Chapter 134 :

Episode 27 : Back in Action (8)

As one may wonder why I didn't use other skills to destroy this tree right in front of me, it was because this tree is awfully special.

‘It is a tree of life after all.’ I nodded my head as I was casually standing and rotting the tree.

Fire is an element that will definitely be effective against plants, but this tree will be revived by itself. Because again, it's the tree of life.

Currently in my knowledge, the only thing that would damage the tree is nature's life cycle. All plants will rot to death which means that this tree of life just needed to be withered away.

That was why I used ‘Wither Storm’ to deal with the tree of life. nonetheless, it was just my speculation since I didn't expect it to work for real.

In any case, if i were to kill the tree this way, it would definitely take longer than a day or more than that.

And for that reason..

"Adam, Eve and HwanGi-ssi.." I called out to them who were beside me, defending me carefully.

Be that as it may, I pondered if they could protect more.. of me.

"Do your best." I smirked at them before doing something that would put them at a struggle for my safety.

[Imitation of ‘Clone’ Lv. 3 has activated.]

[Imitation of ‘Extraordinary Multitasking’ Lv. 3 has activated.]

Tons and tons of versions of me had already been deployed to surround the whole tree. And by the time Adam, Eve and HwanGi took notice of it, I was long indistinguishable from the bunch of me.

———

[See. This is why I find him to be absolutely annoying.] Irritated, Adam spoke to Eve.

Eventually, HwanGi glanced at the endless JoonChul in this area, finding plenty of them slamming their arms into the tree in one spontaneous moment.

Not only that, once they used ‘Wither Storm’ at the exact time, the tree of life shook abruptly, forcing an earthquake to occur as if the tree was screeching for its life.

Fazed, HwanGi stared wide-eyed at the trembling tree while standing upright on a vibrating ground.

At that moment, Eve sighed while staggering. [Yeah.. Now I understand you, Adam.]

"What should we do?" HwanGi asked those two despite him already knowing what to do by himself.

..Since HwanGi was quite curious about what these people's thoughts were in this situation.

[What's else?] Adam, walking past HwanGi, was looking in one direction.

In his eyesight, there were boundless leftovers attacks that were slowly advancing this way.

Even if Frostina and Raiden were battling against Ruby and Sapphire, it wouldn't be a guess to say that they wouldn't manage to keep some of the attacks from going past them.

[We'll protect him.] Adam uttered as he stretched his arm forward to those ice shards and fireworks' flame.

Whoosh!!

[..? Huh?]

When Adam was preparing himself to unleash his power to blast away those projectiles, he was instantly stunned by what was in his viewpoint.

As if he was slow at defending, a gale spiralled out of control which forced a tornado to originate in front of Adam, moreover, it was a fire twister of white flame being spawned in by someone.

[Who..?] Adam murmured.

As though he sensed it could be someone behind him, Adam swiftly averted his eyes, noticing HwanGi pointing his blade at Adam.

No, it may seem that way, but Adam knew that it was just HwanGi spawning in the tornado by raising his flame coated sword.

In no time, Adam narrowed his gaze at HwanGi, glaring at him because it looked like HwanGi was trying to steal Adam's spotlight.

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[I could have dealt with it easily.]

"Oh? Were you planning to do that earlier? I'm sorry for not realizing." HwanGi apologized while sheathing his sword.

[...]

[Oh my.. Hahaha.] Eve giggled in the background when she witnessed the whole thing.

Bothered, Adam directed his dagger eyes at the naive Eve, calling to her with a vexing tone. [Eve..]

"Incoming!"

In an instance after warning them, HwanGi dashed to his front, pulling out his unsheathed sword in a matter of seconds.

In that moment, HwanGi immediately knew that he shouldn't engulf his sword with fire like he used to, because it wouldn't do anything to the situation ahead of him.

"This time, I'll—!"

CRASH!

In a blink of an eye, a whirlpool against a monstrous fireball was colliding upon one another.

