“Aaagh! Die, you persistent bastard!” Aziro seemed to get more and more out of touch with reality as his eyes dited while the outline of his face shifted further into that of a feral ghost.

  Normally, wraiths wouldn’t have been anything more than just empty husks of the human they once were, but there were always exceptions.

  The ghost fme he wielded was both a curse and a blessing to him.

  It ate away at his sanity, but at the same time, it held it together without completely dispersing it.

  This caused his current situation, with his emotions shifting from one extreme to another within seconds.

  Illyan, who saw this, used it to his advantage as he weaved through the conjured gigantic bone limbs and shot several sword sshes toward Aziro.

  Aziro always screamed in pain, but no significant damage was done to him.

  But Illyan felt that just shaving away at his sanity was worth it. After all, wraiths were spiritual undead.

  With that in mind, the fight continued.

  “Haah… Haah…”

  After a grueling half-hour of fighting, Illyan felt that his stamina was being drained, and only a bit remained. His body was quite weakened after several days of digging through the rubble, and this fight made him even more tired.

  Normally, fights wouldn’t take so long, but since he didn’t have a way to deal a fatal wound to Aziro, he had to slowly deal with him.

  On the other hand, Aziro was lost in his madness. Despite enduring one attack after another, he didn’t try new tactics anymore and just attacked with the [Undead Conjuration] and green fmes.

  He didn’t even think about retreating.

  It was even more so since he couldn’t even touch Illyan after the initial few attacks.

  ‘I see… So these purple clouds hide some magic formation that constructs the hidden undead. The clouds themselves can move it and hide where the direction of the formation is. However, since Aziro wants to kill me so badly, I can guide the directions of these spells with my movement.’

  Illyan thought as he jumped over the horizontal swipe of the troll’s leg, and as he nded, he immediately rolled away from the sp of the bone hand.

  Boom

  Without even watching, he sshed toward Aziro, whose robe was already tattered.

  However, this time, Aziro roared in anger as he lunged at Illyan despite the pain.

  Illyan smirked.

  This time, he was prepared.

  The air ssh wasn’t the only supernatural attack he could pull off.

  Despite looking quiet, he was always casting incantations just in case.

  With a flick of his nails, he sshed his palm and clenched his fist, which caused a spurt of blood.

  Aziro, who moved like a phantom above the ground, glided over Illyan as his fingers elongated and mouth distorted, made out of flickering fmes.

  Just then, Illyan threw a punch.

  [Blood Ignition]!

  An explosion covered Illyan’s fist as it pierced through the chest of the ghost-like body.

  “Eighiieh!!!” A screech of pain resounded as Aziro’s body was rebounded, but Illyan just used his right arm, still holding onto the sword, to send another ssh.

  This time, he aimed the ssh more specifically at the wound the blood ignition left behind.

  During the long fight, Illyan pondered over the tactics he should use against this kind of enemy, but this was the only thing he could think of.

  At first, he didn’t want to use it since his arm would be heavily burned, but at some point, he decided that his stamina would run out soon, and that would be more dangerous.

  Illyan endured the pain of his flesh and mind being burned as he sent several new sshes.

  The burns weren’t as serious since Illyan coated his arm with the blood that exploded, but there were still residual strands of fire gnawing at his flesh.

  But he could only grit his teeth as he attacked the wraith with passion.

  “Ah… Ah… Ahgh!” Aziro, who suffered countless sword sshes over the fight, felt as if he would colpse at any time.

  In fact, the pain he suffered would make any other person mad too.

  However, there was no one around to feel sympathy for him.

  Illyan just looked indifferently with an occasional glimpse of malice fshing in his eyes.

  Aziro was the one who redirected the wendigos to his vilge. Thus, he was also the target of his revenge. He didn’t care that the man didn’t do it on purpose.

  “Bearing consequences for your mistakes is also one of the virtues, isn’t it?” Illyan muttered as he chipped off another small part of Aziro’s intangible body.

  Aziro screamed in pain and sent waves of fmes all around him.

