The first spell conjured a beam of pure heat capable of evaporating stone while the second generated an intense cold wave.
One of them was enough to severely injure an Emperor Beast, but their combined effect generated a thermal shock that could kill even a greater undead.
Solus flexed her shoulders, using the metal wings of the Scalewalker armor to intercept both spells. Thanks to the pseudo core made of Hydra’s scales, the wings absorbed the energy from the incoming attacks and redirected it so that instead of stacking, their effects would cancel each other.
“Not bad, but tier four can do only that much. Why didn’t you use something more powerful?” Solus had come seconds away from compromising the structural integrity of the energy flow protecting the Eye of Kolga.
“Because I can’t risk further damaging the tower and you know it!” Ykrah tackled Solus, using the gap in height and weight between them to overpower her.
He was over 1.9 meters (6’4″) tall and weighed almost 290 kilograms (634 lbs) due to having the mass of three adults. When the heir of Kolga was born, they would be infused with two lives instead of one.
It made them capable of harnessing the power of the geyser and of absorbing so much power from the Forbidden Sun that they would be nigh-invincible in its vicinity.
Solus, instead, barely reached 1.54 meters (5’1″) and had a slim build that could reach the 50 (110 lbs) kilograms soaking wet. The impact would surely kill her and even if her bizarre armor allowed her to survive, the fall would finish the job.
‘I wonder what Lith would do now.’ Solus thought while watching Ykrah move in slow motion to her enhanced senses. ‘He would probably ask me to analyze our opponent, but between the Forbidden Sun, the white crystal, and the geyser, my mystical senses are blinded.’
She used a tier four spell War Mage spell, Blast Swarm, to probe the enemy defenses. The space surrounding the tower became filled with bright blue crystals the size of a finger.
The ice would pierce regular or low quality enchanted armor and stuck to everything it failed to pierce by generating a frost layer on the point of impact. Then, they would cause a small but focused explosion thanks to the blue flames hidden within the ice.
On the battlefield, a single Blast Swarm had the same effectiveness of a squadron of archers but a much greater versatility. The caster could spread or focus the crystals at will, allowing the mage to choose between taking down many small targets or a single dangerous enemy.
Blast Swarm wasn’t powerful enough to damage the tower so Solus had the crystals cover Ykrah from head to toe before detonating them. The King of Kolga didn’t slow down while he unleashed a fraction of the power stored inside the Hands.
A stream of energy protected his body, detaching the crystals before they could explode and then dispersing the shockwaves in every direction.
‘Fascinating! Even though it’s quite rough, the effect that guy created by circulating the world energy is the same of the energy field that we have been researching with Faluel ever since Inxialot understood the potential of our gravity ring.
‘While a construct is nothing but a physical object made of mana, an energy field is a moving flow of mana similar to aunt Loka’s Silver Spire spell that-‘ Her train of thought derailed when Ykrah suddenly accelerated beyond human limits, hitting her with the strength of a car.
The King of Kolga’s smirk disappeared when the shoulder charge pushed the puny woman off the roof’s edge and broke all the bones of his right arm and cracked his ribs. Hitting the girl had been akin to crashing against a rock.
Ykrah had no idea that with each chip of power Solus overtake, she regained part of her tower half’s weight and power. The sudden wave of pain forced him to stop, leaving him incapable of following up with a spell.
As for Solus, she had thought about Blinking to evade the attack at the last second, but her suggestion had fallen on deaf ears. Her own.
She was used to Lith taking care of the physical aspect of a fight while she comfortably analyzed the situation and prepared spells for every contingency. She had followed such a routine for almost two decades and had regained her body for less than ten hours.
Habits die hard, but the same couldn’t be said about Solus. If not for the extra mass that her still-recovering tower half bestowed upon her and the Scalewalker armor, the damage would have been enough to squash her body and force her back into a stone ring.
Solus cursed at herself as she fell from the tower. She flexed her shoulders to use her wings to break the fall since there was no time to conjure a flight spell.
Alas, her body was that of a human and she had no wings.
Those of the armor only served to protect Lith’s hybrid form during a fight and not leave his wings exposed as the old Skinwalker armor did.
Solus had just the time for one more curse and a tier one air spell to take off the brunt of the impact before reaching the ground.
‘Dammit, two idiotic mistakes in as many seconds. Well, not really idiotic, I never fought on my own before, correct?’ The silence in her head reminded Solus that Lith wasn’t with her.
‘Why do I keep blabbering instead of weaving spells?’ Solus thought as Ykrah dived feet first upon her like a bird of prey hunting an airheaded mouse.
This time she managed to Blink, but only to be struck by a tier five fire and darkness spell the moment she emerged from the exit point. Solus boosted the Scalewalker armor with her mana, but the Adamant enriched Orichalcum wasn’t enough to save her.
Not with her body already damaged from both the charge and the fall. Even though both her mana core and life force were cracked, the Forbidden Sun fueling them couldn’t bestow her great regenerative abilities as it did for Kolga’s people.
Solus’s body had yet to stabilize, making her physical prowess barely superior to that of an Awakened of her same core despite the Sun’s constant flow of energy. She needed to activate her barrier ring to resist the spell.
“What are you and how can you possibly be still alive?” Ykrah’s broken shoulder and arm had long regenerated, instead.
He had even activated darkness fusion to keep pain from breaking his focus again and to retain all the spells that he was weaving as they spoke. Now that the two were away from the Forbidden Sun and the white crystal, mystical senses worked again.
What Ykrah saw with Life Vision made no sense to him. The woman seemed to have a core less powerful than his own, but despite her injuries, its strength increased with every passing second.
On top of that, her life force looked brittle yet majestic at the same time. Her vitality not only surpassed that of all the magical beasts Ykrah kept in the breeding pens, but Solus also gobbled the energy of the Forbidden Sun, making it her own.
