Chapter 73 – Catharsis
“Yes! Finally!” Eleuthera cheered and stepped onto the field.
She gave Orestis a magnanimous look, then spread her arms wide and said, “I’ll even let you make the first move.”
“Um, goddess?” Maxim raised a finger. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Eleuthera tutted and waved him off. “It’ll be fine.”
Maxim shrugged with an expression that said, I triedto warn you.
Orestis smirked as he moved into position. If she wanted to make this easy for him, who was he to refuse? Plus, the worse he made her look, the better the lesson would land for Eirene.
Let’s end this in one move.
With that thought, he fired a spell aimed at the ground about a foot or two to the side of where the goddess was standing.
“Where are you aiming?” she asked, looking at it curiously. And entirely unconcerned about any hidden tricks.
Orestis shook his head. So careless.
Just because it was her avatar and this was a spar, she was being reckless. And she was too confident in her domain.
His spell struck the ground and triggered an implosion—not a regular one; her domain would have ignored the pull of a simple implosion. No, this spell generated spatial fractures throughout the affected area, shredding everything within a three-metre radius as the tears collapsed towards a central point.
“Ack—!” Eleuthera made a silly sound as the spell’s effects hit her.
A moment later, the effect dissipated. Eleuthera was standing in the centre of a shallow crater, her avatar flickering around the edges. Her hair was thoroughly dishevelled and her robes looked as though they had lost a brief argument with a shredder.
Orestis had obviously adjusted the power so that it would not damage her excessively. A destroyed avatar would be painful—with a portion of the damage getting transferred to the true body. A damaged avatar, on the other hand, was merely an annoyance that was easily restored.
Still, Lyse appeared beside her friend immediately and asked, “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Eleuthera replied. She quickly fixed herself and pointed at Orestis. “A warning would have been nice!”
“In fairness, I did try to tell you,” Maxim pointed out, earning a withering glare from the goddess.
No one liked hearing Itold you so.
“Let it be a lesson,” Orestis said, unimpressed. “Use shields; don’t rely on your domain alone.”
“I do use shields—when I think they’re necessary. I just didn’t expect you to actually have a way around my divinity,” Eleuthera replied.
He raised an eyebrow. “Then let that be a second lesson: Never assume. Always prepare for the worst.”
I’ve been repeating that lesson to Eirene for months—and she watches us all the time. Some people never listen.
“Rematch!” the goddess declared. “I want a rematch!”
“No,” Orestis refused. “This was an educational spar for Eirene’s sake. We should move on to the next one.”
Eleuthera immediately spun to Lyse and said, “You have to avenge me!”
Lyse gave her friend an amused but long-suffering look before stepping forward.
But before they began, Lyse tilted her head and asked Orestis, “You have a way to get through my shield, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Orestis said.
“He does,” Maxim said, at the same time.
Lyse nodded as though she’d expected that.
Eleuthera should have also expected that he might have a trick up his sleeve. But she was being careless as always. Lyse, however, had never been the careless type.
The spar with Lyse lasted somewhat longer. Since this was for Eirene’s benefit, Orestis adopted her style of fighting: teleporting constantly while casting spells between movements. Lyse also responded in kind, occasionally sending attacks of her own.
During the initial back and forth, the goddess was taking the initiative to dodge first, using her shield only when she couldn’t avoid his attacks. She was clearly not taking any chances. But that was also fine; it allowed him to familiarise himself with her movement patterns.
Once he had a clearer picture of her habits, Orestis cast the real spell: a triple-layered construct like the one Varra had used during their encounter. Each layer of the spell had its own properties. Unlike Varra’s version, however, Orestis disguised the entire construct to appear as a projectile spell with only a single property.
He could have created more layers, but based on the distance between Lyse’s body and her shield, Orestis calculated that three was enough for his purposes. She was not using a skin-tight shield; there was an inch or so between her body and the barrier threshold.
That was in line with her way of thinking: if it was skin-tight, any spell that managed to pass through would directly damage her; but it would also be inefficient to create a full-sphere shield.
