However, Xela was left speechless when the ever-calm Darius and the stable Gunner displayed fearful expressions. Without them having to say anything, she understood why they were like this.
Xela sighed and once again felt grateful that she had yet to experience something as daunting as the Impossible Plains of Death Quest.
Just look at how traumatized these two were, it must have been quite the ordeal.
Darius calmed down and coughed. "For now, my firepower should theoretically be enough to handle the Vampire Lord, but I don't want to leave anything to chance. I will spend the next few days trying to design a spell of the Light or Heal element that specifically targets vampires."
"I'm not sure how long it will take, so you two should use this time to either train, relax or go out." Darius advised with a soft smile.
Gunner nodded but asked: "What about the Vampire Lord and his coffin?"
Darius pondered for a bit. "Gunner, how about once per day, you take some Purification Potions and soak the coffin in it. The longer we do this, the weaker the Vampire Lord should be when we initiate the Event."
Gunner and Xela were stunned, then felt sympathy for the sealed creature. His coming days were not going to be pleasant in the least, and he was likely going to wish he were truly dead.
After informing them of their tasks, Xela went to sit before the TV and played around with it, trying to figure it out. As for Gunner, he left to go and explore the area.
Darius noted that his around 250 undead monsters would occasionally engage in a battle, as the vampire's charm was still pulling in new fellows periodically. Against the army of undead though, it was futile.
Darius went to his room and sat down at a small desk there. There usually should have been a computer on it, but such things were no longer needed due to the HoloBrace.
Currently, Darius was working with Miranda on his new spell. This was something Miranda had informed him about, after she had finished absorbing so much information from the Great Library.
It could be said that now, the AI was much more experienced and knowledgeable than he was. When he had previously been working on the Intermediate Order spell, the AI had already offered to help and had managed to further his progress by a strong 10% in one day!
Unfortunately, this had been her limit as the basic archives only had a smattering of info on the Order element. It was very likely that the key details for it might be somewhere in God Krona's restricted section, making Darius desire it more and more.
However, everything in due time.
Right now, he began with the Theory for the Heal element spell he was making. He wanted to try using this element instead of the Light because only Heal could likely give the Vampire Lord a true death.
Darius slowly drew a pattern in the air with his finger as he thought. Nothing came out of it, but it helped shape his ideas accordingly as he made the statement.
'I want to be able to transform the Death element within a vampire to the Life element. It should have an effective range of 2 meters, strike one target, and function instantly.'
It was a semi-detailed theory with most of the necessary parts covered. He had detailed the range, the mode of fire, the number of targets, the duration, and the effect at once.
It was good enough to move to the Design phase. This was the most time-consuming segment, for Darius would carefully have to draw a path for his mana to pass through to convert to the Life element and then mold it to achieve the effect he wanted, all done manually.
Due to his high-quality spells compared to others, this largely wasn't an issue for the first stage, which was elemental conversion. Darius already knew the path it needed to pass, and even if he faltered, Miranda could pick up the slack.
After doing so, he carefully began to shift and manipulate the Life element energy in the Design to emit itself similar to the Heal spell and work within the body of the target.
This too wasn't really an issue since he had the foundation from the basic Heal spell to work with. What came as a real challenge was turning the Death Energy within to Life Energy on contact.
This was in contrast to the Heal spell, which introduced pure Life Energy into the body of its targets. This reinvigorated the living and tortured the dead, for it would combust when it came in contact with their Death Energy.
However, just this was not enough to take down even Mikey and Joneson, not to mention whoever lived in that coffin.
The Death Energy was so powerful and thick that the little bit of life energy he introduced with each cast of Heal was mostly just a painful slap, but not fatal in the way it was to a low-level undead with a thin and messy Death element.
To truly damage one like Lord Darm so thoroughly that he had to die, one would have to take his plentiful death energy away. Darius could either try a Death element spell that sucked it away or a Life element spell that converted it.
He chose the latter for the former would be foolish. No matter how smart he was, going against an entity that had lived and breathed Death Energy for who knows how many years sounded far-fetched.
He might have immunity to Death element attacks or ways to counter it. But against the Life element, there was no counter because he would never expect such a thing.
Darius was, after all, an anomaly who could use the pure and gentle Life element to actually harm Death Energy beings.
Putting aside the effect of the spell, just using Heal alone would be enough to make Lord Darm feel fear from the prospects of the future if Life Energy could now damage him.
