“You were controlled differently than the rest of the Valkyries.” Wu added, following Alina out by as the crowds of partially transformed turned towards her. Sensing her presence in the Wave, all of their attention were quickly drawn towards the one with the most threatening aura, “it seemed that you were special…you were chosen.”

Alina smiled lightly appreciatively as she ignored the partially transformed around her, and none of them dared move a step as she walked past. Even Wu felt a sense of pressure from her as his suit reacted to her influence on the Wave and started heating up slowly.

“Chosen to be his favorite toy?”

“Chosen to be the one to save all of Talonia.” Wu said, “all of these people here, and all of those out there…they need you.”

Alina glanced towards Wu before smiling and nodding appreciatively.

“Did you ever reach Dominance mode?” Icy asked, walking besides Alina with a surprising lightness on her feet as Ita tried to keep up with Wu from behind.”

“No.” Alina sighed, “Wasn’t really that close.”

“You know what the secret is?” Icy smirked, “Some of my…friends back at the Academy got there in the end.”

“What? Being angry?” Alina launched herself up like a rocket as Wave poured out from within her, and Icy followed after her with a rising column of ice.

“No. Being desperate.”

“Oh…trust me. I am desperate.

Alina glanced at her briefly before a brief smile flashed over her face, “It’s true though. You can attain strength through many means…despite what he would want me to believe, and I haven’t felt like this in a long time…”

“Don’t run too far ahead!” Wu added, coming from the side with his feet blasting off the ground before he flew in a curve through the air, “You two should coordinate to attack Caligo head on! I will go support Lera!”

“I don’t need your support!” Lera said, still holding out in her shield bubble when Wu dunked down onto the ground near her, his gloves rapidly spinning and creating crater-making blasts at point blank range to knock the surrounding soldiers off the rooftop.

Caligo had already returned to the middle of the sphere at this point, and he maintained his body in the air as Icy and Alina charged straight at him.

With the last soldiers kicked down from around her, Wu then stepped through Lera’s shields before giving her a quick kiss on the forehead while she relaxed and leaned into his embrace.

“Still don’t need my support?” Wu smirked, picking her up and blasting off the ground while grabbing into her buttocks for the sake of security.

“You are really cheeky, you know that?” Lera said, focusing on her book of Casts, “We need to sever the connections from the Valkyries to the central orb!”

“Did Void domain not work?” Wu asked, letting Lera conjure up a chariot before he projected his Void domain laser forward, slicing up the dark lines of Wave that looked like ribbons from hell before they rejoined immediately with the Cast after the orbs passed by, “Huh?!”

“It’s…a self-healing Cast of some sort.” Lera added, “One that will need to be fundamentally uprooted and destroyed, not simply disrupted. Void domain is nothing but a temporary measure!”

“What are you saying…” Icy asked from the other side.

“She’s saying the Valkyries that this Cast was connected to needs to be destroyed.” Alina said coldly as she stared straight into Caligo that enveloped himself completely within the middle of the orb, “…Thanks for telling me this.”

“There must be another way!” Wu looked towards Lera, who shook her head slowly.

“I…had tried to lift up the basis of the Cast off the ground through my Cast array so it’s effective range is outside of the level of the city, but those Valkyries were acting like anchors for the Cast…I am not strong enough to move them along too…” Lera said, clenching her fist.

“Icy.” Alina said, her hands digging into the rising column besides her as Icy slowed her ascent through the air, “Knowing Caligo, the orb itself will be fortified to the utmost extreme.”

“I had always looked forward to giving him the full force of my blasts.” Icy said, “If you are too slow to return, I might crack it open before you.”

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“We will help you.” Wu said, “We can combine to disrupt Caligo and buy Alina as much time as she needed!”

“Sounds good to me.” Icy nodded, creating a branching ice column that picked up Wu and Lera before conjuring up a wide platform covered in snow for them to stand on together just underneath the floating red orb.

As the trio approached the red orb, Caligo glanced down at them through the crimson semi-transparency before he chuckled coldly and projected his voice straight through it.

“And so you have come.” Caligo said, his entire body bathed in the red light as he reached a hand into the surface of the orb, “Foolish as you are, you have come to stop the inevitability.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not a future that’s worth it.” Wu said, “Look around you! That’s your kingdom that you are destroying!”

“No. It’s the capital that I am transforming, that I am saving.” Caligo said, carving out a smaller chunk of red flesh from the orb before pressing it slowly into his chest, “Without destruction, there is no rebirth. Without sacrifice, there is no glory. This country had always needed its protectors, and it’s been clear that the Valkyries program had become insufficient for its purpose in this day and age. Therefore, we needed something else, something far more elegant, efficient, and unwavering.

“Remember, Fang city is only a small fraction of the entirety of Talonia, Icy. I recall that you weren’t exactly a Fang city native too?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Icy said, her hands swirling with power as a whirlwind started forming from around the surface of the Orb, “You are going to pay for what you have done to this kingdom.”

“You can try.” Caligo reached his hand through the orb’s membrane before he crawled himself out from it, his body rapidly darkening in color the moment he came in contact with the outside world. Red fluids started bubbling from underneath his skin, and dark fleshy movements filled his entire body.

