"Did you get in touch with Ver okay?" Wu asked as Ver sent both himself and Lera far ahead of the chariot once again. Stationing at least a few hundred meters forward of the chariot, they had about a minute or so before Kaire's slow-moving chariot wiggled into their airspace. "Yeah." Lera replied, her voice neutral and eyes focused on the chariot, "It was my communication cast. Of course it worked." "Evidently..." Wu said, drawing the One-Shotter from his hip and adjusting for both the size and strength of the blast. In the meanwhile, Lera had already constructed her Scouting Eye and sent it flying up in between the tree branches, "Ready?" As Kaire whistles with complete and utter relaxation, the tiniest wobble in the flow of the Wave around her environments immediately drew her attention. As the back of her neck tingles with a hint of tension, she focused her vision forward and immediately noticed the same Cast used by Lera when they first encountered one another. In terms of Casts, she has seen far more subtle and elegant ones than a floating grey eyeball. But how is this possible in the first place?! Kaire is fairly certain that Lera and Wu were within the barracks that she destroyed, and she fired off a blast from the Fuel Rock Prime mere moments after Wu went back into the barracks to meet with his companion. Assuming that she didn't misfire and burn away another miner's living quarters, along with the miners, they must have had external- Before her thoughts could continue, a massive blast of the Wave was shot towards her, and it missed the chariot by a meter or so! She instinctively tilted her head and torso as her eyes tried to trace the ripples of the Wave back to the origin of the attack. That wasn't even close, but Kaire simply cannot allow anything to go remotely close to the Fuel Rock Prime. "You made it out, yet you have decided to return and throw away your life!" Kaire said, leaping off the side of the chariot and transforming in mid-air with the vortex of Wave surging from within her body, "NOBODY SHALL THREATEN MY RETIREMENT PLAN!" She landed heavily on the ground, her gigantic feet crushing the rows of trees as she swiped her hands and sent the remainder splintering in all directions. The sharp wooden pins and branches raining down like hell fire. Wu and Lera both turned and hid behind the trees when the blast blew by them. Lera also conjured up her Bubble bubble, though the stray rocks and wood pieces still nearly broke through. When Wu fires his blast again, their locations will be exposed right away. Wu looked towards Lera, and she nodded back, still watching through her Scouting Eye as Kaire went around in a rampage and hoping to accidentally kill the two of them with a spray branch or rock. Maximum size, maximum wave, maximum speed! Turning every setting to its maximum level, Wu then spun into a lunge and pulled the trigger. The orb of Wave lit up the part of the forest he's in briefly before it was launched forward like a cannonball. The impact of the release shoving Wu back half a step, though the recoil was extremely disproportional to the size of the orb. "There. You. Are." Kaire smiled, and her 5 meter long lips curved upwards. She held onto the trunk of a tree like a javelin and launched it in Wu's direction as the flying wooden spear splattering against the orb. As the explosion went off, she knew that wasn't enough to completely dispel Wu's attack. From reading the distortion of the local Wave field, she could already tell that this orb was jam-packed with Wave energy. The density of the shot rivaling the outbursts from the Fuel Rock Prime. Despite all that, she had no intention of dodging. With her right hand formed into a fist, the countermovement of her punch drew a gust that brings along countless leaves that were once attached to the trees, and right she's about to clash fist with Wu's strongest attack, Ver emerged from her Whirlpool Purple right on top of the chariot and prepared to warp away the Fuel Rock Prime. "Not so fast!" Kaire shouted, carrying the momentum of her cock back forcibly as her foot pivoted and dug a massive hole on the ground. She spun backwards, generating a tornado with her movement before reaching her massive hands towards Ver and the chariot. "VER!" Wu shouted as the bounty hunter turned her head and swiftly swallowed herself with the Whirlpool Purple right before the chariot was completely scattered into its individual lines of Wave energy and Kaire's fingers wrapped around the Fuel Rock Prime like a baseball. The orb of the Wave rammed right into Kaire's back now that she has turned around to deal with Ver, and the impact sent her stumbling a step forward. Her foot stomping through the ground and shaking the forest. For the innocent inhabitants of this part of the Endless Woods, this would have felt like the end of the world. As the smoke of the explosion slowly thins out and Kaire's silouette rose up from within, her rumbling voice came blasting through. "Good try. But none of you are even close to my level of power." "Tsk. She's a lot stronger than I thought she is." Ver said, emerging right beside Wu and Lera, "What's the plan now?" "She's not going anywhere." Wu said, "Unless she plans to run all the way back in her giant form while holding onto that piece of rock. How much does she care about her retirement plans?" The gaze of the three people intertwined briefly before Wu and Lera sighed simultaneously. Sometimes, you ask a question after knowing the answer. Ver's utterly out of the loop regarding what motivates Kaire to fight, though, from the reactions of the two, she has a few ideas. Before Ver can say another word, both Lera and her own Wave sensing abilities screamed in their heads at the same time, and her body acted before her mind can fully process what has happened. Wu blinked once when everything around him was bathed in a bright white before the three of them all fell through Ver's whirlpool. "She's destroying the forest with the Fuel Rock!" Lera said, the Scouting Eye destroyed instantaneously as