2042 First Blood (Part 2)

The Seven Headed Dragon had recovered from the damage Lith had inflicted him with the Frozen Flames for a while, but had kept himself out of the battle to better study the Tiamat's spells with his Dragon Eyes.

Now that he had a clear grasp of Lith's abilities and reaction time, he had moved for the kill. Manastorm covered an area too big to avoid it with Blink and even if Lith managed to evade the onslaught, the willpower-imbued bullets would have chased him.

With no other option, Lith activated the Spirit Barrier of his armor, but the violence of the countless impacts sent him off his intended trajectory.

Ufyl grinned as he got closer, unleashing both Final Eclipse and Plague Storm.

"Show me how to defend against these spells, kid. The army of the True Queen accepts all contributions, no matter how small." He said with a laugh.

Lith flipped him off in reply, adjusting his fall so as to land near his tail. Reattaching a limb would have taken much less energy and time than growing a new one from scratch.

"Oh, no you don't!"  Three of Ufyl's mouths unleashed as many bursts of Origin Flames.

The columns of fire twisted and turned, combining into a single fiery vortex that surrounded the black flames of the Final Eclipse so that the two attacks would strike at the barrier without canceling each other.

'I bet that Iata has taught this guy Light Mastery and based on how he's taunting me, he must have Dragon Eyes. Everything I use can and will be used against me. I can't let Thrud's army learn more of my spells.

'I have to stick to the basics and play it smart.'  Lith conjured a tier three Light Mastery spell that produced a powerful beam of light aimed at the Dragon's point of impact on the barrier.

"Foolish and unimaginative! That trick is pointless." Ufyl said with a scoff, but Lith begged to differ.

The beam of light was crushed by the combined power of the Final Eclipse and the Origin Flames, but it still clashed with them with enough strength to work as a thruster and accelerate Lith's descent.

He landed far off from his tail with the grace of a meteor, but thanks to his none of Ufyl's attacks had reached him. Lith stood up, using light fusion to stop the bleeding while he hid behind a hill for cover.

"You can do that with Light Mastery? Good to know." The Dragon used the Tiamat's same strategy to accelerate further and don't let him out of the range of Life Vision long enough to Warp.

'Wait a second, the area in front of Belius is supposed to be flatlands. I don't remember any hill on the maps.' Ufyl thought a second too late.

"Kill him!" Colonel Varegrave said the moment the Divine Beast was in firing range.

A hail of tier five spell based on the water and air element cast by the mages of the battalion shot the Dragon off the sky. The cold sapped his strength and slowed him down, while bolts of lightning made his limbs spasm and air blades tore his wings.

A single spell could only dent a Dragon's scales but so many together could open deep wounds. The problem was that they still lacked the strength necessary to kill a 25 meters (82') tall titan covered in heavily enchanted Adamant.

"Nice try, Verhen. Let's see if these ants can buy you enough time to heal." Ufyl turned one of his heads at Lith as he used the Spirit Spell, Mother's Embrace.

The Dragon would have loved to learn it as well, but Varegrave's battalion kept hammering at him with tier five spells that required his full focus.

Lith had earlier spoken with his allies via the communicator, alerting them about the Seven Headed Dragon's weaknesses and what to do in the case he landed. During his controlled fall, he had cast both the healing spell and opened a short range dimensional corridor to retrieve his tail.

Mother's Embrace used all the elements of creation, light, earth, and soft water, to conjure the best healing spell Lith had in his arsenal. Emerald tendrils burst out of Lith's wounds, sewing them back together and stopping the bleeding.

The spell had also collected most of the blood and was now reinjecting it inside Lith's body as it reattached the tail to his back with minimal consumption of his vitality.

At the same time, the tendrils also extracted the nutrients from the ground and the water from the air to reduce the burden on Tiamat's body to the minimum while his shoulder healed.

'Damn, I need to eat. Not even Mother's Embrace can recreate all the tissues that the acid dissolved. I hope that Varegrave can hold for more than the two seconds he promised me.' Lith thought while gulping down a tonic the size of a truck.

Ufyl did his best to spare at least a head's worth of attention, but the cold made him drowsy and the condensed water carried the bolts of lightning past the protective layer of his scales.

"Damn you, insects!" The Dragon called upon the Plague Storm that was still upon him and conjured another Final Eclipse.

Killing the Tiamat's allies with his own spells would have been just poetic justice.

"I'll take it from a compliment, coming from a lizard!" Varegrave unleashed the tier five War Mage spell, Winter's Bite.

It conjured a localized snowstorm whose strong winds stripped the humidity from its victims, making their temperature drop fast. It was supposed to weaken an enemy battalion and cloud their vision, but with the Dragon's size, it was barely enough to cover him from head to toes.

Ufyl tried to roar in outrage, but his teeth clattered from the cold, making it sound like a yelp instead. He wrapped himself with his wings, feeling them becoming rigid and heavy due to the ice.

'Damn humans. I'll never manage to kill them and recover from the cold before Verhen is healed. The least I can do is make sure that they die a slow, agonizing death.' The Seven Headed Dragon thought while trying to draw a deep breath.

Yet it only helped the cold air to seep inside his body faster and for a moment his vision blurred. He suddenly felt drowsy, and only the pain from the unrelenting hail of spells kept him awake.

Ufyl was forced to use fire fusion just to warm up as he conjured the tier five War Mage spell, Raging Sun. It was a mix of fire and earth that would have caused a massive explosion right under Velagros' battalion first while also generating enough heat to melt a glacier.

"What the?" The Dragon felt the elements resist his will, refusing to gather.

"Did you really think that the Kingdom would have just sent us to our death?" The colonel's left eye lit up and countless streams of runes surrounded the space around them, reaching the area where Lith was resting.

'Isn't that Small World?' Lith thought, recognizing one of the Royal Artifacts left by the First King.

Along with the Saefel Set and the Spell Hoarding Cube, it was one of the Kingdom's most prized possessions.