Chapter 50 One Coin Closer

  Four holes formed on the ground on each of Malcolm’s sides. A new set of Quicken, Flight, and Reality Armor came into being. Frost instantly formed on the dais all around him as a crown and pauldrons of pure ice formed over top of the black iron ones. The final pair of spells were Blades of Oblivion. Two of them materialized behind him and hung in the air as if they were awaiting his next command. Eight solid quartz wands shot up out of the holes in the floor and found their ways into his hands between each finger. All of that happened in the brief moments between Isaac trying to, and Shamesh successfully, break apart the Reality Walls protecting the now-lich fallen-King Malcolm Millen.

  All of the Reality Walls surrounding Malcolm broke apart either on their own or by Shamesh and Isaac’s efforts almost as one and he shot up into the air. “Star Storm.” Malcolm chanted and all of the wands in his hands activated at once. All of them broke apart in his hands as eighty Stars of Doom from eight severely upcasted versions of the low level spell formed in a pair of massive clouds around him. Then, all at once, they all shot towards Shamesh.

  Shamesh threw up a trio of Reality Shields as he retreated. While Shamesh was busy trying not to be eaten by the magical equivalent of piranhas, Lenna was still grounded, and Isaac was moving at the speed of a normal person, Malcolm took his opening and dove at Shamesh with the two Blades of Oblivion in his hands. The bone wizard had proven himself to be far too annoying to leave alive and the V’Nova Wexler duo were obnoxiously hard to kill while Shamesh was involved.

  Shamesh pushed himself to his limits. He cast three Reality Shields in rapid succession as his mana pathways started to burn from overuse and his mana reserves started to warn him of his imminent demise. The Reality Shields each held up admirably but the Stars of Doom were just too much for such a small spell. Shamesh knew this which was why he had also cast a Reality Bubble around himself. The shields existed just to buy himself enough time to form an adequate defensive spell. The rest of the Stars of Doom harmlessly detonated themselves against the thicker and more robust Reality Wall, at least they did, until Malcolm slammed into the wall with a pair of Swords of Oblivion. The Reality Wall was utterly obliterated on impact and nearly a dozen Stars of Doom managed to slip through the flying shards of Reality Magic to make contact with the wizard of bones.

  Shamesh’s front was riddled with holes as his torso’s structural integrity rapidly dropped. His suit was officially garbage. Shamesh managed to dodge away from Malcolm’s dual sword slashes that looked as though they cut reality itself. He tried to throw up a Reality Shield to stall Malcolm even for a second but it didn’t seem to have any effect. Lenna arrived a moment later but was forced to dodge Malcolm’s barrage of dual sword swings before he returned to focusing on Shamesh. Shamesh hadn’t even been able to get a small spell off before Malcolm was once again trying to personally introduce Shamesh to the forever sleep.

  Isaac appeared and yanked Shamesh with him to the shadow realm, that was, he cloaked both of them in his shadow-cloak. “Just focus on maintaining Lenna’s Quicken. I’ll think of something.” Isaac assured his retainer and reappeared with his steel sword in hand. Keeping Shamesh invisible had gotten a little easier but Isaac needed to regenerate his mana and keep up his own boost on Lenna. During the three seconds of both Shamesh and Isaac being gone from Malcolm’s sight, he had decided to focus on removing Lenna.

  Lenna could not get an attack in as even while moving twice as fast as the lich king, his two swords were too lethal to even allow them to contact her armor. As it was, she could feel the enchantments weakening from all of the lines Malcolm’s swordspear had traced across the surface of her armor. She felt like if she got hit just a bit too hard then her armor would come apart into a hundred ribbons. Lenna’s new level of speed meant that she could keep Malcolm from further ruining her armor but she still could not get a singular attack in, and even if she could, she no longer had the opening to go for and her sword would not survive a solid attack against his armor.

  Isaac’s mind raced as fast as it could considering he was no longer boosted at all. His normal eyes could hardly keep up with the game of cat and mouse the lich and his mate were playing, it was nothing but a blur of fire and prismatic Reality Armor. Idea after idea flickered through his mind as the seconds ticked by. With each second came an idea that wouldn’t work. Finally, he settled on something that was borderline suicidal. With a shaky grin as adrenaline re-surged through him, Isaac put his sword away and grabbed a stack of platinum coins in his right hand. The stack of coins started with the first one resting against the heel of his palm and then the fortieth one pressed against his fingertips. Isaac took a quick breath and huffed it out. “Here goes nothin’.” He whispered to himself.

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  Isaac stopped maintaining his shadow-cloak on Shamesh and bent the half of his regeneration rate that he had at his disposal towards boosting himself. Shamesh appeared and in the brief moment when Malcolm turned to look at Shamesh, Isaac struck. Isaac brought very little lethal intent with him as he moved. His plan was not to kill the lich, injure him sure, but even that was not a certainty. He wasn’t sure how platinum interacted with a lich’s phylactery but he was about to find out. Seeing as the lich was adorned with platinum enchanted gear, he assumed that it would do nothing to the rest of his body but the phylactery of a lich was the actual part that was undead. That was the place where the soul of the dead resided and was the part that needed to consume souls in order to maintain itself.

