"Forget everything I told you, kid." Kalla didn't bother replying to Imosi. "No matter what happens, I need you to stay close to ."
She Spirit Blinked outside the erald do only to discover that the elental sealing arrays had moved with them, and so had the Ishara.
"Foolish creature! You threw my rcy back into my face, and now you'll die for it!" The Elder's hand was already raised before he Blinked after Kalla, and it ca down with its palm open as soon as he ca out of the dinsional opening.
'I was right.' Kalla inwardly nodded. 'Keeping the fungus folk near ans that this guy can't use powerful spells or his bident without the risk of destroying his prize. Unluckily for , physical attacks do little damage to a fungus folk but can easily kill .'
The Ishara's hand slamd against the ground too fast for a re bright blue core to react. It produced a tremor that reverberated for hundreds of ters, opening a web of fissures in the soil.
Nyka couldn't avert her gaze from the scene and watched the Divine Beast squash her mother like a bug on a table. Imosi too scoured the area with his eight eyes, and his mouth cracked into a smile when he found no trace left of the Wight.
Yet his joy was short-lived.
'Wait, where is the fungus folk? How can their energy signature have disappeared as well? I didn't infuse my hand with any spell. They must have survived!'
Kalla knew that with the gap in physical and magical skill, she had no way to escape the trap, so she had let the Ishara give her a literal hand.
She had placed the entry point of a Warp Steps under her feet, hidden by her magical aura and the fungus folk's spores shrouding her, and the exit point high in the sky.
Imosi's slap had propelled her and the fungus folk through the Steps, while the Spirit Barrier of her armor had taken the brunt of the damage and ensured the two stuck together as they bolted away.
The trick would have bought Kalla over a second if her opponent didn't have so many eyes. Imosi only needed to slightly turn his neck to notice the erald teor darting through the sky and rush to the chase.
'What are we going to do?' The fungus folk asked as the Ishara's colossal figure blotted out the sun.
'I don't know you, but I think I'm going to die.' Kalla saw the bolts of silver lightning arching across the Elder Divine Beast's body and knew to be completely outmatched.
'Even if this guy were an idiot, I can't kill soone that much bigger and stronger than with a trick. Victory is not an option.'
The Wight focused the Ears of nadion solely on the Ishara and braced for impact. Imosi lunged at her with his four upper limbs and his tail, conjuring another erald barrier that prevented the fungus folk from escaping.
Kalla read the mana flow generated by the five living teors and moved after reading their trajectories. The difference in speed was too great even for the Ears to be effective, so she shrank her Spirit Barrier and altered its elental balance.
The water elent reduced friction in the external layer of the barrier, while the earth elent turned the internal layer elastic. Every hit reached their mark too fast for the Wight to dodge them completely, but their trajectory was a few degrees off the mark, and that was enough.
Kalla's barrier rode the chitinous shell of the Ishara for a split second before bouncing away. Those inside felt akin to a pinball, but luckily for them, they had no organs that could puke.
"How can soone that small be so annoying?" Imosi snarled as every attempt to crush the barrier in his fist ended up with the Wight slipping away like an eel.
"Practice. Lots and lots of practice. Ask my daughter." Kalla's trick had bought her one more second, but she could feel her barrier growing weaker faster than she could fuel it.
Even a glancing blow from a creature the size of an adult Divine Beast was enough to crack her barrier, and it had already suffered dozens such hits.
'Defense alone isn't enough.' She thought. 'My options are too limited, and it's only a matter of ti before Imosi cos up with sothing I can't avoid at all.'
Kalla grabbed the white crystal at her neck and passed a spark of her life force to it, painting the pristine world energy it contained erald. She then absorbed the mana into her body, bringing her core above the limits of the bright blue.
When Imosi's left hand closed in again, Kalla recalled the barrier and added its power to the tier five Spirit Spell she had woven, Starfall. It conjured a hail of small green beads imbued with the power of all elents.
Air gave them speed, light made them as hard as diamonds, while earth gave them physical mass. Fire made the projectiles detonate, and water made their fragnts seep through the joints of Imosi's armor, carrying the darkness along and sapping his strength.
Yet it wasn't enough to stop the Ishara, let alone kill him. Nothing she could dish out would be enough, so she used the clash between the Spirit Spell and the incoming limb to propel herself back like a rocket.
'The pain shouldn't be much, but combined with the shock of his attack backfiring on him again, it should make the Divine Beast hesitate.' Kalla thought. 'I can't defeat him, but as long as I keep my life, I won't lose either.'
Alas, Imosi was an Elder Divine beast, a title granted only to those who entered the second half of their life span and hadn't spent the first in the safety of their magical labs.
The Ishara conjured a Warping Array and used Elental Flow to move the position of its exit point according to Kalla's erratic trajectory. His pincer erged behind the Wight while she focused on the hand coming from the front to ensure no spell would take the fungus folk away from her.
The scissor movent of Imosi's scorpion limb snapped the Wight's body in half like a nutcracker, shattering most of her bones.
"Mom!" Nyka almost lost her mind as she watched the pile of pristine fragnts fall to the ground and the veil of shadows wreathing them fade away.
"Kalla!" Loma and Solus yelled in outrage, the orange Horde launching themselves at the Isharas in a suicidal charge while Solus and the vampire attacked them from the back.
"Cease this pointless struggle, worms!" Imosi's triumphant voice rumbled like thunder, yet the fighting didn't stop. "We got what we wanted. There's no point shedding more blood. We are leaving!"
A small erald sphere rested on his open palm, and the fungus folk swirled helplessly within it. The arrays sealed the only two elents the fungus folk could use, and the Ishara had also found and collected all the spore stashes the fungus folk had left behind.
"You've killed my mother! Prepare to die!" Nyka stopped caring about her own survival and put half of her blood core into Vladion's tier five Blood Magic spell, Ruler's Might.
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