Without communication amulets, it took Quylla's group a while to assemble the rest of the mages and share their plan with them. The mages from the three great Countries moved ahead of the creatures' path and used their spells to unearth the Sapling's roots.
They were already rotting and sizzling from the inside due to Gremlik's plague working its way toward the main body. All of the energy that the Sapling spent trying to block the infection only made the parasite more powerful, which was good news for the humans.
The mages cast their strongest darkness spells on the roots at the same time. Quylla waited for the others to be done, weakening the underground leviathan before unleashing her tier five spell, Black Light.
Normally, darkness magic would only affect the area where it struck.
Black Light, instead, used the light element to carry the darkness energy throughout its victim's body. Not only did light magic allow its dark counterpart to spread as quickly as a healing spell, but it also enhanced darkness' destructive power.
The light element forced the damaged tissues to heal, wasting the vitality they needed to resist the darkness element's onslaught and inducing the same effects of prolonged starvation due to the consumption of nutrients.
Black Light caused a cycle of healing and destruction that doubled the speed with which its victim's life force was sapped. Quylla didn't have enough mana to affect an enemy that big, but the combined effect of Black Light, the parasite, and the other mages' spells did the trick.
The root withered and died, causing to the Sapling a pain so great that the entirety of Laruel quaked. Leaves fell from the treetops as the tremors intensified to the point that it was impossible to stay upright.
Without their nourishment, the Grendelings first tried to sustain themselves by draining treehouses. Then, once the creatures discovered that their prey had been turned into regular trees, they started to fight against each other.
The mages targeted solely the strongest Grendeling, changing target as soon as the tides of battle turned. By always siding with the losing Grendelings, by the time a victor emerged, the last creature standing was half cannibalized.
It took them only a few more spells to put it down.
Meanwhile, Leannan was trying to use her tattoos to tap into the Sapling's power and kill the invaders, but something was wrong. She couldn't make the Sapling move nor access to any of its arrays, leaving her reinforcements still locked out of Laruel.
'First the undead, now the humans. Don't you see that they are killing me? Why don't you do something?' The ancient plant folk asked.
Leannan cursed the Sapling's betrayal and blocked Gremlik's claws with her arm protector. Somehow, he had aimed them exactly at her weak point, the flower that acted as the core of her power.
"Nice armor." The Grendel was surprised by both her reflexes and equipment. Few were fast enough to match his speed and even fewer things could stop a Grendel's mana infused claws.
Now that the ritual of the Chosen was over, she could finally use her artifacts again. Gremlik would have loved to employ his own as well, but among Grendels' weaknesses, there was the inability to use magical items in their battle form.
By fusing their blood core with their bodies, they lacked even the magic spark necessary to activate an alchemical tool. The transformation altered even their energy signature so that the items that Gremlik had imprinted in his Dryad form didn't recognize him as their master.
Leannan took her twin battle hammers out of her dimensional amulet and started her offensive. Each one of her weapons was so big that to a regular human they would have been too unbalanced to wield it with two hands and too heavy for a one-handed grip.
Yet to a creature of her size, they were just perfect. On top of that, they allowed her to express the full potential of her physical prowess. A blade would require more skill than strength to cut, whereas a blunt weapon transmitted to its victim every iota of its wielder power.
Each time she used them to block or deflect an attack, golden threads would form between the hammerheads and the Grendel's claws. At first, Gremlik had no idea what they could be meant for.
They were weightless and ethereal, making it impossible for his mana infused claw to cut them. The same happened whenever the hammers hit their mark, leaving new threads behind.
Leannan took several hits as well, but between her protections and her regenerative abilities, she sustained only minor injuries. To keep his Grendel form, Gremlik required a lot of energy and now that Erlik was dead, the tendril of the Sapling that had followed Gremlik like a loyal dog was gone.
'Damn, I need to feed or she will end me. Why doesn't the Sapling make its mind? By now the plague should have reached it and my Grendelings should have taught it a lesson in humility.' He thought, unaware that Erlik's prized contingency plan had already been foiled.
Gremlik jumped back, to both avoid a horizontal swing and to put some distance between himself and the frenzied Titania. Only then did he discover what the golden threads' purpose was.
The moment his feet left the ground, they became tangible, allowing Leannan to drag him back into her attack range while he had no defense but swinging his arms wildly in the attempt to cut the strings that held him prisoner.
A Grendel was fast, so he managed to cut one of the threads before they turned intangible again.
"What the…?" Leannan's hammer cut him short and hit his arms with the strength of an avalanche.
To add insult to the literal injury that the strike inflicted upon him, a new golden thread was now binding the Grendel's arm to the hammer, replacing the only tendril of light he had managed to destroy.
Leannan's war hammers, War Shackles, were the relic left from an expert of the light element. Their purpose was to make it impossible for the enemy to escape after the fight had started.
The tendrils were intangible only when the wielder of the Shackles willed so. Leannan could choose which and how many threads would turn into hard light constructs, turning her enemy into an unwilling puppet.
Gremlik wasn't allowed to step away unless Leannan wished for it. During their exchanges. she had attached enough threads on him that she could alter the trajectory of his attacks simply by swinging her weapons.
'Fuck me sideways! That weapon is a nightmare for a zoner like me. By locking the range of the fight, it also keeps mages from preparing new spells. The only question is if it's possible to escape its prison with Blink.' Lith thought.
'In theory, yes.' Solus replied. 'I'm pretty sure that threads have a limited range and that light magic or not, the closing of a dimensional door would also cut the energy they are made of.
'Dimensional magic is based on gravity, and gravity bends light.'
'I wish I knew the secret behind hard light constructs. It would open endless possibilities for my Forgemastering.' Lith thought.
Leannan shared such desire as well. She had researched light magic for years, looking for a way to weaponize the light element, but even inside the Sapling's library, only healing spells were recorded.
