"Somebody's here!" Lera said quickly, sensing the massive disturbance feeding back from the perimeter Casts as both Wu and Ver's expressions sunk. Then, the latter two shared a glance before nodding. "Lera!" Wu said as Ver conjured up a purple whirlpool underneath them, "How many are there?" "So far...three!" Lera said, sending out her Scouting Eye far ahead and high up into the air. Then, she caught a glimpse of two familiar faces and one new one. Her body tightened as she gritted her teeth together, "It's the inverted questions. Darl, Jiyu Saturo, and somebody else!" "Ver, can you bring my surprise here?" Wu asked, and Ver nodded quickly before sinking down and teleporting out. Moments later, she reemerged with the Fuel Rock Prime and another strange-looking item that's separated from the Fuel Rock Prime and covered under a roughly put-together cloth. "Is that..." Lera asked, pointing towards it when Wu smiled mystically and drew his pistol. "That's the surprise." Wu said, "the three will not be the first of the enemy, would it?" "I...I don't know." Lera shook her head, "But it doesn't change what we have to do." "No, it doesn't." Wu agreed, "Which one of them is the most troublesome? Do you remember?" "It's...probably Darl." Lera continued, "Assuming the standard composition of Caster, Channeler, and Manifester. Getting rid of the tank, the front line, will make our fight a lot easier." Thus explains the targeted teleportation of Darl away from the battlefield by Ver. As the Whirlpool Purple formed underneath his feet, the ground suddenly turned sinking sand as his massive body started dropping rapidly through the whirlpool. "Shit!" Darl cursed, swinging his arms as massive vortices of wind were stirred up by his movements. Jiyu Satoru turned rapidly and was going to send out his Serpent manifestation to help him when a concentrated blast of the Wave landed right in front of his feet and exploded. Shards of rocks and dirt were sent flying as Tom Bom and Jiyu both turned their faces away and shielded themselves. "Darl!" Jiyu called, but Darl instead clapped his hands together, cutting through the noise and the panic with a singular tone. "Boss, they are trying to single me out." He said as the lower half of his body had already completely disappeared, "I can take care of myself, so please be careful out here." "You'd better come back!" Jiyu said as Darl nodded with a smile and let go of the vortices. Without his resistance, the Whirlpool Purple pulled him in in a swoosh before vanishing fully. "Shit, the aim is slightly off today." Wu's voice came through as he slightly adjusted the grip and the aim on his One-Shotter Pistol. Then, he looked up to see Tom Bom, the red-haired man, and Jiyu Satoru, the architect of his arrival, "It's been a while, you lot." "Yeah. It has, Summoned One." Jiyu Satoru said through a forced smile as a fire burnt fiercely in his eyes. He looked at Wu with a level of intense focus that Tom Bom has never seen before, and he already knew that his boss had tunnel-visioned himself. How could he blame him though, as Wu's existence is a reminder of Jiyu's failure. "Today's the day I correct my mistake." Jiyu said, the winding Serpent manifesting all throughout his body and wrapping around his chest. It hissed towards Wu, and in response, Wu turned both switches on and spun the gun around his finger in a flurry. "No...today's the day I get my revenge." Lera said, her voice shaking as her Book of Cast glowed brightly beside her body, "You will pay for what you have done! Rapid Layering!" A massive array of Casts were deployed and filled up the entire opening in the forest. As lines of writing and Casts were imprinted into the soils of the very earth, Tom Bom made a surprised face and stepped forward with sparkles and smoke coming off his hands. "I will take care of the Caster." He said, lunging down and propelling himself forward with a pair of obnoxiously loud explosions under his feet. Jiyu nodded. As Tom Bom dashed through the middle of the array of Casts, Lera quickly activated the Trapping Cast, sending vines grown from the ground and curving them to envelop Tom Bom as he moved through the array. However, he simply clapped both hands together as an explosion went off from his body. A blast wave tore through the vines, sending the individual strands of the wave flying outwards and disappearing into thin air. Then, following right behind him, Jiyu used the massive body of the Serpent to bounce himself off the ground, leaping striaght towards Wu as Tom Bom sent his hand forward and prepared to blow up Lera. "Switch." Wu spoke quickly, and Lera snapped her fingers and instantaneously activated Strengthening and Lightening for the two of them. Wu pointed his pistol, flicking on one switch while turning off the other and launched the fastest shot possible at Tom Bom. An orb of Wave the size of a table tennis ball whizzed through the air and slammed itself into the hands of Tom Bom. The sudden injection of the Wave into his hand activated his Explosion Cast prematurely and causing it to blow up right in his hands. As the impact sent him stumbling backwards, Jiyu's already hovering over Wu's body with his serpent ready at his hands. "NO YOU DON'T!" Lera roared, leaping up into the air with Bubble Bubble surrounding her body. Then, the Serpent hissed so loud that Lera felt her head split open before its mouth clashed right up against the exterior of Bubble Bubble. "It's always you, isn't it?" Jiyu asked, his burning gaze digging a hole on Lera's face as she glared back just as intensely. "Life was good before your bullshit!" Lera shouted, channeling the level of rage she didn't know she had. Ever since the beginning of it all, she had been too preoccupied with other things going on to have been able to properly process everything, but there were a few things that she already knew. She knew that Wu is not the one to blame for her new destinty, and that Jiyu is the one