  Since his main body was now spiritual, it didn’t only feel as if his flesh was shaved off but also as if his mind was being scraped on.

  Knowing that he could not close down on Illyan, he wanted to form a barrier around him while sending the troll’s limbs at Illyan.

  ‘Not a chance! I guess I will need to suffer through this to finish this thing off…’ Illyan thought tiredly as he felt the purple clouds converging above him.

  Even Illyan, who couldn’t feel mana properly, felt his skin prickling at the amount of mana poured inside of the spell.

  It took seconds for all the bones to materialize and assemble as they reached out for Illyan.

  However, Illyan didn’t just avoid them this time and instead ran at full speed towards Aziro, who was surrounded by the fmes he churned out all around himself.

  The pain was unbearable.

  Illyan gritted his teeth as he felt his skin melting and being peeled off his flesh.

  “Agh!” With a battle roar, Illyan threw a punch at the untouchable bastard and exploded his fist once again.

  “Screeeech!” Aziro screeched as he waved his hand to make the bone limbs attack Illyan.

  However, Illyan kept the short distance as the bone arm’s fist headed for both of them.

  Unfortunately for Aziro, Illyan was much better at evading.

  Boom

  “Agh-Spurt!” As the bone construct was materialized from mana, the hit connected with Aziro, who couldn’t avoid it in time as his mouth spurted some green liquid. Once it fell on the ground, it ignited before exploding in the green fmes.

  Illyan, who was just a few meters away, sighed as he looked at his bloodied body. One of the gigantic fingers grazed his side, which ground the flesh off his bones.

  It hurt, but he quickly recovered as he attacked Aziro with sword sshes.

  But Illyan saw that Aziro was growing impatient. The battle would end soon.

  Thus, he made some preparations in his mind as he exchanged blows with the wraith.

  When he was too distant, Illyan sent sword sshes at him. When he was too close, he punched with his [Blood Ignition] to keep him farther from him.

  However, Illyan was trying to keep close as the bone limbs could be used to his advantage.

  Unfortunately, Aziro also realized this as he stopped the bones from attacking Illyan when he was too close.

  But this was also to his advantage as he got rid of the attacks from behind, sending one fist explosion after another at Aziro.

  However, at one point, Aziro stopped avoiding as he growled in anger and lunged right at the fist.

  A huge explosion blew the body of Aziro before it quickly reformed back to its original appearance while tching on to Illyan.

  The explosion itself caused his fme body to dim, but Illyan wasn’t much better either.

  The cws dug deeply into his hips as his flowing blood started to evaporate.

  “Argh!” Aziro’s mouth opened in an inhuman way and bit into Illyan’s exposed neck as he held on to him. Slowly, his intangible body started to fuse with Illyan’s as he began to phase inside of him, trying to burn him from the inside.

  “Ugh!” Illyan groaned in pain. He wanted to move, but his arms were locked by the hug of the said wraith.

  His sword finally made contact with the wraith’s body as its upper half started to melt before Aziro swung his cws, completely cutting part of the sword while also gouging part of Illyan’s chest.

  It was at that time when the troll’s arm reached him.

  It didn’t try to swat him away like before but instead caught him firmly in its palm.

  Illyan was lifted from the ground as the limbs levitated around him in circles.

  The purple cloud started to expand as the bones began to rearrange themselves into the right pce, with the space between them filled with the cloud formation.

  Soon after, new bones started to spring out of the cloud.

  First, it was the spine that appeared, then one rib after another…

  In the end, a big skull with rge fangs appeared above as the purple cloud dissipated.

  The bones started to connect to the joints of the bone limbs, creating one whole piece.

  Only the whole form of the troll skeleton remained.

  “Are you scared now? Hiheheh… Being devoured by an undead giant. How terrifying, don’t you think?”

  Aziro’s body was almost wholly infused inside of Illyan as his organs started to burn up.

  Only Aziro’s upper body was protruding from Illyan’s chest as they looked at each other face to face.

