Chapter 31: 31. “That is a marvelous contradiction.”

The lich clearly heard the provocation, the flames in his eyes burned stronger. He slowly moved his skeletal hand and pointed it at Arima. Black smoke shot out from his palm and made its way toward Arima.

When he saw the attack, Arima frowned and chose to teleport away for a very short distance. The black smoke exploded into a dark cloud which fell back on the ground. Everything it touched would putrefy and crumble.

"Death magic, as expected," Arima muttered. "But, if it's death magic…" He smirked and flapped his wings. His figure blurred and he was already on his way to strike the lich.

The skeleton opened his mouth and an eerie screech resounded. The ten wendigos shielded him, and confronted Arima head on.

"[Communis humane nature uirtutem] (Superhuman strength)," Arima chanted and his muscles became a bit bigger. He then collided with a wendigo, fist to fist. The result was the wendigo's arm being crushed and its bones sticking out. One of his comrades attacked Arima from behind and waved his claw. Arima turned around and grabbed the undead's wrist, he drew Ira and shot the head of the wendigo.

Soon enough, the rest of them assaulted him. One tried to bite Arima and was crushed by a knee, another threw a punch and suffered a kick on its neck, while a third one was just shot before he could do anything.

"{Eighth level,}" Night commented. All of those wendigos were at that level.

Arima clicked his tongue, "You're lucky I don't have Karma. But you could also say that it's rather fair. After all, I'm the worst opponent you could ever meet." He smirked and smashed the upper body of a wendigo with his knee and elbow.

The lich was observing the fight going on between Arima and the wendigos and his 'eyes' wavered. Something that should be happening wasn't.

When Arima barehandedly crushed the last wendigo's head, he turned toward the lich, "Surprised? Normally, when you fight a high-class undead, you always have to protect yourself from the death aura that they emit. But I didn't," Arima snickered and a bolt of lightning fell on a wendigo. Thunder roared and shook the earth.

"But death is my friend from a long time ago. You'll have a hard time troubling me with that."

"…What are you trying to say, human?" Surprisingly, the lich talked after he called back the wendigos. His voice sounded old and eerie. The sound coming out of his mouth resembled a saturated record.

Arima grinned at the lich's response, "Let me show you."

The whole area was instantly flooded with mana when Arima raised his voice. Both he and the undead were instantly transported in another dimension.

Lanya's expression darkened as she was left alone."…Hey, wasn't I supposed to learn? What am I supposed to do while waiting?"

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The lich looked around, "Is this an alter dimension?"

Arima smiled, "As expected from a lich, you must have lived for a very long time." He was honestly impressed. It was the first time someone actually saw through his magic so quickly. Even Jorga didn't react as knowingly as this lich.

"Now, be my judge. You'll be the first one who'll see this." Arima said and a chilly grin formed on his face. A dark mist surrounded him and engulfed his figure

At that moment, the lich was already astounded and the flames burning inside his skull became more agitated.

After a while, the cloud of dark mist suddenly dispersed and Arima was nowhere to be seen even after that. But the lich turned around and glimpsed a black coat fluttering with the wind. He raised his line of sight and saw a skeletal hand, covered in gray scales, holding a gun. He looked even higher and ended up staring at a skull that had blue flames occupying the eye sockets. There was a skeleton standing right in front of him. It was wearing black clothes and a pair of bone wings was deployed in his back along with a large bone tail.

Its skull had the bones twisted into a grin. It was extremely disturbing. But the lich had his expression doing the same as he started to laugh.

"I must say, I never met a human holding the power of an undead without being one. That is a marvelous contradiction," The lich's voice sounded extremely excited for some reason.

"I don't know about that" The other skeleton responded. His voice sounded like Arima's but was a lot colder and darker.

"To be honest, I just got some insights from your subordinates there. When I felt their aura touching me, I got an idea. Becoming an undead. If I could do that then maybe I could gain a quasi-invulnerable body and nullify the toll put on my body by some of my techniques."

"I understand now. Death magic won't work on you at all." The lich replied, "But, that's not my only strength!" He bellowed and the aura of a tenth level powerhouse crushed everything in the surroundings. The wendigos were compelled to kneel and their aura, along with their life force, were collected by the lich.

"{I'm not imagining things, right? He just absorbed their life force,}" Night asked and Arima nodded.

"{Yeah, but it's different here. He's not like me. Since the beginning, the life force in those wendigos was his. He just retrieved what belonged to him. In any case, are you ready?}"

Night sighed, "{You maybe got rid of the toll on your body but the one on my mind is still not resolved.}"

"{I've got an idea for that. We were going in the wrong direction from the very start. We just need to share half of the toll on each other's spirit and it should resolve the problem of spiritual exhaustion.}"

"{…Why didn't we think of that earlier?}"

"{I don't know}" Arima laughed, "{But it's time to go.}"

The lich had already become twice as bigger, and his bones also began to shine like a precious metal.

