Chapter 478: Overkilling
Turning back the clock about a minute ago…
[Huh…ya know, I honestly keep forgetting that the rest of our lord’s clan is actually somewhat competent in battle,] Razorstella commented.
[To be fair, we only get to see them battle when our lord tags along, and our lord tends to attract threats that is outside of the average warrior’s wheelhouse,] Hurricroak added.
[True.]
As the caravanners fought off the Ravager Otters to the best of their abilities, the kaijin kept observing the ongoing battle in their figurine modes, keeping their interference at the absolute minimum.
That is to say, they were just kicking back, relaxing and watching the battle unfold before them like it was something out of a movie or a television drama.
The four of them had initially planned to intervene at some point, even settling on having Frosttusk and Razorstella being the ones to possess the Bear and Snake uncles, but once they saw that the battle was going significantly smoother than Zhen Liu had anticipated, they decided it was a better to sit back and let the Zhen Clan learn and grow from this experience.
This wasn’t an excuse for them to be lazy…or so they told themselves.
Either way, with nothing else to do except watch, the kaijin conversed liked they do.
[Huh…is anyone else getting a sense of deja vu?,] Hurricroak asked the group.
[Deja…vu…?]
[What are you talking about?,] Razorstella followed up.
[Well…the last time we thought a battle was going smoothly was on the PS Nemona, right? We all thought that the Zhen clan could handle those pseudo-zombie coral things no problem, only for our predecessor, Marlancer, to show up and try to eighty-six us, granted he was originally aiming for our lord’s family and we were just a happy coincidence at best] Hurricroak elaborated, [call me paranoid, maybe crazy, but I can’t help but think that it might happen again.]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[What?]
[Nothing, its just…,] Nepherage answered, [that sounds like something I would have pointed out.]
[…huh,] Hurricroak agreed, [should…should we take that as a good or bad omen?]
[Well…]
“OKAY, SUBTLEY IS OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW! BOYS!”
[The fact that our lord just shouted that is probably a bad omen,] Nepeherage observed. [That said, time to get to work.]
[Alright.]
[Okay…]
[Wait, what even is our task this time around?]
With these words exchanged, the kaijin proceeded to gather up energy and transform back into their fighting modes, ready for whatever their lord needed them to handle.
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[Alright, milord, what’s the plan?]
‘Get people out of the water and into the nearby trees as fast as you can. Call it a feeling, but I think that incoming storm cloud might be significantly more dangerous than anticipated.’
[At once ,milord.]
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Back to the present…
As soon as the order was given, the kaijin transformed back into their original forms, releasing rather noticeable bursts of energy all around the floating fleet of rafts.
Some members of the caravan were mildly surprised at most at these sudden bursts of aether, but the people that were around each of the source for these sudden outburts were absolutely shocked…up until the clansmen associated with Zhen Liu explained the situation for them.
“Oh fuck, monsters!”
“Wait a minute, no! Those are just the Fourth Young Master’s weird aether puppets, this is the Fourth Young Master’s puppeteering skills in action!”
“Weird is an understatement! What is this power radiating off of them?!”
“Better question, why didn’t this puppeteering master of yours not summon these guys sooner?! They would have been able to wipe through these freaking otters no problem!”
“ROOOARRR!!”
“Don’t know, but I’m assuming they were summoned to deal with whatever made that fucking roar!”
At the same time Zhen Liu’s “puppets” made their appearance for all to see, the sound of a thundering roar caught everyone’s attention, causing even the Ravager Otters to pause for a moment in order to stare in the direction the roar came from.
“Oh what the fuck is it now?!”
“Whatever it is, it sounded bad…”
“Yeah, these otters look unusually happy about the sound of that roar, so its probably not good for us.”
“Wait…I recognize that tone of roar…,” Zhen Shi said quietly.
“Xiao Yan, Xiao Long, Xiao Lao! With me!”
“Of course, father!”
Patriarch Zhen Shi and his three Grandmaster sons proceeded to disengage from their respective opponents in order to fly upward and get a better look at what caused that roaring sound.
However, before they could even get halfway up to their intended height, the source of the roaring appeared before them like a strike of lightning.
