Wu Hai and Noyuki were cocooned and the group had no idea how long it was going to take. Vector had managed to grow in strength by simply forcing it, Wu Hai and Noyuki had waited for their power to overrun the bottlenecks or perhaps they never had one at all. Vector's speculations didn't matter to the others, Vira, Mursayade and Kuzunoha were left without the same level of strength and it frustrated them to no end.
"You could always try Group Cultivation.." Vector had said it as a joke but the girls all stood up and walked into the room, erecting an isolation barrier around it. '####' He cursed his shortsightedness when he realized that they didn't need him in the room for that.
Dozens of Totems were thrown out and then all three of them dumped out their spirit stones. "You realize that 'he's' never going to shut up about this right?" Mursayade laughed a little bit. "He's had plenty of other women but I think he's upset more that I can do this and he cannot." She sat with Kuzunoha and Vira in a formation circle. "Let him dream.." She giggled a little bit and started to undress.
"We don't have to do that you know.." Vira spoke first, it made Mursayade frown a bit. "Just focus your mind and think about it, the climax is what helps you absorb more.. just build it up yourself."
"That doesn't sound like its as much fun." Mursayade pouted but sort of understood. It was a boundary that neither of them were willing to cross.
Kuzunoha lightly made coughing noises, "Shall we get on with it.."
The three of them fed their energy into the formation, when it activated, all the totems began to deteriorate, flash absorbed into the plate and refocused between them.
"This formation plate, I want one." Mursayade commented and then realigned her focus.
The spirit stones hovered overhead and began to peel, energy was coming in waves across the three of them, the brunt of the force shared among them all. The isolation formation did little to slow the wave's ripple. It passed through the bulkheads, the walls and through the ship like a bell.
'DONG'
A stronger energy wave burst out and the isolation field failed. Energy came pouring out, Vector sealed the doorway to help stop the leak but the radiant energy coming from the room was melting the Ice no matter how fast he reapplied it.
A golden light swallowed the room again, a wave of light pulsed.
The ship shook and pulsed like a bell again, 'DONG.'
the echo became louder with the formation no longer containing the waves.
Another bell rang, it was like the first two, 'DONG'
The light kept swallowing the room.
Heat, more than Vector could stand could be felt from the corridor between cabins. He pushed back toward the cockpit.
Misozi landed and opened all of her ports. The Golden Light was destroying everything it touched, one second the thing was there and then it wasn't, swallowed up by the light. Golden Motes surrounded a large mass of culminating energies. Bound together as one and spinning, the light revolved slowly.
There was an exchange of energies, all three bodies were giving off a tremendous amount of energy while they advanced.
"Misozi, get Cheonquq out of there." Vector called out and one of the puppets dragged the boy out of the cockpit before throwing him out of the ship. "How did you survive in there? It had to have been hot in the cockpit."
A large golden glow surrounded the ship, Misozi did her best to absorb anything that flew toward the refueling formation but she was already topped off, after a few minutes the light had surrounded them and was beaming into the dark sky above.
A Groan came from one of the caves, then, a beating across the Ice walls that were protecting Zao and Noyuki.
"Cheonquq, hide and don't let yourself be discovered." It was Vector's turn to shine, he drank down a filtered herb that he had found.
They were suitable during cultivating so he figured it had to be good for him before battle. When the liquid his his lips, he felt different. Drunk and woozy, his body twisted and his entire body expanded. His robes tore and his boots split. Vector grew by several sizes but so did his strength. The Ring on his finger snapped and many items fell onto the ground, hundreds of thousands of items spilled out across the ground.
The pile of items resembled a mountain of treasure, his claw came crashing down and a thick rushing wall of ice flew toward the noise.
Then, Vector spread his wings, lightning struck them both but he was too large in size for the bolts to do any damage. Instead, the strikes fueled his fury, motivating him to push his attacks further than ever before. He threw himself into the sky and rushed toward the crashing wall to defend.
His ice was shattered by the attack but it had been from before Vector's transformation. Roaring, he sent out breath attack, it rippled outward and dozens of waves, entirely of spikes flowed from his mouth. It was a tide of Ice, an opening attack meant to distract. The Ice below shattered under Vector's weight and treasures below him began to evaporate, swallowed under his footsteps. The Items simply vanished until the breath attack ended.
"Finally, I have a road to my return!" The enemy spoke clearly.
Vector looked around but couldn't see who it was, no figure was in his vision. "Show yourself."
"Power, there is so much power..." The enemy simple cackled and left faint afterimages in his wake. He was incredibly fast, at least, Vector presumed it was a man. The voice gave little cause for him to believe otherwise and it forced his eyes to keep darting across the battlefield. Vector was at a complete disadvantage when it came to speed, his body was not particularly fast before but now with his increase in size, he was considerably easier as a target.
