“Uh… oops.” Shuxue groaned. “Looks like we’re switching to Plan B, Zhujiao. Abort the mission!”

He grabbed Zhujiao and began vigorously shaking his body. “Abort! Abort! We need to abort, Zhujiao!”

Zhujiao was struggling not to choke on the water flowing into his respirator. “No, big bro…” He gasped. “We can’t teleport. Plot says if you wanted us to pull out of here, we should’ve done it sooner!”

“I should have known Plot doesn’t allow abortions!” Shuxue threw up his hands in exasperation. “Plan C, then. Kill them all!”

He punched out with his fist, shooting out a quadratics dragon. Like all other quadratics dragon, it grew in strength as it traveled in a straight line. Several watersnakes were smashed into a pulp when the quadratics dragon traveled out of the vortex and hit them.

The Golden Dragon’s eyes darkened with fury. “Seize them!” He howled. Instantly, the watersnakes began swimming into the vortex inside of which Shuxue and Zhujiao were trapped. Some were no more than ⅓ meter long, while others were 30 meters in length! The bigger the watersnake, the older it was, and the more dangerous it probably would be!

“Damn it, Zhujiao, charge up your factorial channeling equation faster.” Shuxue howled as he sent another 25 quadratics dragons roaring through the vortex.

“What is the meaning of this!” The Sphinx, emerging from his pyramid, bellowed. “Golden Dragon, how dare you create a disturbance during my unsecluded meditation!”

The Golden Dragon coiled around to look at the Sphinx. It was about to speak, then stopped, narrowing its eyes. “Your friends, the 2 humans, just infiltrated my palace! Can it be that you are here to sabotage my Sector!”

The watersnakes all gasped as they looked at the Sphinx.

“What! The Sphinx is a devious person?” A little watersnake asked, his whiskers trembling in shock.

“We’ve been betrayed!” A female watersnake nearly fainted. “Who would’ve thought an upstanding young Spirit like you would’ve done such a thing!”

“Feh, whatever! It’s time to overthrow your patriarchy, you shitty dragon!” The Sphinx jabbed a finger at the Golden Dragon, not even trying to deny his assertions. “You’ve oppressed your compatriots long enough! For social justice!”

The Sphinx was about to attack, but stopped when he saw a massive shadow fall over the buildings. From the top of the metal pillar, a monstrous creature with a body of bluish-green scales, red wings of a chicken, limbs of a tiger, and the shell of a turtle swam down. It was over 20 kilometers in radius, and its very movements caused typhoons to occur on the surface of the ocean, 100s of kilometers above.

“The 4-in-1 Mathematical Spirit!” The watersnakes shrieked and began kowtowing their heads against the waters. Some of them kowtowed so hard that they died.

“Sphinx…” Its ancient voice roiled the waters. “You are a mere 50-year-old Nascent Spirit. You actually want to antagonize me, the number two Spirit of the Weakest Plane?”

“That’s right!” The Sphinx laughed. “We revolutionaries are always a young bunch!”

The Golden Dragon stared at them darkly. “Very well, then. 4-in-1 Spirit, destroy the Sphinx’s Spiritseed!”

The Sphinx blanched. “Wait, you can’t do that! That violates the code of chivalry! I may not believe in masculine -”

All around them, illusory circles appeared, each one larger than the last. They were all emanating from the center of the 4-in-1 Spirit, and carried untold amounts of mathforce!

“Domain… the Domain that only mathematical lifeforms have!” The Watersnakes shrieked in excitement. “You guys are fucked now!”

Within the circles, giant funnels of water began to swirl around, forming typhoons that destroyed buildings and swept away watersnakes en masse.

“Feel the wrath of my domain! Parabolic Spiraling Dragon!” The 4-in-1 Spirit bellowed. A stream of water emanated from the 4-in-1 Spirit, circling around it and gaining in power as it did so. By the time it had spiraled around to strike the Sphinx’s pyramid, it seemed like an unstoppable force.

“Nooooooooo!” The Sphinx screamed. If his Spiritseed was destroyed, then he would be cut off from his mathforce supply! As a mathematical Spirit, he was made of mathforce, and would die without constant nourishment!

The pyramid suddenly disappeared, right before the jetstream slashed through it. The jetstream continued drawing progressively larger circles, and quickly disappeared from view.

Zhujiao popped up. “Just in time, big bro Sphinx! My interspatial forehead saves the day!”

The Sphinx stared at Zhujiao, and began laughing maniacally. “All right, 4-in-1 Spirit. It’s time for our true showdown! You’re not the only one with a mathematical domain!”

An illusory xy-grid appeared in front of the Sphinx. Rather than a domain that drew concentric circles around him, the Sphinx’s domain was two perpendicular lines, one which shot out in front of his feet into infinity, the other which went straight upwards, through the center of his head.

Shuxue, who was spectating the fight along with the millions of watersnakes, gawked at this new mathematical domain.

“The Sphinx…” Shuxue’s brain was working at top speed. “He uses the first quadrant of a Cartesian curve, making that strange grid formation, whereas the 4-in-1 Spirit is using the laws of Trigonometry to make polar curves! Too profound!”

The Sphinx looked straight up, his long hair fluttering in the water currents. A ball of mathforce shot out of his mouth, flying upwards and disappearing from view. The mathforce in between the ball and the bottom of the Sphinx’s domain began roiling madly. They surged upwards to join the ball, turning it into a huge sphere of destructive mathforce that began falling towards the top of the 4-in-1 Spirit!

