At the same time, air magic conjured concussive blasts on impact whose shockwaves ravaged their victims’ internal organs.
The three colossal beasts collapsed like felled trees, spitting out mouthfuls of blood. The cold sapped their strength, even quenching Lith’s inner fire while the internal bleeding they suffered sealed Invigoration.
‘Bring the storm!’ The elves answered M’Rael’s second call by flooding the hill with water that seeped down the collapsed caves and drenched everyone.
It was then that a new volley of arrows infused with the spell Frozen Lightning struck. The water acted as a conductor for the electricity, sending everyone into a seizure that made them lose their focus and control over their bodies.
The few spells Quylla and the others had prepared were gone and as soon as the bolts of lightning were discharged, the water turned into ice. The three Wyrms were waist-deep in ice while everyone else was trapped in the frozen waters like insects in amber.
‘Don’t falter. Don’t rejoice. Don’t lower your guard.’ M’Rael kept looking left and right with Soul Vision to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. ‘The Tiamat is our main goal, but if we let even one of his allies slip away, we’re done for.
‘An Awakened only need one breath ti-‘ The appearance of what looked like an enraged goddess cut him short.
Friya appeared amid the enemy lines surrounded by the blue aura of Full Guard and the golden-emerald sparkles of the Spirit version of Dimensional Ruler.
M’Rael knew about Nalrond’s presence from the Tree. He was the one who had led the group during the previous visit so he was bound to have accompanied his good friend Verhen to the Fringe as well.
It was the reason he had used Soul Vision to track the movements of the Rezar. Cloaking devices could fool Life Vision but they were useless against Soul Vision.
Nalrond knew about the elves’ bloodline abilities so he had taken Friya with him and swam through the collapsing ground in the opposite direction from which the waves of mana came.
Then, she had opened a Spirit Steps after checking with her Scope spell where she could deal the most damage in the shortest time.
Dreadnought, her rapier, unleashed pulses of darkness and light magic, forcing the elves to heal from the damage her spells and blade inflicted. The combined effect drained so much of their vitality that even those who didn’t faint were no longer able to fight.
Thundercrash, the rail gun, was true to its name, unleashing a single devastating projectile that pierced through the lined-up elves like they were paper while the sonic boom it produced made the sensitive ears of everyone around Friya bleed.
A regular human would have “just” had their eardrum burst and lost their sense of balance, but the elven hearing was much better. The shock from the deafening noise followed by the blinding pain made them roll their eyes back as their mouths foamed.
The area Friya had Warped to was clear in a single blast, but she was far from done.
There were still many enemy units standing and she still had many tricks in her hat.
She spread her fingers, releasing two spells from each of the five magic-holding rings she wore. They were all made by Lith and could store even two different spells at the same time.
Then, she had the emerald-golden sparkles coalesce in the middle of the enemy ranks, forming a Steps from which a flurry of red-hot scales and claws emerged. Nalrond finally had a Featherwalker armor of his own that Orion had gifted him.
The god of the forge had always loved his adoptive daughter, but after Phloria’s death, he had become more generous toward his surviving children and utterly feral in his creations.
The lessons about true magic only made Orion’s understanding of the Forgemastering arts deeper and survival for his enemies harder.
Nalrond’s armor was equipped with spiked gauntlets that not only wrapped his natural claws in Adamant but that could also fuse among themselves to become shields and extend forward into spears.
The scales covering the armor, instead, were capable of adjusting their own angle upon hit and converting the heat released by the Rezar’s spells into high-frequency vibrations, lessening the impact of any physical attack.
To make matters worse, the couple hadn’t come alone. An army of light swarmed out of the Steps, striking along with Nalrond in an orderly spear formation with him at the tip.
He was no Lith, but Nalrond had honed his Light Mastery skills since a young age and after failing to merge his two essences, he had worked hard to make up for the limits of his two blue cores.
The constructs were no Demons either, but they were relentless, felt no pain, and could detonate themselves just to reform a second later. All they needed was Nalrond’s mana and focus and thanks to the armor he had plenty of both.
‘What the heck is going on?’ M’Rael was shocked to see three units collapse like houses of cards.
The Rezar’s claws cut through armored warriors like butter while Friya kept jumping around, detonating her own exit and entry points along with the dimensional spells of whoever tried to chase after her.
On paper, she and Nalrond were no different from the elves since they were also stuck at the blue core.
The difference lay in their equipment.
While the inhabitants of Setraliie lacked Origin Flames for ages and were unaware of the wonders shared by the Rune Magus, Orion had poured the fruits of the Ernas, the Royal Forgemasters, and his own personal techniques into the Adamant.
It was as if the elves were trying to use a wooden shield to stop a machine gun.
Even with the various tier four and five spells that they had temporarily imbued in their equipment thanks to their bloodline abilities, it was only thanks to their vastly superior numbers that their formation was still holding.
‘Don’t be afraid!’ The High Chancellor said. ‘Their physical and magical prowess is no different from our own. Use your superior speed to dodge their attacks and teamwork to corner them. In the end, there’s just two of them!’
He was right, but also wrong.
With one unit down and two more busy dealing with the enemy’s strike team, the intensity of the volley of arrows had decreased.
Lith needed one breath to bring the world energy to his heart and ignite it into Origin Flames. The heat they produced melted the mystical ice, allowing his trapped friends to escape from the death trap.
The water quickly turned hot, revitalizing the other two Wyrms that jumped out of the massive puddle and used chore magic to shake off the residual water.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Morok took flight thanks to his energy wings while doing his best to purge Quylla’s lungs from the water that was drowning her.
He had yet to get accustomed to his new, massive body let alone flying without spells. The elves, instead, were master archers and could hit a fly from one hundred meters (328′) of distance.
Despite his best evasive maneuvres, one arrow reached him unnoticed in the chaos of battle.
