Desperate Rush Against Time, Part ?
664 10/11 3:06 (Autumn, Day, Midrar)
Luna moved forward, her blood erupting from her hand and forming in a two meters long staff whose surface twisted violently, forming on its ends two vaguely spherical spheres to help her maintain its balance and holding it loosely in her right hand.
While she was still mid-step, her shadow contorted violently, rising upwards and circling her weapon, solidifying around the blood staff and wrapping around the crimson shaft, the two materials being kept carefully separated to dodge the Purification-Attribute bias against Composite Materials while still keeping them linked together.
Being still far from her opponents did not stop her advance any, the mass of blood and shadow being refined ever more, the two bloodied spheres shaping themselves into dense, oval structures that ended into sharp ends, forming a mix between mace heads and spear points.
Similarly her shadows firmed themselves, forming tight, highly condensed bands of almost metallic shadows, five centimeters in lenght and one centimeters in width, that enveloped the staff's shaft, leaving small crimson cracks that revealed the sanguineous spear underneath in between the black rings while the same substance grew around the two weights, the one being held behind her simply letting out a spike of solid shadows while the one held forward instead changed much further than that.
Four solid shadow blades formed around the mace head and joining together in a single point, covering some of it with their darkness, even if the crimson glow was still very visible between the shaded blades.
Flux moved to stop the Lunarian's advance, hurriedly launching several jets of glowing water towards the Vampiric one, a thin string of Lightning-Attribute Mana connecting all the bullets together to form a web-like pattern and cover a much wider area with the Purification-Attribute, Mark and Joule working together to render this maneuver possible at all.
Luna did not hesitate in her response, the sections sharpening and then starting to spin faster and faster, separating and forming a long segmented whip of flowing blood, whip that she expertially manipulated, thanks in great part to her ability to manipulate her own blood, to strike at all of the bullets of water raining down towards her, piercing through each one of them precisely.
Lightning was conducted through the shadows, illuminating every single one of the weapon's sections with the Purification-Attribute and being directed right towards the Lunarian, Person that upon seeing the glow reach towards herself simply reacted by opening her hand and letting go of her whip-like instrument, the glow moving continuing on after her weapon and towards the other end.
End that she had already impaled in the ground behind her in advance, grounding it and in so doing creating a rough version of a lightning rod, only being actually effective in her situation because of the Purification-Attribute's actraction towards its Targets, in this case being mostly every single trace of her existence, her blood in this case, and the natural way that lightning flowed through a metal and then being safely deflected towards the ground.
Luna, now without her weapon, simply rushed forward towards her opponent, her hands closing firmly before striking the surprised Human right in the face with a left punch, sending him flying back and distracting him enough that he inadvertently ceased maintaining his own part of the Lightning-Attribute, causing it to quickly destabilize and freeing her weapon from its function as a lightning rod.
As a conseguence, she merely needed to call upon it to cause the bladed mace-like ending of her whip to fly towards her so that she could firmly hold onto it with her right hand, the segments immediately under the ending wrapping around her hand as she pulled it towards her, the other hand rupturing from the ground and shifting in form, becoming the head of a double bladed war axe, the segmented whip joining back together in a mostly-solid configuration that was immediately used to bisect the Flowing Spirit.
A pulse of Counterspell emanated from the axe head, washing over Flux and temporarily stripping them of their Purification-Attribute Boost before they could really make use of it, ridding herself of a potential threat.
Luna retreated, pulling her axe head back with herself before the Spirit could pull themselves back together, holding her now fully solid weapon afloot briefly before swinging down violently, the air around it eating up violently as she compressed Vital Energy and Mana within her Aura, releasing it in a wave of burning Energy towards the Spirit. "[Reaping Moon]!"
The wave moved towards her Target, aiming on bisecting her not horizontally like she did before but vertically, the heat branding a glowing and burning scar on the plain, dirt, rock and grass alike burning violently and then exploding, causing molten slag and ash to rain down violently all over the place.
Luna's eyes narrowed, trying to pierce through the cloud of dust with her sight alone, searching for any trace of the Spirit while also keeping a carefull eye on the Human's movement, analyzing his recovering form to make certain of his position and more importantly to make sure that she would be able to notice the moment that his Time Walker would be activated.
The Lunarian's axe head turned back into a more spear-like configuration, opening her hands wide and letting her construct slip from her fingers, her Aura expanding to form an additional limb that proceded to grab onto the weapon and start swinging it experimentally, quickly growing used to this way of wielding a weapon.
Light-Attribute Mana accumulated around Mark's hands, Joule joining in with their own Lightning-Attribute, combining the two Attributes together and in this way being able to give more stability to the normally very erratic electric Attribute thanks to the more rigid one by following its path exactly, thing only possible thanks to the unnaturally high perception innate to Spirits.
