When the Hydra opened his third mouth to talk, using the other two to keep the opponent in place, he also hurled a burst of blue-violet fire that hit the Firstborn from almost point-blank range.
‘Since when can Hydras use Origin Flames?’ Vladion and the others thought in unison.
Lith unsheathed War to go all-out right off the bat. According to Solus, between their equipment and their unusual powers, those Beasts might be able to match his strength.
The Harpy, who had the chest and face of a woman and the rest of the body of a humanoid bird, wielded twin scimitars with both her hands and feet. The suit of Orichalcum armor she wore didn’t hinder her movements nor that of the feathered wings on her back, allowing her to fly with the grace of a butterfly.
‘A Harpy is a lesser Garuda. If the Hydra can use Origin Flames like a Dragon, then what can the Harpy do like a Garuda?’ Lith asked while their swords clashed, but Solus had no answer to offer him.
The creature was over four meters (13’2″) tall but thanks to his hybrid form and the momentum from the charge, Lith managed to push her back with the sheer might of the impact.
“You’re truly unlucky, child. Your Dragon scent is drowned in human weakness, making you just a filthy hybrid. You’re useless to us, otherwise you might have lived a bit longer.” She said with a smug grin.
She had blocked War by holding the curved blades in her hands into a X shape, using them as a hook to trap Lith while the scimitars in her feet slashed at his defenseless lower body.
The Wyrmling didn’t waste time with quips, letting his magic do the talking. A tier five Final Sunset erupted from his body, engulfing the fighters in a searing sphere of black flames that hurt only the Harpy.
At the same time, he unleashed the tier two Spirit Magic spell, Magic Missiles. Five darts of emerald energy erupted from Lith’s open eyes and went straight for the Harpy’s vitals.
Her eyes, throat, and ears were exposed. Final Sunset offered the Missiles the perfect cover and even in the case the armor protected her head as well, it wouldn’t do much against the Spirit Spell’s blunt-force attack.
Much to Lith’s surprise, the Harpy laughed at her impending death as if it was the best joke ever. Then, she repelled both the flames and the Missiles with a single flap of her armored wings.
Her whole body was brimming with an energy that made Fusion Magic look like a parlor trick. To make matters worse, that same energy coursed through her equipment as well, making the Orichalcum as good as Adamant and her scimitars capable of chipping War.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Lith asked after freeing the blade from the cruel vise that had opened small cracks along War’s surface.
‘It’s the same power that the Abomination Griffon and Garuda hybrids used against Night.’ Solus said.
‘Okay, and what does it do?’
‘Beats me.’ Solus shrugged.
Ignorance was truly the greatest enemy. Neither of them had ever heard of Life Maelstrom so they could only improvise and hope.
‘Gods, I love the Scalewalker armor so much that I could kiss it.’ Solus shapeshifted into her glove form, covering Lith’s arms up to their elbow.
Another of the features of the Scalewalker armor was the ability to fully cover not only Lith’s hybrid body, but also to hide Solus’s battle forms from sight, disguising her as a part of the armor.
The right glove had now five gems while the left had now two of them, making them still pale in comparison with the Hands of Menadion. Yet from her fight with the King of Kolga, Solus had learned a nifty trick.
The gloves started to suck the surrounding world energy in, weakening the Life Maelstrom and strengthening Lith at the same time.
‘Let’s give her a nasty surprise of our own!’ She said as Lith opened his maw and released a violet pillar of Origin Flames.
“The fuck?” The smile disappeared from the Harpy’s face as her strength flickered and she took the Flames square on her chest, incapable of dodging them in time.
Meanwhile, Nyka and Scarlett had joined the fray as well. The Scorpicore took point, using a mind link to share with her goddaughter all the information that she had acquired thanks to the Eyes.
‘Life Maelstrom is way more problematic than Origin Flames in battle because it can both hurt the enemy and enhance its user on multiple levels. I’ll take the Sphinx, you deal with the Roc. Try not to spill her blood.
‘If she’s like a Phoenix, the more wounded she gets, the more troublesome she’ll become.’
‘How can you ask a Vampire to not shed blood?’ Nyka whined as she changed her strategy according to Scarlett’s pointers.
As if the Roc had been part of the telepathic conversation as well, she turned the brown feathers that covered her eagle-like body into a mass of fiery Origin Flames. They were the perfect means of attack and defense at the same time.
The Vampire would suffer damage whenever she struck whereas the Roc’s physical attacks would now damage not only Nyka’s body, but also her mana and her life force.
“Hello, cat.” Said Pretion the Sphinx with a smug grin on his face. Sphinxes looked like Griffons, but instead of the body of a lion they had that of a tiger and their face and chest had humanoid features.
Also, they had a long golden mane that resembled black striped hair, rainbow-colored feathered wings, and several poisoned quills at the end of their tail.
“Hello, lunch.” Scarlett replied.
Despite their feral appearance, Sphinxes were both smaller and weaker than Griffons. Their size matched that of an Awakened Scorpicore and the only thing they had inherited from Tyris was the ability to Dominate all of the elements.
Without a teacher, however, such ability was impossible to discover and non-Awakened Sphinxes still believed that their bloodline had no special power.
Pretion roared in outrage as silver bolts of lightning coursed through his body, enhancing the tier five spell, Collapsing Moon, to a tower tier level.
‘Me and my big mouth! Never taunt unknown enemies, dumbass.’ Scarlett thought while activating the defensive Spirit Spell stored inside her necklace.
Collapsing Moon was a mix of air and earth magic, creating the next best thing to gravity magic by generating powerful electromagnetic fields. They weren’t as destructive as distorted gravity fields, but they were much more manageable.
Life Maelstrom allowed Pretion to add a third element, water, that lowered the temperature of the magnetite and turned it into a superconductor. It also tripled the mana efficiency of the spell, lowering its requirements and bringing it to the level of a real gravity spell.
On the other side of the battlefield, the Hydra kept breathing Origin Flames non-stop from his three mouths by using the lungs that the heads shared to draw enough air for all of them.
“Seriously? Grabbing a Vampire might be a good move in a bard’s tale, but in real life, it’s the worst plan ever.” Vladion took the full brunt of the damage without even bothering to defend himself.
Sure, the Hydra had an outstanding physical strength but he was the Firstborn Vampire.
