"By the Great Mother, a Divine Beast!" Queen Sylpha said while looking at Tyris who was sitting beside the Royals, disguised as her Constable Griffon alias. "Someone should really do something."
Meanwhile, the Royal Court went into an uproar. The Kingdom had several countermeasures to deal with such powerful creatures but no one wanted to pay the price. Each faction tried to goad their respective rivals into volunteering with the most creative arguments.
"The last time we had to deal with a Dragon it was the Kellar region to slay it. I say that for once the Ernas region can prove that its title as a founding pillar of the Kingdom isn't just for show." Duchess Lassa said.
"You say it like it was yesterday but it actually happened 300 years ago!" Archduke Gunyin Ernas, Phloria's oldest brother, said.
"On top of that, your region didn't do much, it was just one of your Archmages who dealt the finishing blow. The Ernas household has yet to recover from the squabble with Deirus which happened just a few months ago instead.
"I say it's time that the Horman region pulls its weight!"
"My region is dealing with the famine, monster waves, and with a further decrease in birth rates. We have no people to spare, send someone else." Duke Jyian replied.
"Everyone is dealing with the famine jackass!" The room roared as one.
'Why should I care?' Tyris replied to both Meron and Sylpha via a mind link. 'He's not one of my children. A Guardian doesn't deal with such low level squabbles.'
'But he's still the offspring of one of your kind!' Meron rebuked.
'Then call Leegaain.' She replied with a scoff. 'There's a reason why I established the Archmages, the Highmasters, the Queen's corps, and the Corpse. Use them instead of whining to me.'
'At least say something to raise the morale!' Sylpha begged.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Royal Court." Tyris stood up and the room fell into silence as her natural charisma made the nobles behave in the hope to gain her approval. "Our Kingdom is facing a crisis that requires us to pool up our wits and resources, not to play a dignified game of hot potato.
"That said, I hereby bear witness that Spellbreaker Verhen completed his mission and petition for restoring the security detail of the city of Lutia. Do you have anything to add, Spellbreaker Verhen?"
"Yes. If my friend and I have to deal with that thing, we call dibs on the corpse. Verhen out." Solus blushed up to her ears while saying such a thing in front of the entire Royal Court.
Yet even while performing what looked like an anime beam battle, Lith was adamant that she followed his script.
"A reasonable request. All in favor?" Meron asked while looking at Sylpha who rose her hand. "It's unanimous, then. To the victor will go the spoils according to their contributions."
As its name implied, the Griffon Kingdom was no democracy. The votes of the Royal couple were the only two that mattered.
Suddenly every member of the Court offered their best artifacts and Archmages, working together as one well-oiled machine to get to the site of the battle before it was over. Otherwise they would lose all claims on the spoils of war.
"Isn't it wonderful when people set aside their personal interests for the greater good?" Tyris's voice oozed sarcasm while pointing at the nobles.
Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away, the battle went on.
"What are you doing laying there on the ground and crying like babies?" Solus did her best Lith impression even though she really felt for the situation of their fellow soldiers.
"Quaron violated the terms of our fight so this isn't a one on one battle anymore. Fight with me to take the traitor down first and that overgrown lizard later. There are no gods on Mogar, our fate is ours to make!"
Then, she turned towards Zeska.
"You have been promised freedom, but all that awaits you is to live under the heel of a creature that has no idea how hard it is to make a piece of bread. Quaron had promised me to surrender your city if I defeated him, but he lied to me as well.
"How many of you knew about the Dragon? How many things has he hidden from you in order to have your compliant obedience? How can you still put your lives in his hands?"
One after the other, the soldiers of the regiment stood up and started to weave their best spells while their respective commanding officers coordinated with each other after regaining their cool.
At the same time, inside Zeska, the people stopped fighting and started talking about whether to keep believing in Quaron or not.
Syrook could hear every single word yet he didn't like any of them.
He had invested too much time and effort to make his lapdog win the hearts of the commoners to let whoever was now in that armor ruin everything.
He unleashed against Solus a tier five Spirit Spell, Breakdown, that he had prepared for Lith.
Upon hitting, the hexa elemental emerald sphere would implode on its target and cause their death. Air and earth would block Solus, respectively by inducing an electric seizure and by trapping her limbs in a prison of rock.
Fire and water would alternate in pulses, causing a thermal shock that would damage her equipment and sap her strength by making it impossible for her to breathe. Darkness and light would constantly eat at her and heal her in a cycle that would consume her vitality until her body lacked the necessary energy to keep living.
Solus was too busy checking the script and was caught unprepared in the middle of her speech. She gritted her teeth and had the Sage Staff revert to its true appearance, revealing the set of three colored crystals and as many Evil Eyes.
Then, she emitted a burst of emerald energy that made Breakdown bounce against the Sage Staff and hit the barrier that protected Quaron, making it collapse before he could recover completely.
"What have you done, you pesky thing?" Syrook turned toward her and roared.
Once again, violet light flashed through the scales on in chest while he prepared a second wave of Origin Flames.
"Where do you think you are going?" Lith exploited the moment of distraction to close the distance between them and punch the Black Dragon in the stomach.
Being five meters (16.4 feet) shorter, hitting Syrook's head would have been difficult due to the fact that the neck of a Dragon took almost one-fourth of their body length. At the same time, however, it also meant that their body would be smaller and their limbs shorter compared to a humanoid.
The hit snapped Syrook out of his frenzy and when Lith tried to follow up with a front kick, the Black Dragon simply wrapped the incoming leg with his tail to block the Tiamat in place.
"Poor idiot! Did you really think that my long neck is just for show?" The Black Dragon bellowed. "It allows me to attack freely in every direction and to use my maw as a sixth limb whereas, with your short neck, you are all bark and no bite!"
