Occult Awakening: From Commoner to Archmage

"Why did Thalia do this?"

Vito gasped for air. He gritted his teeth as he appeared to be in excruciating pain. However, Luca didn't care. Seconds passed and the man refused to answer the question.

"I said… Why did she do this? Answer or I'll make sure you stay like this for a very long time."

His eyes shot wide open with fear at the threat, and finally there seemed to be some urgency.

"I-I don't know! She approached us that day after we chased you and said she had a job for us."

Luca couldn't help but frown slightly.

"Is that all you know?"

"Yes I swear! We didn't hear anything from her till today, then she gave us the instructions on how to deal with you."

"I hate liars," he said. His left arm was covered in faint blue sparks again.

The arm twitched slightly. His shoulders were already numb, and the lack of feeling was spreading rapidly to his fingers.

He reached his limit for its use after the second Judgement Bolt. When developing the attack and testing out its limits, Luca figured out that he would have at most three uses of the spell before his arm went on cooldown for another twenty minutes.

He had only used the spell twice, but coupled with a series of other unnamed attacks, it tired him out. Luca had found that highly subdued blasts of lightning like what he used on Jonny were even more draining on his energy than large blasts.

His mana pool had dipped just barely below the halfway point. However, Vito couldn't possibly know that, and that was exactly the reason he used it as a bluff.

He continued, "You're not being completely honest, and I don't see the reason why that's the case. I will make this painful experience a much longer one unless you cooperate with me."

"I swear she didn't say a lot. She just kept talking about her plans and the Saintess' day. I don't know more than that. I wanted to ask more, but she was paying us big bucks to do the job and shut up. That's all I know."

Luca frowned. Saintess Anastasia's day was a festival that was held at the very end of the 9th month of the year, which placed it squarely a month away. And Vito said something about plans. Unfortunately, it appeared that the bumbling oaf of a man didn't know more than he'd already said.

"Well, what about the potion you drank? What do you know about that?"

A bit of clarity appeared in his eyes.

"The potion! That potion! She said it was called a Sea God potion. She called it a failure! I heard her when she thought I wasn't listening, she mentioned something about a burning man! Please just make this stop."

'Burning Man!'

Finally, there was a piece of information that he found useful, but he hardly had time to think about it.

Tears streamed down the head's eyes, sinking into the earth. It appeared to be a sad scene, but Luca wasn't moved.

"Why should I let you die? Do you really think you deserve an easy death? You and Jonny wanted to kill me."

"Y-yes, but you don't understand. You have to understand! That thing that rescued you… it wasn't human… you don't understand. It was… it was… I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry."

The flames were never put out, being kept at bay by something strange in Vito's head. This left him in a never-ending cycle of pain and misery.

'Ah, perhaps I did care. Torturing him feels a little nice.'

But the feeling only lasted for several seconds before disappearing. There were far more things on his mind.

"Plea-"

BZZT!

Luca sent a final, subdued bolt of lightning into the man's mind, killing him instantly. He tossed the head to the ground, watching carefully as a strange yellow substance oozed out of Vito's still-open eyes.

It moved around in strange patterns, almost like it had a mind of its own. It also rapidly shifted between a liquid form and a solid form, turning into a gem for split seconds at a time.

At first, he was obviously alarmed, but after watching it for a while, he realized it was completely harmless.

'How strange.'

He thought for several seconds on what to do with it, then brought out the vial of rust he always carried around. He emptied the rust onto the ground and brought the strange floating liquid to the vial. It hopped in as though it was alive, swirling around the glass container before finally settling down.

Luca corked the vial and placed it back into his coat.

With all of that settled, he had enough time to deal with the aftermath of the events in front of him.

Jonny's body lay a few metres away. His leg was smashed into bloody pieces, probably as a result of Vito's tentacles from earlier. As for the rest of his body, it was mostly untouched minus the slight incline where Luca broke his spine and the faint black spot on his temple where he electrocuted him.

"That's a real classy death, all things considered," he muttered.

As for Vito, that was a whole other story. All of his body was burned into nothingness, while his head was the only surviving part. If that were only the case, it would be rather simple to come up with a solution.

But it wasn't as simple as that.

The whole forest around them had been completely damaged. Large craters littered the ground, grass and leaves had blackened and charred from the heat of his flames, and trees were flattened or splintered into pieces.

Luca couldn't help but groan.

"It's going to be a pain to come up with an explanation for this."

A second later, Luca thought of something and scanned the scene for any evidence that could potentially point to him.

After making sure there was nothing, he sprinted off in the complete opposite direction, making sure that his trail was noticeable. He scanned the area and found a tree with a large open trunk that was big enough to fit him and squeezed himself in.

"This should about do it."

CRACK!

The scent signal fell to the ground with a loud shatter.

Then he screamed.

"HELP!"