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.