Most of Vector's attacks relied on several factors, one of them was distance. Against any larger opponent you either want a lot of distance or almost none at all, using your size to undermine their stature.
Thankfully, in that instance, Vector was the larger party..he closed his eyes and did his very best to concentrate, there was a lot going on around him. Lightning still persisted and while it had no affect on his body, the strikes that hit his body would disrupt his concentration. Frost spread out across the ground which quickly turned into a fog because of the storm. Visibility was lower but it wasn't what Vector had intended as his attack.
As the frost turned to cold fog and filled the area, he felt all his scales charge with energy the further the temperature dropped. Vector moved himself to the opposite side of the battleground, Cheonquq was still hiding nearby but the heat coming from his body made it easy to find him at all times. The Fog was thicker around Vector's body the storm was bringing hot air inside and grinding away at the top. There was a flicker through the cloud, the intruder had left a trail in his wake that was unmistakable and exactly what Vector wanted.
The Fog solidified around them both, even if Vector couldn't fight the creature head on, he would definitely get a good look at it. "There's no escape." Vector tore himself away and cleared the frost accumulating across the Ice for a better view.
Inside, a dark gray, skinny old man was frozen still. His eyes trembled but he was pinned in place, facial movement at any level was hard. When he was able to blink, Vector reinforced the layers of Ice. It wasn't ending the man's life, he wasn't even containing him entirely. The melting ice was a clear sign that Vector's didn't have the ability to cause harm to the creature or contain it for long.
'How, even now am I not able to kill this thing!' Vector roared and slammed down with his foot, pinning the portion that contained the old gray man in place.
There was a look in the old man's face when Vector's large dragon claw bore down on his chest through the ice. It carved into him and ripped into organs.
The Ice had been broken apart, the gray man spit out purple blood passed out. He was still bleeding but he had lost. Vector didn't intend to nurse the man's wounds or tend to them, helping an enemy on the battlefield is never quite the best idea, no matter the intent.
The unconscious body of the old gray man was thrown into a beast cage. Vector's size made the act of putting the small figure into the cage a funny thing to watch. He poked with a single talon, it gored at the creature's shoulder and then Vector closed the door, locking it.
More noise, including loud explosions could be heard in the distance and out of sight. Misozi's hull lit like a lantern in the sky. She was carrying the girls during their breakthrough, there were caves nearby but one enemy had already come through its wall. There was no telling what awaited any of them if they entered, much less alone.
Vector was still standing atop his mountain of treasure when the effects of his potion had dissipated. When he was no longer so large, his first course of action was to find a storage ring and sweep everything that remained into it. Noyuki and Wu Hai were still paired in the sky and Misozi's position was clearly visible in the night sky. They all undergoing changes and the changes themselves brought with them intense and distorting phenomena.
The ground beneath them began to erode, lightning crystals accumulated the further the crater crept down and into the soil. Like a bowl, they pooled near the center and quickly turned into a funnel that drifted up. The spiral of liquefied energy flowed toward Wu Hai and Noyuki. The Magnetic Fields that surrounded them intensified.
'Really?' Vector was starting to become a little jealous of their pace but did his best to remember that it was Wu Hai that had brought him every step of the way.
The Lightning Storm above shot down a white pillar of light, it slammed into the pair as they continued to rotate. The storm clouds separated, the white light disappeared from above and concentrated itself on the two of them. Noyuki seemed to split apart from Wu Hai slowly, gradually creating a gap in the middle. They were coming to a slow as they separated.
'Is that it?' He had made such a fuss to himself before, watching them coming down seemed anticlimactic and for whatever reason he felt underwhelmed like it happened all too quickly.
Wu Hai and Noyuki both opened their eyes at the same time. White light filled both of their eyes and lightning trailed their fire. The Sun tattoo on his forehead was foreboding but it had darkened and Noyuki's star mark had done the same. He felt a bit annoyed, there were too many similarities to a prophecy he had heard as a child. When he looked into mirrors, he didn't see the innocent child he was in the past, he had been motivated to work hard for the future. Prophecies were a very hard thing to avoid, almost none come with a date of execution.
Vector had gotten dressed, Cheonquq was watching everything from a distance but the large chunks of ice made getting across them difficult. Beneath Vector's foot was a cage.
Noyuki asked, "Okay, what's in the Cage?
"No idea but it can speak, its gray and old." Vector's foot was stabbed from below, his boots had ripped and while he was dressed, things like his boots were all made custom order. "Aye-eh." He picked up his foot and saw a drop of blood. 'That little asshole actually stabbed me. Come to think of it, does he have a storage ring?' Vector searched the hands of the gray man, 'So.. there is a ring..'