Chapter 1607 - Food Chain (Part 1)
'Do you understand now the threat level that Aylen poses?' Sinmara asked.
At those words, Lith froze in horror.
Aside from their phylactery, Liches only had two weak points.
The first was their madness that made them oblivious to the point of stupidity. The second was that by working alone, no matter how brilliant a Lich was, their magical knowledge outside their fields of interest would be outdated.
Aylen, instead, had no such problem.
'Is that why she appeared in her human form from the beginning?' Lith asked.
'Correct. She followed a strict routine that kept both her body and mind from decaying. On top of that, thanks to her feline assistants, there's no telling how many magical breakthroughs she can achieve.
'Why do you think I sent her to your rescue instead of coming myself? Aylen needed a pardon to keep her pets out of the international list of the most wanted creatures and I wanted to check her progress.
'She wasn't supposed to defeat Vareen so easily. The plan was to force her to reveal all of her trump cards and expose the properties of her equipment. I have no idea if her victory was due to you guys weakening him too much or Aylen being too strong.
'Either way, at least I learned about the existence of Mirror Magic and I had the time to learn how to defend against it.' Sinmara replied.
Before Lith could finish pondering the hassle of having to look after a country like Salaark did, the trip was already over. Phoenixes didn't have a term like Dragonspeed to describe how fast they flew, but they were no slower than Leegaain's offspring.
The group had stopped in the vicinity of a small mountain range comprised of several peaks made of a reddish stone. Both their surface and the area around them were completely barren, with no water source, no trace of green, nor signs of wildlife.
'Are you sure this is the right place?' Xenagrosh had been trained by her fellow Abominations to recognize places abundant with world energy and the area she was flying over had none of the characteristics that she would have expected to find.
Even her Abomination hunger that could perceive the world energy and even Spirit Magic with such accuracy that she considered it akin to a mystical sense couldn't detect anything.
'You tell me.' The Phoenix glared down, where a small figure covered in red dust was carefully camouflaged.
Lith had to switch from Life Vision to his regular sight to manage to see what Sinmara was referring to. The Lich wore several cloaking items, making her invisible to all mystical senses.
Sinmara swooped down with her talons extended, shrinking her body to not take away a chunk of the mountain along with Aylen. The Lich cursed her bad luck and took a golden staff out from her pocket dimension.
She had been caught by surprise and the difference in physical prowess between them made it impossible for the Lich to dodge. She managed to block the attack with her Davross staff, Lighthouse, but the impact sent her crashing against the mountain wall behind her, opening a few meters deep crater on impact.
"Is this really necessary, old girl?" Aylen shook off the dust and debris as she stood up while throwing her robe away.
The First Lich looked like a woman in her early forties, about 1.60 meters (5'3") tall with seven streaks of different colors almost entirely covering her light brown hair. She wore a sleeveless red doublet over a white shirt, linen pants, and mountain boots.
Her features were human, but that was the only ordinary thing about her. Her clothes were actually shapeshifted Davross and the bright white light from her eyes betrayed the presence of her white core.
"It's not like you guys can operate these mines. They are too deep underground and any attempt to dig them out would cause the whole mountain range to collapse. On top of that, there's nothing here but hungry monsters for kilometers.
"Unless mommy dearest flattens the entire area, this place is a death trap even for a mage and we both know that Salaark is obsessed with nonsense like balance and whatnot.
"Let's save us both a pointless squabble and come to an agreement. I take the goods and you won't have to add another of my footprints to your feathery ass. Deal?"
Sinmara's reply came in the form of the tier four Gravity Magic spell, Collapsed Star. It raised the gravity surrounding the Lich one hundredfold, making her bones and organs implode under their own weight.
Sure, for an undead such things were barely cosmetical, but their equipment was still bound to follow the laws of physics. Sinmara had fought Aylen enough times to know that she would never go on an important mission without her phylactery.
Bringing it along was the only way to keep a simple dimensional spell from halving her strength but, at the same time, the phylactery was the source of her immortality and her only weak point.
If anything happened to the white crystal holding half of Aylen's life force and mana core, the Lich would have died.
"I've got no idea how you found this place nor how did you manage to mine the crystals and the metals buried down here, but I'm not going to waste my time chatting!" Sinmara replied.
"Come on. We've done this dance countless times. What's the point in getting humiliated for the umpteenth time?" Aylen asked while Blinking outside Collapsed Star's area of effect and activating a gravity spell of her own.
She didn't mind the pain but her phylactery was a delicate piece of art. Even though she kept it shielded inside a Davross necklace, gravity didn't need to destroy the protection to crack the crystal.
Sinmara's spell had actually turned the necklace into a vice, ignoring all the safety spells that Aylen had put into place. Gravity magic had many limits, but due to its passive effects, there was no way to defend against it except that with another gravity spell.
Aylen didn't have the time to weave one so her only way out was dimensional magic. Sinmara spotted her exit point with Life Vision and used the tier five dimensional spell, Sealed Space.
It was Leegaain's trademark anti-Lich weapon that sealed the surrounding area and that would cut off an undead from their phylactery, halving their combat strength, in the case they didn't wear it on themselves.
The Phoenix wasn't surprised seeing that Aylen's mana flow was unchanged even under the effects of Sealer Space, confirming her suspicions.
"Oh, crap." The Lich said.
The dimensional spell didn't affect her phylactery since she wore it at her neck, but it still blocked all dimensional spells, making it impossible for her to Blink again.
Sinmara then cast a combination of a tier five Gravity magic, Small Sun, and a tier Five Spirit spell, Starfall. The former generated a high gravity nucleus that drew in anything within a 100 meters radius.
The pressure was so strong that rocks, dust, and whatever was caught in the gravity pull would be brought at the center of the spell and turn white-hot from the heat.. The highly compressed mass it generated looked exactly like a dwarf star.