‘You can’t stay here!’ She rebuked them. ‘If we group up in a single place, surrounding and killing us will be a piece of cake.’
Quylla had yet to fully recover from drowning and while Invigoration had restored Morok’s mana and stamina he was still hungry.
‘Six eyes and only one frigging mouth!’ He grumbled while gulping down nutrient potions. ‘A bigger body also means I need more food to heal. Why there has always to be a catch?’
‘I know, sorry.’ Friya panted hard, having a hard time stabilizing her breathing enough to use Lifestream. ‘Can you hold long enough for us to recover?’
She and Nalrond were exhausted, having spent most of their mana to hold the line alone against three elven units.
‘I can do better.’ The elf replied while using her own Invigoration on them. ‘Now piss off. This is one of the cases where there’s weakness in numbers.’
By being together, they offered an easy target while they also couldn’t use their most powerful spells without hurting their allies. Only the mage casting a spell was immune to its effects.
Aalejah had survived exactly because she was alone. She had earlier cast a Raging Sun on herself, using the blast to deflect the arrows and detonate both spells and enemies coming in her direction.
‘Thank you.’ Friya nodded, hating herself for what was about to say. ‘Before I go, there’s something you should know. Killing these guys is pointless if we can’t get rid of M’Rael. Solus is a mage tower and by capturing her he has also gained her powers.’
‘She’s what?’ Morok’s eyes went wide and not only because he was shooting elemental beams at everything that moved.
‘Which tower?’ Aalejah asked while suppressing her own surprise.
‘Menadion’s.’ Friya hated to reveal one of Lith’s most important secrets, but she couldn’t afford to let her friends fight against the unknown.
Also, there was the possibility that as the World Tree’s former servant Aalejah might know something that would help them rescue Solus.
‘Fuck! I only know that it exists and that it was listed as lost.’
‘Because the World Tree kept the information classified?’ Friya tilted her head to the side.
‘Yes, there was almost no public information about it. Most of Menadion’s apprentices died with her. Those who left before she completed the tower knew little about it and those to whom she gifted the pieces of the Set of Menadion kept their mouths shut hoping to find the tower themselves one day.
‘The Tree had to work hard to find that information and shared it only with the Chroniclers.’ Aalejah replied. ‘Can you tell me what to expect?’
‘The first floor-‘ A charge of elves wielding enchanted weapons cut Friya short.
With a snap of her fingers, she conjured three entry points and dozens of exit points at the same time. All but the Steps from which the members of the group emerged exploded in a burst of fire.
It blinded the mystical senses of the elves and injured those who attempted to ambush the humans.
‘Did you know?’ Morok didn’t waste time, taking off with Quylla between her arms as soon as he came out of the dimensional door.
‘Yes.’ His tone was hurt and she couldn’t bear to lie to him any longer. ‘I promise I’ll tell you everything, but we have to survive this first. Here’s what the tower does.’
The Tyrant clenched his teeth in anger, envying Lith not for the tower but for the blind loyalty that he managed to inspire. While Quylla talked, he used his eyes to Dominate incoming spells and his scales to absorb the world energy.
Together with the Life Maelstrom, it allowed him to safely overload his core and weave spells above his deep violet core. Since the elves seemed to have a fancy for water magic, Morok conjured on himself the tier five Battle Mage spell, God of Fire.
A blazing armor covered the Featherwalker armor while four flaming spheres orbited around him. By tapping into them, he could now conjure all kinds of fire spells up to tier three or mono-elemental tier four spells with willpower.
He exploited them maliciously to unleash a barrage of tier one Fire Darts so thick that there was barely any space between them. Each Fire Dart dealt minimal damage but enough to trigger the spells imbued inside the arrows and make them explode from a distance.
It triggered a chain reaction that worked its way back to the archers, forcing them to stop attacking and drop down for cover.
‘Friya, stay away from the melee. Keep yourself at a distance and Warp Nalrond alone. Be his lifeline and bail him out the moment the situation is about to get out of his hands.’ Aalejah was playing her role in the Awakened formation as the Control Tower, directing the battle from a distance.
Thanks to his constructs, Nalrond was a one-man army and he could use them to cover his retreat when trapped. All he needed was mana and Friya could give it to him with but a few breaths of Invigoration.
‘On it.’ Friya felt the familiar blip marking that Thundercrash was ready for a second shot.
She pointed it at M’Rael for a second, but then she realized that if he really had the tower’s abilities, he also had the dimensional awareness to redirect the bullet against one of the Beasts he was facing.
So she pointed the rail gun at the biggest group of elves she could find and pulled the trigger. The electromagnetically charged bullet couldn’t do much damage by itself from that trajectory.
There were just three elves lined up and not even in a way that she could hit them all and inflict them lethal damage. The shockwave that followed it, however, was another story entirely.
The three elves lost a limb each and not even from a direct it but due to the air pressure surrounding the bullet. An instant later, the sonic boom followed, causing the eardrums of those nearby to burst and the entire unit to go belly-up.
Friya had also opened three small Steps, the first of which intercepted the bullet before it could hit the ground and Warped it behind another unit. She had no way to aim precisely so the rebound shot hit no one.
Yet the bullet still moved at supersonic speed and the sonic boom in its wake was enough. By aiming at the center of the formation, the eardrums of the elves closest to the bullet’s trajectory burst and their bodies were sent crashing against their allies.
The whole unit collapsed to the ground, not bearing serious injuries but all of them stunned and disoriented. The bullet entered the third and final Steps, blasting through another unit and dealing the same effect.
‘If only I had more time and a better visual, I could have the bullet ricochet longer.’ She thought while rescuing Nalrond and dodging more arrows.
The group was still surrounded and even with the help of Dimensional Ruler, Friya needed to constantly turn around to deal with many threats at the same time.
Her spell burned lots of mana by the second and she also consumed Invigoration for Nalrond. Friya could barely defend herself, let alone help the Wyrms in any way.