Tesilim was yet again surprised at the power of his boosted spell. He had expected the elemental to be stopped for a few seconds at best, not be frozen completely. Either way, he couldn’t stare for too long and reached into his bag, taking out the blue-ish mana potion and chugged it as he dismissed the notification.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning! Chaos Event Imminent, prepare yourself.
Rolling d20. 11. Rolling d6. 2. Rolling d6. 3. Rolling d6. 1.
🔷
“Tesilim any notification telling you about what's happening?” Tesilim heard Alyx say in his mind.
“No, but it should be fine.”
“How do you figure that?” Rose questioned.
“Because my vision is turning red, so I am assuming that's what's happening.”
“What!? Are you okay? Can you still see?” Jasmine asked with worry.
“Yeah, I can see. It's just that everything is in shades of red. It's bizarre.”
“Any chance you know how long it will last?” Lili asked.
“Not sure, didn’t tell me. Either way, it's fine. I can still fight; it will just be weird.”
“That's good to know. I was worried our fight would get interrupted by something crazy. Anyway, it looks like the elemental is starting to defrost. Wait for it to unfreeze a bit more so the rest of us can regenerate some more mana. Once it's done, we want to ramp up our damage some more, but be careful; it will be a much tougher fight without our previous rhythm.” Alyx said via telepathy, but no one responded as they began preparing.
Tesilim felt his soul churn as the liquid he drank never made it to his stomach; instead, it dissolved into an ethereal mist that entered his soul realm. The mist was absorbed by his soul as if it was mana, except after it was absorbed, Tesilim felt a tug as his soul was placed in overdrive. The feeling was like your heart thumping in your chest after taking an energy drink.
Now in overdrive, he could feel how his soul brought in more mana and questioned if the process was permanent. After all, mana intake only increased as people grew in power to meet the demands they placed on themselves. Even then, Tesilim was skeptical as it seemed too good to be true and figured that the boost was just induced and would stop working via some magical nonsense. Not like it mattered since it was doing its job.
With that in mind, Tesilim watched as the ice encasing the elemental began to steam, and he restarted his body enhancement, having dropped it after he had seen the elemental freeze over. It hadn’t been the best idea, but his normal arcane mana had been a bit more than halfway gone, and he wanted to reserve it as much as possible. Thankfully, he had barely used his pure mana, and the potion had helped him recover a little over halfway of his normal mana. Even more helpful than the potion had been his daggers, which helped him dodge the elemental easily without using his teleportation spell or spending more mana on his enhancement. Sadly, or really expectedly, the item had only a quarter of its mana left after being used so much. That particular issue worried Tesilim since it was obvious the fight was about to get much harder, and he wasn’t sure how long he would last without the daggers.
Rose had already taken her potion and was now a dozen feet from the elemental. She was doing okay with her mana, and after the potion began to do its job, her soul was only down about a quarter of her total. There were two reasons why Rose had so much mana left. The main one was because she was fighting in a group, which allowed her to conserve resources by not taking as many risks.
However, the other reason was that she was keeping herself in check. Sure, she got a swing in every so often, but she didn’t put much power into them, which meant her total mana usage was used for defensive purposes. This meant she used less of the mana since Sol’s mana was very much aligned with the concept of protection and defense, making it so magic that involving those concepts was more powerful and efficient.
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Naturally, as a trade-off, her body burned, but not too much, since she was still diluting the small portions of godly mana she used, so it never got to the point where it would make her feel like her entire body was on fire. Sadly, she knew that burning feeling would come soon since it was clear that the fight was about to reach a new peak. The elemental had appeared rather confident of its win. However, after getting blasted by Tesilim’s magic, Rose doubted it would continue to hold back. On that note, it was the first time Rose was genuinely impressed by how much power the elf’s Chaos Mana could dish out, and she actually thought the random events might be worth the firepower.
Jasmine felt like her whole body was on fire, even with her adrenaline pumping through her body. The reason why her body felt like it was on fire was because she had been keeping her reserve of ambient mana as high as possible, only diluting her godly mana in just the smallest fraction.
The reason why she had barely used her ambient mana was because that was her limiter. She could have as much godly mana as she wanted, but her ambient pool was limited and not so easily replenishable, at least not in the middle of a fight. So, she kept everything going, even her enhancement, with as little normal mana as possible. Even then, her ambient mana was now halfway gone, and she was beginning to worry about the fight.
Alyx was so glad he was who he was because it meant that his mana was full. It didn’t take long, especially with a potion, to refill his soul. Not only did his blessing from the goddess of magic make his soul regenerate mana faster, but his presence also gave him a boost in that regard when infused with his will. So, Alyx watched, fully ready to sling spells, as the elemental defrosted, and his party members all began getting ready to resume the fight.
They had all released their enhancements in order to conserve mana, something Alyx didn’t blame them for, but now they all slowly brought them back, increasing their enhancement strength as the elemental steamed more and more.
Lili watched as Jasmine’s body once again began to glow silver, slowly building up to the previous intensity. Meanwhile, Rose, who had kept her own enhancement relatively calm aside from when she went in, was finally starting to put more mana into it as her golden glow increased vibrancy. She felt all of this since her senses were stretched out, and her will was infused into her presence. She had done so in order to check on the elemental, which, as she expected, had finally pushed itself to its full power and was simply building momentum.
As she retracted her presence, she noticed Alyx had his shield up instead of his enhancement, something she questioned but didn’t actually say anything about. The gnome knew what he was doing, and knowing who his patrons were, she knew he was doing just fine in the mana department. Finally, even if she already suspected that they knew, Lili warned everyone so they knew about the boost in power the elemental had achieved as it reached its peak.
“Guys, I scanned the elemental, and its displayed power has finally reached its actual rank. So, get ready because it's building up power for something. I suggest we get behind some trees.”
Hearing Lili in their heads, they all followed her suggestion. Tesilim ran to Drex and informed the drake of the situation. Then they both got behind trees, their heads poking out as the steam rising from the elemental reached a new level, completely obscuring its form that still lay on the ground.
Only a few seconds after everyone began looking at the elemental, the steam was cleared off by a blast that sent small shards of ice shattering against the trees. Once the steam had fully dispersed, the party finally saw the cheese elemental again, except now its appearance had changed.
For one, it had reduced in size by about half. Before, it had been a ten-foot-tall tornado, its top maybe two feet wide. Now however, it no longer spun like a tornado and was half the size, its shape instead becoming more triangular as a whirlwind dome of cheese bits spun around it. Additionally, the pepperoni and mushrooms that had once been on its previous blob body had resurfaced, but only on the cheese parts of its body, because now, it looked more like a slice of pizza, even having a thin slice of crust at its top.
Everyone watched as the slice of pizza floated in place, the dirt and small detritus around it being whipped above by the wind force of its spinning cheese dome.
The elemental stood there for a second as the party watched until, finally, something seemed to trigger it, and the dome of cheese began to unleash tiny droplets of cheese as if it were an omnidirectional cheese machine gun.
Even more alarming was that the cheese was just as hot as before, melting into rock and trees without issue. More importantly, the nearby area was quickly being filled with cheese, which would make the entire area a hazard to fight on.
It was obvious to the team that they needed to deal with this thing fast but were worried about actually being able to dodge the constant barrage of super-heated cheese.
Lili realized this and spoke up in their minds.
“Get ready. I will go in and interrupt its rain of cheese. Once I do, make sure you hit with all you got.”
Then she boosted her enhancement to the highest level she could while imbuing it with a different aspect of her destructive nature, her skin beginning to flutter with lilac lightning fire.