Sevrin arrived with Joga at their previously lively camp, relatively speaking. Now, everything was black, burnt, and smoking. There were only a few traces left around that indicated a once terrifying army of undead were residing here, but none of them were left untouched.
Bones crumbling to dust under the heat of the flames still burning over them, giant log poles once used as the foundation for tents, half melted weapons, all Sevrin had now was either within his dimensional ring or on Jova, including the draugr itself.
"YOU BASTARD, BEFORE TURNING YOU INTO A SLAVE, I'M GOING TO TORTURE YOU FOR A CENTURY!!" Sevrin screamed in outrage. The only time he had ever experienced such a loss to a single individual was when Mitas forcefully recruited him for this war.
"How?! Just how could he recover so quickly!? How did he remain undetected to reach my camp!? Why didn't the defensive formations go off!? How did he manage to destroy my entire army in the span of the single hour it took us to get here?!?"
Sevrin wasn't talking to Jova as he knew he wouldn't get an answer, he was just ranting while he stomped around the ruins of his camp.
Not only was his entire army destroyed along with their camp and weapons, he had also lost three of his commanders and his now favorite subordinate to one person using cowardly tactics! Once he had his hands around their neck, they were going to suffer before he turned them, and then he would torture them more while they obediently cleaned between his boney toes with their tongue!
"Jova! We stick together and find this bastard, he can't elude my senses forever!" Sevrin spoke and was about to launch off, but he paused as he didn't receive his usual grunt of acknowledgement from Jova.
He turned around only to see his most powerful attack commander's head rolling on the ground at its feet. "What?"
Before he could think about the implications behind the scene in front of his eyes, a voice echoed right beside his ear.
"Did you wash your neck?"
The next thing he knew, his head was already falling to the ground as it looked on at his body. Fortunately for him, he was a lich, being decapitated didn't mean the death of his physical body!
He could see the figure wearing odd clothing appear behind his body, and instantly commanded his body to turn around and tightly hold onto the individual before he self-detonated the fake core within it.
"HAHAHA serves you right you bastard! Just wait until I come back for your body!" Sevrin's disembodied head laughed as his soul was pulled from the skull and flew off towards his phylactery in order to form a new physical body.
…
Several hundred kilometers away, Sevrin began to reform. His phylactery was a simple but elegantly decorated phial, the size of a thumb. All liches phylacteries were different, and all liches also became a lich through a different method, a method unique to themselves. There were similarities in how they did it, such as having to split their own soul and removing their core, but everything else was dependent on how the individual achieved lich-hood.
The reformation process was quite boring for Sevrin and how long it took was dependent on how long had passed since his last death. He had died not too long ago due to Mitas, so his phylactery didn't have the necessary time to reform and resurrect him within only a few short minutes like last time.
He had placed his phylactery at the very bottom of an intricate cave network that his army had discovered upon their exploration of the region. It was pitch-black within the cavern, save for the soft glow emanating from the liquid coming from the small phial in a seemingly endless quantity.
The phial was actually his original mana core. He had reconfigured it as his phylactery and the liquid coming out was his own mana containing parts of his soul among other things he had used to become a lich.
A few hours later, his body was fully reformed and now just a fake mana core needed to be created inside of it, which took another couple of hours. Once that was finished, Sevrin began the process of transferring his consciousness to the newly formed body.
"So, that's how you do it? Interesting." The same dreadful voice that asked about his neck rang out inside of the cavern.
"Now the question becomes how I destroy your soul without destroying the mana core acting as your phylactery." Sevrin listened in silence. If he could sweat, he would be pouring it with how nervous he currently was.
He didn't have any way to defend himself while he was transferring his consciousness to his new body! Usually, one of his commanders would report to his phylactery to protect him during the process, but they were all dead! Permanently!
Fear overwhelmed him for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years and he quickly shouted a plea.
"What do you want? Please! I'll give you anything you want if you don't kill me! Anything!"
