Chapter 3701: One Last Time (Part 2) Yet Lith flicked Ragnarök back in front of himself and blocked the last two attacks as well. When the third blade storm came, Ragnarök moved so fast that friction turned the blades of the Awakened white-hot. "Okay, now I’m pissed off!" Zakra looked at Jissha and Cailm for help, but they were busy fighting the Golems. Without the need to help Lith, Trouble and Raptor were pushing the Emperor Beasts back and wounding them deeply. As for the backline of Awakened, the turning of the tides had disrupted their tempo as well. Lith and Zakra moved too fast and were too close. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚 One wrong move and Lith might use the Titania as a wooden shield and maybe even kill her. On top of that, Jissha, Cailm, Gamra, and Kidha were yelling for cover fire, forcing the seven Awakened to split their focus. Now the Roc and the Orthrus struggled to resist the Golems’ onslaught while the Sphinx and the Manticore failed to keep up respectively with Lith’s whipping tail and flapping wings. The Titania had no idea what was happening but knew something was dangerously wrong. She changed her form, shapeshifting from a wreath to a tall tree. It allowed her ten blades to attack not only from every side but also from different heights. Zakra started another blade storm, each blow seamlessly flowing into the next while alternating high and low strikes. The one-handed Ragnarök could never keep up with her strength and speed. Victory would be hers. Or so she thought until Lith parried three consecutive strikes and deflected the following three without breaking his stance. ’Verhen is not just getting faster.’ The veil of pride lifted from the Titania’s eyes, allowing her to realize the truth. At the beginning of the fight, each of Zakra’s attacks had blown Ragnarök away and forced Lith to readjust his guard. Now, instead, the angry blade barely moved from the point of impact. ’He’s also getting stronger. The gap in strength between us is gone!’ Alas, the truth came to her too late. Lith deflected two of the last four attacks with a sweep from high to low of his tail and the remaining two with a slap of his wings. With the ten blades of the Titania far away from her body, there was nothing stopping Ragnarök’s fury. Lith cut Zakra’s tree form twice before she could notice. The angry blade moved faster and cut deeper with every one of its swings. It severed Adamant, vines, bark, and wood alike, until the biggest piece of the Titania could easily fit into a chimney as firewood. The Tiamat roared in fury, and the mere pressure from his voice blasted Zakra’s fragments away. "Thanks for the opening, Zakra!" Gamra hadn’t missed how Lith was defenseless from head to midriff. Cutting down the tree had taken him wide and powerful movements that left Lith open to an attack from the side. Gamra mistook it for one of the many contingency plans Uryn had prepared for them. ’Sacrifice the tower to get the Queen!’ The Sphinx thought, remembering the strategy. Little did he know that the reason Lith hadn’t returned Ragnarök to a guard position was that Gamra and Kidha were too slow and weak to be a threat. "Gamra, that’s not my plan!" Uryn yelled, but it was too late. The angry blade effortlessly pushed the Sphinx’s spear away and sundered its wielder from shoulder to hip with the return swing. "Gamra, Zakra, fall back!" Lelira Blinked them both back before Lith could finish them. "Thanks, Lelira." The Titania said while using her breathing technique and absorbing the nutrients from the ground to heal her wounds slowly. "Verhen went this close to hitting my Root. How’s Gamra?" "Still alive, but I have to act fast before his core-" The two halves of the Sphinx burst into silvery flames that burned him from the inside. He died with a single, agonizing scream before his entire body turned into ashes and his armor into an Adamant puddle. It happened so quickly that Lelira’s breathing technique failed to keep up. Uryn looked at his dead comrade for a moment before fixing his gaze on Lith and noticing that, as the wind pressure from the roar ended, the violet of the Tiamat’s aura shifted to a dazzling silver. "What kind of mana core produces silver light?" Cailm yelled while Trouble relentlessly chased him. "A core full to the brim with Life Maelstrom!" Uryn warned the ten remaining members of his group. "That’s how Verhen defeated Zakra. The Mad Prince inherited his mother’s powers!" Everyone was about to ask their tactician why Lith had yet to move from his spot while they talked until the answer came by itself. As silver lightning flooded every fiber of Lith’s being, he conjured the tier five Void Magic spell, Mjolnir. With no clouds in the sky to support his plan, Lith tapped into the power of the earth below him. A crackling river of electricity burst from the ground, flooding Lith with the equivalent of natural lightning. "Stay calm and hold position!" Uryn yelled. "He may be ten times stronger, but there are eleven of us, and we have the numerical and tactical advantage. He is wounded, whereas most of us are at their peak. There’s nothing to fear." Lith couldn’t agree more with Uryn’s analysis of the situation. It was the reason he mixed Mjolnir and Life Maelstrom into an electrum-colored shining mass of lightning. Natural lightning was much faster than one created by magic, so when Lith unleashed it against Uryn and Lelira, they failed to react in time. Lith had practiced Keila’s teachings and applied them every time he delivered the Life Maelstrom to Ajatar and Faluel, learning its secrets. The silver lightning that struck the two Awakened humans boosted solely their mana cores, making them ten times stronger and sending the many spells Uryn and Lelira kept at the ready into overdrive. At the same time, the natural lightning ravaged their bodies, stripping them of their muscle control. Uryn and Lelira couldn’t stop their overloaded mana cores from tearing their way out while the electricity burned its way in. The two array specialists exploded into gory fireworks, whittling the number of Awakened down to nine. "Together! Now, that he’s weak and alone!" Zakra said. Lith had sent the Golems away to save them from the burst of natural lightning. On top of that, after consuming all the Life Maelstrom, he was weaker than his enemies. The Awakened followed the order without question or doubt. Uryn was dead, and so was Lelira. Every plan they had prepared for that day assumed they had Uryn to guide them and Lelira to support him. Without those plans, the Awakened had a faint idea of teamwork and no viable battle formation. Lith wheezed as his enemies covered the distance separating them in an instant. Without the Life Maelstrom, he was indeed weak. ’But I’m not alone.’ His eyes fell on the crying baby, who, despite the terrible revelations of that day, had trusted his father’s murderer to keep him alive. ’I’m not alone!’ The emerald, orange, and yellow eyes on the Tiamat face burned with power, recalling the electrum-colored lightning bolts to his side.