For the attackers, the plan seemed to be going well. Luckily, none of them died before the spirit was summoned. Without at least 2 of them fighting Winter, they had no faith of being able to hold the slightest candle to him. But they had underestimated Winter. They thought that as soon as they had control of the tower, It would be over for him and they would be able to go on the offensive. In reality, all they could do was put up a barrier. It was clear that they would not survive at this rate and something had to be done.
"He's insane! How can anyone possibly be this powerful and have this much mana!!!!!" higherup 1 yelled through the mindlink.
"I don't know, but at this rate we are all going to die, so I'll sacrifice some life force to get us out of here" higher up 2 said. Life force is the force that gives each creature their life span and their vitality/their ability to be strong and active, so by sacrificing lots of lifespan you are causing your death to occur at a much sooner time, and you will need much time to grow to your old strength. But through actively burning lots of lifespan, which is a form of energy much stronger than mana, you can reach heights, and accomplish spells that would have taken much more training to accomplish. "Don't die on us." "Yeah."
Burning his life force, higherup 2 was able to keep the barrier up and cool the inside down to a normal temperature. They looked up, and while it was hard to see because of the intense heat waves outside, they saw that Winter had an orb in his hand. As he threw it at them, It started to spin and change colors. So much energy gathered around it that it was brighter than the sun and took up half the sky. It then hit the barrier and shattered even the space holding the barrier, so that it couldn't regenerate. Even with all the mana trying to repair the barrier, it couldn't find order amongst the broken space and ended up being reabsorbed by the spirit. Winter then came down, said a couple of things and was ready to deal the final blow.
"I'll take him down with us, sorry guys." higherup 2 "Our fault for messing with someone that shouldn't have been messed with." higherup 1 "Pretty much" said higherup 3. So higherup 2 prepared to end everything.
The fight had been fun so far, but if I let them do what they want, I would be the one on the losing end at this point. I would have never expected anyone to try to, and succeed, in breaking my connection with my tower. So I blasted them with my most potent flames, and then used what I like to call the extinction ray so that the barrier would be down. I came down to say "Thanks, that was good exercise, its rare these days. I would let you live but you are too dangerous and you seem to have been doing some pretty messed up stuff so bye now."
I prepared another extinction ray when one of the men said "Bye indeed," and threw two knives at his companions. The knives pierced them and they fell down dead immediately. He also threw a knife at me which I blocked. But the knife did not get blocked, It passed through my barrier at such a speed that there was no dodging to be done. It hit me, then disintegrated and turned into large chains preventing me from doing anything. My eyes widened, I knew why he killed his companions. By absorbing all of their mana and life force he was able to create these chains to bind me for a couple of seconds. I started working to break the chains immediately. Progress was fast but the opponent was faster. If he had held onto hope that he could survive and rushed blindly at me. I would have managed to break out of the chains and kill him before he could have killed me. But I was mistaken that he had used all the lifeforce for the binding chains. Some of it was used to create a new chain connecting me and the man. This chain was much more dangerous. I started burning my own life force, unwilling to give up. The chain started shattering immediately, but it was too late. This chain was connecting my life and the life of the attacker so when he raised a knife and stabbed his own heart, It was already too late for me. With my vision fading to black, all I could really think was how funny it was that in the end I was betrayed by the simple desire to have fun.
My side felt cold and as I groggily sat up I realized I was not dead. As I opened my eyes I realized that I was in a sanctum of some kind. "What happened, did I get sucked away at the last second? No, that makes no sense. My lifeforce was already extinguished. What happened?" My queries were cut short by some lettering that appeared in the air. It read, "Welcome to the sanctum, please choose a class by heading through a door." as I finished reading it a medium sized leather bound book appeared in thin air and dropped to the floor. I picked it up and opened it. All the pages except for the first one were blank. On the first page it showed my face, some basic personal info, and something called levels and stats. My level was at 1 and my stats were all pretty low. I figured that I would take a vantage point from somewhere so I tried flying upwards. Then a shocking realization dawned. "My magic is gone!" it appeared that all my powers had left me. I took a couple moments to process and looked around the room. The room was circular with all white stone bricks, and I was standing on a raised altar of sorts it looked like. There were 5 doors spread out evenly in a circle along the walls. Above me there was a large dome made of stained glass, showing the blue sky above. I walked over to a door with a sword design engraved onto the keystone above the door. When I got close some more letters appeared and told me about something called the weapon master class. The lettering read "Weapon masters are dedicated to mastering one or multiple weapons of their choice. By perfecting technique, building spirit, and honing their bodies, they seek to achieve the utmost strength through body and mind." "seems interesting." I thought, but I decided to head to the next door. This door had a paintbrush on the keystone and read "Artists are those who are captivated by the beauty of the world and try to capture it through painting, singing, dancing, and many more ways. Many artists are content with mortal strength, but those who choose to grow stronger through art, focus on increasing the strength of their soul along with the quality of their work, while using their imagination to conjure various things into this world."
"I like the sound of that one." I said. It was new and seemed to be lots of fun, so I was tempted to head through the door but I held my ground, and looked at the next one. The next door had some gears above it, and the class was called 'artificer'. They focused on making things to be their strength mainly. It was interesting, but not my ideal. The next one was the shapeshifter class and it focused on replacing parts of your body with those of beasts. For example you could take a bat's ears and have super sensitive hearing, or take bear arms and be super strong. Stuff like that. And the last door was the path of the mage. I had had my fill of this one so I decided that being an artist would be the most fun, but I felt like things had been progressing quickly even though all I did was read some stuff, so I decided to think about some things and fall asleep on the floor. Afterall, I had probably just died.