Chapter 178 - Fear of the Unknown (1/2)
It did not take long for Aurus to transfer his control back to his original body, slightly shuddering for a couple of seconds before hastily teleporting to where his clone was without being seen by the opposing army. While teleporting, he made sure to appear in areas that allowed him to get a better sense of the aura that the opposing army was radiating. Alongside this was the fact that he manipulated the soul balls that hovered over the army to lower in altitude even further, allowing him to listen to the shouts of Chonk far clearer than before.
Whoosh!
”He just said Sixfold Power. I should hurry up a bit,” Aurus muttered to himself as he then put his full focus onto teleporting closer to his clone, taking only a minute to arrive near his clone's body this time.
Whoosh!
At the instant he had arrived, he could see his clone idly standing between multiple trees that had holes in their trunks. If it wasn't for that, it would look like his clone was waiting for him to arrive, wanting to finally end the war and reach the existence level of a God.
Nevertheless, he still remembered what he had to do, hastily channeling a huge amount of FP from inside his body before transforming it into strands of energy that extended outside his body. Not long after, just like before, he manipulated these strands to intertwine with one another as a black light started to radiate from the center of this entanglement.
He then continued to entangle the strands even further as he placed it on the ground near where his clone was. While he was doing this, he looked at the perspective his soul balls had, deciding on a location that was close enough for Argentum to hit the barrier on the alliance with his newly unlocked [Nature's Wind Vortex]. Fortunately, it did not take long for him to find a suitable location, being a concentration of trees around tens of meters away from the barrier that blocked the alliance's entrance.
Whoosh!
Not long after, from the perspective of the soul balls, he could sense a faint black light radiating from the center of those trees, letting Aurus know that he had successfully opened up a connection between the two. He then manipulated the remaining strands of both portals to be engulfed by the black light in the center, expanding the diameter of the black light as the connection between the two portals had stabilized.
After making sure that there were no problems with the portals, he then transferred his control back to Argentum's body, moving it to jump into the portal without hesitation.
Whoosh!
In a matter of an instant, Argentum had arrived in the area where he had placed the second portal earlier, allowing him to have a clear view of the barrier that was blocking the alliance's entrance, as well as a clear view of the opposing army whose auras seemed to be puny for his Animate self. Nevertheless, the aura Chonk radiated far surpassed what his body had radiated, mostly due to Chonk being a Rank 1 Animate while he was still a Rank 0 Animate.
”If only I had more time to train this body, then I might've just gone ahead and used this body to end the war without a problem,” Argentum said to himself before letting out a sigh. After arriving near the alliance barrier, he then sent his control back to his original body, making it teleport back to the top of the alliance base before passing the control back. Surprisingly, this process only took a couple of minutes, but it was more than enough for the aura radiated by the army to increase by onefold as Chonk shouted the phrase ”Sevenfold Power.”
”Judging by the speed at which Chonk increases the intensity of their aura by onefold, I still have around six minutes to prepare before I hit the alliance barrier in order to inflict high psychological pressure to the army,” Argentum muttered as he went over the plan in his mind one more time.
What he was planning to do was to hit the barrier at the very instant Chonk was about to finish shouting the phrase ”Tenfold Power”. He noticed that the increase in intensity had only solidified after Chonk had said those words, even though the increase could be felt even before that. Six minutes was more than enough time for him to look at the spell he had obtained a while ago.
Ding!
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[Nature's Wind Vortex]
MP Cost: 7 MP
A Level 0 Spell inclined towards the Wind element. Its more known variant is the [Wind Energy Vortex], a spell that allows those that learn the magic arts to cast a vortex of wind that could deal large amounts of damage on a great area. Although the normal variant is known more for its level of destruction, this variant takes it one step further as its appearance has transformed into something that's more akin to fireworks, distracting enemies due to the beauty of the attack.
The spell's damage depends on the caster's Intelligence stat, as well as various skills that enhance Wind-based abilities and spells.
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”Since it uses over twice as much MP than [Nature's Wind Bolt], surely more of its energy would be redirected towards damage instead of flashiness, right?” Argentum could not help but ask himself as he pondered over some what-ifs. In the end, his heart was settled as he muttered to himself, ”If else, I'll just use it before sending [Nature's Wind Bolt] afterward. I wonder if they'll fuse?”
While speculating as to whether the two spells would fuse, he eagerly watched over Chonk's army as he waited for Chonk to be close to reaching Tenfold Power.
…
While Aurus—or rather, Argentum was waiting for Chonk to 'finish' his second phase of Code Omega, a slightly tyrannical aura was radiating from the backside of the alliance base as a branch with red carvings all over its body stood in front of an arrow formation of sticks and saplings.
Of course, the branch with red carvings was none than Herellia, who had ordered the arrow formation of sticks and saplings to use their strongest skills. Not long after, she had ordered them to aim these skills towards her, telling them that this would increase her power to a level they had never witnessed before.
These orders were all in line with the first phase of Code 1, which was actually a code made by Herellia in the case where they needed a lot of power as fast as possible. Unlike Chonk's Code Omega, Code 1 only had two phases: the charging stage and the berserk stage. At the moment, Herellia was starting the charging stage.
”Fire!” Herellia shouted without hesitation as she hovered a few meters off the ground, allowing those at the back of the arrow formation to still shoot her.
Pew! Whoosh! Boom! Zoom!
Attacks of various colors and styles had soon erupted from the arrow formation, all of them heading towards Herellia's floating body in a flash.
Just as it looked like Herellia was going to resist these attacks with her body, numerous amounts of blood-red strands manifested from her body, extending towards the direction of the attacks as she manipulated these strands to arrange them in the appearance of a blooming flower as dark red energy started to circulate throughout her body.
While she circulated this dark red energy, she could not help but think about how she had relied a lot on Aurus for most of this war, slightly feeling bad that she delegated Aurus to a lot of the tasks that would allow their alliance to have an advantage over this army. With this in mind, the dark red energy circulating in her body took on a deeper shade, being closer to black than red in a matter of an instant.
Not long after, she then channeled this energy towards the blood-red tendrils that were going to tank the attacks sent out by the alliance members, with the blood-red tendrils radiating an aura of tyrannical might as the aura surrounding Herellia's body gradually grew weaker.