The Roc couldn't know that the crystal belonged to Westhar, who had researched the powers of the Orcs ever since he had taken the body of one of their naturally Awakened members.
Luckily for Olua, even without air magic flying was second nature to her.
Her sudden attack didn't give Se'Haan enough time to conjure a big spell so the darkness blast had mostly hurt her pride.
"A hybrid!" Spite filled Westhar's voice when he recognized what Lith was. "How many times do I have to tell your Master that I'm not interested in their schemes? Maybe after seeing your corpse, they'll get the message."
Lith only saw the Abomination pointing at him a wand made of violet mana crystal before his tier four Light Mastery spell, Blightburn, disappeared into thin air. The same happened to his Plague Arrows and even to the Scalewalker armor's protective field.
'Fuck me sideways! The Puppeteer can use crystals even better than all the shamans I have ever faced. He can not only block spells, but also all externals energy manifestations.' Lith thought.
'The silver lining is that I have yet to employ a powerful spell and that if I get rid of that wand, he'll be nothing more than a regular Abomination in an Orc's body.'
Then, Westhar emitted from his free hand a tier four Chaos magic Howling Void so fast that Lith failed to dodge it completely. By sealing light magic the Puppeteer had also blocked dimensional magic. NiceNovel.com
The mana Lith had stored for a Blink dissipated along with his right wing as the Howling Void pierced through it.
"I can't have you flying around, boy." Westhar said with a smirk while distorting the world energy with his wand again.
'My money on him blocking air magic next.' Solus said.
'My money on me not caring.' Lith replied as he took War out of his pocket dimension amid a burst of emerald fire and hurled a jet stream of Origin Flames at the Abomination.
Westhar had no idea that Lith's omni pocked allowed him to ignore the dimensional seal so seeing the mystical sword appear out of thin air left him stunned. His surprise turned into shock when even after he drained the fire element, the bright blue flames didn't dissipate, hitting him with their full force.
Normal wounds couldn't harm a Puppeteer.
Their body was just a meat sack they used to hide their nature and keep the Chaos energy under control. Even losing a limb was just an inconvenience to them, something that could be mended with minimal effort and no consequences.
Origin Flames, however, attacked the Chaos energy that flowed through the meat sack as well as its flesh, causing Westhar great pain. An Abomination's true nature was that of an energy creature which made dealing with them hard.
Normal and enchanted weapons could hurt them, but that also meant exposing the metal to the powerful Chaos magic that would corrode them. That was the reason why when Westhar saw the blade aiming at his crystal wand, he didn't hesitate to use his free hand to block it.
War cut deep into his flesh, from the palm to the elbow, but that allowed the Abomination's corrosive blood to cover the metal. The angry blade sizzled as the living Chaos flowing inside Westhar's veins attacked at its Adamant body.
War's Counterflow ability, however, had been designed to keep the events that had led to the Gatekeeper's destruction from repeating themselves. The black blood turned against itself, evaporating before it could deal War any damage, and against its owner.
Westhar experienced agony as never before while the Chaos energy gone haywire ate at him from the inside.
"Charge!" His order made the battlefield tremble and turned the tides of the battle.
Even though the Puppeteer had never expected to be hurt so badly, his plan had still worked. The wand, the bravado, even the Howling Void, all of it had been a ruse to force the mysterious hybrid to focus on him while his reverted minions reached their position.
The trolls used their crude Light Mastery to block Lith's limbs inside overlapping constructs while the orcs used small mana crystals to make up for their weak cores and cast powerful tier three spells.
At the same time, the ogres who had regained their plant abilities conjured wooden vines that restricted Lith even more, slipping under his Scalewalker armor and draining his vitality.
'This is amazing. No wonder monsters are so powerful even though they have lost most of their original powers.' Solus thought.
'Trolls are probably the first Light Masters of Mogar, Orcs can use any crystal as if it was their mana core and Ogres can conjure wooden constructs that only need contact to harm a life force.'
'A little help here?' Lith used his own Light Mastery to break free of the constructs while activating the barrier ring to intercept the incoming spells and a Final Sunset from his magic holding ring to get rid of the vines.
'I'm working on it. I've never seen this kind of Body Sculpting before and the sheer number of data is giving me a headache.' She replied while unleashing a darkness blocking array around Westhar and neutralizing the tier five Chaos spell he was about to unleash.
Solus had timed her array so that it not only dispelled Soul Rend, wasting all the mana the Puppeteer had imbued it with, but the darkness blocking array also affected the still open wound, dissipating Westhar's true essence.
The Abomination cursed his bad luck as he sucked dry his nearest minions to close the wound and prevent the loss of even more Chaos energy. Black tendrils erupted from his open flesh, sewing the arm back into its correct shape.
Lith and Solus had never seen a Puppeteer before but they had seen that ability multiple times. It happened to Lith every time one of his limbs was severed, ever since the accident in the Dimensional Magic training hall.
Meanwhile, the other two Emperor Beasts weren't faring much better. They had never expected to fight an army with powerful mages capable of using rare disciplines like Light Mastery.
The shaman managed to nullify all of Olua's spells, leaving the rest of the army free to focus on the Nidhogg. Hard-light constructs and vines couldn't stop him, but they slowed his movements enough to allow battalions surrounding him to succeed in their attacks more and more often.
Neither reverted trolls nor ogres feared Bodya's acid spit because their regenerative abilities healed them faster than it could damage them. The ogres fed upon the Nidhogg's life force while the trolls ate their own allies.
Lith's initial assumption was wrong. Goblins didn't ride trolls, they were just emergency rations in case the voracious monsters got hungry.
'Dammit, this is quite a pinch.' Olua thought.
'If I keep my distance, Bodya has to deal more monsters than he can handle and once they are done with him it will be Lith's turn. Yet if I come close, that damn shaman can shot me down with her crystal.
'All my previous attempts to kill her with dive attacks failed because she always keeps an earth barrier at ready. Arrays take too long to prepare and a shaman can dispel them in the blink of an eye. I need to get creative.'
