You had to understand, the Witch Tyrant did not think like regular people. Very few [Mages] at high realms had thoughts that ordinary humans would recognize. The Witch Tyrant had studiously researched her Legend until she developed thought processes that even the greatest of [Mages] would balk at.

There was no easy way to express exactly how her mind worked, though if it had to be put into words, it would be something like this:

Thread 1: Monitoring the threads.

Threads 2 & 3: Immediate task at hand – Ensuring that Artigan binds with the tortured hero, ensuring that he physically survives the curse’s descent. Beyond that, we will activate the spell matrix on his back and make it look like he managed to escape with an emergency artifact.

Threads 4 & 5: Paying attention to Gamielle.

Threads 6 & 7: Keeping track of Pinkie. She is meditating on her Legend. It is interesting, the way she is approaching this transformation. It seems she’s reaching for concepts first instead of biological accuracy.

Threads 8 through 13: Keeping track of that cursed dragonslayer from the new Table. Making sure they don’t interrupt the board. Threads ten to thirteen are to rotate constant reminders that he exists. ANY EMPTY THREADS TURN RED.

Internal thread 9: Why are we keeping him alive again?

Thread 14: Reminder that he was opposed to the original Table’s plan. Should not kill him without due cause. He can still be useful.

Threads 15 through 21: Observation of the other dragonslayers on the board. None of them should move as long as I make my presence known. None have specializations against [Mage] barriers.

Thread 22: Special observation of the Kellys. They may make a move on Artigan. Donna Kelly can be especially temperamental. Adventurers. May need more threads, their class conceptions have improved their lethality.

Threads 23-31: Monitoring other Tyrants via domain. Namely the Shadow Tyrant. All other Tyrants are currently occupied. He should not have enough time to move. The stall in his progress is circumspect.

Thread 32: Readying the Cataclysm Abyss, ensuring no errant monsters beyond the seventh realm dig through the layers.

Thread 33: Readying the city of Riliead. Everything has been set up for Artigan’s arrival.

Thread 34: Leafstalkers are ready. It is better to have him suffer through this now than later. He must learn to be more ruthless to others. It is better to be cruel now than later. He may never thank us, but he will understand.

Thread 34: Sanity check. Emotions are in turmoil, we should turn off [Emotional Resonance].

Thread 35: Sanity and logic are fine, interweaving threads 32, 33 and 34.

The threads continued on…

Thread 263: Watching Seffara as she stays tied up. Good, Cinnabon was always good at taking hints. Rodstead is spouting off nonsense as usual.

Thread 264-270: Observation of Ella Maizel. Too many wards and defenses to get around. Reminder: She has the Diadem of Luminous Ruin, Archbane Shield, Three Thousand Pentagrams amulet, Deathstrike bracelet…

Thread 271: Reminder: Stop giving Ella more artifacts for work done.

…

Thread 326: Observation of Latarro. The heroic adventurer is progressing nicely. Having stepped up to handle the Wrathford Titan when we pushed it towards a tribe of drakes.

Thread 327: Setting up constant reminders of Artigan to Latarro. It will be good entertainment when those two come into conflict.

…

And so forth.

The number of mental threads alone would terrify most [Mages]. Where it went further was just how the Witch Tyrant had gone about solving the flaws that came with mindsplit skills.

[Interwoven Threads] allowed multiple minds to be crossed together, forming a sort of brain complex that had both active and subconscious sections. While the lesser variant [Threaded Thoughts], could do something similar, it also had an issue where a singular thread could snag, snap, or tangle up and overwhelm the others, throwing your thoughts in disarray.

That issue was why plenty of people made the mistake of thinking [Parallel Processing] was superior. Believing that having multiple purely active consciousnesses and throwing away the subconscious made you better.

The Witch Tyrant scoffed at them.

Subconscious thoughts were crucial in maintaining early alert warnings, coming up with creative solutions and setting yourself up for epiphanies. The subconscious was what allowed multiple threads to act like a true individual, one that would outstrip any pure active consciousness with the same number of threads.

Of course, she had taken things a step further. She used colors, sounds and smells on the threads so that if any had a problem, all of it would be transmitted as certain warning symbols that would get detected and organized by thread number one.

Orange and smoke was what would tell her to start diverting more threads to a certain task.

