“I just wanted to make an explosive.” The masked woman clarified.
“We can do that. No need to get angry over holding hands.” He wove a sphere into existence and a tiny vortex sped up within it. The spherical runic formula was still amid experimentation as he wanted something more efficient and customised for their spell.
It had to be able to withstand unimaginable levels of heat. The ice walls had to be tough enough to contain all that without collapsing. Its compressive or suction strength that served to compress Ning Xin’s conjured elements could be improved. Her ability to conjure her blood made their combined spell able to store her lightning and fire for a longer time without dissipating and increased the upper limit of the amount of energy stored in one of their little bombs.
The spell was limited by the strength of his icy walls and the amount of mana that she had. But that limit is now raised with his recent improvements and her lack of usage of mana the past weeks of patrols.
“I’m not angry!”
‘Damnit. I thought I got the hang of spotting anger. Is it not simply the raised volume? Anyway, how can I strengthen the gravity vortex qualitatively? This is the limit I can get it to with my current Intelligence and mental prowess. The same goes for sound magic. Am I out of ideas?’ He got less distracted as they kept quiet and fed the orb between their palms.
She managed to shake his hand off so he made a bigger orb to fill the gap.
“Once again, what’s the plan?”
“No plan. I just bet that they don’t like heat.”
Sei nudged her head backwards with a grunt.
“They’re right above us?” The masked animal whisperer questioned.
The violent tremble answered them.
“They sat down. Can we even surface?” Ebony was blinded in the truest sense but he wasn’t worried.
Sei shifted a little before speeding off. No longer going straight up and headed north. At least, that was what his Mental Map and orientation were telling him.
“How much mana did you spend on this?” He closed up the gap when he sensed the repulsion and creaking of the icy walls.
“I don’t know. Maybe three days' worth of regeneration minus the amount spent during training? I still have plenty stocked up.” The bomb creation didn’t take much of his mana in comparison to the firepower supplier.
Maintaining it and keeping it from exploding outwards or collapsing inwards did take quite a lot of mental effort and mana to repair. It used to take less but his mana expenditure increased since they packed a bigger punch into it now that his ice magic got more muscles.
“The heat’s seeping through.” He commented.
“I’ve been trying to make them even hotter. It exceeds my blood compression and blood’s capacity for energy.”
Ebony felt a numbing spark in his hands and a bell ringing to inform him of an increase in lightning resistance.
“That’s not good. This isn’t meant to hold lightning and your blood is the only thing holding it.” He didn’t flinch but was sure that at least a fifth of his health went down from that little spark of lightning.
Ning Xin tried to pull out some of the lightning mana but it was too late as the congregation of mana and vortex pulling everything in made it impossible for the lesser mage to do anything about it.
“Sei, are we close to somewhere we can surface? This is about to blow. We won’t have any remains if it does.” Ebony was extremely sure that none of them would have a scrap remaining if their new firepower were to blow in their face. It didn’t even matter that it was their magic. He strengthened her already ridiculous firepower with his favourite power, compression.
The old version blew up a King-ranked Troll and a large number of Trolls sacrificed themselves to have kept that King alive for so long. Putting aside the fact that it was the Shamans who sacrificed them. That was because he stuffed it inside the Troll’s mouth but it didn’t make a big difference at the moment.
Lightning appeared to be the only thing seeping out and he halted his overreaction. If he even had one. It helped the poor turtle speed up.
Sei wasn’t slow by any means.
Yet they travelled in cold darkness for another three hours. In the meantime, he was straining his mental faculties to keep 6 explosives in check. Only the first one leaked and even then, only lightning and some heat leaked.
“She’s going to let us out when we’re ready.” She had time to rest after expending most of the charged mana she had in her mask. He didn’t know she was such a good animal whisperer.
Sei had been uncomfortable from the heat but she didn’t complain or make it obvious enough for him to notice.
To be safe, he poked his hand up through the surface and let his mana sense free to probe the area. There were indeed mountains of ice nearby.
“Stay as deep as you can. Don’t worry about getting out of range from us.”
Quietly climbing out of the ground, he was forced to look ahead.
“That’s one giant eyeball.” They just had to climb in front of an open eye. The Berg Mammoth were sitting or lying on their belly with their heads resting but they were awake.
Ning Xin had long gathered and charged up her energy and brought him away without hesitation. Thankfully, they were at the edge of the new mountain range and only one saw them. It didn’t react until the burst of heat blew in its face.
