Hovering midair, the gryphon is constricting the human in his tongue. Suddenly, his radar senses movements along the stairs to the next floor. They seem to be humans and are running their way down.
"Ahh—!"
The woman groans as he tightens his grip. He does not know if those humans are with this woman or not. Nevertheless, he has to deal with this woman before they reach this floor.
Since his objective is this human's body and her magic crystal, he has been holding back not to damage them as a single greater dragon blast or energy ball would completely disintegrate her. For that reason, he has to think of ways to immobilize her and set a trap for her.
But her magic really makes things difficult for him. That's why he matches her out with speed and unpredictability. She would not expect a monster to make strategies, which let her guard down.
With everything going according to the plan, all he has to do is to eat her whole. But before he can do that, he realizes that he could never see somebody this beautiful again and gazes at her to behold her beauty one last time. Their eyes meet.
(You are probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. It's too bad that you chose to point your weapon at me. But rules are rules. I have to kill you to survive. It's the rule of nature.)
Looking at her eyes, he can see her anger and desperation, which he thinks is totally valid, but, strangely, she does not attempt to struggle anymore. She must have accepted her fate, he thinks.
Once he is satisfied with her beauty, he opens his mouth and begins pulling in his tongue. Suddenly, her gaze increasingly becomes sharper and sharper until he can physically feel pain from it.
(What the—?!)
The pain becomes so severe that it is unbearable and he feels like his mind is breaking. Losing his focus, his wings stop flapping and they begin to fall to the surface.
Crash!
Shriek!!
Falling from hundreds of meters of height, he can feel a few of his ribs break. His body is weakening to the extent that he even struggles to stand. It is as if his strength is leaving his body.
"No way! You even survived that?! What the hell are you?!"
He faintly hears the voice of the woman, but he understands no word as she is speaking in an unknown language. He has no idea what has happened to him. But he is certain that it is all the woman's doings.
Unknown to him, the woman cast a rather deadly spell on him. The spell is called Abyssal Gaze. It is a supreme-tier spell of a rare branch of magic called sinister magic, the opposite of holy magic.
Abyssal Gaze is a single-target spell that inflicts instant death on the victim. In the case of this monster, he is just too powerful to kill instantly. Instead, it greatly weakens him to the point he can barely move a muscle.
Enraged, he uses his last bits of his strength to tighten his bind on her. Without a second thought, he quickly pulls his tongue and shoves the woman into his mouth.
"N-no—!"
Chomp!
The gryphon devours the woman whole. No bite, just a quick and painless swallow. Shortly after, he ultimately succumbs to Great Sorceress magic and eventually loses his consciousness. Even if his life ends right here, at least he drags her with him.
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...…
...
…
There is a place that is void of anything. Light is absent and absolutely nothingness dominates this place. There are no walls, floors, and ceilings, making it difficult to calibrate the right orientation, if there actually is.
Everything is dark and black until a mysterious figure appears out of nowhere in a fade in matter.
"..."
A few seconds of manifestation, the figure has fully unveiled its appearance. It takes the shape of a human, a human woman to be specific. Although it has the shape of a human, its entirety is made of something white translucent. The figure is butt baked and seems to hover or levitate in the vacuum of space.
"So this is its soul-scape." The woman speaks. "It is so different from the others. This just feels... So empty."
That woman is Claire Forlath, the Great Sorceress of the Roheazul Kingdom. Just now, she fought an unusually overpowered greater dragon and she is having difficulties facing it.
At the end of the intense battle, she managed to sort of eliminate it but she was also killed in the process. However, this is actually a part of her plan. She is seemingly 'alive' because of a certain magic.
In this world, most people, whether they are regular people or warriors, regard supreme-tier magic as the most powerful magic humanity can cast. One spell of that level can easily turn the tide of a battlefield. That's why nations tend to keep their supreme-tier casters hidden from the public since they are one of the most valuable assets in a nation.
While supreme-tier magic spells are generally powerful, destructive, and broken, there is actually a realm higher than them. That level of magic is what Claire called ultimate-tier. She knew the existence of such a tier after the second awakening of her awakened ability, which she named Gramarye, the ability that gives her wisdom to almost all of magic.
With much greater firepower, the spells of the ultimate magic are extremely hard to execute due to the massive mana requirements or the specific scenario to trigger. In addition, some of those spells are just too hard to comprehend even for a magical genius like Claire.
However, there is one particular spell that Claire has been cast a few times. The same spell she used to enter this monster's soul-scape, the place where an individual's soul is located. That spell is called Astral Invasion.
Astral Invasion is a spell that allows the caster to project their spiritual body out of their physical body to enter their target's spiritual plane. From there, they can invade the place and transfer their soul to the target, making it their new body.
But they cannot just take over someone's soul-scape without contending for it. For that reason, Claire had to cast Abyssal Gaze first as it greatly damages the target's soul, making it easier to defeat once she enters the soul-scape.
Once the invasion is successful, her soul will take over the target's body with memories and the caster's awakened abilities are completely intact. Meanwhile, the original soul will be cast to nothingness forever, which means no more revival nor reincarnation for them.
In addition, since awakened abilities are linked to the soul, their awakened abilities will not be passed to the new soul.
"Alright, let's find its soul."
Afterwards, she drifts her body forward searching for this monster's soul. Later on, she sees something twinkling and glistening from afar. Thinking she has found its soul, she hurriedly moves closer.
However, upon taking a close look at it, her eyes widened in shock after finding out the actual appearance of the monster's soul.
"Wait... Is that... A human..?"