Chapter 300 - The True Power of Buffs (1/2)

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

In less than an instant, four thousand royal blue lightning bolts came down from the dark clouds, briefly lighting up the dark sky for a few seconds. Not long after, these bolts went ahead and decided to separate into groups, only for them to recall what had happened when they clumped up into groups. Surprisingly, rather than split up into individual bolts to reduce the chances of multiple of them being hit by the beams that dispelled their previous brethren, they decided to continue with the group idea, moving closer to one another.

And just like that, 40 incredibly dense bolts, each of which was made up of 100 Calamity-level lightning bolts, now gradually made their way to where Herellia was, with the intent of striking her down and letting her fail her Existence Tribulation. At this point, Herellia had finally gotten over the initial shock brought about by the sheer number of bolts that came down from the clouds. Infusing her energy into the ten crimson petals surrounding her, Herellia decided to make the first move, lest she wanted to be swallowed up by the hundreds of bolts out to kill her.

But just as she was about to start hovering and tilt her body to allow the trajectory of the beams to be aimed at the dense bolts, she had a hunch that the destructive effect the beams would have on the lightning bolts would be diminished due to their current formation. Working her mind in overdrive, she soon decided that she was going to fight fire with fire, circulating the energy inside her body before forming another crimson rafflesia.

Unfortunately for her, even the first petal of this third rafflesia was enough for the burden on her mind to increase exponentially, making it seem like the formation of the third rafflesia was going to fail. Thankfully, Herellia was someone who did not give up every possible method under a situation of life and death, prompting her to endure the painful feeling brought by the formation before continuing to form the third rafflesia.

12...14…15…

Eventually, the third rafflesia was formed, with Herellia radiating an aura of exhaustion, which was soon replaced with confidence and expectation as she took in a deep breath to get used to the increased burden brought by the newly formed rafflesia. She then went ahead and fused the third rafflesia to the layer of petals below it, bringing the total number of petals in a layer revolving around her to 15.

Naturally, with the third rafflesia now formed, she went ahead and continued with the thing she was about to do before, utilizing her movement skill to hover off the ground and tilt the petals to face the incredibly dense lightning bolts. At this moment, the dense lightning bolts were only around a dozen meters away, with some only being a few meters away from colliding with the ground.

Without hesitation, she infused all of her energy towards these crimson petals, bringing forth 15 golden beams, which were shot towards 15 dense lightning bolts.

Bang!

Being accompanied by the sound of explosions going off from the collision of beams and bolts, the first round of golden beams were able to dispel a large portion of lightning bolts. Unfortunately, unlike before where the beams would be able to dispel a single lightning bolt group without a problem, a few dozen lightning bolts remained from the dense lightning bolts that were hit by the beams. In other words, 40 dense bolts were still heading down to strike Herellia down, but 15 of these were less dense than the others.

Whoosh!

Just as Herellia was about to fire a second round of beams to dispel the less dense lightning bolts once and for all, she noticed that the amount of energy in her body was not enough for her to do so. With that in mind, she went ahead and utilized the energy to turn around and run away from the dense lightning bolts instead, recalling that the lightning bolts usually swerved around the trees while chasing up to her. This action done by the lightning bolts gave her time to prepare a stronger attack, allowing her to dispel the lightning bolts without asking for help from Argentum.

But just as she turned her sense of vision around to look at the current position of the lightning bolts…

Boom!

The dense lightning bolts had finally collided with the ground, bringing forth a quaking of the ground that was far more intense than before. Since Herellia was hovering, she was not affected by it. The same went for Argentum and Horell as well, utilizing their skills and spells to hover off the ground. But even though that was the case, they were still affected by the collision of the bolts with the ground in another way, with all of them radiating auras of shock and surprise.

Why is that, you may ask?

That's because the dense bolts did not swerve around the trees before colliding with the ground, but instead…collided with them directly! With the great amount of force behind the lightning bolts, the trunk of multiple trees cracked, eventually falling down a few seconds later. This effect was further amplified by the quake, with some of the trees even falling in front of Herellia.

Of course, she utilized the crimson petals around her to push these falling trunks away from the path she was heading through, wanting to make sure that the lightning bolts were as far as possible from her so she could unleash a stronger attack.

Naturally, as the lightning bolts birthed by the heavens to become the obstacles hindering Herellia's dream from being fulfilled, they were not going to let Herellia have her way around them, hastily removing themselves out of the ground, with some removing themselves out of the trees they collided with. The latter was even surprised that the trees were not burnt from the collision at all, with a crater the only evidence that they had collided.

Recalling their mission, they discarded these useless thoughts before congregating with the other dense bolts, moving in the direction where Herellia was running.

On the other hand, Argentum and Horell were looking at the current state of things from afar, looking at each other for a bit before looking back at Herellia and the dense lightning bolts chasing her through their own means. At this moment, both of them could not help but feel that things were going south for Herellia, wondering as to whether or not they were going to tell her to use her trump cards.

After a while, Argentum let out a sigh, breaking the silence between the two of them. He then looked at Horell and told him, ”I think we're going to have to make a move this time.”

”Eh?” Horell uttered as he had not yet processed the words Argentum said to him. After he had done so, the aura radiating from him had undergone an immense change as it was changed with that of immense excitement as he looked at Argentum and asked, ”Do you mean…?”

”Yeah,” Argentum said as he nodded in response to Horell's question. He then added, ”We're going to have to cast a few buffs on Herellia.”

”I'm glad to hear that,” Horell replied to Argentum's words with a light chuckle before asking, ”So…what buffs are we going to ca—”

But just as he was about to finish his question, he remembered that casting buffs would increase the difficulty of the subsequent rounds, bringing him to a crossroads. On one end, he wanted to cast buffs on Herellia so she would be able to survive this perverse bombardment of lightning bolts while giving him a sense of purpose. On the other end, he suppressed the urge to cast buffs as he recalled that thought.

Pondering on what was the best course of action to take right now, Horell went silent for a bit, only for the aura surrounding him to become solemn and serious. Contrary to the aura surrounding him, he asked Argentum in a slightly unsure tone, ”But Argentum, doesn't that mean that the difficulty of the subsequent rounds would increase thanks to our actions?”

”Of course, that's a given,” Argentum said as his sense of vision was still focused on Herellia's current condition. At the moment, she would turn her body around to fire at the large swath of dense lightning bolts out to get her, reducing the total number of dense lightning bolts to around 30 or so. Thanks to the help of his enhanced senses, he was able to sense that Herellia was giving it her all to retaliate while maintaining distance from him, not caring as to whether or not her energy was about to run out.

With that taken into consideration, he felt that it was the best course of action for them to cast a few buffs on Herellia, even taking the increased difficulty of the next rounds as a factor in the decision. Nevertheless, he decided to ask Herellia's opinion on this rather than make his own decision, prompting him to look at Horell and tell him, ”Just so you would feel at ease, I'll ask Herellia whether to cast her some buffs or not.”