Lith decided to gamble and placed his back against the library. He hoped that Dawn would care about the books and wouldn't dare risk damaging them. The vampire in the Chiropteran form breathed a white-hot ray of light that cut through stone, books, and shelves alike as if they were butter.
'Okay, she doesn't give a crap about them. Duly noted.' Lith thought while dodging.
This time, the creature was wary of Ruin. The Chiropteran kept his distance from the dangerous blade and chose to fight on the ground while using his claws as weapons. The creature retracted his wings under the armpits and assumed a martial arts stance.
Both of his arms were coated with light, enhancing the undead's battle prowess. Between his longs claws and unnatural arm reach, the Chiropteran could use his right hand as a spear when Lith tried to step away and as a sword in close quarters combat.
The left arm was used as a shield, exploiting the fact that the light construct surrounding it became denser and sturdier by the second. To make matters worse, the vampire was able to read every move Lith had used since meeting Acala thanks to the hive mind connecting the undead with the Bright Day.
When one of her spawns died, Dawn would lose their abilities, but she would also retrieve the power she had bestowed upon them and the memories about their last moments.
Against an opponent stronger and more skilled than himself, Lith needed the surprise element to win. He was quickly pushed on the defense, without the time to think about what technique was better to save for later.
'Fine! Playing dirty is a game two can play.' He thought while defending against a volley of heat-rays.
Lith had tried to turn the enemy's long arms into an advantage by getting so close that the Chiropteran couldn't attack him without impaling himself, but the vampire had simply engulfed his body in darkness magic to push Lith away while releasing light spells from his fingertips.
Dawn's energy could hurt even the vampire, but the holes they opened were too small to affect his movements, whereas Lith had to defend all of his internal organs from the onslaught.
Unlike the Chiropteran, he needed them to live. Lith dodged half of the heat rays and blocked the rest with Ruin before lunging at the prism with the blade.
The vampire sidestepped the telegraphed attack, blocking Lith's arm with his light shield while accumulating a mass of darkness magic in his right palm, ready to unleash it on contact.
"Gotcha." They both said the moment the vampire performed his counter attack.
A black upside-down membranous wing that resembled a slender clawed hand had emerged from Lith's back and was now wrapped around the Chiropteran's right arm, keeping it at distance.
The vampire could easily pluck the wing off by bending his arm while taking a step back, but the latter was impossible due to Lith having stomped the creature's foot with his own.
The talons of Lith's Wyrmling form pierced both the Chiropteran's flesh and the rock thanks to the layer of Orichalcum boosting their sharpness. The vampire attempted to bite Lith's head off, only to find a scaly face at his eye level that responded to the attack with a headbutt.
The creature's rich battle experience allowed him to react to the unexpected turn of events with but a second of delay.
Unfortunately for him, it was a second too late.
Ruin had never been aimed at the prism, it was just a ruse to get the enemy in position. Lith's left wing trapped the creature's right arm while Ruin kept the shielded arm at distance, leaving the chest wide open.
Helped by the boosted Skinwalker armor and his own darkness infused scales, Lith ignored the spell protecting the Chiropteran. His left arm struck in a spear-hand, using his Orichalcum-coated claws to pierce through the layers of magic, flesh, and bones that shielded the prism.
Dawn had seen Lith fighting long enough to discover that he was an Awakened and had played her pawns accordingly. The first vampire's reckless assault was meant to leave the enemy without spells and force him into a hand to hand fight that no man could possibly win.
Yet her plan had failed because Lith was a man unlike any she had ever faced before.
'This is impossible! Hybrids can't bond with a member of the family.' When the third vampire had died, Dawn was tinkering with her version of the Odi machine located in the upper levels of the caves.
Controlling her minions while she performed complex magical calculations and reverse-engineered an ancient device at the same time was a child's play for her. Or at least it was as long as she had enough brains to share the intellectual burden with.
On top of that, there were several reasons why Dawn couldn't afford to lose all the vampires of her nest. The humans she had captured granted her knowledge about all the modern magical fields, but the vampires were the ones that allowed her to bridge old and new magical theories.
Without the vampires, it was impossible for her to convert her outdated spells into modern and more efficient techniques. Another reason was that the Bright Day couldn't bond her prisms with humans, only with undead.
Thralls were an exception because they possessed two cores, making them part undead. Yet without their sire, their blood core would sooner or later dissipate and with it her prism.
Losing all the vampires meant losing everything Dawn had worked hard to acquire since Acala had freed her. With her nest reduced to one-fourth of its members, it was time to take matters into her own hands.
Meanwhile, Nalrond was fighting a losing battle. Even with air fusion enhancing his speed, he was a sloth compared to a Chiropteran. Also, he had never fought an undead before so he kept making mistakes like aiming for vitals in the hope of slowing the enemy enough to break his prism.
The vampire, on the other hand, had lived long enough to turn killing into an art-form, and thanks to the hive-mind, she had already witnessed most of the Rezar's best spells.
The only reason Nalrond was still alive was the light construct protecting him. After killing the first Chiropteran, Nalrond had split it into smaller energy cores to lessen the burden on his mana cores and use them to attack his next enemy from every side at once.
Unfortunately for him, the light spheres couldn't keep up with the undead's speed so he had been forced to use them as shields. The Rezar had already lost several scales and was covered in claw marks.
Some were shallow, others were deep, but all of them bled profusely. By the time Nalrond managed to mend one bleeding wound with light fusion, two more had already been opened.
'If only I could Blink or at least use earth magic!' Nalrond couldn't believe how unlucky he was. Rezars were supposed to be invincible in caves, yet he felt that his end was nigh.
'Lith was right about the speed of a spell being meaningless at close quarters, but that bitch keeps her distance. This way, both my constructs and my darkness spells are useless. I could emit a light pillar, but if it gets deflected again, I'm done for.'
The moment Lith killed his opponent, the last Chiropteran standing received the order to retreat. Her problem was how to disengage from the enemy without leaving herself wide open to a killing blow.