The moment he hurled the spell towards her, he also cast a wide-area distortion field to prevent teleportation. Lyse immediately realised something was wrong. But she had no choice except to intercept the spell with her shield.
The spell struck—and broke against her shield. However, what shattered was merely the outer layer. The rest of the spell construct, however, passed straight through.
Lyse’s eyes widened slightly as she immediately erected a second barrier between her body and the construct. The new shield shattered the middle layer, but the third and final one passed through.
The goddess saw it coming, but by then it was already too late. The distance was too short, and there was not enough time.
The moment the final layer of his spell passed through—and before she could construct another barrier—it detonated.
The explosion sent cracks racing across her avatar form. But it did not shatter. Once again, Orestis had carefully limited the power output to prevent complete destruction.
With that, he dispelled all spell effects around him, ending the spar. Lyse also landed back on the ground while restoring her damaged body.
“Interesting approach,” she said thoughtfully. “Using my efficiency against me.”
Orestis nodded. “Yes. You have a habit of configuring your shield to block only what you see. I exploited that.”
Lyse considered that for a moment. “While the inefficiency would bother me, perhaps it might be prudent to have my barrier deny ‘everything’… No, perhaps that can be the second barrier, used only when the first one fails…”
She drifted into thought for a moment. Then she turned to Orestis again. “You have given me much to think about. I appreciate the lesson.”
“Noo. You can’t thank him for blasting you!” Eleuthera exclaimed from the sidelines. “You should swear revenge!”
“That would be unreasonable after he pointed out a flaw in my defences,” Lyse said.
That was when Maxim stepped up and said, “Fear not. I shall ensure this outrage does not go unanswered.”
“Yes, that’s the spirit,” Eleuthera cheered, then said to her friend, “See? He gets it.”
He’s getting it too much, unfortunately.
Orestis made a face as Maxim drew his sword—a long, single-edged blade humming with compressed aura. It was unenchanted, but functional. Stylish, too. But that was not the point.
“Hey, put away that sword. Are you trying to kill me?” Orestis asked.
“You may be weaker now,” Maxim replied, settling into a stance that looked deceptively relaxed, “but I’m not foolish enough to think I could kill you that easily, even as you are now.”
Okay, fair point.
Orestis did not have access to his most potent offensive skills, but he could still utilise almost all of his defensive ones. Which meant that, even if Orestis could not defeat Maxim, Maxim would not be able to kill him either.
I really should fix that. After Eirene’s spell, I’ll work on restoring my offensive capabilities.
“Besides,” Maxim added, “even if it was during a spar, I’m still a bit upset that you struck My Goddess.”
Orestis tsked. He’d forgotten how devoted this idiot was towards her. Initially, he had been hoping to get in a sneak attack while the idiot was taking it easy on him. But now…
Things just got a bit harder. Well, I did want some proper combat practice. This will have to do.
He turned to Lyse. “Shield Eirene, please. I have a feeling this is going to get messy.”
The goddess nodded while Eirene knit her brows slightly—though she chose not to question it. Eirene would understand soon enough; unless she intended to maintain a full-strength barrier throughout the entire fight, collateral damage was inevitable.
She could shield herself, of course. But that would divide her attention. She would learn far more if she could devote her full concentration to observing the fight instead.
As for Eleuthera, she chose to create chairs in the air and pull the other two to sit beside her. Then she shoved bags of popcorn into their hands.
That’s getting to be a far too common sight, recently.
Orestis chose to ignore it.
Drawing on divine power, he empowered his existing buffs and shields. Everything he needed for this fight had been cast during the earlier spar; now he was simply overcharging them. Anything less and he would die.
Then he faced Maxim.
Almost as if they’d agreed on it beforehand, Orestis and Maxim both acted at the same time.
Orestis created a dozen different spell sigils around him and fired, even as the hero swung his sword and released two aura arcs from that single motion. Their attacks curved and shifted mid-flight, avoiding one another while continuing toward their intended targets. Before they got hit, both of them disappeared from their positions, teleporting away.
