In Lailah’s lab beneath the manor, she was currently lost in thought as she stared at the handful of ancient writings sitting in front of her.
“This is your only answer for increasing my mana? Superstition?”
The target of her irritation was her mother Sei who was standing opposite her.
These ancient texts had come from her, and were supposedly the answer to a problem that had been plaguing Lailah for a while.
“Do you believe what you ask is easy? If acquiring more mana without evolution was something simple, everyone would have as much magic as that bastard Helios.”
Lailah rubbed her temples as she took in her mother’s words.
In hindsight she should not have expected one of the keys to her evolution to have a simple solution.
“But this… true magical body? I don’t quite understand it’s value.”
Unsurprisingly, the former witch queen rolled her eyes and snorted in contempt.
“You wouldn’t because your eyesight stretches no farther than this world. Tell me, how are spells cast?” 𝑂𝗏𝔩xt.𝑐𝔬
“By absorbing and manipulating mana from our surroundings.” Lailah answered.
“Indeed, now tell me this, what if you were in an environment where mana was naturally thin or even worse, nonexistent?”
Suddenly a connection formed within Lailah’s head and her mother knew she’d finally grasped the weight of what was in front of her.
“With a true magical body, you need no longer worry about what would occur in that frightening situation.Your body will constantly produce it’s own mana without limit, ensuring you will never be without our most potent weapon.”
Lailah couldn’t believe it.
ṕḁпdα -n૦νe| , c૦m Limitless mana!
This was the dream of almost every magical being in the world, and yet her mother was telling her such a thing was actually attainable!
But there was still one thing that Lailah couldn’t help but notice.
“You must not have been able to achieve this, or else you never would have lost to Audrina.”
Sei mistook her daughters words for taunts, and her face twisted up into something unkind.
“Do not mock me. Power such as this is not so easily acquired, even for one such as myself.”
Before Lailah could respond, a piercing pain suddenly assailed her chest.
“Aghh!”
She collapsed onto the ground clutching her heart, and Sei immediately became concerned.
“W-What is the matter with you? This is no time for jokes!”
She wasn’t concerned about Lailah from a motherly standpoint.
She was just aware of the fact that if anything happened to Lailah, she and her daughters would immediately be blamed and killed.
As if to prove her point, Lisa appeared in a burst of lightning and grabbed the witch queen by her throat.
“What did you do to her!?”
Normally, Lisa was always had a beautiful and motherly charm, but right now her captivating face had grown bright cyan blue scales and her teeth had all sharpened to a fine point.
Sei wanted to profess her innocence and proclaim that she had not actually done anything, but Lisa’s grip was so tight that she couldn’t even breathe, let alone speak.
“I-It’s not her…” Lailah said weakly.
Lisa’s face quickly returned to normal, and she casually threw Sei to the side before coming to her sister’s aid.
“What’s wrong? Why is this happening to you?”
Lailah looked up at her sister with a pained expression that could melt even the coldest of hearts.
“Our son… he’s hurt.”
–
“I CANNOT HOLD HIM MUCH LONGER. THE TWO OF YOU NEED TO BRING THIS BEAST DOWN, NOW!!”
Despite Apophis’ immense strength in this form, he was having trouble holding on to the boss.
The power contained in it’s eight dark tentacles was so much that it had already begun to overpower him, and would wrest itself free at any moment.
Apophis’ urgent plea seemed to be enough to resonate with his sister’s minds and they immediately sprung into action.
“Mira, give me a boost!”
“Okay!”
Swooping down, Mira allowed Thea to leap onto her back and soared back into the air.
Once the two were at a sufficient altitude, Thea utilized the newest ability of her armor.
Holding out her clawed hands, pools of liquid metal began to well up and overflow.
Soon an enormous lance formed in her grasp and her younger sister immediately understood her intentions.
As Mira flew even higher, she also added her own unique touch on her sister’s weapon.
In the blink of an eye, it became coated in a layer of crystalline ice that was as hard as diamond.
Thea steadied herself on Mira’s back as she tightly gripped the icy lance.
‘I’m sorry you had to get hurt to create this opportunity little brother. But I will definitely not let your sacrifice be in vain.’
Focusing all of her power into her arm, Thea hurled her lance downward.
As a result of using all her strength, a sonic boom was created as soon as the weapon left her grip, and it traveled at a near blinding speed.
Just as it seemed that the Kraken was going to wrest itself free from Apophis’ grasp, Thea’s icy lance pierced through the top of it’s head and shot out of it’s siphon, embedding itself into the sea floor.
In the blink of an eye, the monstrous beast had stopped struggling and slumped over within the coils of the red serpent.
It’s dark and hollow eyes became lifeless, and a large chest appeared a few feet away from the sight of the battle to mark their victory.
