"I'm a Divine Beast!" Syrook roared in outrage at that blatant lack of respect, turning the gales surrounding him into a windstorm. "I'm the descendant of one of the six gods of magic, not a pathetic animal that crawls in the mud!"
"Dude, spouting bullshit as part of your act is fine, but when you start to believe it, then you need help." Lith used the air currents slamming against his face to fix his bed hair.
"Were you acquainted with Xedros? I can see a striking resemblance between you two."
"How dare you compare me to a filthy lizard?" They had yet to throw a single blow yet the Black Dragon's ego had already taken a huge hit.
For some reason, the human Spellbreaker was unaffected by his aura of terror and seemed to treat the whole thing as a joke.
'Seem is the keyword here.' Syrook thought. 'The bastard is stalling for time to cast several spells. I can see it with Life Vision, just like I can see that he's an Awakened. The only thing I don't understand is what he is.
'His life force looks human but it's far from it.'
"What's wrong with being a lizard?" Lith shrugged. "I heard that even the Father of all Dragons started off as-"
"Don't you dare say one more word!" The Black Dragon was both shocked and enraged hearing one of the most shameful secrets of his family coming out of the mouth of a pathetic worm. "Let's see how long you can last against me and my champion!"
Syrook landed near the fallen Ranger who just needed to touch one of the scales to obtain the mana necessary to repair the damages in his armor. The creature was so tall that his head reached past the walls. Even the people on the battlements had to look up.
Meanwhile, Lith jumped outside the area of effect of the city arrays to respond in kind to the threat.
"Emperor Beast and Divine Beast are just names." Lith activated the Scalewalker armor, having it cover him from head to toe while reverting it to its original form that resembled a Tiamat. "Guess what, Quaron isn't the only one who can call for backup."
'Don't!' Solus said the moment he shared his new plan with her. 'Everything but this!'
Yet he did.
Lith wrapped himself with the two sets of wings of the Scalewalker before opening them at the same time in a majestic flap. The purpose of the move wasn't to show off his equipment so much as to conceal himself from all kinds of senses while he came out of it and Warped away.
The moment the four wings fully spread an enormous crack appeared in the air above the military camp. Instead of just opening the exit point, Lith shaped it as if the space itself had been pierced, even conjuring the hologram of a nebula as background.
Two enormous hands covered in black scales emerged from the crack, forcing it open with brute strength. The creature had long curved horns on its head and seven eyes, each of a different color.
With one final push and a savage roar, the creature ripped the space enough to pass.
To all those present it seemed like the second titan had emerged from the space across the stars or maybe even from a different dimension.
Lith had watched enough Kaiju movies to know how to make an entrance.
The army mages started to weep uncontrollably, throwing discipline into the gutter and using their communication amulets to say goodbye to the people they loved. The creature seemed to be on their side, yet they doubted to survive the clash between the Divine Beasts.
The citizens of Zeska, instead, could feel the aura of terror of the second god piercing through their hearts and filling them with despair.
"Allow me to introduce you to my friend here, Tiamat. The Father of all Demons." Solus said while using air magic to imitate Lith's voice from inside the armor and Spirit Magic to move it.
Her petite body ill-fitted the Scalewalker and to make matters worse, she sucked at swordplay, let alone dual wielding.
'Luckily, Lith left me a script.' She said while holding the Sage staff in the right hand and War in the left.
"You heard Verhen. Open the gates!" The Tiamat ordered and the city guards complied.
"Don't!" Syrook's voice snapped them out of their stupor. "Who are you and why have I never heard about your kin? Are you one of Father's failures? A lesser Dragon?"
Like most Divine Beasts, the Black Dragon treated the Awakened Council with contempt. In their eyes, those who didn't carry the pure blood of a Guardian were a bunch of weaklings that needed numbers to make up for their weakness.
He had heard the rumors about a hybrid, but that kind of gossip was of no interest to Syrook. He had even ignored the return of his older sister, Zoreth, so he knew nothing about Lith.
"Are we here to fight or to exchange contact runes?" The Tiamat said with a sneer while never stopping to weave spells.
"An amazing display of confidence for someone younger, smaller, and weaker than me." Lith's ruse couldn't work on someone with Life Vision, but Syrook's interest had been piqued.
His violet core gave him an edge against Lith's deep violet and he was eager to see if his newfound brethren was worthy of becoming one of his followers or his next meal. Either would do.
The Black Dragon took a deep breath and a violet light seeped from between his scales, starting from the chest and quickly rising up his neck until it came out of his mouth in the form of a pillar of fire the size of a train.
'What the heck did he just do?' Lith thought while unleashing a deep violet burst of Origin Flames.
He might have easily dodged Syrook's breath, but studying how other Divine Beasts used their bloodline abilities was his best shot at discovering and mastering his own.
The two streams of fire met halfway, each trying to overpower the other before exploding with such brilliance to paint the area violet for kilometers.
"A second sun twice in as many days is too much." One of the guards said as his mind spiraled into insanity. "Fuck the rebellion, I just want to live!"
He tried to open the city gates, not caring about who would win anymore. He just wanted for that horror to end. The other guards tried either to help him or to stop him, making the fight quickly spread throughout the city along with mass hysteria.
Since Quaron was still behind the emerald barrier and Solus had no energy to waste, she enacted the most important part of Lith's plan.
She took his communication amulet out of the pocket dimension and called the Royals.
"Here is Spellbreaker Lith Verhen. My mission succeeded and I took the traitor down." She also sent them the recording of the fight between Lith and Quaron. "The problem is that he was the pawn of a Black Dragon.
