11: a ritual in a death chasm part 2

Soon the undead screaming "why why" came into view and he was terrifying, and tall 6'3 skeletal humannoid fugure with small patches of flesh here and there came into view, they had a huge spear that was about 4-meters long there bones was stained with dirt and grime. The undead gave of a dark and powerful aura its strength level was low 2nd-tier and its power level was just two stages below Adore who in comparison was a high 2nd-tier mage now but that didn't mean this opponent would be any less of a problem, the undead before her, it was definitely not the heart sense it seemed not to have the highest of intelligence. Adore also could feel the presents of a high tier undead deeper in the vilage near and area where a big house was.

"Below zero"

Adore knew that this opponent was going to be powerful. She cast "below zero" and aimed an icy beam of pure ice energy at the skeleton's head. However, the skeleton easily moved out of the way of the beam with speed so fast that all you could see was a blur. The skeleton then swung its spear, looped it around its body, before following up with a slash that sent a shadowy crescent energy beam rushing in Adore's direction.

"Ice shield"

A big, thick shield of ice, bigger than Adore's body, defended against the skeleton's attack, leaving the slash to slam into the shield of ice with a loud thud. Once the slash was cancelled out, the skeleton then launched an onslaught of the same attacks until the shield was unable to continue defending against them. It was smashed into big chunks of ice and crumbled to the ground. Before the next slash could hit her, Adore pulled out her sword and covered it in mana armament to defend against and parry the attacks being launched at her.

"Flash"

Before Adore knew it, a slash of energy slammed into her sword with a lot more force behind it than the other attacks. The attack made Adore stumble and lose her balance. In that moment, as she regained her footing, two slash attacks were already a few inches away from her, giving her just close to a millisecond to defend against them. Once she did, the attacks sent her stumbling back again. This time, the slashes came to a halt, and the undead moved in closer at lightning speed. Once Adore regained her balance, which only took her a second, the skeleton was already inches away from her.

"Clash"

The undead effortlessly twirled its spear in Adore's direction, slamming it into her sword. The more the spear slammed into Adore's sword, the more momentum it gained, making the attack stronger and faster. Adore was slowly getting pushed back with every attack. She had to do something fast, or she would continue on the losing end of this battle.

"Frost bite"

Adore put a little more mana into this attack due to the level her opponent was on. This caused the undead to be pushed back at least 3 feet away from where it was originally. This wasn't a lot, but it was enough for her to change the course of the battle, if only a little. Adore also decided to use her mana armament to bridge the gap in speed and defense, albeit only a little bit."

Aqua control 

Defense 10+

Speed 10+

Strength 10+

"Agility"

When Adore casted Agility, her speed was boosted by at least 100+. However, this spell had a limit to it. She could only keep it activated for 20 minutes, or she would start losing a large amount of mana that she couldn't afford to lose. This spell slowly siphons more and more mana the longer you use it, and the amount it siphons only becomes harmful to her at the 20-minute mark.

So, she had to make this count. All of this happened in a matter of seconds, so as soon as she was done, she attacked the undead before it had a chance to charge at her. She pulled out her sword and strengthened the mana armament surrounding it and swung it in the direction of the skeleton. The skeleton parried her attack and the following onslaught of attacks that followed after.

"Cold touch

Adore's sword began to grow cold, and signs of frost slowly appeared on her sword as she swung and clashed it against her opponent. The only thing that kept her sword from breaking and turning to ice was her mana armament surrounding the blade and hilt.

The spear that the skeleton had slowly became colder, and frost started to creep up around the blade, similar to how it was on Adore's sword. However, the skeleton didn't use any mana armament like Adore did, so their sword began to chip away the longer the two continued to clash.

Even though Adore's sword could withstand the conditions it was under longer than the skeleton's spear could, it was not invincible. Therefore, Adore had to end this exchange between the two weapons soon. To her surprise, the spear was way more durable than she thought. So, she resorted to attacks with more force to chip at the spear more before hers started to chip away. This strategy worked, and the blade of the spear broke sooner rather than later.

"Freeze zone"

The area around Adore grew colder and continued to drop. This zone was five meters wide, and anything within the zone slowly began to freeze, excluding Adore. She only needed her enemy to be affected by a little bit more before she could use another spell that would finish the job. Fortunately, undead didn't feel pain, so they couldn't tell if the temperature had dropped.

The undead continued to attack Adore using its now bladed-less spear as a staff. It expertly used any opening to its advantage. Luckily, Adore didn't leave many openings, but when she did, she did her best to defend against the attack coming her way before it could hit her.

The skeleton slowly began to have patches of ice form all over its bones because of the freeze zone. Once Adore saw this, she knew it was time to finish the job. 

