"I thought you were fighting against each other?", Harut straightened his back as Lucas had carried Astaroph to safety at the very last second at the cost of his body's left half. His arm, leg and part of his torso were completely gone. His body had been strengthened beyond what was possible for a normal mage on his level, but that meant nothing in the face of Harut's strength.
The blood grew en masse to fill up the lost parts, creating new limbs on the fly. Lucas didn't care he was vulnerable near Asta, who was still recovering in his remaining arm.
"I- I'm not going... to let him... kill you. I don't know what... you're thinking.. but you know, no,", the bloody being Lucas had become shook his head, "You understand me... right? What benefit would... I get... from fighting... this?"
Lucas' voice was raspy. His words came out slower, with effort, as if speaking itself had become exhausting. His lungs were failing as his breaths were rugged, short and erratic, as if it hurt to simply breathe. Half of his face was removed from the bloody cocoon, giving him a small moment of pure clarity.
Astaroph looked through the bloody mask to see his eyes, they weren't filled with plans and calculations, but tears. Not of anger, joy or even pain, but sadness. His eye was only visible for a moment as the bloody armor quickly covered up his visible body.
Asta felt the ground beneath him move slightly. Pushing himself up from the light bloody arm he rested on, he was healed completely. Lucas himself was already recovered. The blood and tentacles worked fast, faster than Harut's own healing, which pissed him off.
During the time they took to rest, Harut had ripped off his own leg to rebuild it and changed his armor for a different one.
"It won't be so easy this time. I can already tell your energy reserves are dwindling. I admit you were a worthy adversary for this Great One, but you cannot surpass the gap between Ranks."
Thanks to his monologue, Lucas was given the time to heal what was necessary. Asta clenched his hands as he looked at Lucas and Harut . He wanted to continue fighting, to release some of the rage inside him, but he didn't like Lucas protecting and saving him.
He was prepared to die, willing even, but Lucas prevented it, he even healed him due to his own inability to use Light magic, making up for his weakness. Asta was as calculated as Lucas and having that small moment to think things through, Lucas started to make more sense than he wished to.
The bloody figure stepped next to him and presented his hand. From his palm, a ball of constantly flowing blood formed. Asta stared at the small ball for a moment. He was meant to attack Lucas. He wanted to attack, he didn't want to think about what he said. He didn't want to do anything.
Grabbing the ball with his own transformed hand, the blood flowed over his arm to form a small armwrist. Instinctively, Asta could tell a fully charged core was inside the blood, an artificial pathway was formed to his palm. He could easily absorb the energy.
"Look, let's first get rid of him, then you can fight me all you like," there was no enthusiasm in his voice, no joy or excitement, just a lonely sadness. The voice was muffled, silent, as if he was speaking from far away, not present in the moment.
Clenching his hand even harder, Asta screamed his anger out. Once he calmed down, he dusted his clothes, "Fine! Let's get rid of this imbicile. How many do you have?"
A bloody hand simply held out two fingers, and didn't bother saying anything else.
"I see."
Standing next to each other, Asta and Lucas felt strange. A bond between them made the underlying meaning in their words clear. They didn't even have to exchange words to understands the other's intentions.
"So you plundered the cores of the innocent to replenish your own? You truly do not deserve to live any longer," Harut formed his shields and weapons once more. The hammer didn't change form, but the amount of mana radiating from it had lessened.
'If I rested properly before coming here, I wouldn't even have to think about mana management. Damn it all.'
Seeing the two mages stand still, he felt like every second he wasted would put him at a bigger disadvantage. "You can feel proud. To think you would make me pull out my domain."
Raising his hammer, the environment around them transformed. Pillars of Light appeared around the crater, not illusions or hallucinations like Lucas was used to, but genuine objects that formed from aura.
The pillars gave off a strange Light, but Lucas didn't notice anything strange.
"Now, die!", the wings on his back were gone, but that didn't stop him from his flight as his speed seemed to have gotten even faster, appearing before the bloody monstrosity Lucas had become in the blink of an eye.
The hammer came down on him like a tsunami, blasting away his right arm and causing another smaller earthquake. The power behind his swings wasn't to be underestimated, not that anyone was.
Lucas didn't mind sacrificing an arm or two if it meant he avoided his death. The splattered blood came alive as they formed small tentacles that quickly swarmed around the tip of the hammer.
Lifting his hammer, a nearby pillar shot out a beam of Light, cleaning the hammer. The blood was gone while the hammer shone brighter. The shields around him pulsed together with the pillar, strengthening them further with each second.
"Your tricks are over."
The monstrous being of blood didn't move from his place, simply letting the arm regrow. Harut raised his hammer and brought it down with a vengeance, but as the hammer came close, the bloody being suddenly expanded rapidly, engulfing him in a large bloody cocoon.