Luna smiled, her Aura expanding further until it finally separated itself from her body completely, joining together with her blood and shadow weapon behind her and quickly gaining a solid form of its own, a large sphere floating mid-air that quickly started to compress more and more, opening like a flower before closing down around the Lunarian's body, obscuring her completely in a dense layer of glowing darkness.
Mark did not bother launching an attack towards his enemy, being able to quickly notice how what looked like a solid sphere was instead constantly vibrating, spinning and pulsing fast enough that striking at her would be a waste of effort, instead moving on to concentrate on his own preparations, light forming various Magical Circles that surrounded his body and in the air floating around him, lightning quickly following the light and starting to mix with it.
As Shining Bolts started to slowly form, the Light-Attribute losing its own Form in favor of the Lightning-Attribute's own, turning into pure white lightning that flared upwards violently, his Mana and Vital Energy both spiking in response and starting to mix, leaning on his partner to manipulate the bright electricity temporarily while he himself concentrated on using his experience gained upon his repeated Regressions to start the process of creating as much Vital Mana as he could in the time that remained.
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Aler, in the meanwhile, was waiting in the cave that they made into a temporary base and was only aware of what was currently happening in the battle thanks to the senses belonging to his Contracted Spirit and the small mobile Artifacts based on video cameras spread by his Party all around the area in anticipation for their fight that were connected with a pool of water that functioned as the reciever.
"Flux is not in critical condition yet, sure, but most of their water was evaporated. Fortunately they were able to dodge the worst of the attack or their Vessel would be entirely destroyed instead." He sighed, his long ears tipical of a full-bloodied Elf twitching a couple of times, before he quickly started to share the Vital Mana that he spent all of this time accumulating with his partner to greatly accelerate the rate at which they were able to restore their Vessel.
He sighed, scowling as he reached for the softly glowing pendant around his neck, hesitating before he could actually grasp it in his hands, needing to breathe in and out a couple of times until finally moving to remove it completely, gently and safely posing it to his left before panting, heat filling his body as his cells rapidly started to burn up painfully, burn and above all started to change.
His body until then thin and not too muscular, yes, but without a doubt belonging to a young Elven man started to change, his curly brown hair held in a low ponytail lenghtening slightly and smoothing out, his green eyes changing slightly and his frame starting to narrow and fill out, undeniable curves forming underneath the cover of his clothes.
His lips, having they too filled out to become without a doubt something feminine in nature, twisted in a disgusted expression at having been forced to reacquire his previous form, the form that thanks to Mark's gift he had until now been able to leave behind.
"If only this fight could have taken place in two months…" He breathed out, his now much more delicate voice causing his expression to worsen even more while he briefly placed a tanned hand over his mouth. "You can do this, you were in this form for decades, you can handle a couple of days. Now, let's not waste any more time than necessary."
He slammed his now thinner hands together, concentrating and flaring his Vital Mana together much more intensely than she ever could have before, breathing out as he intensified his connection with Flux beyond what he could have previously done.
After all the Artifact he just removed had as a quasi-intended function that of weakening his Vital Energy and Mana.
Across history there were plenty of People that were dissatisfied with their own body, whether because of certain illnesses, certain characteristics or the sex at their birth and so it was no wonder then that plenty of methods were created to deal with them, among both the more cheap but potentially dangerous ones all the way to those that were actually safe but kept artificially difficult to obtain so that ignoble People could profit as much as possible from them, uncaring of other individuals' sufferings.
In his case, his Artifact was stolen by Mark as a gift for him to join his Party, taking advantage of knowledge from his previous Times to render everything as smooth as possible, and had the simple function of gifting him with a male form while weakening his Mana and Vital Energy, in a process that while at first dependent on the presence of the Artifact around his neck, would eventually become his natural form.
Using a more straightforward explaination, in exchange for lowering his Mana and Vital Energy Potency to around 80% and some of his Skills having their power restricted by one Rank for two months straight, his natural form would become his new, desired one instead of his original one and he would have no need to wield the necklace any longer, being able to demonstrate his original level of power with no issue.
The act of removing the necklace was a great showing of both his loyalty towards the Person that gave him the Artifact in the first place and the desperation of their situation, especially considering how not only he would have to wait multiple days before he could safely wield his Artifact again but he would also need to restart his personal countdown back from zero and with a longer timer involved, all this to fight back against the resistance his body would have acquired against being forcefully and unnaturaly transformed.
After all when it comes to changes to a body, being constant was key, regardless of the intentions involved.
"Mark will make it up to me." He half-snarled half-promised, his voice alone doing an excellent job at further incensing his rage as he concentrated back into the fight, noting with displeasure how the orb surrounding Luna was condensing together and pulsing with an ever-increasing intensity and speed.
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