Kayn traveled in the direction of his next target without getting close to their listed territory. He wanted to rest and recover his mana completely before moving on to his next target and this also provided him with a good opportunity to reflect on the battle he just finished.
Killing Varion was surprisingly easy. Even until it was too late, the man continued to underestimate him. Not to mention having the ability to control any fire was more than a nail in the coffin against a pure fire mage such as Varion.
Kayn could do that with every element now, but not quite to the level that he understood fire at. It would take him a decent amount of experience with controlling various elements before he became as skilled as he was with fire.
On top of that, humans were curious creatures. Depending on how they spent their life and if they were blessed by the heavens or not, they could evolve various ways. Some humans could develop bodies as strong as if not stronger than the even the most terrifying mythical beasts. Others, such as the case of Varion, would gain an advantage in their magic prowess.
Varion's fire spells were incredibly strong, there was no doubt about that. While his body only gained the usual advantages from his core rank ups that humans received, his core and mana were a different story. He was essentially a glass cannon of pure power, but with little stamina as shown by Kayn taking him out with a single spell essentially.
He didn't expect the next few fights he would have to go quite so easy. For one, the fights within Palatine's walls would always bear the risk of other's noticing, which they surely would. He would need to focus more on assassination when it came to his 6th stage targets there.
On the other hand, liches were always far more cautious than Varion was. Even though they wouldn't die unless their phylactery was found and destroyed as well, due to their nature they were typically more eccentric and would go full blast from the start of any fight.
Most liches didn't like wasting time from what he had read about. Most preferred to seclude themselves and focus on what they wanted to be doing. Anything other than that was a waste of time and should be taken care of as quickly as possible.
He could only imagine how 10 years of war was driving them insane, even if they were already insane from the hundreds of thousands if not millions of years that they had been alive. He could guess they were probably looking for any way to end the war as soon as soon possible as well.
Kayn took a glance inside the dimensional ring and gave a quick estimate to what he gained before tossing it all into his own Void Loop and throwing the ring itself into a different area. By this time, his mana was recovered and he was feeling confident to move on to the next area.
He was flying in the sky with this wings and wind mana as a backup, but he didn't use any concealment skills aside from the passives from the Garments set. It was night-time and he still wasn't close to the next territory yet, so he wasn't expecting to see much action tonight nor did he see the need to be super cautious.
About 10 minutes into his flight, he felt an odd sensation, like someone was watching him. He had his Mana Sense extended all the way to its maximum, but he still couldn't discover what was giving him this odd feeling.
However, the moment he finally understood what it was, a fist smashed into his face, and much like Varion was, he implanted into the ground at lightning speed. Kayn's jaw and cheek bones were broken as he was in a crater of his own making.
Before Kayn could even fully adjust from the massive hit, his attacker was already on top of him pounding down with fists reigning upon Kayn's body nonstop. The pain started to finally build up, meanwhile Kayn was majorly upset at letting himself get ambushed.
He pushed out his entire aura and blasted his attacker away just enough so that he could get some distance. Kayn glanced at his pursuer as he continued retreating while back-pedaling. If this is how it was going to be, Kayn was happy to oblige to his request.
Even after being the punching bag for the last several exchanges, his body was only superficially wounded. His injuries rapidly healed as he sent lightning elemental mana into his muscles and nerves while enhancing his bones with earth mana and using a deviant form, gravity, to surround his fists to increase the impact of his hits.
Thus, the slugfest to crown all slugfests began between two dark clad individuals.
…
"Hahaha who knew a living mortal at only the 4th stage could entertain me for this long!" The person who had been attacking Kayn finally spoke after over an hour of a no holds barred fist fight.
The attacker had stopped punching at Kayn's face after he lost his hand when it vanished into the veil of the hood, so he could only target his opponent's head from the side. Kayn on the other hand spent the fight both trying not to take severe injuries while also discovering his opponent's identity.
"Barabato the Warlord, once a former barbarian warlord turned lich who now commands fearsome armies of undead warriors." Kayn mumbled to himself as he spat out blood from his mouth.
"Hooo? You know who I am? Yes! I am the one and only Barabato! My love and thirst for battle cannot be quenched, even death couldn't stop me! Though, you're quite fun, I think I'll make this last as long as possible!" Barabato declared while laughing and knocking his gauntlets together, prepared for round two. He sounded like a lunatic, talking about himself like that.
