The fight was nowhere near done. The temple could repair itself so the blackened stone was healing slowly.
This was diverting power away from Percy's plan, but they needed to keep the temple standing, since a lot of the circles and Hermetic power relied on its shape.
So Percy and Thalos chased Lethel through the shattered space. Ash and dust fell all around them, only the small flames casting light on the ruined room.
And between the ash, Thalos' katana flashed crimson in different parts of the room, hounding the fire-shifting Lethel around. The fire spiritmancer was not using his usual fire lances because he was also conserving energy for one final attack.
Percy did his best to force spirit energy out of the man, forming golems and grabbing his feet and slowing down his charging Minotaur.
The beast would blast through any obstacle so Percy began opening holes in the ground.
Taking out the bull meant Lethel couldn't switch positions with it, but the man was still incredibly hard to pin down.
Thalos and Lethel clashed, crimson red katana meeting Lethel's white-hot punch.
The air crackled and snapped, blasting a radius of dust and ash away. Percy half-formed a golem close to them and its skin was already burning.
"You really are working hard, Lethel!" Percy exclaimed over their thunderous clash. "But you're using a bit more energy than expected."
"I have enough to deal with you worms," Lethel grunted, pushing Thalos back.
Percy squinted through the white glow of Lethel's hands, covering his eyes as he chuckled.
"I've been wondering what's wrong with you this whole time. The unkept hair and beard really take away from your noble words. Why do you look like shit if you don't mind me asking?"
Lethel roared and blasted Thalos back, sending his figure hurtling into the distance, then he turned that fiery hand on Percy's golem, waving at it like he was swatting a fly from the air.
The world was washed with light and fire. The Percy golem and almost a hundred meters of the earth behind it were erased, the ground was torn up by the fiery slash.
Percy formed another golem on Lethel's left, sighing in exasperation.
"Just because I see the pitiful man you are behind those words isn't a reason to get so angry—"
Lethel grabbed his neck and ripped the golem from the earth, only the upper half was formed, but Percy let him, smiling despite the black burn crawling up his throat. Updates are released by 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩·𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢·𝔫𝔢𝔱
"Did I touch a nerve?"
"Lowly trash like you that relies on being a parasite shouldn't speak to me," Lethel said with a restrained voice.
"Parasite? Oh, this is a Hermetics thing," Percy said, a lightbulb going on in his head. "You think you'll win because you're a pure Spiritmancer. Let me guess, you think Thalos is beneath you too?"
Lethel looked like he wanted to crush the golem between his fingers, but he knew already how pointless that was.
"You parasites and the Arete users don't understand your place, that's all that irks me. Same with your upstart mother."
"You think Hecate should have told the king no when he said she should take Demetria?" Percy asked, genuinely confused. "We should have let that criminal pig, Sion, keep—"
Lethel squeezed tighter, cutting off his rant. The man's white eyes were wide with fury that made his skin steam.
"That right there is the problem. Lord Sion is not on the same level as a whore and her bastard son. Do not speak of him so stupidly. You have no respect for the traditions of our people, the culture that has kept this kingdom standing for years. The same can be said of the child king."
Child king? What does that mean?
Well, none of that mattered. He could sense the building mana in Lethel's body. The heat was growing so much that his stone body was melting away.
"I'll erase all impurities and illuminate the truth," Lethel said in a low voice, almost a whisper that Percy didn't hear.
"I'll shatter your truth, old man," Percy returned, " and Thalos' impure techniques will take your life."
Lethel crushed the golem and let the magma roll down his fingers. He looked over the entire desolate cavern.
The fruit of his overwhelming power, the proof of his right to impose justice, and an old feeling came over him.
He ignored his heart once again and began chanting the spell he would use to erase the temple and anything two kilometers of it from the map.
He needed complete stillness of self.
"I call upon the spark that sleeps in all things, true form of creation, hunger of the void. From stillness, I stir the pulse of flame, from flame, I call destruction. Collapse, ignite, and return to silence once more!"
Meanwhile, Percy was taking Thalos underground and healing him with all the stuff his golem had looted from the Whitemoon soldiers.
"You'll be here till Lethel's explosion subsides," Percy explained. "I've created a circle here that should be able to heal you once I connect it to the generator circle."
"Lethel's flames won't be easy to extinguish," Thalos mumbled, pouring the water Percy gave him over his head. "How will you stop his attack?"
Percy considered telling him that he was using a bunch of his customizable rewards to form a cannon—a Spellcannon, to be specific.
It was something he wanted to create in Dema, but they always required much more mana than the Spellcores could safely provide. Now he had access to a huge amount of power and still had the knowledge of all the experimenting and modeling he and Terra had done.
The Spellcannon wouldn't be perfect, but it would be able to shoot at least once, and with the new Spellcore, he could infuse his spirit affinity into the shot. It would have to be a disabling shot infused with his wind affinity to try and reduce the yield of the explosion.
Percy turned back to his father, smirking. Despite how well put together he looked, his mind was rushing as he did so much at the same time.
He was using his connection to the temple to craft his customizable rewards anywhere he wanted, while also setting up defenses for Dina, her two children, George and Hugo.
What was coming needed so much power to combat.
"All you need to know is that things are about to get shaky, so hold on to something."
Above ground, Lethel was ready to cast his spell when he saw a flash of white light above him. Something was being constructed from the white light, expanding and clicking together.
The barrel of the Spellcannon was similar to a sixteen-pounder, sleek and narrow. The back of the cannon was made from six rotating blue halos that hummed as they charged up.
Lethel raised an eyebrow but his face was quickly twisted into a sneer.
This was the Amphene bastard's idea of what could challenge him?
He released his spell, released the anger that had consumed his every waking hour, in order to erase it all.
And the Spellcannon answered with a disastrous blast that shook the world.