"Let them go." Orpal shook his head. "The life of those kids is already a nightmare, while the adults are unworthy of our wrath. Besides, we need to leave soone alive if we want the entire Mogar to hear the details of the day of our reckoning."
The Dead King called upon the power of his steed, Moonlight, to reach the army base of Akarn, where he had served in the military with a single Warp Steps. Orpal had been honorably discharged, but he had terminated his service when it beca clear he would never be promoted past first-class private.
Akarn fell and burned as Orpal rained spells from the sky, leaving his Upyrs to dirty their hands for him. They slaughtered the cadets and soldiers, saving the drill sergeants and commanding officers for their lord.
"And you said I was unfit to lead." Orpal said while dismbering the military officers he didn't recognize and slowly suffocating the others with tendrils of Spirit Magic. "You were wrong, Sergeant Pholl.
"So wrong, and so was our dear Commander Carkus." The Dead King ripped the heart out of the sergeant's chest and shoved it inside the Commander's mouth. "I want you to die while witnessing the consequences of your actions, Carkus.
"I want you to die knowing that if not for your colossal lapse of judgnt, if only you had given the honors I deserved, none of this would have happened. I would have happily continued to serve in your army instead of building my own.
"I would have brought the Griffon Kingdom to new heights instead of crushing it under my heel."
Carkus tried to say sothing, but his voice ca out muffled and incomprehensible.
Even worse, the spark of defiance and outrage ruined the mont for Orpal. He wanted his enemies to cry in despair and beg for his rcy, but the old soldier denied Dead King that pleasure.
"Burn everything to the ground." He said in annoyance as a snap of his fingers broke Carkus' neck. "It's ti for the grand finale. Next stop, Lutia."
***
anwhile, back at the Starry Lagoon village, nadion was doing her best to help Solus hide her condition and find a way to activate the tower's many enchantnts without further hurting her daughter.
'I can push the corrupted world energy away with the Hands, but how do I keep Frost Soul from infecting it again?' She kept racking her brain. 'The spells stored in the Cannon Vault are safe, but what is going to happen once we run out of them?
'There's no telling how many Upyrs are out there, and those blasted bloodline abilities hinder the tower's targeting system! I can't hit ln's goons if I can't see them.'
'Lith is right. There is sothing wrong with the world energy.' Ryla said via the mind link that still connected her to Lith's family and friends. 'I don't know what it is, but I think I can do sothing about it.'
She activated her bloodline ability, Swirling Wind, and used it to stir the world energy and separate it from the corrupted spark of the Upyr's life force that turned the water elent into Frost Soul.
The tower absorbed the pure world energy avidly, channeling it into the self-repair enchantnts of the tower. The power core thawed, and so did Solus' arms.
'Keep it up, Ryla.' Solus said while feeling her condition improve by the second. 'How far can you expand Swirling Wind? We need to free the frozen rfolk before they die, and there are too many injured people to treat them with just a few Healers.'
'Not as far as you think.' The Fomor shook her head. 'I can't absorb whatever the source of the anomaly is, so the more world energy I purify, the more the anomaly becos concentrated.'
She pointed at the glowing sparks of blue fire that slowly grew in size at the fringes of Swirling Wind. The sight of the phenonon triggered a deep revulsion that made everyone turn their heads away.
'This is nothing like Elysia's Jerak.' Solus thought. 'I feel disgusted, not afraid. If Jerak is a poisoned blade, that blue spark is a sewer cockroach!'
'Not only is the concentrated anomaly harder to repel, but it might easily kill anyone who tries to use magic instead of just incapacitating them.' Ryla said, unaware of Solus' worries.
'Then keep it up for us, and we'll remove the root of the problem.' Solus said. 'Lith. Tista. Swirling Wind is a natural counter to ln's bloodline abilities. All of them.'
'The basic skill of evolved humans is the bane of the powers of those who turn their backs on their humanity? This is poetic justice at its finest!' Tista tried and failed to activate Swirling Wind in her Hekate form.
She swore under her breath and shapeshifted into her Indech form.
"Finally!" Her wings purged the Frost Soul surrounding her, allowing the world energy to flood her equipnt and bring it back to life. "Let's see how you survive this!"
Her battle claws, Firefang, touched the water and unleashed the tier five spell, Dark Ages, turning the surface of the ocean into ice and flooding it with darkness elent.
'What the fuck?' Filos stared at Tista's transformation in shock and almost failed to notice that Dark Ages' effects far surpassed those of any tier five spell he knew.
His shock turned to horror when Dark Ages absorbed the sparks of Frost Soul isolated by Swirling Wind in its path, and sohow kept growing stronger. The corrupted water elent boosted the spell, allowing the ice to form much faster than the Jormungandr expected.
He escaped the frozen prison only thanks to his powerful muscles and tried to force Tista to back off by unleashing two tier five Spirit Spells. Filos aid Mana Storm at the rfolk village and Phoenix Smash at the Indech.
Tista cursed the Upyr's cowardice and stopped her attack.
She Spirit Blinked in front of the Mana Storm to intercept it with the Spirit Barriers of the Mouth and his armor. At the sa ti, she conjured the tier five Spirit Spell, Primordial Roar, to smother the blast of erald flas before they opened a hole in her barriers.
'Be careful, Lith.' Tista warned her brother via their mind link. 'Swirling Wind does nullify ln's abilities, but his residual energy has weird interactions with elental magic. Also, I don't think these bastards want to kill us.
'As absurd as it may sound, they are stalling for ti. When Grandma returns-'
'ln will have achieved his goal!' Lith had shapeshifted in his Indech form earlier as well, and had pierced through the searing wave of Fire Soul unscathed thanks to Swirling Wind. 'Grandma was right. This is all part of his plan.
'ln created so many weak Upyrs only to bait Grandma in a pointless chase and force us to stay here while he does whatever he wants in the Kingdom!'
Lith noticed the red sparks released by the Fire Soul he had cleansed and how they rged with the remaining mystical flas, further increasing their temperature.
'I'm free to cast spells and use my equipnt again, but this is not going to be easy.' He flooded Trouble and Raptor with the world energy amassed by Swirling Wind to make up for the power they had consud.
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