'What's even stranger is that everything has been properly recorded and documented.' Solus pondered while looking at the signatures at the end of each document.
'Not only did the City Lord and the nobles know everything, but they also didn't take a dime for themselves. It's as if they paid Quaron, but for what? Not protection since he's not here.'
'We'll ask them later. We have still more rooms to visit.' Lith replied.
Moving unnoticed was easy whereas using the pocket dimension took a heavy toll on him. Even though Solus shared as much of the burden as she could, Lith had to do most of the heavy lifting.
If she spent too much energy, she would either become incapable of assuming human form or be too weak to be more than a punching ball. To make matters worse, she needed much longer than Lith to recover due to the gap in their mana cores and her cracked life force.
The rest of the rooms belonged to other administrative departments and from them, Lith discovered only that aside from the money, everything else was in order. There had been no stockpile of food or weapons during the past few months as if Zeska had never planned for any kind of war.
'This is weird. They knew that the Kingdom would try and recapture the Nestrar region as soon as their rebellion was discovered yet they didn't prepare in advance.' Solus said.
'Agreed. Enough with the paperwork, it's time to pay the Armoury a visit.' Lith stood up, feeling his knees weak and his head dizzy due to the life force consumption.
'Dammit, I need to rest. On top of that, I've left the camp for a while and I have no clue if something has happened in my absence.'
'We can leave at any time you want. Now that we know the spatial coordinates of this place, we can use Spirit Magic to Warp straight to the City Hall.' Solus examined his condition with Abyssal Gaze.
The cracks in his life force were fine, but he couldn't afford to use the pocket dimension or Origin Flames any longer.
'There's no time for that. If upon my return Rudra has discovered Quaron's location, I would have no excuse to delay the chase. Besides, three days are way shorter than you think.
'If that bastard shows his face, I want to know what his endgame is and what he is capable of.' Lith replied while gulping down tonics.
'Good point. Use Demon Grasp to refine your core while you rest. I'll stand guard.' Solus replied.
He nodded, using his breathing skill to split the world energy into its elemental components before absorbing it through his seven eyes instead of his body like a human Awakened would.
The emerald eye absorbed Mogar's energy signature and replaced it with Lith's so that the pure elemental energies would turn into his own mana the moment they seeped through his life force.
This way, the mana core would offer no resistance to the new energy and assimilate it more quickly than with a regular breathing technique. The seventh component of the world energy, Mogar's essence, nurtured his body, making it grow stronger and hastening his recovery.
The use of Demon Grasp, however, required Lith's full focus, leaving him helpless.
Solus's stone ring left his finger and assumed the form of a small spider that slid under the door to patrol the nearby corridors.
'I wish I could do this in my human form and stretch my legs, but I can't afford to waste precious energy.' She thought while moving as far as she could without losing sight of the room Lith was in.
They were now on the third floor of the City Hall where the offices of Zeska's upper echelons were located. It was the worst place to take a break since even during the siege powerful people might come and go from there.
Lith would have visited it first instead of last if he had the blueprints of the building, but requesting them from the army would raise questions he couldn't answer.
Solus heard steps coming closer and weaved a Warp Steps on the fly to move Lith to a safer location.
"What rotten luck!" The voice belonged to a woman and it sounded annoyed rather than worried or scared. "Just a few more days and we'd be done with this cesspool."
Luckily, they were headed for the office of the City Lord that was far from Lith. The woman opened the door with a silver key that turned off the defensive spells of the lock on contact.
"I got that the first dozen times you said that." The man who answered her sounded even more annoyed. "Just shut up and take those damn documents. I want to go home and-"
The moment the iron-studded door closed behind them, the soundproof spell of the room cut their voices short. Solus cursed the paranoia of Zeska's mages before realizing how hypocritical it was for a kettle to call a pot black.
The stone spider scurried on the floor and turned into a liquid to pass under the doorframe unnoticed. Solus also had to keep mana sense active to make sure that no one would find Lith, further draining her energy reserves, but she hoped it would be worth it.
"I've got everything we need." The woman said, making Solus curse.
She looked to be in her mid-forties, about 1.61 meters (5'3") tall, with curly blonde hair framing her round face. She wore a silk day dress more suitable for a social event than a day in the office.
"Double check that you haven't forgotten anything." The man replied, making her smug grin disappear. "We need to be quick and efficient. We need to deactivate the arrays for the meeting and the longer it lasts the higher the risk of getting invaded by an army of mages when we are so close to our goal."
He looked to be in his early forties, about 1.85 meters (6'1") tall, with short black hair and mustaches with a few grey strands. He wore a tight-fitting white shirt and blue pants that revealed a lean but muscular build.
In a way, the couple reminded Solus of Jirni and Orion, but neither could match the original in any way.
'What goal?' Solus thought. 'Keep the juicy stuff coming.'
"I did double-check! How stingy must a god be to care more about numbers than faith? I feel more like an accountant than a believer." The woman replied with a scoff.
'God? What are they talking about?' The more Solus heard the less she understood.
"You say that like it's a bad thing." The man shrugged. "I much prefer a god with goals that I can understand and with interests that can align with my own instead of some mystical bullshit. Let's go."
The woman nodded and followed him, leaving Solus with lots of unanswered questions.
'Let's go where? By my Mom, why isn't this like one of those movies where the bad guys explain their plan in detail for the hero to conveniently learn everything they need to foil it?' She inwardly groaned.
'I can capture them on my own and then interrogate them with Lith, but they are clearly in a rush.. The moment the other nobles notice their absence, they will sound the alarm and our mission will be compromised.'
