With a series of crackling sounds, countless fissures spiderwebbed across the ground beneath the Earth Great Spirit's feet. When this Earth Element creature stood upon the earth, it was virtually invincible, drawing endless power from the ground beneath it.
Then, wouldn't it be simple to just force it off the ground?
Under Hyacine's raging winds, the Earth Great Spirit was uprooted like a colossal tree—no, more accurately, like an entire mountain range torn from its foundations. In mere moments, it was forcibly blown into the sky!
The ground connecting its feet to the Floating City, resembling the tangled roots of a tree, was ripped upward along with the entire street, soaring into the air as well.
Witnessing this spectacle, the Necromancy Tower Master, Pela, and the opposing Diviners alike wore expressions of utter shock. Even the Fire Great Spirit and Water Great Spirit on the battlefield stared in dumbfounded disbelief.
Blowing a mountain into the sky with wind? Isn't that beyond absurd?!
At the same moment, Little Ica lightly touched the ground, transforming into a streak of white light that crashed into the Fire Great Spirit. Spreading its wings, it hurled the flaming giant into the sky, instantly launching it beyond the Floating City's boundaries.
Because the Fire Great Spirit was composed of magma and obsidian, it resembled a burning meteorite—except this meteorite was soaring upward instead of plummeting from the sky.
Immediately afterward, a rainbow-like radiance enveloped Hyacine, shrouding her in a luminous aura. It looked as though she had gained a special "Aura Buff," and she began to slowly float upward.
The Air Great Spirit solemnly declared, "Let's attack together!"
With that, it transformed into a violent whirlwind of azure energy and charged toward Hyacine. The Water Great Spirit followed closely behind. Seeing this, Hyacine darted toward the horizon.
The rainbow light led the way, with the azure and cerulean Great Spirits hot on her heels. Soon, they vanished from the onlookers' vision—exactly as Hyacine had planned. Fighting inside the Floating City would be too difficult; she'd simply move the battlefield elsewhere. What could be easier than fighting outside?
Having lured away all four spirits, Anaxa and the Two others could continue their mission unimpeded.
As she pondered this, Hyacine glanced back to confirm the Air and Water Great Spirits were still trailing her. If she wanted, she could easily shake them off in an instant. But she was deliberately controlling her speed, keeping them just close enough to think they could catch up, yet never quite letting them close the gap.
At that moment, the Water Great Spirit suddenly seemed to collapse in on itself, shrinking rapidly and vanishing behind Hyacine. In the next instant, the moisture in the air before her began to condense and expand violently, and the Water Great Spirit teleported directly in front of her!
Elemental Distortion—a unique form of movement exclusive to Elemental Creatures.
Simultaneously, the Air Great Spirit began casting a spell. Just moments before, the sky had been clear and boundless, but in the blink of an eye, it became overcast with dense, swirling clouds, streaks of lightning flashing through the darkness.
The Air, Water, and Fire Great Spirits were all capable of wielding magic; they were born Sorcerers, casting spells effortlessly with a mere gesture, without even needing incantations. The Earth Great Spirit, however, was a notable exception.
After teleporting in front of Hyacine, the Water Great Spirit instantly unleashed another spell—a Ninth-Level Time Stop!
This Time Stop differed from the conventional version. While a normal Time Stop achieves its effect by accelerating oneself to near-infinite speed, making the world appear frozen, the Water Great Spirit employed the opposite approach. By freezing spacetime itself, it slowed its enemies to a near-standstill, achieving the same result.
Half had previously used this very technique when battling the Ranger Hero.
In an instant, the entire airspace seemed frozen. From every angle, every point in space was covered in frost.
Then, the Water Great Spirit swung its arm, flinging droplets of water toward Hyacine. As soon as these droplets left its body, they instantly crystallized into deep blue ice cones. Within seconds, Hyacine was surrounded by a dense array of these cones, leaving no blind spots.
These were no ordinary ice cones. Before freezing, they had been part of the Water Great Spirit's body—a substance called "Heavy Water." Even a single drop weighed tens of tons, and their destructive power became even more terrifying when frozen. At the same moment, lightning crackled in the sky, ready to strike.
