How could this have happened?
Indeed, as if her body reacted instinctually, her nostrils gave way as a certain fragrance flowed into her nose.
It was that of cherry blossoms.
Instinctively, she looked back towards the direction of the smell, only to find what appeared to be a staircase.
Wait staircase?
She was shocked, and as she looked up, she realized that Ran was up at the very top, which was several dozen meters into the air.
Yup, our boy had literally created a staircase to get to a taller height. But why?
Well, how else could reach a similar height that these two monsters played in? He couldn't fly.
In reality, he had to go higher because the barrier to use his sigil didn't cover enough distance to cover all the makeshift ice snakes.
Actually, his barrier by now had already passed a hundred and fifty feet (forty five meters) in diameter with him at the center. But, because that was diameter and not radius, only half of that went upwards. So, to compensate, he had to elevate himself by making a staircase made of his own juice. Luckily, they were merely slabs, so they didn't really cost too much focus by the end.
All of this was to say…
He just wanted to help. And, this was probably the only way at his current level.
Since it turned out to be like this, everyone couldn't help but smile. Indeed, even if they weren't strong enough to make too much of a difference, they could all help in their own way.
And so, that was exactly what they did.
Ran would use his sigil to sap the momentum out of Kingsley's snakes, and even transferred them to Ann's lion to help it escape. This already made Kingsley mad as hell.
Bob also began to use his sigil. He, with as much practice as he has, could instill two emotions rather than one. He split them to both parties. He gave Ann happiness, which helped alleviate some of the load from her skill. He gave Kinglsey anger, which, as a debuff, made him marginally less accurate and slightly more prone to not think appropriately.
The effect, while not very good, wasn't nothing either. For Ann, it only helped take off about five percent of the load, but this small amount allowed her to control her lion more efficiently.
Surprisingly enough, Fluffy helped too. She literally walked up to Ann and… spoke to her. Yeah, I know, right? Okay, she wasn't literally speaking, only meoring to her and if Ran didn't teach her to speak, she would be chirping. But this new too as Fluffy pretty much never speaks to the others and only spoke to Ran directly.
And funnily enough, the more she spoke to Ann, the more she understood. It was like they were establishing some sort of connection, allowing them to communicate with each other. So, just like this, Fluffy helped her.
How?
Well, as a cat, though cheetahs were generally quite different to lions, she could still provide some insight into the internal and external mechanisms of another cat. Basically, she just gave some advice to Ann, allowing her to grow increasingly more proficient in her use of her lion. Plus, as a cheetah, she tired out too quickly to try and fight that thing. That and she had no long-range skills.
So, with these helpers so far, Ann could not only dodge Kingsleys snakes, she could even counterattack, slowly whittling away at the cloud.
At all of this, the cloud cried out in frustration.
"Ahh! Do you know who you're messing with!? She'll ruin you all!'
"I'll ruin you all! Die!"
Kingsley and by proxy the cloud, were so frustrated that they crazily released their bloodlust as they disintegrated the black ice snakes into countless ice crystal clouds.
However, everyone was just cringing at this person's dialog. Who directly says "die" like that? Were they okay in the head? Now, they didn't want to discriminate against the mentally ill, but… ah who am I kidding, they were totally making fun of her. Again, who even speaks during a fight? Is that not distracting?
However, they couldn't afford to be distracted themselves as the clouds quickly built a magical static charge from the crystals colliding.
Soon, the hundreds of small clouds released their charge in the form of black bolts of lightning.
However, before they were even released, the fourth helper had acted.
This time, it was Shirley. She carefully put her luggage—I mean Peppy and Missus the toad down on the ground and lectured them so they wouldn't go anywhere. Then, she used a skill passed down by her race for generations.
It involved the bulb on her lure. Basically, it just involved taking a little of the bacteria in the bulb and placing them within a ball of juice.
Once within, the bacteria would quickly multiply.
This was exactly what she did and threw the ball at the cloud right before it shot the lightning. As a result, when it got close enough, the ball exploded and the bioluminescent bacteria released all their light in what was essentially a flashbang.
"Argh!"
Kingsley, temporarily blinded, accidentally released the bolts, causing them to completely miss their mark. The lion took the opportunity and completely blew apart an arm with a threaded ball of its light soul juice.