"Absolut zero"

The area which the freeze zone covered dropped to zero and everything in it froze, including the skeleton. Adore was able to achieve this due to a few requirements she set in place, but the main one was that the area had to be at least 20°F before she activated it. Since regardless of its name, Absolute Zero could only plummet its temperature to 20°F, the same went for Frezone. Although it took longer, so in order to get it to 0, she had to use the two in tandem.

"Shatter"

The skeleton was reduced to flakes of ice. Adore then canceled her spell and plummeted to the floor as the souls of the undead were sucked into the black pond. With this now done, she had a soul to start her ritual with. Although it wasn't at her level, she only needed to use two or three more black souls to reach her goal, so she was good. Now, all she needed to do was to find somewhere to set everything up and place a barrier to keep the low-tier undead from entering during the process.

Adore got herself up and made her way away from the carnage and destruction she and her undead had caused. She reached a small house with only five undead in it. The undead were not a problem for her as they were only 1-tier-undead. Although they were not strong, it was still a very sad sight. The undead in question were a family of five, and they all looked as if they had been tortured with some of their body parts amputated. It was honestly heartbreaking. They all screamed various different things. 

"STOP!" 

"PLEASE LET GER GO!"

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US!"

"DON'T TOUCH HIM!"

"DAD NO!"

Adore couldn't take it anymore, so she put them out of their misery and watched as their souls entered the black pond. After some time of observing the undead and hearing the things they said, she could tell that they were attacked and killed for some reason. She couldn't see why someone would want to raid and kill all the villagers in such a small village.

Whoever was responsible must be sick and evil individuals. But she felt even sick people who wouldn't do something like this with out some sort of reason to even if it wasn't a good one outside of that fact. It just didn't make sense. However, Adore didn't spend too much time on the subject. She was sure once she met the heart, she would have some sort of answer, so instead of harping on the subject, she began to set up for her ritual but not before putting up a barrier. 

"Blizzard Dome"

A round ice barrier then began to form around the house she was in. Once the dome had completed forming, it then began to snow in the barrier along with strong and powerful winds threatening to freeze anything that dared to step foot in the barrier within seconds. Once she had put up the barrier, she then started to take a black dagger and paintbrush out of her spatial bag along with an empty jar.

She put the dagger to her palm and slit it, then commenced bleeding into the jar before taking her paintbrush and drew three circles within each other, each one smaller than the other. These circles were made out of blood runes that connected with one another to make a circle. She then commanded her black pond to lay in the smallest circle. 

Adore sat in between the biggest and second smallest circles and crossed her legs. She then said, "Give me four." The soul of the second-tiered undead, and three other 1-tiered undead came smashing into her. As black runic patterns slowly started to envelope her, she felt a overwhelming amount of pain. However, she pushed through as the black runes slowly enveloped her body. With an hour, they were up to her neck, and the pain only intensified as they crept up her chin.

After a short 10 minutes, her face was fully covered with black runes that gave off a shadowy hue. During the process of the black runes enveloping her body, it cursed her mana and soul. She now could only use all the curse energy in her body to blacken her two mana circles. She also felt like she would be able to form a third mana circle after she finished blackening her mana circles.

So, she used the black runes all over her body and slowly transferred them to her mana circle in her soul space. This process wasn't painful but it wasn't comfortable either. It felt almost like heartburn. Honestly, the fact that she was alive right now was a miracle. The process of becoming a dark magus was very dangerous, and many people die during the process. 

So the pain and discomfort she was experiencing was better than dying, even though she had a feeling she would be okay. She was made by a dark mage, and she was sure the mage had her becoming a dark mage in mind and put certain things in place to ensure she could become one without too many complications. But these were obviously assumptions, and what she was doing was honestly still very careless and dangerous. She didn't care, though. She did what she had to do in order to keep her mice safe.

Dying obviously wouldn't be ideal, but she took some sort of precaution to ensure that wouldn't happen. Adore had now fully covered her mana circles in black runes, and they were slowly changing from a light blue hue to a shadowy dark black color with a dark purple hue. And boy did it burn. Adore couldn't wait for this process to be over because the pain was starting to become unbearable. 

After an hour, Adore's mana circles were fully black. Out of nowhere, a strange phenomenon occurred where she started glowing with a dark purple hue while slowly levitating off the floor inch by inch. The dark purple hue glowing off of her only got brighter every inch she rose until she slowly started descending from the air and landed nicely back in the spot she was originally sitting in.

Adore then decided to form her third mana circle so that she could go and fight the heart of the death chasm. The contracting process was easy - all she had to do was touch its head, form some runes around it, and say 'submit', and it would become her contracted undead.

So, Adore got to making her 3rd mana circle which would be easier than last time since she had already formed two mana circles. Adore closed her eyes and peered into her soul space before slowly condensing and compressing mana in the shape of a ring around her previous circles. Within an hour, she had finished this process and when she did, her body glowed a little bit with a dark purple hue before fading away. Adore was now a 3rd-tier-dark magus and she could feel it.