Ice shards and sharp winds intertwined in a deadly dance, threatening to tear anything that ended up in between them to shreds. In the middle of this mayhem, Roley and Jerigh were using most of their power to avoid being dragged out the storm's power. Unfortunately, their power was not enough, and after one or two minutes, they were ultimately pushed out with heavy injuries.
Der, which had now put the body of the grey condor into his spatial ring, immediately dashed towards the two falling young men, grabbing Jerigh before he could hit the rocky ground.
After Daniel noticed that one of his two friends was safe, he opened a portal right under the falling Roley, which after crossing through, teleported him directly in front of him. He then moved his arm forward, and grabbed Roley's clothes with ease, before injecting powerful waves of healing essence into him.
Locked in the middle of the storm, were the Ancient Red Carp, and the Rainbow-Plumed Hawk, which sent powerful attacks against each other, and barely left any time for their opponent to react. The powerful winds, ice shards, and droplets of water were starting to merge into a massive world-ending hurricane.
While Daniel observed the fight, he quickly came to the realization that, sooner or later, the red carp would end up losing. Aside from the power that it needed to use to keep itself high up in the air, the water which the mid level water spheres were providing for it to fight with, were not as devastating as the wind that the perfect wind sphere was sending in the hawk's way. Therefore, the longer the fight dragged on, the more the hawk-like beast would gain an edge over it.
Daniel was considering whether he should help or not, but then, he turned to look at the massive tree from which the oppressive winds were generated. An idea quickly came to his mind, and after finishing to heal Roley, he turned towards him and said "Roley, go take Buriath, Leffe, and Wolfie.. Come out the moment I unlock the pocket dimension."
Roley nodded in confirmation, and teleported into the ring that he was wearing in his ring finger, which then Daniel grabbed in mid air, and put on his own finger before turning towards the large tree, and flying in its direction at full speed.
The closer Daniel got to this three, the more he felt the wind push him back. He quickly came to the realization of how powerful a non-controlled perfect sphere could be. The high-level water and wind spheres which he had created were powerful enough to create a small sea, and fill the sky with breathable air, and at the same time, while also heavily controlled, the wood and earth spheres had changed the entire layout of his small world, filling it with dirt, soil, and trees. Even the metal and fire spheres, which were the most heavily suppressed, had turned a massive cave into a metallic den, and a mountain into a volcano.
At just a hundred meters of distance from the origin of these winds, Daniel was unable to deviate the powerful gales, and his clothes ended up being turned into tatters. Small cuts had started to form on his skin, which quickly shone with dull white lights before closing back up.
Meter by meter Daniel kept advancing, feeling the blades of wind become sharper, and cutting deeper. He felt as if he had dived directly into a pool filled with knives, and yet, he kept going.
At fifty meters, he had to cover his throat with his hand in order to avoid having it slit by a random gust of wind, and at forty meters, he was forced to shield his stomach with a metallic plaque that he had created out of his own immortal essence, in order to avoid damages to his organs.
When he reached the twenty meters of distance, he was finally able to see the wind sphere, as well as two small beings which looked like two chicks halfway to their adult stage, but that were completely made out of wind. There was no doubt in Daniel's mind that these two beings were newly born wind elemental.
Some scholars from Daniel's world of origin had hypothesized that the reason why elementals were animal-shaped at the moment of their birth, was because of an ethereal consciousness that mana possessed, which registered the shape and type of beasts that roamed their domain, and when elementals were born, this information would be added to the comprehension of their element as added information.
Some others had claimed that it was the elementals themselves that, after obtaining a certain level of consciousness, would observe and gather information about the types of beings that lived the world, and would take their shape in order to fit in more easily.
Daniel was not sure of why the elementals took the shapes that they did, but he was sure that the latter example was untrue, as he had spectated to the birth of an elemental of metal essence, and there was no doubt that Wolfie hadn't had the chance to observe a wolf before forming.
Therefore, he was more inclined to believe that there was some sort of information passed down along with the comprehension of the essence, the moment the elementals formed.
Despite the reason why, Daniel had finally managed to approach the two chicks, which looked at him with suspicion. The surrounding winds had started to focus more on Daniel's position than ever before, indication that he wasn't welcome by the two elementals. The only difference between these winds and the previous ones, was that these ones were not sharp, and instead only tried to push him off of the immense tree.
These two chicks were nowhere near powerful enough to injure Daniel, so, he ejected a large amount of immortal essence from his hand, and sent it to encase the perfect wind sphere, which looked like a gaseous planet that spun in place at a speed so fast, that made it look almost still.
