Supreme Magus

Chapter 3297 Rising Core (Part 2)

Almost because even though the second layer still used Ragnarök as a base, it also had a slot for the Fury and the ability to reproduce its enchantments on a bigger scale.

We must finish this before someone gets close enough to notice the Prime Engine.'Lith and Solus thought in unison, commanding the Mouth to start weaving their Tower Blade Spell, Extinction.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The eight Golems on the front lines joined their arms and turned them into heavy Yggdrasill shields as they charged forward. The other eight in the back line shapeshifted their hands into spiked mace and advanced behind the cover of the shield bearers.

All of them weaved their part of a Silverwing's Annihilation, ready to unleash the anti-Guardian spells the moment the World Tree was done with their preparations. The Golems marched in perfect synch, the Puppets piloting them were extensions of the Yggdrasill and moved in tune with their will.

On the one hand, the teamwork between the Puppets was clockwork. On the other hand, even though seven of them were required to cast an anti-Guardian spell, the willpower imbued in it would belong solely to the World Tree and if cast alone it would have been easily Dominated again.

It was the reason the Yggdrasill couldn't conjure the Annihilations until they were done preparing adequate cover fire.

Unfortunately for the Tree, the hybrid wasn't willing to wait that long.

The hybrid bolted toward the Golems standing between them and the World Tree, conjuring a copy of Ragnarök in each of their free hands.

The first performed a vertical slash that severed the joints where the shields locked together, creating a path inside the enemy formation. The second and third blades lunged respectively at the left elbow and the right foot of the shield-bearing Golems, where their Puppets were supposed to be safe.

The black crystals on the angry blades' fullers lit up, releasing a pulse of darkness magic that withered the Yggdrasill's sprouts and killed them instantly.

With two members of the eight-man unit dead not only were the Golems now incapable of conjuring anti-Guardian spells but also there was a hole in their previously flawless formation.

The constructs had no defense from attacks coming from the opening, their sides and backs exposed. The hybrid exploited the hole they had just created viciously and moved their arms in a whirlwind.

Lith and Solus were surrounded but none of the enemy weapons were aimed at them, an issue that the World Tree was already in the process of correcting. The hybrid stabbed four more Golems and killed the sprouts piloting them, leaving only two members of the eight-man unit alive.

The survivors were on the opposite side of the formation, too far away to coordinate their efforts and too close to escape. The hybrid threw two copies of Ragnarök that shapeshifted into Furies in mid-air.

The flying hammers powered by the hybrid's strength plus the Prime Engine sent the Golems flying off the ground, their feet away from the power line of the Yggdrasill's roots and, more importantly, disconnecting the sprouts from the Tree's mind.

As long as they were on the ground, the Yggdrasill could move them like their limbs since the roots transmitted the sprouts' perceptions to the Tree and the Tree's will into the sprouts instantly.

In the split second the Yggdrasill needed to conjure a mind link and regain control of their thralls, the hybrid threw the other two copies of Ragnarök, and this time the blades stayed that way.

They pierced the right scapula of one of the surviving Golems and the left side of the other, nailing the sprouts hidden inside the constructs and killing them with a surgical pulse of darkness element from the blades' black crystals.

'Eight sprouts killed in a heartbeat and as many Golems neutralized!' The Yggdrasill had no plausible explanation for the hybrid's feat and no time to find one. The silver lining is that Verhen fell for my trap.

'After he killed the first six sprouts so quickly, I assumed the remaining two would fare no better and diverting my focus on them would be a waste of energy. He didn't disconnect me from my minions I simply sacrificed two pawns to kill the enemy's king!"

The eight-man unit of Golems behind the hybrid Blinked and surrounded Lith and Solus while they were still disarmed. The hammers were still flying away and the swords killing the sprouts.

The constructs had their arms already raised and their hands shifted in the form of spiked maces. Their wooden bodies surged with the accumulated energy of their power cores, ready to unleash the enchantments the Tree had prepared for the ambush. Four more copies of Ragnarök appeared in the hybrid's hands and another emerged from their roaring maw along with a burst of Dread Flames. Each of the four copies of the angry blade found its mark, killing one sprout each.

The original, instead, followed in the wake of the silvery fire. The pillar of Dread Flames knocked the Golem off its feet and burned its accumulated mana like gasoline.

The construct's enchantments imploded, opening deep cracks in the Yggdrasill wood that the silver fire used to reach deeper inside the Golem. The Dread Flames wreathed Ragnarök without harming it as the blade pierced through the damaged wood to reach the sprout.

The seven remaining Golems managed to unleash their attacks, both physical and magical, before the pulse of darkness magic killed four of them, yet they hit only air. The hybrid had already escaped the encirclement by jumping in the wake of Ragnarök,

passing right between two Golems before they could understand what was happening. Even in their fused form and with the help of the Prime Engine, Lith and Solus couldn't rely on the Eyes to find the Yggdrasill's sprouts and the World Tree knew it.

The mass of mana of the Golems' power cores, the cloaking enchantments, and the aura of the Yggdrasill wood were more than enough to blind any mystical sense, Soul Vision included.

The Eyes could still read the surface level runes and decipher a spell once it was released but that was it. The Ears, however, had no such problems.

The ancient artifact had been lost to time and had never escaped the hands of its rightful owner except that in very recent times. Even the World Tree had no idea how the Ears worked and hadn't bothered to research the artifact.

The heir of the First Awakened had just assumed that soon they would own Menadion's Tower and the updated full Master Set. There was no point in studying the enchantments of the Apprentice Ears, especially considering such magic was outdated for over 700 years.

On top of that, even if the Tree did study the Ears, it would have done them no good without the unlock code.

As for Lith and Solus, they had no idea how the Ears worked either.

At least until Ripha Menadion had used it in combination with the Eyes while breaking Solus out of the Tree's domain. Until the tower had taken full form, recovered the Menadion Set, and stored all the data collected about Menadion's battle techniques in the Library.