HwanGi who had come into a decision to flow his skill, ‘Wave Vortex’ around his sword, was now channeling all his strength to distinguish the fireball in his sight.

Burning like passion, the fireball continued on burning unwieldy without being put out by HwanGi’s ‘Wave Vortex’. Despite this, HwanGi didn't withdraw from how much the fireball was forcibly pushing him back from his spot.

"Urgh!!" HwanGi groaned.

Nevertheless, the fireball must be put to a stop, and that was what Adam and Eve thought, including the others.

Swish!

Excluding Mirai and Mya, Louis had jumped in to give HwanGi a helping hand, firing his ‘Marine Javelin’ at the fireball to somehow decrease its flame.

"Why didn't you ask for help?" Careless, Louis asked HwanGi who was dealing the full brunt of the fireball.

HwanGi let out a groan. "Now isn't the right time for that."

"Or is it?"

A voice that wasn't Louis, was appearing beside HwanGi. Upon trying to figure out who it was, HwanGi perceived a touch from his hand that was grasping his weapon.

A hand that was chilly, was resting on HwanGi's hand. And as though the chilliness was too cold, the water surrounding HwanGi's sword soon turned to that of ice and snow.

[Combinations of ‘Wave Vortex’ Lv. 3 and ‘Cryokinesis’ Lv. ??? had turned into ‘Cryo-Gyre’ Lv. 3!]

The wave that wasn't even enough to bring a stop to the gigantic fireball, was slowly but surely becoming stronger and stronger because it had changed to a snow whirlpool.

HwanGi quickly uttered. "Thanks!"

As time was passing seconds by seconds, the huge fireball had soon vanished from being submerged in a snowy vortex, and at that time, HwanGi was able to take a breather from having to stand by a flaming hot ball without anything to cool him down.

Sweats building up a lot more than expected, HwanGi staggered backward as he wiped his sweat before suddenly getting blown with a cold wind.

The sweats did dry out, but now HwanGi was now extremely chilly from this unexpected air. While shifting his glance at Noel, HwanGi spotted Crystal blowing air toward his direction.

"No more, please." HwanGi slightly trembled.

Even with the fire emblem on, Crystal's chilly air was enough to make HwanGi quiver.

"Ooh~ Are you sensitive to the cold, HwanGi?" After she spoke, Alaine slowly walked toward HwanGi, not understanding how chilly Crystal's cold breeze was.

Sooner or later, she regretted what she said and how she just moved to the cold air.

"Yee!?"

In the end, she was already shaking from the chilliness as she tried to cover herself to shield from the cold.

"O-Okay.. N-N-Never mind.. th-his is f-freaking c-c-cold as heck!" Alaine cried out with her arms wrapping around her body.

Quickly, Alaine told Crystal. "Stop! Stop it already!"

"Pfft." HwanGi chuckled casually, even though he was decreasing in temperature because of this wind.

———

After some time, Ruby finally had enough of this, even Sapphire was showing signs of it.

"For heaven's sake, you guys are getting annoying!!" Ruby shouted after dodging Frostina's vast ice in different shapes of weapons.

A sword, a dagger, a spear, etc. They were being shot toward Ruby multiple times that she grew tired of it. But if she were to attack Frostina, Ruby would definitely get frozen by Frostina.

Even if Ruby's hotness could melt the ice, it would take a second to unfreeze herself which would clearly allow Frostina a window of opportunities.

How did Ruby know that? Well..

‘This hurts so bad..’ Ruby moaned after she faltered in the air, seeming like she was losing control of her wings.

As clear as it may be, Ruby had already experienced the reason why she didn't want to give Frostina a chance.

It was during when Ruby was charging up her fireball to destroy Frostina in one go, flying rapidly fast to slam her fireballs into Frostina's face.

That was when Ruby was suddenly whipped to the wing by Frostina's whip which resulted in the fireball to be fired to another area.

