Chapter 3169 Puppet Master (Part 1) 3169 Puppet Master (Part 1) Derek swung his blade in a wide arc to keep the Chroniclers away, making his mediocre swordsmanship evident. The elves dodged but didn't exploit the blatant opening, thinking it another trap. 'What if Verhen really is amnesiac?' Tarell asked after no clever tactic followed the amateurish swing. 'What if it's just a ruse and you die?' Q'porr rebuked him. 'Verhen just used twenty tier five spells. How could he do it if he had no memory?' Her reasoning was correct. Regular spell-holding rings could only store one spell so Lith wasn't supposed to have access to more than ten. Yet it was also wrong. By mixing the runes retrieved from the Odi and Golden Griffon, Lith and Solus had found a way to craft magic-holding rings capable of storing two spells each. It was something they hadn't shared with anyone but their closest friends, making even the World Tree oblivious about their innovation. Derek cursed his weakness and unleashed a barrage of tier one spells, leaving the Chroniclers aghast. Even a simple student uniform was more than enough to neutralize such weak spells. Even worse, there was no strategy or reason behind them. 'How could such a moron kill so many of our friends?' Tam'sfil said in outrage. 'I say that our intel is correct. Stop overthinking and cover my back!' Before Q'porr could order him to stop, the Chronicler lunged at Derek with the skill he had polished through the millennia. Everyone expected him to die in a gruesome and unexpected way but that didn't happen. His spear slipped past Derek's awkward guard and impaled him through the chest. Elves had the bloodline ability to imbue their spells inside their equipment akin to an extra enchantment so the blade carried more than the Davross it was made of. The tier four darkness spell, Death Mist, was released straight inside the Void's body and the Voidwalker armor. Tam'sfil used the armor's gravity sheath as a containment field to focus his spell's destructive power. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎 Derek screamed in pain, feeling the life force he had painstakingly collected dissipate, and tried to get a hold of the wooden haft to suck it dry. Tam'sfil, however, was quicker. He pulled the blade out and slashed diagonally as he retreated. He knew that Abominations had no vitals so there was no point sticking close to Lith. The polearm left a shallow gash that went from the right breastplate to the left pauldron, spreading more darkness inside Derek's body and weakening him further. 'That's it?' Q'porr couldn't believe her own eyes. 'This is no ruse. Verhen has lost his memory. We've played ourselves this whole time. Attack!' The elves spread out, adjusting the grip on their weapons and leaving Derek the space of one breath before they jumped at him from every direction. In that breath, Ragnar?k forced the Full Guard enchantment of the Voidwalker armor active, spreading a violet light for over 30 meters (100') around the Abomination. The pain from the wounds awakened the memories of all the fights Lith had faced in his twenty years of life on Mogar. The instincts carved in his body by the countless hours he had spent training and battles to the death rose to the surface. Derek may not know what to do, but Lith did. Full Guard was a common spell, but it had been Lith's bread and butter since the academy and it gave his body all the information it needed to fight. Ragnar?k's clumsy movements became sharp, intercepting the tip of one of the blades coming from the front and pushing it away. The elf's weapon had greater range but Lith didn't need to reach Tam'sfil to hurt him. To hurt them all. Lith let the edge of the black blade slip past the Davross head and onto the haft, shaving the wood above and injecting Chaos in that below. Lith pumped mana in his left hand, temporarily enhancing the durability of the combat glove, and intercepted a second polearm with his open palm. The Davross' speartip pierced through the armor's metal and the Abomination's darkness, releasing part of the tier four spell it was imbued with directly inside Lith's body. Pain was an old friend to Lith and Derek so they clenched their fangs along with their left hand. There were no bones or nerves inside the Void so he could still move all his fingers and grab the Yggdrasill wood, stopping the weapon before the blade could deliver the full blow. Two membranous wings erupted from his back, flapping against the two elves striking from behind his back and wrapping themselves around their weapons. With the human side gone, the second set of wings was missing so nothing stopped the final two weapons. The best Lith could do was to manipulate his body along with the Voidwalker armor, opening holes in the Davross blades' path as quickly as he could. The Chroniclers exploited the openings to shoot their spells right inside, past his armor's defensive enchantments. The Void lost big chunks of his body, his energy reserves and mass greatly reduced by the several tier five darkness spells he had to endure. Yet he pressed on, closing the holes as quickly as they had appeared and trapping the wooden hafts of the two final weapons into his grasp as well. "My turn now." The Abomination Touch infected the Yggdrasill component of the weapons, draining them of vitality and using it to recover the lost mass. Yggdrasill wood was almost as durable as Davross, but unlike the mystical metal, it was alive. Weak to the corruption of Chaos. Small tendrils sprouted from the Abomination's body, forming black veins as they spread throughout the weapons' hafts. It dealt immense pain to the Tree which in turn was passed on to the elves due to the bond they shared. The attack was much worse than before, the infection of six branches at the same time amplified the pain that every Chronicler endured, paralyzing them. The black veins grew fast, reaching the hands wielding the weapons and moving on to infect the living flesh as well. 'Unleash everything you have at the ready or we're dead!' Fighting the Chaos invading her body was making Q'porr lose her focus and she knew that the other Chroniclers were in her same boat. Losing the Annihilation would force the kill team to change their strategy, but there was no coming back from losing their lives. The Chroniclers activated every enchantment of their weapons, released every spell contained in their rings, and conjured all those they had completed. The resulting explosion blasted the Abomination to pieces and sent the elves flying away to safety. 'Assemble to my position!' Q'porr doubted that Lith was dead so she had the rest of her team Blink to the same spot to cast the Annihilation again. 'Use your breathing technique.?We need to recover before-' Her "before" was past and gone. In the time it had taken them to Blink, the explosion had already stopped. Instead of expanding in every direction, the mass of fire and darkness was swirling in a black vortex while the other elements faded into nothingness. 'Has'sar! I thought you were dead.' More than one elf asked via the mind link with the World Tree as they saw their colleague walk through the smoke and fire.