Agnisotra: Origin Tails

Just a warning guys, those punches that thing is doing at my frost wall gives me an enormous amount of energy so beware getting hit by it or getting near it when it slams something could send you flying or even kill you. Understood! You can lift the wall now.

Agnis canceled the frost wall and this strange big ehh thing. What was this thing? It looked like a really big man that had too many steroids in its system It was just a chunk of muscle except it didn't look like a human. Hmm, I don't know what this thing is actually, every bulging muscle also had a different color of brown. It looked quite ugly. I will decide to call this thing The Abomination! I'm pretty sure my buddies would call it similarly. The abomination was throwing a punch at me and I decided to meet it with a punch of my own. I generated and concentrated the energy on my right fist and turned it into lightning. This thing has way more reach than I have so I will just charge my punch until I can meet it with my own. Red lightning, perfect, I threw a red lightning punch at the incoming fist and canceled out the abomination punch.

Hmm, even though I canceled the punch That still kind of hurt. I blew at my sore hand. You know maybe you should leave the defense to me and focus on the attack.

Will do. I imbued myself with lightning and dodged another punch and threw a lightning punch at the abomination's arm. His bulky bulkiness kind off made it bounce off. Ted couldn't do his taunting roar because all the bats, that Gregory was dealing with, would go to him. The abomination threw a punch at Ted which he dodged. Ted threw some jabs at the elbow joint of the abomination and the abomination lost the ability to move its arm.

Hey, what did you do? Teach me that too! Uhm I can but now? The abomination roared in frustration. It managed to move its arm a bit but it seems it was brute forcing movement by just using its shoulder to move its arm.

You have a knack for finding the enemy's weak spots, right? Your lightning magic might work great on this technique. Just aim for nerves and give them a good jab or in your case give them a good shock, it will temporarily numb or disable the area you hit. Since the nerves I hit are responsible for moving the elbow he can't move his elbow for a bit. Ooh, we need to teach this technique also to Agnis! Nothing will ever be able to move if he learns that!

Well, I guess both of you have a good affinity with this technique, just don't go ham on the electric pulse else you might as well nuke him. With my newfound power, I dashed at the abomination. It was trying to still recover from having its right arm numbed. What if I numbed both its legs? The bigger they are, the harder they fall! Would be funny to see this big guy be unable to stand. I might not understand much my buds talk about in general but if it's about weak spots then that is right up in my alley. It's important for hunting and I guess in combat too. I can sense the weak electric impulses nerves send out when I'm close to an enemy, I can also use this to hunt but I would have to really focus to sense this from a distance and I don't really like focusing but I can see the use of it. The impulses seem weaker in its right leg so that's what I’ll be going for. It tried to stomp on me with its left leg. I guess that's why the impulses were weaker in its right leg.

Near the joints, eh? Yah. Ted was shooting rock spikes at the abomination while making punching moves and yelling something about a rocket punch or something. I don't get it. The abomination got distracted by Ted and I copied Ted’s move but infused it with lightning. He said not too strong so I'll just go with dark blue lightning. I jabbed areas near the knee and ankle of the abomination's right leg that looked weak to me and the abomination started to stagger and roar. Woops I had to get out of here else I’ll turn into a Raishin pancake. I know I'm delicious but I’ll only let a hot chick enjoy me! I got out from under the abomination and looked proudly at the results.

Heh, easy! Well, I gotta say this thing packs a punch but if you don't get hit it's not that strong. I looked around and I saw that Gregory was caging the ugly ass bats in shadow cages and made a pyramid out of cages with those things trapped in it. He seemed to be handling them quite well. I looked over at Agnis and he seemed to be dispelling the seals.

Yoo, guys, I need about an hour and 15 minutes to deal with all these seals! Are we allowed to kill this abomination before the seals are lifted?

I don't know! Do you need help? I can send 2 clones your way but I can't spare any more than that.

