Chapter 1768: What To Do?
Chapter 1768: What To Do?
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“At some point, your soul and the spiritual soul of this Great Spirit of the Cliffs, or whatever his name was, became one,” Khepri said. “Technically, you’ve become his vessel forever.”
“F-Forever?!” Quetz was terrified by learning that. “This is…”
“Well, isn’t that nice? You got a lot of power from that!” Khepri said. “And also… Close your eyes and think about ’searching for your missing parts’!”
“What? What does that have to do with anything?” Quetz asked, still trying to process what he had just heard from Khepri. He was clearly not fine at all.
“Just do it!” Khepri complained.
“Uhh…” Quetz closed his eyes as he tried to do just that.
“Searching for my missing parts? What does she even mean with… that?”
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
“Ungh?!”
Quetz grabbed his head as he felt a strong headache, at the same time detecting three different lights from three different directions.
“Quetzal? Are you okay?” Agua asked him as she placed her hands on his arm.
“I’m fine…” Quetzal muttered. “I think I saw them, three lights. Is this what you meant by my missing parts, spirit?”
“Yeah! So you saw them! Nice!” Khepri nodded. “Yeah, they’re your ornaments! Or well, the ones that belonged to the Great Spirit of the Cliff Winds. You should secure them right away. They’ll give you an insane power boost.”
“I’ll gain even more strength, really?” Quetzal wondered, his eyes widening. “I am already plenty strong myself, though. Wouldn’t it be simply greedy to seek more?”
“Are you kidding me?! We’re going to fight like a million giant fire ants with spirit powers and a god-like queen. We’ll need as much power as we can find!” Justicio said. “Honestly, why didn’t the oasis people report this to Everstone? I am sure Svana would’ve done something about it eventually…”
“We didn’t know this area was an ant nest until recently, Justicio…” Agua sighed. “And we usually do not venture outside of our territory or the oasis’s jungles. It is part of our Oath to protect this place, but to walk outside is often seen as bad. I suppose it might indeed be our fault in the end, our negligence. Perhaps if we had acted earlier, something like this wouldn’t have appeared… I’m sorry…”
Silvia and Aquarina glared at Justicio with angry expressions on their faces, furrowing their eyebrows…
“A-Ah! No, please, I didn’t mean to say that… out loud,” Justicio muttered nervously. “Sorry if I was mean… I kind of lost my temper there for a moment. It usually doesn’t happen…”
Justicio had always been a chill, lazy, and sleepy young man, so losing his temper like that was indeed very rare. It just showed how much stress he had gone through since everything began.
Although it was thanks to this stress that he had grown so strong, his personality didn’t really like it and tended to clash with it, making him more irritable than he should truly be.
“I’m sorry…” He smiled lightly, scratching his head.
“Yeah, he’s not like that usually. He must be very stressed…” Silvia defended him a little. “Sorry about that, Agua.”
“I-It’s fine…” Agua smiled gently. “Um, so Quetzal, I think you should definitely get those equipment pieces… You’re the one that saved us from having our minds destroyed by that monster. I think we’ll need you as strong as possible!”
“Hmm…” Quetzal rubbed his chin and then sighed. “Very well. These three lights aren’t too far away, but not too near either. I can sense one around this area of the mountains, probably to the left. We would have to deviate from our original route, and that would delay our attack on the ants.”
“That’s not very good…” Silvia muttered. “Hmmm…”
She looked at Aquarina’s mother, who was tapping her arms with her fingers while crossing her arms, waiting for the kids to finish talking.
Nepheline was definitely not going to accompany the kids on this request.
“Okay, I will go on my own then,” Quetzal nodded.
“Eh?! Let me go with you at least, Quetzal!” Agua said. “You might need some help, right?”
“Help? He’s plenty strong on his own, Agua. I think you should let him be,” Aquarina said. “He’ll also be faster alone. Why do you think he’s got that big pair of wings with him?”
“B-But…” Agua got worried, glancing at Quetzal. “What if something happens to his mind? He wasn’t that well yesterday…”
“Agua…” Quetzal felt moved by her concern. “I appreciate your worry, but I’ll be fine. I know I can do this.”
“Uuh…” Agua muttered. “It’s not that I don’t trust you… But you never know. There are things that are outside of our power sometimes, as Silvia said. Having someone else by your side is always better.”
“We’ll need your water magic, girl. You can’t go,” Nepheline interjected, looking at Agua with her sharp emerald-colored eyes. “And your mother personally asked me to look after you, and I promised her I’ll protect you. If I let you go with the bird boy, then I’ll break that promise. And we Amazonian Warriors don’t break promises.”
“…” Agua sighed. “Then… what can I do to— Ah!”
Suddenly, in that moment, Agua glanced at Pyuku and also remembered the Aura Aquarina had used before, which helped her shape her own powers into little versions of herself.
“Right, maybe if I could make something like Pyuku…” Agua muttered, as Pyuku looked at her with confusion.
“Huh?” Pyuku tilted his little head.
“A-Aquarina! Can you help me out?” Agua ran toward Aquarina. “C-Can you… Um…”
“What?” Aquarina asked.
“You have that aura that… spirit aura thing…” Agua muttered.
“Hmm? Oh! You mean that…” Aquarina wondered.
By “that,” Agua meant Aquarina’s Level 5 Skill: [Spiritual Aura Embodiment]!
This ability allowed Aquarina to separate her own Spiritual Aura from her body and create Spiritual Constructs or even temporary Spiritual Lifeforms.
It was mostly used for her to unleash powerful Beast Auras and other techniques, combining amazingly well with her fighting style.
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