"I expected worse from you. It's not like an egotistical jerk like you to risk his life for a bunch of blood-sucking parasites who'd gladly see you dead." Orpal said.
"I owe no explanation to a slave of ln Narchat." Lith replied. "Only death."
"I'm not ln!" Orpal snarled. "My na is-"
"Co forth, Oga Pri!" Lith ignored him and deactivated the arrays of the Stonewall Fortress while calling upon the tower.
Without the magical formations draining the energy of the mana geyser, Solus triggered her imprint, and the tower Warped to their position.
An erald fissure bigger than an Elder Divine Beast appeared right behind the Undead Courts' lines, and what ca out of it brought the fighting to a halt.
An armored stone colossus over 40 ters (132') ters tall stretched the fissure open with its hands, taking a single step on the battlefield that made the ground quake.
The Pri Engine looked like a knight with clawed gauntlets studded with huge elental crystals of all seven colors. An angular face mask covered its mouth, and its battle helm had triangular crystals jutting from the sides of its head where the ears were supposed to be.
"Oga. What a la na." There were no Greek letters on Mogar, so Orpal assud it was a made-up term. "All this fuss for an oversized Stone Golem? We'll take it down like we've done with his little brothers. Like I'll do with you, little brother!"
Lith didn't reply. He shapeshifted into his Tiamat form while Solus climbed on his shoulder and jumped back into the Engine. Yet there was no crash upon contact. The stone giant rippled like the surface of a lake and let the Tiamat in.
The Engine rearranged itself, forming an exoskeleton that fitted the Tiamat like a second skin. Thanks to Lith's mass, the Pri engine rose to 50 ters (164') of height, its body stretching in every direction.
"That's not a Golem!" The Dead King warned his soldiers. "That's an armor!"
At the sa ti, Solus relieved the tower from the strain of sustaining her physical body, leaving only her consciousness behind. She integrated her mind with the tower core, taking its power and giving it sentience.
She beca the bridge between the enchantnts of the tower and Lith's mind, becoming a living interface. Lith could now focus on controlling the physical aspect of the fight while Solus filtered and organized all the data collected by the Ears, the Eyes, and the various floors of the tower.
Their minds were still linked, sharing the burden evenly between Solus, Lith, and the tower core. Yet each one of the three was free to focus solely on their own task, delegating the rest to the other two.
The Pri Engine's exterior turned from stone gray to pitch black, and five extra eyes opened on its face. A golden light, more radiant than any mana crystal studded on the armor, sparked from the center of its chest, spreading rhythmical pulses of energy like a beating heart.
'Shouldn't we call this "The Nesis" rather than "The Oga"?' Solus asked with a chuckle.
'Good Bohr, I've created a monster.' Lith chuckled back.
Double Edge encased Ragnarök and, in turn, was encased by the tower-sized Solus' Fury. The three weapons fused, giving the Engine a blade that fitted its hands like an extension of its being.
"Stop staring like idiots and attack!" Less than two seconds had passed since the appearance of the Engine, but the silence was deafening, distorting the fighters' perception of ti.
The Upyrs knew the Dead King's reputation and didn't respect him enough to trust his words over their survival instinct. And they were right.
The mont the blade fully ford, Lith threw it away in a Furies' Flight. The colossal Ragnarök multiplied into nine identical copies that soared through the battlefield and landed like teors.
Each impact created deep fissures in the ground and threw those nearby off their feet. The weapons were aid at no one in particular, and the Upyrs had enough battle experience not to freeze in panic.
Only a few of them were killed by the attack. Most were just wounded and ready to resu the fight. Except that their battle formation was in disarray, and only a handful of key points were still manned.
Lith hadn't aid to Furies' Flight to soone but to sowhere. To all the places where the battle was fiercest and the undead couldn't retreat without suffering massive casualties.
Lith had forewarned the Undead Courts' warriors of the attack via the communication array of the Fortress, giving them the opportunity not only to disengage from the enemy safely, but also to retreat under the cover of dust and debris.
"The arrays are down! Fire at will!" Orpal ordered after noticing the disappearance of the magical formations.
The Upyr responded as one man, unleashing all the spells they had at the ready on the exposed backs of the undead. A storm of fire, lightning, and ice filled the space between the two armies and then disappeared.
The Engine held Yurial Guard in its left hand, the shield's enchantnts absorbed all the elental energy approaching the Engine and stored it for later use.
'Lith, the Cannon Vault is already full and the Yurial Guard can't hold another volley like that.' Solus warned him.
'I know.' He replied. 'That's why I needed a free hand.'
As they spoke, the right fist of the engine disappeared into its forearm, leaving a deep hole in its wake. A magic circle surrounding seven stars arranged like the Big Dipper appeared in front of the hollow arm, releasing one of the spells stored in the Cannon Vault.
Seven pillars of prismatic energy burst out of the magic circle, diving toward the core of the enemy formation.
'Silverwing's Annihilation?' Orpal was flabbergasted, and with him, the rest of his army. 'An anti-Guardian Spell takes seven bright violet-cored Awakened and ti to cast, yet Leech produced it instantly and alone!
'Can you do that, Night?'
'Alone?' She sneered. 'Not even with my tower, and if you had already reached the bright violet. Why do you think I put so much effort into teaching you Blade Spells if I could just use sothing that can take down a Guardian?'
'Then how does Leech do that?'
'My best guess is that it's not him but the cursed object he's bonded with.' She replied. 'But even then, it doesn't make sense. Even the Golden Griffon needed its students to cast Silverwing's spells, and Lith is alone.
'On top of that, why didn't he use it against us in the past?'
'No ti for questions.' Orpal grimaced. 'The only silver lining is that holding the beam of the Annihilation takes too much energy. Leech just wasted a lot of mana to kill one of our Upyrs, three tops.'
'Do you need help?' Lith asked.
'Thanks, but no thanks.' Solus replied after locking on the targets with Eyes and synching the Annihilation to the multiple energy signatures with the Ears.
The seven colossal pillars split into dozens of smaller Annihilations, each aid at a different enemy. The Annihilation Bullets were much weaker than the original, but they held twice as much power as their target and unleashed it in a single blast.
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