"Say...when we are in battle, we should probably still have our own secret language, right?" Wu said, strolling beside Lera as she practiced incorporating her new versions of Void Domain into her Cast Array.
"Like...the USB thing back at Winter Wars?" Lera replied without looking away from the ground.
"Yeah!" Wu said, pointing his finger straight at Lera with excitement, "I knew you would remember that."
"Of course I would," Lera said, a hint of red flashing on her face, though that should no longer be something that embarrasses her.
"Given the way Void Domain affects both my suit and your ability to use the Wave, let's use the phrase 'Turn off the PC' for when it's best for us to withhold the use of Wave. Just in case we need to nuke the whole place with Void Domain." Wu said, knowing full well that Lera would be equally as confused as before, but still willing to stick with him nonetheless.
Maybe that's why he loves her so much?
"Ok." Lera said, finally standing up with resolution written all over her face, "Now, help me with something."
She took him straight back to their bedroom, though things didn't exactly go according to Wu's expectations when Lera started taking off her clothes, revealing lines of Cast written over her own body too. Though unlike Wu's tattoo Casts over his stomach, she started from the side of her body and let it continue into her back.
"What...would you like me to do?" Wu asked, swallowing hard, though Lera clearly heard the gaggle in his throat. She giggled lightly before turning over to a page in her book where she laid out sets of Cast lines over the page.
"I want you to replicate this over my back." Lera said, letting her hands rest in front as she lowered her head slightly, "Use the sets of ink to my left."
Wu looked over, and it was the same set of ink he used to create the Void Domain over his own body, paired with a metal brush with arrays of needles to pierce through the skin. Wu swallowed hard, and he grabbed onto the handle of the metal brush firmly, "You...trust me to do this on you?"
"Didn't you do this on yourself?" Lera said back.
"I could afford to make mistakes if it were on me..."
"I trust you with my life." Lera said, tying her hair up into a bun before turning and kissing Wu on the cheek. Then, she pulled back slightly, her grey eyes looking at one of the Cast lines around Wu's neck, "But...if we do this...I will look different...than before."
"And I don't mind." Wu said, caressing Lera's cheeks as she smiled and nodded, "You are still my Lera...and you still make me feel things whenever we are like...this."
"I would be angry if you don't feel anything." Lera smirked before turning around.
"Let me know if the pressure is alright," Wu said, his eyes scanning between Lera's smooth muscular back and the page, ensuring that every single stroke of his is in an exact manner that Lera laid out. In the back of his mind, the sets of patterns reminded him of the base of the Void Domain, though the intertwining sets of Cast lines in the middle was noticeably different.
"Hmm..." Lera moaned slightly, and lines of sweat started forming on Wu's forehead. He continued, adjusting his pressure and angle of the brush as he worked around Lera's shoulder blades.
Alas, the work was complete after two stressful hours. Wu wouldn't know the true extent of the tattoo Cast's strength, until months later.
"Turn off the PC!" Lera called out again, rapidly channeling her own Wave into the starting point of the tattoo Cast from her oblique. A blue pulse flowed along the lines and traveled up her back, activating the entirety of the Cast as a dark aura expanded from her body much similar to Void Domain when activated from Wu's body.
But something felt different to Dolly. The traditional Void Domain was a pure region of stagnant Wave flow, a region that felt like an unmoving brick wall. Whatever Lera's just created...that felt like a net had been cast out wide, and the individual fibers of the net are somehow acting like sharp blades, carping out pieces of the environment as it goes.
Dolly held her breathe slightly, feeling for the influence of the new attack on the surrounding Wave fields when suddenly, countless tiny explosions went off within the dark regions themselves. Like bubbles popping into existencce before being collapsed inward, those tiny explosions appeared spontaneously before vanishing just as quickly and just as quietly.
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Something feels off...Dolly pulled back, as the dark aura immediately swept up all around her, sniffing out the countless light whips before engulfing all of the Dolly's around them. Then, those spontaneous explosions popped into existence over the stomachs of one of the Dolly's, a gaping wound being brutally carved into her stomach before the rapid implosion folded her over.
"Shit!" The Dolly's cursed and dispersed, but the spontaneous explosions chased after her, "What is this?!"
"My ultimate move." Lera said, wiping away the blood from her mouth as she walked towards the pile of Dolly's burying Wu, "Void Domain: Chaos!"
"I knew it." Wu's voice came from underneath the piles of Dolly's as they all screamed at the same time as parts of their bodies became blown off and torn up by her attacks, "The base was made from Void Domain."