It was what she was detecting now. As Artigan drew on every single bit of emotion and aura from the city. It was lowered to green when she assessed that it was completely uncontrolled.

She had dismissed them. Then a full red fire alert rose when all of it started to move in tandem. The two threads monitoring the situation believed that Artigan was insane. She started readying barrier spells to save his life.

Thread 2: Cannot do that or we risk tainting his current and future achievements.

Thread 3: If he dies then everything becomes pointless.

Thread 1: Switching assignment of thread 4 from Pinkie to current task.

Thread 205: Switching assignment from the abyssal one.

Thread 264: Switching assignment from Ella Maizel.

With five threads together. The Witch Tyrant made the correct judgment that the boy was not suicidal and that had a clear plan. Unfortunately, that brought in more warning signs so she brought more threads in.

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The conclusions paralyzed her for half a second.

He can either utilize all of the aura or he will die. If he can indeed utilize it all then everything put together might be capable of destroying the ritual.

The Witch Tyrant brought in more and more threads, taking more away from the others to make a full assessment. A full thirteen threads of focus was being spent on a single fourther. She was now contemplating shattering the gathering aura completely.

I should stop this. I used the excuse of consequences to throw down the curse on him. If I shatter that veil completely then I risk tainting all of his future achievements entirely.

There was a balance here. Despite saying that this was the consequence for Artigan’s disrespect. Her forcing the binding curse like this would still hurt his long term achievements. On the other hand, the difficulty of overcoming the curse was high enough that it would be worthwhile. Most of all?

The Witch Tyrant truly had no idea if Artigan… no, if Ryan would even survive the curse. Nor did she know how he would overcome it.

That was what tipped the scales in favor of using this curse on him.

Now she was balancing the scales of destroying the gathering aura so the curse would stick.

Then the world started to form a familiar ripple around Ryan. Causing more of her to hesitate. More threads were drawn in to weigh the scales. And with the enormous amount of threads, something peeked out from deep within her.

A person that had once stepped up against an entire world to do what was right. Perhaps slightly influenced by [Emotional Resonance] and the boy—no the adventurer that was burning brightly.

Do I even want to stop this?

And in that moment indecision the sword came down. Annihilating and exploding the ritual that she had been crafting for a decade.

Then came the wave of regret.

Ah, things will have to change. I must reassess and change things. Find other ways to–

Old Thread 4: Orange, smoke Gamielle–

The Witch Tyrant checked the message, though with not too much attention. Gamielle had never truly learned subtley. The Witch Tyrant was savoring the way the title was forming around Ryan. Reorganizing her mind to reassess whether it was even suitable to throw him into the Cataclysm Abyss. He would just make a game of it and ruin everything–

Old thread 5: RED BURNING, PINKIE–

That made her snap up from her thoughts. That was the only thing she thought of as a bolt of pink lightning came up.

And punched her in the face.

It shattered her barrier, all of her thoughts in disarray while mid-organization. Her body moving on instinct based on thread 1. Rearranging the barrier back in full and assessing her own body while her mental threads… started snapping.

Never, since the completion of her mental network had she been punched in the face before.

Threads 2 to 50: Diverting to current status.

Thread 51: Why aren’t we all diverting?

Thread 10 (old): Focusing on that cursed dragonslayer. RED RED RED. MISSING THREADS.

Thread 49 (new): Silence! I’m not missing him, we just diverted threads and damnit all to hell we should have just killed him.

Thread 250 (old): We’ve lost track of Ella, alert! We’ve lost track of her–

Thread 251 (old): It’s because we need more threads to get past her wards. Silence!

Main unified Threads: Pinkie didn’t believe we would leave the cottage for this. She pierced our barriers using her new understanding. If she had used that fist from earlier–

Thread 1: This is how [Mages] die. Black. Dead. Decaying. Reset.

And all of the Witch Tyrants threads came to a standstill.

She cared little for the world that was watching. That Gamielle was displaying her face for both worlds to see.

The call had been made and all threads collapsed into one.

This was indeed how [Mages] died. No matter how organized you made it, no matter how many layers or skills you crafted on top. A mindsplit skill could never react as perfectly as a singularly focused mind. It was a lesson in untested arrogance… no, this had been pure hubris.

If Pinkie had used her new fist, I would be dead.