that's truly responsible. The relaxing days out here enabled her to forget about what Jiyu had done to the Pinnacle Research Institute and Professor Richard ever so briefly, but the moment his face appeared again, everything just came flooding back. "YOU! All of you were too cowardly to ask the real questions!" Jiyu declared, "You let yourself be controlled by a single stupid tablet, and for thousands of years, we have let outsiders determine our destiny! I was going to set you free! ALL OF YOU FREE!" Lera grunted angrily and set the Bubble Bubble to rapidly expand outwards, pushing back Jiyu as the two of them both landed back on the ground. In the meanwhile, Tom Bom had been chasing after Wu as he kept on sending his Explosive Casts forward. Wu had always wondered what it's like for the soldiers to run through the battlefields with explosions going on all around them in movies, and now, he knew what that felt like. However, Lera's just the greatest, and she had also casted a separate shield around him as she leaped up. Spinning around after planting his feet hard on the ground, Wu shouted loudly while turning on both switches at the same time. "LERA!" "GOT IT!" She said quickly, her fingers rapidly tapping against the page of Cast and activating the trappings over where Wu's standing at. "All of this is USELESS!" Tom Bom shouted, ignoring the vines that were bound to his body as he turned his entire fist red and slammed it straight down onto the ground. It was as if a volcano had erupted from where he's standing. Then, a shock wave propagated rapidly through the ground, flipping up the earth and breaking apart the lines of Casts even as Lera tried to sink them deeper down. Before she could react, Jiyu had lunged forward and sent a bag of venom flying in her direction. That was when a bright flash went off right behind his back, and Wu had sent a full-powered shot at him while falling down from the previous jump. The explosion of the ground, the Rapid Layering array, and Wu's full-powered shot went off simultaneously, turning this part of the forest briefly into what felt like the surface of the sun. Wu squinted hard and covered his eyes, yet the bright flashes were still blindingly intense. When the initial flash of light went away, Wu saw Tom Bom standing in the middle of destruction among patches of white in his vision, his clothes completely burnt away and revealing glowing red lines all over his body. His black piercings also glowed red like hot iron. Then, countless small orbs were launched away from his body like pollens and filled the air. "Jiyu!" Tom Bom shouted, "Remember what you said when we first fought?" Jiyu spun around rapidly, his entire backside burnt and charred due to the attack from Wu, and his Serpent manifestation shielded him from the worst of the fire. "Yeah." Jiyu nodded as the bright light enveloped everything and Tom Bom offered up the greatest display of power in his life, "A boss that couldn't handle the fire from an underling is unworthy." "That's right. FINAL ART: DETONATION!" Tom Bom smiled, unleashing all of his Wave in single glorious Cast. A massive mushroom cloud rose through the air as Tom Bom's explosions chunked away large sections of the ground as a blast of fire rose up tens of meters into the air before rapidly expanding. As the shields of Bubble Bubble were eaten away by the sheer intensity of Tom Bom's detonation, Ver's dark Whirlpool stepped in at the last second and latched around Wu's arms, pulling him in when everything went off. Moments later, Ver and Wu both reemerged onto the battlefield as this part of the forest were completely cleared away. In the aftermath, Lera dropped to her knees as she gasped for air after holding out for so long with her Bubble bubble. Desperately searching everywhere for Wu, she tried to get herself moving when Wu placed his hands over her shoulders and helped her stand up. Five meters away from her, Jiyu Satoru coughed out dark smoke and slowly forced himself to rise as a faint greenness dissipated from his body. Covering himself with his Manifest, he's able to survive through Tom Bom's explosion, but it looked like the last act of the One-Trick Bomber was to no avail. "That was close..." Lera murmured, gripping onto Wu's hands so tightly that he started to feel his fingertips tingle, If she didn't have the leftovers of the Rapid Layering and set up 5 layers of Bubble bubble around her body immediately, she would have died on the spot. Thankfully, Ver's there to save Wu's ass this time. "Darl?" Jiyu asked, shocked to see the third person joining by Wu's side, "No way..." "He's strong." Ver replied, showing Jiyu a small bruise over her arm, "The Walking Disaster is no joke. But in the face of a true monster..." Jiyu lowered his head slowly, and he slowly breathed out painfully. Darl's gone, and so was Tom Bom. Now, he's all the one that's left. Even if he can't avenge the other two, he still can fulfill his purpose here. He can still kill Wu! Unlocking his knees, Jiyu slowly sat back down to the ground, sending his Serpent silently far underground through a crack created by Tom Bom's rampage. "I suppose you are the winners for now..." Jiyu said, a shadowy smile on his face, "But-" The massive mouths of the serpent emerged from the ground underneath Wu as its fangs started closing in from both sides, attempting to bit his entire body in half. Then, with a victorious smile, Jiyu looked at Wu in his last moment as he stared into the black barrels of his One-Shotter pistol. "Pew." Wu pulled the trigger as the blast of the wave left the pistol and dashed straight through Jiyu's forehead all within the same instant. The serpent's fangs scraped against the sides of his body and ripped his clothes in half before it disappeared from the air. Jiyu's body flopped back, and blood started streaming all over the ground. Wu dropped down the pistol, and he turned and vomited as the red soaked through the dried-up soil.