War needed to hit a Skeletal Knight once to disperse the darkness that animated it, but only if Solus managed to make the blade get past the protections and touch the corpse.
She already had trouble moving with her human body, let alone while being forced to puppeteer an oversized armor.
“I hate undead!” She roared as no matter how hard she hit them with the Sage Staff, the Skeletal Knight would keep getting up and fighting until all of their limbs had been destroyed.
“Fall back, Major!” Captain Eman was surprised by how feminine Lith’s voice sounded from time to time. “You are already tired from the previous fight and need to rest. We’ll cover your escape!”
The officer unleashed the tier five spell, Dark Star, generating a pillar of darkness that descended from above and engulfed the Skeletal Knights surrounding them. Darkness magic was the origin and the bane of the undead, quickly turning them into ashes.
“And leave you guys behind? Never!” Solus blocked Quaron’s attempt to Blink past the Dark Star and inside her defenses by putting a shield of light right in front of his exit point.
He slammed his face hard against the construct and tumbled on the ground without even knowing what had gone wrong. The Ranger had tried to Blink behind her back, unaware that Solus’s mana sense could see all around her.
She pointed at his position and the Captains opened fire with their wands but Quaron conjured an earth shield to defend himself before Blinking away to escape from the Demons that had encircled him.
‘If only I could use Invigoration like a true Awakened, I would have impaled him on a tier five spirit spell!’ Solus thought while the soldiers complimented “Lith” for his impeccable timing and leadership.
Usually, a deep blue mana core would have been capable of casting several powerful spells before needing rest but her case was different. Her cracked core leaked energy by the second and keeping her physical form caused Solus great pain.
Her life force was cracked as well and it crumbled faster with each move that she made. Even with the aid of the Sage Staff, focusing on a spell drained a lot of her focus.
To make matters worse, not only was she still unable to cast spells with her body due to the lack of auxiliary cores, but she also couldn’t afford to go all out. If her body disappeared, leaving behind an empty suit of armor, Lith’s cover would be blown.
The Skeletal Knights outnumbered the Demons ten to one and with each mage that fell, with each shadow that faded because Lith was too far away to infuse them with new strength, the situation grew direr.
A small unit of undead managed to flank Solus and strike at her constructs. They got past the shattered shields before she could reform them, separating Solus from the Captains by alternating feints and darkness spells.
‘This doesn’t make any sense. Skeletal Knights are supposed to be incapable of such clever thinking without- Oh shit!’ Only then did she notice that Quaron had ceased his attack to direct the battle from a safe distance.
As Syrook’s Harbinger, he had access to most of his bloodline abilities, including control over the undead conjured by Nether Gate.
Solus Blinked to blindside Ranger, but the moment Quaron saw the dimensional energy gather, he turned around and put all of his weight behind a lunge aimed at the heart of his hated enemy.
Metal clashed with metal and enchantment with enchantment until his glaive pierced through a wailing Skeletal Knight.
“What the fuck?”
“Nothing personal, kid.” A voice said from behind his back, making him shudder.
‘He must have Blinked the undead first as a decoy! Too bad Verhen forgot that my weapon has blades at both ends.’ He thought while shifting his body weight and reversing the grip on the polearm to strike at the source of the voice.
This time, it hit only air.
When Quaron turned around, Solus was still where he had seen her a few seconds ago. Her tier four Light Mastery spell, Stingray, however, was right in front of him
She had simply used the dimensional door to carry a small cantrip and make him think that she had moved while she had used that time to weave a spell instead.
The construct resembled a huge multi faceted sphere akin to a disco ball the size of an SUV. Quaron expected it to shapeshift into a more dangerous form the moment it came close enough so he attacked it with a barrage of low tier spells.
Such a clumsy form made Stingray an easy target and if he managed to weaken the construct before its activation, he would regain the initiative.
Quaron conjured one tier three spell after the other, exploiting their fast casting time to make up for quality with quantity. Unfortunately for him, Stingray wasn’t a construct so much as a carrier.
The moment that the sphere got close enough to its mark, it released from each of its facets the equivalent of a tier three Light Mastery spell. The hail of golden beams of light pierced through the elemental spells and then filled the area around the Ranger.
Only a few managed to hit him while the rest opened holes in the ground, making Quaron’s footing uneven.
‘That’s the worst waste of mana I’ve ever seen. My armor may be weakened but it can take much more than this before-‘ Instead of disappearing after the initial burst, the rays of light remained fixed in place and adjusted their trajectory to converge on him.
Quaron Blinked away, only to discover that nothing had changed aside from his position.
Solus had waited to activate Stingray because Light Mastery spells lost their firepower with distance and because by placing it in the middle of Quaron’s Blinking range, Stingray made dimensional magic useless.
On top of that, part of the Light Beams surrounding him had turned into hard-light constructs, limiting his movements and making it impossible for him to fly away. Everything else poured on him, hitting Quaron akin to a swarm of incandescent drills.
The Ranger Blinked again to gain the moment of respite he needed to take a deep breath. Mana sense showed Solus where he would reappear and she adjusted Stingray’s line of fire accordingly.
Yet this time Quaron welcomed her spell with a burst of bright blue Origin Flames that ate at the incoming beams of light, working their way up to the core of the spell. Solus used part of the energy stored in her spell to put out the flames but Quaron simply breathed more.
Stingray collapsed, leaving the two contestants far away enough from each other to use Invigoration yet only one of them could actually do it.
‘Shit! I hoped that he would rush at me while we are both down on mana. I can’t last for much longer.’ She thought while heavily panting.
Rangers were used to working alone and had often to fight tribes of monsters or groups of bandits. Those who charged in blindly rarely lived long. Quaron had noticed how after their fight “Verhen’s” power had drastically dropped.
At first, he had put pressure on Solus to keep her from using Invigoration, yet time and time again she didn’t even when she had the opportunity.
