'These creatures are unstoppable war machines.' Solus explained.
'Even without the vortex, by using two cores at once it's like they have one core of superior purity. With the vortex, the core purity is upgraded twice and they have the same effects of a full elemental fusion.
'To make things worse, the double core synergy allows them to ignore the mana poisoning effect as long as the secondary core holds. Basically, it works like a filter. It protects the main core by tanking the foreign mana while the creature uses the vortex to accumulate loads of world energy.
'This way, even when the second core crumbles, the Carpenter can keep fighting at full strength for an extended period of time.'
Lith cursed the enemy's ingenuity while activating earth fusion to block most of the damage from the five incoming Chasing Lightning and light fusion to heal his wounds the moment they opened.
Luckily, the War Mage spell was slow enough to allow Lith to intercept two lightning bolts with his earth magic infused Gatekeeper. It wasn't as good as a stone wall but it was the next best thing. Lith felt a sting when the blade and the bolts clashed, but nothing more.
He gritted his teeth ready to tank the other three, yet nothing happened. Three enchanted needles were stuck in front of him. They drew the incoming spell as if they were lightning rods and grounded their energy making it harmless.
"The other one is escaping!" Jirni pointed at the second Carpenter which was walking upstairs double time towards the balcony. It held in its huge hands the limp bodies of Manohar and Mynna.
"I don't feel like turning my back to something capable of silent casting." Lith's voice oozed sarcasm. He had yet to understand how the Carpenter had timely produced a tier four spell out of the blue.
'Solus?'
'No clue. Their cores have a static flow, so they aren't Awakened. That's all I know.'
Tista took off with a flight spell, taking advantage of the Ballroom high ceiling while none of the Carpenters seemed to pay her any attention.
"Not so fast, little girl!" The Carpenter's voice was a low rumble, like an echo coming from a deep cave. Its thin lips formed a cruel smile and his voice was amused, like a child who had just received a new toy.
The creature was incredibly nimble despite its size. It leaped with inhuman strength to intercept her with its clawed hand while the other was set ablaze, ready to unleash the tier four spell Scorching Blast.
Tista grinned in reply. She reversed the Carpenter's gravity and turned its jump into a head first dive into the ceiling. Both the claw and the spell missed their intended targets with a wide margin.
"Gravity magic?" The creature's surprise turned into shock when Lith and Tista combined their efforts, reversing the gravity around the creature again and amplifying it by ten times as the Carpenter plummeted to the ground.
Even with its enhanced physique, such a huge body already exerted a huge strain on its joints due to its height and weight. Between the fall and the artificial gravity, the Carpenter's kneecaps shattered even though it had conjured an air cushion at the last second to lessen the impact.
Tista left Jirni and Lith to deal with the crippled monster as she darted toward the second Carpenter to prevent its escape. The joyful expression on both creatures' faces disappeared as their plan was suddenly taking a turn for the worse.
The rest of the team had drunk the same potion Lith did before approaching the Marquis' office. This allowed Dorian to recover in a matter of seconds from an impact that otherwise would have knocked him out and Jirni to circle around the enemy with the speed of a cheetah.
'These things have eyes even on the back of their heads. I know that I can't perform a sneak attack, but there's something I need to verify.' She thought.
One of the advantages of not taking part in a fight was the possibility to calmly observe the events like they were nothing more than a game.
Since Solus's magical abilities were usually negligible against Lith's opponents, her role had always been to analyze the enemies and use the collected information to help him devise the best strategy.
'Those earlier cuts bled too little.' Solus and Jirni reasoned as one. 'The anatomy of these things must be completely different from a human's. If I were in their maker's place, I'd put their vitals in places hard to reach during a fight.'
The two needles in her hands shapeshifted into curved knives as she approached the enemy's back in what seemed to be a cut throat attack. From the other side of the creature, Lith had finished casting Death Call again.
Four arms made of darkness energy emerged from his body and enveloped the Carpenter's limbs while he aimed for its head. With one hand he executed a horizontal slash with the Gatekeeper to cut all the eyes at once, while the other shoot a volley of Plague Arrows to the torso.
Without its legs, the Carpenter couldn't dodge both attacks at once. Not with Jirni timing her attack to match Lith's. Their coordination was so good that it was hard to believe it was an improvised maneuver.
Yet instead of panicking, the creature smiled again.
'The kid is good for his age, but that's it.' The puppeteer thought. 'With all of his fancy spells and weapons he thinks he has won already. He doesn't realize that no matter how good a potion is, he can't exploit its full potential.
'Having the abilities of a magical beast doesn't mean knowing how to use them. They can use about 50% of their new capabilities without them becoming a burden. Unlike them, I don't need to get accustomed to this body's prowess, nor to worry about the aftereffects.
'It's way weaker than mine and it's only disposable trash. Sometimes I wonder if Balkor used my work as a template for his undead.'
The vortex suddenly activated at full force, dispelling both Death Call and the Plague Arrows, leaving Lith exposed to a counter attack. The Carpenter's first mana core tanked the damage while the world energy brought the second one to a purple core level strength.
At the same time, two humanoid arms previously camouflaged by the creature's bulging muscles emerged from its back, revealing how all the space where kidneys and liver were supposed to be was actually empty.
The arms completed the last hand sign before moving to intercept Jirni's hands. She managed to step back at the last second, avoiding her wrists getting crushed, but she was too close to completely dodge the stream of lightning that appeared at point blank.
The Carpenter's grin grew wider as the ice spikes it had conjured appeared behind the stumbling Constable and turned her into a pin cushion. To add insult to the injury, the first set of arms ignored Lith's sword and lunged their bone claws to his sides.
At the same time, the mouth on the Carpenter's abdomen opened and released a jet stream of purple flames. It was just another tier three spell, but the vortex boosted its destructive power to the extreme.
