Chapter 583: Chapter 583 - Taming the Fourth Year: Journey - Struggle - 2

A moment of tension stretched, seconds feeling like hours.

Then, the tutor whispered, without turning toward the niche where they were hiding:

"Larissa needs her friends now. Enough of suffering alone."

The girls exchanged looks of silent shock. The tutor knew they were there? Had their infiltration been compromised or was this something else entirely?

The answer...

"Perhaps going out to get some sun and see the world she’s missing would help her," the woman continued in the same low tone, her voice seeming worried for that someone who had withdrawn too far into herself. "Though not too far, because of the crisis and all that."

She made a significant pause. Then again...

"The tower roof is always free at these hours. The views of the city and its academies are... educational."

The footsteps resumed, moving away down the hallway. The tutor never turned toward where they were hidden, maintaining the fiction that she hadn’t felt anything. Her discretion was a gift wrapped in plausible deniability.

Luna waited until the footsteps faded completely before emerging from the niche, her muscles cramped from the tension of forced stillness and worry.

"Do you think it’s a trap?" Liora whispered, her voice barely audible as she scanned the empty corridor for signs of approaching guards.

Umi shook her head slowly. "Her voice... it sounded genuinely worried about Larissa."

Luna approached Larissa’s chamber door, processing what had just happened. The tutor had had the perfect opportunity to maybe scream and alert the guards, to end their infiltration before it could accomplish anything. Instead, she had offered useful information and a way to approach their friend without any confrontation.

"At least now we know we’re not the only ones who need help," Liora murmured while stepping forward before Luna and placing her hand on the door handle.

♢♢♢♢

Julius’s energy exploded like an earth supernova.

Enormous walls grew instantaneously around the combat area, their surfaces covered with spikes that moved like they were living entities. Tons of earth and stone reshaping themselves, but not according to his will...

He wasn’t controlling the individual movement of the spikes, his control was enormous but not to that point.

However, he wasn’t alone. His duplicated beast was the one who manipulated these formations with great power and speed, making them grow and shrink in rhythmic waves that punctured any mutant creature attempting to cross the impromptu barrier. The coordination between tamer and beast created a defensive system that was both beautiful and terrifying to witness.

"My fusion won’t last much longer!" Julius shouted while maintaining his massive earth control, sweat streaming down his face as the strain of channeling such enormous power took its toll. "Let’s finish the fight now and prepare to flee from the wave!"

His control was enormous, but he could also feel energy draining at an alarming rate. Each meter of wall expansion outward and each wave of spikes required more concentration, each adjustment in the walls demanded more power. It was like conducting a symphony while lifting mountains.

Liu immediately coordinated with his duplicated beast too. Devastating sound waves emerged from two points simultaneously, creating a destructive interference that amplified the damage exponentially. The waves found resonances in the abomination’s structure, causing multiple sections to crack and fragment at the same time.

Taro and his duplicated beast suppressed the leg movements alone as they surpassed the previous control that the two guards had helped maintain. With Mako switching to using her evolved ambusher to harden the earth Taro controlled even further, the stability of his formations multiplied exponentially.

Shizu took advantage of being freed from suppressive responsibilities to go completely on the attack, her enormous earth Wolverine now the same size and rank as Julius’s, destroying already damaged plates with brutal assaults.

Zhao maintained his assault of feathers with incredible power, speed, and precision at each core that was exposed by Shizu’s attacks, taking advantage of the cracks from Liu’s sonic blows and the holes created by Ren’s attacks.

His marksmanship was legendary for good reason, every projectile found its mark without fail, threading even through the defensive gaps that existed for mere fractions of a second.

And while he concentrated on the main mutation...

His duplicated beast, the owl-raptor with hardened feathers sharp as blades, flew high to circle Julius’s wall and systematically eliminate the "few" mutations that managed to overcome the waves of spikes.

The owl-raptor spun in the air at enormous speeds, its wings cutting through the wind while keeping at bay what looked like a growing tide of horrible beasts constantly emerging from more and more underground tunnels.

Min maintained a defensive position, conserving what little energy he had left for medical emergencies.

Ren maintained constant offense, but still avoided using his complete fusion since at Julius and Zhao’s request he would be part of the evacuation effort at the end. However, his attacks still gradually gained power as the corrupt roots in his system tried to grow, but this time he had much more control, channeling that energy into his elemental techniques instead of allowing it to spread uncontrollably.

