The first lightning bolt dropped towards the flagship of their fleet, and Tirto was ready with a barrier of water. He paid careful attention to make certain that the shell of water did not draw close to any part of the ship, as that connection could actually be used to slip through more easily. Instead, it was there to disperse the lightning as much as possible.
But of course, Morana knew what she was doing- either from prior knowledge or training with water element cultivators. She forced the attack through his barrier with minimal loss of spiritual energy, and it continued towards him and the ship… only to be stopped by Verusha, of course. A barrier of fire element was neither strong nor weak against lightning, so the two clashed on the merits of their power alone.
Morana was in the Ascending Soul Phase, so she had an advantage there- but she was also on the offense, attacking at range using a method other than her primary form of study. More importantly, Verusha was not alone. Tirto’s barrier had still absorbed some of the attack, and the crew supported her as well. The clan had long experience working with Tirto and Verusha, while the alliance of Morana and the other cultivators with her appeared more recent. Finally, defending against a long range attack was easier.
Neither Tirto nor Verusha would want to try to continuously take such attacks, but they could withstand a few- and the more spiritual energy they could get Morana to expend wastefully, the better.
“I’m out of taunts,” Tirto said.
“You literally only used one!” Verusha commented. “But whatever. Hey, Morana! Your windswept hair look isn’t as good as you think!”
“I can’t even make out her hair,” Tirto admitted.
Verusha shrugged. “Neither can I.”
The storm cloud grew ever more charged above Morana’s ship. A second strike was stronger than the first, and the third even more so. Even defending with all their might, the crew found it difficult to withstand her might. Air had an elemental advantage, no matter how much experience they had with storms.
A fourth bolt of lightning raged within the cloud before unnaturally leaping forward. Tirto hastily threw up a channel of water, but the fourth and strongest bolt of lightning leapt from his barrier towards the main mast. The ship trembled as the bolt of lightning struck.
Tirto breathed a sigh of relief. “I was worried she’d try to strike the sails directly, or us.”
Their ships were made to withstand the Shimmering Islands. Lightning was an everyday occurrence. A cultivator with active control could direct lightning in devastating ways… but Morana had only been dealing with the local seas. While there were some storms, they weren’t constant in the same ways. The Glass Hills were known for their lightning, but that didn’t extend out to sea. The Wuthering Steppes and Gloom Desolation likewise didn’t have the same sort of lightning proofing… so Morana wouldn’t have been used to the results.
Perhaps the cultivators with her might- they were a mix of water and air cultivators. But with Morana in control, her power provided the backbone of their ability… and her weaknesses shone through. Plundering ships for a few months hadn’t taught her everything she needed to know.
They only caused her to waste a single attack, but it was a big one. The storm cloud she formed in anger dispersed after the assault, and the ships were drawing close enough that they would soon be engaging each other directly. Even if Morana wasn’t actually exhausted, she was at a lull in her ebb and flow of power. They were ready to take advantage of that.
The first thing that happened was Verusha threw a swirling glob of fire that clung to the main sails of the enemy flagship. Their water cultivators immediately set about putting out the fire… or trying to. The best they could do was push the spreading fire around, dropping pieces of it onto their deck. Verusha had picked up more than a few tricks in the decades she had been living with water cultivators. Tirto knew how to counter the technique, obviously, but nobody was going to tell them.
They did manage to quash some of the flames with an excess of power, but that kept a great number of them distracted. Brandle clan cultivators prepared to cross the distance between ships, and while being underwater wouldn’t insulate them from air element attacks it still provided them with their optimal mobility.
Before the ships actually reached each other, Tirto and the clan members around him joined their power to assault the enemy ships- not the cultivators. The enemy flagship and one other drew close to each other, and at the optimal moment the seas were frozen between and around the ships. The other water cultivators could certainly reverse the process, if they were not otherwise occupied, but it would still take a few moments. Meanwhile, the two ships were tied to each other and lacking mobility.
That was also when Carl attacked the third one- along with a number of clan members riding on the leviathan. The ship was completely cracked in half, tossing the cultivators into the sea. They wouldn’t be helpless there… but it caused chaos among them at the unexpected situation.
Morana was trying very hard to look like she wasn’t gathering another attack. Personally, Tirto thought it was a waste. She was going to try to sink their ship like the others… as if water cultivators would fear that. She should have consulted her own crew upon encountering cultivators atypical to the region.
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Instead, she did exactly the thing they had been ready for. Morana and a number of water cultivators around her joined together to drive her lightning through the water. It snaked towards Tirto’s ship, only to be met by a layer of steam that he formed, with Verusha’s assistance of course. Then a layer of ice. The layers alternated rapidly at random distances, occasionally having standard liquid water in between them.
The lightning was meant to surge through pure water and cling to the wooden hull of a ship, amplifying its damage. Morana wasn’t ready for such a counter, and even though the water cultivator with her instantly began to try to disperse the layers, they simply couldn’t manage it. The attack fell apart when its intended results failed to manifest. But Morana and the others were clearly preparing for another volley.”