He couldn't cast any detection spells to see through the darkness at the moment, so he could only beg the darkness around him. Unfortunately…
"Hmm the liquid inside the phial seems to be what contains your soul, so if I extract that and destroy it, will you die? Let's try it."
…
Kayn exerted his entire focus onto the liquid inside of the phial in front of him. Due to his ability to control liquids, he thought it would be easy, but truthfully what was inside the phial wasn't just some liquid, it was the embodiment of Sevrin's mana and very being.
Try as he might, he couldn't remove the liquid using force. He knew that Sevrin would soon be in control of the new body, but with the phylactery in his hand, he wasn't worried about what the lich would do.
Giving up on controlling the liquid, he tried to control the mana as a whole, but that just wasn't something he could do, even if he wanted to. Then thinking he might as well just eat the mana core and spit out the liquid, he threw it into his mouth and chomped down.
Only, it wasn't the phial that cracked, it was his teeth!
"Ah fuck! Is this really a mana core? What the hell has he done to his core to make it that durable?" Kayn complained as he rubbed his sore mouth.
Sevrin just watched in silence, completely flabbergasted at what this person was trying to do to him. However, realizing that it was just a matter of time before his body reformed and he had a way to remove the hands grasping his core, he sat in silence. It appeared that this individual didn't actually have a way to destroy his phylactery!
"Bah, fine! Let's do it this way." Kayn spoke as he ignited a small black flame on his finger and sent it inside of the phial. Sevrin laughed to himself as no flame would work against his phylactery like that, but he was proven wrong mere seconds later as he screamed in terror and pain.
"AAAAAAGHHHH! STOP! PLEASE!" Sevrin begged and begged, but over the next few minutes, he began to feel his life finally coming to its true end.
As the last of the liquid in the phial was destroyed, the body which was sitting there uninhabited began to degrade as well. To hurry along the process and as insurance that the lich was indeed dead, he destroyed the body with Extinction Flames as well.
Kayn knew the lich was finally dead when he was able to place the once mana core turned phylactery into his Void Loop. He was excited that this ordeal was finally over. Liches were extremely difficult targets to deal with at his current level.
One-on-one wouldn't pose too much of a problem, but that's exactly the issue. Liches were almost never alone, save for Barabato, but he was an odd one. The worst part about having to deal with the lich and their army was the fact that most of the time, their minions wouldn't have mana cores.
Raised undead were similar in how they functioned to rune beasts, except that they had no core stone at all, nor did they retain their core from life. It was the soul that powered them, and as the undead devoured the mana infused flesh of their prey, their soul would grow stronger, increasing their total power.
"Haaaaa…" Kayn sighed out loud. He really didn't want to go after the other two that Yelena wanted him to deal with before he returned to hunting the easier targets within Palatine. The targets inside the city should be weaker for one, and two most of them were among the living.
Only a select few undead actually had a mana core for him to obtain, among those were the ones he planned to visit inside of the city. Undead who raised themselves or formed naturally were the only ones who could possibly have a core, and even then, it wasn't guaranteed. If he wanted to maximize his gains, it was best to target only the living amongst the 6th stage targets.
Kayn sat in silence for a time as he recovered his mana, thinking about the best way to kill the last two lich targets. Was it doable? Was it even worth the investment?
With these thoughts in mind, he pulled out the two mana cores he had obtained from Barabato and Sevrin. Maybe, just maybe, he could find a better way to deal with liches if he studied the two mana cores he obtained.
From the small sample size he had, liches used their original mana core within or as their phylactery. If he could figure out how to find and trace a phylactery through the core or by something else they radiated, he would have a much easier time killing liches in the future.
All of this was only conjecture, but it was worth looking into before he sidelined going after the other two targets. With a small chance of his idea actually being usable, he dove straight into studying the mana cores with every possible examination spell he had, including his Mana Sense.
A few days later, in the murky depths of a pitch-black cavern, the teeth of a vicious smile could be seen.