While Alistair aimed Forging Tides at the monsters on the roof, summoning his Battle Spheres skill to unleash his new Waterflash Beams compound skill and slice through the griffins, Riseth descended into the formation of unicorns. The unicorns shot golden sickles at her, but she effortlessly dodged and teleported out of harm's way.
Alistair's beams tore through a few of the griffins, wounding others, but the Wyvern reacted swiftly, summoning a barrier of holy light. The shimmering dome encapsulated both the Wyvern and the remaining griffins, deflecting Alistair's attacks with ease.
Holy concept? Alistair mused before he glanced at the battle below for a moment before engaging the rest of the griffons.
Riseth had, in the meantime, reached the unicorn formation and unleashed Fluffy, who instantly grew larger, her body coiling among the unicorns like a serpent in battle. Lightning crackled off her feathered hide, sending shocks rippling through their ranks. Fluffy sank her teeth into one of the unicorns, injecting it with venom as it buckled beneath her grip.
At the same time, Riseth's bladed tail chain and bone blades lashed out rippling with space magic, ripping and slicing into the closest unicorns.
Meanwhile, King hadn’t been idle. He unleashed his Sonic Beam on the dome protecting the wyvern and its allies. The barrier strained, darkening under the force as King closed in, his glowing talons crashing through it. The once-gleaming shield blackened and began to melt away as it shattered completely. Without hesitation, King’s Talon shot toward the leathery gividian wyvern’s armored neck. The wyvern twisted away with surprising agility, retaliating with a beam of holy light, but King deflected the attack with a barrier of his own.
Alistair didn't have the luxury to watch the battle unfold. He teleported into the thickest cluster of griffins, lashing out with his blade and killing two before they could retaliate. Their claws scraped helplessly against his defenses, and a sphere charged with kinetic energy sprang from his body. Viv seized the opportunity, void magic and shadows enveloping Alistair as she lashed out, extending her void claws to slice through the skull of a beast. The griffin recoiled with a shocked screech before Alistair finished it off with a kinetic blast from his free hand, blasting its head off as it went limp.
Alistair sidestepped a magic-infused peck and retaliated with a swift slash of his blade, aiming to decapitate the beast. But he misjudged the angle, and the griffin's erratic movements caused the blade to lodge in its ribs. Viv quickly stepped in, her void-infused claws slicing cleanly through the creature, allowing Alistair to free his trapped blade. With a quick forceful telekinetic punch, he sent another griffin, eager to exploit his stumble, flying off the palace rooftop.
Alistair clicked his tongue in frustration, recognizing the shortcomings in his swordsmanship. He admitted to himself that he relied more on sheer power, battle experience, various skills, and the quality of his weapon than any natural talent with a blade. These issues were less apparent when he wielded his poleaxe, a weapon with which he had a better sense of range and angles. His Temporal Combat Reflexes skill—enhancing reaction time, spatial awareness, and even time dilation—helped him compensate, allowing for more precise strikes even when his execution faltered. However, the absence of his Kinetic Poleaxe Proficiency was far more noticeable than he had anticipated. It was becoming clear that he needed formal training from a weapon expert, as rising through the ranks would demand more than raw power and system-granted abilities. Unless he was willing to abandon weapons and focus purely on magic—which didn’t feel like the right path for him—he would need to sharpen his skills.
Alistair activated his Razor Aegis, another skill he knew he needed to upgrade but hadn't found the time or inspiration to do so. Zathen had recommended he replace the razor concept with vorpal, though Alistair had a much harder time envisioning it. He wasn't sure if this was due to a lack of affinity for the concept. It didn't make sense, as Zathen wouldn't suggest a concept that was less suitable for him than the razor concept he already used. Perhaps it was similar to the control concept, inherently more challenging to master. Thinking of it as a higher-tier concept didn't feel right either. Many believed this, but Mitania firmly stated it was incorrect. Each concept had its own strengths, aspects, and relationships to others. While some concepts were generally considered more desirable, powerful, and rare, anyone could achieve remarkable results with any concept.
