Novel Full Chapter 838 - Taming the Fifth Year - Biggest Eater - 3
Chapter 838 – Taming the Fifth Year – Biggest Eater – 3
So all this commotion was some exaggerated legend about historical capabilities of more powerful Bashes that had been incorrectly applied to all specimens of the species?
Stories had a way of growing with each telling. A Bashe that killed a Bull-elephant became one that swallowed it whole. One that swallowed it whole became one that could swallow three. Three became ten. Until eventually nobody remembered what the original truth had been.
It didn’t matter in terms of determining the outcome of the present battle.
But everyone still wanted to see its real abilities in action, abilities that would justify the massive investment Selphira had made possible and that would explain why Ren had considered this beast appropriate for Liora specifically.
The anticipation was thick in the wind despite… or perhaps because of the initial disappointment. Sometimes the least impressive-looking beasts were the most dangerous. Sometimes appearances deceived.
Sometimes the monsters that didn’t roar were the ones you should fear most.
Almost everyone was watching Ren and his “small” beast while thinking that.
♢♢♢♢
The battle began when both Ren and Liora commanded their beasts simultaneously upon receiving Professor Zhao’s formal signal.
“Begin!”
It was a simultaneous start that communicated both had been anticipating the other’s initial movement and had prepared counter-strategies before the first attack even launched. A chess match starting at the second move rather than the first, both players having already calculated their opponent’s most likely opening.
Ren asked the wolverine to control earth and wood to capture the serpent on the ground where its mobility would be severely limited.
It was an approach using natural physical elements, theoretically the “least vulnerable” to the serpent’s spiritual abilities that Ren understood from his knowledge.
Solid earth and living wood couldn’t be drained of mana as easily as pure elemental projectiles. Or at least that was the theory Ren operated under, an assessment that would soon be tested in actual practice.
The consensus seemed to be that spiritual absorption worked best against refined elemental constructs, fire bolts, water lances, wind blades. Things made purely of shaped mana.
Physical matter infused with elemental energy should be more resistant. Should be.
The field exploded in response to the wolverine’s command.
Earth rose in waves converging toward the Bashe from multiple directions, an attempt to enclose it in a cage similar to what had trapped the wisp moments before. Simultaneously, roots emerged from the depths, wooden vines seeking to coil around the serpent’s body and restrict its movement completely.
It was a pincer attack. Earth from the sides, roots from below, all converging on a single point. The Bashe would have to break through one barrier to escape, and that moment of resistance would give the other barrier time to complete the trap.
Elegant. Efficient… The kind of technique that demonstrated why the wolverine’s control was considered twice as refined as the hydra’s.
But Liora had anticipated exactly this type of action.
She’d given her order at the same instant Ren commanded his attack, instantaneous instruction for the Bashe to escape upward before the trap could close completely. Because although the serpent couldn’t disappear in teleportation as the wisp had done, it could float due to its relatively “ethereal” or spiritual nature that gave it properties ordinary physical serpents didn’t possess.
The Bashe rose from the ground just as earth and wood converged on the space it had occupied a moment before.
Its body undulated in the air with movement that defied gravity, flotation that didn’t depend on wings or visible propulsion but simply on will manifested through its negative spiritual energy. It climbed higher with each moment, gaining altitude that put it out of reach of the terrestrial trap.
Not super fast, nothing like the wisp’s instantaneous teleportation, but fast enough.
And it escaped by a hair’s breadth, literally centimeters separating it from roots that extended trying to grab its body at the last moment.
“It escaped,” someone breathed in the stands.
“But barely. If it had been a fraction slower…”
“It wasn’t.”
But Ren reacted instantly when he saw the initial trap had failed.
No time to lament a tactic that didn’t work according to plan. No room for frustration or second-guessing. Only the need to adjust and press before Liora could capitalize on an opening her escape had created.
The wolverine invoked a downward air push, a broad gust of elemental wind designed to force the serpent back toward ground where it could be trapped in a second attempt.
The Bashe needed just a bit less altitude to not be safely out of reach of the ground-based attack. If Ren could push it downward now, the trap was still active, waiting to close on a target that returned to the appropriate range.
The wind roared downward with force that would have grounded almost any flying creature, hitting the Bashe from above with intent to deny its escape, wind displacement visible as rippling distortion spreading outward from the impact point.
Several lighter objects in the stands, hats, loose scarves and almost a mouse, were pushed outside the arena by the sides of the pressure effect. The sheer volume of air being moved was staggering.
But Mayo smiled, she had helped simulated something like this.
Liora knew Ren’s move before it happened again…And counterattacked with the first move that revealed the first truly unique capability of her beast, an ability that at least partially justified its legendary reputation.
The serpent had opened its jaw disproportionately upward from the start, and as if its mandibles were an umbrella for itself, absorbed the wind attack’s mana directly.
Not deflection. Not resistance. Literal consumption of the huge block of dispersed elemental energy Ren’s beast had projected.
The wind was sucked in with an intense and fast whistle before exerting almost any force on the Bashe’s body, the mana composing it being drained and converted into sustenance for the serpent that had intercepted it.
In a moment the roaring gust simply… disappeared. Vanished into that gaping maw like water down a drain, no, a vacuum.
One moment there was enough wind to uproot trees. The next moment, nothing. Just a serpent with its mouth open and a faint satisfied gleam in its eyes.
Ren sighed internally. ‘So it doesn’t matter how wide the attack is in the end. It shouldn’t be used.’
The experiment was over.
Liora and her mischievous accomplice Mayo knew…
He’d wanted to test the limits of the absorption. Ren would want to know exactly if the Bashe could drain a massive area attack as easily as a focused projectile.
Could it be overwhelmed by sheer volume?
Apparently not. Or at least, not with the amount of mana he’d just thrown at it.
Ren smiled anyway.
Good to know… A bit costly to learn, but good to know.
And the Bashe grew a little bit from having fed on the attack.