And yet, this wasn't even all of it.
Even before all of this, the fifth helper had acted.
Being the only one left, how could Queenie not do anything. In the end, peer pressure got to this helpless teenager.
So, how does an angsty teen deal with her brother who had turned into a gigantic cloud monster?
With a sword of course!
Or, I guess with a rapier. Wait, is a rapier a kind of sword? Okay, Google says it's a kind of sword, so it should be fine.
Anyways, how does a sister use a sword to deal with her brother?
Intimidation!
How do you do that?
By swallowing it of course!
Indeed, since little, Queenie had trained and was a master sword swallower. Wait, since little? Will I go to jail for this?
Eh… She's a fictional character, so it should be alright. After all, everyone knows that every fictional character, no matter how small they looked, was over eighteen.
However, in reality, she was just imbuing her rapier. After all, her sigil was in her navel, and her flames were released from inside her body.
So upon swallowing it, the flames within her body quickly imbued themselves into her fetal organ.
Upon removing it, it came out red-hot and on fire.
Then, with its sparkling heat illuminating her face, she pointed towards the cloud and activated her fetal organ's special ability.
Upon activation, the rapier suddenly shattered into dozens of thin spikes that floated in the air.
With a "go" from Queenie, they flew off towards Kingsley.
Along the way, the flames turned the spikes into projections of serpents. They circled around the cloud and approached it from behind.
But, as it just so happens, the timing was particularly well-timed as by the time the flashback went off, the sword fragments had already neared Kingsleys main body.
And while she knew it approached, the circumstances she was in didn't allow for her to take action against it.
Unfortunately though, it wasn't the end of it all.
As only rank-7, it was already good enough that she could control her move from hundreds of feet away. However, while fetal organs were stronger than normal weapons, the fragments couldn't couldn't go further than a few centimeters into the skin. The flames were also too weak to do anything more than slightly singe the area.
So, Kingsley, while practically turning to a porcupine, wasn't really hurt in any serious sense.
Although, because of all these happenings, combined with the anger Bob instilled in her, Kingsley finally seemed to snap.
Her black eyes emitted black rays as she recovered within a second of being blinded. She shook her body, causing the sword fragments to lose their power and fall to the ground. She then, in a fit of rage, changed her target to the group rather than the lion.
The cloud used her other good arm to make a grabbing motion towards the group, intending to crush them in its abrasive grip. But before she could do so, her cloud body completely stopped courtesy of our boy Ran.
At that moment, the lion moved, sending another threaded ball and obliterating the cloud's other arm.
"Argh, shit! Y‐you all must be fun at parties… ganging up on me like that."
She coughed a little before continuing.
"But, this is far from over…"
And then she summoned her fetal organ.
Almost as a last resort, Kingsley activated her scepter's special ability.
Immediately, a golden aura swept out from the scepter and enveloped the cloud, which was half its original size due to recovering its arms.
However, as it enveloped the cloud, it suddenly began to flicker until it eventually fizzled out.
Finally, everything had taken its toll.
You thought it was easy to become a cloud monster several hundred feet in height?
Pfft, should I laugh? Yeah, I thought so…
But seriously, the only reason she could even use such a move was because of those runes. They provided not only the structure, like all rune formations, but even took a portion of the toll or load it takes to use such a move.
However, to use a fetal organ's ability on top of that? Not to mention that Kingsley was already running on practically fumes; that's why the cloud didn't recover.
With all this, something was bound to go wrong. And the first to break was Kingsleys focus. And that happened from a variety of factors as well, it wasn't just the sheer load of the move she used.
And now, there seemed to be only one thing left to do.
"Heh, so I'm all out of gas?"
The face of the cloud gritted her teeth as she spoke, and even her expression seemed to warp and twist into one of a much more sinister nature.
"Well then, since I won't be leaving today, neither shall any of you!"
And at that moment, everyone could feel the energy within the cloud escalate extremely quickly as black lightning once again began to circulate around it.
However, she did not discharge it and only continued saving it all up.
It got to the point that her gaseous body began swelling and swelling.
Then, and only then, did they realize that this monster planned to self-destruct!
She wanted to go out with them!