Without the protection of the Gividian wyvern, the griffins fell quickly. The Razor Disks made short work of the remaining griffins, efficiently slicing through them.
King was engaged in a fierce battle with the guardian wyvern, his body covered in burn marks and scrapes. In contrast, the once-pristine white wyvern was now battered, its red blood staining its skin, and its golden plating cracked and broken in many places. It had a noticeable limp but was still nimble, deftly evading many of King's more telegraphed attacks. Alistair's Conceptual Awareness skill revealed that the wyvern was rapidly healing itself. Despite its injuries, the gividian remained agile, dodging King’s larger strikes, aiming to outlast the more violent and annoyed grikad.
King pressed his advantage relentlessly. His long, blade-like tail, charged with magical energy, lashed out in a vicious spin, nearly severing the other wyvern’s left wing. The guardian wyvern barely managed to pull back, retaliating with a beam of holy light from its maw. King countered with his own sonic beam, and the two attacks collided with a deafening bang. The air rippled from the force of the clash, but King steadily, then suddenly, overwhelmed the guardian’s beam. He came dangerously close to blowing its head off, stripping away most of its golden armor. In a flash, King teleported forward, clamping his massive jaws down on the wyvern’s head, shaking it violently before tearing it clean off, spine and all, basking in his victory for a moment before storing the head in his storage, presumably as a trophy.
"God damn!" Alistair whispered under his breath, recoiling slightly at the gruesome display.
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His initial thoughts on the gividian Wyvern being useful for materials and as a summon were pushed to the back of his mind as he witnessed the brutal scene. King let out a victorious roar, placing his claw on the fallen guardian's body and spreading his wings in a fearsome display. Desily had a point; King was indeed a terrifying beast. Alistair decided to let King have his moment of triumph and returned to the edge of the building, curious to see how Riseth and Fluffy were faring.
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Riseth sliced into another unicorn, redirecting some of their golden sickles back at them using her Veil of Space skill. As her blade pierced the unicorn's flesh, it transformed into chainsaws, ripping and tearing through the beast. The weapon spirit she had purchased was surprisingly vicious for something labeled as 'helpful' in the trial reward section. It responded to her intent easily, but she found it most effective when she let the spirit act on its own, especially once reinforced with her Warping Blades skill.
She glanced at her summon, Fluffy, who was roiling through the herd of unicorns. Fluffy was busy chomping down on one unicorn and flicked another away with her massive tail as lightning flashed imparing the movement of many of the attacking beasts. Riseth knew Fluffy would have rather stayed in her shard as she had been reclusive lately, focused on mastering her polymorph skill. The serpent was determined to find the perfect form for herself, and Riseth suspected Fluffy had a few favorite shapes already, as she had shown her some but was still reluctant to commit to any one of them.
Riseth's attention shifted as the leader of the unicorns' horn glowed with golden light, and the wounds of all the beasts began knitting themselves together, even regrowing limbs she had chopped off moments ago.
Well, that's annoying, she thought before teleporting and plunging her blades into the back of the unicorn leader.
The lead unicorn bucked, and before Riseth or her blades could react, a shockwave of mana drove her back, forcing her to leap off the beast's back. Her Battle Intuition skill had warned her that staying in her Ethereal Shift skill that would have turned her incorporeal wouldn't have helped. Quickly recovering, she bombarded the beast with a rapid stream of Arcane Bolts fired from her bone blades, which had rapidly transformed into sharp-looking, jagged bone pistols in an effort to empower her attacks. The explosions riddled the guardian's neck and body, throwing it off its legs.
