Counter Measures (Part 2)

'I am the only one who can recharge the Demons quickly, sure, but the more I use Invigoration on them, the less it works for me! Lith sent Valia and Varegrave forward, expecting an ambush.

He wasn't disappointed.

Two Wendigos welcomed them with a Chilling Wail that froze the Demons and conjured an ice wall that cut the reinforcements off. Valia and Varegrave were prepared for something like that.

During the interrogation of the assassin unit sent to the Verhen Mansion, Lith had extracted from them the countermeasures that the Undead Courts had devised against his different forms.

Wendigos for the Dragon, Nightwalkers for the Abomination, and Blood Witches for the Tiamat.

The two former members of the Queen's Corps had moved forward while holding their breath so that when they exhaled, they released a burst of Origin Flames from all over their bodies.

The mystical flames turned the ice into steam, blinding the Wendigos from seeing the blades aimed at their intestines. Smashing the head or puncturing the heart of a Wendigo was useless.

Born from a person starving during a harsh winter to the point of feeding on the corpses of members of their own race, a Wendigo's weak point was the never-rotting flesh of their first victim.

Unless it was destroyed, the hairy undead would endlessly regenerate, given time and enough power in their blood cores. The blades failed to get past the Adamant armor of the undead but the darkness element coating them did.

Valia's opponent experienced discomfort while Varegrave's was unlucky.



The blow glanced at the right spot, causing the remnants of her first meal to rot. The Wendigo's strength plummeted and she tried to back down but the Demon of the Fallen kept pressing forward.

"Help me, dammit!" She screamed in fear as the eternity that had been promised to her slipped through her fingers.

Thralls and undead came to her aid but as soon as Lith's array- detecting spell and life-sensing array provided him with the information he needed, the rest of the Demons stormed the room.

Having no idea how deep the building went and how many enemies he would face, Lith used the Demons for recon while he studied the situation from a safe distance. He was close enough to help and support them, but also out of reach for the undead.

"Now!" A familiar voice shouted and the undead jumped to the side, uncaring if it left them exposed to a blow.

A massive construct shaped like hands made of pure darkness reached the crowd of Demons, splitting into many smaller limbs that grabbed their respective targets and pinned them against the wall.

The Demons tried to shapeshift out of the restraints, but darkness could interact with darkness and the constructs shapeshifted along with them, blocking their escape.

The undead didn't miss the opening and poured their spells and bloodline abilities against the helpless Demons.

Lith cut his own palm, throwing droplets of his blood in every direction. The moment they got far away enough from him, the effects of his natural shapeshifting were lost and they returned to their original size.

Lith's body was that of a creature 30 meters (100') tall so the droplets expanded into the equivalent of several buckets of blood that painted the room red.



Many undead almost fell into a feeding frenzy, the smell of the nectar filled with bright violet mana and a powerful life force intoxicating. Somehow, it suited the blood cores of those belonging to both the human and beast races.

Even the undead who didn't feed on blood had a hard time not lapping it. The wrong nourishment was bound to taste bad, but the vitality and mana contained in the blood made it a hearty meal.

The Demons of the Darkness bathed in the crimson liquid, seeing it for what it truly was. The trigger for another contingency plan. The Demons absorbed the spark of Lith's life force contained in the blood and ignited it, turning themselves into Demons of the Flames. The shadow constructs still pinned the Demons to the walls but the mystical flames now burned at the mana and the materials that comprised the unknown spell.

At the same time, the fire engulfing the Demons weakened the attacks aimed at them, giving them the time to counter with spells of their own.

'I was right! Thanks to the Origin Flames eroding the spell matrix, Lith could see its components with Life Vision. "Those weren't shadow constructs simply because they don't exist.

"They were made of earth coated in darkness that somehow also gained the speed of air magic and the flexibility of water magic. Tier five magic controlling four elements at the same time is something that only a tower tier spell is supposed to achieve yet the magical power behind those constructs was nothing special!

Lith had experienced the effects of his own tower and witnessed the might that Baba Yaga's hut granted her and that of a Horseman's steed. Even the crystal horses provided their master with a power beyond the bright violet core whereas the mana in the shadow constructs was slightly stronger than his own.

"Dammit, this wasn't in any report. Add the flaming Demons to the database." Urma the Nightwalker said while sapping the vitality of his herd to recover the lost mana.

His hands traced the mystical signs and his mouth spoke the words of power, both moving with the swiftness of undeath and the expertise of centuries. He also used true darkness magic to weave the rest of his spells with his mind.

Nightwalkers were prototypes of the Horseman of Night and they shared her ebony skin. The highly compressed darkness element stored in their bodies painted them black and granted them resistance to all kinds of damage.

The white of Ulma's eyes stood out so much that from a distance it would have been easy to mistake him for an Abomination, if not for his thick red hair streaked black all over.

Nightwalkers' affinity toward the darkness element was so great that they were capable of manipulating the shadows. They just needed to infuse a shade with a bit of their mana to turn it into a hiding spot, a weapon, or anything they might need.

Yet such abilities came at a price. A Nightwalker would only be attuned to the darkness element instead of two like the rest of his kin and they could feed solely on people with black streaks in their hair.

Ulma conjured two tier five spells at the same time, Fire Cutter and Burial Grounds. The first was supposed to conjure a storm of super-heated air blades that would chase their target.

The second spell, instead, would fill the marble corridor around the Nightwalker with darkness magic and mana, allowing him to manipulate his surroundings at will and turn the entire area into a corrosive trap.

Lith's Tiamat eyes spotted the enemy leader hiding in the shadows at the end of the long corridor and identified his spells. Yet the situation made no sense to him.



From that distance, Fire Cutter would lose cohesion before reaching Lith while keeping Burial Ground active until the two engaged in close-quarter combat was nothing but a waste of mana.