Chapter 3820: Atrophied Limb (Part 1) "If I have to go down, I’ll bring as many of you with me!" Feeling his strength fade as the Annihilations closed in on his nucleus, Ruugat abandoned all hopes of victory. He poured all the mana he had left and the world energy he absorbed from the geyser into the mana crystals studded all over his body to conjure one final Fountain of Death. ’Since I can’t escape capture, I’ll spend every iota of my strength to kill as many Awakened as I can. This way, the balance of power in Jiera will shift in favor of my siblings. ’Without the Council to keep the other lost cities in check, the human and beast strongholds will fall, and the monster tides will grow stronger than ever. ’At that point, my siblings will free all those of us who have been sealed again. My imprisonment will last years instead of millennia, and my only problem will be finding a geyser as good as the one under Detemer. It will take me a long time, but I have eternity on my side.’ The mana crystal covering the lost city pulsed with white light, the frequency of the flashes increasing until each gemstone shone like a small sun. Now that the mana crystals were charged with mana, Ruugat only had to weave the necessary spells. "Stop him at all costs! Hit him with everything you got!" Lith roared, pouring the Dread Flames shrouding his body into Double Edge. The blade’s size didn’t increase, but its destructive power soared. One horizontal swing was enough to sever Ruugat at the hip level. The mana crystals still active on the torso, the stumps of the arms, and what was left of the head of the lost city lost their light. Lith kept swinging his blade, cutting the upper body from shoulders to midriff with an X-shaped slash. Double Edge moved almost too fast for the Awakened eye as it sliced and diced Ruugat’s severed upper body in mid-air. By the time gravity brought the ruins of the upper body to the ground, the biggest piece was the size of a commoner’s house ’No!’ The lost city inwardly cursed. ’Even if many parts of my body were too damaged to use them to conjure Fountain of Death, they still channeled my mana. They still carried thousands of mana crystals that I could have accessed with a mere touch. ’With half of my body broken and scattered, restoring the crystal network would cost me more mana than what I would retrieve. My Fountain of Death’s power is as crippled as I am!’ The Warp Gates carrying the Dread Knights opened while Lith’s order still echoed across the battlefield. The undead had never stopped moving since they had left, and their charge hit so fast that no one noticed it, only its effects. The lines of Dread Knights crashed against Ruugat’s right foot and then turned around to make space for the undead behind them. The lost city’s only intact extremity exploded in a boom of thunder, robbing Ruugat of his balance. He stumbled left and right, trying to keep standing on the two uneven stumps that his feet had become. The relentless rain of spells didn’t help, especially when the allied forces noticed the effects of the charge and stopped all the attacks except that from one side. The resulting push made Ruugat stumble and fall, his lower body slamming against the ruins of Detemer with the grace of a sack of bricks. The Awakened wasted no time and resumed their offensive, digging deeper and deeper into the few still intact sections of the lost city’s body. ’I can’t get up!’ Ruugat kicked and trashed with his ruined legs, but to no avail. ’The power of my Fountain of Death has been halved again, since the crystals facing the ground won’t kill anyone. ’I’ve consumed all my mana and all my life force and that of my host for just one quarter of my original power.’ He inwardly sighed, his defeat becoming more shameful by the second. ’I must make haste before- And so, Ruugat’s time came and passed. A lucky seven-man unit of Jiera’s Council grazed the lost city’s nucleus by sheer luck. They didn’t notice it because it was still mostly hidden, but it was more than enough for the Eyes of Menadion to pick up the now-exposed powerful energy signature of Ruugat’s pseudo cores. "There!" Lith pointed with his finger and marked the spot with a huge X-shaped hologram. "Quick, before he completes his spells!" Dawn and Vladion didn’t reply. They simply unleashed their best spell at the marked target. The Horseman used her Tower Tier Spell, Sunshine, conjuring a heat ray the size of a train that carried almost as much mass and burned at thousands of degrees. Heat rays were much more effective than constructs against a large and stationary target. All the mana that Dawn would have otherwise employed to shape and solidify the light element was released as raw destructive power. Vladion used his Blood Magic Immortal Ruler spell, expending all the energy stored inside his full-red blood core. It generated a hail of crimson blades as hard as Adamant that he manipulated to attack the nucleus from the sides without getting in the way of Dawn’s spell. The seven-man unit that had inadvertently discovered the nucleus needed to backtrack the Annihilation just a bit to strike Lith’s mark head-on. The moment the Earthly Vault ebbed away from the rest of the legs and focused around the hologram, the allied forces changed their tactic. The people of Zelex, the elves, and the armies of the three great countries attacked the now unprotected areas of Ruugat’s remaining body to cripple him further and leave the Awakened the space they needed. The Council Elders focused on the nucleus, instead, joining the current onslaught only after adjusting their position so as to not interfere with the other Silverwing’s Annihilations. The light generated by the mana crystals scattered across the lost city’s body dimmed. Then, it blinked, and finally it went out as the mana they contained was rerouted into the Earthly Vault enchantment to protect his pseudo cores. Something that Ruugat desperately tried and failed to avoid. He knew that unless the Awakened rediscovered the self-destruction spell to undo the Forbidden Magic that gave him life, they couldn’t afford to kill him. Ruugat wanted to leave his nucleus unprotected and release the Fountain of Death at full strength, killing hundreds of enemies as his swan song. Alas, the Warlock King hadn’t accounted for such a contingency when he had Forgemastered Ruugat of the Earth. A lost city was a living being, but also an artifact. What Ruugat could do was limited by what the runes that comprised his life essence allowed him to. He couldn’t override the emergency protocols intended to keep him alive. He tried everything he could and failed. In the space of a few seconds, the orange aura of Earthly Vault faded into a thin mist, and his Spirit Barriers collapsed. "Enough!" Raagu signaled everyone to stop and placed a tier five Spirit Magic spell, Sealed Space, around the massive mana crystal that held Ruugat’s pseudo cores. "Not so fast!" The lost city snarled, using what little power he had left to shatter the emerald cube.