Kayn sat inside of a cave, slowly regaining the mana he had spent to lay his trap. Controlling and creating a massive weather system was a daunting task and used up a good amount of his mana pool, but it was worth it.
After finding the banshee flying around a specific region, he took inspiration from a book he read and combined the elements of water, wind, and fire to create a storm that not even those talented at flight could traverse easily.
With the banshee losing control of her movements, Kayn utilized the water he created and poured his mana in do its job, burning through her as if it was acid poured on skin. He watched from above the clouds as her expression turned from anger to regret and then sorrow.
Kayn felt no remorse for killing these undead though. The number of innocent people they had slain over the years, especially during this war, couldn't be counted. When Kayn saw that she was about to give it one last push to retreat to safety, he made his move.
Activating the draconic transformation of his arm that he was slowly gaining control of, he speared it through her back in order to extract her heart before crushing it in his grip.
Kayn was sweating at this point as the mana that he was constantly using was finally taking its toll. It wasn't easy to create and maintain a massive storm system, not to mention one with strong enough winds to overpower the sound attacks of a banshee.
On top of that, he transformed only his arm, but that still required a considerable amount of mana as it wasn't a transformation in a true sense. He was essentially doing exactly what Wrath had done for him all those years ago. Creating a solid form of dark and void elemental mana over his flesh.
Unfortunately, his control and understanding paled to what Wrath had done, and he ended up decaying his own arm to the point that he barely had any flesh over his bones now. It frustrated him to no end that he could do something so complex when he was weaker with his subconscious, but he couldn't achieve the same results on his own even when he was much more powerful.
Kayn was told that Wrath could and would use everything one possessed to their maximum potential when it took over. However, now that Kayn was mostly in control of Wrath, he would need to figure out how to utilize it to learn and understand what his maximum potential was.
If he could successfully understand how Wrath accomplished what it did, he was positive he would cross some barrier that was holding him back. No matter how long he thought about it or studied it though, the wall he knew was there never showed itself.
Taking several deep breaths, Kayn cleared his mind and refocused on his recuperation. He needed to work faster. He still had two more targets to eliminate before Sevrin noticed something was amiss and recalled them to his side.
Even one less opponent was better than all three of them at once. If he thought about it in terms of an RPG party, he took out the utility stunner and the agile DPS. Now he was left with the tank, the brawler DPS and the party leader, who commanded from the back while playing the role of dealer and utility.
Kayn found it funny that he was equating himself to a boss character that a party was trying to take down. But in truth, he was in a solo dungeon, desperately trying to reduce the difficulty of the end boss by taking out the accompanying mini-bosses beforehand.
With his thoughts a little more lighthearted, he set off to find his next target. So far, he found the wendigo in the south, which was the direction he fled originally, and the banshee in the east. He was making large circles around the regions to keep as far away from the center area, where the lich's camp was set up, as possible.
His goal was to stay outside of the lich's range to detect life so that he could continue moving freely, assassinating one target after another.
...
Kayn continued his travel on foot, swiftly navigating over mountains and through forests. Kayn reminisced about the fact that only 15 years ago, it would have taken him weeks if not months to travel the distances he could move within only hours now.
As stray thoughts went in and out of his mind, he eventually sensed a monstrous abomination stomping its way through the forest. It wasn't around the forest, it was through. Trees were being flattened one after the other as the creature moved forward at a pace far too fast for its massive and disfigured body.
Kayn was hoping to meet the draugr first as he actually had an idea of how to kill it quickly, but this thing? He had no clue what would work against it, or how to even approach killing it as fast as possible.
'I guess there's nothing for it except trial and elimination.' Kayn thought as he enhanced his body with as many physically enhancing fusion elements as he could before launching himself at the grotesque creature faster than a bullet.
His fist connected with the abomination's fat head with such a great impact that it sounded like an explosion going off. Rather than sending his target flying off into the distance or exploding the head outright though, the creature barely moved back a couple of steps.
"You hurt Grog! Grog kill you!" It shouted as it raised its new chained meat hook weapon to the forefront.
Kayn made a rueful smile behind the veil of his hood. "I hurt you? More like I hurt your feelings! Damn monster! My hand bones shattered from that hit and you're standing there like nothing happened!"
In response to his audible complaint, he was met with the tantrum of a child. "GROOOOOG"
Thus, a game of cat and mouse began. Kayn launched spell after spell at the giant chasing him, trying to find what would work against it, but no matter what he tried it would heal back almost instantly.
Burned flesh? Instantly healed.
Earth spike through the chest? Instantly healed.
Darkness decaying flesh? Negated and healed almost instantly. In fact, it looked to help the damn thing as after the darkness spell vanished from its body, it started attacking with more fervor!
Offensive light spear to the eye? Bounced off.
Lightning bolt charged to the maximum? Left a scorch mark temporarily but healed near instantly.
Mana Threads wrapped around its neck and retracted? The joke was on Kayn, he couldn't even pull it through the thick flesh of the monster's neck. He had to disperse the threads in the end because the abomination started to fling him around with its massive strength.
