Kayn sat at the table, silently eating the meal he cooked while contemplating on his next course of action. It might be possible to attack the lich and draugr at the same time and win, but it was risky.
He could use his new Light of Purgation spell, but the amount of mana it used and the risk of others noticing were too high. He also wasn't positive that it would destroy the lich's soul completely, causing the phylactery, he still didn't know the location of, to perish as well. He had killed a single lich so far, but that didn't mean they all functioned similarly unfortunately.
His biggest problem was being able to act without being caught by Sevrin's life sensing spell. He just didn't have the time to sit down and think about how to conceal his life force or what elements would be best suited to the task. He had his guesses, but it wasn't like he had long enough to be able to experiment for weeks on end.
Then the unexpected happened. The avatar he could create within the Villa walked into the room holding a thick scroll that it placed on the table in front of Kayn like an offering. It then also held out its right hand, above which a glowing orb of translucent light floated.
Kayn was stumped for half a second as he had completely forgotten about the avatar. Ever since the evolution of the Villa back on Earth, he was able to task the avatar within to study topics in his place.
Rather than a thinking and intelligent being, the avatar was more of a machine. Kayn would give it a task, and it would analyze and categorize information before trying to discern or create something useful from the topics it was assigned.
The Villa was part of Kayn's soul, but the avatar wasn't a separate part of his mind. He couldn't just gleam knowledge from the avatar as it gained it, the avatar had to pass it on to Kayn physically. From Kayn's previous testing, this typically meant the extracted information was given in the form of the glowing orb.
When Kayn absorbed the orb, he would digest the information at an extremely quick pace, understanding what the avatar gleamed from its studies after a few short minutes.
Previously, the avatar had read through a few books on arrays before passing on the knowledge, so Kayn assumed that it could only take previously written knowledge, that he had stored in the library, and pass on the important parts.
Kayn had forgotten about the avatar ever since he started his battles on Talgonoth. It was only now that he remembered the task he gave the avatar. However, how did the avatar come up with a solution within only three months?
He had glanced through the book titles he owned, and none of them contained what he desired, so how did the avatar find what he wanted within them?
Curious, Kayn first brought the glowing orb to his own head and absorbed it before looking at the scroll. He wasn't even positive why the avatar had written information down on the scroll, but it would all make sense soon enough.
Like absorbing memories that weren't his, Kayn dove headfirst into the information he was quickly gaining insights to, and it shocked him.
"What? How?" Kayn asked out loud as he tilted his head in question, looking at the motionless avatar waiting for its next command.
Three months ago, Kayn tasked the avatar to use whatever information it had available to either find or create a spell that would provide him with a new and better stealth ability. He usually needed to cast several different spells in order to cover all of his bases, and even that was found lacking by the lich, Sevrin.
However, what the avatar gave to Kayn wasn't what he expected. Rather than insights into the multiple books in his massive library, it had done what he was trying to do. From the knowledge gained and stored within his soul for multitudes of temples and from Chaos, the avatar had somehow pulled bits and pieces from many of them and took into account his unique nature as a being of the Void.
Multiple insights from various topics entered into his mind, before they all finally converged on the scroll in front of him. The avatar couldn't use mana nor cast spells itself, so it could only theorize before passing on its theories to Kayn. This was why rather than trying to pass a spell that it wasn't capable of understanding how to use as it had no methods to perform them, it wrote down the theorized spell on parchment to pass on for Kayn to test.
Kayn gulped as he unfurled the scroll and read through it from the first line. The spell had no name and the several pages had theory on the elements involved and a description of the optimized mana flow.
After absorbing the insights first, Kayn understood everything that was being described, but this wasn't how one would typically pass on a spell for someone to learn.
Then a spark of inspiration hit. He activated his All-Seeing Eyes and Analyzed the document. In an instant, the spell was ingrained in his mind and with a little testing, he would be able to use it perfectly. He only knew that it was a completed spell and would 100% work due to the information hovering just above the paper.
[Spell: Shadow's Embrace (Elysian-Mythic): A spell created by a budding power that is seeking sovereignty from all. Through the help and garnered insights from multiple Elysian beings and one true God, and due to the unique nature of the creator, a spell never seen before has been realized.]
