There was no way a poison could remove momentum. It wasn’t a physical force.

Yet, the absurdity of the thought gave him an idea and Sage acted upon it. The Greenrose Venom poisoned living things. Telekinesis was essentially a use of Spirit Power. Didn’t Spirit Power come from living things? Could he poison the Spirit Power? Focusing his strength, he found that he could! The Primal Law he’d comprehended could corrupt anything! Since the projectiles were already so far from the minds guiding them, and with a suitably powerful medium, he corrupted the Spirit Power that propelled them, just enough to disrupt their control. He was sure with some more effort they’d figure out how to add more strength or use finesse to avoid his contamination, but he didn’t plan on letting it get that far!

Corruption. Changing things from what they should be.

The giant cobra’s eyes closed and then they reopened again. The red-outlined triple pupils starting to oscillate, vibrating up and down while emitting a yellow glow. The cobra’s hood changed colors, turning into a brilliant light show. Black and white lines swirled together, spinning round and round. Not only had Sage’s rank increased, but with the enhancement of the Primal Law of Corruption, he sought to change these people. Polluting their minds, corrupting their loyalty.

“What?! Impossible!”

That booming voice washed over the forest, the man in the wheelchair very displeased with what he was seeing. The thousands of Flares stopped moving, standing in place, locked in an unmoving daze.

Even with dark lenses covering their eyes, they had all been hypnotized. With the influence of the Law of Corruption, Sage didn’t even need to make eye-contact with them. The eyes were the window to the soul, or so they say. When one gaze met another, it was like a door was open and it was that medium the Hypnotic Eyes used to affect the mind. It was far more difficult to accomplish the same effect without locking eyes, yet with the power of a Primal Law, he pulled it off. Not wanting to give the enemy a chance to turn them against him, Sage convinced the majority of them that they were very very tired and they needed to sleep for a long time.

Before the man in the wheelchair could say anything more, thousands of Flares leisurely laid down upon the ground and curled up to sleep. They used the nearby debris to make themselves pillows, some pulled tree branches over themselves like blankets. In short, they used their powers to make themselves comfortable and then fell asleep. The only ones who didn’t lay down to sleep were those without gas masks on. Those were the individuals that Sage now had almost complete control over. All he had to do was implant memories of him saving their lives and helping them out of jambs. He also inserted memories of their wheelchair bound boss doing the opposite. Hurting their friends and taking away their benefits. The few hundred Flares had turned a ferocious glare upon the leader they didn’t know they had.

The charred corpse of the giant was still burning, but at this point the flames climbed off of the giant like they were a blanket that had come to life. The moving sheet of fire twisted and curled, taking on the form of a humanoid. It was the same as the one that had been assaulting Sage’s mind. Only, it was much smaller now. In his Spiritual Sea the flame giant had been a hundred feet tall, but here in the real world it was only a tenth of that size. It was still a giant, but only the height of a single story and not a skyscraper. It roared and flew into the air. It didn’t bother walking arrogantly and burning the ground, merely floating through the air as a huge flame being.

Heh, he probably can’t spare the power. Seems to me that he just has excellent control over the fire and the ‘giant’ is just for looks.

If the flames were really transformed into a giant, why didn’t they take any actions like one? In the Spiritual Sea that giant had only stomped around and thrown a few attacks. After that it just stood there acting intimidating. A creature formed of flame would use its own body to attack, wouldn’t it? Even the ‘punch’ it once threw just summoned a torrent of flames. Right now, he’d sent hundreds of Flares into battle to test his theory.

Well, that and he wanted to buy a little more time. He’d just reached a new rank and wanted to stabilize his cultivation a bit more. He couldn’t complete the process without rebuilding his body, but he was still confident of victory even without that.

The huge cobra slithered itself into a huge coiled pile, burying its head and seeming to ignore the battle that was going on. The Flares rushed towards the man in the wheelchair, but they were intercepted by the fire giant. One of the Flares was nearly as tall as the fire giant, reaching a full eight feet in height. The man was overflowing with muscle, with arms as big as a normal man’s torso. He carried a huge sledgehammer that seemed to be an anvil welded to a bar as thick as a fireman’s pole. The flame giant didn’t even bother to avoid the attack, the huge piece of metal causing sparks to fly, but passing through the flame giant’s body. The fire giant reached out and grabbed the strongman by the throat.

Was I wrong?

Sage was of course watching the battle, but only with his Spiritual Sense as he further accustomed himself to his new powers. When the flame giant grabbed that man by the throat he felt his earlier analysis might be wrong. But then, the man’s throat wasn’t squeezed, it was burned. The giant pulled the man closer and flames bathed his whole body. There was a pained yell, the manly version of a scream. The burly fellow’s weapon dropped from his hands and he flailed around to try to put out the flame. The fire giant released him, but the fires kept raging and the man started rolling around on the ground to try and douse the flames that only got bigger. Other Flares moved to attack, most of those that wore no mask were physically empowered. They used weapons and their weirdly misshapen limbs. They were just like that Fisher Punk Sage first battled with, but not as extreme. Their odd limbs were only 50% larger than normal rather than larger than the rest of their whole body.

Sadly, none of them stood a chance against a creature made of fire. None of their attacks did much. Even when they combined attacks, the most they did was cause the fire giant to partially disperse. The fire giant was sliced into two pieces, its legs bursting into sparks and disappearing. The fire giant killed the offender, a man with a huge waist that wielded a massive axe, with an arrow shaped flame. The fire shot into the man’s eye, burning a hole through his head. Then, a moment later the fire giant’s legs reformed.

If Sage cared about these people he would have called them back, but they were the enemy after all. He let the fire giant waste time and energy dispatching each and every one of them. The hundreds of Flares attacking just a few at a time in unending waves, a match with a hundred rounds. The fire giant started to get smaller as time passed, and by the time the last Flare fell, it was down to man sized.

At that moment, the giant cobra finally stirred. It rose up and fixed a vicious stare at the man in the wheelchair. There was something odd about its eyes, one of them seeming to carry the boundless emptiness of the void, complete with tiny sparkling stars.