The wind whipped past Seth's head, howling in his ear as the Manticore lifted off of the ground and took to the skies. With one beat of its powerful, leathery wings it was already in the air and with the second, it was climbing higher and higher into the sky with ease.

Of course, Seth had absolutely no idea what the Giant Dwarf had said to this beast, or what he had been saying to him, but even if he knew that still wouldn't mean he would simply let that beast fly off to do god knows what.

There was already a dragon on the loose, and all these earth-born monsters, he was not going to allow a damn Manticore to freely roam throughout his city.

Thrusting his hand forward, Seth cast out the threads of his [Weaver's Curse] once more, sending them directly towards the wings of the fleeing Manticore. But before they could ensnare the beast, a thick meaty hand clamped around the thin steel threads and stopped their advance.

Seth's eyes darted towards the dwarf, who still held his arm out to the side and kept his steel threads, which glinted softly in the daylight, tight in his meaty grasp. Seth tried to wriggle them free, but it was no use. His fat fingers were like an iron vice, even extending the threads didn't help, they wouldn't move past his hand.

He was eager to make sure that Seth could only watch helplessly as the Manticore departed to do his bidding. Of course, Seth wasn't helpless just yet. But before he could send his trust dagger to poke some holes in those wings, something else did his job for him. Even if it wasn't in the same way he would.

A pillar of azure fire descended upon the departing Manticore like the wrath of the heavens. The roaring flames swallowed up the flying beast, drowning out its howling cries as they lapped at its fur.

The azure pillar lasted for a few moments, thoroughly roasting the Manticore, before shutting off as a black shadow flitted across the skies. A thunderous roar echoed out, declaring the presence and dominance of the shadow in the skies.

The Manticore, its fur singed black and still burning in places, let out a rumbling growl before letting out a roar of its own. It beat its wings some more, spinning in the air as it flicked its scorpion tail, sending a hail of spikes into the air towards the darting shadow.

The spikes quickly disappeared into the clouds, unclear whether or not they hit their target. But the Manticore wasn't satisfied with that. It swiped its tail back and forth, over and over, sending volley after volley of spikes into the clouds.

It only stopped when it finally ran out of the needles to fire, although they were quickly sprouting themselves anew, like fingernails rapidly growing out of its tail tip.

The Manticore beat its wings, hanging in the air and waiting for its prey to finally fall, eager to see the pin-cushioned corpse come crashing to the ground, overwhelmed by its poison. When the shadow appeared once more, plunging rapidly through the clouds, the Manticore's hybrid face twisted into a cocky smirk.

A smirk that was quickly washed away by another shower of azure flames.

Omelette spewed the flames from his beak as he dove through the air, his wings close to his body as he flew like an arrow towards the hovering Manticore. He kept it blind with his flames to mask his approach, although it wasn't perfect.

More poisonous spikes came flying from within the column of flames, being shot blindly by the Manticore smothered by their heat. But even blind, it was close enough that Omelette had to cut off the stream and roll to the side, letting a few of them barely brush by his steel-like feathers as he dove.

When he finally reached the Manticore, Omelette thrust his talons forward and plunged them deep into the side of the lion-like beast, piercing its flesh and forcing more howling cries of pain from its lips.

The force of his dive drove both of them down to the ground, which shuddered with their meteoric impact.

Their spectacle in the sky, and subsequent landing, was enough to garner the attention of Seth and his gigantic foe. But strangely, the dwarf did not seem annoyed at the outcome, nor did he seem worried about his companion.

Instead, as he watched Omelette the Wyvern and the Manticore battling it out between each other on the ground, the only expression on his face was an eager, lustful smile. As if he wasn't seeing a fight, nor a Wyvern, but a living pile of gold.

With Seth's steel threads still clutched tightly in one hand, the Dwarf raised the other and made a grasping motion in the air. At his command, metal fragments shifted from beneath his hairy mass, flying out of his clothes and from the deepest depths of his beard, and began to coalesce in his grasping hand.

The metal fragments, a metal that Seth had never seen before in his life, clicked themselves together perfectly like they were made from one intricate jigsaw puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle that eventually formed something that was unexpectedly familiar.

When the last piece slotted into place, what the Giant Dwarf was now clutching in his thick, fat fingered hand was nothing else but a gun. Well, at his size it was more of a cannon. Even a tanks main barrel would feel inadequate and jealous at the sight of this behemoth blaster, which seemed large even in this Giant's hand.

Runes, which were pre-carved into the metal, lit up all along the guns barrel as the Dwarf poured his own mana into the contraption and began to take aim. The Goliath cannon began to whirr to life, humming like a nuclear power station as more and more of the runes lit up, one by one.

Turning the cannon towards the ongoing battle of the beasts, the Dwarf's mad grin widened even more as he carefully took aim and, when Omelette untangled himself from the Manticore for just a brief second, he pulled the trigger.

KRAKOOOOOOM!

The runes flashed as he pulled the trigger, before a blinding light erupted from the weapon and a deafening explosion echoed out. The air itself was forced away from the site of the erupting, rushing outwards in a powerful shockwave that extended across half the city.

As the light dimmed and vision returned to the observers eyes, the result of the weapons discharge was clear, as all that was left was a smoking, charred mound of burned flesh and smatterings of fresh blood across the ground.

[Requital Destroyed]

The dwarf let out a grumbling roar of pain as he let go of Seth's steel threads and instead clutched at the blackened stub where his hand used to be. Everything had been going his way, right until he pulled the trigger.

At the very last moment, Seth had sent his dirk, the [Kiss of Death] right into the barrel of the cannon and plugged it up. It seemed that even magic cannons still needed a clear barrel to work properly otherwise, just like a normal gun, the energy would find its own way out.

With Seth's dagger blocking the barrel, the weapon had simply erupted in the dwarf's hand, taking the hand with it, and leaving nothing behind but warped chunks of a strange metal. Unfortunately, it had utterly obliterated his weapon in the process, a fact that he was utterly expecting in all honesty. But he would rather lose his knife than his Omelette, the knife could eventually be replaced after all.

However, just as Seth was feeling good about preventing the attack on Omelette and instead wounding the dwarven bulwark with his own attack, the charred flesh of the dwarf's hand began to flake.

Blackened chunks fell from the stump like discoloured snowfall, drifting down to the ground until the stump was back to looking like a freshly cut mess of raw, pink meat. But even that didn't last long.

The muscle tendons wriggled eagerly, knitting themselves back together as new flesh began to sprout from the old, finger bones erupting from the stump like bamboo shoots which were quickly wrapped up muscle fibres that were knitting themselves back together like new.

In just a minute, the dwarf was flexing his new hand, his knuckles popping as he clenched the powerful new fist into a tight ball.

'He can regenerate... Of course he can regenerate...'

The dwarf let out a rumbling laugh at Seth's disheartened expression, before making another grasping motion into the air with his newly regenerated hand. Just like before, components started to fly into his hand.

However, the first component that rushed from within his clothing was not more metal, but was instead wooden poles a foot in length. They clicked themselves together, forming a wooden staff half as tall as the Dwarf himself. A wooden staff that was soon topped by more metal chunks clicking themselves into place at the top.

Soon it became very clear what he was holding was not a staff, but the shaft of a newly formed bearded axe with intricate runes carved along its edge that Seth could only dream of replicating.

As if he was eager to give Seth a proper look at these intricate runic carvings, the dwarf pulled back his arm before lobbing the axe with all of his tyrannical strength. Sending it spinning through the air, blurring like a helicopter blade as it spun directly towards Seth's head.