The array was like an IV of life force dripping straight into his core. If Lith's previous tampering felt like someone messing with the needle, now it was like venom had been injected into it.
"What the f*ck are you?" Gadorf yelled, writhing in pain.
His words made no sense to the survivors. Their knowledge of magic was so limited they thought Lith's performance was thanks to his training and equipment. They had no way to understand the number of layers the fight was taking place on, nor the amount of energies which had been expended with every strike.
Gadorf himself only understood that Lith was capable of using true magic, but Life Vision and Invigoration were beyond his comprehension. At that moment Lith was using his breathing technique not to heal his wounds, but to keep a steady flow of darkness magic through the blade, shaking the array to its foundations.
The wyvern roared, realizing his chances to breakthrough to the next level were nigh zero. Best case scenario the array was damaged, worst case scenario it was poisoned.
Gritting his teeth Gadorf conjured his strongest attack, the tier five light spell Purge. His eyes were fixated on Lith while the whole room was filled with streams of light of different colors, resembling an aurora borealis.
Then, everything went black. Agony blinded his mind while a small icicle physically blinded him.
"Forgot about me?" Captain Yerna's voice sounded from his right side. Between the pain from the array and his attention focused on his opponent, Gadorf had really forgotten about the insignificant ants.
Yerna had managed to circle around him, waiting for the moment to strike. Her spell was too weak to change the course of the fight unless it hit a critical spot. Compared to the scales, the wyvern's eyes were soft.
With his concentration lost, Purge was dispelled. Another ice dart was aimed at the remaining left eye. Gadorf only needed to slightly tilt his head to make it harmlessly strike the scales instead. The wyvern was enraged once more, on the brink of losing its mind again.
The wyvern roared, Blinking behind the officer that had just shot from his wand, decapitating him in a single bite. He disappeared again, materializing in front of Sargent Khran, his mouth already opened.
Gadorf hated wasting so much energy, but without the tail and an eye, moving normally would mean becoming a sitting duck. Knowing what was about to happen, Khran inwardly cursed while raising his arms over his head.
His last act wasn't a futile attempt of protecting his life. Khran was aware he wouldn't see ever again his wife or children. Gadorf's fangs effortless bit off his upper torso, swallowing it in one gulp.
What the wyvern didn't know was that inside the Sargent's hands there were the broken extremities of his wand. The damaged alchemical tool went haywire, the wild energies it sealed quickly reached the magical stone, releasing all of its power in a small conflagration.
Lith ignored the screams around him, focusing only on two things. Following the wyvern movements with Life Vision and corrupting the array as fast as he could. The energies seeping into the black core were corroding it instead of nurturing it.
Once the black core filtering them was destroyed, the life forces contained into the array would directly reach the wyvern's true core, destroying it.
The explosion caught both Lith and the wyvern by surprise. Gadorf's innards were strong enough to withstand the blow, but not without taking damage. The wyvern coughed smoke and blood, trying to breathe.
It was the first real opening since the fight had started, yet Lith stood still.
'Without dimensional magic, to get there I'd have to fly. Rather than making myself an easy target, it's better to keep weakening him. If he is able to cut off his pain receptors like I'm doing, he could ignore his wounds and crush me the second I'm within his reach.'
Like they were sharing a mind link, Gadorf used darkness magic to stop feeling pain. He Blinked right above Lith, to squash him with his weight. The talons on his feet were longer than twenty centimeters (8 inches) and harder than steel.
The wyvern slashed downwards with his legs, their longer reach prevented Lith from raising his sword and impale him. He had no time to adjust his position, standing there meant having his arms torn or worse.
Lith rolled away, but the talons still managed to open deep wounds on his back, from the clavicle to under his rib cage. Blood spurted all over the wyvern's body, filling him with renewed confidence.
Gadorf pushed forward to not lose the advantage, following the prey closely. Lith couldn't expose his back anymore, so he turned around, slashing randomly with the Gatekeeper to keep the monster at bay.
Lith's swordsmanship was already bad to start with. Now that his arms were weakened by the wounds, Gadorf had an easy time grabbing it in mid air and ripping it from Lith's hands in one fluid movement.
Contrary to his expectations, the brief contact welcomed him into a world of hurt. The sword had been infused with light magic, granting it healing properties. The spell Lith had imbued it with wasn't meant to treat any injury, only to reconnect the severed pain receptors.
Gadorf lost his grip, throwing the sword as far as he could. His throat was back to burning so bad that every breath was agony. Every time the ice shard piercing his eye moved, the pain would make his vision go blank.
Suddenly Gadorf couldn't breathe nor see. He fell on his knees trying to control the spasms and shut down the receptors again. The wyvern regained his sight just in time to see Red completing his spell, turning the world around them into shards of light.
Chapter 288 Call Part 1
After Captain Yerna's wake up call, Red was forced to bet everything on a desperate gamble. The members of the unit were dying like flies and despite his outstanding equipment, there was only so much White could do against a wyvern.
