With a roar, the shadow struck with all its might, splitting the spirit’s ‘skull’ in half. The melted sand, now enveloped in glass, tried to merge back together, but couldn’t. Karissa’s flame warriors flew in through the gap in the spirit’s defenses that had been left behind by the attack. They fused with the spirit. It screamed, trying to tear its silk clothes and sandy body to pieces. But instead, it only managed to remove some pieces of glass, and Karissa’s spell was already creeping close to its stone of consciousness. The flame warriors rained powerful blows down on the spirit, spreading a fiery echo across the sands. The sandy armor around the spirit’s heart melted, turning into glass.
“Now,” Hadjar whispered and, breaking the connection with his Technique, blurred into the shadow of the Seven Ravens. Finding himself above the luminous stone, he struck.
“Spring Wind!”
The attack turned into a steel beam that pierced through the glass barrier. It burrowed into the ground, leaving behind a hole several yards deep. An instant later, the spirit crumpled.
Catching the small stone that fell out of the sand on the fly, Hadjar pushed off the ground and, once again using the Seven Ravens Technique, retreated. He did so just in time. The second spirit, roaring furiously, launched a powerful attack with its sand sabers. It split the dune in half, despite standing several yards away.
Damn it. If Hadjar hadn’t avoided that strike, he wouldn’t have returned to Underworld City, but gone to his forefathers’ house instead.
Pocketing the stone, which was warm and emitting a raging energy, Hadjar looked at the rest of the squad. Karissa looked like she was on her last legs. She’d used up most of her power and was now staying upright only due to leaning on Einen’s shoulder. The islander, wiping away his sweat, was breathing heavily and leaning on his staff. Glen was wheezing slightly, still coughing up blood.
Ramukhan and Tilis looked a little better, but each of them had blood flowing down their faces — a sign of extreme exhaustion and strain on one’s body. Hadjar had only a tenth of his energy reserves left. Even if he used his Call, he still wouldn’t be able to compete with a creature that was at the level of a Spirit Knight.
The joint attack of the five strong practitioners had barely been able to kill one creature. The element of surprise had also aided them. The second spirit, given its defensive stance, was clearly ready for their attack. Its blue silk clothes were swaying in the wind. The entity relied on this cloth to hold it together. If it disappeared, the spirit would once again become a simple dune.
“If you have any trump cards left, it’s time to use them,” Hadjar hissed.
He and Einen looked at each other and silently agreed that it wasn’t the right time to demonstrate the abilities of their Inheritances.
While the citizens of Underworld City were pondering whether they should part with their artifacts, the spirit didn’t waste any time. It roared, and the sands around it began to move. Columns of sand burst out from its body. Curving, they intertwined around the spirit until it had six arms, each holding a huge saber.
“Fucking shit!” Hadjar cursed.
Extending to an incredible degree, the six arms attacked the squad.
“Calm Wind!” Hadjar shouted.
To power the stance, he used up all of his remaining energy. The spirit’s sand sabers hovered in the air, momentarily delayed, but Hadjar felt that he couldn’t hold them back for more than a few seconds.
“It’ll break through soon!”
“Evening Stars,” Ramukhan breathed out, taking a jade seal out of his pocket.
The hieroglyphs on it were painted in black and white, and the pattern was so complex that one glance at it made Hadjar’s head spin. The sorcerer whispered something as he held the seal in front of him, then threw it under the spirit’s feet. What came next blew all of Hadjar’s expectations out of the water.
A yellow lightning bolt shot out from the center of the cracked jade seal. It was as wide as the trunk of a young tree, and as sturdy as a stone wall. The feeling it gave off was that it could be grabbed with one’s bare hands and carried on your shoulder. Given the power roiling within it, the shoulder would have to belong to someone who was far beyond a Spirit Knight.
The sand creature didn’t even have time to cry out as the monstrous lightning bolt cut it in half. Without creating even the slightest echo, without wasting even an ounce of power, it just struck a single point. The attack was so powerful that no core stone fell to the sand afterward. It had simply evaporated along with the sand spirit itself.
“What was that?” Hadjar asked, dumbfounded.
“The Sage’s seal,” Ramukhan explained. “Paris gave us two, and we’ve just used one up. By the Evening Stars, now we only have one Lord level spell left for when we face Sankesh.”
Lord level? That meant the Sage, the master and mentor of Underworld City, was at the level superior to a Spirit Knight. However, if his memory wasn’t failing him, South Wind had also mentioned something similar to Hadjar before.
For a while, silence fell over the desert.
Chapter 385
“Would it have been better to die instead?” Karissa asked him. “The Sage gave these seals to all of us. Don’t act like you used your own personal spells!”
Ramukhan didn’t answer and turned away. Damned sorcerer! He most likely also had a personal seal given to him by the Sage. His mother had been right when she’d said that, in the world of cultivation, people sometimes did mean and stupid things to get precious resources.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Hadjar said. “Einen, can you treat their wounds? I’ll go check how Glen’s doing.”
“Okay,” the islander said.
He gently put Karissa down on the sand. Einen took several small bottles out of his bag. Seeing this, Hadjar began to wonder whether his mother’s words had been true.
While Einen treated Karissa, Tilis, and Ramukhan, who didn’t like being indebted to the stranger, Hadjar went over to Glen. The Baliumian was lying on his back, trembling slightly. There was a gash across his chest, from his left hip to his right shoulder. The ragged edges were several inches deep —it was a miracle that the attack hadn’t damaged his stomach or heart. Alas, his right lung, judging by the warrior’s breathing, had been torn to shreds, which explained all the blood he was coughing up.
Sitting down beside him, Hadjar took Glen’s wrist and closed his eyes, listening to the rhythm of the Baliumian’s heart and sensing the currents of his energy. Back when Dogar had taught him the basics of healing, Hadjar hadn’t really understood all the confusing talk about ‘the currents of power and energy’, but everything was now clear and even simple for him to gauge.
In the World River, Glen’s body looked like a terrifying tangle of energy currents. Even the thinnest threads formed an intricate pattern that Hadjar didn’t dare to try and comprehend. If he tried to understand this complicated pattern, his mind would simply dissolve into it. Instead, Hadjar singled out the largest threads, which looked more like rivers. These were Glen’s meridians. Most of them looked normal, but there were a few in his chest area that were damaged. They were no longer properly circulating the energy in his body, which meant that his entire energy system had dimmed and become lifeless. There was a presence of death about him. Unless he did something, Glen would die soon. Hadjar didn’t like the Baliumian, but he’d just seen that even five of them weren’t strong enough to survive in this region on their own.