In other words, the instant Time Stop ended, Hyacine would simultaneously face both the ice cones and the thunder from above.
That was how it should have happened. But in the very next moment, the lightning above suddenly veered ninety degrees and struck the Water Great Spirit directly. Meanwhile, the deep blue ice cones it had launched toward Hyacine melted into pure water vapor before reaching her.
Scorching heat erupted around Hyacine as the rainbow light vanished, replaced by a blinding crimson glow. To put it bluntly, any ordinary person who glanced at Hyacine in this state would instantly be blinded by the searing light.
This sun-like heat instantly melted the Heavy Water Ice Cones that had surrounded Hyacine. Rolling waves of heat surged outward in all directions, forcing the Air Great Spirit to retreat rapidly to a safe distance.
The Water Great Spirit used Elemental Distortion to teleport beside the Air Great Spirit. Crackling electricity still flickered across its body, clearly showing it hadn't recovered from the lightning strike. "Why did you attack me?" it asked.
Yet the Water Great Spirit spoke without a trace of anger or any other emotion. Its tone remained perfectly calm, as water elementals are inherently incapable of anger. Their emotional stability is unparalleled.
The Air Great Spirit quickly explained, "No, that wasn't me! Once my attack leaves my hand, I lose control of it! It's Her Authority—it seized control of the lightning!"
Hyacine was not the Wind God, the Thunder God, nor the Sun God. She was the Sky God, and whatever a common person could see when they looked up at the sky—that was within her domain.
Thus, gales, lightning, and scorching sunlight were merely facets of her Authority. The boundless expanse of the sky was her true dominion!
The Air Great Spirit was utterly dominated by Hyacine from start to finish. This was an absolute suppression in terms of divine status and Authority, akin to a rabbit attempting to attack a tiger. Although the battle appeared to be two-on-one, it was essentially a solo duel between Hyacine and the Water Great Spirit.
Hyacine didn't even glance at the Air Great Spirit, her entire focus fixed on the Water Great Spirit beside her. She extended her right hand horizontally, and a searing beam of orange-red sunlight erupted from her palm, hurtling toward the Water Great Spirit.
It's often said that water extinguishes fire, but when the flames are of sufficient magnitude, this relationship can be reversed. Imagine pouring a bucket of water onto the sun—it wouldn't extinguish the sun, would it?
This was precisely the situation here. Compared to other Demigods, if Cipher's Authority was an absolute "mechanics monster," Hyacine's was a pure "numerical monster." No flashy tricks, just the sheer beauty of overwhelming power.
Boom!!!
The fiery beam instantly engulfed the Water Great Spirit, piercing through its body and continuing its trajectory across the sky, leaving a vivid red trail etched against the heavens.
Had anyone been looking up from the ground at that moment, they would have witnessed the once-impenetrable, storm-clouded sky—summoned by the Air Great Spirit—suddenly cleaved in two!
The Air Great Spirit, suspended high above, recoiled in terror. Its humanoid form, merely a manifestation of its elemental essence, contorted into a grotesque distortion under the sheer shock. As an Elemental Creature, such violent contortions were only natural under extreme duress.
Even when first summoned and laying eyes on Hyacine, the Air Great Spirit had sensed something unsettling about this petite, pink-haired human. Whether it was intuition or some other innate sense, the spirit could vaguely perceive a hidden threat lurking within her frail frame.
But nothing could have prepared it for such absurdity! The mere aftershock of this attack had nearly shattered its form on the spot. As for the Water Great Spirit, which had taken the full brunt of the blast, it was undoubtedly obliterated beyond recognition. The Air Great Spirit muttered silently, "Rest in peace, brother."
In truth, these Elemental Creatures cannot truly die. When shattered, their essence returns to their respective Elemental Planes, where they slowly recuperate. After some time, they regenerate. Because of this, Hyacine held nothing back in her attack, though she didn't use her full strength—the strike she unleashed likely only tapped into sixty or seventy percent of her power.
As Hyacine turned her gaze toward the Air Great Spirit, the creature abruptly raised its hands. "Wait! Stop fighting! I surrender!"