  Illyan’s body was slowly lifted into the air as the troll’s mouth opened.

  Illyan looked above, but his face didn’t show any worry.

  “It’s just bones. The true fear comes from the malice it emanates, from the heat the beast is giving off together with the smell and humidity of the approaching maw… This is just the husk of what it feels like to be swallowed by a monster. I know it the best. After all, that time when you sent the herd of wendigos that were attacking you far into the north, they devoured my vilge, me included.”

  After saying so, Illyan showed a crazy expression as he bit off his tongue.

  Aziro, who was surprised and confused by Illyan’s words, felt immediate danger and wanted to hide.

  Unfortunately, he was halfway into entering the human’s body, which was quite a slow process—

  Because of that, he couldn’t evade when Illyan spit on his face.

  Illyan calcuted the time for all of this to happen as he was quietly chanting the spell right before he was caught, using Aziro’s entrapment against him.

  The bloody spit spttered on Aziro’s face as it exploded immediately, blowing half of the wraith’s face away.

  “Arrrrghh!?” The wraith screamed in pain as it wriggled around.

  However, it moved only a little as it was still fusing with Illyan. This also caused Illyan extreme pain as his mind was on the verge of insanity.

  He started to have hallucinations and nausea as he almost lost consciousness.

  But he gritted his teeth as he started another chant with his already regrown tongue.

  He moved his arm that was finally free after he pushed the bony finger of the troll away.

  With that, he swung the remainder of his sword. It wasn't a perfect swing considering the distance between the two, but the shortened bde made up for it as he at least could swing properly.

  “Y-you bastard! Do you think you can—Boom!”

  Aziro ughed angrily at Illyan’s bitter fight for survival as his face started to reform.

  What he didn’t know was that the gouging of Illyan’s chest from before caused spurts of blood to sptter on the remaining hilt and bde of the sword.

  It wasn’t even a few seconds after the st spell, but Illyan finished the next chant as [Blood Ignition] was prepared to activate.

  Illyan’s honed instincts, together with the recent relentless repetition of the spell, allowed him to shorten the time of chanting as he got used to it.

  And with that, Illyan’s sword passing through the hollow wraith finally made a proper nding.

  The sword’s edge cut through the fmes as if it was human flesh, cutting the upper half of Aziro’s body just seconds before the explosion completely blew it off.

  A deep, echoing thrum resounded as mournful whispers attacked Illyan’s mind.

  It was as if Illyan hit something hollow, with the contents of mourning spirits being spilled out.

  Aziro’s face was full of pain and regret as he regained a piece of his crity.

  “My ambition… I spent so many years on it, yet I will die here so pointlessly…” Closing his eyes, there was instability in the falling upper and lower halves of his body as they exploded into balls of fire.

  Illyan was caught in such an explosion as his organs literally evaporated, with his bones shooting out of his chest cavity due to the inner explosion. His upper and lower body only held together thanks to the devastated spine that barely endured the disaster.

  The troll’s bone structure also turned rigid for a second before finally colpsing, with the opened jaw falling right at Illyan, who was freed from the bone fingers that blew off to smithereens too.

  Just before losing consciousness, Illyan tried curling his body up before he felt the shock of his body nding on the ground while the troll’s skull nded right on top of him, leaving him barely inside the opened mouth.

  ‘Ugh… I will listen to these dice opportunity signs from now on… This will be difficult to recover from…’

  With difficulty, he took out his remaining vials that he got from Arwen and other acolytes and drank them all.

  This was his first time using these since there was no need for them, as his natural regeneration was enough.

  This time, however, Illyan was almost split in half, so he didn’t want to take his chances.

  While he didn’t have any stomach, the liquid safely traveled through his body and was absorbed in a few seconds.

  Illyan felt its effects immediately as his body parts started to regrow quickly.

  It wasn’t because the healing vials were so good but rather because one of their effects was boosting his natural recovery.

  Thanks to that, Illyan had an immense advantage in using these.

  With that, Illyan could close his eyes with peace of mind.