Chapter 480: A Natural Counter
[Tempest Cutter!]
[Howling Destroyer!]
[Lion’s Rage!]
“!”
“ARFHE!’
As soon as the three Grandmaster Elders and Razorstella (which they thought of as simply being Zhen Liu’s weird aether puppet), got close enough to the Thunderscale Dragon Otter, the four of them unleashed whatever aether art they thought could do anything against the beast, without getting too close it to it.
As such, Zhen Lao released a flurry of wind blades, Zhen Long let loose a howl full of Caligos aether and Zhen Yan used his fiery aura to launch an energy blast in the shape of a lion’s head.
The group understood that out of any elemental expressions an aether beast could have, lightning was one of those expressions that were very, very good at reactive counter attacking, especially in regards to close quarters combat. The amount of times the three of them or their four weaker brothers got electrocuted from accidentally punching a Sparking Hedgehog was embarrassingly high.
Combining that fact with the fact that dragon force wielders had the ability to ignore the damage caused by affinities other than its immediate opposite and one can understand why getting into close range was a bad idea overall.
Even Razorstella had to capitulate and go for a ranged attack, which wasn’t exactly her forte. Granted, the resulting energy slash that glistened with starlight looked impressive nonetheless.
“SHIT! STUPID FUCKING OTTER!”
“My attacks are making contact but doesn’t seem to do shit!”
“Not even your son’s freaky puppet seem seem barely able to do anything against it.”
Unfortunately for all them, their attacks did jackshit.
Zhen Lao’s wind blades got zapped out of the air, Zhen Long’s howl made impact but seemed to roll off the otter-dragon’s skin, while Zhen Yan’s attack was knocked out of the air by a timely slap from the Thunderscale Dragon Otter’s tail, coated in Aquarii aether.
Despite being scaly, dragonic and shooting lighting, the beast was still an otter and still had Aquarii aether baked into its existence.
Razorstella’s attack did manage to scratch the damn thing when it landed, but it was a superficial one at most.
Making matters worst, the quartet did nothing but make the dragon-otter even madder than it was before.
“ROAR!”
“Oh fuck!”
“Incoming!”
“Evasive maneuvers! Now!”
After receiving all of these attacks, the Thunderscale Dragon Otter began to spin in place, turning into a spiralling blur. As it did, lightning began to dance across its form, but only for a split second before shooting off towards the group.
The warriors and “puppet” could sense the mortal danger radiating off those bolts of lighting infused with dragon force, so they didn’t dare to block them, opting to go for more evasive tactics instead.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep this up forever.
“Shit! We need someone with Terraqi aether if we even want to try and land a hit on this damn thing,” Zhen Long shouted as he dodged a lightning strike, “otherwise we’re toast!”
“But Zhen Xi is the only among us with a Terraqi formula,” Zhen Lao pointed out while spinning in order to dodge a lighting blast, “and having him fight this thing would be tantamount to suicide!”
“Yeah, I would rather not bury a brother while on this journey,” Zhen Yan added as he used a blast of fire to dodge at the last minute, “can’t we just-”
But before Zhen Yan could finish asking his question, a new voice suddenly cut in. One that they were all rather familiar.
“Honored uncles and father, please haul ass so I may SMASH THIS FUCKING RODENT TO PIECES!”
“Xiao Liu?! What are you-WHOA!”
“Huh-OH SHIT!”
“DODGE!”
“Arf-bleck!”
The three elders immediately flew out of the way as a massive boulder came flying from behind them and slammed directly into the spinning Thunderscale Dragon Otter, the blasts of lightning doing absolute nothing to the stone surface of the boulder.
*Crack!*
As the boulder broke apart from the impact, the familiar form of a warrior woman made of red jade appeared from its center.
“Oh right,” Zhen Yan said in disbelief at this sudden turn of events, “I forgot that my son’s first puppet was technically Terraqi based.”
In fairness to this observation, Nepherage did use a lot of magma based techniques.
________________________________________________
After Nepherage had bolted off to go punch the Thunderscale Dragon Otter in its stupid face, Zhen Liu, despite his arms feeling like all of his nerve endings got blown out, proceeded to go and check on Hurricroak’s condition.