“So…this is how it feels…” He murmured, as Lera and Icy both stumbled back and grabbed onto their heads simultaneously as the disgusting presence in the Wave overloaded their Wave sensing abilities immediately, “The power of one hundred beings condensed into one…”

“What have you done?!” Wu asked, creating shields around Lera and Icy, but the shield melted the instant they were formed as a further wave of pressure exploded out with Caligo as the origin.

“The Gate of Transformation siphons the Wave from the user’s soul and gives it a demonic twist. Like adding a drop of black ink to the tub of white paint. Just enough of a shift to unlock new levels of power, yet not enough for one to be entirely consumed.” Caligo explained casually as a large bubble formed from his stomach before it popped and exploded, “a perfect dose of the devil, a sight to behold in the history of Wave research!”

As Wu squinted to see him from this far away, there was thankfully no blood at all, as the parts of his body simply reformed around him.

“Ah…the settling stage after the acclimatization…” Caligo murmured, recalling the steps of the transformation that he had noted down from his preliminary experiments. He glanced down towards his feet as his mist manifests slowly started to fold in his new layers of power.

Sensing a rapidly approaching attack, Caligo looked up as a fast traveling orb of Wave rocketed towards him, its size so large that its bottom scraped along the snowy icy surface and created jets of steam on either side.

At that moment, it was the strongest attack that Wu could muster that doesn’t rely on the Void domain. Caligo tilted his head slightly before reaching forward, his hands dispersing into a web of blood and air before it reshaped itself and caught onto the Wave orb like a baseball glove from hell. Then, the size of the orb continued to shrink further and further until it became completely absorbed into Caligo’s body.

“That’s…OP?.” Wu blinked a few times as more smaller projectiles whizzed through the air before it clashed against Caligo’s body. However, all of them passed straight through him initially before they whirled back and exploded around his back.

He was knocked forward intially by the explosions before the blast waves actually turned black and imploded as chunks of his flesh became torn off at the back. He roared out in pain as he clawed along the ground when Wu powered down his suit as his skin started to burn.

“What…was that?” Lera asked, pointing at the spinning orbs around Wu’s body that he recreated and fired off immediately.

“Void domain homing missiles.” Wu smiled, “It was easy to do a reverse of the Anti-Void domain homing missile.”

“Well..thanks to that, he had loosened his grip on the local Wave…but I have never felt anything like that before…” Lera said, “Not when Kaire Jinn first used her Dominance mode, not when Fatera first unlocked hers…”

“Not even when Bez Aro first showed his power at Winter Wars before…” Icy said, “He’s literally a half-demon, and yet…”

“This felt far worse.” Lera agreed, “He’s out of control. We need to stop them, together.”

“Well,” Wu looked towards Icy and Lera before clapping his hands together, “Then, let’s stomp him together then.”

“Neat trick, little man.” Caligo said, slowly pressing himself off the ground as the blown off pieces of flesh slowly started reassembling around his back before he suddenly grew in size, expanding outwards until he towered over the three of them, “Now…you will be crushed like the ants that you are, with the true power of the demonic dimension!”

“Scatter!” Icy said, and Wu, Lera, and Icy all dashed in different directions with Lera laying out her cast Array underneath the ice platform, Wu continuing to fire off his Void domain homing missiles and Icy controlling her Perfect Synchrony before conjuring and slamming down massive columns of ice from above Caligo’s head.

However, he was undeterred, and a single slam of his fists shook the entire platform.

“He’s connected to the orb still!” Wu shouted, flying overhead and resisting the rapid acceleration from the sharp turns from shoving his head down. He projected his Void Domain forward and surrounded the entirety of the orbs, cutting off Caligo’s connection to it while Lera wrapped massive vines around the giant’s legs.

In the meanwhile, Icy twirled her fingers as her eyes glowed bright blue, “Nifelheim Devastation!”

“Meager resistances…” Caligo’s rumbling voice murmured, “TALONIA! COME TO ME!”

That roar rocked the entire floating platform as more of the cracks starting forming along the surface. However, Lera immediately redirected parts of her attention towards stabilizing the platform as the dark red ribbon like Wave lines redirected themselves, connecting instead directly to Caligo’s gigantic body as the raw Wave from an entire city became pumped into his body.

His body grew ever larger, and so does the rings of light around the city’s bounds as it sweeps upward, siphoning Wave away from the citizens that couldn’t get to higher ground in time before running them through the bodies of the Valkyries as conduits and concentrating around Caligo’s body.

“You severed the orb, little man, and now…the Wave will not return to the bodies of those that had it taken from!” Caligo said, turning around his head and glancing at Wu, “With your acts of resistance, you had just destroyed their future by yourself!”

“Don’t listen to him!” Icy warned sharply, bathing Caligo’s body in her ruthless bombardment of Nifelheim Devastation, but any damage Caligo suffered was immediately recovered through the seemingly endless supplies of Wave.

“Shit!” Wu panicked slightly as the panicked screams and shouts of Fang city sounded clearer and louder to him with every passing second.

What should he do?! Should he hold his ground at keeping the entire city from being transformed, or should he redirect his attention towards Caligo?!

“Shit shit shit!” Wu cursed, “Alina! We need you to sever the red lines! Now!”