Kayn was unhappy, but not because of whom he was fighting, it was where he was fighting him. Barabato shouldn't be in this area, he was supposed to be several hundreds of kilometers down south fighting against the orc tribes, so why was he up here?
Another curiosity was that he had somehow evaded Kayn's senses up until the last moment. Unless he was a stealth expert, that shouldn't have been possible. All the information released on Barabato stated that he was a purely headstrong brute, there was nothing about him having stealth capabilities.
He was an earth and dark magic warrior during his time alive though, so it wasn't too farfetched to believe that he could learn some stealth skills over the years after he became a lich. Regardless, it was time for Kayn to kick it up a gear and end this fight, he was still on a clock after all.
Kayn activated his All-Seeing Eyes and looked directly at Barabato, trying to figure out if he could see through him to view his soul or not. Or conversely, maybe he would be able to get a sense for Barabato as a whole and be able to trace his phylactery from there.
One of the most common pieces of information about liches aside from the fact that they had a phylactery, was that the phylactery could never be too far from them. The distance it could be left was relative to their core strength, so the stronger the lich, the further away they could leave their remnant soul.
Unfortunately, Kayn wasn't able to see anything out of the ordinary. He would most likely need to destroy Barabato's physical body first before going after his soul and phylactery. Kayn was also curious about how they retained their core strength after losing it when their body was destroyed, but this was something he could learn as he killed more of them.
The fight continued and every blow from Kayn was slowly chipping away flesh and bone from Barabato due to the gravity magic he had placed on his fists. Kayn himself was suffering blows as well and the constant mana being used to heal himself was proof of that.
This fight though, different from the last, allowed Kayn to regain his mana almost just as fast as he was using it, so while it was mentally taxing, he wasn't at risk of running out of juice.
What Barabato didn't realize was that throughout the entire latter half of the fight, Kayn had been setting up a trap of Mana Threads and he was just about ready to deploy that trap. Kayn made one final odd movement with his arms showing an obvious opening that Barabato took full advantage of by landing his fist directly on the side of Kayn's head.
Kayn allowed himself to get launched far off into the distance, but when he stood up, Barabato had an uneasy feeling that his opponent was smiling back at him. He narrowed his eyes as Kayn spread his arms to the side, as if inviting Barabato in for a hug, but the old lich could smell something fishy even from the distance away he was.
One of the things that Kayn learned about the Tethers of the Void was that the Mana Threads he could cast using them were extremely versatile. His favorite adjustment was that the Mana Threads he cast could become intangible and pass through anything, practically not being there until activated.
This gave Kayn the opportunity to catch his enemy's unaware and that's exactly what he did to Barabato. Kayn activated the intricate net of Mana Threads he had prepared as well as igniting them with Extinction Flames and quickly pulled them taught around the warlord lich's body.
It wasn't immediate, but the armor surrounding bones and flesh was beginning to turn into nothing but scrap and there was nothing Barabato could do to resist. He tried exploding out with all of the mana in his body, but the net strangling him in place refused to budge.
And that wasn't all. Pain. He felt pain for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, and he had no clue as to why. Ever since he became a lich, he had never once felt pain, not even when his physical body was destroyed. Only now, against this man, was it different.
The black fire that was permeating into his sturdy body was causing him pain like he had never felt before, even when he was alive. The pain was so intense that he was starting to go more insane than he already was.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" Barabato screamed out as he continued to struggle to get free of the fire coated Mana Threads. However, no matter how much he struggled, he couldn't escape.
Kayn didn't wait and used all of his power to dash forward, digging his hand through Barabato's armored chest just below the sternum. Only, what was there instead of his core was a round crystal slightly opaque crystal which he didn't recognize.
He could sense the profound mana of Barabato emanating from it, but that didn't make sense to him until he thought about his earlier question. How do liches transfer their core between their physical bodies, and what happens to the core if they perish?
The answer was, they don't. This crystal was used as a substitution for their real core. This crystal must have to go through massive changes and be a unique material for it to be able to be used as a core.
He would still need to do research to understand how a lich could restore their lost mana inside this crystal and how they could still gain mana to rank up, but that could be dealt with later. For now, he needed to find Barabato's phylactery.
The former warlord was now screaming even louder since his mana reserves in this physical form were removed, so his body quickly began deteriorating due to the Extinction Flames burning his body. Kayn watched with narrowed eyes as the last of the physical body of Barabato vanished from existence.