’No clothes, no corpses, no blood. It’s the perfect murder. The question is why is the f*cker helping me?’ Lith’s paranoid mind tried to walk a mile in the cursed artifact’s shoes. A cruel smile appeared on his face when he believed he had found his answer. Lith wove all of his most powerful spells at once. He had a dirty job to do and didn’t want to prolong it one second more than necessary. Lith moved outside the castle while looking for a bottleneck where the people forming the procession would be bunched together to inflict the maximum damage. He was plotting the best way to chain his spells together when Solus’s mind peeked into his own. ’Promise me you will not make them suffer.’ Lith replied with a telepathic nod. A Raging Sun, a tier five War Mage spell, struck the middle of the crowd. Violet flames exploded in every direction, turning flesh into ashes in a split second. Those who tried to escape from the blast or were unlucky enough to survive it, discovered that all the escape routes were blocked by another tier five spell, Silent Reaper. A small sized tornado had surrounded them and was closing in. Its edges spun slow, not sucking up but rather cutting everything they touched into a fine dust. When the two spells collided, the resulting blast leveled the block to the ground. The humming sound turned from annoyed to angry, but Lith couldn’t care less. He kept track of the energy flow going from the ground to the castle through the spires. When the mana was about to reach the second to last magic crystal to be amplified, Lith shattered the gemstone with a Checkmate Spears. The Black Star did its best to rebuild the relay point, but it was a second too late. The energy was lost. Lith continued to rain death from above while rhythmically destroying the gemstones before they could collect the mana siphoned from the geyser located below Kaduria. The hum turned into a tremor and the tremor into a quake. The Black Star rose into the sky, shattering everything in its wake. The castle and all the buildings nearby crumbled like sand. They were reabsorbed by the enraged artifact now resigned to losing its precious harvest. ’It seems really pissed off. We are still far from the barrier, it’s better if we get away from here. We don’t know if the black rain has negative effects on all living beings or just on Kadurians.’ Solus worry increased as the dome was filled by the black fumes generated by the cursed object. Strong gusts of wind howled like an angry beast and tried to push Lith off the roof. He bolted towards the city’s edges while throwing random spells to the crowd downstairs. The Black Star roared in anger. Without the black rain, it couldn’t collect the mana cores unless their vessel was destroyed. Yet the clouds were still forming because of the light cycle being interrupted halfway through. The more damaged the corpses, the more energy it would take to get them back to life in useful conditions. Lith’s spells were all like a blender, ripping their victims to shreds rather than simply killing them. Between the loss of mana due to the crystals being shattered and the energy that would be needed to regenerate the fallen Kadurians, the Black Star knew a lot of nourishment would go to waste. Yet that wasn’t what had triggered its fury. The artifact was used to the recurring interference from the Rangers. It allowed the Black Star to measure the passing of time and gave the Kadurians someone to blame for their own misfortune. Without them, the city would plunge into madness again, considerably reducing the gains from the light cycle. Dead people wouldn’t draw the world energy. The amount of mana the Dark Star collected from their cores was negligible, yet vital. Perceiving their almost empty cores, the world energy would gush out from the geyser making it easier to collect and store inside the artifact by the network of spires built over all Kaduria. The people were the only flaw in the mechanism the cursed object had devised to escape from its prison. It could repair their homes, give them food, and even the pretense of a few hours of normal life. Yet it could not make them happy, nor force them to stay alive until the end of every cycle. That was the reason it welcomed the Rangers. They were the perfect scapegoats. Solus was another matter entirely. After centuries of isolation, the Black Star had finally found a being it could relate to. It had even indulged her delusion of being a female as an act of kinship. Nonetheless, she had rejected its request for help and had unleashed her thrall against its dominion. Humans it could tolerate, but betrayal was unforgivable. The artifact released but a fraction of the power it had accumulated through the centuries in the form of a small beam of light as thick as a finger. The shockwave accompanying the compressed mana exerted a pressure capable of crushing everything in a two meters radius from its passage. Lith opened a Warp Steps in front of himself and materialized its exit point right behind the Dark Star. He had expected some kind of retaliation, so he kept a significant distance from the opponent to have the time he needed to set up his countermeasure while remaining close enough to be an alluring target. The artifact had been a prisoner for countless years and its own birth had caused the disappearance of magic from Kaduria. It knew about the existence of dimensional magic, but it had always been used as a means to escape. Being hit from point blank caused it to lose focus and to suffer some damage. Before it could recover from the surprise, Lith was already outside the barrier. ’Not bad for a first raid.’ He thought. ’I still have no idea how the Dark Star works, but this should put a nice dent into its escape plans.’ The black rain was falling. Lith had to wait for it to stop before going back inside to kill the Shadows. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦 ’I suggest you remain close to the barrier and lure the enemies to you.’ Solus suggested. ’I’m afraid our host is quite enraged by our interference. It might attempt another attack, this time maybe with more finesse.’ ’Play it safe and bait it into wasting even more power. Sounds like a plan to me.’ Lith said while using Invigoration to recover his strength. Being well rested it would take him but a few breaths to return to his peak condition. A sudden crackle of energy behind him signaled the opening of a Warp Gate. Lith had no idea who was going to come out, but he was certain it wasn’t an ally. The army’s communication amulet was still in his pocket and he had received no message.