"So...are you ready to fight once more?" Lily asked, gathering up her squad of five as they all posed menacingly over the campfire while Fatera chomped away at her hearty breakfast of fish wrapped in leaves, "The end of training camp battle, the final round, the last spar, and the battle to determine if we shall welcome Wu into our college?"
"What?!" Lera shot up, "When was that a deal?"
"Well...since the start of the camp, but you seemed to be distracted by other...matters." Lily shrugged, "It's pretty simple. If you win, we go through our back channels to bring Wu back into the Academy. If you lose, then...good luck getting accepted as a squad in the Summer Selection."
Lera turned to Wu, who smiled and nodded back to her.
"Don't ya worry." Fatera said, stuffing the fish deep down her throat with her fingers before she rose up with a kip, "I got this."
"I trust you all to not get me doubly expelled. Hah!" Wu laughed as Lera glared at him, clearly not entertained by the joke.
"Anyhow." Lily said, snapping her fingers and pulling the fire from the campfire into her palm, "This game we will play today is simple, and going to be far closer to the summer selections format than the Coconut game was."
With her fingers spread out flat, a map of the island is drawn, and sets of circular dots are shown on either side of the island. The area is still divided into two regions, one for Wu and one for Lily. Each of the regions contains three circular stronghold points, where Casts were preset by Matty to act like structure Casts. Taking control of the stronghold means holding onto the position for ten minutes while keeping the other fighters out.
Those that control all the strongholds by the end are the winners. So once again, it's a mix of tactical control and combat, mixing in aspects of capture the flag and defending strongholds.
"Sounds simple enough?" Lily asked as Wu nodded. Then, the two groups broke, each heading towards their own triangle of strongholds.
"So, what's the plan?" Ver asked, turning around first before quickly noting down the locations of each of the strongholds. Without needing to collect those stupid coconuts, Ver can now actually use her mobility through the use of Whirlpool Purple as a means of quickly facilitating transport between the strongholds. And she could obviously do the same for the strongholds captured on the other side too.
"We fight." Wu said, scanning around, "With you, Ver, we clearly have the advantage of speed. And...going headfirst into battle just seemed to be our style, right?"
"Ya know me." Fatera said, smiling confidently as she cracked her knuckles and started swing her arms back and forth, “We find the fight, and we get in there.”
With Fatera as the vanguard, Ver as the spear behind her, then Augen and Lera acting as facilitators with their long-range Casts and environment control, Wu can then act as a rogue agent, slipping in and out wherever he is needed.
"I will set up defensive Casts around our structures," Lera said, her Book of Casts at the ready before she unleashed sets of Scouting Eyes into the air like pigeons released from a cage.
"So will I, my Summer Lotus makes great traps." Augen said, as Lera slammed her fist into the ground, conjuring countless networks of Cast Arrays into the ground that spread through the entire sides of the island. The group watched on with mild surprise as Lera commanded Casts of this size with such ease.
"Wouldn't charging in headfirst be what Lily wanted?" Ver asked, "They know we have better mobility, even with Matty's eagle-"
"Which I can now snipe down now." Wu added, showing her the Void Domain Laser over his wrist.
"-Which you can now snipe down, sure. Still, those with less mobility across the map will want to fight then and there, wouldn't they?" Ver asked.
"Yeah, what's that about, Wu?" Fatera snarled at Wu.
"We will fight, we will get in there, but not without a plan." Wu smiled, "So...here it is..."
As the flare went off into the air, signifying the start of the battle, the group of five immediately moved. Fatera and Augen enjoyed each other's company in their own vanguard squad as they made a beeline straight towards the left stronghold on Lily's side, while Lera and Ver approached slowly from the middle. Wu, acting as the rogue agent, moves in from the right on foot, sneaking around the Casts with his imperviousness to the Wave.
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"There they are!" As the blur from Fatera's movements cut through the forest, ripples in the Wave created from her movements inevitably became caught by Matty's sensory Manifestations on the other side in the shape of plants. Knowing that the Wu's squad they will fight today will be one that is completely different from the Wu's squad that they had fought in the past two weeks, Lily also decided to switch up their own tactics too.
"How many?" Lily asked, as Matty turned and showed the projections of the duplicated Scouting Eyes over his arm to her.
"Just Fatera." Matty replied quickly when Yuna's voice came from the stronghold that Fatera is bee-lining for.
"Not just her!" Yuna shouted, preparing to engage as Fatera came to a screeching halt, revealing that she had actually been literally carrying Augen like a backpack.
