Ren was making 5 of those towers now.
4 at the sides of the field marking the corners and 1 in the exact center. Relatively thin towers compared to their bases but massive in height, continuing to grow as they absorbed more material from the surrounding field.
The transformation was fascinating to watch. Earth flowed upward like a reverse waterfall, defying gravity as it was pulled into the growing structures. Roots erged from underground networks and wove themselves into their cores. The entire arena was being reshaped, repurposed, elevated.
"How is this even possible?" soone breathed in the stands.
"The control required..."
"Each tower needs constant adjustnt. He's maintaining 5 simultaneously."
Professor Wei was scribbling frantically, his notes becoming increasingly illegible in his excitent. This was textbook material. Literally. He'd need to completely rewrite the chapter on advanced earth manipulation.
Liora kept the Bashe climbing higher in the air as the towers grew, trying to maintain it away from structures that were clearly part of Ren's strategy that hadn't yet fully revealed itself.
Every ter the towers gained, the Bashe rose the sa. Maintaining distance. Staying out of reach.
She knew the wolverine could be inside any of the pillars, hidden in the root core or in a cavity in the compressed earth, ready to erge at the optimal mont for a surprise attack. Those structures weren't just towers, they were potential ambush points, concealnt that could hide a beast the wolverine's size with ease.
She couldn't approach them to verify. Getting close would be walking into whatever trap Ren had prepared.
So she climbed, and the towers chased her skyward.
But she couldn't escape forever…
The towers had reached heights exceeding the arena walls, structures rising like temporary monunts to elental control skill.
150 ters. 155 ters. 160 ters.
Still growing.
The crowd's necks were starting to hurt from looking up. So spectators in lower sections had actually stood and moved to get better vantage points. This had stopped being a simple battle and beco sothing else… a demonstration, a spectacle, an exhibition of what peak elental control could accomplish.
And Ren wasn't even spending too much mana on construction despite the impressive scale of the project.
The process was deliberately slow, optimized for efficiency instead of speed. Rush construction would have cost from 5× or even as far as 40× as much mana. This asured approach, while ti-consuming, was sustainable.
He kept the wolverine entombed deeply to take advantage of direct connection with deep earth's mana that amplified the wood elental absorption.
He was exploiting the small roots he'd created that could absorb residual mana deep in the ground and from previous battles that had left dispersed energy in the field, allowing them to beco enormous.
Every technique left traces. Every elental attack scattered mana particles that slowly dissipated over hours or days. The arena soil was saturated with it after days of intense battles, fire mana, water mana, earth mana, lightning mana, all mixed together in chaotic residue.
Ren's wolverine with its 7-elent mastery could absorb it all too. The roots grew bit by bit using mostly natural mana from the depths but that recovered energy too, supporting the "construction project" without draining the wolverine's reserves significantly.
It was resource recycling that converted what should have been massive expenditure given the enormous scope into sothing manageable over an extended period.
Always efficiency with Ren. Never waste anything that could be used. Never throw away advantage that could be leveraged.
What did take more noticeably from his own mana were the 10 launch stakes he was preparing simultaneously with tower construction.
Of those 10, he'd already completed 5 fully, perfectly ford projectiles waiting for the command to be fired. And he'd absorbed those 5 into the towers as he completed each one, transporting them vertically through the structure of roots and earth to store them in elevated positions.
1 stake in each of the 4 corner towers. 1 stake in the center tower.
Positioned at considerable height above the field, ready to launch.
When the mont ca to fire them, gravity would assist initial acceleration and height would provide attack angles that would be difficult for the serpent floating in relatively limited space to avoid.
Physics beca weaponized. Potential energy converting to kinetic energy. Height advantage translating to velocity advantage. The higher the position, the faster the projectile at impact, and these were already fast projectiles enhanced by multi-elent propulsion.
And the angles. Oh, the angles were beautiful.
From the ground, you could only shoot up. The Bashe could dodge more easily
But from 5 towers at different positions, all at extre height? Now you had converging trajectories from multiple directions simultaneously. Dodge left, and the corner tower's stake still tracked you.
Three-dinsional death trap disguised as impressive architecture.
The wolverine's core spun at high speed to recharge mana spent producing the stakes, like an athlete who'd just completed a long sprint and needed to recover their breath.
The internal rotation was visible underground to those with mana sight. a vortex of energy being drawn from Ren through the bond, compressed in the beast's core, then distributed to internal reserves. The process took ti, but it was faster than natural recovery would be.
Ren had perfected recovery techniques that allowed energy replenishnt more quickly than standard thods, but it still required ti he was using in tower construction to mask the necessity of the pause.
Liora watched the towers grow with attention that intensified with each additional ter of height.
She realized with growing clarity that Ren's beast remained hidden at the structures' base, probably buried deeply where the roots were densest and where connection with earth provided maximum defensive advantage.
Smart. Infuriating, but smart.
The wolverine could erge from any of the 5 towers. Or it could stay hidden indefinitely, protected by ters of compressed earth and interwoven roots that would resist even Gold-rank attacks. Trying to dig it out would an going closer to the ground, that would be suicide, the mont she committed to an attack on one tower, it could erge from another and strike her exposed position.
Additionally, the towers were nearly at the 200-ter height limit that Liora couldn't exceed or she'd be disqualified for fleeing, an altitude making them visible from considerable distance outside the arena and demonstrating exactly how much control Ren had refined during his training with Taro.
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