“Wow, you’d think an Ascending Soul Phase cultivator could win a battle against lower rank cultivators, but I guess not.” Verusha’s voice was overly loud and her tone pretty clearly intended to provoke Morana. Tirto didn’t think that anyone would fall for it.
But apparently Morana was really that easily provoked, even though she’d seen how it went for her mere moments ago. She immediately threw herself forward with her gathered air element, flying towards the Brandle Clan Flagship- far out in front of the others. That disrupted those who had been gathering energy to attack with her, and while the spiritual energy wasn’t lost they took a moment to redirect it towards trying to take care of other problems, like the frozen ice around their ships, and trying to save their masts. Their sails were already done for.
While the optimal way to deal with Morana might have been to call upon the power of his whole crew to try to bring her down, Tirto actually directed them to attack elsewhere. “We’ll handle her!” he called out.
It was a bit of a risky proposition, but it had logic behind it. He truly believed that with just himself and Verusha, they could take on an Ascending Soul Phase cultivator. And it would be even easier if she was angry.
Morana flung a war dart with the force of a hurricane, directly for Tirto’s chest. This was her actual style… but it was far less effective away from her walled palace in the sky. Tirto took a large leap to the side. In the arenas he had heard about from his father, that would have thrown him off a platform. On his ship, it hardly made any difference as he and Verusha moved in tandem.
Normally, Morana’s style would have involved flinging war darts with both hands… but she was down one of those. Thus, her following attack came at a point contrary to her accustomed rhythm. That made it easier to avoid when the one returning from behind them didn’t come quite in sync. Tirto deflected the one from the front with a shield of ice, while he slowed the one returning with a bubble of water that clung to it. Outwardly, Verusha wasn’t displaying any power… but she wasn’t simply letting Tirto drag her about.
Fire empowered water. His ability to instantly form ice was in large part due to her, as he wasn’t an ice specialist. And the bubble of water surrounding the returning war dart? That gave Morana quite a surprise when she tried to disperse it from her weapon. Her burst of air element indeed stopped the water from clinging to her weapon… only to cause an explosion of superheated water to spray over her as her hand closed around a scalding hot metal shaft.
The former was entirely deflected by Morana’s energy defenses, but the latter she didn’t entirely negate in time. Her instincts immediately dropped the weapon so she took only minor damage, but that impacted her rhythm even further- and she lost control of her far flung war dart. It crashed into the ocean far behind the battle.
Such minor setbacks didn’t seem like they would be important, as Tirto and Verusha hadn’t come out far ahead in terms of damage or spiritual energy… but with the beating her allies were taking, she couldn’t afford to come out even close to neutral.
The three Brandle Clan ships were focused on the two enemy ships and their cultivators. The third enemy ship was fighting Carl and the remaining portion of clan members there. The leviathan was not necessarily skilled, but he was more than strong enough to control that battlefield on his own, threatening more than just a few individuals at once.
Air cultivators were taken out first to remove the enemy’s elemental advantage. Their enemies had been expecting darkness cultivators, and while they were certainly able to adapt to fighting different elements… the leviathan was a shock. And the lack of combat synergy with Morana was more than clear. Their prior attacks had all gone smoothly, but that would have been against cultivators who were not seeking battle, unprepared for the specific sort of assault that was happening here.
Morana was enraged even further, catching her falling war dart with a gust of wind, at the same time withdrawing her remaining stock to swirl around her. Facing numerous attacks at once was of course a threatening situation… but Tirto knew that if such a style was actually better, Morana would just use it as a default. There was a reason she threw the war darts, and that became immediately apparent as the whirlwind pressed in around Tirto and Verusha.
All of the war darts followed the same path of the wind, and while Morana created slight fluctuations they were basically just one continuous attack. Tirto formed a barrier of ice that kept them at bay, then flames joined the whirlwind. They didn’t disrupt Morana’s control… but the war darts began to melt and burn.
A great gust of wind blew Tirto and Verusha off the deck into the water, then bolts of lightning rained down on them continuously as Morana started flinging her energy with reckless abandon. Tirto just calmly focused on defending, shaping the water around the two of them into layered barriers just as before. Unlike when he was defending the ship, he could create an omnidirectional barrier around the two of them.
Morana didn’t try to finesse her way through the barriers, but struck with power- repeated bolts of lightning alternating with strikes from the few war darts that had retained their form.
Tirto gave an exaggerated yawn, subtly adjusting his defenses and the water around him to create a clear picture for Morana. Then he suddenly opened the barrier, leaving room for a massive ball of flame to fly out. Verusha grinned as she finally got to attack again, her built up aggression manifesting in a huge explosion around Morana. The Ascending Soul Phase cultivator did not go down from that single strike, but her defenses were shaken… and Verusha was obviously building up another attack.
Morana took stock of the situation… and before the second attack was launched, flew higher into the air. Then even higher. Away, to the south, fleeing to the Sky Islands and leaving her compatriots to die without her. Tirto first thought she meant to fight from afar, but constantly flying would drain her energy and the distance would weaken her attacks- and she didn’t turn about even as they began capturing the surviving enemy sailors.