“Same. The size and territorial advantage can only do so much if you don’t know how to exploit them properly.” Salaark nodded.
“I bet on Tyris as well. Tyris may be smaller, but I don’t see Fenagar’s slow ass put up with so much enthusiasm.” Zagran the Garuda pointed at the difference in killing intent.
Her fury made Tyris shine like a sun whereas the Leviathan had nothing but his wounded pride to fuel his aura.
“I’ll join the bandwagon. Even though I don’t like her one bit, I’m the first to admit that her fists hurt beyond imagination.” Roghar the Fenrir touched his chest, almost expecting the old wound to ache again.
“There’s no point betting if no one backs Fenagar. Unless we bet on the duration of the fight.” Leegaain said. “All considered, I predict Tyris winning in about an hour.”
“An hour is too much. With all that water and earth, she can’t use air properly, halving her fighting prowess. Either she wins in half an hour or she doesn’t win at all.” Zagran said
“As someone who has fought and lost to her in the past, I can tell you’re underestimating Tyris too much. She needs but one hit to send Fenagar flying and change the location of the fight. Once on the mainland, he’s done. Fifteen minutes tops.” Roghar said.
“My money on her winning before the three minutes count.” Salaark’s words flabbergasted the others. “Ever since Valeron died, the only way I had to drag her out of her lair was a friendly spar. She never managed to beat me, but she still got more battle experience than anyone else here. Zagran and I excluded, of course.”
***
City of Kolga, now.
‘Tista finding that mana geyser has been a stroke of luck. I couldn’t have prepared so many alchemic tools so fast with the low output of world energy that Reghia provides the tower with.’ Lith thought.
His intervention had allowed Solus to fight Ykrah one on one, but it had also put Lith at great disadvantage. War was useless against enemies that regenerated so fast that any cut he inflicted them healed as soon as the blade’s edge moved away.
Its Counter Flow ability prevented the healing and inflicted a huge deal of pain, but it also required War to be stuck inside a single opponent. Lith had no idea how long it would take a Kolgan to die that way and even if they did, it would make him little good.
Only his touch would instantly kill the people fueled by the Forbidden Sun and deplete its energies. Any other method would just return the energy that the ritual imbued their bodies with at birth and strengthen the remaining opponents.
Rem had mentioned the regenerating abilities of the inhabitants of Kolga and Lith had prepared accordingly. What he couldn’t have predicted, not even in his most paranoid fits, was that Solus would regain her body and leave his side.
Just like she lacked his combat prowess, Lith lacked Solus’s tactical mind to face so many enemies while his clock ticked much faster than usual. Without Solus, his Abomination side protected him from the poisonous life force of Kolga, but it left his mana core exposed.
Being so close to the Forbidden Sun put a huge burden even to his bright blue core and with each spell he cast, the mana poisoning would only get worse. Luckily for him, alchemical tools required no mana.
The Kolgans sneered at the green pine cones that the Wyrmling threw at them as if they were candies. Some even grabbed them in mid-air and attempted to store them inside their dimensional amulets.
Kolgans knew about pine nuts solely from the books and hoped that they would taste as good as the legends said.
Except they weren’t pine cones. Anyone from Earth would have recognized the grenades and tried to get to safety, yet it would have been an equally foolish move. The weapons Lith had prepared had no timer and triggered on contact, exploding at the slightest vibration.
He kept a wind barrier around himself to deflect the small stones that the fire magic stored within the grenades projected in every direction. The explosion gave the earth magic projectiles the speed they needed to pierce through the enchanted armor of the Kolgans.
‘Fuck me sideways!’ Lith thought while watching the injuries his weapons inflicted heal at a speed visible to the naked eye and the shrapnel getting expelled from the bodies of his victims.
‘Step 1 failed. Time to see if step 2 was worth the effort.’ He thought.
The stone projectiles were just a carrier to bring their filling past the gravity sheath of the magical protections. The explosion weakened the shell and the impact did the rest, releasing the white phosphorus inside the Kolgans’ bodies.
The chemical compound dehydrated their fluids to produce phosphoric acid and burn them alive from the inside. Despite their regenerative abilities, the white phosphorus would continue to melt their flesh, leaving them crippled by pain and removing them from the battlefield.
Thanks to the Forbidden Sun it wouldn’t be enough to kill them, but Lith hoped it would buy the time they needed to retrieve the Hands of Menadion.
The second wave of Kolgans followed by several Warp Steps letting through several soldiers better equipped than the citizens nipped his hopes in the bud.
‘Not only producing white phosphorus is hard since I had to find and process everything from scratch, but it’s also a natural fire that becomes pointless against armor powerful enough to resist the shrapnel.
‘That’s why I planned to use them as a means to cover our retreat, not as one of offense against a frigging army!’ Lith opened his pocket dimension again, causing what looked like slightly curved black tiles to fall on the ground in front of him.
The Kolgans stopped their advance, conjuring shields of earth to protect themselves from whatever trickery the Wyrmling had in mind, yet nothing happened. The black tiles kept piling onto each other, forming a makeshift small tower around Lith.
The moment the soldiers took down their shields to unleash a barrage of spells against their self-trapped enemy, Lith snapped his fingers, sending the signals that triggered the Claymores mines.
The explosions sent countless stone projectiles infused with darkness magic in every direction. Their momentum was so great that even the few that had the presence of mind to conjure a protection didn’t escape the onslaught.
The rocks simply bounced around like pinballs, following unpredictable trajectories that allowed them to hit their victims even from behind and turn them into unliving swiss cheese. Darkness magic temporarily negated their regenerative abilities, turning their immortality into a curse.
Amid the black storm, only the Wyrmling stood unscathed.
Usually, Alchemical tools would damage even their user because fueled by foreign mana, but Lith was both their user and their maker. They had all been infused with his own mana, making him immune to their effect.
He exploited the chaos and the fear that the darkness bullets caused to kill as many soldiers as he could in the shortest time possible. Yet it wasn’t enough.
Each volley of alchemical tools would only buy him a few seconds and after their first use they lost the element of surprise and most of their usefulness.
