Lith had barely touched the ground that the Wyvern was back, diving on him like a bird of prey on a dumb rabbit.
Qisal had his wings spread open as he aimed his talons at Lith’s chest to impale him. At the same time, his tail whipped the air left and right with its thick bone spike, making it impossible for Lith to sidestep the talons and a raging river of bright blue Origin Flames erupted from Qisal’s mouth.
The Wyvern exploited his powerful body to its fullest, executing a three-pronged attack that left Lith no way out.
Dodging meant to be impaled by the tail, blocking to take the talons in full, and the Origin Flames would shatter any defense that he might conjure at the last second. Moving up or back would have been a fool’s errand since he had no way to beat the Wyvern in raw speed.
‘Fuck me sideways!’ Lith thought as he hurled a stream of blue-violet Origin Flames that met the opponent’s in mid-air.
His plan was to make Qisal bathe in both Flames, hoping that he would suffer enough damage to make him falter and allow Lith to tank the impact.
What happened, instead, was that the two Origin Flames ate at each other with the fury of natural enemies fighting for dominance. The conflicting energies generated a powerful conflagration that blew the two contestants in opposite directions.
“What the fuck?” They said in unison once they managed to stop tumbling on the ground by digging into the rock with their talons.
Qisal was annoyed and enraged. The violet-blue Flames had overpowered his own, dealing little damage to his body but a huge blow to his ego.
“What. The actual. Fuck?” He roared in outrage while looking at the violet bursts of light at the fringes of Lith’s aura.
Lith used that short respite to stop the bleeding of his shoulder blade that kept sapping his vitality. It was too big a wound for light fusion to heal it and there was no time for Invigoration either.
The Wyvern was already darting forward whereas Lith had yet to come to a halt. He didn’t have the focus to harmonize with the world energy while doing so many things at the same time.
Stopping his fall, healing, keeping an eye on the enemy, and weaving spells.
Qisal knew that if someone had taught Lith the secret of the violet core, he would have already achieved it. The colored bursts happened solely in the aura of those who managed to reach enlightenment on their own, without any guidance.
The idea that a runt who had yet to live half a century had beaten him to the punch and might have a bloodline stronger than his own, drove the Wyvern mad with fury. He went all-out and emitted a bright blue aura, determined to end the Duel quickly.
Lith waited for the enemy to come into the range of his spells, hoping that his mind would follow Qisal where his body couldn’t.
Alas, great minds think alike.
Lith unleashed his tier three Spirit Spell, Razor Net, at the same time when Qisal unleashed the tier five Light Mastery spell, Purge. It was infused with enough Spirit Magic to turn it into something new, to turn it into Emerald Purge.
Gadorf had been stopped before the spell could fully manifest, but this time Lith wasn’t so lucky. Purge would fill the air around the caster with a hail of huge nail-like constructs that struck at the enemy like a hammer and pierced like a rapier.
They were so densely packed that, to form them, the mage needed to drain the light element in their surroundings and distort it into an aurora borealis. Emerald Purge, however, was much worse.
Spirit magic would make the nails faster, increase the strength behind each blow, and more importantly, it would turn them into blades. The two spells clashed and Lith did all he could to increase the density of the Net but the difference in mana was too big.
He had planned on using the Spirit spell to block whatever Qisal had in mind and cut him to pieces. Razor Net had the toughness of earth magic, the sharpness and speed of air magic, and the destructive power of darkness, yet it was ripped to shreds.
The sheer number of blades from Emerald Purge overpowered the Spirit Spell, turning Lith into a pincushion.
‘Son of a gun!’ Solus thought while studying the situation with mana sense. ‘Qisal went all-out, depleting his mana with that single attack, and exploited Lith’s paranoia that forces him to always keep more than one spell at the ready.
‘Razor Net was actually stronger, but by using the light element as a crutch and by pouring an insane amount of energy into his spell, Qisal turned the tide of the clash. To make matters worse, he isn’t stopping to use Invigoration.
‘His plan was foolproof. Had Lith exhausted his mana as well, Qisal would have suffered minor damage due to the tier difference in spells and then defeated Lith thanks to his vastly superior physical prowess.
‘Qisal never meant to make this a battle of wits. His goal has been to win by using his superior aerial maneuverability and by exploiting the mass gap all along.’ Solus’s analysis was on point.
Without equipment and having both a bright blue core, the Wyvern knew that all he had to do to win was to exploit his natural advantages and his superior experience. He didn’t spend the past 300 years playing the lute, but fighting against worthy opponents.
Only a few swords from Emerald Purge had reached their target, but they were more than enough.
One pierced Lith’s chest in the middle, another his left shoulder, making his arm limp, while a third one nailed both his right hamstrings and calf to the ground, forcing him to kneel.
His three remaining wings had been shredded by the light blades’ fragments and emitted bursts of black flames non-stop.
“I can’t kill you, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t teach you a lesson.” Qisal said as another stream of Origin Flames burst out of his mouth.
He couldn’t afford to give Lith the time to use Invigoration or cast spells. Life Vision showed the Wyvern how despite his battered body, powerful mystical energies still coursed through the Wyrmling.
Now that Qisal had no mana left, getting too close would have been suicidal. Origin Flames, instead, were the perfect solution against an opponent too weak to dodge.
They required no mana and they would destroy anything that Lith might conjure before it could fully form.
“Idiot.” Lith coughed out a mouthful of the black flames that passed for blood in his hybrid body along with a burst of Origin Flames.
‘Shit! How could I forget about this?’ Qisal inwardly cursed at himself while the explosion caused by the conflicting flames separated them once more.
‘There’s just you and me in here, pal. The difference between us is that I’m not alone. I’m never alone.’ Lith thought while using the tier three Spirit Spell, Mother’s Embrace.
Emerald tendrils burst out of his wounds, shattering the hard-light constructs that pierced his body and healing his wounds at a speed visible to the naked eye. Mother’s Embrace used all the elements of creation, light, earth, and soft water, to conjure the best healing spell Lith had in his arsenal.