The sensation was like what riding a lightning bolt would figuratively be, dangerous but exhilarating when properly directed.

The enormous beast tried to cover itself, repositioning its protective plates and using the arm-claw to block attacks directed at its cores. But faced with the joint and coordinated assault, it couldn’t completely hide its vulnerable points from so many angles.

Core after core disintegrated under Zhao’s precision and the exposure created by the group effort. The organic systems connecting the sphere on its back began failing completely, creating additional weak points that the team exploited immediately.

Each destroyed core sent ripples of system failure through the creature’s hybrid body, like watching a complex machine shut down piece by piece.

But a cornered beast is still dangerous.

Desperate in the face of a battle it was clearly losing, the abomination decided to use its last card. It coiled in on itself even breaking its legs against Taro’s and Mako’s control and began directing what remained of its light to the sphere it was connected with.

The claw on its back began overcharging with energy, absorbing power not only from the remaining cores but also from the organic systems that kept the creature functional. Its light veins tone changed from corrupt violet to a brilliant pink that hurt to look at directly.

The huge arm rose as its wrinkled and "dry" wooden form transformed into something smoother and "newer," as if recovering a long-lost original appearance. The change was like watching time reverse, revealing what the ancient artifact had been before time weakened it.

The attack came fast and unexpected...

From the palm of the ’new claw tree’ emerged a pulse of pure energy that threatened to strike the entire team simultaneously.

Mako’s evolved golden ambusher, which was closest hitting and breaking the enemy’s plates with its claws, was the first to be reached. The creature simply disappeared, vaporized instantly by the wave of force. There was no dramatic death scene... one moment it existed, the next it was gone, leaving only the echo of its final roar.

The loss of connection knocked the tamer unconscious immediately.

"Mako!" Shizu screamed, but there was no time to process the loss.

Zhao’s owl-raptor rose desperately, its wings beating with maximum force to gain altitude. It managed to avoid the worst of the glow, though the feathers on its tail were singed by proximity to energies that could unmake itself.

But those on the ground had nowhere to escape.

The pulse expanded like a wave of destruction that promised to annihilate everything in its path.

"Down!" Taro roared with desperate determination.

Julius, Ren, Taro, and Shizu activated earth control simultaneously, channeling their energy as quickly as possible into creating thick and resistant defensive formations. Layers upon layers of hardened stone rose between them and the destructive wave.

The formations cracked immediately under the assault. The first layer disintegrated like sand before a hurricane. The second fragmented into thousands of pieces. The third absorbed part of the impact but collapsed with the groaning protest of matter pushed beyond its limits.

The battlefield remained silent for a moment... it seemed things had taken a terrible turn.

But everyone was miraculously alive. The worst of the attack had been absorbed by their desperate defense.

From the debris of the destroyed defenses, Ren emerged first in a furious explosion of rocks, his jade scales brighter than before. Zhao and Julius also launched into attack, their bodies bruised but operational. Without verbal communication, the three understood this was the decisive moment.

Zhao launched his last feathers before positioning himself in a perfect line with his raptor in the air, executing his most powerful signature movement... all feathers directed toward the cores that had been exposed when the abomination had drained energy for its desperate attack.

Julius stopped expanding the walls for his own final attack and channeled his last reserves into a mineral assault just below the connection with the sphere, destroying the creature’s remaining defenses.

Ren, feeling the black roots pulsing with more and more accumulated energy, channeled them completely into a concentrated ray that pierced directly to the beast’s last central core.

The combined impact was devastating.

The abomination emitted an agonizing shriek that resonated through the impromptu bowl, a cry that signaled something fundamental in the creature being destroyed.

The sound was not just heard but felt, vibrating through bone and soul with the finality of absolute ending.

Then, the creature began to dissolve.

Its body mass disintegrated like mist, the organic systems evaporating into violet vapor that smelled of corruption. In moments, all that remained was the enormous claw-arm, now wrinkled again and motionless on the ground like a winning monument to a battle that had pushed everyone to the limit of their capabilities.

The silence that followed was broken only by heavy breathing and the distant sound of some remaining minor mutants still insisting on scaling the wall with the mindless persistence of corrupted minions.

"Is it over?" Min asked, approaching cautiously to examine injuries.