Cresia infused his body with all the elements and darted forward, his blade aimed for Lith’s neck. A well-placed lunge would make it impossible for him to breathe plus the time it would take Lith to die of blood loss was much longer than what Cresia needed to use Invigoration.
Great was his surprise when the short sword hung at Lith’s hip grew in size until it became a silvery long sword with a hilt long enough to allow for a two-handed grip.
‘What a moron.’ Cresia thought. ‘Heavier doesn’t mean stronger. Such a weapon allows him only a couple of attack patterns, making him predictable.’ Like most Awakened, he favored speed over strength.
Yet Lith didn’t attempt to slash, but lunged as well, aiming at his opponent’s head while his sword continued to grow in size. Orion’s blades were all exceptionally light, but with Lith’s strength, even a non-enchanted zweihander would have been as quick as a foil.
Cresia had barely the time to intercept the enemy blade with his own when the unexpected happened. The moment the two weapons touched, he felt as if his body had been turned into iron. It felt so heavy that it took his full focus to not slip and fall onto the ground.
‘Gravity magic?’ He thought in surprise.
All Awakened knew it, but no one practiced it. With the exception of its first magic form, even tier one gravity magic required to cast six spells at the same time and to infuse them with willpower, making it akin to casting two tier five spells at once.
Another of its downsides was that, unlike normal elemental magic, gravity had no direct effect, but only an indirect one. It meant that it would behave like an array, influencing even its caster if they were inside its area of effect.
It was the reason why gravity magic was widely used in Forgemastering and in crafting permanent arrays. It did still require huge bursts of strength to activate it, but the fine-tuning of its effects would be performed by the runes forming the enchantment.
Cresia’s enhanced senses noticed that the ground was cracking under his feet, that even though his muscles and bones could withstand that sudden weight increase, his joints were already at their limit.
Yet the leaves kept flying in the wind and Lith seemed to be unaffected by whatever was happening. Even Gaaron was racking his brain, trying to make heads or tails of the situation by using Life Vision.
“It’s the fucking sword.” Yet he had grasped only half the truth.
Lith had realized the limitations of gravity magic back when he was still at the academy and had tried to overcome them to no avail. At least until he had mastered the use of the ring that the fungal creature had gifted him.
Tier zero gravity magic could be cast quickly, but it was too weak to be effective in real combat and it would hinder Lith has well. Everything had changed when Lith had practiced using the gravity ring, learning how to weave a small array together with gravity magic to escape from its negative effects.
Yet it was only thanks to Orion’s new sword, Ruin, that Lith could bring first magic to the next level. Unlike the Gatekeeper, Ruin could also focus and amplify gravity magic, turning an annoying parlor trick into a game-changer spell.
The moment Cresia pushed Ruin away his weight went back to normal, leaving him free to move and his head to fly high in the sky. Reacting under such physical strain had required him to make a wide movement, which had created an opening that Lith had exploited.
‘Solus?’ He asked while preparing another Warp Steps now that the air blocking array had vanished along with the life of its caster.
‘That guy wasn’t alone.’ Her Life Detecting array spotted the enemies who were outside the area of effect of their mystical senses. ‘It’s the stupidest ambush I’ve ever seen. They are too far away to intervene and lumped together like a bunch of morons.
‘The dead guy had a deep blue core, so I guess that the others are about the same level.’
‘How many?’
‘Five more. This is worse than we expected. Plan D?’ She asked.
‘Plan E.’ Lith collected the corpse and opened the Warp Steps at the same time, Blinking through it to not get killed in the case the enemies had another array at the ready.
“Let’s kill that bastard!” Horyu said, another of the young Awakened, readying the Warp Stone that would allow them to chase after their prey.
“Verhen acted in self-defence.” Athung said with a sneer. “What did you expect him to do after a stranger popped in front of him and tried to kill him? Have a cup of tea and some cookies?”
‘Master Raagu was right. These guys can teach me a lot about how not to plan ahead.’ She thought.
“She’s right.” Gaaron gritted his teeth, almost chocking on every one of his own words. “We’re not here to kill, but to examine him. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make him suffer. Attack all together and chop off his limbs.
“We need him alive, not well.”
The Warp Stone was a device linked to a specific set of spatial coordinates, that usually dimensional mages used to cover very long distances with a single Warp Steps.
Its use lessened the focus necessary to visualize the exit point and reduced a dimensional corridor’s mana cost since the spell would be partially fueled by the stone. In Gaaron’s case, he had prepared several stones, each one linked to a different exit point where he knew Lith would reappear.
“Watch out for his sword. Until we understand the trick behind it, you have to dodge instead of blocking.” Gaaron activated the Warp Stones until he found Lith, then he activated the Stone leading to Lith’s next stop so that they could take him by surprise.
“Why do you send your minions, Gaaron? You could always take action yourself.” Athung mocked him. For a 300 years old Awakened and a regional lord at that, moving against someone who was an infant would have been a terrible humiliation.
It would mean that he was incapable of nurturing even one worthy vassal and that his claims to the Council would be forever dismissed as a joke. To make matters worse, in case he needed to intervene, anything but a crushing victory was unacceptable.
“Shut up. You’re here only as an observer. Don’t you dare mess with my plans, little girl.” Gaaron words only made Athung smile.
‘He really is a tool. I wonder how such a small body can contain such a bloated ego.’ She thought.
Meanwhile, Lith had reached his destination. When he came out of his Warp Steps, the four Awakened had surrounded him, but he was ready for them.
The blue aura from Full Guard covered five meters (16 feet) around him and the four pseudo-wings from Death Call coming out of his back flapped furiously, forcing them to scatter or be engulfed by the impending darkness.
An overly handsome guy wielding a war hammer threw his weapon at Lith while flying back to avoid the wings, and so did a stunning redhead with her twin battle axes.
At the same time, their allies turned the area surrounding Lith into a quicksand, to restrict his movements and leave him no other choice than Blinking. They were all using Life Vision, so they only needed to exploit the split-second Lith was helpless while stepping through a dimensional door to turn him into a pinhole.
