"I'm sorry for never finding the courage to let you know the truth and relieve you from the burden of your secret. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be here. You've always been there for me and yet I never told you how much you meant for me.

"I don't care about what you did or what you have become. I will always love you." Carl said.

"Then I hope you'll understand why I have to do this." Lith stepped back from the embrace, taking the chain connecting them and breaking it with a violent twist.

"Now that I know that you're safe and that you don't resent me, I can let you go. I don't want to drag you into the mess that my life is. You deserve peace, but I'm not done fighting."

Carl was so shocked that by the time he managed to open his mouth, his body had already completely faded away, leaving his last words unspoken.

"Thanks for the clarity." Lith gave Mogar a small bow and closed his eyes, making the Mindscape collapse under the weight of his will.

"What about your choice?" Mogar-Elina said while fading away.

The moment Lith's eyes opened again, he stopped resisting and let the tribulation happen.

***

Meanwhile, in the space between the two tidal waves he had created, Fenagar unleashed his Guardian tier spell, Mud Storm, at the gigantic Griffon-shaped plasma mass that was charging at him.

The water from the tidal waves formed a third one in front of the Leviathan, mixing it with ferromagnetic stones from the seabed and charging the water with a lightning storm.

Water magic would cool the plasma while the hypercharged magnetic field imbued within the earth magic would trap even Tyris's energy body. The Leviathan had made sure that Mud Storm matched Tyris in both electrical charge and power.

The repulsive effect made it impossible for the Griffon to phase through his spell. Tyris roared as the unstoppable force of her attack hit an unmovable object. Both her Lightning Body form and the Mud Storm crumbled, incapable of withstanding each other's power.

The clash caused shockwaves that in turn generated quakes and tidal waves despite the control that Fenagar exerted over the body of water around them. Garlen was too far to even notice them while Jiera took the worst of it.

"Shit!" The four remaining members of the Awakened Council said in unison. "We have sent our strongest members to Kolga. How are we supposed to keep Jiera from being split into two with the people we have left?"

The coasts of the continent trembled with growing intensity while tidal waves tall enough to devastate the mainland for kilometers approached at uncanny speed. The Council alerted all of their cities and attempted to ask the other Guardians for help, but to no avail.

They were too focused on the show to bother themselves with such insignificant details.

Fenagar had exploited the moment Tyris had been forced back into her physical form to coil his huge body around her. It allowed him to restraint her movements and cripple her physical strength while he was free to attack from every side.

Fenagar's spells couldn't harm him and he had Tyris exactly where he wanted her. He let go of the tidal waves, making the ocean fell upon them and taking away her precious air element while he squeezed the life out of her by tightening his grip with every move she made.

Tyris's height at the withers was over 50 meters (164 feet) tall and 87.5 meters (287 feet) long, but the Leviathan's body extended for over 122 meters (400 feet), managing to easily squeeze her limbs and her neck at the same time.

"Coming here was stupid of you." Fenagar unleashed more and more spells at point-blank range at his trapped opponent. "Giving me the time to prepare for your arrival was all I needed to win.

"You had a plan to get rid of my arrays, but they were just a disposable diversion only meant to waste your energy. Their complexity hid the brilliant simplicity of my real goal.

"No matter how strong a Guardian is, we still have to follow the laws of physics and magic. You are a flying creature while I'm a sea serpent. Guess who's going to win now that we're under hundreds of tons of water?"

Tyris attempted to Blink, but Fenagar disrupted her dimensional magic and started to freeze the water around them. The cold did nothing to him while it would weaken his opponent even faster and rob the Griffon of her precious lightning.

Ice was a bad conductor and in a fight between equals, it was more than enough to tip the scales in his favor.

"Provoking me was stupid of you." Tyris grinned as her body came out unscathed from all of Fenagar's attacks. "You used well the time I needed to get here, but so did I. Did you really think that I wouldn't spend those eight minutes preparing my best spells?"

Tyris's body started to glow like a sun as it increased in size beyond what the Leviathan could constrict. Only then did Fenagar notice that every single feather of her eagle side, every single hair of her feline side was covered by a hard-light construct as thin as paper yet as hard as a diamond.

Even Soul Vision couldn't distinguish between the energy of something so small and the living energy that a Guardian going all-out was. On top of that, Tyris had infused both herself and the construct with Life Maelstrom.

That way, not only did her innate ability enhanced her already outstanding physical prowess, but it also hid the presence of the construct while making it durable enough to withstand Guardian tier spells.

The Griffon-shaped construct, Castle of Light, kept growing in size, trapping both Guardians inside. Fenagar cursed Mogar when he realized what had happened. Tyris had now lost her unbreakable protection, but it had been a worthy exchange.

He was now in a dry space full of air where his long body was just a huge target. Facing a Griffon in the air was moronic and to make matters worse, the entire construct obeyed to Tyris's will, leaving him no safe place where to retreat.

"F.u.c.k!" Fenagar saw Tyris charge at him from above while the colossal construct took flight as well, aiming for the surface.

'The moment this thing reaches the sky, our situation will be fully reversed. With no water nor earth to manipulate, there's little difference between a Leviathan and an oversized fish bait.' He thought.

Unfortunately for him, even though the spells he had at the ready could pierce through the construct while they were still underwater, it would require his full focus to find and exploit the weak points in the Life Maelstrom enhanced structure.

Focus that the Leviathan had to devote to his opponent unless he wanted to be turned into shreds.

Tyris unleashed her Guardian tier Light Mastery spell, Fire Titan. A scorching sphere of fire came out of her beak and started to grow in size, filling the Griffon-shaped construct.

Now Fenagar's space to move would constantly reduce, forcing him to face three threats at the same time. The Fire Titan, the enraged Tyris, and the hard-light that attacked him from every side.