Under Her Cursed Scythe

It reaped Ming's soul, an unbranded soul.

(What's an unbranded soul? You may ask.)

During one of Alivia's earlier days of reaping, she discovered that she could only reap the souls of those who were branded by sparkly red marks. For those who were not marked? Well, let's say she intended to reap one once (out of laziness). She managed to paralyze the person with her ring but after touching and patting his chest for more than half an hour, she still couldn't separate his soul from his body. She had to give him up eventually, especially when the person began to show signs of waking up from the paralyzing effect of the ring...

(But wait, it seems this limitation was no longer an issue…)

"Ming!" Molly shrieked when she watched her comrade falling onto the ground right before her eyes and a glowing ball slowly emerging from his body. She looked at Joshua promptly and shouted, "Joshua, what are you waiting for? We have to stop it! Trap the freaking Witch!"

But Joshua didn't give her any immediate responses. Anxiously, his eyes ping-ponged between the possessed Alivia and the unconscious Ming, flicking back and forth.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place- torn between his duties as a Blesser and his heart, Joshua finally sounded after a moment of silent struggle, "I-I can't do it. Sorry."

Then, cowardly, he turned his tail and jumped into an underground burrow that he had created with his glamour.

"Wha-Joshua!" Molly screeched as she witnessed Joshua's escape. "Joshua! You betrayer! You coward!" she cursed.

"Tink! Lend me your powers!" Standing on her own, Molly chanted a spell, and lifted her hands.

At once, thick vines, tree branches and roots coated in gold broke out from the concrete surface and crashed through the ceiling, wrapping themselves around Alivia, layers and layers, until a cage was formed. Even though that cage could not be as strong or as powerful as the mobile lightning cage that Joshua was good at creating, it gave Molly just enough time to run to the doors and seek for assistance.

"Hiroshi!" she called out to the Blesser outside the door, "Go and ask for backup! The ring has taken over the Witch! We have a Level 7, no, 10! Yes, a level 10 situation here!"

Yet, after she had called for help, Alivia broke out of the golden cage and Molly eventually collapsed onto the floor like Ming while her soul broke away from her body and flew towards Alivia.

**********

Support was mustered almost immediately as soon as Molly's call for help was heard, and it only took a few seconds before the door was once again forced open and more than ten people rushed in.

Meanwhile, they also murmured nine words in Japanese: "Rin, Kyo, Toh, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, Zen!" over and over again, after which a square-shaped, semi-transparent seal was formed around Alivia, burning her whenever she tried to come close with it and constraining her movement.

Those people didn't stop the chanting and as their charmed fingers jabbed at Alivia, the seal got tinier and tinier. And for a moment, they seemed to have successfully suppressed the darkness surrounding her and have trapped her in that semi-transparent box. Yet, it soon lost its effect on her in that cracks were gradually seen on the seal after Alivia squinted her eyes and once they spread throughout the box, she easily broke the barrier around her with a slight push with her hands and stepped out of the square.

Soon after she had gotten out of it, Alivia raised her left hand and those people surrounding her toppled over as their souls flew towards her. The ring, then, brought her roaming around the room in order to absorb the remaining souls like a magnet.

One boy who wore a yellow priest frock and a Taoist cap intended to sneak up from behind to stick a yellow paper amulet on Alivia's back with his wooden sword but he was soon spotted by her when she whirled around abruptly and his soul was reaped before he could even touch her.

The last four remaining people who were bald, with six dots on their heads and wore identical silver beads bracelets, bent their knees at once and opened their hands with their fingers closed and straight, swirling them in high speed as surges of energy began to gather around them swiftly.

At a certain point when they felt their bodies were charged with energy and strength, the four of them gathered all the powers they had each collected, molding them with one last swirl of their charmed fingertips into one single ball of energy and together, their hands pushed forward, releasing the vortex-like beam of energy against Alivia.

The speed of the beam of energy was faster than a leopard's and pretty soon, its shape-shifted from a vortex into an enormous glowing dragon with a body of a snake.

The serpent-like being opened its mouth wide and vehemently crashed against Alivia. The ground quaked as it caved in and cracks appeared on the walls.

Any magic folk or human being could have died or at least, severely wounded under that kind of attack. But, Alivia readily parried the blow with one snap of her fingers and came out of the smoke without a single scratch on her skin! And shortly after, she just closed the distance between her and her attackers with one leap and reaped their souls one by one, mercilessly.

"Yes, reap! Reap!" The husky voice continued to pound in Alivia's head.

Supposedly, she was done for the moment she allowed that voice in her head to come in and permitted herself to go out of control. She was supposed to be shielded off from feeling any remorse and pain while her body was causing those destructions like she had flipped off her humane switch. But she had left out a vestige of her conscience that she never knew existed, long hidden in one of her worst memories.