Another one of her shrouds vanished, consumed as she converted it into mana to blast away the ice.
As the ice melted away, I closed in and made my next throw.
Her lightning shroud was gone. Her fire shroud was gone.
The bottle froze as it passed through the ice layer of her shroud, then shattered on impact, drenching her with Luck Lily Extract.
Mizuchi had just a moment to look at me with confusion before I blasted her with transference mana, triggering the effects of the compound.
Teleportation to a random location.
Mizuchi vanished.
And, for just a moment, the room was silent.
Tristan stared at the space where Mizuchi had been just a moment before. “What the resh was that?”
“Teleportation potion, basically. I don’t know where it sent her. It probably won’t keep her long.”
“We need to go.”
I nodded. I rushed to Sera.
She was still conscious, but barely. “Retrieve: Healing Potion.” I pressed it to her mouth, and she drank.
“Mm.” She coughed. “I…don’t think I can move.”
I picked her up and turned to Tristan. “Where can we go?”
Researcher ran out of the doorway where she’d been hiding, joining us.
“This way.” Tristan led us to the double doors he’d emerged from. “In Tenjin’s name, I unlock this sanctum.”
The doors swung open.
Researcher and I followed him inside.
“In Tenjin’s name, I seal this sanctum.”
The doors slammed shut behind us.
“We should be safe for now.”
I set Sera down.
We all just sat there for a moment, breathing heavily.
“I can’t believe we just survived a fight with Mizuchi.” Tristan wiped the blood from his face on his shirt.
Sera chuckled, then coughed. “That’s two for us. You’re behind.”
Tristan laughed. “I suppose you’re right. I think I’ll let the two of you keep the advantage in that area.”
Sera turned to me. “So, she was weaker right after she took a breath, or something?”
I nodded. “She had multiple shrouds, each of a specific element. Sort of like how Professor Meltlake could turn her shroud into fire, but Mizuchi had several at once. Every time she drew in a breath, she was using the corresponding shroud to power it. The first time I hit her with a potion, she used her fire shroud to evaporate it before it could do much damage. I knew if I wanted to teleport her, I needed that fire shroud gone, and ideally the lightning as well.
“When she took the breath, it used up the lightning shroud. Then Tristan hit her, and she used her fire shroud up to get rid of the ice. After that, she still had multiple layers. I don’t know what they all were, but I think it hit the ice one first, so it froze. From there, I hit it with transference mana, which triggered the compound to teleport her.”
“That’s…actually pretty impressive,” Sera admitted. “Even if I’d figured out how her shroud worked, I probably would have just tried to wear it down and hit her hard while her defenses were weak. Your approach was better.”
“I don’t know if it was better,” Tristan cut in, “But it was definitely Corin’s style.”
I grinned.
Keras had been right.
I was much more effective when I was fighting like me, rather than trying to be someone else.
I turned to Tristan, an important question coming to mind and wiping away my moment of reflection. “How confident are you that she can’t find us in here?”
“She can’t get in. No one can, not without the right key.” Tristan patted his chest.
“This is Tenjin’s private sanctum, then?” Sera asked.
“Indeed. Or, it was.” Tristan grinned.
“I don’t believe I should be in here.” Researcher said, glancing from side to side. “This is a forbidden place. Even the other visages are not allowed inside without Tenjin’s permission.”
I glanced down the hallway ahead. It was stark white walls of stone, and I could see a larger chamber ahead, but not a lot else from my vantage point. “How is it that you have access to this place?”
“I stole it.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Researcher gasped.
“My attunement. It allows me to steal magic.”
Several things clicked together in my head at once. “You have the Sovereign attunement. That’s how you were able to absorb those spells that Mizuchi cast. It’s probably also how you incapacitated Tenjin in the first place.”
Tristan nodded. “Indeed. The first thing I did when we ambushed him was steal a bit of his power. Much like when you strengthen someone with your Arbiter attunement, however, I didn’t retain all of that. I did, however, manage to target and hold onto something specific — a mark on his body that he used as a key for accessing certain parts of the tower.
“That mark enabled me to access his sanctum, as well as control many of the functions of the spire that normally only he had access to. I’ve even been able to keep the other visages out of this room, at least for now.”
I glanced to Researcher, then back to Tristan. “I’m not sure you should be saying all this around her.”
Researcher frowned. “But I like knowing things.”
Tristan waved a hand dismissively. “It’s harmless. If this version of her is bound to Sera now, she’ll be loyal to her. And many of the actual Researchers already know what I’m up to, anyway. I have an arrangement with some of them.”
“An arrangement?” I asked.
“Not all of the monsters are exactly happy about being kept inside a tower for their entire lives, bred to be slaughtered by climbers or used at the visage’s whim.”
Researcher’s expression shifted to something inscrutable. “I suppose I’m lucky to be a copy that was allowed to be outside of the spire. Few are given such a chance.”
That explained a great deal about how Tristan was able to keep working within the spire in the way he had been — if there were monsters on his side, in addition to other Whispers, I could see how evading Katashi for as long as he had was more plausible. Maybe the monsters were even feeding Katashi false information.
Sera frowned. “If you had access to everything in the spire, why didn’t you just give yourself a whole pile of magical equipment?”
“I like the way you think. I did do that, although I couldn’t access everything. Because of a brand on my body, I can’t physically leave the spire…nor can I travel to certain other parts of the tower in person. That makes retrieving things difficult, because I’m forced to work through intermediaries.”
He pointed down the hallway. “I have some things in there that I wish I’d been wearing during that fight. I was only expecting to meet with Corin. Normally, I’m untraceable while I’m in the sanctum.”
Tristan turned his head toward the floor, brushing his face again to clear another patch of blood off of it. He looked exhausted, and I didn’t blame him. “I didn’t think that anyone would be looking for me in the few minutes I was outside…but I hadn’t anticipated the possibility that someone had already divulged our plans. Researcher must have been watching us, and reported to Mizuchi the moment that I was vulnerable.”
“I’m sorry.” Researcher’s voice was a whisper.
I turned to her. “It’s okay. We know you didn’t mean any harm, and you helped us out in the end.”
Researcher nodded, but she appeared unconvinced.
Sera broke into a fit of coughing, and I turned toward her. “You okay?”
“Yeah…” She raised a hand, coughing again. “Just used too much mana again.”
I winced, remembering what happened last time she’d done something like that. “How bad is it?”