The Captain had asked him to do his thing, but there was actually a single option in his arsenal. Countering an unknown array was almost impossible, the only thing he could do was to identify its key points and use them to bring it down.
Destroying an array was always risky, even more if you were blocked inside it. It meant twisting the energies coursing through the formation into chaos, turning the mana flow against itself until its structure collapsed.
The stronger the array, the greater the risk for the consequences to be literally explosive. The only perk of the Disarray spell was to be relatively quick compared to most Warden incantations.
'If it works I may die, but if it doesn't I'll die for sure. Here goes everything!' Red thought.
The only silver lining was that, based on his previous analysis, the array seemed to be based on light magic, hence probably harmless.
Probably.
The word echoed in his mind while the Life Draining array shattered, freeing the prisoners from their cage. The life force released formed wisps of light, the intensity of which made it almost impossible to see.
The surviving member of the unit jumped off the nearest window without hesitation, quickly followed by Red. While their uniforms could easily protect them from the fall, the same could not be said against an angry wyvern.
Their escape almost had a tragic ending, since their colleagues surrounding the house had been spooked by the explosion of lights. Not receiving any response from the Captain for several minutes, they had requested for back up and were expecting the worse.
The sudden explosion made them trigger happy. A few of them shot at their falling comrades before seeing the black of their uniforms.
Meanwhile, Gadorf was panicking. The array had been dispelled before the link between the magic formation and his mana core could be severed. What was meant to be his instrument toward godhood was now a gaping hole in his cores.
He had the means and the knowledge to mend the damage, the Master had foreseen for such an eventuality to happen. The black core served both as a filter for the foreign energies and as a plug.
The problem was the contingency plan had been devised for the case something went wrong during the cast
ing of the array or the assimilation process, not to be used in dire circumstances.
Gadorf was heavily injured, most of his mana spent. Not to mention he had no doubt that the monstrous kid wouldn't let him cast a new array and perform several healing spells while standing idle.
"Come on, White. Let's go!" Captain Yerna was still there. White was just an unknown temporary member of her unit, but she had seen too many good people die in a single day to leave someone, especially a kid, behind.
Lith's body was battered, covered with so many first degree burns his skin was nigh red rather than pink. Life fusion had partially healed the haemorrhage on his back, but it was still bleeding.
Now he could Blink again, the problem was he had enough strength just for one last trick and movement spells inflicted no damage.
'Leave no loose ends.' His mind kept looping. The wyvern knew.
The wyvern had to die.
Invigoration was off the table. The moment he focused on the breathing technique, Gadorf could still Blink. Even if Lith knew exactly where he would appear, the wyvern had proved to be too fast even for his enhanced reflexes.
That when his body had yet to become a bloody mess.
Hearing Yerna's voice triggered Gadorf. His blind eye was a constant reminder of what underestimating her could cause. Following his mana perception, the wyvern cast a stream of lightning with his left hand while charging up a breath to intercept Lith the moment he came to the rescue.
Seeing the air crackle, Yerna cursed at the monster before taking cover behind an altar, still refusing to leave. Even without the array, the marble was unaffected by the spell.
Contrary to the wyvern's expectations, Lith didn't move an inch. His eyes kept staring at his opponent while his hands weaved and amplified a spell he was too weak to cast with his mind alone.
"Damn you!" Gadorf cursed again. The woman clearly had no value as a hostage. The realization shattered his hopes to use her to stall for time and save his cores.
His time was running out, he could hear the escaped officer yelling about the need of sending reinforcements. Gadorf was left with one choice. The energy from the Life Draining array was still lingering in the room and there was still more than enough to overload his core.
Remembering the Master's words, rather than death Gadorf preferred to join the ranks of his Abominations. That was the black core's last trump card.
Just like Kalla's blood core made it easier for her turning into an undead, the artificial black core was supposed to greatly increase the wyvern's chances of successfully turning into an Abomination.
Gadorf used the last of his magical strength to collect all the energies and forcefully inject them into his body. Suddenly he was full of vigor, the missing tail and the pierced eye didn't bother him more than a scratch would.
His rage and pride were replaced by a quiet hunger while his physical body started to crack under the massive pressure coming from inside. For the first time in his life, Gadorf felt at peace with the world.
His path was now clear in front of him, neither Lith or his father meant anything. The only sour note was that until he learned how to control his new body, magic would be out of his reach.
"I'll need a lot of life force to complete the transformation. It's a good thing Xenatos is such a populous city." Gadorf's tone was relaxed, but he was actually focused. With his new senses, he could perceive that Lith's spell was a darkness one.
"Since the two of you pushed me this far, it's only fair for you to become the foundations of my new life." The wyvern smiled softly while his flesh crumbled.
Such a spell was useless against him now that he was back at his prime. Darkness magic was the bane of undead and Abominations alike, but even the most powerful sword was useless if it was unable to hit its target.
Gadorf bolted toward Lith, lured by the light of his cyan core like a thirsty man by a gushing fountain. He moved in a zig-zag pattern, making impossible to predict his trajectory.