Will you be ok with using fewer clones to deal with those corrupted bats? Eh? It should be fine, they are numerous but not that strong, as long as they don't bite me and corrupt my mana, I’ll be fine, I have my shadow cloak on so no way that will happen.

Aight, I’ll link your vision with mine with instructions on how to disarm these, if you find a faster way surely do tell me. Hmm, it seems we have to kill some time.

What do you think will happen if we kill the abomination before the seals are lifted? I asked Ted while looking at how Gregory sent some clones over to Agnis and they started to tackle the seals with their clones. I have no idea but maybe more abominations will spawn when we defeat it before all the seals are down. This one seemed to have spawned when Agnis and Gregory tried to investigate this cave. I looked over at the abomination and it was still struggling to stand up. It was making a lot of noise though.

Oh, it stopped making noise. Uh oh. What uh oh?

Does the word “Phase 2” sound familiar? You’re telling me even a scrub monster like this has a phase 2?

Hmm, maybe not maybe it was warming up and is not in its true form kind of like a warm-up. The muscles of the abomination started to wobble and it looked quite disgusting.

Nope, this is a phase 2! Get ready Ted! Ugh, I miss the time when you defeated monsters, they were defeated for good! The abomination drastically shrunk to about half its size. Still big and ugly but it seemed a bit slimmer.

Hey just something that concerns me. You don't think it exchanged power for speed, right? Haha, that would be ridiculous. The abomination dashed at me.

Oh shit, it really did! Ted blocked the abominations charge. Ugh, I hate that I was correct on this. I jumped up and away from Ted and threw a lightning bolt at the abomination. It dodged it and jumped at me again this time readying a punch.

What the? Ted jumped, grabbed me by the leg, and pulled me down making it so that the abomination missed me. Whew, thanks, Ted. This thing is fast. Gotta thank Agnis for this, He is fast yes but we're used to seeing Agnis zipping around and this thing is nowhere as fast as he is, that is probably the only reason I can somewhat follow its movements.

Yeah, Agnis would kick its ass in speed. Sadly, we have to deal with this now. You might not like this idea but I suggest we stay at a range from this thing and dodge it until we get used to its speed. We don't know how much power it exchanged for speed; it might still split your skull open if it hits you.

Meh, fine, I created some distance with it and occasionally tried to zap it. Some hit others didn't. It seemed to be inconsistent in its dodging. Ted made some rocks appear in front of its legs tripping it up. Same thing it dodged some and didn't dodge others. It did seem to come close to hitting us whenever it dashed at us. I had to short-range teleport to Ted to grab him and move out of the way of the abomination's trajectory. And Ted had to block some of the charges it did to me. Because Ted blocked those, I could see how much power was behind those charges. Ted was sturdy but one wrong hit could seriously injure him.

It is kind of hard getting used to this speed, but now I kind of understand how Agnis’ opponents feel. Yeah, I think I'm starting to get used to this guy’s speed.

Hmm, I was wondering though, why is it so inconsistent in dodging our attacks? It does seem to barely miss when it locks onto us. Haha, maybe it's using autotarget or something.

Auto target? Yeah, when it attacks it just locks on to the closest target, you don't have to see or aim at your target for auto target to work.

Wait, what if it can only dodge attacks for those it is locked onto? Hmmm

Hmmm. The abomination faced me and seemed to want to dash to me. It kind of caught me off guard because I was still thinking about what Ted said. It started dashing but tripped over the rocks Ted made in front of its feet.

Hmm, this seemed to work, try to disrupt him whenever it locks on to me Raishin. Alright. It dashed at me again but mid-dash it got tripped up again. I was readying a lightning bolt to throw at it but since it was faceplanted at the moment I guessed that it won't be able to dodge in this state anyways. A clean hit. I doubled the power I put into this attack. I was forming it intending to disrupt but this works too. This time it seemed to go for Ted. I threw a lightning bolt at its legs intending to briefly paralyze them. It hit and the abomination faceplanted again.

