Lith had already been to the village of Trauros to share his communication rune with its elder. Crossing the couple hundred of kilometers which separated it from Maekosh with Warp Steps only took him a handful of seconds. Lith appeared inside an isolated alley while people all around the village were screaming and begging for help. Their prayers didn’t stop the wargs’ fangs nor their claws. A dozen wargs were pillaging the food supplies while several others were feasting on those who had attempted to stop them and the passers-by who had not fled from the scene fast enough. The starving monsters’ aim had only been the stored meat, but the first drops of human blood spilled during the initial assault had sent them into a feeding frenzy. Wargs were predators, whereas the squishy humans were just food after all. Much to Solus’s dismay, aside from cloaking his presence with darkness magic, Lith did nothing. He held the magical tracker and watched the green gemstones at its corners lighting up one after the other. The device needed time to lock onto the signal emitted by the Abomination fragments inside the wargs’ bodies. ’You can fight while I take care of the tracker!’ Being helpless in front of the massacre was killing her soul. With each passing second, someone was dying. ’Then what? The wargs would split up again and fly away. If the warriors left to fight me commit suicide before the link is established, we’ll go back to square one and the next time even the army might not be able to stop them. ’I’m not a fan of collateral damage either, but if we don’t find the whole pack, it will be all for nothing.’ Lith replied while impatiently looking at the tracker and weaving all the spells he could need. Only when all the gemstones lit up and the holographic display not only pointed the nearby wargs, but also the location of the rest of the pack did Lith came out of the alley. The monsters that had yet to take off died before they could even realize what was happening. Lith’s surprise attack struck them while they were still recovering from their berserk rage. In the blink of an eye, six wargs were dead. Lith stored their bodies away and healed all the injured villagers before leaving. He couldn’t stand Solus’s suffering and he needed some time to recover his strength with Invigoration anyway. Warping there so fast would have left a fake mage with little mana left. Helping Trauros would look good on his resume and lull the wargs into a false sense of security. Lith wanted them to have all the time they needed to regroup and maybe even change the location of their den. He had already killed a total of 18 wargs out of the 50 he had counted during his first day in Maekosh. Even if a few more had been born during the last two days, they would still be cubs. His plan was to wait for them to settle down and strike at them while their mind and bodies were lethargic from the feast that they would soon have. Just as he predicted, his first ambush had made them cautious. The pack moved as soon as the last warg carrying the supplies arrived, flying for hundreds of kilometers before stopping. Only then did Lith left Trauros. He was back to his peak condition and was certain that by the time he arrived, every warg would be too busy stuffing their muzzles to notice his presence. Once again, they had chosen the base of a small hill to build their den with earth magic. Lith checked his surroundings with Life Vision and the terrain with the array detection spell before landing. This time, several arrays were in place. ’Fuck me sideways! They didn’t waste a single second. Their mastery of magic is progressing so fast that I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes. Could it be that the one behind the mutated monsters is an Awakened? ’If so, how come despite the amount of time he has invested in training them, we’ve never seen him?’ Solus had no answer to offer, so she focused on the arrays to identify their focus points and dismantle them with true magic while they were still inactive. Lith and Solus each took care of half the magical formations. After checking the underground maze with Life Vision, Lith decided to place an anti air array right above the den. He had no time to waste searching for all the possible exit points, so he made it impossible to fly away. It was supposed to take the fleeing wargs by surprise and give him enough time to catch up with them in case something went wrong. ’By my maker! Lith we must hurry!’ The shock in Solus’ voice gave him a bad feeling about the mission. She hadn’t lost her cool even when they had faced Scarlett the Scorpicore. He followed the ever changing tunnels to the huge cave located several dozens of meters underground as Solus kept watch on their surroundings with mana sense. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂 ’When we were outside, some of them must have Awakened or something. Their mana signatures grew so much that I could clearly see them even from such a distance. Yet now I can’t feel them anymore. I don’t like this at all.’ She said. Lith focused on moving fast without losing his breathing rhythm. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted to be at his peak condition and disabling so many arrays without alerting their maker had taken a toll on him. Solus was already in her gauntlet form and both of them had woven their best spells. If the enemy now had both quality and quantity on their side, the only advantages Lith and Solus had left were speed and battle experience. When they reached the underground cave, they stumbled into a scene completely different from what they had been expecting. The wargs were almost all dead, the floor was littered with mutilated corpses and entrails. The smell of blood, bile, and shit was overwhelming, yet Lith barely noticed it. The tight knit warg pack seemed to be fighting among themselves, with many grey wargs fighting and losing against a few black wargs as they tried to defend pregnant females and cubs. The black wargs had a similar appearance to the hybrid alpha. Half of their bodies was composed of raw darkness element, giving them a demonic look. Their fur was shiny and black, quivering under the magical light like it was alive. Their yellow eyes burned like torches and now Lith could see that the things he had previously mistaken for horns, were actually quills, like those of a porcupine. They grew not only on their heads, but also on the rest of their bodies. Each one of the black wargs had at least two tails. Their own plus one or more fox tails comprised of pure energy. ’What the fuck? That’s no internal strife, it’s a battle royal!’ Lith realized as the black wargs also fought among themselves. The winner would assimilate all the black matter from the loser, whose corpse would then revert to a normal warg’s. Everything happened in just a few seconds, while Lith’s and Solus’s minds were processing the events taking place in front of them.