As the threads came together, they began to consign plots into oblivion. Magical structures that were maintained with her various threads collapsed all across The Realm as her full mental capacity came back to her.

A unified whole.

The Witch Tyrant took in a breath, and truly, everything felt more real than it had in an age.

She glanced down at the projection that had shown her face throughout the whole transformation. Then she took a moment to savor her daughter’s mischievous triumphant face. For a moment the Witch Tyrant wanted to smile, then she remembered why she had continued to split her mind in the first place.

Oh it hurt so much.

But it was glorious to be whole again. To feel the full weight of her emotions. To feel again. Her class and skills sang as they took in the emotions of the city. So alive–so much adoration.

Though now there was more than a bit of horror from seeing her eyes and the curse.

But that was fitting as well. It was good that they saw her for what she had become.

There had been a new alert from the Trial System. One she hadn’t checked while her mind was in disorganization.

Odd…

The Witch Tyrant stopped reading. For the second time that day, her mind went into disarray. In an ironic twist of fashion, bringing her mental threads together had made her forget about that particular Legendary title quest.

Then her eyes darted to Pinkie. Who was staring at staring at her with her eyes wide open. Her fist bleeding from fragments of her barrier.

The Witch Tyrant could be cold and logical but it had been awhile since she had truly felt all of her emotions.

So she gave herself the luxury of this singular emotion.

Rage.

–

Ryan stared up as the world itself seemed to have become fury incarnate. Even when he looked away he could feel the Witch Tyrant’s anger.

Pinkie began to shriek.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.”

She dove down at lightning speeds, stopping to grab Cerul and him in one huge hand then blasted off at top speed. Both Cerul and Ryan started to scream alongside Pinkie. More so because they were going at blistering speeds that their bodies couldn’t handle.

All three of them could hear the Witch Tyrant’s voice, clear as day. Transmitted directly to their minds.

‘You must remind me to thank you for the lesson, Pinkie.’

Pinkie did not stop flying, nor stop screaming. An enormous spell circle appeared in front of the Witch Tyrant. Visible to Ryan, despite the distance.

She couldn’t be planning on blasting both of them could she? Anything that could hurt Pinkie would completely kill him.

‘But for today I must have my pound of flesh. [Archmage Tyrant’s School: Multiplication Metamagic] + [Acceleration Gate].’

The Witch Tyrant flew, leaving trails of expanding spell circles behind her as she accelerated at an impossible rate.

They had been going so fast that when the Witch Tyrant suddenly sped up and her face was visible, it was like a sudden jumpscare. Three orbs of light began to flicker around her.

Pinkie threw her trident and blasted it with lightning. The Witch Tyrant knocked away the electrified trident with a light beam.

Then she started firing.

Ryan had seen examples of the Witch Tyrant’s fight with the dragonslayers before, he’d seen these orbs. What he hadn’t realized was that these beams of light didn’t have to be fired in a straight line.

One zigzagged towards Pinkie, while another curved in a huge arc. Pinkie dove to dodge the curved one while the zigzagging one cut down and targeted her directly. In an awkward angle, she brought her hand up, shifting him around in her grip.

And used Ryan as a meatshield.

Ryan could barely process or see what was happening. By the time he saw the light beam in his face, he was pretty certain it was the last thing he was going to see. At the last moment, the beam of light pinged away from his face and all he saw was the trail of light, cutting off far into the distance.

I almost died. That was inches from my face, at this speed, there was no way that hadn’t been close.

They both heard the Witch Tyrant click her tongue. Ryan also came to the same conclusion she did.

Pinkie hadn’t picked him up to save him, she’d grabbed him so she could use him as a hostage.

This piece of shit.

The last thing he was going to do was be used as a meatshield by someone that broke their word and killed a good dragonslayer. Ryan was still holding the handle of his sword and she had wide gaps between her hands where his arms were free to do whatever he wanted.

A rookie move.

His aura had been completely filled up and he had a new title. Ryan switched out the [Rebellious] title for [Undisputed Apex of the Fourth Realm]. The surge in all of his stats making him feel unstoppable.

A dense sword made of aura formed at the hilt of his blade.

He went for one of the open wounds on her finger. The one that had been freshly made when she had punched through the Witch Tyrant’s barriers.

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