'I'd rather sort my socks drawer than waste my brain cells to remember a dead language in the remote case I find an inscription while I'm unable to just cheat my way with Soluspedia.' Lith opened the storage door, finding what looked like a Warp Gate being built.
It was a stone circle of 1.5 meters (5 feet) radius, with an odd mix of old and new dimensional runes engraved. Yet just like the other device, there was no trace of a power source capable of activating it.
'Seriously. Why build a Gate in a storage and why all the traces of the white energy don't go any further than this?' Lith thought.
Lith retraced his steps, finding several inscriptions along the corridors he had already visited.
'What the actual fuck?' Due to the rock's erosion, he had to use earth magic to read most of the engravings. It was the only way to sense even the slightest traces remaining in the rock and make sense of the words.
What shocked him was the fact that above and sometimes below the engravings there were air bubbles in the rock. At first, Lith had thought they were just imperfections, but after a while, he noticed that they were located exactly where the Odi would place their hidden road sign.
'Someone has altered the rock to erase the writings. Those remaining prove that this place once belonged to the Odi, but they only lead to places that are the magical research equivalent of broom closets.' He thought.
Too many things didn't add up, making Solus unwilling to mock Lith for his paranoia.
'We'll think about that later. Something is coming our way from the north-east wall.'
'Living or dead?' Lith asked while activating Life Vision. Without the sun, he had no idea what direction Solus was talking about.
'Living. It has two cores so it should be a thrall…' Solus paused for a split second to take a better look at their opponent. It was still at the fringes of her mystical senses so her readings were approximative.
'By my maker, it's no thrall. The second isn't a blood core.' She thought in amazement.
'Oh, great! Another Abomination hybrid then. What the heck is one of them doing here?' Lith unsheathed Ruin and started to weave his best anti Abomination spells.
'Hybrid, yes. Abomination, no. It has two mana cores, but one is human while the other has a beast's energy signature.' She replied.
Lith canceled his spells and prepared new ones. He had no idea what his new opponent's abilities were so he wanted to be prepared for the worst.
'Bad news. Somehow, not only they are able to spot our position, but also to follow your movements through the rock, just like a Clacker.' Solus thought.
Lith had moved out of the creature's trajectory, to strike at them the moment they came out the wall. Yet they seemed to have noticed and adjusted their course to not fall into his trap.
'How the heck can they move like that without causing the mountain to collapse nor suffocating?' Lith's attempts to take the enemy by surprise were constantly being foiled.
Tired of that game, he stopped moving and activated Full Guard. The spell enveloped even the space inside the walls, allowing Lith to notice that the creature wasn't digging so much as swimming through the rock.
'What a cunning bastard! They are weakening the tunnel's structure to cause a cave-in with minimal effort. Their ability uses so little mana that is barely noticeable even to Life Vision. I might have missed it if not for Full Guard.'
Lith extended his open hands and clenched his fists, making the softened rock harden again. The spell served to both foil the enemy plan and trap the creature. Before they could react, Lith clapped his hands, turning the trap into a vice that squashed the enemy like a bug.
'What the heck?' Solus thought as she witnessed with her mana sense a white brilliance radiating from the creature. The unknown spell was growing in intensity but it had no apparent effect.
'That's idiotic. The hot air and the pressure generated by the vaporized rocks will crush that thing along with my spell, unless…' Lith's paranoia moved his body before his brain could finish processing the scenario.
A white-hot ray pierced through over three meters (10 feet) of solid rock, passed where Lith had been standing until a second before, and hit the wall behind him, leaving a circular hole several meters deep.
The edges of the hole were clean-cut as if it had been made by a laser.
"Murderer! Your time has come!" A roughly male voice yelled while a dozen white spheres emerged from the wall and tried to strike at Lith.
'The bad news is that this guy can use offensive light magic. The good news is that producing that heat ray took quite a toll on him. His two deep blue mana cores are half-spent already.' Solus thought.
'Did I miss an offensive light magic bargain sale or what?' Lith was pretty pissed off seeing another hybrid use such rare magic, but he was more focused on defending against the spheres of light.
The only silver lining of that mess was that he could finally try out Ruin's second enchantment, World Mirror. Ruin's ability to also channel gravity magic was simply the proof of how much more polished Ruin's first enchantment was compared to that Orion had infused the Gatekeeper with.
An Orichalcum Skinwalker armor was quite a catch, and Orion's pride would never allow him to try and scam Lith. Orion had listened to all of Lith's stories, about how Thrud Griffon, the Odi, and Manohar were the greatest threats he had been forced to deal with and almost died for it.
The Mad Professor was more an unwilling ally than an enemy, but since capturing him was becoming a state affair, his unparalleled skill in using light magic couldn't be underestimated.
All three of them had in common the ability to conjure long-lasting spells that could be shapeshifted at will. Hence Orion had imbued Ruin with the ability to leech off the elemental energy from any incoming spell and use it to improve its own performance without any mana cost for its wielder.
World Mirror came with several limitations, like being ineffective against fast spells or the fact that it sapped the elemental energy of a spell too slowly to dispel it completely, but it was still effective in many situations where most mages would be helpless.
Also, Ruin was but a prototype.
Lith infused the blade with the light element, making its glow become brighter. The creature was less powerful and skilled compared to the Mad Professor, giving Lith plenty of openings to work with.
The further hard-light constructs got from their caster, the weaker they would become so Lith moved away from the creature while blocking the spheres that were swarming him.
With each step he took, the constructs became slower, and with each hit they sustained, the mana they were made of was dispersed.
A spell with a physical vessel could attack its target multiple times before losing strength, but at the same time, it could be struck back. Ruin's magical properties allowed the blade to easily cut through the constructs while also draining their energy.
On top of that, thanks to having practiced the meditation techniques that Faluel had taught him, Lith was able to perceive the focus points of the creature's spell.
Lith's Domination over the light element was none, but he could still see where the willpower and the mana that fueled the spell were accumulated.