“Wow. It’s over ten kilometres tall. Hmm, maybe most of its back is just an ice cap.” The Berg Mammoth was so big his range of senses couldn’t even scan the whole creature. It had the appearance of a woolly mammoth and had extremely fearsome tusks that pierced the skies once the creature stood up.
A chain reaction occurred as its family members stood up along with it.
“Oh…its legs are as long as its body.” His neck had to bend back to its limits as the Mammoths slowly doubled in height and they blotted the skies out until Ning Xin brought him further away.
They were far bigger than the Progeniturtle underground and he could see why Ful called them sluggish but did it matter if a single step they took covered vast distances?
However, only one Berg Mammoth moved while the others used their tusks to scratch each other’s ice caps. They ate some tiny silhouettes that flew out of the caves on their backs.
“This is one of the younger ones.” Ning Xin mentioned as she propelled herself forward with her arms around his waist.
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They were able to widen the distance between the Mammoths which was good but that didn’t serve their purpose. They needed the clan of mammoths to leave the area and let the forest resurface.
“Greetings mammoth.” He attempted to talk once again.
He was replied with a towering shadow known as a raised trunk. Watching his ride’s back had him alert but even his usual calm and expressionless face blinked twice when the light brown furred trunk teleported from a resting position to a thread that connected the lands with the skies.
“Left!” Mana vibrations moved faster than his vocals and a pair of red hot wings was summoned from her mantle.
They watched as the trunk flashed by and returned to the ground. They took off into the skies and were free from the devastation. It looked as if a meteor landed and left an impact crater of immense proportion. The poor little reindeer just turned into a puddle of…something with its whole family.
“Come on, we’re far enough. Time to catch their attention.” The skies felt safer. Unlike the Jetfins, these Mammoths don’t look like they could fly.
He conjured a tiny flaming petal hoping the Berg Mammoths’s senses were good enough to sense him. They were.
The rest of the Berg Mammoths which were just shadowy silhouettes shifted. He wasn’t able to see far enough to tell how many Mammoths had their attention caught but they waited till the Mammoth seniors caught up with their playful child.
“Sorry about this!” He winded up a baseball throw and tossed the first bomb.
A slightly larger Mammoth than the first swiped its gigantic trunk horizontally. The tiny ball of ice was but a speck that got smaller within his sights in an instant.
He was expecting an explosion but three surrounding Mammoths kept up with the chasing Mammoth and blasted out an avalanche that swallowed the little speck.
“They noticed the congregation of our mana.”
The blast of wind came a bit later but they were flying away at Ning Xin’s new top speed augmented by her new mantle. It was as if he was boiling water and the first bubble popped. The bubble grew to the size of half a kilometre in diameter before it shrunk to nothingness.
“They suppressed our bomb by covering it up.” Ebony was a bit disappointed. This meant the Mammoths were able to sense how dangerous the bomb was. It was good as it meant the bomb could injure them if it landed. But it was clear the Mammoths were strong enough to deal with their strongest combined effort.
“We’re surrounded.” Inertia hit them as she changed her direction to a sharp incline.
Ebony began to notice. The few that chased him were relatively fast but they weren’t the biggest Mammoths around. The rest of the mountain range circled and trapped them in.
“How are they so fast?”
Dozens of weird-looking birds clambered out of their caves but they couldn’t catch up so Ebony didn’t give them a second look. If they couldn’t even catch up then they couldn’t be that dangerous.
The Mammoths were either smart or lucky enough that none of the bomb’s flames or blood touched their bodies. They covered up the explosive so thoroughly that it was honestly amazing. At the moment, five of the original pursuers were shooting blasts of ice, snow and gusts at the remains of their bomb.
Hence, they were uninterrupted in their flight.
“Great. They can’t fly and those birds of theirs seem weak.” He commented. This was an amazing advantage.
“Eb-ebony…It’s really cold up here.” A trembling voice reached him.
“What? You’re running Blood Boil aren’t you?” He was a bit late to notice that he was covered in a coating of ice and her mantle had patches of ice. Even her mask had a layer of ice.
“Descend.” He underestimated the environment. He actually had a hard time manipulating the ice on their skin and clothing.
“We’ll be in their trunk range.”
“Not yet. They haven’t closed in.”
The weird-looking birds had flat face with a long beak. Two pairs of wings decorated their back but they were featherless, unlike the rest of the body. Their cheeks were large pouches that sagged and flapped in the winds. These pouches expanded to a yoga ball’s size and they shot out gusts of sharp wind but Ning Xin dodged it all. There was no coordination between the birds which made it simple to dodge despite the attacks being strong and fast enough.
