2046 Crank it Up (Part 2)

The impact produced a boom that could be heard from Belius' walls and created a dozens meters deep crater. Iata coughed out a mouthful of blood, but a savage grin appeared on her black snout.

"Thanks, you moron!" She said while Warping away in the sky.

The hit had dealt her severe injuries but had also freed her from the hooks and given her enough space to use dimension magic. Blink could have been followed whereas Warp moved her outside the range of Life Vision.

She had conjured it with body casting while enduring the beating, waiting for the right opportunity.

"Fuck!" Crank snarled, seeing his prey escape. "I forgot that Sealed Space doesn't move with its target."

Lith was about to comment on that when he saw Solus's golden and white pillar flying toward him, followed by the golems and what was left of his Demons.

"What happened?" He asked.

"I ran out of juice and so did Raptor and Trouble." She replied panting. "I defeated one Divine Beast, but our army paid a big price for it. Once Thrud's army resumed its advance, we didn't have the strength to stop them anymore. We had to retreat."

Of the over one thousand Demons that had answered Lith's call less than a half were left. He could still see their shadows lingering around him, feel their hands clutching at him in a silent plea for new power.

"Fuck me sideways." He said while consuming the energy he had just recovered to restore the army of Demons and partly recharge the golems.

Their movements had become sluggish due to the depletion of their power cores, the mana crystals etched in their bodies almost out of juice. Solus wasn't faring any better.

Her blue core was strained from the repeated use of Sky Blessing while her body was on the verge of crumbling.

Being close to Lith helped, but it wasn't enough.

'I wanted to make my body disappear and return inside the ring to recover, but I'm too scared at the idea of what might happen. What if it counts as failing at the world tribulation? What if Mogar kills me?' She asked via their mind link.

'Excellent question, but I have another. Since when do you have world tribulations as well?' Lith was shocked seeing how similar yet different her proto-Guardian form was to his own.

'I don't know that either!' She replied in frustration. 'By my Mom, we are so dumb. All this time and we never figured it out. It's actually obvious if you think about it. Back in Kulah, Mogar talked to me.

'When Aunt Loka attacked you in Jiera and we fused, our appearance was far from human even though we used my body as a base.'

'Are you saying that those were your tribulations as well?' Lith was flabbergasted.

'Yes. I mean, no. Maybe.' Solus felt her head splitting and her heart pounding, respectively out of mana abuse and fear. 'I don't want to die! Please, Lith, help me.'

She now understood why Baba Yaga and Silverwing had given up on achieving Guardianhood after reaching the white core. World tribulations gave no power and put the Awakened against a wall.

Either they granted whatever Mogar wanted from them or they died. Solus had faced death many times, but a tribulation was different. She had no understanding of what the conditions of success were so she could neither plan her victory nor retreat.

Meanwhile, a few hundreds of meters away, Faluel in her pseudo-Dragon form had pierced Ufyl's chest with her glaive, Strife. The only reason he was still alive was that he had caught its staff between his hands in time.

The blade had stopped centimeters away from his heart and he couldn't move a muscle without putting his life on the line.

To make matters worse, Varegrave used Small World to seal all elements but water while his battalion kept shooting at the Dragon cold blasts that sapped his strength. The Royal artifact kept Ufyl from using regular magic, including dimensional magic.

All he was left with was the mana expensive Spirit Magic, but even with his seven heads, he failed to find a way out of his predicament. There was no time to use his breathing technique and the Hydra simply conjured one barrier after the other to protect herself and her human allies.

The fight had turned into a battle of attrition that he was bound to lose.

'I may be physically stronger, but she bests me in magic. On top of that, with those ants freezing my ass, I'll soon become too weak to keep fighting. I must get out of here.'

Whenever he stepped back, Faluel followed him while keeping the glaive stuck in his chest. She gave Varegrave all the time he needed to relocate the arrays and make sure that the Divine Beast couldn't escape their area of effect.

Every time Ufyl conjured Origin Flames, the Hands of Menadion neutralized them, wasting the precious life force he had left.

'If I can't win, I must bring them down with me. Death is nothing but a few days of forced rest for me, but it's permanent for these bastards!' The Seven Headed Dragon roared as he poured all the mana he had left in the tier five Spirit Spell, World Crusher.

An emerald sphere that resembled Mogar seen from space appeared around him, trapping both the Hydra and the humans at its core. The six elements produced a gravity one hundred times stronger than normal that affected only the space inside the sphere.

To make matters worse, fire burned the air to one thousand degrees that alternated with cold waves of -200°C (-328°F), and the air pressure reached 100 atmospheres. Light and earth made the sphere diamond-hard and darkness filled it with poison.

Faluel was caught by surprise, managing to conjure a Spirit Barrier on top of that of her armor at the last second. Varegrave and his troops took cover behind the several defensive arrays conjured by Small World.

Yet the pressure of taking a tier Five Spirit Spell was too much for his human body. Not only had he already suffered from the Origin Flames eating at the Royal artifact, but he was also using his sheer focus to counter every single effect of World Crusher to save his soldier.

An anti-gravity field relieved the pressure while water and fire arrays kept the air breathable. Yet there was nothing he could do to stop the air pressure from bursting their eardrums and the darkness from eating at their bodies aside from energy barriers.

All things that put an even greater strain on his already exhausted body. Small World was a powerful artifact, but it was meant to control elemental magic in a wide area and give its wielders a portable set of arrays comparable to those of the ancient noble households.

Not to be used on the frontlines against Awakened Divine Beasts.

"No, you don't!" While her flesh was ripped apart, Faluel used one of the spells imbued inside Strife, Cruel Healer.

It negated the effects of darkness fusion, making the Seven Headed Dragon suddenly feel the pain from all of his injuries and from World Crusher. The gravity had broken his bones and the hot air burned his lungs, but until that moment he had felt nothing.