Chapter 769: Ruin Part 1
Cresia infused his body with all the elements and darted forward, his blade aimed for Lith's neck. A well-placed lunge would make it impossible for him to breathe plus the time it would take Lith to die of blood loss was much longer than what Cresia needed to use Invigoration.
Great was his surprise when the short sword hung at Lith's hip grew in size until it became a silvery long sword with a hilt long enough to allow for a two-handed grip.
'What a moron.' Cresia thought. 'Heavier doesn't mean stronger. Such a weapon allows him only a couple of attack patterns, making him predictable.' Like most Awakened, he favored speed over strength.
Yet Lith didn't attempt to slash, but lunged as well, aiming at his opponent's head while his sword continued to grow in size. Orion's blades were all exceptionally light, but with Lith's strength, even a non-enchanted zweihander would have been as quick as a foil.
Cresia had barely the time to intercept the enemy blade with his own when the unexpected happened. The moment the two weapons touched, he felt as if his body had been turned into iron. It felt so heavy that it took his full focus to not slip and fall onto the ground.
'Gravity magic?' He thought in surprise.
All Awakened knew it, but no one practiced it. With the exception of its first magic form, even tier one gravity magic required to cast six spells at the same time and to infuse them with willpower, making it akin to casting two tier five spells at once.
Another of its downsides was that, unlike normal elemental magic, gravity had no direct effect, but only an indirect one. It meant that it would behave like an array, influencing even its caster if they were inside its area of effect.
It was the reason why gravity magic was widely used in Forgemastering and in crafting permanent arrays. It did still require huge bursts of strength to activate it, but the fine-tuning of its effects would be performed by the runes forming the enchantment.
Cresia's enhanced senses noticed that the ground was cracking under his feet, that even though his muscles and bones could withstand that sudden weight increase, his joints were already at their limit.
Yet the leaves kept flying in the wind and Lith seemed to be unaffected by whatever was happening. Even Gaaron was racking his brain, trying to make heads or tails of the situation by using Life Vision.
"It's the fucking sword." Yet he had grasped only half the truth.
Lith had realized the limitations of gravity magic back when he was still at the academy and had tried to overcome them to no avail. At least until he had mastered the use of the ring that the fungal creature had gifted him.
Tier zero gravity magic could be cast quickly, but it was too weak to be effective in real combat and it would hinder Lith has well. Everything had changed when Lith had practiced using the gravity ring, learning how to weave a small array together with gravity magic to escape from its negative effects.
Yet it was only thanks to Orion's new sword, Ruin, that Lith could bring first magic to the next level. Unlike the Gatekeeper, Ruin could also focus and amplify gravity magic, turning an annoying parlor trick into a game-changer spell.
The moment Cresia pushed Ruin away his weight went back to normal, leaving him free to move and his head to fly high in the sky. Reacting under such physical strain had required him to make a wide movement, which had created an opening that Lith had exploited.
'Solus?' He asked while preparing another Warp Steps now that the air blocking array had vanished along with the life of its caster.
'That guy wasn't alone.' Her Life Detecting array spotted the enemies who were outside the area of effect of their mystical senses. 'It's the stupidest ambush I've ever seen. They are too far away to intervene and lumped together like a bunch of morons.
'The dead guy had a deep blue core, so I guess that the others are about the same level.'
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