Altura

I had to admit, I was looking at this new wave of beasts with hunger. A group of ten thousand beasts, most of them between Late Seeding and Early Sapling, they were a tasty Qi filled morsel. And I wanted to devour said morsel.

“So, what is the plan this time?” I asked.

“I would suggest that you still kill off all the Mid and Late-Plantlings and Plants, your grace. Sadly, we lack people of that cultivation level. I will be sending them to hunt down the Early-Plantlings, however.” Aswelth proposed.

“Good. I should get going then.” I said as I lifted off. Time to hunt some more beasts.

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Aswelth

Aswelth sighed as the Archduchess went out to hunt. At this rate, it would be a small matter of time before she caught up. Not even that long, a few months at the latest, a few days even if this war continued to hold so much Qi.

But Aswelth had other things to do. The Ducal guard was an unorganized mess, a mess he had to clean up now before it turned into something worse.

“Carrin, get the rest of the off-duty guard together, there are going to be some changes.” Aswelth said to one of the more trustworthy guards.

“Yes sir!” Carrin replied as he went off to get them. Perhaps it was because everyone was now a Sapling, or perhaps because they were all alert, the entirety of the off-duty guard was gathered in a few minutes.

“As some of you know, the Ducal guard as we know it has no proper chain of command at all. This irritates me. So I decided to fix it. From this moment onwards, the guard will be divided into thirteen divisions. Each of these divisions should, theoretically, hold three hundred members at present capacity. That is of course not something that can be achieved. There will thus be three battalions that will remain empty until such a time when recruitment can be restarted.”

“Moving on, I shall now announce the divisions. The ten current divisions shall be one, two, three, four, five…you get the gist.”- a few fits of suppressed laughter sounded out.- “The first division shall be headed by Carrin, and be responsible for special operations.”

“The second division shall be headed by Allumni and will be responsible for Infantry formation. The third headed by Sentris shall serve as Cavalry. The fourth headed by Nortis shall serve as another infantry division. Lerrit shall head the fifth and have the honor of being our anti-air troops.”

“While the sixth by Toric will be the frontline troops, remember to treat them with respect. The seventh and eighth, headed by Larvithius and Norleen shall be the ranged artillery troops that will provide ranged support.”

“The ninth, headed by Larvatia, shall serve as heavy artillery and target single powerful beasts. The tenth shall serve as emergency support.” Aswelth finished.

“Any questions?” Aswelth asked a crowd simply bubbling with questions. Immediately, a few dozen hands were raised, hands that soon multiplied to hundreds. This was going to be a long few hours.

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Altura

I sighed as I sat on a tree. Being sieged was not a good feeling, especially not when the beasts doing the sieging were so weak. A bunch of Plantlings that couldn’t even put up a fight. But they were good practice for my new method. I had formulated a possible technique based on my experience from yesterday. A very instinctual method of casting.

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Instead of focusing on some complex logical break on how to work the Qi, I focused on the instinct attached to it. The subconscious mind did, after all, have more information. Plus, it made sense that this body, and my seed, had some idea of how things worked.

Trying not to think too much over it, I let my QI out, knowing what I wanted it to do. And it worked…somewhat. The Qi turned into a host of snowflakes, rushing towards the Plantlings like some Ninja Shuriken. Except what I wanted it to do was freeze the Plantlings. Idea failed.

But that wasn’t the only idea I had. On to the next one, then. I called on some more Qi, this time visualizing what I wanted it to be. Not visualizing it as threads in between, but as what I wanted it to be directly. A wave of fire swept out from around my tree, burning Plantlings to ashes.

Except it stopped the second I stopped willing it to go. A lack of automation. I willed it forward, and it continued, burning more Plantlings. Soon enough, I was fresh out of Plantlings. A similar efficiency to incantation, so a lot better than the thread thing. But the downside was that it was much harder to multitask here.

A hybrid use where I used both incantation and this one would probably work best in big fights. Now to go kill some Plants. Taking off into the air, I didn’t even need to snowflake places now. Being a Plant was great.

And there was my first target, a large deer. With blood dripping down its mouth. Goodbye little carnivorous deer. I wielded fire like a whip, spinning it around and then letting the rope go towards the deer. The rope coiled around the deer as it turned its attention towards me. Too late. None of its attacks even shot out before it died. A smile stretched across my face at that. Being out of range was OP.

Now for the next one. The forest filled with cries of beasts as they died to fire, ice, and lightning. Some even to Earth and Air. I didn’t discriminate. The Ducal guards’ Plantlings joined the fight somewhere in between, roasting the low-levelled Plantlings while I dealt with the higher ones.

The low leveled beasts panicked as we wreaked havoc across the army. This attack had taken much longer than the other one and had done far more damage. Eventually, the rest of the beasts panicked and attacked the fortress. I did notice that they did not retreat or try to escape. Whatever had caused them to attack the fortress still influenced them very much. But that was to be dealt with later.

I had to go back to killing. What was my next foe? Uh oh. A Plant. And from the feel of it, a Late-Plant to boot. This would be my first fight against a higher level foe. But I could do it.

‘Fire, Lightning, Ice, Hear my call, turn into a ball. Ten thousand Qi I give to each of you, let it aid me in this fight, let it amplify my might.’

Thirty thousand Qi poured out of me, coalescing into three balls of Fire, Lightning, Ice that formed a triangle around the beast, just out of its range. I waited in the air, letting my QI recover and then shooting towards the beast as the balls got closer to it.

A missile of fire shot out as I willed it to target the beast. This time, there was an immediate counterattack. The beast let out seven different attacks that headed towards me as it dodged mine. But my balls didn’t sit around doing nothing. Fire, Ice and Lightning shot out, forcing it back in place, but the beast was intelligent, it wasn’t quite done yet. Bearing the Ice attack, it escaped the missile, or so it thought.

I merely willed the missile to follow suit, and this time it couldn’t dodge it. I didn’t get away unscathed, however, three of the seven attacks hit my defenses as I attacked. But they barely made a dent. This wasn’t a one-sided battle.

I glided through the air, using the same strategy as I had with the vine, a hundred-meter-long sloth was remarkably easy to attack. This time I sent out more than one missile, of more than one element, Ice shurikens, Lightning, Fire, Earth and Hot air bombs shot out around the beast, from different directions. This forced it to hunker down and defend, something it was admittedly good at.

But just being good wouldn’t save it. I could see it growling from pain as the attacks devastated it. These weren’t some low level attacks. Each of them had hundreds of Qi within, rivaling the Qi I that went into the spiral that killed that vine.

And I didn’t let up. The attacks continued as I circled the beast, overwhelming it with quicker reactions. Forcing it to keep focusing on defense. The beast roared in frustration as it was hit by a fifth wave of attacks. By now it was bleeding from several places, places that I was targeting, causing further damage to its body.

But I had underestimated the beast. A glow emerged throughout its body as it let out one final bellow that turned its entire body into a massive towering typhoon of fire that spread out towards me. A suicide attack. How did I not predict that? I was in a bit more trouble than I thought I would be in.