Chapter 3814: Something More (Part 1) The air element was still there, magnifying the destructive power of the spell and Davross sword alike, while the earth element made them resistant to physical and magical attacks. Morning Star cut through Cruel Star’s external layer while it was still far away from Dawn and set off the unstable gravity field it contained. A flick on the Horseman’s wrist shrunk the construct, which she swung in a series of rapid cuts that dispersed Cruel Star’s spell matrix before it could deal her any damage. Meanwhile, Ruugat now faced the Engine again and charged at it with unbridled fury. ’We’re hurting the living legacy, but we are not wounding him.’ Solus warned Lith after double-checking the readings of the Eyes and Ears of Menadion. Ruugat was too big compared to the Prime Engine and had no vitals. Earthly Vault made it hard to inflict damage on him, and the constant flow of world energy from the mana geyser allowed him to heal faster than he could be hurt. A lost city was no living being. It didn’t need to feed, its body wouldn’t tire, and a paper cut or a severed head hurt it just the same. A lost city needed only stone and energy to remake itself from scratch, and Ruugat had access to plenty of both. The severed arm had already reconnected with the stump, and it needed only a few seconds to become functional again. ’I noticed!’ Lith dispersed the rest of the Tower Blade Spell and shared Ruin’s remains with his allies. Syrah’s battle claws burned with red and black energy, and so did the weapons of all those who could afford to face such a colossal opponent in hand-to-hand combat. "A Blade Spell?" Breganoth looked at the power that overflowed his Davross staff like a long-lost child. "If only I could go back to my lab and study it." "Don’t be foolish, old man!" Inxialot said, making every Lich flinch in horror at such boorish disrespect for the sanctity of research work. "Even if we run away right now, Verhen’s energy will fade long before we get home. "We can’t study Verhen’s Blade Spell, but that doesn’t mean it has to go to waste. We can field-test it and collect as much data as we can!" The Liches gaped at Inxialot’s genius and would have clapped at the King of Liches, but the embers of Ruin were already fading. "For data!" The battle cry managed to distract Ruugat and the allied forces for one second before a swarm of deranged Liches rained blows upon the lost city, attempting to mix Ruin’s powers with their spells and enchantments. Ruugat ignored them like mosquitoes and shapeshifted his weapon back into limbs. The Engine had already proven unable to deal any real damage, and he couldn’t risk sending Lith flying with a swing of his mace. Ruugat was tired of that game, and to win, he had to get rid of one of his two most dangerous opponents. Dawn had put even more distance between herself and the lost city, whereas Lith had come close to exert the Tower Blade Spell’s full power, making him Ruugat’s easiest pick. Even with Solus guiding Lith’s steps back and the golden lightning hastening his retreat, the lost city was faster, and his long arms closed in by the second. ’We’ll never escape in time, let alone bring the lost city out of the boundaries of the mana geyser. We have no choice but to fight.’ Lith thought. ’Ryla!’ He gambled everything on the Fomor and released the earth element amassed inside the Elemental Storage. Ruugat’s hands were too close, so Lith dug the Engine’s talons deep into the ground and lowered his center of gravity to brace for the impact. He caught Ruugat’s hands with his own, trapping them in the steel grip of the Engine boosted by the golden lightning. Yet the mass gap between them was too strong. The lost city was twice as tall as the Engine and much, much heavier. The golden lightning made Lith and his equipment stronger, not sturdier. The Engine’s external layer cracked on impact, and the fissures on its surface spread as Ruugat tightened his hold. Lith’s muscles strained, and his joints popped from the effort, yet Ruugat still managed to push the Engine on one knee. ’On it!’ Ryla’s wings turned orange as they absorbed the world energy and filtered the earth element from it. The wings gathered the elemental energy and sent it to her orange eye, where it was focused, amplified, and turned into something more. The power of the Fomor spread through the forehead of the Engine, and reached Lith’s orange eye. There, he combined Ryla’s bloodline ability with the earth element from the Storage and that generated by reversing the air element with Void Magic. Lith poured everything into the Davross-Adamant alloy coating the tower, conjuring an orange defensive aura just in time before his bones shattered. "What?" Ruugat stared at his opponent in outrage. "How can you call upon the power of the earth? There can only be one Ruugat! You can’t be like me!" In the heat of the battle, as Lith and Solus poured every ounce of their strength to last just a bit longer, they missed the moment when the Eyes and Ears of Menadion stopped analyzing the enemy and turned inward. Meanwhile, Morok had found his first opportunity to contribute to the battle. ’I can’t believe how useless I am.’ He absorbed the light element from his silver eye until his mana core was about to burst before releasing it into a burning pillar. ’My best spells didn’t even scratch that thing. ’Healing the people of Zelex and carrying the wounded to safety was the best I could do. Until now.’ Morok had learned Light Mastery from Nalrond together with the rest of the Ernas family, but he was still stuck at tier three. He was too busy with Quylla’s pregnancy and studying his life force to have the time needed to master a complex subject like hard-light constructs. Yet he could fire heat rays, and that was more than enough to turn his silver eye into a weapon or, like in this case, a power source. The condensed and amplified light element struck Dawn without harming her. It carried no destructive power, only a great mass of energy ready to be absorbed. "Thanks!" The Horseman said as Sunrise fed upon the pillar and used it to restore Dawn’s body and mana reserves. "Less thanks, more help!" He pointed at Lith. "On it!" The Horseman reformed the Lightpillar spells from their gilded fragments and imbued them with new mana to restore their original power. She sent the two jousting lances drilling on Ruugat’s shoulder blades at the same time as she unleashed her Tower Blade Spell, Rising Sun, on his left foot. The drills weakened the joints and loosened the lost city’s hold, while Rising Sun disrupted the repair process and dealt enough damage to shorten the stump further. With Lith drawing the lost city’s attention to himself, the assembled forces of the three great countries and the Awakened Council had resumed their cover fire. Silverwing’s Annihilations drained Ruugat’s defenses while the thick hail of spells blinded his mystical senses.