Needless to say, the four of them were absolutely shocked at this sudden appearance.
“Whoa!”
“Where’d she come from?”
“Hold up, is it just me or does thing seem to have-”
“Dragon-blood!”
Herald by the clap of thunder and a flash of lightning, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter appeared in its all its glory. Wreathed in purple lightning and rage plain on its face, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter let out a growling voice, blaming them for the injured state of three of her children.
Of course, all that came out was: “IMPUDENT! PREY! HURT! CHILDREN!”
Evidently, none of the people present acted shocked as they heard the dragon otter speak, due to it being common knowledge that powerful aether beasts, especially those with dragon blood, could speak naturally. Granted, the people were shocked at the otter’s choice of words.
They did not share the sentiment the Thunderscale Dragon Otter was having about her children being the victim.
“…”
“She did not just blame us for being the aggressors, right?”
“They attacked us first?”
“Technically it was that Geyser Hippo that brought em, but still.”
Ignoring the cries of the people below it, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter proceeded to scan the caravan below for whomever was responsible for the injuries of three of her kits, or rather…began to scan for the beings able to inflict wounds that would be able to penetrate even her own skin.
‘Fire and wind…’
The Thunderscale Dragon Otter had initially assume the culprits to be two of the humans that had flown up to be in her airspace, the ones that were dressed like a lion and a peacock.
However, when she took a deeper smell of the duo, she noticed that despite being the same type of aether that had injured her kits, the age of their aether was wrong.
The energy used against her kits felt younger, like it’d belong to a pair of wreckless children.
However, when she began to spread her senses further out and identified the energy of more and more people, she realized that one too many of them fit the criteria she had filed away in head.
As such, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter proceeded to do the one thing that made sense to it: obliterate the entire caravan of rafts with one massive blast of lightning.
But first, it needed to get some distance.
“ROOOOOARRRRR!”
“AGH!”
“MY EARS!”
“AH SHIT, DARYL’S OUT LIKE A LIGHT!”
Knowing full well that the floating humans in front of her were probably going to do all they can to stop her from attacking, the dragon otter took in a deep breath before releasing an ear piercing roar that stunned everyone in its immediate vicinity, the Aether Lord for about five seconds, the Grandmasters for six and the Aether Masters for eight, but it also straight up knocked out some of the cultivators below that rank.
With this distraction in play, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter now had time to move further back and begin it’s attack in earnest. As it charged, the air began to feel electric.
“Uhh…why does the air suddenly feel tingly?”
“Wait…I know this feeling…”
“INCOMING! DRAGON FORCE ATTACK!”
The purple-ish lightning surrounding the dragon otter’s body suddenly began to gather at the tip of its dragonic horn, condensing into a sphere of lighting.
A sense of primordial fury could be felt radiating from the ball of lightning as the dragon otter finished condensing it.
Many of the quicker witted carvaners immediately got out of the way as quickly as they could, grabbing their slower colleagues out of the blast zone too.
Even the Ravager Otters could sense the danger coming from their leader’s attack and wisely chose to stop their attacks and bail into the nearby trees.
“DIE!”
Once her attack was as saturated with energy as she could make it, and the Ravager Otters managed to clear the blast zone, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter let out a roar and fired the ball of lightning directly at the caravan.
As the ball of lighting flew closer and closer to the caravan, it began to balloon in size, threatening to engulf even the people that had just barely made it out of the original path.
“Oh no you don’t! [Icescale Guardian]!”
Before the worst could happen though, Zhen Shi flew forward and summoned forth his regalia, manifesting a pair of icy chains that he then wove into a shield-like formation and coated it in ice.
“Break for me!”
Once the shield was completed, Zhen Shi flew forward and slammed it into the ball of lighting, releasing a concussive blast of sound that rippled the waters below.
He had aimed to break the attack completely against his ice shield in order to open up a window to counterattack, but as it turned out, it wasn’t enough.
“Shit! Fucking…dragon force!,” Zhen Shi cursed as he rapidly infused as much aether as he could into the shield.
This was the second time Zhen Shi had to deal with an unusual energy, but this time, it was something he actually knew about and knew how to counter!
‘What countered lightning again…’