As soon as he realized the beast was dead, Apophis released his grip and fell backwards in exhaustion.
There was a flash of light, and the giant snake changed back into a young boy whose body was riddled with holes.
As he plummeted from the sky, he felt like he was struggling a bit more than usual to keep his eyes open and it didn’t take long for him to pass out.
Suddenly, his meteoric descent was slowed to little more than a float as he silently drifted downwards.
Unsurprisingly, Abaddon was already waiting beneath his son, and was the one responsible for his smooth landing.
He lay him gently on the ground and took a knee beside him, while analyzing his wounds.
There were deep puncture marks all over his body, and they had already begun to turn black and ooze with a yellowish pus.
Apophis had a fairly high poison resistance.
So much so that he was once thought to be immune.
But the bio toxin produced by the kraken proved to have been too much for even his body to dispel.
“”Brother!!””
Mira and Thea both came down from the sky and immediately rushed to their brother’s side.
They looked terribly worried, and their fear only compounded when they saw the terrible condition his body was in.
Mira’s eyes began to fill with tears, as she let out the most heart wrenching cry imaginable.
Thea was doing everything she could to console her sister, but her emotional state wasn’t that much better either.
If it had not been for Abaddon, they would have cried themselves into sheer exhaustion.
“I need you to relax, my daughters. Your brother will be fine but he needs to rest properly.”
“R-Really…?”
“B-But he…”
Abaddon dug his claws into his palm and let dark red blood flow freely before showing his children something miraculous.
The blood of the dragon dripped onto his son’s body and promptly entered his son’s wounds.
After a few seconds, an inky black substance was pushed through the surface of his skin and turned into an unsightly black vapor.
“How are you doing that…?” Thea asked with wide eyes.
In response, Abaddon smiled proudly and tried to resist the urge to gloat.
He had learned a lot of things ever since Lucifer deleted his system, but this ability was one of the ones he was most proud of.
“Just like my powers, my blood is also a part of me. That means that I can tell it to do whatever I want, and it will act on my behalf. I am currently telling it to remove the poison from your brother’s body.”
To further demonstrate the usefulness of his ability, Abaddon siphoned off some of his blood and sent it towards Thea and Mira.
The blood twisted and congealed until it had turned into twin teddy bears that were bright red in color.
Unlike simple dolls, these bears proved to be capable of movement as they tried to hug both girls with their little arms.
“Wow…”
“Their so cute…”
With the girls calming down and Apophis in the midst of treatment, Abaddon gestured for his youngest daughter to move beside him.
With the blood bear in her arms, the young girl made her way onto her father’s lap and listened intently.
Abaddon had never had to reprimand his children before.
All three of them were like perfect little angels who could do no wrong in his eyes, and the three of them could probably get away with murder if they were more malicious in nature.
But when it came to things like their individual safety and wellbeing, Abaddon would not hesitate to correct their course if they were going astray.
“You were too reckless Mira…”
The young girl flinched within her daughter’s grasp before letting her head drop to the ground.
“I understand what you were trying to do, but you have to consider your environment and your capabilities before you make decisions like that.”
Mira’s belief was that she could freeze the water surrounding the beast and encase it in a thick layer of ice.
While that would have normally been a good idea, the dungeon’s peculiar environment altered the difficulty of such a task quite a bit.
The water surrounding them was completely ignoring their presence and abilities.
As such, their powers were able to function the same as if they were on land surrounded by oxygen.
To freeze the water in this dungeon, Mira’s control over her powers would have to be great enough to literally freeze the air.
She was still only a child and she just simply wasn’t at that level yet.
“You have to be more careful, my daughter. Today your brother has paid the price for your hubris, and if I were not here he could very well have suffered a much worse fate.”
Again, Mira’s eyes began to fill with tears and Abaddon was flooded with guilt from knowing that he was the cause.
“Do not be too hard on her…”
Everyone looked to see Apophis awake and alert on the ground with his eyes showing hints of weariness.
His wounds were beginning to clean themselves and heal, but it still did not look like he was going to be moving anytime soon.
“Uwahh! Mira is sorry brother!!”
Mira had thrown herself across Apophis’ lap and began crying hard enough to wake the dead.
“Sister, you’re getting your tears into my wounds…” He reminded gently.
Unfortunately, it seemed like she could not hear him over the sound of her own crying as she continued to apologize.
“Mira just wanted to help!”
Before the young girl could say anything else, she felt the reassuring hand of her older brother on her head.
“You don’t need to cry. I think that hurts more than being pierced all over.” He said honestly.
The last couple of seconds before everything happened were a bit of a blur for him.
Once he saw that Mira was about to be attacked his body reacted on autopilot to defend her.
There was no way he would allow that monstrosity to harm a member of his precious family.
‘Precious, huh…’
As Apophis thought about his own motivations, a small connection began to form in his brain.