“Begone!” Lith screamed at Rizo while using his wings to cover his arms, creating a multi-layered protection to stop the incoming slash.
Rizo laughed at the monster’s stupidity, this way he could kill all three of them in one fell swoop. He activated the powers of his Eternal Blade, fueling them with an enormous amount of the power that the Reactor still had left.
The Odi’s masterpiece was now surrounded by a white aura, strong enough to literally cut the air in front of it and even to split matter down to an atomic level. Lith’s black wings evaporated, unable even to withstand the intense heat and power the Eternal Blade emitted.
‘Wait! Why are the wings black?’ Guuna pointed out. She was a genius on Solus’s level, so she couldn’t possibly miss what was happening.
‘What the heck are you saying? This Scourge has always been red and black!’ Rizo ignored her remark, putting all of his weight and focus behind the strike.
‘The monster, yes, but his armor was silver! Where is its armor?’ Guuna had noticed that Lith’s wings were back to being pitch-black, only made of flesh and bone.
The answer to her question came in the form of a silvery sound as the Eternal Blade was pushed away by an unstoppable force. Rizo could only curse at his stupidity when he saw that the armor wasn’t the only thing to have disappeared.
The arm protector was gone as well and, in their stead, there was a silver bastard sword between Lith’s hands. Its shape reminded Phloria of the Gatekeeper, but it was clearly made of Orichalcum and had a green and a yellow mana crystal on its hilt instead of two blue crystals.
Lith had made Solus’s stone body take the form of his once prized blade and given her the entirety of the Skinwalker armor to protect her from harm. As the final step, by injecting his mana inside the armor, he gave to the makeshift weapon the same properties of mana boosted Orichalcum.
Yet Solus was more than what even the Gatekeeper once was. Not only could she channel Lith’s elemental fusion, but also add her own, further enhancing all the blade’s and Orichalcum’s properties.
The Adamant alloy was semi-liquid, so no matter how many times the Eternal blade’s aura pushed the liquid metal aside, new Orichalcum kept flowing to replace the missing parts while its energy field clashed with Rizo’s weapon.
Lith’s strength plus Solus’s while combining their fusion magic was enough to almost rip the Eternal Blade off Rizo’s hands. Both blades were now above their masters’ heads, but only one of the fighters still had a firm grip and both hands on his weapon’s hilt.
Lith’s body was wounded and battered, his mana almost depleted.
Too long had passed from the last time he had used Invigoration and even more since he had actually slept. Yet thoughts of his broken existence back on Earth were filling every corner of Lith’s mind.
Almost losing Solus had reopened all of his old wounds. It had reminded him of the differences between the loveless world, devoid of anything worth living for, that he had left behind and Mogar, which was filled with people who needed him.
Rizo was now defenseless from his midriff to his chin, yet it wouldn’t last for long. Lith moved his blade in a downward diagonal slash, to cut Rizo from his right shoulder to his left hip.
Even if with only one hand, Rizo managed to strike at the Soluskeeper with his own blade, preventing the cut from being deep by pushing the edge down and away before it could pierce his organs.
With his other hand, Rizo imitated the spell that Jiira had previously used and emitted from his palm a red beam of concentrated first magic aimed at Lith’s heart.
‘If the striking the head doesn’t work, this thing must be like a vampire.’ Rizo thought. ‘Burning his heart should do the trick.’
The green array made the beam too fast and powerful to be dodged, not that Lith would have done it even if he could. Rizo had almost taken Solus away from him, Lith wouldn’t let anything happen to Phloria or Quylla.
‘No matter how powerful, that thing it’s still fucking chore magic!’ Lith thought as his red eye burned with mana of the same color, infusing both Solus and the enemy’s spell. The red light born from the eye tilted the beam enough that his blade’s aura was enough to push it aside.
Lith adjusted his grip on the Soluskeeper, following the motion from the previous attack to draw it near his chest in a horizontal stance and then lunged at the enemy. The combined beam parry and sword stab took Rizo by surprise.
He tried to deflect the Soluskeeper again, but his one-handed grip was too weak compared to Lith’s double-handed form. Lith’s blade pierced his chest, forcing Rizo to fly back to not be impaled.
‘Stick to what you know, you moron!’ Guuna scolded him. ‘You’re no mage, your control over first magic is pathetic at best and that thing has three eyes flaring with mana. Judging by their colors, you have to avoid fire, darkness, and water magic.’
‘What do you want me to do, then? Heal him?’ Rizo rebuked while a jet stream of Origin Flames tried to strike at him, only to be stopped by both the God’s Will array and a bolt of thunder.
‘No, you idiot! Use your damn blade and the advantage that having hostages gives you. He stood still to defend the women before so…’ She stopped the moment she noticed that Quylla and Phloria hadn’t remained idly.
They had used Lith’s cover to get out of the array and free him from the need to fight inside the magical formation.
‘Damn! Why am I the only one who is partnered with idiots?’ Guuna thought.
Lith followed his enemy and now that everyone was out of the array, God’s Will was reduced to be just a tacky decoration on the floor. Rizo used the thunderbolt from his blade again, but without the array, it was just a peak tier three spell that Lith deflected with a flick of his blade.
Once the two men were engaged again in close quarters combat, the difference in weapons soon become overwhelming. Just like the Skinwalker armor protecting her, Solus had no definite shape.
She adapted after each clash, making the parts of the blade that Lith used to block thicker at the right moment and shapeshifting it to be shaper and more curved whenever a hit connected, causing a deeper wound.
Rizo had a hard time following the Soluskeeper’s movements, mostly because the blade kept changing its form, making it hard for him to hit its tip to easily deflect an attack.
‘Fist it was double-edged, then single-edged, and now it’s a goddamned curved sword! What the heck of a weapon is that?’ Rizo had to predict both the movements of the Soluskeeper and its wielder, who despite being less skilled than the blade master had a vastly superior physical prowess.
Quylla didn’t understand anything of what was happening, so she focused on Lith’s non yellow eyes and the enemy’s array, trying to find a way to help her friend. Phloria instead was in awe for his performance.
She had often heard the term “being one with the sword” but it was the first time she was actually seeing it. Solus wasn’t just a powerful magical artifact, it was also part of Lith’s body, allowing him to bring all of his techniques to a new peak.
