Chapter 4338: Summoner Stone (Part 2)

"Nice trick, Lady Verhen, but I’ve been hit by those weird fires enough times to know how they work." The Storm Griffon smiled through a gritted beak. "Only the black Origin Flames dispel Life Maelstrom.

"All the others just hurt. And hurting is a game two can play!" He swung Dusk Wraith with a skill that was much more impressive when one faced the maces up close instead of from the safety of Lith’s finger.

Jorl pressed forward without giving Solus any opening or way out. One mace always followed the other, acting as a shield ready to intercept any counter.

Solus had recovered her human body for a little over a year and gained her Divine Beast form for a little over a week. Her combat skill was nowhere comparable to Jorl’s, and she knew it.

’Please, hold. Don’t break. Don’t break!’ Even with the Ears of Menadion’s help, she was weaker and much slower than the Storm Griffon.

Dusk Wraith was a Divine Beast-sized weapon, whereas the Fury and the Staff were not. When Solus was forced to block, she conjured a copy of the Fury that always shattered on impact, leaving her arm numb for a few seconds.

Each destroyed copy drained part of the Fury’s energy reserves, but it beat blocking with the real Fury and maybe losing it forever. Solus cast the Spirit Spell, Griffon Fetters, followed by her tier four Spirit Mastery spell, Diamond Cutter.

Jorl shattered the emerald chains by flexing his muscles and crushed the golden drill with a single blow of Dusk Wraith before looming over the helpless Solus.

"Is this all you can do? Pathetic." She tried to escape again, but Jorl cast a Griffon Fetters of his own that was now restricting her movements.

The mace hit her square in the stomach, shattering her armor, breaking her ribs, and squeezing the air out of her blood-filled lungs.

"One Verhen down. Only two more to go." He was still speaking when Dusk Wraith came down on Solus’ head like a meteor.

*** 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Akhton lunged at Lith the moment the explosion separated him from the rest of the group. The Bastet-Upyr considered him the greatest threat to his plans, and for a good reason.

No matter how unfavorable the odds he faced or the number of his enemies, Lith Verhen always came on top. There was no apparent rhyme or reason for that, but no one could argue with the results.

The records of Lith’s career spoke for themselves, and neither Akhton nor the cursed book could risk ending up as another notch on Lith’s resume.

"Dragons are notoriously weak to cold. What about Tiamats?" Uragar conjured one Frozen Wasteland after another, aiming them at the only retreat path that the combined attacks of Akhton and the Golems left Lith.

It was a tier five spell devised by an ancient World Tree to deal with greedy Dragons that had become widespread after one of the many fights between Chroniclers and Divine Beasts.

Lith had already faced it in the past and did all he could to avoid a direct hit, but Frozen Wasteland’s cold affected him even from a distance. The water element caused the temperature to drop by over a hundred degrees, and the air element removed the humidity in the area, one effect reinforcing the other.

Lith took a deep breath to conjure Origin Flames in his lungs, using them to warm himself from within while also pushing the heating system of the Voidwalker armor to its limits.

"Your spells are working." Salanoth nodded as she brought the Soldier Golems embossed with water crystal forward. "Verhen is like a house of cards. He only needs one push to fall."

Inside the hole created by the Zero Element, the Ring of Space controlled everything. She had no trouble releasing hundreds of wands and a few artifacts from her pocket dimension.

The alchemical tools released more ice bullets while chains and nails respectively restricted the Tiamat and pinned his limbs to the floor.

"You were a great opponent, but it was only a matter of time before luck turned her back on you." Uragar conjured Griffon Fetters infused with silver lightning, slamming the Tiamat against the floor.

"No dimensional magic and alone against us plus an army of Golems. What could you possibly do?" The Book of Knowledge smirked, and Lith’s whole world went black.

***

’We need to do something!’ Tista fought like the Demon she was, unleashing every spell stored in the Mouth of Menadion and conjuring all the Flames she had mastered. ’If we don’t help Lith and Solus, they are going to die!’

Yet she failed to take a single step forward.

The Golems coming from inside the keep and all over the defensive walls had surrounded the rest of the group. For each construct they destroyed, three more joined their ranks.

The Upyrs made everything worse by raining spells on Lith’s friends after infusing their mana with silver lightning. Protector didn’t have enough space to move, and Nalrond’s arrays shattered seconds after he conjured them.

Quylla helped him however she could, but the pressure rose with each passing second, and soon the dam of the combined Spirit Barriers would break.

’For the gods’ sake, stop yelling and listen!’ Nalrond used one of his constructs to grab Tista from behind and force her back into the battle formation. ’Use Swirling Wind. Now!’

’A Home Stone?’ Tista’s voice oozed disgust at the sight of the artifact in the Agni’s hand. ’Do you want to run away and leave them behind?’

’A Summoner Stone.’ Nalrond corrected her, and those three words were enough to pierce through the veil of her fury.

The Agni emptied his mana core to create several barriers and infused them with Spirit magic, buying enough time for the Hekate to shapeshift into her Indech Form. Tista had barely the time to clear the space between her wings from Salanoth’s energy signature when the Agni’s shelter collapsed.

His hard-light constructs only offered the Golems a bigger target, and the Upyrs had helped them by hitting the barriers hard with their Thunder Soul. Shards of light and a barrage of explosions sent Tista and the others flying.

Yet one brief instant was enough. Nalrond had kept the crystal pressed the entire time so that the Chaos sealed inside the Summoner Stone had pierced through the small opening created by Tista’s Swirling Wind.

A Chaos Steps didn’t bend space, it pierced through it. The enchantments of the Summoner Stone came out of the closest set of dimensional coordinates that Nalrond had marked, forming a second Chaos Steps.

Without the influence of the dimensional-sealing and space compressing arrays, the Steps covered hundreds of kilometers, reaching the first point recorded in the Summoner Stone.

From there, the enchantments found their way home and opened a Chaos Steps that crossed thousands of kilometers. They reappeared in the middle of the ocean and opened another, losing another chunk of their energy with every new Steps they conjured.

When the Summoner Stone’s enchantments reached the Arch Duchy of Essagor, there was barely any energy left to them.

Only enough to record the set of dimensional coordinates from which the signal had departed and transmit it to the artifact’s true master.

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