Supreme Magus

Chapter 4461: Never Again (Part 1)

The three Isharas came at Lith in unison in a triangle formation, forcing him to face one of them while exposing his back to another and his side to the last Ishara.

Master and apprentices began their attack by simultaneously lashing at the Tiamat with their tails. One bolted at Ragnarök itself, aiming to destroy the angry blade while there was still no world energy to fuel its self-repair enchantments.

The second tail was aimed at Lith’s Voidwalker armor. A single dose of acid wouldn’t inflict any permanent damage to something that big, but it would be enough to reduce the armor to a useless lump of scales and metal until the end of the fight.

The third and last stinger was aimed at the small gap between Lith’s gorget and helm. A successful strike would sever his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.

’We can take Verhen hostage, end this stupid fight, and teach him a lesson.’ Ankhuta thought. ’We won’t let him go until he pays the weregild for all the Isharas he killed and returns their bodies and equipment.’

Lith’s tail intercepted the stinger coming from his back, striking it from below with the bone spike on the end of the Tiamat’s tail.

The Adamant-coated bone spike pierced into the stinger like a hook, while the rest of the tail wrapped itself around the Ishara’s, throwing her around like a fish dangling from a line.

Ragnarök severed the stinger in front of Lith from the rest of the composite tail while releasing a burst of red flames that cauterized the wound on both ends and made it harder to heal.

Lith’s upside-down right wing splayed its bones into a hand-like pose and caught the stinger coming from the side, pulling it away. Venkhara hit only air, and the sudden tug forced him into an uncomfortable position from which he couldn’t unleash the Spirit Spells he had prepared.

At the same time, a blast of mystical red flames struck the three Isharas, burning their flesh and mana alike. The Balefire conjured by Lith’s red eye also ravaged their defenseless equipment, melting the metal and consuming what world energy was left in their power cores.

The three Isharas screamed in a pain that darkness fusion couldn’t suppress as the mystical fire also burned the runes of the spells they had conjured inside their bodies.

’Balefire isn’t as strong as Origin Flames and won’t neutralize Life Maelstrom like Void Flames, but I can release as much as I want without messing with my breathing rhythm.’ Lith thought.

’Also, not having to squeeze the air out of my lungs allows me to do this!’

The Tiamat pushed his muscles and fusion magic to their utmost limit, twisting his body and sending the female Ishara caught in the grip of his wing to crash into Ankhuta.

The impact disrupted their focus and doubled the amount of Balefire engulfing them.

’If I conjure my Spirit Spell from so up close, Venkhara and Ishuta will get caught in the conflagration.’ Ankhuta inwardly cursed. ’And that if Verhen doesn’t use Ishuta as a meat shield!’

He was about to finish the thought when Lith whipped his tail and slammed Ishuta on top of her allies. The damage the Isharas suffered was minimal thanks to the Life Maelstrom coursing through their sturdy bodies, but that wasn’t Lith’s goal.

The Tiamat could now focus the Balefire on a single, tangled target, and release a jet stream of Void Flames that would hit all three Isharas at once.

The Blood of Selkis was flabbergasted when Lith managed to produce one more kind of mystical flames despite the alleged lack of world energy.

Surprise turned into grief as the silver lightning abandoned their bodies and the tier five Spirit Spell, Primordial Roar, shattered Ishuta like glass and still had enough power to blast the other two Isharas away.

”This is impossible!” Ankhuta roared as he unleashed his Spirit Spells, and Lith dodged them with ease, burning them with another burst of Balefire. ”How can this be?”

Meanwhile, Tista was still surrounded, and her situation worsened by the second.

Once they had overcome the initial surprise, the Isharas caught in her magical formations had managed to either escape the confines of Tista’s arrays or just break them apart with sheer might.

Realizing the danger that the Hekate posed to their survival, only a couple of Isharas went to help Inara deal with Faluel while the rest focused on Tista.

’Fuck me sideways!’ The Hekate used Ethereal Aegis to turn her body into a mass of living Flames and escape a deadly trap, also burning a Divine Beast inside out in the process. ’There are too many of them, and I have only two more bursts of Void Flames stored inside of Firefang.

’Once I consume them, I’ll be alone against a bunch of monsters who are over twice as strong as me and have enough limbs to sell a few at the local market and still have plenty to spare to turn me into a meat skewer!’

The bloodline ability consumed none of her mana and saved her life, but rebuilding the flaming parts of her body destroyed by the hail of enchanted blades and spells the Isharas had thrown at Tista drained her stamina.

The Blood of Selkis had no idea how Ethereal Aegis worked and stopped their assault for a moment in confusion.

’There must be a cost to using that ability, or Tista Verhen’s fame as an immortal warrior would have spread far and wide.’ The Divine Beasts thought almost in unison before chasing after the Hekate.

Tista flew amid her own magical formations, using them to keep the Isharas at bay, but Life Maelstrom made them faster than Dragonspeed. On top of that, small units of Isharas kept their distance and dismantled the arrays, removing the obstacles that kept their brethren from cornering their prey.

’Oh, screw it! There’s no time like when you are still breathing.’ Tista thought as the encirclement tightened on her so much that she couldn’t escape without using Aethereal Aegis again and consuming most of her life force.

She flapped her wings with all of her might, throwing her colored feathers in every direction in a storm of prismatic daggers. The Isharas dodged, blocked, and deflected most of them, suffering little to no damage from the few feathers that hit their marks.

The Isharas thought it was just a desperate bluff to slow them down when the Prismatic Wind stored in the feathers conjured a tornado. Tista had developed an array version of Lith’s Mjolnir spell, and the Isharas were the first to experience its effects.

Air magic produced strong winds, air blades, and lightning bolts, while the earth element conjured stone spikes, walls, and shields. Together, the two elements magnetically charged both the rocks and the Isharas caught in the storm.

The repulsive effect further accelerated Tista’s stone constructs while the attractive effect turned the Blood of Selkis into living lightning rods.

Last but not least, Void Magic constantly switched one element into the other. Many Isharas crashed into solid walls that hadn’t been there a moment ago, while others aimed their spells at stone projectiles that disappeared like mist just to reform a heartbeat later and hit their target.