“Xiao Liu, what are you doing?”
“I gotta make sure Hurricroak is okay, her arms got scorched!”
“What the-take care of yourself first!”
“Pfft! I’m fine!,” Zhen Liu refuted despite the obvious burn marks snaking up and down his arms, an imperfect mirror to Hurricroak’s own injuries.
Granted, her arms looked a touch more burnt…and bleeding…and broken.
Jin Fang and Rianna attempted to stop Zhen Liu so that they could get him medical assistance and get Hurricroak out of there, but switched to assisting him once they saw how stubborn he was in making sure the kaijin was okay before himself.
Evidently…she was…sorta okay. Well, as okay one can be when their arms get absolutely blasted to pieces by a giant ball of supernatural lightning while being an equally strange supernatural being that’s normally immune to lightning.
[Welp, I can now confirm that we can get injured and it fucking sucks,] Hurricroak complained in an attempt to distract herself from the pain in her arms. Granted, it probably didn’t help that some of the dragon force lightning she attempted to absorb was still inside of her arms a bit.
Small bits of purple lightning could be seen jumping across the burnt texture of Hurricroak’s arms.
Zhen Liu looked grim and sympathetic at the injuries in his kaijin’s arms, especially when he compared them to his own arms.
‘Hurricroak, are you okay?’
[I think so, maestro, but I didn’t expect to actually get electro…hey wait a minute! I should be asking you that! You’re the squishy mortal here who’s connected to me!]
‘Ah, bah!,’ Zhen Liu disputed, ‘I am made of sterner stuff than that. But I have no idea how to fix this or if it can be fixable…’
[I refuse to sit still for that long.]
‘Logos is what she said true?,’ Zhen Liu asked the logical spirit. Normally he’d be all for banter and quips, but his arms were fried and Hurricroak’s were worst, now was not the time. This conversation may have been moving at the speed of thought, but Zhen Liu wanted answers ASAP.
=She is milord, but some of the options aren’t that…great…=
‘Explain?’
=Well…option 1 is amputation.=
‘What the fuck?’
[You are not slicing up all of this sexy, I need these hands to do music!] Hurricroak refused.
Having spent a lot of time in the Library of Nowhere, Hurricroak had time to read up on a bunch of random stuff and one of those things included medical practices such as amputation, granted, it was a rabbit hole result after reading up on how many musicians from Zhen Liu’s world famously died from medical complications.
[Oh…oh yeah…wait, I am connected the maestro here in a feedback basis, won’t me getting my arms sliced off and then regrowing be felt by him as well?,] Hurricroak pointed out.
While Zhen Liu couldn’t see it, he swore he could feel Logos and Pathos shrugging at the question.
‘How do you two not know this?’
<=To be fair, we're more used to having a medic kaijin in hand to deal with this sort of thing.=>
‘I AM WORKING ON IT!,’ Zhen Liu defended himself. He actually was trying to find the right materials needed to make a “medical” kaijin, but any aether treasure or materials that had explicit healing properties were rare as fuck and expensive as hell. He’d honestly have better luck stealing a high ranking alchemist’s corpse, but that was incredibly sketchy and something he didn’t want to have to explain to anybody.
‘Wait…was option two by any chance having me try and pump [Chaos] into Hurricroak’s wounds until they fix themselves?’
=Normally we’d suggest that, but…=
‘Of fucking course that’s the issue…,’ Zhen Liu grumbled as he rubbed his temples in frustration in these not-so stellar solutions.
‘Alright, dare I ask what option three?’
=Oh option three is actually the simplest and arguably the safest option for this situation… maybe.=
‘Then why didn’t you guys just-okay, not the time, what is option three?’
‘…oh right…uh…’
Funnily enough, while Zhen Liu was racking his brain to figure out who could play him some magically enhanced music, someone else had already come to that conclusion.
________________________________________________
“Wait what the, Jin Fang, what the heck is that?”
“It’s called a guitar, Pathos made it for me when I asked for an instrument that was suitable for me, now pardon me Rianna, I have a boyfriend and a frog to heal.”
