There was a reason why Lith had taken the Monocle off before the fight. He didn’t want the Tree to discover about Solus nor to put her at risk in the case his plan failed and his body turned into Chaos again.
Without Solus, Lith could exploit the full power of his Abomination form and discharge the Chaos resulting from any mistake he might make on the wood of the World Tree.
Renkar swept the Yggdrasill staff over War, collecting the traces of Chaos and amplifying them with Domination. The angry blade had already flooded the Eldritch’s remains with Lith’s energy signature thanks to its World Mirror skill, making the process easier.
The small drops of dark matter turned into a hail of tier four Chaos Arrows that chased Vareen like sharks after a blood trail. This time, however, the Eldritch knew what would happen so he conjured the tier five spell, Devouring Wall.
A black sphere of Chaos enveloped him, making him immune to such a weak attack.
Or so he thought until the sphere opened akin to an automated door in front of the Arrows, letting them through and hitting him square on the chest and head.
‘Nice use of Domination, kid. If I didn’t know about such an ability, I would have fallen for your trickery and believed that your spells had overpowered Vareen’s.’ The World Tree said with a chuckle.
‘Thank you for nothing, asshole. If you have the time to make comments, why are you here instead of sending reinforcements?’ Lith asked.
‘That’s exactly what I’ve done, you ungrateful runt.’ The Yggdrasill replied. ‘Help is already underway. I contacted Salaark the moment I saw Vareen. She should be there any minute now.’
‘We’ll be dead one minute from now!’ Lith could see with Life Vision that his tricks had managed to destroy the Eldritch, but his body was already reforming. ‘You know this guy so any advice on how to get out of here alive?’
‘Don’t die.’ The Tree said. ‘If you succeed, I’ll gladly have you as my guest to thoroughly analyze your body and skills.’
‘My six years old brother could have told me the same thing, you useless piece of wood!’ Lith replied while dodging a barrage of Chaos spells.
“Fine, I wanted to take you alive to make you talk, but there are a lot of things that I can learn from a corpse as well!” Vareen took the kid gloves off and his black core emitted an aura so powerful that it blinded even the Awakened’s mystical senses.
Eldritchs were the pinnacle of natural undead just like full-red blood-cored people were the pinnacle of Baba Yaga’s children, yet the difference in strength between them was enormous.
According to the rumors that Faluel had told Lith, black cores were even more powerful than white-cored Awakened when it came down to destructive abilities.
Vareen dashed forward, using the darkness as a cover to take out his enemies in one fell swoop. He moved so quickly that even Lith’s enhanced body couldn’t keep up with him.
Luckily for Lith, the unnatural darkness didn’t affect the Scalewalker armor’s Full Guard, which allowed him to Blink away the moment he perceived the enemy. Yet Vareen still managed to extend his claws in a lunge at Lith’s heart while he Warped away.
The Tiamat had no will to see what happened to his lesser Abomination form when the places where his vitals were supposed to be were destroyed nor to endanger War. He used the Yggdrasill staff to block, not giving a damn about the chatty tree.
The impact sent him flying away as soon as he came out of the Warp and left deep black marks in the Tree’s wood. Lith could now hear the Yggdrasill scream in pain as they fought the infection and kept it from spreading to the rest of the staff.
On the one hand, Lith had avoided a deadly strike and gotten further away from the enemy. On the other hand, however, he had compromised the staff and its ability to keep his focus.
Renkar felt the shift in the balance and tried to take over Lith’s body.
‘Why should I just play wingman when I can also get back to life in a body that possesses untold powers? Youth is wasted on the young.’ He thought as greed blinded him.
The sudden conflict slowed Lith down, allowing Vareen to find him and to launch a second attack that pierced through the lesser Abomination’s heart. Or better, it would have if Lith still had one.
Yet even his temporary lack of vital organs couldn’t stop the Eldritch’s corrupted life force from infecting him.
‘Do you want to live so badly? Then live, fucker!’ Lith and Aalejah sealed Renkar in the infected darkness before giving him enough life force to make it a separate being from Lith.
Renkar found himself out of Lith’s body as he wanted, but trapped in a deadly cage. He suffered so much pain as the Chaos devoured his new form that the soul gave up on life and moved on.
Lith had avoided the infection, but he had now a gaping hole in his chest. To make matters worse, losing such a big chunk of his body was akin to self-mutilation. The pain and the shock paralyzed him, forcing Lith to focus solely on keeping his body from fading away.
‘Don’t worry, I’m still here. Your lesser Abomination form is already going haywire. Go back to Tiamat as soon as I patch you up.’ Aalejah ignored the agonizing voice of the Tree coming from the staff and used what little mana she had left to treat his wounds.
‘Are you insane? Why did you come here? Now he can kill us both at the same time!’ The answer to Lith’s question came in the form of a tornado filled with air blades and ice spikes that sucked the darkness away while also trapping Vareen in its eye.
“Do you really think that a simple Frostmaw can-” A tier four penta-elemental Spirit Spell cut the Eldritch short.
Four emerald pillars struck at him from the front, back, above, and below, giving Phloria the exact coordinates to unleash a fifth pillar that erupted from Vareen’s chest.
‘No, I’m not insane. It’s just that your apprentice needed less than one minute.’ The elf replied as the tier five Battlemage spell, Bonegrinder, joined Frostmaw and Pinning Star before the Eldritch could even understand what was happening.
The darkness infused ceiling and ground rushed against the still trapped Abomination, generating a thunderclap every time they clashed. Then, a fourth, and fifth, and a sixth tier five spell appeared one after the other.
‘I was against four runts, not a trained army.’ Vareen thought as he was hit by the coordinated attack of the tier five spells and by a new tier four Spirit Spell. ‘Where do those spells come from and how can their mana not disrupt the destructive power of the others?
‘No matter how good their coordination is, such a perfect synchrony cannot be achieved even with a mind link.’
Vareen was right, even a mind link wouldn’t allow for such quick communication as to unleash so many spells without any pause nor creating a single opening for him to escape.
