War needed to hit a Skeletal Knight once to disperse the darkness that animated it, but only if Solus managed to make the blade get past the protections and touch the corpse.
She already had trouble moving with her human body, let alone while being forced to puppeteer an oversized armor.
"I hate undead!" She roared as no matter how hard she hit them with the Sage Staff, the Skeletal Knight would keep getting up and fighting until all of their limbs had been destroyed.
"Fall back, Major!" Captain Eman was surprised by how feminine Lith's voice sounded from time to time. "You are already tired from the previous fight and need to rest. We'll cover your escape!"
The officer unleashed the tier five spell, Dark Star, generating a pillar of darkness that descended from above and engulfed the Skeletal Knights surrounding them. Darkness magic was the origin and the bane of the undead, quickly turning them into ashes.
"And leave you guys behind? Never!" Solus blocked Quaron's attempt to Blink past the Dark Star and inside her defenses by putting a shield of light right in front of his exit point.
He slammed his face hard against the construct and tumbled on the ground without even knowing what had gone wrong. The Ranger had tried to Blink behind her back, unaware that Solus's mana sense could see all around her.
She pointed at his position and the Captains opened fire with their wands but Quaron conjured an earth shield to defend himself before Blinking away to escape from the Demons that had encircled him.
'If only I could use Invigoration like a true Awakened, I would have impaled him on a tier five spirit spell!' Solus thought while the soldiers complimented "Lith" for his impeccable timing and leadership.
Usually, a deep blue mana core would have been capable of casting several powerful spells before needing rest but her case was different. Her cracked core leaked energy by the second and keeping her physical form caused Solus great pain.
Her life force was cracked as well and it crumbled faster with each move that she made. Even with the aid of the Sage Staff, focusing on a spell drained a lot of her focus.
To make matters worse, not only was she still unable to cast spells with her body due to the lack of auxiliary cores, but she also couldn't afford to go all out. If her body disappeared, leaving behind an empty suit of armor, Lith's cover would be blown.
The Skeletal Knights outnumbered the Demons ten to one and with each mage that fell, with each shadow that faded because Lith was too far away to infuse them with new strength, the situation grew direr.
A small unit of undead managed to flank Solus and strike at her constructs. They got past the shattered shields before she could reform them, separating Solus from the Captains by alternating feints and darkness spells.
'This doesn't make any sense. Skeletal Knights are supposed to be incapable of such clever thinking without- Oh shit!' Only then did she notice that Quaron had ceased his attack to direct the battle from a safe distance.
As Syrook's Harbinger, he had access to most of his bloodline abilities, including control over the undead conjured by Nether Gate.
Solus Blinked to blindside Ranger, but the moment Quaron saw the dimensional energy gather, he turned around and put all of his weight behind a lunge aimed at the heart of his hated enemy.
Metal clashed with metal and enchantment with enchantment until his glaive pierced through a wailing Skeletal Knight.
"What the fuck?"
"Nothing personal, kid." A voice said from behind his back, making him shudder.
'He must have Blinked the undead first as a decoy! Too bad Verhen forgot that my weapon has blades at both ends.' He thought while shifting his body weight and reversing the grip on the polearm to strike at the source of the voice.
This time, it hit only air.
When Quaron turned around, Solus was still where he had seen her a few seconds ago. Her tier four Light Mastery spell, Stingray, however, was right in front of him
She had simply used the dimensional door to carry a small cantrip and make him think that she had moved while she had used that time to weave a spell instead.
The construct resembled a huge multi faceted sphere akin to a disco ball the size of an SUV. Quaron expected it to shapeshift into a more dangerous form the moment it came close enough so he attacked it with a barrage of low tier spells.
Such a clumsy form made Stingray an easy target and if he managed to weaken the construct before its activation, he would regain the initiative.
Quaron conjured one tier three spell after the other, exploiting their fast casting time to make up for quality with quantity. Unfortunately for him, Stingray wasn't a construct so much as a carrier.
The moment that the sphere got close enough to its mark, it released from each of its facets the equivalent of a tier three Light Mastery spell. The hail of golden beams of light pierced through the elemental spells and then filled the area around the Ranger.
Only a few managed to hit him while the rest opened holes in the ground, making Quaron's footing uneven.
'That's the worst waste of mana I've ever seen. My armor may be weakened but it can take much more than this before-' Instead of disappearing after the initial burst, the rays of light remained fixed in place and adjusted their trajectory to converge on him.
Quaron Blinked away, only to discover that nothing had changed aside from his position.
Solus had waited to activate Stingray because Light Mastery spells lost their firepower with distance and because by placing it in the middle of Quaron's Blinking range, Stingray made dimensional magic useless.
On top of that, part of the Light Beams surrounding him had turned into hard-light constructs, limiting his movements and making it impossible for him to fly away. Everything else poured on him, hitting Quaron akin to a swarm of incandescent drills.
The Ranger Blinked again to gain the moment of respite he needed to take a deep breath. Mana sense showed Solus where he would reappear and she adjusted Stingray's line of fire accordingly.
Yet this time Quaron welcomed her spell with a burst of bright blue Origin Flames that ate at the incoming beams of light, working their way up to the core of the spell. Solus used part of the energy stored in her spell to put out the flames but Quaron simply breathed more.
Stingray collapsed, leaving the two contestants far away enough from each other to use Invigoration yet only one of them could actually do it.
'Shit! I hoped that he would rush at me while we are both down on mana. I can't last for much longer.' She thought while heavily panting.
Rangers were used to working alone and had often to fight tribes of monsters or groups of bandits. Those who charged in blindly rarely lived long. Quaron had noticed how after their fight "Verhen's" power had drastically dropped.
