"Shit..." Wu cursed. Seeing the body really is different... Lera held her hands around his shoulders briefly as Ver went ahead and took care of the body with her Whirlpool purple, "Damn...that's gonna haunt me for a little while." "You will get over it." Ver said, turning around and wiping her hands down, "We all do, eventually." Wu nodded slowly and sighed. This isn't that kind of fantasy world after all. "So what now..." Lera asked, "How the hell did they figure out we are here?" "It's really a matter of time. If they searched comprehensively from the Inner Earth's main camp all the way up here." Wu said, "All they had to do is a quick fly by..." "It doesn't matter now." Ver said, adding to Wu's sentiment, "If it's anything like last time, then the second wave of attackers will arrive here sooner than later. We need to prepare to fight." "We could just keep running...but they will catch up to us eventually." Wu said, "We have been running all this time, and they won't expect us to fight back right now." "And...how do you expect to fight back that many with just the three of us..." Lera asked, turning her attention towards the strange-looking item that Ver brought along from his lab. "With a little planning and some help from you two." Wu said with a mysterious look on his face, "Trust me, I have a plan." It turned out they had a few days in between the first and the second attack, and Lera had been setting up her perimeter casts starting from two kilometers out, just so they will have a longer reaction time for when the enemies approach. Also, Lera left behind a few of the specially designed traps just for fun. In the meanwhile, Wu and Ver had transformed their main living quarters into a small fortress of sorts, layering down wooden fences with reinforcement Casts left behind by Lera and powering them with Fuel Rock Granules. That worked out far easier than Lera had expected, but for Wu, it will be far stranger if that didn't work. "Lera." As the nighttime arrives and the moons above lit up the dark curtain overhead with their own eminance. The three of them were sat around a campfire when Wu suddenly stood up, walked towards Lera before dropping to a knee, "Will you ma-" "AHH!" Lera screamed and turned away in embarrassment, "NOT NOW! WU!" "-ke a massive Bubble Bubble that w-will surround the entire camp..." Wu continued, stuttering his words and slowing down due to her response. "I think she thought you were going to ask something else." Ver said, pointing the leg of the rabbit drumstick she's absolutely devouring at Wu. "No kidding..." Wu murmured as Lera calmed her breathing while looking away from him. Then, she pumped her arms and patted her chest before turning around. That was when Wu realized her face was bright red, or maybe it's just the lighting of the campfire. "Of-of course!" Lera said quickly, "I love Bubble Bubble! It's my favorite Cast!" "Yeah. We know." Ver said as she watched the two. Powered directly by the Fuel Rock Prime, when Wu linked up the massive rock with the lines of writing carved into the ground by Lera, a semi-transparent bubble slowly formed with the desired radius, covering a sphere with a 100 meter radius from its origin. This is now by far the biggest Cast Lera had ever done. It may even qualify as a Structure Cast. With the shield all set up, all that's left for them to do is to wait. The few days of tense relaxation eventually passed, and early in the day of the attack, the handful of the perimeter Casts were tripped as squads of bounty hunters crossed the woods on foot with dozens of Chariots moving overhead. It was actually rather impressive that Kaire was able to muster up what looked to be a tiny fleet of interested bounty hunters. Sitting comfortably in the very first chariot, Kaire was also the first person to feel the slight shift in the local gradient of the Wave. Having been trained at the Infinite Academy to read even the slightest shift in the Wave, she immediately knew what that entailed. Looking down to the literal foot-soldiers that were walking in groups of three or five, Kaire wondered if it will even be worthwhile to warn them of such a setup. Is the effort even worth the rewards? Would they even bother listening? The ground underneath the bounty hunters' feet lit up as a handful of them marched across the Trapping Casts set up by Lera. Those with adept Casters were immediately able to shield themselves, but the detonated Fuel Rock Granules that were part of the traps proved far more powerful than what some of the Casters expected. As scattered and isolated explosions went off from underneath and caused a handful of the bounty hunters to panic, Kaire cleared her throat and stood up, "Listen! THEY ARE DESPERATE, AND THAT'S WHY THEY RESORTED TO SUCH LOW-CLASS TRICKS! Victory is ALREADY in hand, and we just have to reach forward and grasp it!" Her words were able to bring everyone's attention back in, and she raised her fist before rubbing her thumb against her index and middle finger, "Plus, I promised you all with cash bonus as a member of the Sky Guardian Corp! So march on! And have no fear!" As the bounty hunters all hurried forward with the extra burst of blind motivation, Kaire sat back down on her chariot and wondered how much more scummy she will have to be just to get anything done in this world. None of this will matter by the time she's lying on the beaches of the Western Continents though. As the groups moved closer to the main camp, a handful of the Casters and Manifesters sensed Lera's Bubble Bubble, and none of them were able to break through from the exterior. "To create a Barrier Cast of this size...the Caster must have at least been Mountain-Splitting level..." One of the more seasoned