Though the unicorn visibly began to heal, Riseth intervened by using her Healing Manipulation skill offensively. The beast's flesh became misshapen, with painful, spiky, and frayed bone growths appearing where there shouldn't have been any, causing the unicorn to neigh in agony and halting its regeneration. Riseth hadn't had many opportunities to use this skill outside of arena battles, but it had proven to be a valuable tool. The skill upgraded to the supreme tier once she incorporated its offensive capabilities. Though she suspected she could have gotten there by improving the healing aspects of the skill, she still needed to get the hang of dulling the pain her type of healing inflicted.
The sheer pain seemed to overwhelm the guardian. Riseth seized the opportunity, teleporting back into the fray with her tail equipped with the bladed sepaskerite chain. The chain quickly wrapped around the beast's neck, ripping and tearing as her blades did much the same once more transformed into vicious chainsaws. Riseth wondered if the weapon spirit had gotten the idea from watching her bladed chain or had copied it off one of the weapons James had made for some of their lawyers, but based on the timing, the weapon spirit had first shown that form, it was likely the latter. The guardian unicorn died collapsing under Riseth's foot, and Fluffy had by now killed most of the other unicorns by poisoning them and thrashing about with her lightning-coated body, some wounds covering her body as the unicorns had managed to get through her tough scales.
Looking up, Riseth noticed Alistair watching their fight, his task apparently complete, while King's triumphant roar echoed from out of sight. She waved at Alistair, and he waved back with that wide, excited smile of his.
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Once they had collected the remaining bodies and stored their summons, Alistair and Riseth prepared to head inside the palace. Alistair speculated whether the dungeon core had laid traps within the palace, but he doubted it. Such tactics didn't align with what they had observed so far unless they involved some kind of golden saw blade or a massive golden boulder falling on them. Nonetheless, he kept a keen eye out for any unusual magical signatures that might indicate hidden dangers within the structure.
As they walked through the richly engraved marble-like halls, they drew closer to the center and the large golden oak. Some of the pillars had become overgrown with plants, though in an almost decorative manner, with roots and vine-like plants becoming more and more prominent. The corridors and halls were well lit by circular windows, letting in the artificial sunlight from the outside. Riseth suddenly stopped and inspected one of the more colorful purple vines that radiated a more complex mana signature but nothing extraordinary.
"What is it?" Alistair asked, also inspecting the plant with his Identify skill, which told him it was an [Imp Vine].
"This is imp vine! It's one of the ingredients needed for the enlightenment pill, which we didn't buy because it's a very common plant in the multiverse," Riseth said excitedly, carefully cutting the stem to harvest the plant.
"Oh, that's great!" Alistair replied.
He would have overlooked it, assuming it was just another low-tier herbal ingredient like so many they had found before. He appreciated Riseth's keen eye for detail. The Enlightenment Pill recipe was something she had fought hard to convince her sister to acquire from the Trial rewards. In the end, Nessyra had agreed to get the recipe and the more rare ingredients required. They had compromised by not getting the lower tier and more common ingredients required for the pill. Hoping to either acquire them later or have their alchemists find suitable substitute ingredients. Finding the imp vine here would simplify the process for the alchemists quite a bit. It would also make for a great decorative plant, Alistair mused as he started to help her harvest the rest of the imp vine within the corridor.
As they approached the center, the main corridor led them into a vast chamber, culminating in a throne room framed by two massive, twisted roots of the gargantuan golden oak. In the center, an elevated pedestal held an elongated, torso-sized bipyramid-shaped core hovering above it, resembling white marble with intricate golden veins. The core was encased in golden, root-like tendrils at both ends. Alistair had to dial back his Conceptual Awareness skill due to the overwhelming concentration of compressed mana within the core—greater than anything he had encountered, save perhaps Mitania. But what truly left both him and Riseth stunned was the sight of the core wrapped in vines, with a swarm of birds desperately attempting to lift it. The largest and most striking bird, adorned in radiant gold and bronze feathers, let out a screech in an absurdly deep and booming voice, completely at odds with its appearance: "It's too late! Please don't kill me!"
Both Alistair and Riseth stared at the scene in disbelief before Alistair blurted out, "What the hell?"