  Isaac’s chest slammed into Malcolm’s prismatic breastplate as the dark mage shadow-stepped as close to the lich as magically possible. Isaac’s left arm reached under Malcolm’s right armpit and grabbed onto the back of his freezing cold collar bone. It wasn’t just the collar bone, the entire lich and everything within twenty feet of him was cold enough to freeze steam. The wind was knocked out of Isaac’s lungs as Malcolm had been chasing Lenna at his top speed and his flight spell was not going to let him slow down unless he wanted to. At the same time, Isaac shoved all of the platinum coins directly through Malcolm’s left eye socket. Malcolm’s left eye winked out as the undead magic that it was made from steamed and traded itself for the first platinum coin. The rest just fell through without any other immediate effects.

  Malcolm turned both of his swords inwards in an attempt to cut Isaac in half. He had to be careful not to let the blades touch each other or himself so the movement was much slower than it otherwise would have been, slow enough that Isaac was able to shadow-step with only his cloak being cleaved nearly in half. Malcolm swung wildly towards his left side as Lenna switched directions and attempted to flank him. They all heard the coins rattle and tumble down through Malcolm’s insides while his armor kept any of them from spilling out. Malcolm tipped as most of the coins found their way into his right leg. That was only minor to how he started to act otherwise. It wasn't something extremely easy to put their fingers on but both Isaac and Lenna almost instantly knew that Malcolm felt off somehow, and it wasn’t just his missing eye or uneven weight distribution, but those definitely helped. The lich king was suddenly now on the defensive as a matter of choice.

  Lenna ran in circles around Malcolm as he always tried to keep her in his line of sight with one of his swords facing her. The rest of his focus was entirely dedicated to tracking Isaac. It took Isaac a moment to realize what had happened. “How’s it feel to be one coin closer to your final death?” He taunted the lich.

  “Die.” Malcolm ordered him. Isaac felt his core implode his heart, he felt his boost almost completely die out for a moment before it returned in full, and he didn’t show that it affected him at all. Right as the command had been spoken, right before it had fully taken effect, Isaac launched towards Malcolm with a singular platinum coin in each hand.

  Malcolm swung one of his swords at Isaac but the dark mage just teleported through it and tried to stuff a coin through Malcolm’s only remaining eye. A Reality Shield appeared to block his attack and Isaac bounced off of the shield and partly into the path of one of Malcolm’s Oblivion Blades. Isaac’s right arm was parted as if it wasn’t even there. He twisted in the air and grabbed onto Malcolm’s wrist just enough to keep from losing his arm at the bicep and used the lich’s arm to shove himself downwards. Isaac’s feet barely hit the ground before he shadow-stepped away again.

  Isaac landed and his arm was already perfectly fine. The lingering pain was still there, and would be for another few seconds, but the injury was entirely gone. “I was right.” Isaac taunted the lich from a dozen feet away while his wife continued to circle him. Lenna stopped on the opposite side of Malcolm and readied herself to rush in. “The ‘old ways’ still work to send a lich to the afterlife. It’s good to know that some things never change.”

  Malcolm charged directly at Isaac with pure lethal intent. Not only had Isaac hit the nail on the head, but Malcolm’s own kneejerk reaction confirmed that he had. If Malcolm was going to win, he needed a few things. The first was for Shamesh to run out of mana already. The second was for Isaac to die or all of his platinum coins that he was pulling out of thin air to vanish for good. The third was Lenna’s boosts and sword to be removed before Malcolm’s own boosts and spells finished running their courses. In short, things were not looking up for the old lich king.

  Isaac grinned and vanished only to reappear where Lenna had been. Lenna was now driving her fist into the middle of Malcolm’s back so hard that the Reality Armor actually cracked. A spiderweb of broken lines formed from where her fist had impacted the Reality Armor and she felt her gauntlet get a bit more uncomfortable as the metal joints and hinges were tweaked slightly from the impact. Malcolm went shooting forwards before his Flight spell stopped him and helped him reorient on Lenna. She had actually managed to hit him with a physical impact powerful enough to force his Flight spell to comply. He had noticed Shamesh but the wizard of bones was just standing there, menacingly, with new bone already forming where the Stars of Doom had obliterated it. If Malcolm didn’t have such good mana senses then he would have thought that Shamesh was just trying to wait and recover while maybe looking for an opening to land an attack, but Malcolm could feel the faint trickle of power going from Shamesh to Lenna from her currently active Quicken spell.

  Malcolm had to be running on just the mana that he could naturally regenerate after trying to use a Word of Power to kill them, multiple times. He hadn’t expected Isaac to be entirely unfazed after having his core explode and that combined with the fact that Isaac was the easiest one to do it to, Malcolm had expected to turn the tide in his favor in that instant, oh how he was wrong. Instead, he just managed to help Isaac let the rest of the world fall away and focus just on their battle.

  Malcolm made a show of going after Shamesh once more but right before he got to the wizard of bones, he spun around and headed back with both his swords leading the way. Lenna had nearly caught up to him and was forced to sacrifice something. The swords were each aimed at the inside of her shoulders, neither one necessarily lethal but both far enough apart to keep her from being able to dodge them both at once.

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler