"This is the 5th one... Are these attacks coming from them?" Silverlight Zephan watched another missile slam into the Blood Dragon.
Fire coiled upward again, feeding the flas already burning and refusing to let them fade, wrapping the beast in a rising column of heat; the scales within blistered, warped, and blackened. The shockwave dragged at loose ash and scorched sand, and the detonation's force shocked him all over again.
He had been impressed by the small army Adyr introduced to him, yet their peak was only Rank 3, and many were not even Practitioners. In the Practitioner world, the scale of power was simple and unforgiving.
A hundred Rank 3s before a Titled Rank 4 were children in a park, noisy but harmless against true authority.
Now he was seeing a small human unit unleash that level of destruction not once or twice but five tis in steady succession, and the edges of his understanding began to fray.
Perhaps the world was larger than he thought, filled with far more secrets and mysteries-enough to spend another few centuries trying to understand.
"They are coming from those strange flying objects," Soulforge Throgar said as his eyes focused on the distant sky.
He tracked the hoverjets by the faint tallic glints skimming between broken clouds and the thread-thin white scars their passage left in the upper air.
Soon, another presence brushed the edge of his senses, a smaller, familiar figure.
"Adyr is coming," Throgar said, recognizing who it was.
Adyr ca into view monts later, cutting across the heat shimr with calm strokes of his wings, two missiles resting across his shoulders like oversized spears.
He dropped through the wavering air and alighted near them, his black reinforced boots biting a fraction into ash-softened ground that sagged from the recent heat.
"Are you alright?" He scanned the three figures, taking in dirty clothes and soot-streaked skin, the fine dust fild along their brows, and the clipped rise and fall of their breathing that spoke of effort under the still-building thermal pulse.
"Yes..." Liora answered. She had already shifted into her third form, the smaller 6-ter monkey body that packed mass into tight, efficient lines.
Her gaze then snagged on the long shapes across Adyr's back. "Are those?"
The others followed her gaze. Realizing everyone's attention was on the missiles and ti was bleeding away, Adyr did not circle the point. "These are the ones behind the strikes you saw."
He gave them a mont to absorb it, then continued. "Their destructive power is high, but still not enough to take that Spark. I will need your help."
Relief and shock crossed their faces in the sa breath when they heard him. Relief, because there was a ceiling to this firepower, and it likely matched the 5 detonations they had witnessed, plus the 2 now in plain view on Adyr's shoulders.
If they knew there weren't just 7 but more than 100, they would have already lost their logical minds.
Their shock, however, ca from the fact that even learning there were 2 more such blows possible from a force of Rank 3s felt unreal when weighed against the old doctrine.
"Tell what we need to do," Liora said, trust landing cleanly between them. "Give 5000 crystals," Adyr demanded with a calm expression.
With two nuclear bombs on his shoulders, he looked like a street hustler asking passersby for money-but on a far greater and more fantastical scale.
The sum he was asking was not small, but none of the three titled Practitioners were destitute.
Liora Virell was the only one near the edge of her reserves, but thankfully, Throgar stepped forward before either of the others moved.
He lifted a hand, forming a pouch in his palm, then offered it with a short nod. "Here, 10,000."
Adyr took the pouch without hesitation and sent it into his Sanctuary. "More than enough. Thank you!"
Then another object ford in his grasp, pulled from his Nimbus Land: a stone staff with a tempered heft that showed deep carving lines and a dense, even grain.
It was the Tower of Worth in staff form. He angled it toward Liora and asked, "How effective is your size manipulation? Can you enlarge this? I need sothing huge."
He knew she possessed a skill similar to the Ant Spark he had found within the Tower of Worth. He had watched Liora fight, fists swelling mid-strike to drive a heavier force, knuckles and forearms ballooning at the mont of impact, but he did not know if she could extend the effect to tools and weapons. "Do you want a mountain?" Liora's answer was positive but... "I can do that, but a normal stone staff will fail long before it reaches that size. It will crumble." "A mountain?" Adyr blinked once. In his experience, while using his own size manipulation skill, the upper limit was closer to a mansion.
Liora, however, was Rank 4, and she walked a single path. Her [Physique] stat surpassed his nurically, so any skill tied to that stat would respond more powerfully in her hands than in his.
"Do not worry. This is not ordinary." He passed the staff with easy confidence. "It is a treasure. It will not break that easily."
"So that is the Tower of Worth." Zephan and Throgar traded a look, recognition lighting in their eyes. Brakhtar and Thalira had already shared the Legacy Domain's outcos with them, as well as all the gains they witnessed. "Treasure? You found a treasure inside?" Liora's surprise flashed and then settled as she rembered who stood before her and what he had shown so far. Being surprised by this was naive.
"Take it and shift to your Titan Ape form. We do not have much ti." Adyr tossed her the staff.
Liora caught it, then her body began to climb in height and weight, bones lengthening under taut muscle, the lattice of tendons tightening as mass spread
through her fra.
The staff began to swell with her as she activated her size manipulation skill. The stone's fine striations widened like the rings of an ancient tree, faint stress lines appearing and then smoothing as the treasure's quality held.
She looks like that character from my childhood. Adyr watched the massive ape grip an equally massive staff, a faint nostalgic smile touching his mouth, then
turned to Throgar.
"I have a request for you as well. Can you hold the Blood Dragon? I need you to restrain its movents as much as you can."
Throgar glanced toward the beast. He observed how the Dragon's wounds
were knitting, split plates sealing along its ribs, and its legs bracing as it gathered strength to rise through the wavering heat. Then he answered, "I can lock it for at most 10 seconds."
Zephan stepped in and added, "13 seconds. I will add to his restraint."
Silverlight's skill build clearly held a binding Spark skill, 3 more seconds sounded modest, yet it was better than nothing.
"That is good." Adyr nodded once, sounding satisfied. "Here is the plan."
He then explained it in clean, direct steps, sending the three Titled Practitioners into another round of shock, as every choice he laid out was aid not at killing the Spark but at subduing it.
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