Though Elemental Creatures are immortal, who would willingly endure being forcibly shattered, banished back to their Elemental Planes, and forced to slowly heal?
Victory was utterly impossible; there wasn't even a sliver of hope. What else could it do but surrender?
Hyacine tilted her head slightly, a gesture that would normally appear utterly adorable. To the Air Great Spirit, however, it was utterly terrifying. The creature trembled, fearing she might reject its surrender and obliterate it instantly.
Fortunately, Hyacine harbored no such murderous intent. Since the creature had yielded, she would spare it. She turned her attention to dealing with the remaining two Great Spirits.
Take the Earth Great Spirit, for example. Though she had elbowed the creature off the Floating City at the start, sending it plummeting from a great height, the Earth Great Spirit hadn't died. In fact, its fall to the ground had strengthened it further, its body merging with the earth to gain even greater power.
Originally a hundred-meter-tall rock giant, it had continued to expand, now reaching an absurd height of five hundred meters. Its towering presence was impossible to ignore.
It was fortunate that Hyacine had blown the creature into a deserted wasteland. Had the Earth Great Spirit landed in a city, its mere act of absorbing the earth to grow larger would likely have flattened the entire settlement.
Though the Earth Great Spirit couldn't cast spells, its sheer size and physical strength were more than enough for combat. Compared to the other three Great Spirits, it was essentially a numbers monster.
Boom...Boom...
Standing on the ground, the Earth Great Spirit tilted its head to gaze at Hyacine in the sky, lumbering toward her with heavy steps. Each footfall caused massive destruction to the ground beneath, and it bellowed in a muffled voice, "Don't run!"
Nearly all Earth Element creatures share this stubborn nature—simple and earnest. Once they set their minds on a goal or made a promise, they would relentlessly pursue it to completion.
A scene like the Air Great Spirit surrendering at the first sign of trouble would never happen with an Earth Great Spirit. Hyacine gathered her energy once more.
Just kidding! She didn't need to gather energy at all. She merely rotated her hand, aimed it at the Earth Great Spirit below, and unleashed the exact same attack as before—a crimson beam of light erupted from her palm.
In the blink of an eye, the beam struck the Earth Great Spirit's forehead, between its eyes. The hardened stone instantly melted as the beam pierced through its 500-meter-tall body, slamming into the ground below!
However, the Earth Great Spirit possessed astonishing vitality. While the Water Great Spirit had been instantly annihilated by this very attack, the Earth Great Spirit merely paused momentarily. Then, the hole blasted through its body began to rapidly regenerate, drawing energy from the earth beneath its feet to replenish itself.
Witnessing this, Hyacine pondered briefly before shifting her strategy. She raised her right hand skyward, and vast quantities of matter surged from within her body, coalescing directly above her. A colossal sphere of rock, over a hundred meters in diameter, slowly began to materialize!
Creating matter from nothing! Sculpting a meteorite with her bare hands!
With a gentle flick of her wrist, she sent the meteorite plummeting toward its target: the Earth Great Spirit below!
However, because Hyacine was only about a thousand meters above the ground—not particularly high—the meteorite didn't have much time to accelerate, resulting in a slightly weaker impact.
Faced with this strike, the Earth Great Spirit neither dodged nor blocked. Instead, it stolidly raised its massive hands, attempting to defend and intercept the attack!
The moment they collided, a deafening roar erupted, and the ground within a radius of dozens of kilometers beneath the Earth Great Spirit shattered into a dense network of cracks. Even residents in a city a hundred kilometers away felt the ground tremble beneath their feet, as if an earthquake had struck!
The Earth Great Spirit was forced to kneel on one knee by the impact, its entire body riddled with cracks. Yet, through sheer brute force, it stubbornly endured, managing to catch the sky-borne meteor!
But Hyacine merely raised her right hand again. A classic scene from Naruto, which she had watched in her past life, flashed through her mind. She murmured to herself, "If you can catch one, what about the second?"
In an instant, an even larger meteorite—far exceeding the previous one in diameter—appeared high above. This was no ordinary rock; its surface was riddled with crimson fissures, revealing a molten core of magma within—a true Fireball!
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New Honkai Impact fic out on profile!