"Hah! Removing your armor will be the last mistake you'll make," without the defense and regenerative properties from the bloody figure, Lucas was as weak as a normal human. Right as he was going to go on a rampage, he felt his hammer got stuck. Looking at it, dozens of fleshy tentacles had wrapped around the head while a bridge of clotted blood was holding it to the wall of the cocoon.
Tentacles seemed to jump out of the wall, reaching the other side before hardening. The blades came from the most unpredicable places as with each blade that reached for his flesh, a new powerful barrier was set up.
Smashing his fists into the crimson bridges, they easily fell apart, at the cost of getting his hands dirt. For every blade he couldn't dodge, his shield absorbed the hit before Harut destroyed it.
Out of nowhere, every cell of blood inside the cocoon started to give off Lucas' aura, turning his vision red. The disgusting aura pouring out from it made him nauseous, he felt the world blur for a moment. "I don't need my hammer to crush your skull!", plunging his hand into the wall of the cocoon, he grasped it right where Lucas' mana was concentrated, but all he felt was a mass of blood.
'He wasn't inside it?!'
The blood quickly closed in on him as chains of pure mana appeared seemingly from nowhere. They were easily destroyed, but by then, the blood had made direct contact. Slipping into his ears and mouth, the maddening aura it exuded made him go crazy.
Conjuring an explosion of Light, the pillars reacted to strengthen his defenses. The blood was pushed back before it was turned into a mass of pure Darkness, which consumed every bit of shield there was.
In a slight moment where his shields were gone, a Dark Red Beam exploded out from right beneath him, as an array made of blood and flames fueled it. Stomping his foot, the array and beam were destroyed, but the damage was done.
His flesh and body had trouble regenerating, but the pillars pulsed rapidly, healing him fully.
"Raagh!", screaming out a battle cry, he swung his hammer in Lucas's direction, who floated in the sky without any defenses, his skin extremely pale as all his blood was used to remove Harut's defenses. And despite his momentary success, the shields had already been rebuilt due to the pillars constantly feeding Harut.
A single swing caused a streak of Light to flow forward, one Lucas wasn't keen on getting hit with as the power emanating from it made him wary. Dodging it to the best of his abilities, streaks of Light started to overlap as Harut took to the sky, swinging his hammer to close of any escape route except towards himself.
Lucas eagerly took him up on the challenge with a wide smile. His muscles bulged out of his skin as it took a red tint. Harut, smashed his hammer down on Lucas, who barely dodged it in time, fist ready to hit him straight in the gut, but with all his shields active, all Lucas was able to accomplish was push him back slightly.
Having some room, Lucas dove to the ground, but was already hit by one of Harut's streaks of light as he caught up in an instant. The sound of searing flesh reached his ears, making Harut smile. Lucas crashed on the ground, creating a dust cloud. Harut kept his eyes on Lucas to make sure he wasn't going to disappear again.
Harut didn't hesitate to use his Magic Vision, yet it revealed nothing. His heat sense only displayed how hard the temperature in the area had risen due to Asta's flames. The figure of Lucas was gone, and by the time the dust cloud settled, the body had vanished.
"Damn that little rat!", landing on the impact spot, Lucas was already gone, but dozens of arrays activated simultaneously. Explosions off all kinds were set off, purplish flames ate away at his body, destroying every cell, consuming it as fuel.
Harut waved it off, stepping out of the explosion badly damaged, but perfectly fine. A single pulse from the pillars would've healed him up. Right as one of the pillars was about to create another shield, nothing happened.
"Hmm?", looking at the pillar, dozens of runes were scribbled over each one.
"Don't think I stood still as you played with Lucas," Asta appeared behind him, as he activated a few arrays.
"Nothing you do will be able to kill me!", his injuries were there, but even without the healing properties of the pillars, he still had the upper hand. He simply had to heal himself, which took a few seconds longer and required his own mana, but by the time he finished his sentence, his body was back in top shape.
"You are already dead, what do you think these arrays are for?"
Staring at them, Harut couldn't understand them, but certain runes made it all to clear what it was meant to do.
"Hmm? Make mana go haywire? Hahahaha! You think you can usurp control over the mana in my own body?! Have you lost the plot!", Harut laughed out loud at the mere prospect of such a move.
"Well, it's not exactly your core that we're targeting," a pale Lucas appeared next to Asta, he finished filling in the runes of the final array.
Harut felt a pang of pain as his back started to feel extremely hot. At the center of his back, a single tiny core was being held in place by blood that had fused with his flesh. Near his hands as well, a tiny bump in his skin, almost unnoticeable started to heat up.
"Didn't you know if you healed your wound while debris is inside, it stays inside?"
