The golden bolt leaves my hand, and the iron-bearded one is already dead; he just doesn’t know it yet, and that is exactly the sort of assumption that had killed me multiple times when I fought Vrakth.
Tribulation lightning targets the soul, and once it is locked on, it cannot be dodged. The moment I fired that bolt of lightning from my hand, I could see in the face of the Arcanist that he immediately detected this.
The crystalline souls of Arcanists were extremely vast and sensitive, and they were able to read magic in a way that I was only becoming familiar with. The golden bolt was an inch near his face when multiple purple shields appeared in front of him, blocking the lightning, and although the lightning was eating through the shield, the Arcanist could always create more to wear away the power of the bolt.
Suddenly, the air hundreds of meters above the Arcanist shivered, and a golden bolt of lightning, taking the shape of a spear, fell with impossible speed, and the Arcanist looked up with anger in his eyes before his head came apart.
You see, while I had wielded the golden tribulation lightning with my hands, that was not the true method of unleashing this spell. I could only do this because my channels were so incredibly durable that I could cast a part of this legendary spell through them.
However, this was far from the true power of Lightning Tribunal, and even now, I had only used a fraction of the true power of this spell due to the warning attached to it, but even this fraction of Tribunal Lightning, unleashed properly, was enough to shatter the head of an Arcanist.
With the senses of an Arcanist, I knew he would be able to anticipate a head-on attack, but the true form of Lightning Tribunal was lightning falling from the heavens.
As the head of the Arcanist exploded, I felt a centuries-old life gutter out, and for a quarter-second, I let myself believe that I had just killed him. I mean, his head was gone, and his heart was pumping out the last of his blood through his neck... but his dead body does not fall.
It stands, headless, the stump of his neck after losing all of its blood was still smoking with soul-fire, and the deep-purple glow of his magic pours out of the ruin of him in a flood, accompanied by screams that tore at my soul.
I understood at this moment that I may have succeeded in destroying the head of this Arcanist, but his soul was so powerful that he was not easily dying, even without a head.
If I had not used Tribunal Lightning and Soul Forge, which had broken the consciousness of this Arcanist, then I think even destroying his body would be useless, as his soul could survive.
However, without a head, the silver flame of the Soul Forge that had been burning on the stump of his arm suddenly expanded and covered his entire body.
The screams of the Arcanist suddenly increased in intensity. I fell to my knees and pressed my hands against my ears, trying to block out his cries that wanted to tear my mind away from my body.
Space began to twist around the Arcanist, and a dangerous wave of power was growing from his body. My eyes widened when, with a final dying cry, his body began to implode as what seemed like a black hole appeared on his chest, and I understood that his Anima Depth may have imploded.
The Arcanist, whether by accident or design, had turned his dying soul into a bomb of recoiling space, the distance around his corpse crumpling inward toward me, and there is nowhere to stand because the very space my feet occupy was folding toward a dead man’s chest.
I was being drawn into the breaking space, and something told me that I did not want to enter this place, or my death would be a very tragic one.
My feet left the floor, and I saw my legs begin to stretch, followed by my lower body, though there was no pain, making me realize that even space itself was stretching, pushing through the pressure covering my body like a gigantic hand. I became Lightning Incarnate and began to push out of this layer of shattering space.
A cry rang out of me as I kept pushing, one second, two, three. I pushed out of the folding space, my body, a bolt of lightning blasted out of the imploding space, and I collapsed at the far side of the hall. Behind me, the iron-bearded one’s death finishes folding space, and the corpse and thirty feet of crumpled space implode into a point and wink out.
I reformed on the cooling stone, breathing hard, and I wondered why Vrakth seemed not to be able to control space as easily as these Arcanists, and I sent my question to the Hollow Avatar, as the shock and anger had not left me from the near scrape with death.
The Hollow Avatar did not take long to reply to me, but its answers made my frown deepen.
"This should not be possible for powers at this Tier, but the mages of this world have figured out how to link their souls to domains. This ability should be the standard for Sovereign Tier powers. Elric, I was wrong about the power tier of this world... something is wrong with your power system."
∞
I stood up, and the four Arcanists surrounded me. They glanced at the spot where one of them had just perished, and I saw anger and fear in their eyes before these emotions vanished.
The four were all men, and although they did not look young, they were not old either; they were all middle-aged, and even though I did not want to use this description, they all resembled the age group of my father.
One of them, which I instinctively felt was the strongest, took a step forward and looked at me, and I could feel the pressure of his gaze. Then he sneered, "There is still a Celestial Golem left behind. I thought these things were all destroyed ten thousand years ago. Summon the Arnean Formation; we cannot let it get away. This is a Prize that the Sovereign would crave."