Ebony swatted them aside with a slash whenever they got close. Ning Xin didn’t let themselves get surrounded as she had the upper hand in speed and it was easy to knock the weird [Frigate Tympanuchus] down. They were in the 320 to 330 range and weren't so special.
He could decapitate them with a single swing and string them up because the gluttonous girl wanted to eat them. After a dozen ropes were pulling them down, they were slowed down slightly. They had to wait till the essence escaped so that she could draw out the blood or she could stab her swords in them to suck it up. The creatures in the Glades had greater resistance against magical control and she couldn’t directly drain them even if she was the one slicing them.
If they weren’t in the middle of an escape or bait operation, she might have sunk her teeth into them to drink it directly.
Dumb as they were the Frigate Tympanuchus weren’t suicidal and had a sense of self-preservation. They didn’t stack on the aggression.
Ebony tugged at the ropes and the dead birds lifted before their bodies were butchered and gutted. He conjured a container of ice and deftly slid his bag out before storing the food while Ning Xin watched the birds. They descended quite a bit and he could see the Mammoths lazily walking towards them.
“Any suggestions?” He questioned the one with better Intuition.
“Not really. I think we need your sil-innovative ideas. I don’t feel an impending sense of doom so that’s a good thing.”
“Calling me silly again…Your Intuition isn’t completely reliable but I guess it’s good to know.” The Frigate Tympanuchus gathered more of their allies before they unleashed a greater volume of sharp gusts but they weren’t able to get aerial superiority over them.
He was actually out of ideas.
Ebony no longer took a ride to allow Ning Xin greater freedom of motion while he weaved his upper body back and forth to dodge the sharp but small wind blades. The number of wind blades increased enough that she could feel difficulty evading all of them. Most of the hits she took were only on her fiery wings and only the edges. Far from landing on her or her cape mantle.
“The mammoths are just watching us now.” Ebony was sure that they were within the Mammoth’s reach now.
Beneath them was what looked to be a crater or valley but they were simply a ring of Berg Mammoths whose trunks could touch each other despite the distance between themselves and their tusks pierced into the sky like a vanguard raising their spears.
“We succeeded in baiting them with my aura. Almost all of them, two mountains remain on top of the underground dome.” Puny humans like them didn’t need 4000 colossus to surround. He knew that if he ascended further, he could see a second, third and maybe fourth ring of Berg Mammoths that were slowly positioning themselves.
“Their hunting tactic. I bet that they use this for stronger creatures so I guess we should be honoured.”
“I’ll lead them away. You go back and look for Sei or Ton and get the forest back up when you feel it's ready.”
“You’re confident?”
“Confident enough. I can fly higher. I’ll just dip down to attract their attention once in a while. To keep them busy, I just need to bring them to their predators. They don’t seem too smart.” Ebony had two choices, head deeper into the Glades or get into range where his Callstone can link with someone. However, the second choice required someone who could actually help and few could. The Frost Elves would have been a good choice since they had freed up their powerhouses but were supposedly uncontactable for a few years.
“The Kings are the problem. They’re not budging.”
“If Ful is right, they would follow once the pack moves far enough.” If he had to guess why they felt safe to a certain extent, it was obviously because the Mammoths were grounded. He didn’t want to see or think about jumping mammoths until it happened. He did keep in mind that they could flip the earth and cast magic or at least, blow out immense amounts of ice from their trunks.
If all 4000 of them were to shoot out of their trunks, he might see a familiar sight like the corrosion cloud that the Trolls employed.
“Go back, I doubt they’ll stop you.” He squatted on his frozen platform and did leg stretches to prepare to overexert his legs.
“I don’t want to.” She denied and crossed her arms. The swarm of Frigate Tympanuchus was smart enough to scatter and return to their caves on the respective mammoth.
“Your presence doesn’t change anything so just leave.” He stood and rotated his ankles with a little Augmentation running through them.
“Huh!?”
Ebony had been learning. The change in her posture and the deeper voice made him think.
“You wanna guess what I’m feeling right now?” Her fist clenched and he sensed her muscles tighten with an additional rise in heat.
“Angry?”
“You’re goddamn right.” She snatched a few bombs out of his hands and dived down. He barely reacted in time or all the bombs would’ve been in her hands by now.