“Panicking never did anyone, anywhere, any good.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“Well, not really,” said Aideen rather nonchalantly as she stared the so-called king of Vitalica right in the eyes. “I mean, I did come here expecting to find some deluded madman lost in the throes of power beyond their reckoning, and I did find exactly that, all considered,” she added. “You’re no god, just a madman with grandiose delusions and a case of megalomania, is all.”

The mad monarch apparently found her words unpleasant to the ears, as his figure blurred and struck towards Aideen. Unlike Kino, however, Aideen could use her affinity to forcibly enhance her body’s functions past their natural limits, so she could perceive the motion to an extent, even if it remained far too fast for her to truly see clearly.

Even so, that bit of perception combined with muscle memory ingrained from centuries of practice and hard work allowed her to shift her staff just enough to block the incoming fist aimed towards her face. Aideen’s staff was made out of pure adamant, a material renowned to be resistant to magic, and was further enchanted with anti-magic enchantments to capitalize on that quality of the metal.

As a result, any magical working that made direct contact with her staff would lose a lot of its effects, and the madman’s fist was no exception.

Aideen could tell that the madman achieved his absurd speed and power using a similar process as how she reinforced her body using her own magic to allow herself to perform feats beyond the limits of her body. What they did was to hold their body together in a brute force manner using their magic, healing any damage it incurred from usage that went far past its limits before they could have any effect.

Because of that, the madman’s speed and power – which already built up on the way to Aideen – was unaffected when his fist struck against her staff, but the fist itself lost the protection of the magic that held it together when it landed on the adamant staff. The flesh and bones, returned to their natural state and driven by overwhelming force from one side and matched with the hardest known material in the world on the other, only had one way to go.

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While Aideen still skid back a few steps on the marble floor from the ridiculous force, an explosion of mangled flesh and bone also erupted where the madman’s fist made contact with her staff, liberally coating the chamber with a rather ridiculous amount of gore as the madman’s magic kept regenerating the flesh only for it to be crushed again and again.

It was obvious that while the ritual granted the madman a massive amount of mana, he had minimal true control over it, and in fact only used it in the most instinctual method so far.

Aideen took the opportunity where the madman was temporarily blinded by his own exploding fist to break off and slid over to where Kino still laid crumpled at the base of a pillar. One touch was all Aideen needed to undo the damage the strike had done to Kino earlier. The strike had pretty much pulverized her ribcage and the organs in her chest, while the impact against the pillar shattered her spine in several places, which was why she couldn’t stand back up.

Normally such injuries would have taken time and care since Aideen would have to carefully ensure that each nerve regenerated at the right place, but since Kino was Unliving, she just went for a more efficient solution. She directly converted the damaged parts of Kino’s body into mana and rearranged it within the moment they touched, fixing everything in the blink of an eye.

Kino gasped as she suddenly could breathe again and without a word returned to the battle once more. This time she learned her lesson and instead of trying to annihilate the madman’s body – or head, for that matter, which had already been proven to not work out – she took on a different approach. She shaped void magic into multiple paper-thin discs and juxtaposed them between her and the madman.

Sure enough, the madman came rushing towards the two of them only to run afoul of the discs in question. Instead of striking them, he landed in a wet flop on the ground, missing most of his limbs as well as slices off various parts of his body. The thin discs were stable enough to slice through his body and since he could not regenerate with a barrier of void between the cut body parts, the madman ended up dismembering himself.

It was only temporary, of course, as a mere second later his injuries vanished and his limbs regenerated.

“How Dare you!?” yelled the madman with palpable rage at the two as he rushed towards them once more. Aideen managed to react fast enough to catch him mid-rush with a full-force swing of her staff, however, striking them man across the gut, resulting in another explosion of flesh, blood, and organs that only stopped when the madman’s upper body was flung towards Kino by the remaining force of his charge.

The madman might be capable of extreme speeds and power, but he clearly lacked the control and reaction speed needed to make effective use of such capabilities.

Due to Aideen’s delay Kino managed to step aside to avoid getting slammed by the flying upper half of the madman. Where she once stood, she left behind several more void discs, these ones longer and wider, wide enough that should the madman’s upper body run into them they would be sliced into pieces without being able to make contact between themselves in the process.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Kino asked back as the madman’s upper body flew directly into the void discs, leaving his severed arms flung off to the sides while his body fell apart into five chunks after they passed through the discs.