Dozens of her minions had died to buy her time, but it had been worth it. She completed an array that sealed light magic in a s.p.a.ce of ten (33 feet) radius around the Mad Professor, turning both his swords and s.h.i.+elds into fireflies.

"Let"s see who is the one trick pony now." She said with a smug expression while watching the Carpenters surround him.

"I"m going to retrieve my body. Kill him at all costs. Overload your bodies with mana and self destruct, if you have to." Hessie sent the telepathic order and walked away from the dungeon.

After regaining her cool, she had realized that it was pointless to play by her opponent"s rules. He was alone in her house, the only thing she needed to win was to play it smart. Skill and preparation could kill even the strongest genius.

Manohar couldn"t agree more with her. It was the reason why only one among the spells he had prepared was based on the light element. Too bad none of them could deal with his current predicament.

"I hate arrays." Manohar inwardly griped as he dodged bone claws the size of a great sword coming from every side. "They may be slow a.s.s, but one of them is enough to turn tables. Life is so unfair!"

So whined the man blessed by endless talent, a bright purple mana core, and an unlimited research budget.

The Mad Professor was still alive only thanks to the Mage Knight Full Guard spell, which left him with no blind spots, and Marth"s strict training schedule to force Manohar to stay out of his lab long enough to clean his mess.

Together with his stubbornness, they allowed him to only sustain flesh wounds while weaving the tier five spell he was in desperate need of. He wasn"t like Lith. He couldn"t turn off his pain receptors, nor use silent magic.

Manohar could only perform movements small enough to not disrupt his hand signs, with a rhythm that let him not stutter a single magic word. All while the Carpenters sealed off the s.p.a.ce around him by the second.

One of the creatures stabbed the Professor"s left shoulder, leaving a gaping hole the size of a m.u.f.fin and made his arm fall lifeless by his side. Manohar snarled the next magic word like it was a curse, gritting his teeth for less than a heartbeat before finis.h.i.+ng the chant.

Unluckily, it was too late. Not only did the claw went through and through, causing major bleeding, but it also stopped Manohar"s movements long enough for its companions to pile up on the helpless human.

A Carpenter grabbed Manohar"s right arm, crus.h.i.+ng it like a twig. Another used its clawed hand to stab his chest. And then it finally happened. The Mad Professor"s shadow came to life, taking the form of a blue eyed colossus.

It was over three meters tall (10"), with a spiky back like an urchin and slender arms that almost reached the ground. Its hands had four fingers, each one as long and sharp as a blade. It had no legs. The lower part of its body was just a thin line connected to Manohar"s.

It was Balkor"s tier five personal spell, Death Ruler, which Manohar had reverse engineered after reading the G.o.d of death"s notes found in one of his old labs. The Mad Professor"s body had fallen limp not because of the wound, but because his mind had left his physical sh.e.l.l.

The Death Ruler freed his human body by ripping to shreds the nearest Carpenters with its claws. The pieces tried to rea.s.semble themselves, but the darkness energies poisoning them spread like a plague, turning them into rotten flesh.

After that, the shadow colossus struck at the ground. Black vines sprouted from the point of impact, eating the energies which composed the array and his enemies alike. The Death Ruler didn"t stop his rampage, growing in size with each fallen enemy.

Their vitality wasn"t destroyed, but stored for later use.

The moment the array crumbled, Manohar"s human body was showered with the life force equivalent of a small platoon. Light magic was unsealed, so his organs and bones could be repaired at the expenses of the Carpenters" bodies.

The Mad Professor had no time to eat, he was eager to return to his lab.

***

Dawn Court branch, Outside the city of Othre. Now.

There were plenty of reasons why Yurial Deirus had developed his own version of Silverwing"s Hexagram. Lochra"s array could selectively negate all of the enemy"s spells, but it was far from perfect.

The greater its area of effect, the harder it was to keep the six elements in perfect harmony. Even in its small, first magic form, it took so much to cast it to make it useless. Also, negating a spell required from its caster to spend as much mana as its target contained.

According to Yurial"s estimates, between the mana expenditure to keep it active and the amount required to nullify the opponent"s spells, his energy reserves would deplete faster than his enemy"s.

It would take him barely a minute to run out of mana, and one on one at that.

Against multiple enemies, it would be more than suicidal, akin to madness.

Yurial"s Hexagram, instead, could only negate one spell per element, and the mana would be stored rather than countered. The acc.u.mulated energies could be unleashed at will to trigger a powerful gravity field.

Silverwing"s Hexagram heavy requirements made it useless even for Lith. Unless he knew in advance that he would face a single opponent in an enclosed s.p.a.ce with no way out or external interferences, of course.

Even with all the aforementioned conditions met, it wasn"t as easy as he made it seem to the audience. The sheer focus required to keep all the six elements perfectly balanced over the whole arena while keeping Invigoration active, prevented him from moving a single step.

Yet without his Gatekeeper and his armor, he wasn"t confident of being able to defeat an opponent with endless stamina and unknown skills. If even Xolver had forced him to use fusion magic, there was no telling how strong a real vampire could be.

Zarran released several streams of lightning and it took Lith a full Invigoration breath to negate them all. Lith"s fingers twirled in the air as the sand obeyed his command and sealed the vampire"s limbs.

The grains of sand stuck to each other turning back into stone, yet Zarran was able to break free by consuming a good chunk of his blood core. It didn"t simply enhance his strength, it made him shapes.h.i.+ft into a giant hybrid between a human and a bat.

The creature was 2.5 meters (8"2") meters tall, with membranous wings connecting his hands to his hips. Ten centimeters long razor sharp talons replaced his nails as a thick dark brown fur as hard as steel covered the rest of his body.

His open mouth was now bigger than Lith"s head, with fangs long as short swords. A single flap of his wings let Zarran take the sky and escape from the sand"s grip.

"This explains his horrible taste in clothes." Lith thought while weaving multiple spells at once. Zarran was circling above his head like a shark around its prey.

"Fighting on the ground without magic is a lost cause. I must strike from above fast enough to escape from his spells and force him to move. Without the array, he"s just a human."