The wyvern was so fast that he had barely the time to notice that the young mage was uncaring for the evasive maneuver. Lith just focused all of his strength on his right hand.
His right bare hand.
'Didn't he wear a magic gauntlet? Where has it¡' Even if he had realized it earlier, it would have been useless. Back when he had ripped the Gatekeeper from Lith's hand, Solus had followed suit, suppressing her energies behind the sword's waiting for an opening.
Chapter 289 Call Part 2
While the wyvern wasted his movements, the sword flew in a straight line held and empowered by Solus, whose senses allowed her to pinpoint her target with surgical precision.
Infused with air magic, the Gatekeeper struck a split second after leaving the ground where it lied in ambush. The blade went through and through, adding its own momentum to the wyvern's to drag him to his demise.
Lith unleashed the darkness spell while Solus acted like a lightning rod, guiding it to destination. Their lives were linked and so were their energies. Manipulating Lith's spells, even from a distance, came natural to Solus like thinking.
"There's two of you?" There was no rage in Gadorf's last whisper, only surprise.
His cores were already weakened from the continuous poisoning Lith had inflicted them and the stress the metamorphosis caused. The first wave of darkness was enough to wipe them both away, turning the wyvern into a bad memory.
The sword disappeared into the glove and the glove shapeshifted back into a ring before returning to Lith's finger. When Yerna came out of her hiding spot, it was already over. Everything had happened in just a few seconds after the lightning struck.
"A little help here." Lith was sitting on the ground in a small pool of his own blood.
The Captain had no idea what had happened, yet it didn't stop her from applying first aid at the best of her capabilities. The wounds were too extensive, they required tier four healing magic. Stopping the bleed was within her reach instead.
"The monster?" She looked around nervously, expecting it to jump out from the shadows.
"Dead. That lightning was his swan's song." Lith lied, pointing his finger to the few scales still in the process of turning into light.
"Seems his life and the array were connected. Red saved our lives."
"Saved our lives my a*s!" The Captain cursed. She knew it was unbecoming of an official and didn't care one bit at the moment.
"Even if what you say is true, it means that if instead of chickening out he had acted earlier, half of my team would still be alive. Khran would still be alive!" Yerna had yet to come to terms with the massacre of her unit.
"You are crazy, instead. Tampering right off the bat with an unknown array and holding your ground like a madman." She wanted to scold him, but found herself unable to.
"The good kind of crazy. Red or not, I'm going to write in my report that if it wasn't for you, we would be lying on those altars, waiting for that crazed monster to turn us into dried meat. That and the fact we've been set up."
"Set up?" Lith raised his eyebrow in interest.
"Yes, even if I have no proof, I'm certain of it. Too much of our intel was wrong. The support was supposed to be on stand by, yet never arrived. Too many things do not add up. It's likely to be all my fault. I stepped on too many entitled toes during the last years.
"I'm ready to bet my next two months' pay that everything will be covered up. Some minor bureaucrat will be fired, all thoughts and prayers to the victims, but in the end, nobody will be held accountable.
"Those rich b*stards always get away with everything." Rage and sorrow cracked her voice.
"Gods, so many people have died today. Good people. What I'm going to say to their families?"
Lith didn't know and didn't care.
"I'm not much for justice¡" He took out his communication amulet.
"but revenge, is something I respect. It's time to see if my pin is worth its troubles." Lith called what he thought being his most powerful ally. He had no
idea if the real target was him or the Captain. Either way, Yerna's reasoning was sound.
Someone had to pay.
The royal constable Jirni Ernas was surprised seeing Lith's identification rune, he never called her before.
"This better be imp¡ What happened to you?" Lith looked like a burning building had just collapsed on his head, yet Jirni knew he could shrug off such a trivial event without a scratch.
"Murder attempt. I've been set up during academy duty." Lith used the same tone anyone would use to talk about the weather.
Jirni liked him more every time they spoke.
'Calm and collected, like a professional.'
"Tell me everything."
"One moment." Lith gave the amulet to the captain, who didn't know how to react.
"Ma'am, your son is safe and sound. I can't tell you more and neither should he." Yerna threw a mean look at Lith.
"Today's events are likely to be classified, I'm really sorry."
Jirni found the situation hilarious, yet she just smiled warmly. Unlike Lith's standard issue communication amulet, her own was capable of forwarding and registering conversations, among many things.
She shared the call with Linjos and the Queen, before making the proper introductions.
"Don't worry, Captain Yerna." Her amulet's facial recognition program had already uploaded the Captain's personal file along with all the relevant information about her career.
"I'm not his mother. I'm the royal constable Jirni Ernas. Give me a detailed report of what happened. Start from the beginning.'
***
"A wyvern?" Linjos was shocked, the Queen merely amused.
"What are your orders, your Majesty?" Jirni asked.
"Go to the precinct, interrogate everyone thoroughly. Find who is behind this attack and why it happened." Queen Sylpha was wandering how valuable could it be a mage who faced a Valor first and an Evolved monster later and lived to tell the tale.
"It won't take long." Jirni was on her way since the Captain had finished her report.
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