Hehe seems you were correct. Now how are we going to bully this abomination? Hmm well, we can't kill it till Agnis is done with the seals so I guess we should just keep disabling it.

I know something better how about we try to see how long we can keep it airborne? Whud why would we do that? I teleported towards the abomination, amped up the lightning magic on myself, and kicked the abomination in the air and towards Ted.

Here! Catch! What the! Ted charged up a fire punch and returned the abomination to me. Here take this spicy Abomina-ball I almost missed the timing of my kick because of Ted’s lame pun.

That's such a lame pun! The abomination couldn't do much because every time I returned him to Ted with a lightning-charged kick I zapped it with some paralyzing lightning. We kept sending the abomination back and forth. It had yet to touch the ground. I didn't really want to lose so the abomination, which was curled up in a ball by now, got hit by a lightning kick, but I made it a curveball. It approached Ted but about 10 meters before it would get to him it curved to the left and headed towards Agnis who was dispelling seals. I don't know if it was a clone or him himself. Is that a proper sentence? I don't know but you know what I mean! Raishin, you dumbass!

Hey, I don't want to lose! I'll have to make you drop the ball! Ted seemed to rush to send the ball back before it hit Agnis but it seemed like it would be my win. Agnis seemingly dodged the ball easily though. What in the Hourai are you guys doing? Uhh Abomina-ball

Without me? Uhh, it was Raishin’s idea.

Don't kill it yet, it seems to be close to being defeated, I wanna join in a bit too before I dispel the last seal. Uhh sure. I did win though Ted! You are a jerk. Let's go for round 2, and no sneaky curveballs that would impede Gregory's or Agnis’ job.

I'll be more careful this time.

We resumed our game. You guys seem to have a lot of fun, can you guys blast this pyramid of shadow cages? I’m running out of space to put all of them and there still seem to be a lot more bats to cage. Oh, great now we have targets! We added some spice to our punches and kicks and tried to crush all the cages Gregory had piled up without hitting the ground or bothering Gregory and Agnis. It did add a whole lot of difficulty though. The ball was now burning and electrified so it did quite the damage to the bats inside those cages. Whenever we successfully crushed the bats inside the cages, the cages would return to shadows and return to Gregory. That's how we could see if we successfully crushed the bats. Improperly crushing the cages kept the corrupted bats still alive and the cage wouldn't return to Gregory’s shadow. We used this to perfect our abomina-ball techniques. Anything that couldn't crush 4 cages with corrupted bats in it was a nonviable technique. Ted took round 2.

Best out of 3? I will crush you this round. Ha! You wish! The abomination was on my side so I launched it with a strong lightning kick. It seems Ted saw that coming and was charging a powerful punch to send it back. It was a heated match. There were a lot of moments where I almost missed returning the ball and the same for Ted. But something that shook me to the core happened shortly after. After I kicked the ball back to Ted, Agnis lifted the last seal. Mid-air the ball glowed and grew back to its original size and bee-lined for Agnis. Agnis watch out! I saw Agnis turn around but it was too late. The abomination smashed and when it lifted its arm all that could be seen, was a lot of gore and blood dripping off its fist.

AGNIS! How could this happen? Nooo. A wave of sadness and anger went through me and the only thing I wanted to do was avenge Agnis. I dashed off to the abomination and one shot it with a powerful energy blast when I heard clacking footsteps.

“Aah, that annoying dispeller is finally dead. I tried to kill him by sending curses through the seals but he kept freezing and dispelling them. All I have to do now is to kill you brats and restore the seals.” My sadness turned into anger. Who are you?

“I am Guyani Ingrei, the guardian of the Bei root.” I have failed, how could I let Agnis die like that? I'm supposed to protect everyone. Gregory, I know how you feel but you need to get a grip! We need you else we might all die! I don't care if you're Guyani or Nayani you are dead meat! I tried to rush at this white-haired chick who had a wide smile on her face but Ted stopped me.

