To make matters worse, the wingtips were long claws that the Demon kept ready to slash in the case the Emperor Beast tried to attack him from the sides. The two warriors had yet to perform a single attack but the Roc was already losing.
Asa kept retreating and Locrias kept advancing, but soon the Roc's back would reach the wall. When that happened, the fight would end. Emperor Beasts were used to overpowering smaller opponents by exploiting their raw strength and speed.
Yet the Demon in front of her was capable of following her every move with his six eyes and Asa's simple attack patterns were like child's play compared to Locrias' swordsmanship.
The Roc's instinct told her that if she let the fight come down to close-quarters, she would die. The feral wings, the cruel blade, the hunger that the body made of darkness exuded, everything in the Demon seemed to have been made to kill.
'If I have to die, I'd rather die fighting!' Asa infused the Life Maelstrom into her own bloodline ability, Living Thunder.
She drew in the surrounding world energy, turning her humanoid body into a silver mass of crackling energy that charged at the Demon. Locrias tried and failed to use Domination since he lacked the necessary mastery to harmonize the six eyes and conjure the seventh.
Then, he lunged with his longsword while also clawing with his darkness-infused wings, but they all passed through the Roc's body without dealing her any harm. Locrias, on the other hand, took plenty.
The Living Thunder flowed through his armor and blade, directly reaching his body. Earth fusion granted him resistance to the air element, but not immunity so it only helped him to limit the damage.
The Demon gritted his teeth, withstanding the spasms and managing not to lose the spells he had at the ready. That was the only advantage he had left after the Roc had escaped from the corner and readied her next attack.
Rocs belonged to the lesser Phoenixes and thanks to Thrud's ambrosia, Asa had regained part of her legacy. She breathed a river of violet-blue Origin Flames at Locrias, hoping to finish him off.
His body was made of pure energy which made it nigh-invulnerable to physical attacks, but it also made it easy for her to gauge his strength.
'He has yet to cast spells because he knows that with every iota of mana he spends and with each bit of damage he takes, he becomes weaker. That thing started stronger than me but after I hit him with the Living Lightning I evened the field.' Asa thought.
'Origin Flames are the bane of beings that feed off energy. If they hit, he will become even weaker and the tables will turn.'
The Roc was right and Locrias shared her same thoughts, just in a much less optimistic light.
His rage turned into hate and the hate burst out of his chest in the form of Void Flames. The clash between the two different kinds of mystical fires resulted in a powerful detonation that made the City Hall tremble and sent everyone in the room flying.
'Locrias, you damn idiot!' Lith roared after losing his advantage due to the blast. 'That was Origin Flames 101!'
'Don't be such a drama queen! There were just two of them.' The Demon replied, ignoring how Earth's college classes worked. 'I know that I made a dumb mistake but knowing and doing are two completely different things.
'I have yet to get used to this body's instincts.'
'Thanks, Locrias.' Solus said with a dazzling telepathic smile. 'It feels good not being the noob anymore.'
The Demon was about to ask what a noob was when the fight started anew. Ienta released a second volley of Life Maelstrom that restored her strength and further boosted that of her allies.
Both Lith and Solus tried to Dominate it, but the silver bolts of lightning were too quick for them.
The Harpy darted in front of the Tiamat, executing an x-shaped attack with her maces that forced him to raise War to protect the blade, leaving him unprotected from the chin to the waist.
Ienta smiled as she used the momentum of her failed attack to perform a somersault and use the long blades covering her talons to gut him like a fish.
Or so she thought until something blocked her legs in their tracks.
"Got you!" Lith said as the part of the Voidwalker armor that covered his wings shapeshifted into a solid block of metal, turning the thin membranes into thick maces.
The impact produced a silvery sound while the blunt damage numbed the Harpy's limbs and broke her feet.
She tried to escape, but the wings-maces turned into blades that coordinated with War to block her escape route, leaving nowhere to go but back.
Forced to move in a straight line, Ienta was once again easy prey of the Void Flames. The impact sent her slamming against the wall where War nailed the Harpy. The angry blade's World Mirror ability took the Life Maelstrom for itself while the Counterflow ability distorted Ienta's mana, unleashing her own spells against her.
The Harpy died in a burst of Adamant as her armor exploded along with her flesh, yet Lith collected every piece of it for Salaark to recycle.
"This is the good stuff." He said while experiencing for the first time the effects of Life Maelstrom that War had passed onto him.
Meanwhile, the Treant had fully reformed and after noticing how green Solus was, he had moved the fight to close-quarters.
'Clearly that midget relied on her artifacts and her magic to survive until now.' He thought. 'She barely has a deep blue core so she can't cast spells with her body. If I manage to stop her from throwing that hammer again, she is as good as dead.'
That was his first and last mistake.
The Treant's analysis was as spot-on as his conclusions were wrong. Solus had a limited energy reserve so she resorted to the Sage Staff's and the Fury's abilities to extend the duration of her human form.
On top of that, with her deep blue core, she could only cast a few tier five spells before running out of mana. Her body, instead, carried part of the mass of the tower. Each of her physical attacks was deadlier than most spells and cost her an insignificant amount of energy.
The hapless Treant was fooled by Life Vision that mistook her tower side as a part of her artifacts and only perceived the life force that belonged to the short woman.
The Fae attacked with a long polearm that shattered at the first strike of the Fury. The Davross forged by Menadion and purified in Salaark's flames dwarfed the Adamant of the spear like the sun does a faraway star.
The fact that Solus weighted more than ten adult Treants didn't help either.
"Wow, are you stupid or what?" She asked, sounding too much like Manohar for her own liking.
The second hit of the Fury, a backhand attack, sent him flying right into the trajectory of the Sage Staff's ability, Elemental Gaze.. The three evil eyes and the three crystals emitted each an energy pillar of their respective element.
