Osho vs Jane II
Waves of immolating heat warped the air as the ground-turned-lava bubbled precariously.
Everything for dozens of miles was simply gone, everything that was made of having simply been erased by the heat, and the ground had been turned into a lake of magma. An acrid smell filled the air due to the lava as well.
One should know, though, that the thing that caused this, the explosion, wasn't dispersed in any way.
In fact, at the edge of the lava lake, the ground was almost completely untouched, causing a strange disconnect. This was because Ignis had concentrated his heat on that area to utterly destroy everything in that location.
It was an absurd attack that would have wiped out anything weaker than Ignis and most things at his level.
And yet...
"What an absurd defense." Haggai mumbled, her eyes gleaming as she scribbled furiously. Somehow, the protective bubble remained intact despite the attack, but that was due to how it worked.
No, what was shocking was that within the lava lake, not too far from its center, there was a dome of earth that seemed to float there like a lone island in a storm.
The outer layer of the dome was glowing red from the heat, and there were cracks all over its surface. But it remained intact.
Slowly, the dome fell away, revealing Osho and Bedrock on the single stone platform that floated in the bubbling magma. Osho's armor had a faint sheen around him which protected him from the waves of heat, and Bedrock just raw-dogged it with his durable body.
Both of them were wholly unharmed.
"... You're a tough nut to crack, I'll give you that." Mrs Jane, who had been on Ignis' back and protected from everything, mumbled with a trace of disbelief.
She had to take Nora into her beast space as the armadillo couldn't block such an attack easily, and while she was an ally, it was an omnidirectional attack that wasn't exactly easy to avoid. Jane herself only got off easy because she was small enough for Ignis to create a safe spot for her.
So the fact that Osho and Bedrock hadn't taken any damage was... surprising, to say the least.
"That's what you get when your beast is committed to being a tank." Osho said and patted Bedrock's shoulder, who let out a soft grunt.
"That said," His eyes narrowed. "I didn't think you'd try and take me out from the get-go. What if I couldn't defend against it?" Hearing this, Mrs Jane scoffed.
"You're the one who said that probing each other was boring. Besides, even if you couldn't block it, I'm confident that bird of yours could have pulled you out of there before the heat reached you," Then she narrowed her eyes as well. "That said, where is said bird."
At this, Osho just smiled and pointed upwards.
After finally convincing himself to let Gale do his own thing, Osho barely ever gave Gale direct commands during fights, so the bird was more or less allowed to do whatever he wanted, however he wanted to do it.
Mrs Jane looked up, and her pupils constricted slightly.
Gale had summoned a tornado before at the beginning of the fight, and he seemed almost offended that it didn't work.
... So now he was summoning a hurricane.
The previously clear sky was now filled with clouds almost as black as ink, and said clouds were swirling, with flashes of violent lightning going through them.
After that, came the hail.
But it wasn't normal hail, either.
Meter long spikes of ice rained down from the sky at terrifying speeds, and Ignis didn't hesitate to spread his wings and create a bubble of powerful flames.
The 'hail' melted upon contact, and any that missed hit the lake of lava, briefly turning the spots that got hit into obsidian which was then swallowed by the remaining lava.
None of the icicles came close to Osho and Bedrock, though.
The scene was almost apocalyptic to describe. In the sky was a massive hurricane that spun like punishment from the heavens, and the lake of lava below sloshed and churned in defiance.
Seeing the attack, Mrs Jane didn't just stand still.
Ignis opened his maw and continuously let out concentrated beams of fire to destroy the hurricane. However, whenever they got close, it was like they hit some sort of invisible barrier, and the energy within them would suddenly disperse.
Seeing this, Mrs Jane couldn't help but frown and glance down at Osho, who seemed perfectly content to watch everything play out.
However, the lava around them was cooling at an unnatural degree, with the focal point being where Bedrock was standing. Somehow, he was rapidly cooling the lava without turning it into brittle obsidian.
'Nora.' Mrs Jane called out as she released the armadillo once more.
As soon as she appeared, a metal platform appeared at her feet, and she quietly floated downwards until she hovered a few meters above the lava, some ways away from Osho and Bedrock.
The armadillo, now several times larger than before, cracked her neck and released a low metallic grumble as gaps suddenly opened up in her armor, and what followed was a vast swarm of metallic dust which spread out and shimmered in the light of the lava.
They didn't fall into it, though. They floated.
'I was wondering when she'd bring those out.' Osho thought as he stared at the swarm, his eyes narrowing.
He naturally knew what he was looking at. After all, he was the onr who evolved her. However, he didn't fully know what they did. What he did know was that they were nanites Nora created herself, but he wasn't clear on what they could actually do.
"I suggest you prepare youself." Mrs Jane spared Osho a glance, and as she spoke, the metal dust multiplied, then fused, separated, and multiplied again. This repeated until complex geometric patterns clicked into place in the air. Rings, spheres, panels, and so on, made up of countless moving parts. In just seconds, half the lake was swarming with them, the light from the lava reflecting off them and giving them a strange haunting beauty.
Then there was the hum.
Each particles vibrated slightly at a different frequency, and the pitch rose until the creature was a single harmonic tone that made Osho teeth uncomfortable.
"Bedrock." Osho called out calmly.
The gorilla slammed a hand into the ground, and black light rippled out from the point of impact which rapidly thickened into large plates–or rather–shields, that rose up and overlapped with layers of dense mineral that was enhanced with every defensive ore Bedrock had ever ingested and then some.
The first wave of nanites slammed into the shields like a tide, and the sound that followed was... oddly enchanting, like a crystalline chime that hid the violence they wrought.
Tiny sparks erupted wherever the nanites touched the brown, and to the untrained eye, it looked like miniature fireworks going off.
To Osho, though, it was something far deeper.
"Interesting," He rubbed his chin. "Adaptive decomposition. They are studying the molecular structure and disassembling in it real time."
Mrs Jane heard his musing and smiled, but she didn't say anything as most of her attention was devoted to what was happening above them.
The speed of the hurricane had reached a point where the naturally occurring ones which were already far more obscene than what could ever appear on Azure Star before Mana were simply incomparable.
It looked like the sky wanted to swallow them everything whole, which probably wasn't too inaccurate, all things considered.
The 'rain' was far more violent now. Spikes of ice, water droplets shaped like spears, lightning, and much more.
It was honestly staggering to think that Gale was no different from a natural disaster despite his rank. Then again, it was made clear that rank differences hardly apply to him due to his nature and the concept he employed.
Keep in mind, he hadn't even attacked yet.
All of this was just a preparation.
"With a potency like that, Gale would probably be able to kill the Skyblight Harbinger dozens of times over even if the bloodline suppression wasn't a factor." William muttered.
"In fact, I'm fairly confident that he'd beat all of us from back then," Lady Haggai added as she tapped her stylus against her tablet thoughtfully, then her gaze drifted as she continued. "That said, he doesn't seem to be the only anomaly."
Back to Bedrock and Osho, they seemed to be at a disadvantage as Nora's nanites disassembled his defenses one at a time at a frightening pace, and it wouldn't be long before the shields got breached. However, both beast and tamer were calm as Osho simply nodded at Bedrock.
Receiving the signal, the Gorilla gave what might have been a grin before he clapped his hands together loudly.
As soon as he did, the churning sea of lava suddenly stopped its mindless sloshing, and following that, there was a deep 'thump' that seemed to strike right through the cores of everyone present.
Then, amazingly, the lava lake started to rise and go towards Bedrock.
Nora quickly floated upwards with her metal pkatform to avoid the melted rock as everything started to move and condense in front of Bedrock.