"There's no point in denying it." Morok said. "Between your fancy glove and all of your trinkets, I would have bought your act if it wasn't for your smell, brother. You need to fix that."
"How did you kill the Golem?" Lith repeated his question. He preferred to avoid explaining that he could do nothing about it. Unlike Morok, he didn't just shapeshift, he had two different life forces with a unique smell.
"My old man refused to Awaken me, but at least he gave me a nice gift." Morok juggled with his weapons before sheathing them. "They can absorb and enhance the power of my eyes, giving me plenty of tricks.
"Balors are losers compared to Tyrants, we evolved correctly and it's only a matter of time before we outmatch them in every aspect." His smile was full of spite, pronouncing the name of their rival species as if it was poison.
"Don't get startled, I'm not a Balor." Lith said while assuming his hybrid form.
"What the fuck?" Even though he had been forewarned, Morok jumped back, unsheathing his blades. "Was your father a Dragon who mated with a Balor or was it the other way around?"
"I don't know what I am." Lith replied. His blue eye remained open for a few seconds before closing shut.
"You got abandoned, huh? Is that why you have the hots for human women?"
"What?" Lith snarled, a puff of black smoke came out from his mouth.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of." Morok raised his hands in a sign of apology. "My mom kicked out both me and my old man when she discovered the truth. I've got mommy issues too. Why do you think I became a Ranger?"
"For fun?" Lith replied.
"Nailed it in one. Emperor Beasts are so boring, always blabbering about duty and balance. In the army, I get to kill stuff, see stuff, date hotties, and the best part is that I get paid for it. By the way, are your eyes for decoration or what?
"They should be pretty powerful if you descend from a Balor and you have seven of them. Odd, even us Tyrants develop six tops. I am still stuck at four, sadly."
"I can only see how people will die, if they do, in the immediate future. Nothing else." Lith said.
"Seven worthless eyes? That's harsh, brother. Maybe rather than from a Balor, you descend from a Peeping Dragon." Morok gave Lith a wink.
"Whatever. We need to find Phloria and get out of this place. The longer we remain here, the higher the risk of more Golems finding us."
"Dating so many women at once is not cool. Also, she's not that cute. We can find much better girls outside and…"
"First, she's just my friend." Lith was seconds away from strangling the Tyrant and his face was a few millimeters from Morok's.
"Second, I don't know how to operate dimensional runes. Without her, we're stuck in here. Is that clear?" Each word was a snarl, accompanied by a puff of smoke.
"You need to literally chill, brother." Lith's scales had turned red hot from his anger. "You definitely have Dragon blood. The brimstone breath is a killer. Mint?"
Morok offered him a dew fresh leaf from his dimensional amulet, which turned into ashes the moment Lith touched it.
"Can you find the girls with your sense of smell?" Lith asked while scanning their surroundings with Life Vision, finding several mana signatures but no life form.
Morok sniffed the air like a hound before shaking his head.
"All the spells cast during the fight have destroyed any trace I could find. Plus, the fact that they likely used dimensional magic doesn't help. I think we should work on the assumption that they've been captured. Humans have no chances against Golems."
After checking on Professor Neshal, Lith was forced to admit that the Tyrant was probably right. Bits of the Professor's corpse were mixed with the Golem's remains. Neshal had detonated all of her magical items to bring her enemy down with her.
Only a suicide attack of that magnitude was enough to destroy constructs. With their arrays sealing dimensional magic and uncanny bodies, there was nothing that Phloria could do against them.
'When I get out of here, I must warn Friya. Dimensional mages like her are basically powerless against constructs.' Lith thought.
He told Morok about the dying words of the two humans grafted to the Golems he had killed, hoping that the Tyrant's eyes could help him to find his target.
"So you don't just see people dying, you also somehow commune with them. Seriously, who the fuck were your parents?" Even though they were alone, they had both reverted to their human form to keep the element of surprise.
"Focus, dammit. Can you find something like the Mana Reactor or the so-called green array? The former we have to find and destroy, the latter we have to avoid." Lith asked.
"I can only sense great amounts of mana belonging to the elements associated with my four eyes." Morok said while moving around the corridor. The red, yellow, black, and orange eyes on his body moved independently, searching for energy traces.
"Something like what you just described should be visible from a distance, yet I can't find anything. Either it's too far from here or it's cloaked."
Both mana sense and Life Vision revealed nothing but the usual set of locks and arrays on the nearby doors, making Lith grit his teeth.
"Fine. Let's backtrack our steps. If Phloria or Quylla managed to escape, they'll be waiting for us. If we don't find them, we have to assume the worst and destroy the Mana Rector." Lith checked on Solus's condition before moving.
She was using her own Invigoration to recover, but she had yet to return to her full strength. Lith quickly opened a small Warp Steps, leading to the farthest point to the camp he had access to, closing it the moment the noxious gas started to seep through the dimensional window.
"I tried that too, otherwise I wouldn't have come back for you." Morok sighed. "Without one of the Royal Forgemasters, we're as good as dead."
***
Professor Gaakhu reached the Warehouse in a matter of minutes, the problem was that she had no idea how to safely open its door.
"Stay back! We've already thrown caution to the wind, there's no point in using finesse." After her chant was over, a pillar of black flames struck one of the Warehouse's sidewalls.
Darkness lowered the metal's melting point while the fire was just fire. A hole the size of a door slowly opened and the pillar made its way inside the room, destroying the crates and their content until Gaakhu was able to see in front of herself.
Her actions triggered several alarms, but she didn't care. The soldier assumed a defensive formation around her while Gaakhu cooled the wall and scanned the arrays inside the room.
It was then that three Flesh Golems appeared from as many Warp Steps, surrounding them from every side. They blocked fire, ice, and darkness magic before unleashing their thunderbolts against the floor, hitting all their prey at once.
The soldiers weren't aware of that trick and Gaakhu had never bothered warning them. She had already fought the Golems, so she knew that the soldiers were only good to buy her time.
'Five soldiers and only three constructs. I can still escape while they capture them again.' She smiled while using the Disarray spell to deactivated the only dangerous magical formation in the room.
