Serenity didn’t reply. Lykandeon didn’t need to know why he was being attacked; if there were any other approach possible, Serenity would have considered it, but there wasn’t. Not when Lykandeon ruled the planet and didn’t have a method set up for a peaceful change in power.

Not when his first recourse was mind control and he used it against the people he should have worked with because it was easier than convincing them any other way. Not when he kidnapped people and didn’t care about them because they were “only” Tier Zero or Tier One because they’d never had a chance to be more.

Lykandeon needed to be removed from power and the only way to do that was killing him. Serenity had originally planned to sneak away, because it hadn’t seemed possible, but the more he saw the more he wanted to do something. On top of that, dealing with him seemed possible now.

Serenity knew his manablade wouldn’t go through Lykandeon’s shield without taking the shield down first, which a manablade was notoriously terrible at; his ax, on the other hand, could take down the shield but would do very little damage to the deity. He needed to either get another good opportunity for a paired strike or he’d have to do the rest of the fight with magic.

As an underequipped hybrid with too few Skills for his Tier, Serenity was poorly set up for a fight with either magic or physical damage, but he had his own advantages. He’d planned for this outcome and the next step was simple to say but hard to execute: he needed to wear out Lykandeon before he was worn out.

It was Serenity’s preferred fighting style the same way it’d once been Vengeance’s; he could simply keep going when others were out of resources. It wouldn’t work up Tiers this far normally, but Lykandeon had two marks against him: the damage from the ritual and the lung damage.

A small smile came to his face. However much he might deny it, even to himself, Serenity liked to fight. Magic or melee didn’t matter; he simply enjoyed being challenged.

Serenity was stuck in the more passive position right now because he needed to save his mana. He couldn’t tell how much Lykandeon had left; all he was certain of was that he couldn’t call any of his allies in without risking their lives. Without a shield, Lykandeon’s attacks were too dangerous. What they could do was indirectly support him; Ita and Rissa had worked out a way to share mana with him and Ita could teleport small items into the room as long as he told her what he needed.

Serenity concentrated to focus his aura and therefore his Death Field on Lykandeon. Aura was difficult to shape as anything other than a bubble but it was possible with practice and he needed to limit the mana drain while still hurting Lykandeon. He could feel and even see the rest of the room becoming less saturated in Death as he limited it.

Lykandeon seemed to relax. “I knew you’d agree. Why don’t you head outside? Now isn’t a good time, we can talk later.”

Serenity had to suppress a smirk. That was perfect! Lykandeon hadn’t realized that his spell hadn’t worked. Serenity stayed silent and didn’t move; the Death Field should be working. The longer Lykandeon decided not to fight back, the better.

Unfortunately, Lykandeon didn’t stay fooled for long. When Serenity didn’t move, he dropped the weak attack and threw a bolt of golden light at Serenity without warning.

Serenity moved to the side as far as he could, but he wasn’t as fast as literal light. The bolt hit the shield in front of his shoulder and punched through before splashing off his dragonscale armor with no real damage done. It cost him some mana to quickly repair the hole in the shield, but that was all. If that was all Lykandeon could do, this would be fine.

It wasn’t all Lykandeon could do.

Lykandeon snarled and unleashed a rain made of golden light on Serenity. Each droplet was small but they tried to cling to his shield and eat it. It was one of the standard shield-attack types, meant to either drain mana or damage the shield itself depending on how it was set up.

Unfortunately for Lykandeon, it was a very standard attack and Serenity knew several counters to it. He used the simplest: a minor alteration to the outer surface of the shield that temporarily increased its “hardness” and “slickness”. Lykandeon’s spell lost its ability to cling, slid off the shield, and dissolved into golden motes before it completely disappeared.

Serenity was pleased at the trick. It’d been a long time since his last mage duel and he’d been afraid he wouldn’t remember the little things. He thought he did, but anyone could get rusty.

It was definitely time to taunt the deity into wasting more mana.

Serenity grinned at the surprised expression on Lykandeon’s face. “You expected that to work? Come on, where did you learn to fight?”

Serenity wasn’t confident the taunt would work, but it was worth a try.

Lykandeon’s nostrils flared and he launched another attack. While it still had the appearance of golden light (with a slight greenish tinge), this time the attack was sharp, slashing attacks that Serenity could actually see travel, like a video game or anime. They were another type of shield-breaker, specifically designed for the sort of hard, brittle shield that worked well against clinging, draining attacks.

Serenity easily shifted his shield to spin before they arrived, making the impacts hit a wider area where they didn’t completely glance off. The normal defense was absorption, a more malleable shield that might leak but wouldn’t shatter, but Serenity knew that spinning the shield was a better defense over the course of a fight; it let him leave a hard outer shell present.

The fact that his shield’s outer shell was designed to puncture instead of shatter helped, of course.