And I need you to keep your cool, this chick seems strong, we can't afford to lose our grip here.

“You blonde brat! How do you know my sister?” What? I don't care about you or your sister, you are dead! Gregory, I need your help to calm Raishin down! I rushed at this annoying woman and aimed a red lightning-charged lightning kick at her head. She dodged it and sent an energy blast that sent me flying. I crashed into a wall but neither the blast nor the impact hurt. I heard from Agnis that my lightning enhancements increase my resistance to physical, lightning, and element-less damage. I got up but I then saw that Ted and Gregory were under attack. Gregory seemed to be panicking and couldn't seem to be able to do something. Ted was struggling to keep himself and Gregory safe but he was starting to accumulate injuries. I suppressed my anger a bit and dashed over to just in time kick away a fireball that was aimed at the panicking Gregory.

“Hmm, why didn't my last attack work on you blonde brat? Wait this enhancement.“ She started to throw around more fire magic. I'm no expert but the magic circles appearing when she cast this magic seemed different. Raishin, I think we need to flee; we can't fight in this state! I dodged most fire attacks but still got hit by some. This woman packed a punch.

Without Gregory’s and Agnis' support, it seems that we can't do much really. Ted punched the ground which created rock spikes aimed at that Guyani chick. It didn't seem to do anything as she floated up. Hey! That is cheating. I took this chance to short-range teleport to her with a fire punch ready. I tried to copy one of the punches Ted used on the abomina-ball which gave me a lot of trouble. It was bound to be powerful.

“So naive! Do you think I don't have any precautions against teleport users?” She seemed to know exactly where I would appear and floated down to the ground while torching me. Aaagh! Raishin! Ted dashed at me, grabbed me, and moved me out of the way milliseconds before a fire pillar spawned on the spot, I was lying down moments ago. Ugh, this hurts, thanks, Ted.

“Impressive that you brats dodged that, but aren't you forgetting something?” The woman landed on the ground and pointed her hand which was charging up fire magic, which turned deep red at Gregory, who was still panicking and alone. Ted punched the ground but instead of rock spikes made the ground sink under Gregory, making the fireball, ehh it wasn't a fireball actually, it looked like a fire laser. Anyways the fire laser missed. We need to grab Gregory and run, can you teleport to him and then away? Ugh, I’ll try but I still don't have the hang of that stuff Agnis told me about the distorted teleport pings.

At this point, it doesn't matter just get us out of here! I teleported us to Gregory but before I could teleport away that chick blasted us with element-less magic.

“Indeed, I can't prevent you brats from escaping but if I don't give this blonde brat time to focus, I won't have to worry about any teleports.” She kept firing element-less magic at us, which I could withstand with my enhancement but it required enough focus to keep it up strong enough to not do serious damage to me. Just dodge it! She's not trying to defeat you she's just making sure you can't teleport us away till you get worn out! What about you guys then?

We’re tanky, we can take some hits!

“It seems this is the end of the road for you three,” Guyani said while she created a ring of fire around us and was about to hit us with a big fire spell. Well, good thing we came with four. A sword pierced her chest, all the fire got sucked up to something behind her and she started to freeze solid. The frozen body shattered and behind her, we saw Agnis holding his sword forward and three tails out. He looked a bit different than we used to see him. He looked very serious, his eyes were light blue almost white and his tails seemed to be made out of frost. His sword shattered too and he approached us.

Ugh, you were really cutting it close there Agnis. Agnis! You're alive! Agnis! Wait you knew this, Ted?

Well not really but there is no way he would get one shot by a slow monster like that, and you guys should also remember that his specialty is speed and deception. Even though I wasn't sure I assumed he activated an illusion because he probably found out that something like this would happen. I'm so glad you're alive! Gregory went to Agnis for a hug but he stopped him.

