Chapter 288

Before the jet of fire ended, Gadorf charged head first at Lith like a ram . Even with the flames still raging around him, fighting off the blinding pain with light fusion, Lith saw the wyvern coming at him and acted accordingly .

The heat had not only injured Lith, but also weakened his constraints . He could now let himself fall to the ground, holding the sword with both hands close to his chest . As he expected, Gadorf Blinked at the last second, keeping his momentum to strike at him from a dead angle .

It was what Lith would have done in his shoes .

With the back on the ground, however, he had no blind spots . The area was still shrouded in flames, Gadorf had no way to know Lith’s exact position . His head only hit empty air, Lith rolled away as soon as the Blink happened .

Darkness energy coursed through the blade, grazing one of the wyvern’s legs as he passed . It was just a scratch, but it affected Gadorf’s already precarious balance, chipping again his life force at the same time .

The wyvern tripped on his own feet, crashing against one of the altars . The array protected and empowered it, giving Gadorf the impression of having hit a mountain . Lith was too weak, his battered body didn’t allow him for fast movements anymore .

Charging at Gadorf was like asking him to Blink and put him out of his misery .

Lith lifted his sword again, using all the strength he had left to stab the ground, unleashing all the accumulated darkness magic into the array . The wyvern felt like his body was being torn into shreds .

The array was like an IV of life force dripping straight into his core . If Lith’s previous tampering felt like someone messing with the needle, now it was like venom had been injected into it .

“What the f*ck are you?” Gadorf yelled, writhing in pain .

His words made no sense to the survivors . Their knowledge of magic was so limited they thought Lith’s performance was thanks to his training and equipment . They had no way to understand the number of layers the fight was taking place on, nor the amount of energies which had been expended with every strike .

Gadorf himself only understood that Lith was capable of using true magic, but Life Vision and Invigoration were beyond his comprehension . At that moment Lith was using his breathing technique not to heal his wounds, but to keep a steady flow of darkness magic through the blade, shaking the array to its foundations .

The wyvern roared, realizing his chances to breakthrough to the next level were nigh zero . Best case scenario the array was damaged, worst case scenario it was poisoned .

Gritting his teeth Gadorf conjured his strongest attack, the tier five light spell Purge . His eyes were fixated on Lith while the whole room was filled with streams of light of different colors, resembling an aurora borealis .

Then, everything went black . Agony blinded his mind while a small icicle physically blinded him .

“Forgot about me?” Captain Yerna’s voice sounded from his right side . Between the pain from the array and his attention focused on his opponent, Gadorf had really forgotten about the insignificant ants .

Yerna had managed to circle around him, waiting for the moment to strike . Her spell was too weak to change the course of the fight unless it hit a critical spot . Compared to the scales, the wyvern’s eyes were soft .

With his concentration lost, Purge was dispelled . Another ice dart was aimed at the remaining left eye . Gadorf only needed to slightly tilt his head to make it harmlessly strike the scales instead . The wyvern was enraged once more, on the brink of losing its mind again .

The wyvern roared, Blinking behind the officer that had just shot from his wand, decapitating him in a single bite . He disappeared again, materializing in front of Sargent Khran, his mouth already opened .

Gadorf hated wasting so much energy, but without the tail and an eye, moving normally would mean becoming a sitting duck . Knowing what was about to happen, Khran inwardly cursed while raising his arms over his head .

His last act wasn’t a futile attempt of protecting his life . Khran was aware he wouldn’t see ever again his wife or children . Gadorf’s fangs effortless bit off his upper torso, swallowing it in one gulp .

What the wyvern didn’t know was that inside the Sargent’s hands there were the broken extremities of his wand . The damaged alchemical tool went haywire, the wild energies it sealed quickly reached the magical stone, releasing all of its power in a small conflagration .

Lith ignored the screams around him, focusing only on two things . Following the wyvern movements with Life Vision and corrupting the array as fast as he could . The energies seeping into the black core were corroding it instead of nurturing it .

Once the black core filtering them was destroyed, the life forces contained into the array would directly reach the wyvern’s true core, destroying it .

The explosion caught both Lith and the wyvern by surprise . Gadorf’s innards were strong enough to withstand the blow, but not without taking damage . The wyvern coughed smoke and blood, trying to breathe .

It was the first real opening since the fight had started, yet Lith stood still .

‘Without dimensional magic, to get there I’d have to fly . Rather than making myself an easy target, it’s better to keep weakening him . If he is able to cut off his pain receptors like I’m doing, he could ignore his wounds and crush me the second I’m within his reach . ‘

Like they were sharing a mind link, Gadorf used darkness magic to stop feeling pain . He Blinked right above Lith, to squash him with his weight . The talons on his feet were longer than twenty centimeters (8 inches) and harder than steel .

The wyvern slashed downwards with his legs, their longer reach prevented Lith from raising his sword and impale him . He had no time to adjust his position, standing there meant having his arms torn or worse .

Lith rolled away, but the talons still managed to open deep wounds on his back, from the clavicle to under his rib cage . Blood spurted all over the wyvern’s body, filling him with renewed confidence .

Gadorf pushed forward to not lose the advantage, following the prey closely . Lith couldn’t expose his back anymore, so he turned around, slashing randomly with the Gatekeeper to keep the monster at bay .

Lith’s swordsmanship was already bad to start with . Now that his arms were weakened by the wounds, Gadorf had an easy time grabbing it in mid air and ripping it from Lith’s hands in one fluid movement .

Contrary to his expectations, the brief contact welcomed him into a world of hurt . The sword had been infused with light magic, granting it healing properties . The spell Lith had imbued it with wasn’t meant to treat any injury, only to reconnect the severed pain receptors .

Gadorf lost his grip, throwing the sword as far as he could . His throat was back to burning so bad that every breath was agony . Every time the ice shard piercing his eye moved, the pain would make his vision go blank .

Suddenly Gadorf couldn’t breathe nor see . He fell on his knees trying to control the spasms and shut down the receptors again . The wyvern regained his sight just in time to see Red completing his spell, turning the world around them into shards of light .