‘A normal person would put the power core in the chest. It’s the largest and the best-protected part of the academy. Only an idiot would put it in the head. It’s exposed and if decapitated, the Golden Griffon would become a sitting duck.’ Lith said.
‘So next stop the head.’ Bytra understood Lith’s reasoning.
‘Yeah. Thrud isn’t dumb but she is cunning. She may have chosen a dumb spot to make it hard to predict.’ He replied.
‘What the heck is Verhen doing?’ The security system showed Lith’s path to Hystar, but the Raiju moved so fast that by the time she was pinpointed, Bytra was already hundreds of meters away.
On top of that, the Cursed Headmaster couldn’t focus on the mystery. Marth was attacking with everything he had and it was more than Hystar could take.
‘If Lith succeeds, there’s no point in saving my strength. I’ll make this fucker pay for attacking my wife!’ Marth snarled as his blade locked the opponent’s, his shield pushed away Hystar’s, and his right leg bolted up like a whip.
Marth’s kick struck the Golden Knight in the chin with his heel, the impact snapping the head up.
Hystar staggered for a second, long enough for Marth to Blink behind him and perform a shoulder bash that sent the lost academy sprawling on the forest.
“Try laughing now, you bastard!” Manohar’s spell, Supernova, appeared out of thin air.
Yet instead of surrounding the fighters, the hard-light spheres encased the Golden Knight in a concentric formation. At a snap of Marth’s fingers, they imploded in unison, leaving Lith unscathed even though he was just centimeters away.
Hystar, however, couldn’t say the same. The Mad Professor had developed several versions of Supernova and this one was designed for indoor fights while protecting his students.
Casting Supernova in this form reduced its power while focusing it on a single opponent. Not a single iota of energy was lost, filling the Golden Griffon’s armor with thin cracks.
Cracks that started to heal the moment Hystar regained his footing.
“Idiot! Struggle all you want, we are both fueled by the Royal Array. Soon you’ll run out of energy and then I’ll destroy you!” The Cursed Headmaster roared.
At the same time, Lith had finished scanning the head of the Golden Griffon, finding it empty.
‘Chest it is.’ He said and Bytra followed his directions.
For once luck didn’t laugh in his face and he found the power core after scanning about 50% of the chest.
‘There!’ Lith had the image of a huge X appear in front of Bytra’s eyes thanks to the mind link.
The Headmaster’s office wasn’t in the place of the heart but of the left lung.
‘Copy that!’ The Raiju consumed most of the Life Maelstrom she had received from Nelia to cast a powerful Chaos Annihilation.
She moved her head in a diagonal trajectory from down left to up and right, then all to the left and down again to the right.
The X that Lith had telepathically shown her was now visible to everyone, carved in the armor by the Chaos spell.
“That’s our cue!” Zoreth said as the fallen descendants of the six originals gods of magic assumed a formation that resembled the Big Dipper.
It was centered around Vastor who acted as the seventh star.
‘Gods if I’d love to call this Vastor’s Annihilation, but even I find it pretentious.’ He thought as they unleashed the Mirror World spell.
Vastor had derived it from Silverwing’s legacy and just like the Hexagram, it was a hybrid between a spell and an array. Each Eldritch conjured a different Cursed Element while only the Master provided Spirit Magic.
The seven pillars couldn’t combine due to the nature of Mirror Magic, but they still held tremendous power. They struck the same point in unison so that their chaotic and violent conflict would be focused on a single point.
The blast opened a hole in the armor of the Golden Griffon deep enough to reveal the academy inside. Lith didn’t waste time and jumped in, quickly followed by the Firstborns who had Spirit Warped behind him on his cue.
“Magnificent!” Tessa said with an enraptured voice while looking at Vastor with new eyes.
“Thanks, but I’m a married man.” The When All Are One array carried the thoughts of its members, creeping Kelia and Nyka out but leaving the others indifferent.
“Too bad.” She shrugged and moved past the fleeting excitement.
To plant folk and Fae, power was the greatest allure and the Master had proven to be a most charming man. Yet those feelings would fade as fast as they came unless nurtured.
‘My Queen, Verhen is inside and so are Baba Yaga’s Firstborns. Something is wrong!’ Hystar tried to follow Lith, but Marth almost cut his armed limb off, forcing him to focus on the battler.
“What do you think you are doing?” Thrud locked Sylpha’s sword, the Davross of the blades screeching as it bent due to the massive pressure both sides exerted.
“If you sit down and wait, I’ll gladly explain everything to you.” The Queen replied with a smirk, pushing the blades to a side and shoving Thrud away with a shoulder bash.
‘The Dungeon is that way. I have to go this way, instead.’ Lith said via a mind link.
He couldn’t afford the risk of Hystar relocating the power core so he had to keep the map while Vladion would follow it via the telepathic channel. Luckily for Vladion, Lith had found the dungeon almost immediately during the scan so it was visible on the map as well.
‘Solus?’
‘Almost done.’ She had started adding the self-destruction spell for the academy inside the Mouth of Menadion the moment Lith had spotted the Headmaster’s office.
Until that moment, she had kept one slot ready for a Disarray in case Bytra was caught in the Unwavering Loyalty array and Ruin in the other slot because why not.
The hole they had entered from was already closing and the walls of the academy were shrinking in the attempt to squash Lith like a bug.
Unfortunately for Hystar, the Tiamat wasn’t Bytra but he was still incredibly fast. On top of that, he was free to focus on the path ahead whereas the Cursed Headmaster was beaten up every time he got distracted in the attempt to block Lith.
Marth was relentless, burning the entire energy reserve of the White Griffon in a seamless onslaught. On top of that, his strikes were aimed at the joints and he came close to severing the arms of the Golden Griffon more than once.
‘Dammit! If I don’t stop Verhen, he’ll reach the power core of the academy. On the other hand, if I don’t stop Marth, he’ll cut off my limbs.
‘Once I lay defenseless on the ground, all he has to do is to sever the Headmaster’s office from the Golden Griffon to turn the entire academy into a sitting duck!’ Hystar thought and he was right.
He had understood Lith’s plan to perfection when it was too late to stop him. Sylpha blocked Thrud, while Marth kept Hystar on his toes, leaving Lith free to advance.
