her hand into the air, creating a finger gun pointed threateningly at the sky…

  A fireball phased out of existence mere meters away from Her face, and behind it popped out a leering and monocled Archsage.

  The Fae Queen didn’t even spare a glance as the Archsage melted half of Her arsenal of spears and charged at Her fearlessly.

  “Rise” The Queen commands.

  And hundreds of pillars of rubble and soil started to rise from the ground all over the ruins, erecting themselves against the mountains.

  The Fae Queen simply proceeded to step casually to the side, teleporting away from the charging Archsage and reappearing on one of the newly erected pillars.

  Without a command, the pillars started to form themselves against the night air, each one creating a wide, thin disc in the air.

  With a tap of Her feet, every single disc started to glow a burning white, shedding a layer of black dreg, and crafting perfect discs of iron and obsidian.

  The light was blinding, creating an effect almost similar to daylight.

  Then, it faded, as the Queen gave Her next commands.

  “Fall”

  Without so much as a protest, each disc sank to the earth, creating a chorus of bangs and a storm of dust as air got displaced.

  And now, 80% of the rats that had bothered Her had become trapped in their cages of iron and obsidian.

  Archsage Andrew looked down in displeasure.

  How annoying was it to have to struggle so hard to let his hard work not go to waste!

  And with a snap of his fingers, he severed his arm once more, intending to cast another spell.

  “Enough.” The Queen commanded, stepping into existence right in front of the Archsage, both hands holding a strange gauntlet of knives, and an eerie smile on Her face.

  “You asked for it.” She mused, swinging at Andrew’s face.

  Andrew snapped his fingers on instinct, saving himself by the skin of his teeth as he teleported away to the distance.

  And the Fae Queen followed, reappearing in front of him like a shadow.

  Archsage Andrew stared at this strange goddess with deadpan eyes.

  He couldn’t help but feel incredibly flattered at how much this damn Fae had taken a liking to him!