2196 Face the Darkness (Part 2)

Everything inside the black pillar had its energy sucked dry, be it Jormun, his magical equipment, or the Golden Griffon itself. Hystar screamed in pain as Chaos coursed his stone body, further weakening the cloaking devices and hastening the Eyes' scan.

"What are you doing?" Jormun had to jump back and use Scalesong to restore his withered legs that had been caught by the pillar. "If you turn into an Eldritch you will die, leaving behind a monster!"

"You are wrong, big brother." Lith focused on Solus' stone ring, needing sheer willpower to stop the Chaos from reaching it and the pillar from fully forming. "I'm already dead and so are you.

"The only difference between us is that you still don't know it."

Lith could feel the black sphere of the Abomination closing in to the star of the Divine Beast that held the red human life force at its inside. The tethers between them were breaking up one at a time, yet there was still hope.

The Void had always been surrounded by lights that kept it at bay. The light of Solus, Carl, his family, Kamila, and now the baby. Those lights now formed a bastion that slowed down its advance since Lith had yet to give up on both them and life.

"I'm sorry, too. I would have liked to send you off properly but I have a few seconds at most. Goodbye." Lith walked forward as Jormun walked back to avoid the effect of the still lingering black pillar.

The speech was just a ruse. Heartfelt and sincere, but a ruse nonetheless.

Without the Yggdrasill staff, Lith needed time to select the right souls before activating his Possession bloodline ability.

'This doesn't make sense.' Jormun thought. 'Even if Lith were to become an Eldritch, his newfound powers would amount to nothing without the time necessary to master them.

'Quite the contrary, he would be overwhelmed by the hunger and become easy prey. I've bested him on every exchange not because he's weaker than me, but because compared to me he's barely an infant who has just learned how to walk.'

Now that the black pillar was almost gone due to Lith resisting the evolution, the Emerald Dragon stepped forward and lunged with Dragonclaw. When the Abomination tried to block while backstepping, Jormun needed but a flick of the wrist to slip past Lith's guard.

Or so he thought, until War dropped down on Dragonclaw, sliding along its blade to aim at Jormun's head while also pushing his attack away. The Emerald Dragon sidestepped while flicking Dragonclaw down and up to free it, but War followed its movements as if they were glued together.

Despite his three arms, Jormun managed to avoid getting skewered only by taking one step back after another.

"You should have let me go, Jakra." Half of the Abomination's face now resembled one of Thrud's Forgotten and so did his voice. "I know all of your tricks and today I'm going to settle our score once and forever."

Jormun had no idea that the name of the man was Fogha, nor how he had ended up inside the Golden Griffon. Every time they had met during the past centuries, they had always battled to death without exchanging pleasantries.

Yet seeing that face, those techniques, and hearing Lith speaking the ancient language of the Kingdom, left no space for doubts.

'By the Father of all Dragons! That's why the Forgotten show no sign of improvement no matter what Thrud tries to make them regain their sanity. They are already dead, their souls chained to their bodies and incapable of leaving.'

The perspective of the Golden Griffon robbing its victims of their humanity until they turned into unliving was terrifying, but Lith borrowing their knowledge was much worse.

Jormun had fought Fogha countless times in the past and had always come on top because of the abyssal gap in mass and physical prowess. The man had trained for centuries to counter Jormun's techniques and make up for his lighter build but to no avail.

Now, however, he still retained those techniques and possessed a body as strong as a Dragon's.

The two of them had the same amount of battle experience but while Fogha could count on Lith to adapt to his new body, Jormun had no idea how to counter their combined techniques.

'Dammit, my only hope is to hold on until Lith runs out of time and dies.' The Emerald Dragon thought and he was right.

After Lith's life forces had merged, they shared most of their skills but Possession wasn't among them. Only the Abomination could host wandering souls inside his body but that came at a terrible price.

Possession opened his body to any soul in the vicinity, giving them the opportunity to attack his mind and try to take over. Even hosting a single soul might have driven Lith insane due to the full fusion that sharing the same body required and now there were dozens of them.

To make matters worse, Possession caused a lot of strain on him, generating more Chaos than his body could handle. It was the reason he had let the Void in, to obtain the means to withstand the Chaos without further shortening his life span.

The Void was what Lith would have become if he ever turned into an Abomination and controlling Chaos was second nature to him. The problem was that by fusing with him, there was only so long before the Abomination's life force became dominant.

'This is odd.' Lith thought. 'I was ready to leave Fogha free reins over my body while I fought the invading souls, but I feel no pressure on my mind. I might as well kick things up a notch.'

Lith was in charge of one set of arms and weaving spells since Fogha was no Awakened and had no experience with true magic or body casting. It allowed the dead man to focus solely on the swordplay and footwork.

Then, Fogha's half of the Abomination face split again and another of Jormun's dead rivals took over the remaining set of arms. The two souls combined their techniques, switching War from one hand to another in a seamless sequence of attacks and parries.

Meanwhile, inside the Mindscape, Trion and the other souls that usually resided inside Lith's Void Sigils were giving their all to keep the invaders at bay.

They stood their ground right in front of the black sphere of the Abomination's life force, beating into a pulp whoever tried to approach them. The light element in Lith's life force was a beacon for the wandering souls.

They just needed to take enough of it to form a body of their own and come back to life as independent Abominations. At the same time, losing even a sliver of life force would have shortened the little time that Lith could resist the pull of the black pillar.

The Demons gave their all, but there were just four of them against dozens of souls.

"I don't get why you are here." Trion grunted, the blue light of his soul flickering as his punch pierced through a dark specter. "This is nothing like answering Lith's call and none of you is truly loyal to him."