Five seconds.
It's not a long time, not a lot can be done in five seconds, but a lot can happen in five seconds. Especially from the perspective of someone who had enough weird magical energy coursing through their body to power a small city or a very large town, half of which was violently coursing through their brain cells.
It may have been five seconds in real space, but to Zhen Liu, it felt like five hours.
Zhen Liu kept a weary eye on the deadpan maid, hoping to whatever higher power was up there that this maid wouldn't try something or at least wait until he could move and fight back again.
'Is...is this how condensing rings normally supposed to go, or is it because I ate that stupid thing?,' Zhen Liu thought to himself in-between the minutes long microseconds.
It was a weird feeling being helpless after spending a few months being a walking min-max anomaly, but at least it was only for a few seconds.
'I...need to plan ahead more often. So I don't end up like this again.'
Zhen Liu knew that at his current level, fighting the Marquis, even with kaijin's helping, was basically a losing battle that would end in death or worst. Luckily, there was some(thing/one) with a vested interest in him not dying in any manner.
With this in mind, the brain voice gave him two choices on how to survive.
The first option was to run and live to fight another day. He would have time to prepare and synchronize with his current roster of kaijin in order to get them up to snuff, but this was an unacceptable choice. Zhen Liu, or rather Thomas Lee, understood that when someone is kidnapped, they only had about twenty four or so hours before things could go incredibly wrong. The fact that the kidnapper happened to be a crazy rich gothic horror knock off antagonist with an actual murder chamber, didn't help either.
Which is why he went with the second choice: forcibly leveling himself by consuming an unused core.
'Come on Zhen Liu, just need to hold it together for a little longer,' he told himself as he felt as if brain was becoming too big for his skull and was about to push out of his eye sockets.
A desire core wasn't just condensed desire and want made tangible, it was..."energy".
The voice in his head wasn't exactly forthcoming with the details, but it had explained that the desire cores Zhen Liu were making weren't just pure crystallized desire, rather the cores were actually a cocktail mix of desire, aether from both the universe and the origin of the aforementioned desire and pure chaos energy. As such, consuming a core could cause one's abilities to skyrocket to unknowable heights, but the latent desires that held together could easily influence the consumer as well, possibly irreversibly changing them as a person.
In a way, the cores Zhen Liu were making were very much like high class aether pills, but equally dangerous.
An aether pill, by design, is the unification and refinement of conflicting aethers collected from various natural treasures, beast cores and aether herbs. The mere process of making aether pills is considered an arduous task that requires a special constitution to even attempt to make.
As part of Zhen Liu's education, he learned how even if someone got their hands on a high grade aether pill, the energies inside it could be absolutely devastating for them. There have been cases where people would explode due to being unable to handle all of the energies locked within the pills.
But then again...some people can get very, very lucky.
All at once, Zhen Liu felt his skewed perception of time suddenly correct itself, while his mind and body felt a lot more...substantial.
'Huh...'
As he picked himself up from the floor, tiny wisps of [rainbow/black] colored energy leaped from his skin and into the ground. The voice in his head then began to rattle off announcements like it was a level up notification.
Zhen Liu took a deep, calming breath with his eyes closed, before opening them and striding out into the adjacent. The deadpan maid didn't make a single move to stop him.
'Huh. Guess she is being controlled,' Zhen Liu mentally commented. 'Good thing I'm about to bury the source of it then...'
_________________________________________________
While the above was happening...
"DIE!," the Razor Maiden called out as she spun towards the Marquis like a buzzsaw.
The Marquis had a bemused smile on his face when he saw the encroaching Razor Maiden. Entering into a fighting pose, the aether around his fist began to churn violently and hum. The illusion of a wolf's head began to super impose itself on top of the Marquis's fist.
[Howling Blast!]
AWOOOOOOO!
"Bah!"
An ear piercing howl echoed through the room as a force of aether in the shape of wolf's head came flying out of the Marquis's fist and slammed into the Razor Maiden's stomach. The spinning attack was stopped dead in it's tracks as the Razor Maiden was knocked to the ground. It's good thing she didn't have blood or organs, otherwise she'd be coughing either of those up by now.
"Now with that out of the way I should... actually, let's just finish this, shall we?!," the Marquis shouted in an unhinged manner.
The Marquis leaped into the air towards the prone Razor Maiden. Not enough to send him flying, but just enough to give him enough momentum to cave in the latter's head once he landed!
"Can't move," the Razor Maiden growled as she tried to crawl away.
"It's over!," the Marquis shouted.
The Marquis was just about to land, when all of a sudden, a strange hairy yet metallic elephantine trunk grabbed him by the waist midair. A piercing cold somehow penetrated his armor.
"Huh?!"
"Pick on...someone...your size!"
[Artic Slam!]
With the Marquis firmly entangled in his trunk, Frosttusk slammed the Marquis into the ground as Ice aether surged through his body.