It allowed Frostina time to damage Ruby's wings more severely and dodged the fireball without difficulties.

Anyways, Ruby denied her failure to defeat Frostina. ‘That was just pure luck though!’

"Sapphire! Can't we just get this over with already?!" Ruby exclaimed while tossing hand sized balls of flame toward Frostina.

By then, Sapphire was gliding through the air before she was responding back to Ruby. "But you must not kill them."

"What the freak!? They will harm the tree!"

"I can't let you since I know you only wanted to fight them in the first place."

In spite of Sapphire getting surrounded with thunderbolts because of Raiden, she still had time to glare at Ruby and had a conversation with her.

"Oh come on!"

Ruby grumbled before spawning in a lot of fire spears and firing them toward Sapphire to get rid of Raiden's thunderbolts.

Boom! Bang!!

"But I'll handle them myself."

Afterwards, Sapphire had backed off from Raiden and had arrived swiftly behind Ruby, gathering her might to summon something that could give a halt to this pointless fight.

"Keep them busy." Sapphire informed.

It went without saying that it was still Ruby's turn to keep Sapphire safe while she was preparing.

..But all of the sudden, Ruby sensed her body getting goosebumps by the seconds as if her instinct was telling her to tilt her head before it got cut off.

WHOOSH!

Ruby exclaimed out loud. "Look out!"

A black object piercing through the air at an unnoticeable rate, was being thrown by Raiden, soaring at an unbelievable speed with a devastating power circuiting around it.

Despite it being a split-second, Ruby managed to barely dodge it with Sapphire.

It was at that moment when Ruby pushed Sapphire away from the dangerous black thing that Ruby seemed to have realized something too late.

"A ca—!"

BOOM!

…The black object wasn't a thing, but a living feline!

Changing its direction by shooting explosions, the cat had gone toward Ruby at high speed. Not once did it lend Ruby time to change her course of action which led her to be forced into defense.

CLAP!

Behemoth, the cat was viciously slicing away at his opponent in this very moment, dominating his way toward Ruby's useless defense.

"Meow! Mrow!"

Not understanding what the cat was saying, Ruby just assumed it was belittling her for her poor defense. Because she didn't have time to set up her flaming shield, her defense was ironically lacking in defense.

"You stinking cat!" Ruby grunted until she unexpectedly felt a chill down her spine.

"I'm ready." Sapphire spoke.

"Right back at yah."

"...?!"

…The one who just responded to Sapphire's words, wasn't Ruby nor the opponents they were facing.

"It can't be!" Gasped in shock, Ruby and Sapphire cried out.

Their glances fixed on the one who uttered that last sentence, landing on one person who that voice belonged to. Before they could even figure it out, their eyes went tremendously wide to witness their failure.

"The tree!!" Ruby and Sapphire cried out before stopping whatever they were doing.

As a result of witnessing the tree turning to bits and dusts, Sapphire and Ruby immediately went ahead to restore the tree in any ways they could.

…But how could they actually do that when their powers are that of ice and fire?

..What could their effective elements do for this nature element tree? Completely nothing..

And they both knew that..

"Holy crap.."

Ruby with her hands covering her face to hide away some of her dreadful expression, could only gaze upon this holy tree being reaped of its gracious life.

"..."

Accompanied with Ruby's astonishment, Sapphire felt immense disappointment and appalled by her duty of not managing to keep a single tree alive.

Her expression that described her defeat and failure, was on her pale face as she uttered with contempt. "I failed.."

During this moment of watching the tree dying in front of them, Ruby and Sapphire felt a sense of powerlessness and were at a loss of word at their jobs.

What are they if they can't protect the mythical tree of life? Are they even worthy to be ‘Helpers’ at all? Questions like that flooded their helpless minds..

..And to fail because some mere humans were their opponents, caused Ruby's and Sapphire's blood to boil to the brim.

"Curse… YOU!!!"