Light flew back and forth between the two combatants while Serenity hid in the shadows. He could vaguely tell that they weren’t simply throwing spells at each other; there were tricks in the magic as well. He could have figured out what they were if he spent the time, but it didn’t seem worth it when it would delay his own spell creation. The one thing he was certain of was that Tirmanak seemed to be using more complex but less powerful spells than the man in white, who seemed to be doing little more than throwing power at the daa’il.

It made sense. While Tirmanak was obviously a combat-trained and experienced mage, it seemed likely that a Guildmaster mostly did things other than fight. On top of that, the man in white was pulling power from somewhere else. It probably cost him less mana to cast his high-power spells than it was costing Tirmanak to cast his lower-power clever spells. The advantage was probably with the stranger simply because of his casting endurance, though Serenity wasn’t going to bet against Tirmanak; clever spell usage often beat power.

Not that it should matter once Serenity’s spells came into play; they were a perfect example of “clever spell usage”.

Serenity could see the structure of the spells powering the outer shield and the robe. He decided to build the counter for the robe first, since it was the more difficult spell; that way, he’d be able to concentrate on it and construct the easier shieldbreaking spell he already knew while holding the first spell.

The question was which method he should use to counter the robe. For the shield, it was easy; the standard shieldbreaker would take the shield all the way down and prevent it from bouncing back up the way Stojan Aith’s had when he hit it with his ax. It was too bad he hadn’t been able to do that against the former lord of the Necropolis; he didn’t have the time to build the spell for a shield as tricky as hers. She was a Tier lower than the man in white, but far older and more skilled at building shields.

Simply taking down the spell on the robe would be far harder, because it wasn’t a simple cast spell where the only remaining input was a mana draw like the shield; it was being actively maintained. What he really needed to do was to break the man’s concentration on the spell; if he did that, there might be a residual spell, but it would be far weaker.

Alternatively, he could cut the flow of power instead of the control. That was usually more difficult, but the man really did seem to have truly terrible mana control compared to Serenity’s. In fact, it was so bad that Serenity was beginning to wonder if everything he was doing was a Skill instead of a spell; if he was a pure Path mage, everything would make sense.

Cutting off the mana to the robe spell would only work temporarily, especially if it was a Skill; on the other hand, distracting the man enough to take out his control of the spell was even more difficult and also wouldn’t work well on a Skill. That was the problem with simple Skills, after all; they were simple.

The most difficult option was usually redirecting the power. It was something Serenity wouldn’t bother with for a single-cast spell like the man’s attacks and to some extent his shield, but for a maintained spell like the robes and the sword, it was plausible. Now all he needed was a place to redirect it to.

Yes, that was the perfect option. He’d redirect it into the other spell the man was maintaining, the one on the sword. To fix it, he’d have to drop the sword spell as well, and he might not even realize anything had happened immediately since the spell’s drain would stay the same. The only problem was that it likely would boost the power of his attacks; Serenity would need to time it carefully for one of the short breaks they were each taking to recover.

It took a solid fifteen minutes to build the redirection spell’s spellform. The shieldbreaker took a little under ten, and would have been less than that if Serenity hadn’t already been maintaining the redirection spell. Once they were both ready to go, Serenity was able to concentrate on the battle again.

The attacks had generally gotten more intense and the breaks longer while he worked on his spells. Tirmanak was taking longer breaks than the man in white; that meant either he was fading or he was preparing a big attack. Serenity had to hope it was the latter; while he could do some real damage if he had the time to prepare spells, the man in white probably countered Serenity’s best magic instead of the other way around. He didn’t want to fight him one-on-one.

There was a pattern to the attacks; Serenity didn’t want to count on it, but he didn’t have a better option. He waited for the right moment, then sent the shieldbreaker straight at the man in white.

Tirmanak was obviously in the middle of casting a spell when Serenity’s shieldbreaker entered the corridor. Serenity had sent it on a slightly circuitous path to avoid Tirmanak’s likely spell, but Tirmanak actually canceled the spellcasting and seemed to start a different spell. Serenity wasn’t certain what Tirmanak was doing now, but he started the redirection spell moving right behind the shield spell, before it made it to the enemy. Tirmanak could see the spells and he clearly had a plan.

The shieldbreaker spell did exactly what it was supposed to.

The redirection spell glommed onto the robe; for a moment, Serenity thought he’d gotten something wrong in the spellform. While he’d cast similar spells before, it wasn’t his specialty.

A moment later, he realized that he was seeing his spell take control of the other spell. He’d known that was what it did, but it took specialized spells to see it actually happen; normal Mana Sight wasn’t enough. Apparently the version of Mana Sight a Mana Elemental possessed was good enough. That was good to know; it gave him a potential alternative to several specialized and finicky spells. It also made Serenity want to try out Essence Elemental to find out how its vision improved on his Essence Sight.