Fatera, for a moment, worried about how Augen would have felt with him riding on the back of a girl, but when she offered it, Augen hopped on immediately, citing how saving energy is simply a more strategic way to fight. He is surprisingly light, and it felt only as if she had put home some sort of heavy armor as she moved.
Especially in her Hard mode, the reduction in speed is negligible.
"Summer Lotus!" Augen said, his legs wrapped around Fatera's firm abdomen as massive lotus leaves floated in midair around them and blasted at the defensive Casts in full force. Then, Yuna leaped down from atop the stronghold, her body coated with the faint outline of the white tiger.
"Surging Tiger: King of the Jungle!" Yuna said, soaring towards Fatera before she let out an earth-quaking roar.
"Winter Bark!"
With the cold harsh winds suddenly blowing in the battlefield, countless leaves were swept up and formed into an ever-morphing wall in between Yuna and Fatera. Then, the latter charged through it as Yuna's roar tore through Augen's attempt at interception.
"Yuna!" Braka's voice came from above, his body now drenched in blood as countless blood blades extended from his core like legs of a spider, and he combined all of his blades together into a single one, slamming it into Fatera's rising fist before blowing her back.
Then, as Fatera landed hard on the ground, Augen let her go as he dropped onto the ground before rolling onto his feet. That instant release of the weight on her back coupled with her entering into her Killa mode immediately triggered the rapid increase in her speed, and she blitzed straight through Braka, knocking him out cleanly before he could have activated his Blood Brink state.
Due to his time limit in the Blood Brink state, Braka needed to time its activation perfectly. However, if Fatera were able to completely blow him up before that point, then Victory would have been secured. Knowing that, perhaps Braka should have pre-activated his strongest mode in preparation for someone as dynamic and bombastic as Fatera.
"Braka! You Baka!" Yuna cursed, turning around as Fatera charged towards her, however, she instead felt a bitter chill from behind her as she leaped up and out of the way from Augen's Winter Bark attack. Glancing down at Fatera who is now nothing more than a blur on the ground, Yuna smiled as Augen's attack would have slammed headfirst into Fatera's body.
However, it's as if the hand of the god had forcibly changed Fatera's trajectory, she made an instantaneous turn upward, her footstep planting hard and angling steeply into the ground as the sand were pressed into glass upon impact before she chased after Yuna.
"Tsk! Surging Tiger: Pathing Lightness!" Yuna said, pouring all of her attention into her footsteps as she leaped from one tree to the next, taking advantage of her speed and trying to get away from Fatera when she suddenly appeared right in front of Yuna's face.
The figure in front of Yuna is Fatera alright, and yet her figure seemed to grow larger and larger, until she filled up Yuna's entire field of vision, the immense pressure from her presence alone sniffing out all of the Wave within Yuna's body as she dropped onto the ground, gasping for air.
"Lily!" Matty shouted after Lily had already taken off from their stronghold, sensing the grave threat that is Fatera as she continued pushing her power further and further, “She’s...done it again…”
"Dominance mode: Dominance of the Demon, activate!"
Red mixing in with black, and dark red lines swirled around Fatera's body before forming a sphere and collapsing inward as her skin started charring further and further and red glowing lines covered her skin. Then, a pair of dark horns extended out from her face as her eyes glowed bright red like crimson diamonds.
Before, when she activated her Dominance mode, dark waves expanded outward, because she wanted to impose her will onto the environment. However, now, she instead pulls the overflowing power inward, balancing it perfectly like a skilled waitress with a bowl full of water, allowing her own presence to dominate naturally.
With elegance, she moved past Yuna, pressing her finger into her forehead and knocking her out. Then, she looked forward as the pair of Fire Mecha from Lily and Matty stood tall in front of her.
"You feel it?" Lera asked, looking over towards Ver who nodded back and wiped away the sweat on her forehead.
"This is crazy..." Ver said, laughing dryly before the pair of Fire Mechas headed to confront Fatera in her dominance mode, "So this is what it felt like..."
"She's doing her job, so let's do ours," Lera said when Wu's voice suddenly came through the channel as he took over one of the empty strongholds.
"Shin is heading in your direction!" Wu warned, when Ver rapidly drew her Sky Splitting Sword, slipping through a Whirlpool Purple and reemerged on the other side of Lera, clashing weapons with Shin's Meat Maker Axe.
"I got this! Win the map!" Ver shouted, and Lera charged forward, conjuring up the single-person Chariot under her feet and moving ahead.