The moment the immortal essence covered the sphere, the winds suddenly stopped being generated. The wind sphere had been suppressed, and yet Daniel had not taken it. Instead, he removed the spatial block on his pocket dimension, and allowed Roley to come out along with the three elementals Buriath, Leffe, and wolfie.
As soon as the three elementals appeared, the two previously alert chicks calmed down significantly. There was something within elementals that told them not to feel fear amongst themselves. It was like finding someone from your own country while traveling far away from home.. Not bounding was almost impossible.
—–
At the same time, the hawk-like beast had lost its edge completely, and now needed to use a much larger amount of power to create his own winds to attack, rendering it unable to use its sheer speed to avoid the oppressive attacks of the red carp.
Inside the body of the hurricane, winds had diminished significantly, and most of what remained, was a two kilometers thick, columnar vortex of water, which fell right under the control of the red carp.
Bit by bit, this column compacted around the red carp, decreasing in size more and more, until finally, its shape replicated the very same red carp that it was encasing. This massive watery fish floated in the air, fully under the carp's control.
The hawk-like beast tried to break the water construct created by the red carp, but it was useless, as the blades of wind that it created by waving its powerful and large wings were only able to pierced through a few meters of water, before being ejected out of it in the shape of bubbles.
The fight went on for a few more minutes, until finally, exhausted by the constant fighting, and from being unable to escape due to the relentless water attacks of the red carp, the hawk-like beast was ultimately encased in a thick layer of water.
It desperately tried more than once to escape from it just like it had done two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, this time the hawk-like beast lacked the support of the powerful winds, which along with the oppressive tiredness that was growing in his body, and the lack of space of maneuver, had forced it to a state where he could only watch as the thick encasing of water closed in on it..
In just a minute, the hawk-like beast was stuck into a massive globe of water from which it could not escape, and after five more minutes, it drowned.
—–
Back on the tree, Leffe observed the two young chicks for a few seconds, then said "They are really the age they look.. That's odd. If the sphere has been here for a thousand years, there should be a few fully grown wind elementals around."
"The three flying beasts must have killed them.." Said Buriath while Wolfie approached the two chicks, and started to sniff them out. There was no reason for Wolfie to do that, as it wasn't a real wolf, but that sort of behaviour was also part of what was passed down when it had become conscious, just like the slithering of the earth elementals when in their snake form.
Daniel looked at Buriath, and said with curiosity "Why would they do that?"
"It's actually easy to guess." Interjected Leffe before Buriath could respond. The two had become great friends now, and Leffe was aware that Buriath didn't like to talk as much as he did, so he would often take his place in explaining when possible. "Were the beasts friendly with each other?"
"Not really." Responded Daniel plainly.
"They must have known that the body of an elemental can sometimes turn into a treasure during the moment of their death, and were likely hoping to produce more perfect treasures to split amongst them before separating.. That must have been why only the fastest one dared to move away from the tree." Said Leffe with a matter-of-fact tone. "How foolish of them.. In order to obtain that level of sphere from an elemental's corpse, they would have had to wait tens of thousands of years."
Unable to know if that was the case, Daniel turned to look at the two wind elementals. He could see that they were now more curious than scared, so, he activated 'Time is Precious', and pushed all of his immortal essence out of his body.
The invisible immortal essence slowly moved towards the mountain like three, and after it touched its bark, it used it to spread all over it. It took more than an hour before the immense tree was fully surrounded by Daniel's immortal essence.
"Dan, what are you-" Said Roley before being interrupted by a shocking sight.
A powerful shockwave had suddenly spread from the point where the mountain-sized tree previously was, caused by the sudden switching of its area, with an identical empty area which came directly from inside the pocket dimension.
In a moment, Daniel had teleported the immense tree, the wind sphere, and the two wind elementals on an extremely large island which was near the coast of the mainland, within his pocket dimension.
"Why did you take the tree?" asked Roley in confusion.
"That tree resisted the full power of a perfect wind essence sphere.. Why not." Responded Daniel casually before turning back to look at the red carp which quietly floated in the distance next to a massive water sphere which contained the corpse of the hawk-like beast.
Daniel approached the red carp, and the moment he was in earshot, he said while pointing at the lifeless body of the flying beast "I figured you would have wanted to take a revenge on it.. After all the time he spent tormenting you"
The red carp was feeling a lot of emotions, which had caused it to be unable to respond to Daniel's words right away. It was only after a good minute, that it said "Thank you."
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*Primary Quest started: Karmic Exactor (Repeatable)*
-Description: Enforce the payments of a karmic debt.
Objective set: Support the Ancient Red Carp in exacting its revenge.
Reward: 3,500,000
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