Sam and Gran started running with their normal forms. Just like a normal runners using physical runners and after they warmed up a bit, Gran activated her partial shadow elemental fusion for which Sam did the same.
Gran was a surprised a bit. She knew little about Sam. Other than the fact that he is good at formations and good at liquor and wine with some extra high intelligent beasts that could do all kinds of work for him, she doesn't know much about him.
Now seeing shadow element, she was even more surprised.
Both of them started using shadow element and moved like two black snakes in the ground jumping from one place to another with a relative ease.
Sia looked at both of their receding backs and wished that they both would be safe.
Soon as both racers ran for a few hundred meters the meteors started striking. They boulders are almost falling down like raining water.
Gran who seemed to be experienced in this started dodging them easily, she is using the shadow of the meteors that are about to strike to move from one spot to another and swiftly moved forward creating a lead.
Sam wanted to overcome that lead, but he is not as swift as Gran at the start, but soon he managed to catch up a bit.
But as soon as he neared Gran, she made a somersault in the air and kicked two small meteors that are coming down towards him.
Sam dodged one that is sure to hit him and ignored the other that was a bit off trajectory, but the next second he dodged the first one, he understood the second one didn't miss. Because it was not aimed at him in the first place.
Its target is another large meteor to begin with. This boulder crashed into a larger one that is near Sam and the debris started falling off on him.
Sam shifted to earth elemental fusion and defended against the debris, before chaging the fusion back to normal and moving forward.
This time, he didn't try to catch up or overtake immediately. Instead he maintained a steady distance as he observed the meteors that are crashing down with energy vision. The main disadvantage of Sam over Gran is that she knew about this and familiar with this scenario.
He has to make himself familiar and knowledgeable if he has any chance of beating her and soon he drew up some observations.
First one is that the nine moons which have different elemental properties and presences are throwing out different elemental meteors. Even the rock that crashed into him burning with fire elemental one.
Even the gravity and the extreme force these meteors are hitting the earth is not changing these elemental properties and second is that the meteors are of different sizes.
There are small baseball sized to large mammoth sized. But they are not gigantic. If they are that big, then the planet might not even be able to survive. Sam doesn't know how the gravity of this planet holding itself against nine moons, but that is not his problem so he shook those thoughts away and started thinking of ways to help himself out of the situation.
He came up with a small plan to pick up the lead. He shifted his elemental fusion to earth elemental one and caught hold of a meteor without destroying it. It is a good soccer ball sized and he used gravitational manipulaton to catch a hold of it.
Then he shifted to fire elemental fusion and started creating a rock-lava egg. After that he turned back to the shadow elemental fusion and started picking up the speed again.
Gran noticed that the distance between them is decreasing once again and started kicking the boulders. This time Sam is careful and he used this exact moment to throw the Rock-Lava Egg at Gran. She dodged it to the side.
But the egg crashed into a nearest large rock and the lava splashed all over Gran. Even though it is not exactly damaging and all it could cause might not even be considered pain, the first instinct of the body when an unknown hot liquid suddenly splashed on them, particularly when they are not expecting it is to flinch and cover.
Sam used this swift second to jump and kick a large ice elemental boulder that was about to fall towards it and it crashed right into Gran which made her stop for a second and Sam took this chance to not only eliminate the distance between them and picked up the lead.
But instead of leaving a large gap between themselves, he maintained a steady distance so that he could be aware of her tricks.
For some time, he managed to dodge or even completely avoid her attacks from the rear because of this constant awareness, but he also managed to maintain the lead perfectly while throwing a few of his own attacks.
But after a while Gran stopped attacking him and let him move forward and then only he realized that something changed. Until now when a meteor crashes, all he had to do is dodge from the impact and debris and he did the same with this one.
But instead of the stray and harmless debris that usually hit him, he was hit by a large wave of fire elemental spiritual energy that caused to feel a minor fire elemental energy forcefully entering into his body.
He almost felt suffocated because of that and his body also started hurting severely.
He immediately changed his shadow elemental fusion to fire elemental fusion and absorbed the stray fire elemental energy and stayed in place feeling shocked.
By now, Gran already caught up and just overtook him and by now, she is already using full shadow elemental fusion as she moved like a shadow snake and avoid every crash by almost a four meters.
Sam looked at the surroundings for a few seconds. The meteors changed. There are normal boulders charged with elemental energies but now in addition to that, there is a new kind.
Sam dodged a strike and moved forward slowly as he used earth elemental fusion and caught ahold of this new boulder. It looked like a glass crystal filled with some kind of colored smoke. He looked around to notice the effects of this crash and was stunned to see that such a thing even exists.
This is just a giant mass of active elemental energy. It is stable enough to stay in shape and not create an elemental energy explosion, but also unstable enough to create an elemental energy wave that would could corrode the surroundings up on impact.
These glass boulders are also of all elemental energies.
Fire, water, ice, lightning, darkness, wood and many more. At one spot a fire elemental glass boulder created a small scale magma pond and a few meters away the ice elemental one created a miniature tundra.
Now he understood why Gran didn't bother fight for the lead a while ago. She knew that something like this would happen.
He also activated full shadow elemental fusion and started moving forward. He was sure that he could catch up with Gran, but soon he realized that he had overestimated himself. He cannot possibly catch up with her as the glass boulders are raining more densely and Gran is still managing to dodge them.
This is the result of experience.
He really wished he prepared well enough for this.
As he was busy dodging and thinking of other ways, Gran turned around and gave him a smile before throwing two knives towards him. He dodged them, but they hit two glass boulders behind which caused him to take the blunt of the attack.
Luckily one of them is a wind elemental one which blew him a few meters away and made it easier for him to recover.
Sam pursed his lips and used started moving forward, but as Gran was about to take a few more throwing knives, he took out his two hand guns and aimed forward.
He shot energy cell bullets at the glass boulders around Gran.
He is faster than her throwing knives and when she threw those knives, he even shot them mid-air like they are easy targets.
As the constant barrage of bullets hit the glass boulders that she almost dodged, Gran had to slow down and halt for a few seconds and Sam used this chance to catch up.
As he crossed her, he had a sudden idea and changed his elemental fusion back to earth one to catch a boulder and used repel style to kick it towards Gran.
Gran who barely recovered from the shock of this bunch didn't expect this kind of attack. After all, the glass boulders should be exploding up on hitting them.
But to both of their shock, the repel style worked and he managed to kick the boulder properly. He caught a few more boulders and stored them in the divine dimension for research before changing back to shadow elemental fusion and taking the lead.
Now not only Gran has to look out for meteors, he also has to look out for these weird and impossible attacks from Sam.