-Become one with shadows, hidden from all eyes and senses, no matter how powerful.
-Due to the creator's current low overall prowess, the spell is severely impacted and certain limitations exist.
Kayn had several questions as he read through the information over and over again. What rank was Elysian-Mythic? Was he supposed to be the unique creator? Would it become more powerful as he understood more about the underlying mechanics or just as his overall power increased?
Even another quick read through of the spell and thinking back to the words Chaos had spoken, told him he was the only one who could use this spell, but the avatar theorized it, created it. Does that mean the avatar counts as him? It was part of his soul, so it made sense, but things were just too misconstrued and there was far too much Kayn didn't understand about the Wanderer's Villa.
In time, he would answer all of the questions he had, but now was not the time. He had a way to travel unseen now, and it was time to use it. Though he wasn't sure what the restrictions were until he tested it.
"Begin sorting through and digesting the knowledge gained on Earth. Start with finding a solution to concealing the unique aura of Obsidian Void Dragons, and then move onto combat and elemental mastery-oriented information." Kayn commanded the avatar who swiftly retreated back to the study.
'If it can pull knowledge from my soul, I might as well have it focus on that for now. That way I can make use of it when the time comes.' Kayn thought to himself as he was about to test out the new spell, but decided to relay new information to the avatar first, so he walked to the study.
"On second thought, proceed with former directions, but try to find information on methods to kill liches first." The avatar sitting in the middle of the study nodded and closed its eyes.
He wasn't sure if there really was any knowledge on how to fight undead, but several of the temples he visited belonged to gods who fought undead in their mythologies, so it stood to reason that perhaps there was something about killing liches.
For now, he would use the method that proved successful the first time. He had a feeling that Sevrin and his draugr were going to stay close enough to maintain communication, so he planned to draw them both to him.
The best way to do that? Kill off his army.
…
It was daytime when Kayn walked out of the Villa and he stood in the shadows of the trees he had crashed down into. Smiling to himself, he activated Shadow's Embrace.
It felt odd at first, and any dark areas containing a shadow became more intense to his vision. Rather than being shrouded in shadow, he became one and now he resided within the realm of shadows. It was a strange feeling to get used to, and he felt instinctively that if he tried to fly into he would be revealed.
The odd thing was that he didn't feel like he was standing either, and upon finally looking down, he realized why.
He had no body!
However, with a simple thought, a body of shadow was created.
"This is so trippy." Kayn spoke as the disorienting feeling was quite overwhelming for his first use of the spell. It was going to take him a long time to get used to, and master, but he knew that it could eventually turn into a terrifyingly powerful spell in the future.
For now, he got used to moving around and figuring out how to travel as fast as he could. Surprisingly, he could move almost just as quickly as his typical flight by only looking where to travel and moving there. If he could see a shadow, he could move to it within seconds.
There would be a lot of testing and perfecting his usage of the spell in the future, but as of now he just needed to make his way south, so that's what he did. It took him nearly an entire 24 hours just to get back to where he annihilated Grog.
What took him mere minutes before at his absolute top speed, took an entire day at a regular pace. He had his Mana Sense active the entire time as well and knew he passed right next to the draugr at one point, but rather than fighting him, he continued towards the undead camp.
Silently and unseen, Kayn skirted his way through tens of thousands of undead, weaving Mana Threads the entire time. As he wasn't actually attacking with the strings of mana and they only sat in the air until commanded, it didn't seem that it pulled him from the shadows due to attacking something.
Once he was ready with Mana Threads prepared to take down each and every undead in the army, he appeared before the army from the shadows they made. The undead all looked towards him simultaneously as he spoke.
"I'm waiting."
With those two words, he clenched his two wide open hands. Fire and lightning engulfed the Mana Threads as they instantly tightened around the undead. Most were so weak that they were turned to ash within seconds, but some lasted a little longer as horrifying groans and roars erupted from all over.
It didn't matter if they were undead equivalent to a 5th stage mage or those barely at the 1st stage, they all became equal within minutes.
Kayn stood in front of smoke, fire, and ash as the final pieces of the undead burned completely. Kayn's fire vaporized most of the weaker undead while the stronger were still currently burning after being separated into pieces by the Mana Threads.
With the stage set, Kayn dropped back into the shadows.