Ver teleported the three to a faraway location from there. Watching from afar, Kaire held the Fuel Rock Prime like the pandora's box, peeling away a segment of its outer layers and unleashing a pure and unadulterated blast of the Wave onto the land through the opened side, turning trees into cinders and the forest into an ocean of fire. She spun around, the massive beams wiping through and cutting downthe forest as the ground quaked and the earth wept. Fortunately, when her senses are completely overloaded by the massive output from the Fuel Rock Prime, there's no way that she will be able to detect the locations of the three through the tiny changes. "Shit..." Wu cursed, "That was too close." "No kidding." Ver replied, holding onto her right eye and forcing her breathing to slow down, "We need to take her out quickly, or..." Wu looked at her briefly, and nodded. Then, he showed her the One-Shotter pistol which had the wooden handles charred and the page of Cast barely clinging onto it, "I still have one more shot in this thing." "What are you two planning?" Lera asked, her book drawn out and preparing to form a bubble if need be. "At this rate, she's going to destroy the entire place if it means killing us in the process." Wu said, as Kaire took a step in their direction and continued her rampage, "We gotta blow it up, or at least, make sure that she won't be able to wield it as a weapon anymore." "How can you do that?" Ver asked. "I designed the 'containment' for the Fuel Rock Prime, and it's nothing more than pieces of rocks and mud slapped together." Wu explained, "If you can get me really close to the rock, then I can shoot and break apart its outer layers. Then, that thing's like a hot potato." "So...it will be delicious and fluffy?" Lera blinked a few times and thought back to Lita's cooking as saliva started building in her mouth. "What? No! I mean...yes. And really hot." Wu said, his eyes turning back from Lera, "Can you do this?" Ver looked at him, and she reached out towards Wu, a purple whirlpool rapidly expanding from her feet. "You know, when we really get to know each other, Wu," she said as Wu took her hand, "You will know I hate that question." Their bodies dropped into the whirlpool before the purple rapidly retracted away, shrinking into a single point on the ground and vanishing. "WHERE ARE YOU?! ARE YOU DEAD ALREADY?! STOP HIDING AND SHOW YOURSELVES!" Kaire spun around yet again and held the opening on the Fuel Rock Prime outward. This weapon was actually really fun to use. All she had to do is to point it outward, and let the rock do all of the damage. No wonder Inner Earths became absolutely obsessed with this material. Also, she's not just blindly destroying the woods around her. After the blast swept through a specific area, she always paid more attention there both in terms of Wave detection and visual identification, trying to see if she's truly taken out her targets so she can be on her merry way. However, there was not a single hint of success so far. The Scouting Eye was destroyed a while back, and the small blasts of Wave from Wu were nowhere to be seen for the past little while. For all intents and purposes, Kaire has won. But if that's the case, then what's with the lingering feeling inside of her? This feeling had been with her all through the years adventuring, and now... As she spun around once more, a strange itchy sensation suddenly arose over her chest, and when she looked down, she spotted a purple circle suddenly appearing out of nowhere over her right breast. From its tip, Wu poked his head through right at the nipple position and shot a white blast towards the Fuel Rock Prime she's holding onto. Then, as she tried to crush the tiny being with her left hand, the purple circle disappeared, and her palm sent a shock wave onto her right breast as the brilliant sphere rippled and wiggled. "Damn you!" Kaire's face turned bright red, and she cursed when suddenly, the layers of rocks and mud surrounding Fuel Rock Prime became loosened and bits and pieces started rolling off the surface of the rock. Then, bright flashes of light came off the rock before the remainders of the layers were sent flying away by an expanding wave of energy. Bathed in a rapidly expanding white, all that Kaire could do was close her eyes. With the Fuel Rock Prime as the origin, a massive spherical blast wave materialized and started traveling outwards, disintegrating everything in its path and growing in all directions. At that instant, the light from the explosion lit up the sky, turning it red. The sound became too loud to be audible, and the entirety of the Endless Woods started shaking as birds flew off the branches and insects flooded out from the ground all the way from the outstretches of Sonne. The wavefront of the whiteness continued for another mile until it's finally settled down and transformed into a massive gust that flooded through the trees, bushes, and streams of river water even further away. Emerging from the destruction thanks to Ver's broken teleporting ability, Wu, Ver, and Lera found themselves at the edge of a crater that's fifty meters deep. At the bottom of it all sat the Fuel Rock Prime, glowing red and gold and sitting quietly, utterly unaware of the destruction it just caused. "That was...crazy." Lera said, looking around. "Like a nuclear bomb...Shit..." Wu said slowly, his legs heavy and stiff, and his mind traveling back to when he first learned about the two bombs dropped during the second world war. If a single piece of rock can do this much damage in a forest, he couldn't even imagine the level of destruction on the cities back then. Later in history, many citizens recalled that day being the day god awakened. As the entire Eastern Continent shook in response to the explosion and the sound propagated through the earth, the water in the various waterways in Sonne was shaken and slushing back and forth for days after, and the pets were flustered for weeks on end. "Let's...never do that again." Wu sighed, "We did end up doing more damage..."