For Liora, releasing now ant Ren wouldn't be in position, wouldn't have any blessed water ready and wouldn't have the timing benefit he'd assud was his.
It seed both had the sa adventurous idea about not waiting until the last possible mont to act.
But Liora was even more radical than Ren when it ca to jeopardizing impossible timings, willing to damage her own beast a lot if it ant gaining advantage of fractions of seconds that would determine the outco.
It was madness Ren recognized with so admiration and also genuine concern for Liora's bond pain. That had to hurt...
Yet the tables had turned as she wanted.
The wood and earth that had been under the wolverine's dominion and distributed around its hidden underground position turned against it instantly.
Energy Ren had been manipulating suddenly responded to the Bashe's will instead of the wolverine's commands. It was a violent reversal of elental dominion converting a refuge into a trap in a fraction of a second.
Roots that had been allies began growing aggressively, seeking to penetrate the wolverine's body. Compressed earth that had provided protection fragnted into pointed stakes directed toward Ren's beast.
It was an assault from all directions simultaneously.
Underground, in the dark, surrounded by elents that now wanted to kill it, the wolverine faced death from a hundred angles at once.
Ren smiled despite the imdiate danger his beast faced.
Liora was truly adventurous, willing to take risks that would make more cautious tars hesitate fatally. It was a characteristic making her a formidable opponent in ways simple raw power alone never would.
Respect… Even if she put him in crisis… respect for the audacity.
With complete focus on the bond and a concentration so intense the external world disappeared except for his connection with the wolverine, Ren nearly took direct control of his beast.
His consciousness almost overlapped with the wolverine's, Ren's super-augnted perception guiding movents with an accuracy that went beyond what the beast could achieve independently.
It was the highest level of puppet, but a puppet with its own instincts and reflexes providing backup processing.
And Ren guided the shadow jumps through the giant crazed mass of roots and pointed rock, navigating the impossible path toward the surface.
The floor opened and closed in hundreds of small sections and shadows moved at trendous speed following aggressive movents of the hostile environnt, dark spaces appearing and disappearing in milliseconds as structures shifted. It was a three-dinsional labyrinth changing constantly, a challenge requiring not only speed but perfect prediction of where shadows would be instants later.
Jump… Land for 0.1 seconds. Jump again… Land for 0.05 seconds. Jump. Jump. Jump.
The wolverine received several cuts and blows on the way despite Ren's incredible guidance.
Impossible to avoid all damage when you had to jump hundreds of tis in scant milliseconds, each transition taking you through a space containing dozens of potential threats.
Rock edges cut through fur and flesh. Piercing roots penetrated before the next jump could execute. Blood loss accumulated.
Ren, concentrated to maximum with his perception amplified beyond normal limits, barely managed to keep the wolverine alive through a sequence that would have killed any beast operating without direct his guidance using insanely advanced mana perception.
But in the end they succeeded in escaping, erging from the chaotic mass onto the surface where open air provided space to maneuver appropriately.
And they transported themselves to a shadow cast just above the Bashe's massive body that was deflating and being crushed by gigantic debris it had sacrificed not absorbing to execute its premature explosion.
Ren evaluated the situation quickly while the wolverine bled from multiple wounds.
The wolverine was running on fus.
Simple blessed water wouldn't be enough now to end the battle when the Bashe had expelled most mana in its attack. And the forced compound jump consisting literally of hundreds of micro-jumps had consud a ton of energy, the drainage leaving the wolverine's reserves dangerously low.
He didn't have enough to create a too large water sphere.
So he had to choose between revealing another card he'd been carefully guarding or losing the battle, because the bleeding wounds generating energy loss from his beast would eliminate it sooner or later if not healed and Liora wouldn't let him heal… defeat would beco inevitable.
It was a decision he determined to make in favor of revelation.
Because he didn't want to disappoint Larissa without even reaching the finals. Didn't want to disappoint Luna without facing her in that sa final battle. Even Liora, who hated losing but hated more being allowed to win, having reached this point she deserved to see him give his maximum effort instead of obtaining a diocre victory.
Ren had already lost in a certain way.
Liora had forced him to use what he didn't want to reveal publicly, forced to show capabilities he'd planned to keep secret.
'Fine… So be it.'
Ren's wolverine fired the largest mass of blessed water it could, not a simple projectile but a considerable sphere descending toward the Bashe with that purification that would cut through a good chunk of the intensified miasma.
It was an attack that shouldn't be sufficient to end the battle considering the serpent's reduced but still enormous size.
And not only that, Liora didn't surrender to pain and still redirected the serpent's head along with releasing rock mana she still controlled, a mass of earth exploding upward to intercept the water ball before impact.
Incredible that she still searched for ways to improve her chances despite the pain.
The rock do Liora manifested to stop the water sphere's advance was impressive in construction, a structure demonstrating refined control despite desperate circumstances.
Not badly built at all.
Even designed to disperse rather than resist directly.
But it was destroyed when the water sphere exploded prematurely before contact.
No, it wasn't really an explosion, it was expansion. From the water, powerful stakes were created.
Selphira recognized it instantly from her position in the stands, her expression changing from anticipation to recognition with profound familiarity.
It was the advanced combined elent she herself used. It was confirmation of what she'd suspected about Ren's elental control depth.
This was the true ending. There was no way Liora could counter this with her remaining resources.
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