Maxim materialised directly in front of the position Orestis had occupied, already mid-swing. But instead of Orestis, his aura-enhanced blade—as well as the two aura arcs—cut through the explosion Orestis had left behind just before he disappeared.
Orestis had also left several spell sigils behind him while destabilising the surrounding space. So when the sigils unleashed their volley, Maxim found himself unable to teleport away. He was forced to take the attacks head-on, breaking six layers of his shields. As always, however, he had several more layers beneath that, leaving him unharmed.
Not that he’d be harmed even without the shields, Orestis thought as he appeared in the air, forty metres away. Still, makes my job harder.
Orestis created several sigils around him as Maxim jumped into the air in pursuit, using aura platforms to propel himself forward. The hero shot two more arcs towards Orestis. Now, there were four heading towards him. The first pair had not dissipated; they had simply changed directions and continued their pursuit.
After releasing the spell volley—which Maxim dodged—Orestis began the teleportation sequence. Just before he completed the spell, divine power surged outward from the hero as he activated one of Lyse’s most annoying Blessings—the one Orestis had taken to calling threshold lockdown. It sealed the entire area against spatial transitions, preventing any teleportation or gates that Maxim did not allow.
Maxim had timed it perfectly, causing Orestis’s attempted teleport to fail. One of the aura arcs hit his shields, cutting into it.
But Orestis had been expecting Maxim to use the blessing, and was prepared for it. Before the aura arcs reached his body, Orestis folded space and vanished, reappearing several metres away.
Unlike teleportation—which required crossing a spatial threshold in order to reach a destination—spatial folding simply brought the destination to him instead. Same result, but completely different phenomena as far as the Blessing was concerned.
The downside of the technique, however, was that it had a much shorter range than a true teleport. And just as Orestis had anticipated the Blessing, Maxim had anticipated the spatial folding.
Orestis emerged at his destination to see two aura arcs already heading his way. Now there were six in total.
No thanks to Maxim’s ability to sense spatial fluctuations—another Blessing—he had known exactly where Orestis would emerge. The hero was also closing in along with the aura arcs.
Even as Orestis detonated the spells at his previous location—extinguishing one aura arc and weakening two others—he sent out another volley to distract the hero and folded space again to gain more distance.
And so it went. Orestis cast spells and folded space from one location to the next, occasionally destroying the ever-growing swarm of aura arcs pursuing him. Maxim answered with relentless pressure, cutting through spells, shrugging off explosions, and steadily closing the distance.
Eventually, the gap between them shrank enough that spatial folding stopped being a means of gaining distance. Maxim could cross the gap almost as quickly as Orestis could create it, turning the technique into little more than a melee dodge. Now, Orestis was using it simply to avoid the next swing from Maxim’s sword.
And it wasn’t always successful.
Whenever a dodge was even slightly imperfect, Orestis ended up with a cut on his body, Maxim’s aura sharp enough to slice through his shields. The injuries would have been significantly worse if not for the fact that Orestis was randomly rotating his shields to shift the trajectory of the incoming attacks.
Still, that was fine. Orestis had not been moving around without a purpose. Whenever he had shifted away from a position, he had been placing invisible spell anchors behind, slowly assembling a spell formation.
Invisible, because he did not want Maxim to copy this spell. It was also why this whole set up had taken so long.
A few minutes, maybe. Which is fairly long, considering.
The moment the last anchor was placed, Orestis activated the final component of the spell: one to exclude him from the effects. And then, every hidden anchor suddenly lit up at once.
But Maxim wasn’t a hero for nothing. Something must have triggered his instincts—the sudden shift in the ambient mana, or perhaps a premonition honed through centuries of walking into traps—because his reaction was immediate.
And entirely unexpected.
Maxim dropped all of his shields.
What is he—
Orestis understood a fraction of a second before an arc of aura erupted from Maxim’s body—not from his sword or his hands; but through his own torso. The arc had been moving in Orestis’s blind spot, hidden behind Maxim’s own body until the moment it emerged from his body—a horizontal crescent of aura, aimed to cut through Orestis’s waist.
Orestis dodged, even as the spell activated.
