Return of the last survivor

Chapter 103: Mana Erosion

[Mana Erosion]

This was one of Merlin's AoE attacks, which did not damage non-living things, and could even specifically target particular living creatures.

Naturally, this would be limited in many ways, the biggest way was the incredible amount of mana consumption, enough to suck a Lv 3 Tier 3 being completely dry of mana, and thereby killing them off.

It should be known that in the 10 years on Tsundere plane, Merlin learned a lot about how Arcania works, along with an incredibly unimaginable number of spells through [Archive]'s library.

In one of these learning sessions, Merlin had come across the fact that draining one's mana completely was actually suicide. Once a being began to grow with the help of mana, completely using up all mana in one's body was equivalent to death. This was because one's soul was intertwined with their mana when they first level up using Arcania.

And [Mana Erosion] worked in a similar method. It used the user's mana as a gathering point to suck out the mana of the targeted beings until they turn into dry corpses, devoid of any mana, leaving unintended bystanders and structures completely unharmed.

Naturally, absorbing this mana back into the body would cause immediate deviation on one's mana flow, completely stopping your growth in levels no matter how many creatures you kill.

The only way to survive the spell was to dispose of the accumulated mana by channelling into another spell.

This would cause the user to get glimpses of the target's memory, due to the partial souls moving with the mana, however, it was not much of a burden for a few people

But Merlin was going to kill off hundreds of thousands of people, and so while the spell was activating and pulling the mana, of those who he deemed as accused, Merlin gave out the order for all of Phillip's children to stop controlling Cayden, and instead help him share the load of the memory fragments.

Although they were mere new-borns, their intelligence stat no being as high as their forefather, they still had insane mental capabilities.

Merlin had found that most of the Hokori race had an average of 5000, which was already 5 times that of Merlin, and there was not merely on such creature.

Since [Mana Erosion] was the best method to deal with all the perpetrators, since they filled the condition of having less mana than Merlin, and not being of a higher Tier than him, Merlin had not lost his mind to rage and instructed them to help him.

Soon, the collection of mana had grown to a truly terrifying size, dwarfing all the skyscrapers still intact in Cayden.

It could be compare to the size of a few football fields put together, and was still growing, however, he had not killed anyone as of yet, but was sucking them all dry of everything but the tiniest of drops.

Soon, what Merlin was waiting for happened, as many of those under his suppression were forced to evolve to Tier 3. This was another fun fact Merlin had learned. While the plane has just evolved, and is in the process of fully recovering, emptying one's mana would allow you to evolve to the next stage without completing the necessary evolution points.

However, this had many drawbacks, namely: the Mana stat would be reduced to 1, or sometimes 2, and an excruciating pain would assault your body as you forcefully evolve to Tier 3.

All those beasts, zombies and humans under Merlin's suppression evolved to Tier 3 with so much pain that many fainted on the spot.

At this very moment, before any of them could recover, Merlin completed the extraction process and killed them in droves with a satisfied expression.

His evolution and stat points skyrocketed instantly, as the ball instantly grew to 4 times the size it was before, greatly weighing down on Merlin as well, who was already nearing Lv 5, the peak of Tier 3.

Not wasting any more time, as more and more soul-mana flowed into the soul-mana bowl above his head, he began the mental beck and forth to supress the partial souls and disperse the mana.

However, after the first few souls being instantly destroyed under his power, and the mana being dispersed as concentrated liquid mana, Merlin frowned.

The memories were slightly blurry, but remained fundamentally the same.

And the problem was that, although many of the people were not people who had actually harmed other, the ones who had harmed other did not have any recollection of it.

Immediately, a small portion of Merlin's 1450 Intelligence got into action to understand how this could be.

Nearly 30 souls in, the portion of Intelligence finally found 2 possibilities, both of which involved on thing; outside influence.

And this was something Merlin hated even more than cowards, schemers and sly foxes. These were the worst breed of creatures, worse than any kind of scum.

Merlin looked up as though he was seeing through the giant ball of chaotic mana, through the planer barrier, and into the planer void, where 2 'so called gods' were watching everything with a stunned expression.