Serenity couldn’t let that attack go without retaliating; he needed to keep Lykandeon off balance, reacting instead of thinking. It would also help if he could get Lykandeon’s shield down again for long enough to manage another major injury, but that wouldn’t be easy.

Serenity turned his gaze to the ceiling. They were in a stone palace; the ceiling was stone blocks mortared together. More than that, there was a water feature in the room; the room must always be humid, so there was undoubtedly humidity in the stones or the mortar holding them up. The stones weren’t all that much stronger than stone from Earth; there was no need for that at Tier Three or even Tier Five. Sure, a Tier Five could break them, but it wouldn’t happen casually.

Serenity directed a Cone of Lightning at the ceiling above Lykandeon. Some of the lightning skittered off the surface and even struck Lykandon, but that wasn’t the point. No, the point was that some of the lightning found the wet spaces in the mortar between the stone blocks and traveled along it, superheating the water. It flashed into steam and three of the stone blocks fell. Only one was directly over Lykandeon.

It wasn’t as good of a result as Serenity had hoped for, but it still made Lykandeon look up then frantically dodge. Even at whatever Tier he was, he didn’t want a two-by-two-by-four foot block of solid stone landing on his head.

It would have been the perfect time to attack if Serenity had had a Skill to attack with that would go through Lykandeon’s shield. A second lightning strike would have a significantly reduced effect, though it might still knock some blocks free if he were lucky, but that wasn’t what Serenity wanted to do next; he’d save that for if he needed more space again.

Instead, Serenity used the time to step over to Aeon’s core. It might serve as shelter or it might piss Lykandeon off; as far as Serenity was concerned, either one was a win. Being next to it would restrict Serenity’s own chances to dodge, but the other advantages were worth that restriction.

Lykandeon did not like Serenity’s new position at all. He yelled something incoherent and threw an entire series of attacks at Serenity. Serenity had to repeatedly adjust his shield to keep them from breaking it; he was far too hard pressed to counterattack. After trying a range of attacks, Lykandeon switched to the simple shield-piercing bolt he’d started with. It was the only one that Serenity didn’t have a good counter for; while there were ways to stop it completely, that required a different type of shield that was stronger and more brittle.

Lykandeon’s attacks were fine, even good. Lykandeon was spending mana like water while Serenity was spending far less. Serenity knew he couldn’t without attacking, but defense was easier on the mana supply.

Several of the attacks broke through Serenity’s shield, but he took them on his armor and it blocked almost everything. The only time an attack actually penetrated was when Lykandeon managed to hit the same spot for the third time; Serenity’s armor failed and it seared his own scales, doing some damage to the muscle underneath. Serenity knew it would heal quickly, but that was an additional mana cost he’d have preferred to avoid.

When another bolt targeted the same spot, Serenity moved in the only direction he could, the direction he’d been avoiding as much as possible: towards Aeon’s core. His shield ignored it like any other slow-moving object that Serenity didn’t consider hostile and his shoulder smacked into it. It felt warm against his armor; before he moved, he noticed an odd feeling coming from that shoulder. Was Aeon’s core sending him mana?

Serenity ducked out of the way of another shield-piercer and set a hand on Aeon’s core. The mana flow resumed and this time Serenity could tell that there was essence mixed into the mana. It was the same green-with-gold as the mana he’d seen at the Water Gardens.

Did Lykandeon often use Aeon’s mana instead of his own? That could be a very bad thing if Serenity let him get mana from Aeon’s core, but it could be a very good thing if Serenity could steal it and use it against Lykandeon.

So Serenity threw a Fireball at Lykandeon using the mana from Aeon. There was only a tiny hint of green to the spell given by the mana; it was mostly the usual blue-white fire. Strangely enough, the green color seemed to be concentrated in Aeon’s essence, not its mana.

Serenity had to admit that that could simply be inexperience, however. When he took over mana, he made it his in order to cast a spell or Skill properly. This was fast and sloppy, so the mana was only incompletely converted. Essence, on the other hand, was new to Serenity so he was probably slower at converting it to his own.

Which meant that Lykandeon’s mana was probably natively golden in color. Serenity wondered if there was meaning in that or if it simply was from Lykandeon’s original Affinity.

These days, Serenity’s mana was colorless but he could remember that when Vengeance was first learning his mana was black because a necromancer uses Black Magick. So dramatic and edgy. Serenity was glad he’d gotten over that eventually.

Serenity threw another Fireball, then another. They engulfed Lykandeon’s shield and scorched his surroundings but didn’t hurt him, but hurting him wasn’t the goal yet. No, the goal was to get Lykandeon to run himself dry and that seemed to have happened; he’d stopped casting the insane barrages of spells and was casting individual, well-spaced shield-penetrating bolts.

Serenity was easily able to get out of the way of each one with as far apart as they were now. Lykandeon had either calmed down enough to try to draw Serenity into a trap or he was getting low on mana. Possibly both.

It was time to move to the next phase of the fight and take the fight to Lykandeon.