A Vampire and a Lamia conjured their respective best tier five darkness spells, Skybreaker and Cruel Sun. Skybreaker unleashed a stream of black lightning bolts while Cruel Sun generated a sphere of black fire that would grow until it covered the entirety of the room.
The former was a fast attack capable of tracking its target, while the latter was slow but its power would kill anyone who wasn’t an undead bearing Night’s prism. No living being could withstand such heat and only a spawn could resist so much darkness magic.
This time, Balkor had to use Life Vision to find the focus points of two spells at once. He released a pulse of darkness magic that took control of Skybreaker and Cruel Sun, turning them against their creators.
“By my mother, are you stupid or what?” Night couldn’t afford to lose her Chosen ones so she shielded them with one of her defensive spells.
“Don’t use darkness magic. They are just humans with shitty equipment whereas you’re undead to whom I bestowed upon relics. Use them!”
Balkor kept manipulating the two spells, sending them to crash against Night’s defenses until all of their mana was exhausted. Manohar, instead, was completely ignoring the battle and focusing solely on his companion.
“Seriously, how the heck do you do it?” Both Magi had a violet core and had been gifted with a similar amount of talent, but Balkor had lived for a decade longer.
On top of that, being forced to do everything on his own, from preparing the equipment for his Valors to open the Warp arrays against the Griffon Kingdom, had given the polymath genius plenty of experience in all fields of magic.
Manohar was still obsessed with the light element and resorted to the White Griffon resources to do what he considered scut work.
A Doom Knight charged forward and suddenly Blinked behind Manohar. Dimensional magic allowed her to keep her momentum so that between the difference in physical prowess and her heavy armor, she would hit with the strength of a truck.
“He said to shut up! Can’t you see that I’m busy here?” The palm of the Avatar of Light erupted from the Mad Professor’s body, stopping the Doom Knight on her tracks and slamming her against a wall.
The construct seeped through the openings in her armor as if it was water, and once inside it shapeshifted into buzzsaws that sliced her body until they found the black prism.
The Doom Knight died even before her feet could touch the ground again.
“Enough! Get to safety, my Chosen. I’ll deal with the humans myself.” Night stood up, snarling in outrage.
‘During his first visit Manohar didn’t manage to kill a single one of my champions, yet now he killed Yuta in a split second. How is this possible?’ She thought.
The answer was that Manohar was known as the Mad Professor, not the Stupid one. Against unknown opponents, he would always save his strength in the case the worst happened.
All the light magic on Mogar was pointless if he was too dead to use it.
Now, however, his obsessive mind demanded answers. Usually looking at a spell once was enough for him to understand its underlying principles, but this time Manohar had no clue how Domination worked.
‘Not knowing is the foundation of research, whereas not understanding is the trademark of idiots and I’m no idiot!’ He thought.
However, even the Mad Professor’s thirst for knowledge had to make way for his survival instinct.
Unlike Dawn, Night had never been captured. Her armor wasn’t just a spawn shaped for the occasion but a powerful artifact, just like the spear that appeared between her hands.
The Black Rose and its Thorn were items she had crafted using the skills inherited from the best hosts she had inhabited over the centuries. Not only were they masterpieces, but she was also very skilled at using them.
“Dominate this!” Night lunged at Balkor without moving from her throne.
A pillar of darkness as fast and big as a freight train emerged from Thorn’s tip, forcing the god of death to dodge. There were so much mana and willpower stored in that simple attack that Domination was useless against it and so was avoiding it.
The pillar performed a sharp turn and chased its target, no forcing Balkor on the defense.
“Darkness magic imbued with kinetic energy? How the heck is it possible?” Even though the pillar kept bolting across the room like a frenzied wasp, Manohar only needed a glance to understand the trick behind it.
‘Spirit magic, you moron.’ Balkor thought while dodging the relentless onslaught. He had understood it from Beregor’s attack and employed the same principle to kill the Wraith.
Manohar with his human body couldn’t keep up for long, so he used his Avatar of Light to clash against the pillar and snuff it out.
“I’m afraid she has a point.” Manohar said. “That was just a lunge, yet to stop it I needed to spend half of a tier five spell’s mana. Her equipment is far better than ours.”
The god of healing had never relied on equipment for two reasons. The first was that he had never needed it to win, and the second was that usually everything the Kingdom gifted him with was jam-packed with trackers.
He had never felt so helpless before, not even against Thrud. Yet the difference didn’t lie in his current opponent’s might. The two women were almost matched in power and equipment whereas, against Thrud, Manohar had plenty of allies.
He was certain to have overcome the power gap between himself and the Mad Queen by learning silent magic, but reality seemed to differ.
“Surrender now, swear your loyalty to me, and you will live to replace the Chosen you have killed. Refuse and you’ll die.” Night swung her weapon twice, sending a pillar against each of her opponents.
The Magi managed to block the attacks, but Manohar’s Avatar of Light shattered for good and Balkor was pushed several meters back with his arms half rotten.
“I might die, but I’m never going to be anyone’s puppet! Ask the Royals!” Manohar snarled while his fingers traced dozens of runes at once.
“You’re wrong as always, Night.” Balkor was calm as light fusion healed his wounds and darkness fusion allowed him to ignore the pain. The energy mass he had conjured required surgical precision to be employed. “Death is not the end, just the beginning.”
‘How can a mortal quote my mother’s words?’ She thought, recognizing Baba Yaga’s first teaching.
“Light and darkness were never meant to be used separately. They are part of the whole, and the same applies to all elements. Baba Yaga made a huge mistake by splitting them between you and your siblings.” Balkor said.
“By doing that, she didn’t give birth to perfect being, only to perfect failures. You are no different from the Fallen races. A mistake that needs fixing.”
The mass of darkness magic surrounding Balkor exploded, forcing Night and Manohar to conjure their best shields to protect themselves from the raging storm of mana.
Contrary to their expectations, the spell suddenly imploded on Balkor as he took a few mana crystals and Orichalcum ingots out of his dimensional amulet. Darkness magic attacked the Skinwalker armor he was wearing, along with his Feather robe and the other ingredients he had conjured.
The spell had never been meant to hurt, only to destroy. It broke the enchanted items down to their molecular structure before revealing the light hidden inside the darkness.
