Chapter 907: Against the Dragon(Monkey)[2]
[Wait a minute. Director, isn’t this thing able to mimic aether arts and dragon force arts because of its original bloodline?]
‘Yes. Yes it can.’
[Then does that mean our plan to act as a distraction while the princess delivers the finisher kind of…rendered moot? I mean, that thing just saw her swing that sword once and it copied her Crimson Draguar strike.]
‘Well, I have faith that Jinju Ren will be able to overpower and overcome her own copied attack…even if that monkey might be stronger than her…that and the others are on their way as well…’
[Uh huh…are you sure you’re not saying that because you forgot that this weird ass monkey was able to copy moves due to how fast your brain is moving?]
‘Maybe.’
[To steal a word from you…bruh.]
…
In all honesty, Zhen Liu’s plan was incredibly simplistic.
His idea boiled down to constantly attack and annoy the Dragon Thief Monkey to the point that it would think of nothing but retaliating against the source of it all,or at the very least get him focused on doing nothing but dodging, all while a third party patiently charged up their attack and unleash hell on earth. In this case, that third party was Jinju Ren and her dragon force based arts.
Against most other opponents, this wouldn’t really work.
One of the first things aether cultivators, warriors and beasts alike, are taught is the ability to sense when an opponent is doing something that disturbs the surrounding aether, i.e. when they’re going to perform an aether art, which is then followed by the lesson of, “how to limit one aether emissions”.
In other words, rookies are taught to notice when someone’s about to pull off a big attack, experts are taught to hide the fact that they’re doing a big attack until the last moment.
Dragon Force, however, has this really annoying quality that it was incredibly noticeable…once you were made aware of it.
It didn’t matter if it was meant to empower a small Corporeal art or an all powerful Universe art, dragon force could be sensed the moment it was used.
‘Just a few more seconds…’
The reason being that dragon force was…kind of the equivalent of a force of nature occurring in a place that it shouldn’t occur.
For example, Aquarii dragon force caused people to think they were about to face down a tsunami, even if it was being used in the middle of a desert.
The Dragon Thief Monkey should’ve noticed that directly below him was a dragon blooded princess about to fire off a giant bolt of dragon force enhanced bolt of lightning at him.
However, this particular fact about dragon force becomes moot due to one other factor: [Chaos].
Between dragon force and [Chaos], the latter was significantly more noticeable to one’s senses, it was…louder in a way.
This meant that it didn’t matter what little tricks Zhen Liu, and the kaijin, employed when using [Chaos], their present and future opponent would always be able to sense it when it was being used.
This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though.
Since [Chaos] was inherently l
“loud”, it made it so that any other arts being performed with any other forms of energy wouldn’t be noticed at all.
Which is why, by the time that the Dragon Thief Monkey noticed that there was an issue, that Jinju Ren had been fully enshrouded in the shadow of a giant otter dragon made of lighting and rage, it was too late.
The only reason why he had finally noticed in the first place was because he had to dodge Zhen Liu for the ninth time in a row, in a manner that finally angled him to be facing downward with a gaze directed at Jinju Ren’s position.
Meaning he had a full view of what was going to happen to him as Jinju Ren swung down her saber.
[Dragon Otter’s Lightningstrike!]
Alongside exactly how Jinju Ren managed to conjure such an attack in the first place.
Perhaps it was due to the adrenaline, perhaps it was due to desperation, but it was in this moment that the Dragon Thief Monkey managed to tap into and enhance the innate power of his original species to the point that he managed to perform an instance of instant mimicry.
Of course, instead of using a saber and lighting aligned dragon force, the Dragon Thief Monkey used a stick and it’s innate attribute of dragon force.
“OOKIE!”
The Dragon Thief Monkey proceeded to fire off an attack that felt remarkably similar to Jinju Ren’s lighting dragon otter, but looked incredibly different. Instead of a dragon otter made of lightning, the Dragon Thief Monkey had fired off a giant dragonesque baboon made of black colored energy.
A shockwave rocked the area as the two beastial constructs collided with one another, a clear case of both sides being equal…much to the chagrin of both.
However, one of these sides had a way of making sure their attack came out on top.
The only problem was that they had no idea it would work, because they had based it off of seeing their fiancee do it once…in a recording…and with the help of a weirdass gourd.
Regardless of the risks and factors though, Jinju Ren proceeded to try and do something she had honestly never considered until recently.
She was going to try and combine the energies of all of her familiar for one big attack.
All she had to do was figure out how.
‘Come on, Ren, if he can do it, you can do it too,’ she told herself as she focused on the [Dragon Dominating Saber] with her aether.
‘Maybe if I had a mental image…’
…
“Bah!”
[Incoming dirt!]
As the two constructs of dragon force collided with one another, powerful shockwaves knocked Zhen Liu/Razorstella out of the air and towards the ground, forcing them to land.
Which was honestly fine by the latter, because they had thought of something that needed answering.
…
[Huh. I think I owe Jinju Ren an apology later…I honestly expected her attack to get overpowered by this freaky primate.]
‘See? Told you I had faith.’
[Faith aside, I thought this wasn’t going to work because I can literally feel the power difference between the two of them, and we saw through Nepherage’s eyes how that monkey was playing with Zhong Wei and your grandfather like it was nothing. So…how can a girl weaker than those be able to fight toe-to-toe with that thing?]
‘Are…are you seriously asking me that? Your creator who technically can and has punched above his weight class? I barely understand how I can, how can I how she does it?’
[Fair point.]
‘Okay, even I know that’s only half the answer. What’s the other half?’
=The [Dragon Dominator Saber] is giving access to the power of about four different types of dragon blooded aether beasts,= Logos answered. =So while her cultivation level is a Grandmaster, like you, the beasts in her blade allow her to punch upwards. Like you and the kaijin.=
‘There it is.’
‘Noted.’
[Speaking of Kaijin, where are the others? I feel like we’ve been fighting for longer than two to three minutes.]
<=Our timer says eighteen seconds, actually.=>
[What the-]
‘Lemme check…’
…Meanwhile, in a slightly less hectic area…
“What in the hell are these trees?”
“I don’t know, but father and the hermit both still appear to be alive at least.”
“Should we cut them out or wait for Zhen Jin?”
“The latter.”
“Alright…”
Around the same time Zhen Liu and Jinju Ren were preparing to take out the Dragon Thief Monkey, the rest of the groups were heeding Zhen Liu’s advice and we’re going to try and extract their patriarch and guest before things got worse.
Evidently, it wasn’t too hard to find them due to them being embedded in trees that radiated their respective aether signatures. While that was probably an ominous sign, none of the people present knew what to do about it.
The first to arrive was the group consisting of(Screamira), Zhen Long, Zhen Hai, Zhen Guo and Zhen Lao and the menagerie of apes that Zhen Hai managed to tame. None of them, not even the old apes, knew what to do in this situation.
The second to arrive was the group composed of (Hurricroak),Zhen Hou, Zhen Yue, Zhen Xi, Zhen Feng, and even they had no idea what to do in this situation.
Technically there were two people who did know what to do, but…they weren’t exactly people at this moment.
…
[So…do we tell them what we know, or…]
[I think we still have to play dumb.]
[Great…]