The next moment, everything within a fifty-metre radius—including Maxim—simply ceased to exist. Flesh, blood, metal, rock, magic, divine power, soul; all of it—unmade.
The destruction was absolute, but not dramatic. There was no light, no sound. Everything simply ceased to be, leaving nothing behind but Orestis and a vast spherical void.
A heartbeat later, the surrounding atmosphere rushed inward to fill the emptiness.
Orestis hovered in the air and looked down at what remained of his legs. The right was missing from mid-thigh down. The left ended at the knee.
He tsked, watching flesh and bone slowly extending from each stump as his healing and regeneration spells did their work.
I didn’t expect the idiot to use one of my own moves against me.
Makes sense, though—he has the same kind of body now, after all.
In front of him, tiny particles began to appear, gathering into a growing mass. Maxim’s body slowly reassembled itself, falling towards the ground a moment later as gravity asserted its hold.
Orestis followed the body down, watching the restoration. Just before it could fully form, he flicked a finger, sending a bolt of concentrated mana at Maxim’s remains.
Might as well milk this for all its worth.
The body shattered, then began pulling together again. He waited a few seconds, then sent another bolt.
The next moment, Eleuthera appeared beside him, looking curiously at Maxim’s half-formed body. “How strange,” she said. “This is very different from any sort of healing I’ve seen before.”
Lyse materialised next to them, watching analytically. “Yes. This curse is very unusual. That annihilation spell destroyed even the divine bonds, but they are all being recreated again perfectly.”
Just as Orestis was about to reply, Eirene also walked up behind them, studying the restoration process with undisguised curiosity.
Normally, Orestis had no issue with people gathering to watch miraculous curses at work. Unfortunately, the curse had very clear priorities—and clothing was not included among them.
Orestis immediately destroyed the body again and cast an obscuring effect around the area of Maxim’s hips.
Eirene glanced at him, then at the obstruction. Then rolled her eyes, amused.
Suddenly, a disembodied voice said, “Will you stop that? Why are you still destroying my body anyway?”
It was Maxim, using a soul spell to communicate since his vocal cords had yet to form.
Looks like his soul has finished reforming.
Orestis folded his arms and smirked. “I don’t know… I’m finding it quite cathartic.”
Eleuthera gave him a knowing look. “You’re still upset about losing the wager, aren’t you?”
Oh. There’s that too. Let’s go with that.
“There’s probably a joke to be made here about being the bigger man,” Maxim said. “And what’s with that ridiculous spell? I’ve never seen you use that before.”
“Obviously,” Orestis replied. “Why would I use something like that against heroes coming against me? I created it only to see if it could kill me—which, as you’re experiencing right now, is clearly a failure.”
Maxim scoffed. “‘Failure,’ he says.”
Lyse was still observing the restoration through her own perceptive abilities. “It really is a fascinating curse.”
Both Eleuthera and Eirene nodded in agreement.
Orestis decided to let the body fully form this time. Any more and it would start looking less like catharsis and more like an agenda.
When his body was fully restored, Maxim sat up and looked around himself, evaluating. A moment later, he said, “Pity. I liked that sword.”
Maxim opened a spatial tear next to him—a storage space anchored to his body’s relative position rather than a physical object—and pulled out a set of clothes from within.
Orestis turned to Eirene. “Anyway. That’s one way to handle an immortal cockroach hero.”
“You can’t steal my insults,” Maxim protested immediately. “I came up with that for you, specifically.”
As if that has anything to do with the point I’m making.
Eirene, who was focused on what actually mattered, asked, “How did you create that formation without any prior signs? I had no idea it was there until you activated it.”
“There are two ways to do it,” Orestis said. He held up a hand and demonstrated while explaining. “You can either invert the sigil’s structure to suppress mana emissions, making it difficult to sense. Or, you can weave in a light spell into the mana as you create the formation, rendering it invisible to the eye.”
Both techniques had their uses; which was superior depended entirely on the situation. Orestis did not bother elaborating on that since Eirene would understand that much on her own.