"We need reinforcements, now!" She moved the amulet so that the blue gemstone at its center would also transmit the images of the clash between Origin Flames.
'At least she got that right. You do eat for two.' Lith inwardly chuckled.
'Ha ha! Very funny. Why don't you try spending years trapped inside a stone form without any of your five senses? Then when you get out, we'll see if you won't indulge in a bit of food after a long day's work.' Solus said.
'Please, stay calm, Solus. Too much stress could hurt the baby.' Lith said while pretending to caress her womb while he actually pinched it.
'Tell this story to anyone and I'm going to kill you!'
The carriage quickly reached the inner rim of the city where a couple of guards attempted to stop them to search the vehicle and identify the passengers.
"Move away, dimwits! There's no time for this crap. This woman might lose her baby!" The umpteenth groan and Solus's genuine distress at those words made the guards move out of the way.
"Bring them straight to the hospital. Our colleagues will identify the man while the woman receives the necessary treatment." The senior officer said.
They couldn't leave their station nor communicate with others due to the dimensional sealing arrays. They just followed the carriage with their eyes, making sure it wasn't just a ruse.
"Thank you very much. I can do the rest on my own." Lith jumped out of the carriage while looking through the windows on the second floor of the nearby city hall with Life Vision, searching for an empty room.
"We couldn't come with you anyway." The woman sighed. "The food rations for the day won't deliver themselves and with all the soldiers on the walls, everyone must do their part to protect our city."
Lith gently took Solus between his arms, opening the door of the hospital with a kick while screaming:
"My wife needs a healer!" Loud enough for everyone to hear.
Yet he also opened a Warp Steps on the floor and placed a Hush spell in the corridor in front of him. The guards inside heard the yell muffled and thought it came from one of the hospital rooms.
Also, when Lith walked inside, he fell straight into the Steps. The door opening and closing on itself baffled the guards only for a second.
"I can't believe that people can't even close a door properly! We are soldiers, not butlers." The man looked outside, making sure there wasn't anyone who needed help, and gestured to his colleagues that were staring his way that everything was okay.
Meanwhile, Lith found himself in a storage room filled with stationery.
'How are you doing?' He asked while making sure with Life Vision that no one would disturb them.
'I've never felt so embarrassed my whole life but I'll get over it. Thank you for asking.' Solus checked her own flabby, soft belly and Lith's flat, well-toned abdomen.
The comparison only made her feel worse.
'I meant your energy reserves. You can only spend so much time in human form and I might need your help later.' Lith replied. 'Also, hands off the merchandise.'
'Right. I'll get back inside my ring.'
Lith used Hush on the door so that neither the lock nor the hinges would creak when opened and stepped outside. The corridor was lit by two lines of torches hung to the walls while the magical stones had been turned off to redirect the energy into the city arrays.
Lith spotted several energy signatures and moved away from them.
'If I kill people randomly, their disappearance might be noticed and my mission would become even more complicated. First, I need to find a clue about what's happening here.
'Then I can search for one of the local nobles and ask them why they decided to follow Quaron in his madness.' He thought.
'Agreed. It's best to have answers before asking questions. I found a few heavily enchanted doors that look promising.' Solus said while sharing with him the findings of her mana sense and array detecting spell.
Lith followed her directions, using a Hush spell to not make any noise and sticking to the high ceiling with Spirit Magic whenever someone walked their way. The City Hall was a three-story building tastelessly furnished.
The rooms and corridors on each floor were identical if not for the tags that identified them by number.
'Either the people who built the City Hall were confident in the arrays that surround the building or they made the corridors confusing on purpose. There is no other way to explain why the locks and the arrays are not connected.' Lith thought.
'Without Life Vision, I wouldn't be able to distinguish the door of a broom closet from that of the treasury. On the other hand, someone like me only needs a good old Clean Slate spell to open a door without triggering any pesky alarm array.'
The tier four Forgemastering spell used a pulse of light and darkness magic to temporarily reset any enchantment the caster touched, making them lose their imprint.
The lock clicked and Lith stepped inside, making sure to leave no visible trace of his passage.
'Oh, fuck me sideways!' The rectangular room was five meters (16.4 feet) wide and ten meters (33 feet) long, with three desks each one lined against a different wall.
They had two cabinets each on either side and were covered by orderly piles of documents as long as Lith's arm. It would have taken a regular person hours to read the files on a single desk and that without even opening the cabinets.
'The bad news is that everything here is magically locked. The good news is that I made a lot of room in Soluspedia before leaving the tower exactly in case something like this happened.' Solus said.
'Thanks, Solus. This will still put some strain on my life force but it's better than nothing. As soon as we're done with this mission, I'll prepare your favorite dishes.' He thought.
'Yeah, right. I don't want people to ask me if I've already chosen the name for my twins so hard pass on that.' Yet if she had a mouth, it would have been watering at the thought of his cooking.
Lith needed to consume a spark of life force to make the pocket dimension overcome the seal of the arrays and to make matters worse, the amount wasn't fixed. The more things he stored the more energy conjuring the emerald flames required.
Lith opened the drawers of the desks and the cabinets, putting everything inside Soluspedia at the same time. He felt so tired that he needed to sit down and eat, but at least it took him less than a minute to browse through all the files.
Thanks to Soluspedia, he needed but a thought to study the contents of every single document. He took notes of his findings so that once he was done, he could put everything back in the same place where he had found it.
'Either the Commander of the city guards lied to us or he underestimated how much money Quaron took from Zeska.' Lith thought. 'Even if he really bought supplies on the black market, there's no way Quaron spent so much in just three months.
'The taxes have already been collected and yet the treasury is almost empty.'