He never thought it would work, but he still tried using a water cannon spell. Just as he expected it splashed off the monster like he was shooting it with a squirt gun.
Hell, he even tried to cast a long-range light healing spell on it to see what would happen, and not to his surprise, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. At least that's what he thought, but he missed the subtle eye twitch of the monster.
Finally, he got a spell to work though...or so he thought. He compressed a massive amount of fire elemental magic into the Magic Bullet spell, similar to when he defeated Varion, and he was successfully able to destroy one of the abomination's arms.
However, the feeling of success soon turned to one of hopelessness as the monster grew its arm back within seconds. The risk that spell brought was also large because of the sound the explosion made. He was sure that the lich would notice something was amiss and would arrive soon.
Kayn grit his teeth as he finally gave in. The next spell he launched was a fireball of Extinction Flames. The fire blast impacted the creature directly on its stomach and began to burn away at its flesh. However, as Kayn watched his flames destroying the creature's flesh. He realized his spell was actually losing to the regeneration capabilities of it.
Extinction Flames worked, but the spell he cast wasn't strong enough to win out and kill the monster. Knowing this, he began to charge up an even more powerful fire blast as he led the creature further and further north away from the central area. All the while it was shouting and screaming, saying "Grog" or "Grog kill" or "Grog smash", over and over and over again.
"I GET IT! YOUR NAME IS GROG!" Kayn finally screamed back as he turned around and released a jet of black flame that he committed 10% of his mana pool into.
What Kayn didn't expect was for Grog to charge even more ferociously at him through the flames like a blazing comet before grabbing him by the head and repeatedly slamming him into the ground as if it was unaffected by the fire coating its entire body.
Fearing that his head was going to be smashed, and with his body being broken hit after hit, he overcharged his body with the light element, causing it to burst outwards like when he healed the people in Horus's temple.
Kayn fell to the ground at that point as Grog had dropped him while taking several steps away and screaming in pain. Kayn looked up to see that the Extinction Flames were still burning, and the regeneration of Grog was finally losing to them.
This only lasted momentarily though as the flesh that was destroyed grew back during the minute Kayn had paused to recover a bit of his mana and Grog was too busy screaming to chase him.
The gears in Kayn's head spun at lighting speed and he finally realized what had worked. The light element! Something about the light element was able to negate the regeneration abilities that this creature had or at least overpower them momentarily!
The extinction portion of the Extinction Flames worked as well, only the fire aspect didn't. Then, a crazy idea came to Kayn which he had never tried before. What if he fused the void element and light element? What would happen?
With this thought in mind, he tested the waters with a miniature spear of the void infused light element that he had to spend several minutes of dodging in order to figure out how to create on the spot.
When he launched it, he watched as Grog stopped moving once again and began screaming in pain as a small hole, relative to its size, appeared on its arm and it wasn't regenerating. Kayn smiled for the first time since the fight began as he finally had a way to kill this thing.
The two of them had traveled several hundred kilometers north already, but Kayn had a bad feeling that the lich was on his way already, and he probably wasn't alone.
Even with his massive mana pool and the potent quality of mana it contained, he had still spent around 40% of his total throwing spell after spell and dodging the hulking figure for the last hour or so. Much like Barabato, he couldn't afford to hold back his mana against this opponent.
He had fought for 17 days in a row before, but he was always able to rest and gain mana back whenever the enemy sent weak cannon fodder his way. If he was fighting 6th stage mages or warriors constantly, he wouldn't have lasted nearly as long.
Knowing he needed to end this fight as soon as he possibly could and then escape, he made the rash decision to dedicate 50% of his total mana pool to a light-void fusion spell. He needed to create and launch a spell that was large enough to fully encapsulate the abomination who was again relentlessly pursuing him.
His mind worked quickly as he visualized exactly how he wanted the spell to work before pumping more and more mana from his Demonic Dragon Heart through his mana circulatory system.
However, while visualization was the most important aspect to spells, sometimes they required an incantation to successfully manifest in the way the spellcaster desired. Kayn had never had this issue, but in the spur of the moment he decided to shout out what he was going to call the spell as he turned 180 degrees and released the spell.
"LIGHT OF PURGATION!"
A massive black-golden pillar several hundred meters tall and tens of meters in diameter illuminated the area as it grew and descended from the sky. The beam fell and impacted the ground at Grog, sending everything outside of the immediate area flying, including Kayn.
The sudden loss of 50% of his mana caused Kayn to momentarily lose consciousness, and when he came to, he was slamming into the ground many miles away from the impact zone. Without wasting time, he launched himself into the distance using all of the mana he had left.
If he was on Earth still, he would have reached speeds faster than 30 or 40 Machs, but here on Talgonoth sound traveled faster. Still, Kayn managed to break through the sound barrier as he sped off, a sonic boom left in his wake.
He didn't even pause long enough to confirm that he had killed the monstrosity. The feedback he received from the spell as it impacted with Grog told him all he needed to know. His purifying light from the heavens had indeed erased the seemingly immortal Grog without even a trace left behind.