Eirene studied both demonstrations and asked, “What about the spell itself? Can you teach me?”
Orestis saw no problems with that. Apart from one. “I will show you later, when he’s not around to steal it.” He jerked his thumb at Maxim.
“Hey! I resent that,” Maxim said. “That spell would be an excellent addition to my collection.”
“You do not need failed spells when I’ve already taught you enough ones with better potential.”
What Orestis did not say was that he needed to keep these spells to himself now. After all, there might come a day when he might need to use them against Maxim.
They might not kill him, but they would slow him down.
“Fair enough,” Maxim shrugged, not reading too deeply into things.
Having finished clothing himself, Maxim dispersed the obscuring effect around him. Then, he pulled out a sword nearly identical to the one he’d been using earlier.
Orestis raised an eyebrow. Well, he did say he liked the sword. Probably meant the design.
“Right!” Eleuthera clapped her hands. “Now that everyone is more or less recovered, back to sparring! I propose a team battle, with Eirene and Orestis against the rest. To balance things out.”
He gave her a wry look. It was obvious what she was planning: revenge. She was clearly going to ignore Eirene completely to focus on him instead. And the idiot would probably join her.
“We’ll have a free-for-all,” Orestis declared.
“Okay!” Eleuthera agreed immediately.
Orestis smirked.
Naïve.
***
The free-for-all was chaos.
As predicted, Eleuthera went straight for him. That pursuit lasted all of two seconds before he cloaked himself from divine sight, cast invisibility on himself, and then teleported away—much to her frustration, as well as his amusement.
After that, Eleuthera reluctantly decided to annoy everyone else equally, while sometimes helping Eirene out.
Maxim engaged everyone impartially—except when it came to Lyse. He would even jump in front of spells heading for her, never mind that none of them would likely get past her shield.
Lyse mostly defended, but would sometimes launch precise, devastating counters when openings presented themselves. And then she would beat down on Maxim when she thought he was being too bothersome.
And Eirene, outmatched in every individual engagement, found her role in the gaps—exploiting moments when the heavy hitters were focused on each other to land spells she’d never have landed in a one-on-one.
Even Nuri joined in, adding her shadow abilities to help Eirene, creating cover, shields, or sending out various attacks. Ironically, the kitten seemed to possess better battlefield instincts than her mistress. At least, in the beginning.
Eirene, as always, adapted very quickly. Hit and move, exploit divided attention, retreat before retaliation; she was getting better and better at reading the flow and making snap decisions. She and Nuri even started developing combinations on the fly, their attacks growing more coordinated with each exchange.
As for Orestis, he spent the rest of the time relaxing and observing the others. Of course, in the interest of participation, he did occasionally send sneak attacks towards everyone.
By the time they called it, the terrain had been rearranged so thoroughly it bore no resemblance to its original topography. At least none of them discovered the formation buried underneath.
Varra should have been able to harvest a fair amount.
***
“Ah, that was fun. I haven’t played like that in ages,” Eleuthera said happily while stretching.
Lyse nodded. “I also enjoyed it.”
“Yes, yes, I’m delighted everyone enjoyed themselves,” Orestis said, glad to be done with it. He turned to Maxim. “So. Reasonable enough for you?”
After all, this whole mess had started because the idiot couldn’t trust Orestis’s training methods.
“Yes. Surprisingly,” Maxim replied, nodding.
Good. Now Eirene and I can go back to our regular training routine. Eleuthera can just be uninvited.
That was when Lyse said, “Surprising indeed. You have given me a great deal to think about. We will see you in three days.”
“Wait—what?” Orestis snapped his head in her direction.
“We all learned something today. This session made it clear that each of us still has room for improvement,” Lyse replied. “It would be inefficient and irresponsible to not make use of such an opportunity.”
Eleuthera beamed and raised her hand. “I’ll be there!”
Maxim smiled. “My Goddess is wise.”
Eirene said nothing, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
Orestis gave each and every one of them an unamused glare. This entire situation seemed all too familiar. In hindsight, he really should have seen this coming.
Yes. I definitely should have half-assed this entire thing.
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