Chapter 282: The Battle Drifts into a Stalemate
Baqunava's gaze was locked onto the figure in the sky. Zipping about with the aid of a small bamboo dragonfly, Star was a nimble, infuriating gnat, constantly executing provocative maneuvers. In response, the behemoth's giant claws, sweeping tail, and even its corrosive energy breath were almost all directed at her.
"Star! Watch out for its sweep!"
"Don't get greedy, focus on evasion!"
"Its energy breath has a splash effect! Keep your distance!"
The voices of her teammates cut through the cacophony of explosions and whistling wind, each call laced with a sharp edge of worry. Every time Star's flight path narrowly grazed a claw tip, every time she executed a heart-stopping shuttle through a torrent of abyssal energy, it sent a jolt of anxiety through the four on the ground, making their fists clench.
They knew what she was doing. Star was using her extreme mobility and defense to create the most valuable window of opportunity for the team to deal damage.
Not another word was needed. Cherishing every second Star bought with her perilous dance, Lumine, Dan Heng, March 7th, and Welt focused their entire assault on the thick, crystalline shoulder armor plating Baqunava's arm.
Lumine was a whirlwind of elements, fluidly switching between the powers she commanded. The heavy, shattering slashes of Geo sought to break down the armor's fundamental structure. Swift, piercing bursts of Electro searched for gaps in the monster's energy flow, aiming to penetrate its defenses. An occasional switch to Anemo not only granted her a burst of speed but also whipped up vortexes of wind that could subtly interfere with the condensation of the abyssal energy. Her assault was a relentless storm, the adaptability granted by her mastery of multiple elements allowing her to find the most effective angle of attack at any given moment.
March gripped her Zanpakutō, Sode no Shirayuki, stirring the nascent soul power and the deep cold of the Six-Phase Ice within her. The blade unleashed waves of glacial sword qi, each one as cool and pure as moonlight. They possessed a potent penetrative and freezing effect, continuously eroding the surface of the dark crystalline plate. Amidst flurries of flying ice shards, the areas struck by her blade showed a noticeable dulling of the crystal's luster, and subtle cracks began to spiderweb across its surface as if frozen solid from the inside out.
Welt played the role of the core armor-breaker. He stood a little further back, the Star of Eden hovering before him as it fired precise, dark red rays of gravitational force. These were not direct attacks; instead, they continuously acted upon the thickest points of the shoulder armor. The already heavy plating began to feel as though it were burdened by a thousand tons, its internal structure groaning under the abnormal gravity. Baqunava's movements clearly grew more sluggish. At the same time, Welt remained ever-vigilant. The moment any broken armor fragments or leaking core energy appeared, a simulated black hole would immediately form to mercilessly devour and annihilate them, preventing any contamination of the battlefield.
Dan Heng, relying on his extraordinary combat intuition, could always find the weakest points in the armor's defense or the fissures created by his teammates' attacks. Lances of water, imbued with immense piercing power, stabbed into those gaps like high-powered drills. They penetrated deep along the cracks, applying pressure from within and accelerating the shoulder armor's disintegration.
The coordination between the four was exquisite, and their armor-breaking efficiency far exceeded their own expectations. At this rate, shattering the armor's defense and exposing the core of the arm beneath seemed to be only a matter of time.
However, the combat instincts and adaptability of a rule-level undead behemoth far surpassed their imagination.
The repeated setbacks and harassment—especially Star's repeated "visits" to its oral cavity with her sword qi—caused Baqunava's raw fury to gradually cool, settling into a more dangerous, cunning madness. It no longer insisted on swatting the nimble "flying insect" with its massive claws. Instead, those claws, which could crush mountains, closed slightly in front of its chest.
An extremely concentrated, turbid, dark green Anemo power began to furiously gather and compress between its palms, emitting a sharp, piercing whistle.
"What is it trying to do?" March 7th cautiously halted her attack.
The next moment, Baqunava slammed the sphere of roiling wind condensed in its palms fiercely onto the ground before it.
Boom—!
There was no direct, explosive impact. The dark green sphere of wind, upon contact with the earth, was like a giant boulder thrown into a placid lake. It stirred up a visible, terrifying circular shockwave of wind pressure mixed with abyssal energy. This pressure was not directed at a single target but expanded outward like a domain of death, attempting to forcibly push away and crush everything within its range.
Wherever the wind pressure passed, the previously gentle breeze became a storm of invisible knives. The ground's vegetation instantly withered and shattered, and even solid rock was worn smooth, scoured down by the force.
"Watch out! It's an area-of-effect repulsion!" Welt immediately warned. The Star of Eden glowed brightly as he attempted to create a gravitational barrier to counteract some of the impact.
But the range of this turbid wind pressure was too vast, its speed too terrifyingly fast.
Just at this critical moment, the clear, melodious sound of a zither connected in the ears of the five-person assault team. It was a sound that seemed capable of purifying all the world's defilement—gentle, yet firm. It was Venti's music.
As the melody began, several seemingly delicate yet resilient emerald-green breezes, imbued with the tenacity of a thousand winds, quietly swirled to life around the five individuals. When the turbid, circular wind pressure surged forth like an overwhelming tide, these emerald breezes swayed gently, forming a thin yet unyielding barrier.
The terrifying wind pressure, capable of tearing giant trees from their roots and leveling stone, seemed to collide with an invisible dam upon touching this wind-infused protection. Its power was significantly weakened. Aside from scraping away three feet of earth around the team and completely clearing the more distant trees and rubble, it failed to cause any displacement or substantial harm to the five people within the barrier.
"Well done, Venti!" Paimon cheered from the safe zone in the distance, having witnessed the save.
With its attack neutralized once again, Baqunava completely succumbed to its frenzy.
It let out an devastating roar as the abyssal energy coating its body churned and surged like boiling tar. Centered on the behemoth, the temperature within a two-kilometer radius began to drop sharply. This was not a natural cold, but an abyssal chill imbued with the essence of death and nothingness. The ground rapidly turned an ominous, purplish-black as the soil lost its vitality. The rocks became brittle, completely eroded and assimilated by the encroaching abyssal power.
At the same time, it abandoned its complex elemental attacks, reverting to the most primitive and most difficult-to-evade physical methods.
Its giant feet lifted and stomped, causing localized earthquakes. Its arms, though slightly slowed by the heavy shoulder armor, swung with a force that seemed to tear at the very fabric of space. Its attack patterns were simple and its tells were obvious, making the blows themselves not exceedingly difficult to dodge. The true problem was that they greatly interfered with and delayed the armor-breaking progress of Lumine and the others.
Everyone had to expend a great deal of energy on dodging and maneuvering, completely disrupting their offensive rhythm.
Even more troublesome, the beast began to instinctively alter the environment itself. Accompanying its heavy stomps, sharp rock spikes, slick with flowing abyssal energy, would abruptly erupt from the ground without warning, like venomous snakes lying in wait to devour their prey. These spikes covered a wide area and appeared with shocking suddenness, forcing the four on the ground to constantly shift positions at high speed. They were like dancers on a field of knife-edges, making it impossible to maintain any stable, consistent damage output.
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