The 4-in-1 Spirit looked up and bellowed, releasing Calculus mathforce that congealed to form a gargantuan dy/dx symbol that blocked the incoming ball. Mathforce blasted in all directions as the vast majority of the ball dissipated.

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Yet a sizable amount broke through to smash into the 4-in-1 Spirit’s body! Shuxue stared in confusion at the spectacle as the 4-in-1 Spirit reeled backwards in pain.

5,000!

“But… wasn’t derivative armor supposed to reduce all attacks to 0?” Shuxue didn’t understand. How had Zhujiao’s attacks, which numbered in the millions of points of mathforce, get completely blocked by Elder Yin’s derivative armor, while the Sphinx’s attack was able to bash through with a giant amount of mathforce remaining?

The Mathematical laws were truly profound. Perhaps derivative armor was not as infallible as Shuxue believed!

The 4-in-1 Spirit stared at the Sphinx in awe. “Attacks using the profound mysteries of the Integral! You are at the late Calculus stage?”

The Sphinx smirked. “That’s right, motherfucker!”

“You are truly advanced in your enlightenment of the mathematical laws!” The 4-in-1 Spirit roared. “But in the end, you are just a Nascent Spirit, while I am a Severed Spirit who’s lived for nearly 3,000,000 years! I have more durability and a higher mathforce pool. Let’s see who can truly win this battle!”

“You’ve been a middle Calculus and late Trigonometry stage expert for 3,000,000 years without making any breakthroughs?” The Sphinx snorted. “You’re fucking retarded! What kind of world do you live in, where you can be stuck at a bottleneck for 3,000,000 years? It’s like you’re asking to get raped by me, Sphinx! And because you’re a heteronormative male, it’s not rape if I rape you, so don’t think I won’t do it!”

The Golden Dragon swam up next to the 4-in-1 Spirit, releasing his own domain. A second set of concentric circles appeared, causing the entire ocean to be covered in vast, sweeping illusory circles.

“Subordinates, subdue the Sphinx’s companions!” The Golden Dragon shouted. “This is war!”

Shuxue snapped out of his thoughts, immediately shooting out quadratics dragons into his surroundings.

“Domains are the key!” He muttered, his eyes wild. “All this time, I’ve been unable to use Linear Algebra concepts as attacks! I have a feeling that only with a domain, can I use the multivariable attacks I’ve developed. Otherwise, they will just disappear off into the 4th dimension of the Tesseract!”

Domains granted Mathivators the utmost control over their attacks! Without a domain, a quadratics or arithmetic dragon could only move in a straight line in whichever direction Shuxue pointed his fist. But with a domain, they could perhaps become true, sentient attacks!

Shuxue was regretting not mathivating more in the past. If he was a mathematical lifeform that had a domain, his attacks, techniques, and research could become orders of magnitude more profound than before!

Illusory mathforce snakes shimmered into being, shooting out in strange circular arcs. The faint dy/dx symbols in the Sphinx’s skin glowed brightly as the illusory snakes battered into him. Blood poured into the waters as he coughed out blood, his eyes full of shock.

100!

31!

927!

0!

243!

A stream of damage numbers burst out, each serpent doing a seemingly random amount of damage.

“Hahaha!” The Golden Dragon roared with laughter. “Using Derivatives to defend against Trigonometry attacks is like urinating on an underwater forest fire to put it out. Even though by all logic it should work, it doesn't! You’d best roll over and die!”

Lines carved out a rose shape around him, madly sucking in the surrounding mathforce. The Golden Dragon was preparing another attack!

“Bah!” The Sphinx roared, sending out another ball of mathforce that curved through the waters towards the 4-in-1 Spirit.

Shuxue cursed as a quadratics dragon blasted halfway through a rose shield that a 10-meter long watersnake had conjured before dissipating. Mathforce bubbled up, slowly reforming the rose shield. Another 2 quadratics dragon smashed into the rose shield, breaking it apart and finally killing the watersnake.

3,290!

“These strange defenses use the laws of Trigonometry!” Shuxue fumed. “Their defenses are unpredictable and self-repairing. It’s completely unfair that someone can have a defense like that!”

Every watersnake required immense amounts of effort to slay. The Watersnake Clan was truly the number 1 mathematical beast clan in the Weakest Plane.

The laws of Trigonometry were extremely unfathomable and hard to predict. They could even penetrate straight through the derivative artifacts with seemingly no adverse effects, and their defenses could constantly regenerate. Breaking them was like beating back the waves on an ocean, a nearly impossible feat.

The Watersnakes, using the laws of Trigonometry, were similarly slippery and difficult. Shuxue felt that they had picked the wrong target this time.

Screams rang out from not far away as nearly 100 watersnakes were flattened into nothing.

362,880!

Zhujiao floated up, his green hair flying about wildly.

“It’s time… for the ultimate technique of me, Zhujiao!” Zhujiao shouted. Like that first time Shuxue had seen Zhujiao perform this technique, Zhujiao mimicked a throwing motion.

The water split apart, sending violent ripples surging out everywhere. Incredibly, a region with no water had formed! Like an ominous deity of death, this empty space smashed down on approximately 2,000 watersnakes. Shuxue watched as they were all crushed by the invisible force, becoming puddles of blood imprinted on the sea floor.

3,628,800!

The Golden Dragon whirled around, gawking at Zhujiao’s attack.