Healing System

"Lilith, you didn't use mana, did you?" he asked, his tone containing traces of exhaustion.

He had lost track of how many times he had been through this same scenario. The intruder came, Meph failed to stop him, and they repeated the cycle.

But his exhaustion continued accumulating, whereas the intruder's didn't seem to go down in the slightest. The boon of immortality, or some other technique—he did not know.

However, there were some changes during all of these scenarios. One was the fact that Lilith had now learned how to properly control mana. She had also grown a bit, looking like the average healthy teen.

Of course, the biggest change was, "Yup, I made a fountain this time!" Lilith exclaimed with a cheery laugh before running up to Meph and hugging him.

At some point, he stopped disallowing her to use mana; instead, he encouraged it. If she was going to use it anyway, why not learn how to do so faster?

It did not change anything in the grand scheme of things. The intruder still found them, and over the course of many battles, Meph was finally able to find out his name.

'Reinhardt... like some sort of knight in shining armor. Too bad he is some kind of chimera instead,' he thought while whistling to himself. If all went the same as it did previously, Reinhardt should show up in the next minute.

"Lilith, we will have to travel again soon. Did you finish up what you were doing?" Meph asked in a kind tone. No matter how bad it got, he would still not hand her over.

But just as she was about to reply, a sharp wave of mana headed for their wooden hut. Before it could connect, Meph blocked it and went outside, creating a bunch of barriers to protect Lilith.

In front of him was Reinhardt, looking a bit more beat up than usual. It would be surprising if he wasn't—they had been doing this for at least a couple of centuries, after all.

Meph glanced at him up and down before asking with a straight face, "Tea?"

"...Fuck off," Reinhardt replied with a scoff before swiftly slashing in the air and creating a miniature fissure, similar to the one Meph created, but many times weaker.

'Hmm... so he's finally learned how to do it, huh? Not chaos, but it is very close,' Meph thought while observing the fissure. It did look very similar, but it did not seem like it was made through the combination of mana and demonic mana—more like sheer strength combined with mana.

As surprising as it was, Meph was now losing in physical bouts against Reinhardt. He couldn't tell if it was due to the exhaustion or if the seemingly immortal person was growing exponentially stronger after each fight.

Nonetheless, his objective remained the same, and that was to stall.

However, despite both of their expectations, a sudden surge of mana came from behind them. It was nothing too special—much weaker than their own.

The purity seemed extremely high, much higher than Meph had ever seen in his entire lifespan, as if whoever was using the mana was made from mana itself.

It was hard to distinguish, but the issue was that the person behind that surge of mana was Lilith. It seemed like she had begun training once again, but this time, a breakthrough happened.

Meph could only blame himself since he did not explain to her what was happening this whole time, mostly keeping her in the dark.

She did not know that the world was being destroyed or that they were being attacked. The only thing she knew was that he was going in and out of the house constantly, creating colorful portals in the living room.

Now, he was going to have an even bigger problem than he anticipated.

Reinhardt also seemed to recognize that fact. With an alarmed look, he started attacking Meph using all sorts of techniques he had picked up along the way.

It seemed like his natural affinity was Light, but after all of their exchanges, it changed, turning into something like a space-and-light hybrid—which, in turn, made Meph just a little cautious.

He was not immortal like Reinhardt, and at the same time, he had limited mana, which by now was almost at rock bottom.

Meph dodged an incoming attack that was moving at the speed of light. But just as he thought he was safe, a crack appeared in the space behind him, and then another in front of him.

Due to the unpredictable nature of the attack, he was unable to dodge, and it went straight through his mana core, which was located in his heart. As it did so, the surrounding organs exploded in the process.

"Ugh..." Meph groaned in pain before using a decent amount of mana to heal his injuries. Chaos could heal, but it did not work as well when using it on himself. He was better off speeding up his natural regeneration instead.

But as he was doing that, another attack flew toward him, and then another. They all landed, causing him to fall to his knees. The exhaustion was finally starting to show.

"That stupid child..." Reinhardt exclaimed in annoyance as he walked past Meph and toward the wooden hut. However, before he could take another step, Meph impaled him with an invisible spear before throwing him aside.

Obviously, that did not do much besides buying time, but that was his goal after all. It always had been.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Enjoy new stories from empire

But it did not even manage to buy him more than a second. In the next, Meph was slowly starting to lose consciousness. The hit to his mana core was massive. The only reason he was still alive was because of the chaos he infused; it kept him alive, but it did not stop the inevitable drain of his mana core.

The only thing Meph could think at that moment was to save Lilith. However, he had already exhausted all of his options, and he was unsure when "they" would arrive.

Sending her back to a mirror world would not do much, as Reinhardt would simply find her after killing him and take her away.

Just as his worries were reaching an all-time high, Reinhardt appeared before Meph and looked directly down at him. The strange part was, he was not attacking.

Instead, there was a certain swirling white cube in his grasp. It contained the familiar mana of chaos; however, it was a tad bit different. It felt ominous, as though the mana was not naturally obtained.

Staring directly at it, Meph could feel a foreboding sensation, one that seemed as though it was sucking him in.

Reinhardt started bringing it closer to Meph, but just as the cube was about to touch him, the sky above them shone a golden light that covered everything in their vision.

The shocking part was, the light was entirely made out of mana, meaning that whatever or whoever was doing this had extremely formidable strength.

Reinhardt loosened his grip slightly, causing the white cube to fall on top of Meph, distorting his body and seemingly pulling him inside.

But before he fully lost sight of what was happening, he could see a single man floating in the sky. He had long, radiant golden hair and eyes akin to crystals, as well as a pair of pure white wings that seemed like they were covering the entire sky above them.

With a glimpse at that being, Meph's vision turned completely dark, while his consciousness quickly faded. But before it did, one word manifested upon seeing the angelic being above them, and that was:

'Terrifying...'

With those thoughts, he saw a small flash of bright white light. However, before he could process it, he lost consciousness.

The air grew stale, and the memory ended, just like that, leaving the previously watching Michael both enlightened and conflicted.

Enlightened because of the chaos energy that he had felt firsthand, and conflicted because of Reinhardt's prowess as well as the angel he saw, which looked eerily familiar to the one he already knew.

Michael glared at seemingly nothing before expressing out loud, "I thought you said you didn't know anything about either of them?"