I’m sorry Greg but stay away from me for a bit. I tried something new and my body is extremely cold now, you might freeze when you touch me. What did you do?

I absorbed all the magic of this Guyava inside my tail. I will let my tail analyze the magic to get an idea of what her capabilities are but also what the capabilities of these guardians can do in general. I don't know how much I can learn from it but we can never be too careful. I needed to use a lot of frost magic for this because she was really strong. And as you can see my body temperature drops a lot when I use this. Too much and I can freeze myself solid and will probably end up sealing myself for several hours. I don't want to turn into a popsicle yet so I don't want to overuse this. Hmm, I did hear about the possible downsides of frost magic. I didn't realize you could just end up freezing yourself too.

I think my innate core temperature being higher than normal helps a lot with this. Maybe if I learn to channel my phoenix side better, I could take this frost magic further to counteract its side effect but for now I probably won't be able to do this to anything stronger than this guardian. You look cool though.

Alright, enough puns, sorry to have you guys go through that but this illusion had to be realistic so that I could pull off that sneak attack. Ted and Gregory are good at acting but you suck at it Raishin! I felt attacked but I knew he had a point. Ugh at least give Gregory a heads-up next time, he was a real mess. Ugh, I'm sorry, I just couldn't even formulate a plan on how to deal with this situation.

Alright, my temperature stabilized. We all went in for a bear hug.

“How nice, having a warm group hug after you murdered my sister!” Ah, right she did mention having a sister. Oh, shit! I looked behind me and saw Guyani about 30 meters behind me but she looked angrier. Wait I thought you just died and when did you manage to change clothes?

“I'm Nayani! the twin sister of the lovely woman you guys just killed! I'm gonna freeze you brats to death!” Ah, twin sister, that makes a lot of sense. I acknowledge your strength but I don't think you can do anything ice-related with Agnis here! Yeah, another fight, that's a bad idea! Let's teleport out!

“Hey, don't run! Let me kill you brats!” Before I could send another comment back to her Agnis teleported us back to my hut. I agree with the retreat but I still want to ask why? Hmm, well even though I kind of one-shot that guardian she is really strong, fighting her sister who might be as strong or stronger sounds like a bad idea, especially when I can get information out of the magic, I pulled out her sister. Her specialty might be ice but if she also uses frost magic as I do, we're in deep shit. Hmm yeah, I've seen what you can do with frost magic, I don't want to ever fight against something like that. So how long do you need to analyze that?

About 1 day. Meh.

Also, I left a nice present behind for her, she won't be able to place any seals because it will set up frost traps. Nice! She's gonna be so pissed when we're gonna defeat her. I guess. I heard Guyani saying stuff about sending curses your way while you were dealing with the seals, are you ok?

Guyani? Oh, that chick uhh yeh there were some curses I guess, I thought they were just baked in the seals, they were nothing special. Hmm, that is good. Ugh, I'm pooped! Yeah, we need to recover. It's good that we didn't listen to you and kept fighting.

Ugh ok, I admit I was mistaken, but it feels lame to retreat. Do you know what is lamer than retreating? Death! Now let's go rest up! You too Agnis! I know you're probably going to do something or exhaust yourself to analyze that magic faster Ugh, fine. Guess no secret frost magic training.

I knew it! Gregory started treating my burn wounds with his potions and bandaging me up. We do heal fast but that doesn't mean we shouldn't heal up properly! At least that's what Gregory always tells us. The guys left and I decided to go to bed early It was about 21:00 but we were pooped. As I lay down in my bed I thought back to when the abomination smashed into Agnis.

It looked so real. I then thought of how he one-shot that guardian.

We can't keep getting carried by Agnis, one day he will get into deep shit and we will be screwed if we don't do anything about our current state. I decided for the first time in a long time, to actually put in some effort and do some simulations and practice new techniques. With the resolution to carry my buddies in the fight against that Nayani chick, I fell asleep.