"But the devil's in the details, love." Lera said, moving aside the Dolly's as they all rolled aside without much resistance, partly because they were debilitated by the Cast or knocked completely unconscious, "These spontaneous explosions were conditioned on the regions with the Wave, so it targets Wave users far more than someone like you."
She reached a hand towards him, helping him up as the Dolly's scattered around her and ran away in all directions.
“Ouch...someone like me…”
“You know what I mean.”
"Can I kiss you right now?" Wu asked.
"No." Lera shook her head, "My teeth is still bleeding from her hits..."
"Ok..." Wu looked a little disappointed, but he understood. Looking all around them, the bodies of the Dolly's filled the battlefield, though more still were able to make it out of range of Lera's Void Domain. Similar to Wu's own version, the range of the Cast is about twenty meters before it's strength dies off.
"Screw those couples!" Dolly cursed, her little legs spinning on the ground as she made a run for it, "Always there to ruin my fun!"
Then, a hint of weakness filled her legs, and she let out a cough before looking at a wound over her lower leg that she didn't even know she suffered in her escape. She let out a suppressed growl before filling up the wound with a ball of Wave in her body. However, that open wound will only speed up the draining of her own Wave by the Principal's Cast.
It shouldn't have significantly affected the others on her squad, but because all Dolly cared about is her offensive arsenal, she didn't even bother learning anything beyond the most basic of defensive Casts. And clearly, any subpar defensive measures would not have worked against Principal's Cast anyway.
Fortunately, her ridiculous store of Wave within her body and her general ability to draw on the Wave from around her meant she should have plenty of supplies back up before making it back into the center of the battlefield where the influence of the shrinking bubble hadn't overtaken everything.
She heard a loud whooshing sound coming from behind her, and Wu and Lera turned a corner before they started chasing after her riding one of Lera's chariots. With a concentrated effort, Dolly launched herself off the ground, creating a arrow-shaped chariot of her own before jumping in and blasting off.
"Ha." Wu shot his Void Domain laser forward, its black beam slicing the chariot Cast wide open, even as Dolly managed to toss a trio of counter-attacking blasts their way.
"You are all so obnoxious!" Dolly growled, her body slamming into the ground as Wu slammed his foot onto the forest ground right beside her, the Void Domain completely engulfing her body and shutting everything down, "Get off me!"
"It's all going to be okay..." Wu said, reaching his finger towards Dolly's forehead when suddenly, the entire forest rocked before a massive blast of air accompanied with trees, rocks, and splinters of wood rushed towards them like a flood of biblical proportions.
"Wu!" Lera shouted as Wu instantly switched over his Void Domain to the shields before the blast slammed into him. He felt the embrace of Lera moments before their bodies were slammed into one another’s, and they held onto each other tightly as the onslaught continued.
With layers upon layers of Bubble bubble surrounding their body, they endured.
"What the hell is that..." Wu asked, glancing beyond the bubble as the earth continued rolling over them.
"You okay?" Lera asked, her fingers digging through his armour as he nodded. Cuddling is always nice, but probably less so when the literal earth is flowing over their heads.
It felt like an eternity before everything finally settled down around them, and Wu pushed through the new sediments over their head before pulling Lera up beside him. There was a track in the dirt where Dolly was standing, and she somehow managed to blast her way out of here in the midst of the flood of rocks and soil.
If the crater Dolly created with her attacks made the One-Shotter's blasts felt like puffs of air, then this blast was what made Dolly's attacks felt like a sneeze. On his world, there is always a bigger fish, and on this one, there is always a stronger attack.
The forest around them had been completely replaced by the landscape of a flood plain, and standing in the origin of it all was a pair of individuals with their bodies coated in Wave armors of distinctive colors.
Standing to the left was a bold girl with caramel skin and a crimson-black Wave armour and a pair of blood-red horns over her head. Right across from him, a bold man with equally red eyes and a pink beard who actually looked skinnier than the girl did. However, if the outcomes of their clash were anything to go by, their strength was easily matched.
"COME ON!" Fatera yelled out, her fists grazing the ground as she nearly collapsed forward, "I am just getting started!"
"You are awesome!!!" Ajax Hawks, the big brother of Dolly Hawks, stood tall and gave Fatera a big thumbs up, "You are as strong as you looked at Winter Wars! Awesome!"
"No..." Fatera shook her head, when she suddenly caught the presence of Lera far out in the distance, "I have grown stronger..."