So it is done

How do you kill an immortal witch who has seen the rise and fall of hundreds of civilizations? How do you kill someone who can't be killed?

Jonathan had devoted most of the past three years to researching Salem. Even if she had acted clandestinely most of the time, and she certainly hadn't, a person with her influence on the world scale could not have passed through the millennia without leaving traces in reality. Old legends, passed down oral tales, archaeological excavations, artifacts of long-forgotten states, Salem had left her mark, you just had to find it and study it.

Jonathan was hardly an ally of Ozpin's, in some ways he was grateful to him for making him wake up to the reality of the world years ago. But in some ways, he also hated him as an enemy of humanity, who saw the world only in terms of fulfilling his holy mission to save Remnant. A worthwhile mission, sadly Ozpin wouldn't even blink if he had to sacrifice a couple of million people to even gain the smallest of advantage. And he had done so many times, as the traces of the civilization destroyed by Ozpin could attest to.

It's actually quite hard to measure which of them had killed more humans.

But, in the end, Ozpin and Jonathan were on the same side as they worked on Salem's destruction, a grand event crowning thousands of years of Remnant history and the struggle of two immortal beings. Jonathan did not see his alliance with Ozpin continuing after the fight with Salem was over, but for a brief moment of united aspirations, Jonathan could trust Ozpin.

He got as much information from Ozpin as he could, of course, he double-checked it himself, but there were very few ways to verify information from five hundred centuries ago. And so, much of Ozpin's information Jonathan had to take on faith, and a boulder sized grain of salt.

Jonathan also had to take on faith the information brought by Leonardo Lionheart, the traitor, simply because the information he could provide could mean the difference between success and failure.

Jonathan could personally try a few dozen ways to eliminate Salem in the more conventional methods, without having to solely rely on esoteric methods.

But, who would know what Salem would do after these failed attempts? Each option he thought of, discarded, meant that there would be less time for Jonathan to delay using the ritual. A bullet would not work, fire could not kill her, and neither would a blade nor poison work...

Gradually, more destructive ways of destroying Salem began to appear in Jonathan's mind, but they too were gradually being discounted.

What was the point of vaporizing half the continent with the power of the Sun if it was just the same old fire, if concentrated beyond belief, at the end of the day? Increasing power but offering nothing radically new?

Salem could not be defeated by force, and if Salem could not be defeated by force, she had to be defeated by intelligence.

However, even here, Jonathan began to run into obstacles right from the very start, the things he knew had already been tried by Ozpin. There might be a thousand ways to skin a cat, but apparently Ozpin had already tried 999 of them.

A star's gravity trap? Ozpin had used this trick before, to no avail. Sealing Salem forever in a multitude of small parts? No success. Seal her in another world? Perhaps that would have worked, but Jonathan did not possess such an ability.

Gradually, Jonathan's ideas were cut off one by one, before he came to the conclusion that he definitely could defeat Salem... In ten, twenty, or maybe a hundred years, after he would have evolved to the heights that all other mages looked upon with horror and awe, an Archmage.