"You! No!", Harut realized why Lucas had sacrificed his bloody armor, it wasn't to kill him, but to make his mind hazy. The beam was just there to cause enough damage to lodge the cores inside his wounds. Harut never noticed the tiny changes in his body, as he was focused on killing Lucas.
Astaroph formed a few barriers of Pure mana while Lucas added his own final shield around Asta and himself. Completely out of mana, Lucas stared at the bright star Harut was becoming. Two fully charged Rank 3 cores exploding at the same time would level the entire area, but it was the only way Lucas figured could kill him.
Asta instantly knew what he was going to once he noticed Lucas had left the bloody armor and controlled it from underground. Slipping away and hiding the cores inside the mass of blood gave him enough to work with.
Harut started to give off so much light as he clawed the skin from his wrist to pull the seething core out, but the pillars around him suddenly buzzed after Asta snapped his fingers, healing his wounds. Harut looked on with disbelief as his Protective Pillars were being used against him. Everything he tried failed as his time was simply too limited as the cores exploded, leveling the entire crater, blasting everything apart.
The protections Lucas and Asta had formed were almost useless as they were flung backwards, covered in injuries.
The dust took a long time to settle, but Lucas used the final bits of energy he could get from the air to heal the most grievous of wounds.
Asta lay not far from him, part of his body was gone, but his heart was still beating.
"A-Asta...", crawling over to him, he felt the pain in his body intensify as the fight was finally over. All the stress and abuse of his body caught up to him, causing him immense pain.
Asta turned to the side to see Lucas suffer in silence, his clenched fist and teeth said enough. His own body was falling apart as well. The many uses of his own lifeforce took a toll, one he couldn't pay for much longer. His skin had started to shrivel up.
He wanted to sigh, but couldn't.
"YOU MONSTERS!!!", a shriek from the center of the dust cloud made both Astaroph and Lucas panic. Harut sat in the middle without any arms and half of his body missing. Blood poured out of him at a rapid pace.
Lucas felt like going unconscious as all the mana in his body was dried up. His head was losing control, a piercing headache forced him to go unconscious, only to be pushed back by his survival instinct.
He still wasn't safe, after all that, they still couldn't kill a single Rank 4 mage. To them, Harut was the true monster.
What scared Lucas even more was the fact the man still had mana inside him. But he wasn't preparing a spell. No, his core had become too unstable from all the foreign mana forcing it's way inside his body.
"YOU WILL ALL PERISH WITH ME!!!"
A new star of Light started to appear in the middle of the cloud of dust, dozens of times larger than before. Lucas stared in stunned disbelief at the amount of energy being gathered from the air.
And yet, despite the fear, there was a sense of relief. Without any defenses, his death would be painless in front of a Rank 4 core exploding. His end would be fast. He didn't expect to survive, his results already far surpassed his goal.
Asta looked at the star and felt his guts twist. Looking at how relieved Lucas had become, tears welled up in his eye.
'If we worked together from the start, we would've survived... Lucas, I'm...'
Lucas turned his head to look at Asta's teary eye. He couldn't help but follow suite. They had done the impossible at the cost of their own lives, but he was happy. He was glad they were able to do it. He was free from this burden. Free from the pain. All his worries and fears were washed away. But most of all, he wouldn't have to fight Asta anymore.
Asta grasped the ground beneath him, clenching it in his hand. "Lucas," his voice was quiet, Lucas barely heard it.
"I'm sorry. For doubting you."
Lucas paused for a moment, he let all the thoughts in his mind vanish as he simply gave Asta a soft, genuine, smile.
Seeing that, Asta knew what he had to do. Stretching out his hand, the final bits of his own lifeforce that were still available shot through his palm. A few runes appeared around Lucas.
He didn't recognize them at first, but his eyes widened not long after. The daunting realization of what Asta was planning on doing made him panic, "Asta! No! Don't! ASTA!", reaching out to him, Lucas felt genuine pain and fear.
Using the last bit of mana inside his core, Asta opened a small portal underneath Lucas, dragging him to wherever it led, as Asta didn't have the time to set up the perfect coordinates. His eyes lit up at his successful activation, the spell he worked for so long on worked.
"Ha...ha...I did it...," Asta was fascinated by spatial magic, but couldn't use it due to his restrictions. His heart suddenly gave out as it exploded from within. Coughing up blood, Asta's eyes started to grow hazy as he stared at the star in front of him.
"Now...we're....e...ven..."
A flash of Light appeared, Asta didn't even have the time to think as the world he viewed so darkly had turned into pure white light. For him, all that followed was a serene silence.
The earth waved, as the blast turned the entire county of the duke into a massive explosion. Not even rubble would remain after the blast.