Arima followed his example and his bones cracked as they were forced to change. His skeletal figure grew bigger, his bones turned silver, and his aura soared to the tenth level.

"[Death God's Body]."

"[Agnitio Vultus Unum Centum]."

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The two of them chanted at the same time and their respective transformation ended. They laughed together and charged at each other.

The lich summoned a black scythe and, without Karma, Arima conjured a huge katana with lightning magic.

Each time their weapons clashed, either a lightning bolt would flatten the landscape or a ray of darkness would disintegrate the ground and form a perfectly round crater.

The lich wielded his scythe like a whirlpool and from the tip of his blade, a dozen of black spheres formed a circle and were launched at the same time.

Arima lifted his weapon with his two hands and swung it down, whilst black lightning thundered around it, "[Aeterna]."

A crescent-shaped wave of lightning clashed with the dark spheres and the shockwave came before the explosion. The ground was cracked open and something that could only be described as a tsunami of soil and stone was created. The discharge of lightning and darkness manifested as an electrified dark dome.

Both Arima and the lich were chased out of the dome by their own attacks. They regained their balance and glared at each other.

The lich landed on the ground and caused a canyon to be constructed. He condensed his mana and a sea of darkness appeared behind him. He kicked the ground and rushed forward, followed by a tide of absolute obscurity.

Arima deployed his wings and an ashen net appeared between the bones. He wagged them and spun in midair. The air around him became filled with lightning. The blue flames blazing in his skull became larger. He conjured another katana and battled the lich again.

Their weapons clashed and shattered countless times. Every time one broke and exploded, another would appear. The huge waves of magic following them were also raging.

Then, thunder rumbled and the lich looked up at the sky. He spotted thick and shadowy clouds compressing a huge lightning sphere in the sky. He wailed and the ground opened up to reveal a bottomless hole filled to the brim with darkness magic, some of it began to condense into a sphere of energy.

Arima called Ira and changed the bullets whilst fighting. When he fired, the bullet reached the lich in less than a millisecond and exploded. The undead was surprised by the weapon's might but he still managed to defend himself with a shield.

Arima grasped the opportunity and gathered a great amount of mana and magic in his sword. He sheathed his blade and teleported just in front of the lich with a magic circle that he had been preparing for a while now."[Terra Aeterna] (Eternal Night Over the World)."

The lich quickly reacted, "[Blood Harvest]," He chanted and his scythe's blade gained a hint of red and a bloody aura surrounded it. He blocked Arima's iaido with it.

The consequences were much worse than before. The conflict caused an earthquake. The ground literally vanished for at least ten miles around them. At the same time, the spheres that were being condensed in the sky and underground suddenly transformed into beams that were launched against each other.

That second clash created a strange and ominous black sun in the sky covered in shadows and lightning. It was obvious that this 'sun' was extremely unstable. The two fighters looked at it and acted immediately.

"[Hades]," The lich chanted the name of the God of Hell and became a red light that flew toward Arima.

"[Et Iratus Scintilla] (Enraged Spark)," Arima became a bolt of lightning and charged at the undead.

They both used their strongest displacement magic. They knew that if they could prevent the other from guarding against that sun, they would gain an obvious advantage.

Their max speed had now reached eight hundred meters per second. Two colors, blue and red, just kept flashing and causing shockwaves that led to momentary voids.

This situation lasted for ten seconds, during those ten seconds, they threw around a thousand blows to each other. And then, the black sun exploded and shrouded everything.

The nova that ensued gradually expanded. Bigger and bigger. It split apart the clouds and rewrote each crater on the ground. After a minute of intense destruction, only a hundred miles' radius crater was left. Not even a speck of dust remained. Even the soil had become something unrecognizable after the damage and pressure it suffered.

In the middle of it, Arima and the lich were facing each other. Both of them had their clothes in tatters. Although they had no problem of physical endurance, no pain, and no blood, they still were at their wit's end.

Both of them had at least some ribs and an arm obliterated, which were already being restored. Since they were using death power, they didn't need life magic. As the latter can heal living beings, the former can heal undead beings.

Arima moved his jaw, "If things continue this way, we'll take at least a day before finishing this."

"What do you propose?"

"What about we prepare our strongest moves and use that to determine the winner? The one who can't withstand it loses. Well, there's also the case where we both die." Arima uttered with a smile.

The truth is that Arima wanted to finish this fight quickly. Not because it was a bother to carry on but because his mana would dry up to keep the dimension active.

"I'll give you face. You set this dimension to keep away troublemakers. I'm sure you already spent more mana on saving this dimensional connection than I have in total," The lich said and planted his scythe in the ground.

"Let's do it, no matter the result, it was fun for me to meet a human as fascinating as you. My name is Koden."

"My name is Arimane. Me too, it was fun," Arima answered and leaped before finding an invisible foothold in mid-air.

The lich did the exact same and chuckled, "Then let's do it, Arimane."

"Sure thing, Koden."

They sniggered and both gathered their magic for the last attack.

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