The spell quickly saturated the robe, then both it and the preexisting spell seemed to flood up towards the hand with the sword and into the sword. The man in white didn’t react until the sword suddenly exploded in his hand.

That was unexpected. While it certainly was possible to overload an item enough to make it fail, most people stayed well away from that level of power, because it would massively speed up the rate at which the spells enchanted onto the item would fail. The spells would usually fail long before the item did, unless there was a hidden flaw somewhere. Adding the robe spell had only approximately doubled the mana flowing through the sword, which meant that it had probably already been in the range where the man’s use of the sword was degrading it.

A long battle like the one he was having with Tirmanak was exactly the wrong sort of battle to push his items. If you were going to push an item, it was far better to do it for a short period of time when it was vital. Either the man in white was an idiot or he was wealthy enough he simply didn’t care about the sword’s magic failing.

Serenity couldn’t completely discount the possibility that the sword was poorly made. It was a melee weapon being used as a spell enhancer, after all, which wasn’t exactly normal.

However unexpected the explosion was for Serenity, it was even more unexpected for the man who was now wearing bloody robes that had once been white. With both of his protective spells down, shards of the sword stabbed into him, mangling his arm and bloodying his side. None of the injuries were fatal, but one was to his right knee and he sank to the floor, clearly in pain.

Serenity’s attention was drawn away from the man by the mana from the exploding spell. It was chaotic and would likely dissipate quickly, but Serenity could see it being drawn into the old runework inscribed at the doorway of each of the three cells he could see from his location. For a moment, a bubble wall formed of mana appeared in one of the doorways; the other two seemed to streak for a moment before the mana shredded apart, the runework too degraded to even form the wall in the first place.

Serenity mentally marked which cell successfully created the bubble wall. He could come up with a couple of ways to do that, but this was probably one he hadn’t thought of. Taking apart someone else’s runework was a lot like taking apart someone else’s poorly documented code; interesting and he often learned something, but it wasn’t unusual for that something to be options that either didn’t work or didn’t work well.

It was just as common to hack together a functioning rune as it was to hack together software. Either could be riddled with bugs and exceptions.

While Serenity was watching the ancient runework, Tirmanak closed the distance between him and the man lying on the stone floor. “Surrender.”

Even at the other end of the hall where he’d been thrown by their enemy’s first spell, Serenity could see the rictus spread across his face. “Never.”

Serenity could also see the mana building up in the man’s chest. It hadn’t been long enough to forget that spell; it would never be long enough. Serenity would recognize that spell until the day he died. Possibly from that spell.

Serenity leapt to his feet and yelled “Duck!” as he sent his ax flying down the hallway towards the man in bloody white robes. It was unlikely the ax would cancel the spell, but anything it did would help.

Serenity didn’t stay in the open to watch how well the ax did; he immediately dove into a nearby cell that wasn’t in a direct line with the man lying on the ground. The more cover he could get, the better; unlike Tirmanak, Serenity didn’t have a shield yet. Hopefully Tirmanak would take his shout as the warning it was, but there wasn’t time for anything more.

Serenity curled up in a far corner, as sheltered as he could manage, moments before the air lit up with blinding light and blazing heat, followed by a rumbling that was more felt than heard. It seemed to last minutes, but Serenity knew that wasn’t true; by his internal clock, it lasted twenty-three seconds.

Timing it gave him something to watch while he waited for it to be over.

When the light faded, the heat remained but the built-in lighting also went dark. The haze of chaotic mana was bad enough that Serenity had to be careful; unlike normal Mana Sight, he couldn’t turn off the natural Mana Sight of his current form, and it made everything look a little hazy and seem to shift as it moved, even to Eyeless Sight.

A quick check of the four lower-Tier opponents showed that they had all been in the direct path of the explosion; none of them survived. It was unfortunate mostly because it meant there was no information to be gained from questioning the group; Serenity already knew the Tier Six man in white was dead.

As Serenity headed towards the rubble-filled site of the explosion, he caught a glimpse of a familiar structured mana form and called his ax to his hand. It was covered in ash and probably soot, but it didn’t seem notably damaged. Any damage it had taken should be handled by the self-repair enchantment; Serenity could see that its magic nullification properties were still functional as it cleared a small space around the ax head as he moved it around.

Serenity faced the pile of rubble in front of himself with a sigh. Tirmanak was somewhere in the pile. With even minor luck, he’d be alive, but there was a very good chance he was injured. With a little more luck, Serenity’s warning was enough and he was simply trapped.