Ventus's face was ugly as he frowned with a grim expression in his face.

"If I carelessly try to take the flower by force I will be turned into cheese by those spikes," he sighed, "A hands-on approach won't work since that will put me in danger and most likely I won't survive if I am attacked like I just was."

He retreated into the periphery of the cactus field and began to brainstorm. The first idea he had was to make an armor completely built of the same golden sand he constructed, but he immediately discarded that. Pulling off that feat would take too much mana, so much in fact that he calculated to make a solid set of armor simply of that golden sand would require at least five times the mana his body could currently hold.

And also, there was a second issue. Even if he did successfully construct the armor, he could not maintain it for long, at best, with his current mana levels, he could withstand maintaining the sand armor for only one minute. That time frame would never be enough to get the flower and get out of the flower field safely.

He then pondered over a second idea, grabbing the flower using a ranged attack. That could, in theory, allow him to grab the flower and retreat safely without sustaining any more damage to himself. But how would he do something that could resist the spike attack without crumbling and last long enough to safely bring him the flower back? He thought of throwing his board towards the flower and mold it in mid-air, but, he immediately threw off that idea as he wasn't proficient enough in the practice of the terra control technique to manipulate the earth at a distance, at his current level he absolutely had to have contact with whatever he was manipulating or a previously established mana thread connection just like he had done with the sandboard.

As his thought raced he unconsciously started walking in circles around the flower field and after several minutes his shoes were thoroughly covered in the soft earth he had removed earlier to reveal the metallic roots making them somewhat slippery as he kept walking in the medium. And, as physics and fate would have it, Ventus didn't take too long after that to slip and fall.

"WHAT THE!?"

Before he could finish his phrase he crashed face first in the dark brown soft earth and filled his mouth with the thing. He stood up instantly and started coughing, spitting and cursing.

"Just what I needed! Not only am I stuck here unable to take the damn flower, but now I fall and almost swallow this damned dirt!"

As he kept spitting and trying to get the dirt taste off his mouth an idea took over his mind.

"This dirt! Of course!"

He grinned widely and began to run around the flower field gathering all the dirt into a single spot so that he could manipulate it with ease. After he finished he saw that he had collected a ten-meter tall mound of earth. He figured that he could use this dirt as material to build an armor for himself, but since it was too soft he discarded the idea since this would not allow him to move properly, If he increased the thickness of the armor he wouldn't be able to move properly, so he instead decided to make a massive external armor for himself since he had so much material to work with, and to his luck, this dirt required little mana to work with and was especially malleable. That way he could move, grab the flower and return all whilst being protected by many layers of earth that he planned to build into his dirt external armor.

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He then created several dozens of mana threads and connected in various spots of the dirt pile, the connection with the material once finished, Ventus began to work. He pumped massive amounts of mana into the dirt, so much so that at some point the earth began to faintly glow with a semi-transparent white aura. Ventus ended spending 80% of his total mana in the infusion process.

One had to know that previously he had used the roughly the same amount to condense his sandboard, though merely two meters of it. That spoke loads about the value of the golden sand, being at least five times more valuable and demanding than the dirt. But that didn't mean the brown earth was worthless, rather, it was extremely useful to Ventus at the moment, and thus, held an extremely high value in his mind.

He molded and manipulated for several minutes. The result was astounding, Ventus had made a complete five-meter long exact replica of the silver sand poison dragon he had seen earlier, it looked resilient and mighty, though not as impressive as the real deal. Perhaps if he had made it out of the golden sand, that would certainly even more astonishing than the real beast.

He then climbed onto the earth beast fusing with it in the process. Right now he was inside the beast's body and could see using the mouth hole he had especially created.

"hehe..I wanna see now how you'll stop me!" he grinned cheerfully.

"Dirt Dragon..." He commanded, "CHARGE!!!!"

The beast moved its body and shot rapidly towards the corona cactus. Since it was such a massive body Ventus couldn't avoid hitting other plants in the way and damaging them, and as if he had triggered the ire of the plants, they fired their spikes at him. He heard several pressurized firing noises, but none of that mattered as the dirt dragon armor was holding it all perfectly fine.

Ventus laughed loudly without a care in the world as he rapidly advanced through the field.

"I'm INVINCIBLE!!"

At that moment a thought of absolute power and what it could be was born in his mind, maybe, he figured, having an absolute defense would be best, after all, if he couldn't be harmed, he could win battles by tiring his opponents to death. He grinned maliciously at this thought.

A few moments and thousands of spikes fired later, Ventus finally arrived before the flower. He molded his sandboard and created a thick golden pair of sand gauntlets for his arms, he wouldn't commit the same mistake of leaving them exposed to a surprise spike attack. He stretched his arms out of the snakes mouth and gently placed them around the flower.

As he did the fire rating increased massively and the dirt armor showed signs of cracking, Ventus got worried but resolutely pressed on. He pulled his arms back swiftly with a firm hold on the flower and pulled it out completely unscathed.

At this point, the plants seemed to be furious as they began to fire tens of thousands of spikes in seconds.

"Not Good!" He grimaced.

He willed the dirt dragon to turn around and slither away. The fire only increased and Ventus began to feel that the entire structure was collapsing, the dirt dragon was cracking and some external pieces began to fall off as he desperately pumped mana into it so that he could escape death. His heart was beating madly whilst his brain raced and his mana almost ignited.

"Come on, just a bit longer, please, hold on!" he begged.

Sweat covered his body as he madly dashed, in a few instants that felt like an eternity he crossed the whole flower field and escaped the spike trap. The second he left the radius of the flower field the firing stopped. Ventus exhaled heavily as not even a second had passed after the attacks had stopped, the dirt dragon broke apart and collapsed. Ventus sat down in the golden sand gasping for air.

"Damn...I...did it...I got....the flower!" He laughed, "Stupid...task....F*cking stupid...rules...why give us...such a hard challenge..."

He grumbled for a bit, but very soon a satisfied smile bloomed on his face as he celebrated his victory whilst curiously looking at the flower he had just obtained.

"What precisely is so precious about this thing? Why make me face certain death to obtain just a stupid flower?"