Caster said, his hand touching the hard exterior of the massive Bubble Bubble. "Here! There's an opening!" One of the more eager Channelers in his group said loudly, drawing the attention of the rest of the ground troops. There were a single opening positioned near the entrance into the main camp, and sets of wooden fences were set up from right beyond the opening, funneling the group of bounty hunters in a single formation. "It's so obviously a trap..." The Caster said, sighing when the Channelers laughed and slammed his fists together. "The job of Channelers is to spring the traps!" He said, charging headfirst through the opening as the Caster was too slow to stop him. However, to the surprise of the group of grounded bounty hunters, nothing happened after the channeler stepped in. "HAHAHA! SEE?" The channeler laughed, "If you aren't coming, then the prize is all mine!" "Hey you! Wait up!" The other bounty hunters all flooded through the opening and pushed past one another as they all ran in through the opening into the camp, one after another. Kaire watched from above, and as more and more of the bounty hunters went in, the transparency of the Bubble Bubble suddenly started to decrease even further, as if the entire interior of the shield was fogged up. Now this is interesting. Kaire sat back and let out a sigh. Out of the three people last time, Lera was the only Caster. But she knew for sure that she couldn't have casted a Cast of this size in such a short amount of time. Unless she has processed so much further, and that they have figured something out in this short amount of time? She didn't quite believe when the informant told her that there were attempts to use the Fuel Rock Prime as a power source, though it made no sense to her how something that violent can be controlled at all. However, that impossibility seemed more and more like a joke the longer this goes on. "Boss, what should we do?" One of the group leaders asked from a neighboring chariot, and Kaire simply waved her hand. "You may attack however you wish." She said with a smile, "Take control of your own future! Use your own power!" The other group leaders nodded, and the bounty hunters split themselves into a group that sought to damage the shield while the rest charged straight in through the opening. "Um...are you just going to sit and watch here?" The miner that's piloting the chariot asked as one of the Casters launched a massive fireball which bounced off the surface of the shield and slammed into the ground. "Yeah, why not." Kaire asked, "They are the ones that wanted the Token. I am just here for the stupid rock. Let them wear down each other for a bit, then I will step in when needed." From the outside, the coalition of forces under Kaire was disorganized, self-centered, and an absolute mess by any sort of military standards. But that's to be expected and actually works better for both Kaire and Wu in this case. As the dozens of bounty hunters ran through the corridor in between the wooden fences, Wu slowly pulled off the cloth covering the strange item before tossing it aside like a magician revealing his props. As the bounty hunters turned a corner and faced up against Wu standing at the top of a slope, he slapped his hand on top of the machine. "I heard you want me dead?" Wu asked, flicking on the switch to the machine as a line of Cast was lit up and slowly spreaded the glow to the rest of the machine's body, "This ain't much, but it's honest work." "What the hell is that?! Come face me!" The Channelers at the front all transformed at once as they channeled their internal Wave and grew in size. Then, they charged towards Wu as he reached his hand over. "Taste the rage of my Wave-powered machine gun!" The next thing the bounty hunters knew, countless highly concentrated blasts of the Wave were shot out from the machine as the first row of Channelers were mowed down immediately, their bodies pummeled by the impact. The Casters standing right behind them hurried and conjured up their shields, but they were easily torn through after dozens of Wave-powered shots repeatedly bashed themselves into the same place. "Damn you!" One of the Channelers from the back leaped through the bodies of his fallen comrades, and Wu grabbed onto the handles of the machine gun, pointing it up as the array of Wave shots pierced through his enhanced body and slammed it back down to the ground, adding to the mountain of bodies of the unconscious Channelers. In the meanwhile, the Trapping Casts around the wooden fences were also activated, and the bodies of the bounty hunters started to sink into the ground and underneath the mud, the ground clearing away and leaving only the bloodstains behind. Wu's heart was racing, and the imagery in front of him reminded him of the old World War 2 movies that he had seen before. He had never imagined himself in a situation of kill or be killed, and yet when he justified the actions in his head, the killing just came so easily. Too easily... There is constant darkness surrounding those that have killed, and he could already feel its effects slowly corrupting his mind. If he stopped and waited, that darkness will have swallowed him whole. Just as he prepared to take down the next waves of the bounty hunters, a loud BANG suddenly came from overhead. Wu looked up, and a massive crack formed over Bubble bubble. Another BANG came through, and a pair of massive fingers dug through the surface of the shield, tearing it apart as the Cast next to Fuel Rock Prime sizzled loudly before breaking down and burning up. "There she is..." Wu said with a nervous smile, as the semi-transparent shield vanished from the air, leaving the giant figure of Kaire Jin that looked down at him.