Lith split the silver energy inside him into two identical halves, each forming a stable lightning ring. Solus took one and the silver ring moved inside her body without any discomfort since her energy signature was identical to Lith’s.
She combined her Domination with the Hands of Menadion to both keep the Life Maelstrom in check and amplify it as Lith had done, but with no success.
‘Fuck! What do you think is the difference between us?’ She asked.
‘Off the top of my head, a mana organ. My lungs and heart can naturally collect the world energy and ignite it with life force. For me, the hard part is suppressing the fire element and replacing it with a spark of the Life Maelstrom Valeron gave me.
‘For you, everything is hard.’ Lith took deep breaths, each one collecting great amounts of world energy yet only a small part turned into new Life Maelstrom.
If the energy signature of Valeron the Second became too dilute, the silver lightning would fade so Lith couldn’t just inject world energy at will. He also had to provide a spark of his own life force after purging it of his energy signature so that it would be assimilated by Valeron’s.
It added one layer of difficulty too many for someone who was attempting such a difficult procedure for the second time and once again during a battle.
Solus tried to replicate his technique with the emerald gem of the Hands but only one of the two gauntlets had it. The spark of life force flowed from one hand just to crash into the other which was incapable of channelling it.
‘I guess you are right.’ She inwardly sighed. ‘Still, it was worth a shot. Be careful out there. My safe word is the same as Bodya’s.’
‘It’s not funny!’ Lith grumbled and fire burst from under his scales. ‘Be careful as well and remember that our role here is to stall the Black Tide.’
‘I will.’ Solus jumped on the back of the Vagrash, wielding the Sage Staff in her left hand and the Fury in her right.
The Golem unfurled its wings and used a mix of gravity and air magic so that they could support its weight and that of its rider.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Inxialot’s bones were the first ones to make contact with the enemy. They bounced on the heads of the advancing army, ignored at first but quickly picked up as soon as the smell of the rotten meat that covered them reached the monsters’ noses.
The fallen creatures bit the flesh and twisted the bones to suck the marrow but both resisted every attempt to break them. Red light filled the empty sockets of the Lich King’s skull as his consciousness was dragged away from his mind lab.
“I was this close to substituting numbers with elemental runes and giving birth to magical calculations. This better be important, or else…” Inxialot looked around, seeing too many fangs, claws, and snarling faces for his taste.
His first thought went to his phylactery, afraid that Nero might be in similar circumstances. After feeling the presence of the cat and the vessel of the other half of his mana core at a safe distance, the King of Liches could focus on the threat at hand.
Or rather, at hands.
His bony fingers returned the grip on the monsters holding them and used the creatures as an anchor around which to rebuild his body. The monsters tried to resist the pull but touching a Lich was never a good idea.
The physical contact robbed them of their mana and life force which albeit providing Inxialot with little nourishment left the monsters too weak to fight. The King of Liches conjured his equipment along with two black cubes out of his dimensional amulet.
Their surface was inlaid with silver runes that hummed with power and formed on each face a delicate drawing depicting a ferocious battle. It was Inxialot’s way to mark an artifact and remember its use.
Too many had been stored away and then left to rot due to their maker forgetting the purpose of his various creations or even their existence. At first, Inxialot had the habit of activating them, but it often bore dire consequences.
Explosions marked his presence, forcing him to deal with those who came to investigate. On top of that, in order to test an artifact’s capabilities, the Lich King needed to imprint them first.
Many times Inxialot had discovered that he had no use for the nameless items he had stored inside his dimensional amulet simply because he was supposed to sell them.
He had lost clients and wasted priceless ingredients before caring enough about the issue to find a solution. Keeping a ledger was pointless since Inxialot would forget about its purpose and use it as a notebook for his experiments.
The first cube opened its dimensional subspace, releasing a mountain of skeletons whose flesh had been replaced with Orichalcum. Their right hand had been fused with an Adamant blade while the left with a shield.
The second cube, instead, released Inxialot’s Necromancy spell, Spare Parts. The magic imbued in the cube contained everything that the Lich had learned about swordsmanship from his victims.
Whenever a Lich fed upon an enemy, they would inherit their abilities until the stolen life force was spent or the Lich forgot about them. In Inxialot’s case, he had excised the extra life force whenever he fed upon a warrior and sealed it inside the cube while it was still fresh.
The Orichalcum stored and channeled the muscle memory stored inside Spare Parts while the darkness element flooded the skeletons, turning them into Dread Knights. The newborn undead retained most of the skills and magic mastery of their originals, making them a force to be reckoned with.
Also, Spare Parts made the undead see everyone but the other Dread Knights as Inxialot while the Lich King himself was invisible to their eyes. The undead fought against the monsters surrounding them with fury and an unquenchable thirst for revenge, reliving their final moments over and over.
For each Lich King they felled, ten more rose to take his place but the Dread Knights didn’t falter. Their rage was unending and they would keep fighting until the final iota of the power animating them was spent.
“What am I supposed to do, exactly?” Inxialot stood calmly between the Dread Knights, waiting for instructions before starting to prepare his spells.
“To host a party.” Raagu snarled, her voice coated with sarcasm.
“Really?” He gasped in shock as the ground below his feet turned into mud from the monster blood spilled by the unwitting allies.
“No, you idiot! You are inside a monster tide. Keep them busy until I tell you to fall back.” The human representative hung up the call and kept flying back.
She had one magic circle in front of each of her fingers plus one behind her back. Raagu unleashed a magical formation just to wave another immediately after. Each array had the power of multiple tier five spells combined together and it affected the entire area it covered.
Yet not only would the magical formations last solely a couple of seconds, but also if not for her flight spell, Raagu would have been killed one hundred times already.
