Chapter 3672: Cooperation and Coercion (Part 1) Locrias’ Blade spell generated an energy disc that moved as fast as a bullet and grew in size as it advanced. Unbreakable Anvil had limited destructive power, but incredible durability. It had been devised to catch all the enemies it met in its trajectory and herd them right in front of Menadion’s Unstoppable Hammer. The Anvil advanced too fast, and its walls were too hard for the Upyrs to escape before the two Blade Spells met. The two energy waves collided, one folding into the other, without a single iota of energy being wasted. "Come on, boys!" Trion yelled. "What’s a forge without a fire? Let’s smelt Meln’s bastard sons with a Thousand Flames!" The Demons of the Darkness breathed in unison, releasing a torrent of Origin Flames that burned at the captured enemies without affecting the Blade Spells. Caught between a hammer, a hard place, and a searing wave of flames, even the plant folk using their allies’ corpses to fuel their regenerative abilities were destroyed. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of creatures with the mass of a Divine Beast and uncanny powers perished. More died by the second as the Undead Courts ripped the Upyrs to shreds and fed upon their life forces to make sure they wouldn’t rise again. *** "There’s no point fighting a losing battle." Jorl said. "Order the retreat. Every Upyr who survives will be a veteran who can teach the next batch of recruits. They have gained invaluable experience about their new abilities and Verhen’s strategies. "With them as lieutenants, we can delegate the small matters and focus on the big picture instead of micromanaging every aspect of the fight." "Indeed." Orpal replied as his clone relayed the orders. "Losing to Leech is no big deal. The only reason he’s still alive is that he never lost. We’ve forced him to reveal many of his cards, and the next time we meet, he’ll find us ready." *** ’We can’t let anyone escape.’ Lith’s thoughts mirrored Jorl’s. ’Every survivor softens Meln’s defeat and will become a formidable foe in the future. None of them knew how to use Meln’s powers in a real battle, or things wouldn’t have gone so smoothly for us.’ The Mouth of Menadion helped Lith to complete Ruin in record time, while the Ears allowed him to parry enemy attacks and lunge where the Upyrs tried to form sacks of resistance without disrupting the flow of the spell. "Not this! Not now!" Uragar had bolted away long before Orpal sounded the retreat. As soon as his Davross body allowed him, the Book of Knowledge had used his best flight spell to leave the battlefield and move toward the exit of the caves’ network. Lith split Ruin into two halves. One was shaped as a reddish-black sun that he sent after the retreating Upyrs. There was only one way out of the Stonewall Fortress, and the tower’s space-compressing array blocked Blinks and Warp Steps. The tunnel was smooth and featureless, offering no protection from the Blade Spell. Ruin’s other half split into countless red and black shards of energy that merged with the weapons of the undead and Demons. Each shard had just a fraction of the power of the Tower Blade Spell, but even a fraction of Ruin had the ability to cleave a mountain. The reddish-black energy coating the weapons cut through metal, flesh, and vines like a hot knife through butter, while the one flooding through the tunnel devoured everything but the stone of the tunnel. Thanks to the Ears, Solus followed the advance of Lith’s Blade Spell from a distance and used Ruin’s mana waves as an extension of her own senses. The Blade Spell only attacked the Upyrs, leaving the spiders and the other critters crawling on the walls of the tunnels unaffected. ’One way out also means one way in.’ Solus thought. ’We can’t cause a cave-in and destroy our allies’ hard work, or this will be a hollow victory.’ Licks of Blade energy checked every corner, depression, and crevice in the ground to make sure no one had crawled there to escape the onslaught. Many Upyrs had given up on outrunning Ruin and attempted to hide from it. None of them survived. "Shit, shit... Yes!" Life Maelstrom still empowered Uragar, and he used it all to fly as if his immortality depended on it. Because it did. The farther he got from the Stonewall Fortress, the weaker the influence of the space-compressing array became. A normal magical formation would lose its effectiveness the moment one escaped its magic circle, but the Book of Knowledge was against Menadion’s tower. The arrays generated by the Heart were at their strongest inside the circle but exerted their power even beyond its borders. They became less effective with distance, sure, but it was something no other array could do. Ruin was already grazing at Uragar’s pages when the Life Maelstrom he had left gave him the power to break the dimensional seal. Normal Warp Steps required to weave the coordinates of both the entry and exit points in the spell, but Uragar’s maker had found a loophole. The Book of Knowledge could store a Spirit Warp holding solely the arrival point’s coordinates, leaving the starting point’s blank. This way, all Uragar had to do was insert the dimensional coordinates of his current position to be Warped to any preselected location within the range of the spell. The Spirit Warp brought Uragar to safety, but he never stopped flying. He didn’t even bother rebuilding his host’s body until he was reasonably certain Lith wasn’t chasing after him. ’Yes, yes... Shit!’ Solus felt the cursed object escape from her grasp. ’We were this close to blowing him away!’ Her mood soured, but only until she realized what would have happened if she had succeeded. ’On the other hand, if we destroyed him, the whole network of caves would have collapsed. If we captured him, instead, we would have to bring him to Grandma before he understood this is a mage tower and exposed our secret. ’I’ll take this as a silver lining.’ Solus sent the Ruin further up the tunnel until she was certain no Upyr was left. Then, she recalled the Blade Spell, sweeping the tunnels on its way back to double-check she hadn’t missed any clever trick. She found no one and nothing, and when Ruin reached the Stonewall Fortress, the battle was still ongoing. The Upyrs were forced on the defense while the undead’s only worry was to keep the enemies from regrouping. The Engine needed one sweep of Ragnarök to mow down the colossal Fae while the Demons harried the enemy from above with bursts of Flames and spells not to hinder the Undead Courts. Orpal’s forces were akin to cornered rats and fought just as desperately and bitterly. ’I would admire their determination, had they not allied themselves with that piece of shit of Meln. Time to end this.’ Solus split Ruin into countless small spears that pierced through the Upyrs’ backs. With the situation under control and no enemy requiring her attention, she could put her training with the Ears to use and guide each spear to a different target by reading and predicting the individual mana flows.