At first, he had put pressure on Solus to keep her from using Invigoration, yet time and time again she didn't even when she had the opportunity.
"Useless to say, in the case of failure, it's better if your family never returns to the Kingdom. You have my word that the Crown will not harm them but we will not protect them any longer.
"You have made plenty of enemies during your short life and many of them wouldn't miss the opportunity to strike the moment you leave Lutia." Meron's words made Lith feel as if the King had hit him in the guts with a sledgehammer.
What he had considered as another bargain with the Kingdom had turned out to be a double-edged sword that was now pointed at his throat. All of his life work was at risk and the worst thing was that it was a nightmare of his own doing.
"That said, I want you to know that your plan will have my full support. I've sent hundreds of scouts to surround Phresca and they will report you the moment Quaron leaves the city. Assuming he is there, of course.
"If you can kill him before he reaches Zeska, it will save us a lot of trouble. If you can't, make sure to prepare the battlefield to your advantage. Use your time wisely and remember that if you manage to force Quaron even to seemingly violate the terms of your deal, it would still be your victory." The King said.
"I understand." Lith gave him a bow.
"By the way, I'm impressed by how easily you infiltrated Zeska first and then even the City Lord's office. Do you mind to explain to me how you bypassed so many arrays and how did you come back to the camp so quickly?" Meron asked.
"I got out the same way I got in." Lith replied. "Under the cover of darkness, I waited for a gap in the patrol rounds and used a hard-light construct to reach the top of the walls. Another to get down and here I am." Lith replied.
"As for the office, I simply used Light Mastery to keep the lock from clicking once it had been opened with its key. I didn't bypass the arrays because they were still inactive once I came out of my hiding place."
"So you used Light Mastery to leave a decoy in front of your tent, to get in and out of Zeska despite the dimensional sealing arrays, and to violate one of the allegedly safest places in the city. It's no wonder that Manohar manages to escape so often." Meron sighed.
"I'd put light blocking arrays in place in every city of the Kingdom as well if that didn't also mean to cripple our hospitals and- Did you say a key? Can you show it to me?"
Lith conjured a hologram accurate down to the smallest detail of the artifact that Solus had witnessed.
"That's no key. It's the Royal seal entrusted to all City Lords. Why didn't you mention in your report that Quaron's corruption has reached Zeska's highest official?" Meron said in surprise.
He would have never expected Lith to make such a blunder.
"Because that was no City Lord. I have studied the mission's files thoroughly and memorized her appearance." Lith conjured from his right hand the hologram of a scrawny old lady in her mid-eighties with a hunched back and a wig.
"The people I saw, instead, were much younger." The image of the couple appeared above his left hand, showing that there was no resemblance between the two women.
"This makes no sense." Meron said in confusion. "The Royal seal is no common trinket. It cannot be imprinted without the supervision of the ruler of the Kingdom."
"If Quaron or this so-called god have cracked the seal's security, then they pose a threat second only to Thrud!"
***
City Lord's Mansion, a few hours earlier.
The couple that Solus had briefly followed and many other nobles of Zeska stood in a circle around one of the many Warp Gates that had opened the moment the arrays surrounding the city had been deactivated.
They had chosen the ballroom to meet their god because it was the only room of the house big enough for the purpose. While the last batch of riches and magical weapons floated through the dimensional corridors, the nobles kept their forehead on the ground.
In the middle of the circle stood a man of exquisite beauty, about 1.92 meters (7') tall with such delicate features and long silky raven-black hair that it would have been easy to mistake him for a woman if not for his deep voice.
He wore a loose white shirt over pitch-black pants that made him look even taller. Behind him there were mountains of riches and magical treasures arranged to form the walls and the furniture of his home.
He sipped wine from a red crystal glass that had actually been cut from one giant ruby and the handmaiden serving him was of a beauty worthy of a god's dream. Yet she paled in comparison with her master.
"This is everything we had promised you and even more, my Liege." The blonde woman said while putting on the floor all the papers accounting for their offers.
The documents floated on their own, flying through the Gate in an orderly manner for the man to examine them. From time to time, he would move his eyes to the crates that were being delivered, to make sure that nothing was amiss.
A warm smile appeared on his face when he finished checking the goods. The crates contained enough gold to form a small hill and the artifacts emitted such a powerful magical aura that it made even his skin crawl.
"You have proven your faith and are worthy of receiving my gifts." At a snap of his fingers, a golden light enveloped the convened nobles.
Their skin became more elastic and their bodies toned while even the bald ones grew a thick mane. When the light disappeared, the god allowed them to stand up and conjured a mirror of ice in front of each one of them.
"I'm back to my prime!" A nobleman said while looking at his arm that had gone from thin to muscular.
The faces in the mirrors that returned their gazes were those of people who looked to be in their mid-twenties, with perfectly fit bodies as if they had trained regularly instead of suffering from the ailments of old age.
On top of that, they didn't just look young, they also felt full of energy like it didn't happen from decades.
"In the world that I'm going to create, my loyal retainers will be blessed with an eternal life full of pleasure and joy." The god said. "All that I ask of you in return is loyalty and trust."
"All hail Syrook!" The circle of nobles fell to their knees again, slamming their heads against the ground with joy.
"Soon the true Queen will return." Syrook continued. "She will rule under my guidance and make you members of her court. Your families will regret banishing you to a remote corner of the Kingdom, even the founding pillars like Household Myrok."
The blonde woman whose resemblance with Jirni had become even more apparent couldn't help but smile at the thought of the suffering she would inflict upon her relatives.
