A perpetual smoke hung in the air, obscuring most of the valley from Fluffy's vantage point.

Since the column of black fire appeared, however many days—or weeks—ago, the haze remained a permanent fixture.

Fluffy did not know what was burning to cause the smoke, but whatever it was, it filled the entire valley and most of the dome with its fumes.

The air within, and immediately around, The Garden was clear thanks to the birds, but that helped little in anticipating the attacks of the abominations. It only helped with responding to them. Which was helpful, but they would come back, they always did. It was only a matter of time.

And Fluffy was tired. So very tired of the constant fighting.

The creatures were drawn to the Garden. It was filled with life and creation, and their need to sate their thirst for destruction forced them to attack the only place in the dome where life still remained.

It would be fine if a constant stream of abominations trickled into The Garden surroundings. The gathered spirit beasts within The Garden could handle a steady stream of individuals.

Continuous fighting would be draining, but not to the point that they would be worn down until they broke. They had enough strong spirit beasts that there would be time for everyone to rest.

No, the problem was the waves of abominations coming at them.

For every ten abominations, there is one that can exert dominance and control the other nine. If you gather up ten of the leaders, there is one that can control the rest.

More than that, as they massed together, they seemed to reinforce and strengthen each other. Or at least weaken the spirit beasts.

They had not seen groups larger than a hundred, but Fluffy felt confident that the pattern held true, and eventually, they would see a group of a thousand.

That was unimportant and not worth the effort to think about it at the moment, though. What matters is the constant attacks from the north and south of The Garden over the river and canal, along with the occasional attack from the west coming out of the lake.

At least they were lucky enough that nothing could attack them from the east, which would take the abominations over the mountain and past the Guardian. They could not come directly over the mountain, at least.

The valley underwent drastic changes thanks to the pillar of fire, and it was far more than just scouring all life from the land's surface.

If one stared out into the drifting smoke long enough, they might catch a glimpse of the surrounding mountains and how they changed, but everyone had better things to do than staring into drifting smoke: like resting for the next attack.

The few birds willing to try and fly out into the valley and beyond, even with the limited distance they could travel, had reported another reason for the constant attacks as they watched the abominations.

They were searching for something.

Even while the spirit beasts fought against the abominations, they occasionally became distracted, glancing off to the side for seemingly no reason. Once he thought about it, Fluffy often remembered taking ruthless advantage of such moments, never thinking twice about why they happened.

Fluffy had no idea what was drawing their attention. All he knew was it was not in the valley, and the only pass to exit the valley was behind the Garden. Leaving him and the rest of the spirit beasts directly in the abomination's path of destruction.

Fluffy remembered a time not that long ago when he could stand in The Garden and inspect the valley's walls. He thought about how he could bound over them. The new reality was nothing like the past.

The surrounding mountains are nothing like what he remembered. What remained of the simplistic beauty and majesty was warped and deformed.

The sides of the mountains became a black obsidian sheet that looked like they had been blown back and up by a strong wind until it formed uneven, wavy peaks. The mountains even bled into the valleys separating each other and creating a wall nearly as tall as the mountain peaks themselves.

The few scouts that tried to fly over the mountains, without exception, failed. And these were some of the most powerful spirit birds living within the Garden.

No matter how long or hard they flew, they could not fly above the mountain peaks. There was always a few hundred more feet that they needed to climb.

Even when the scouts flew higher than the mountains in the center of the valley so they could get a view of the rest of the smoke-filled dome, when a scout tried to fly over a mountain, it would grow larger and larger until it towered above them as they approached.

The river running past The Garden now dipped into a tunnel passing through the gleaming obsidian wall. And according to Flash, the underwater tunnel was filled with jagged spikes of stone and fast-running water that traveled through an unending passage.

Fluffy was prone to believe Flash as she came out of the tunnel with some of her scales broken or missing.

Whatever shenanigans were going on, it altered the dome in ways Fluffy could not and was not sure he wanted to try to understand.

The only way out of the valley, for land, water, or air, was slipping past the Ancient Oak guarding the Master's unconscious form atop the only still mostly whole mountain surrounding their valley.

From the base of the Oak's trunk, a small stream ran down the mountain into the canal. A small dirt path ran up the face of the mountain, passing right over a dip in the Oak's roots. And the air constantly flowed past the tree's leaves, rustling their branches.

Currently, the tree would let nothing past its domain. It was the ultimate gatekeeper of the valley, The Guardian, but that was not the reason the tree kept abomination and spirit beast alike away.

The reason was that the Master was unconscious beneath her boughs, and he needed to be protected while he could not do it himself.

Without his constant purification of the Qi flooding into the Garden, they all would die within hours. Which was why no one within The Garden pressed the issue when the Oak explained her reasoning to Fluffy.

Not that the spirit beasts tried to get past the tree all that hard. They had nowhere to go.

And if the Master recovered up there on the mountain or in the heart of the Garden, it mattered little. If something could get past the tree, then the collective forces of The Garden would not put up much more of a challenge.

On the bright side, the Ancient Oak did secure that side of The Garden from direct attack. The weird thing about the bowl-like obsidian walls that now made up the valley's edge was that while they would not allow anything to cross them from the inside, anything could pass over them from the outside.

Fluffy and his fellow spirit beasts had watched as hoards of abominations threw themselves from the surrounding cliff edges into the valley. Only about half of the abominations would survive, but their leader would not care.

Within moments the leader would screech into the air rousing their group and sending them on a path leading directly to The Garden in mindless aggression.

The dangerous times happened when The Garden was already fighting off one attack, and another horde of abominations popped up to attack them from another direction. They usually lost someone during those times. Disengaging and then redeploying their forces was not always practical or fast.

Such desperate battles were becoming all too common in recent days.

Luckily, we haven't been attacked on three sides…yet. Fluffy thought as he half dozed while refilling his core with Qi. Feeling a disturbance in the winds, he stood up and looked around.

Sighing, Fluffy readied his Qi and shouted, "Attacks on the north and south sides! Ready yourselves!"

Animals lumbered to their feet and stretched at his words before looking up at Fluffy for his next command.

Someone needed to organize the defense. And in order to do that properly, he would need to be at the highest point overlooking the Garden. You cannot give the right commands if you don't know what is happening. Fluffy claiming the largest Wind Jade only made sense.

The fact it helps his cultivation and ability to recharge Qi only added to his argument.

The other arguments he used to browbeat the birds into giving him the Wind Jade was he could project his voice over The Garden as he gave commands with his wind Qi. He can also reach one of the fronts fast enough to matter if they were pressed hard. And him being one of the strongest spirit beasts, it was only logical that he should save and regain his strength for critical moments.

More than that, though, he was a servant of the Master the longest, so he had seniority. Why shouldn't he take advantage of it?

Perched upon the floating Wind Jade, Fluffy's head faced one way then another, with only a blur noting the change in the direction he was facing.

Soon, the call needed to be made. There were only so many spirit beasts able to fight, and they needed to be organized to maximize their effects.

"Speed and Harriers to the Vines, stall their advance. Strength, Renders, and Disrupters to the River. Fish, Support both as able." The heart of The Garden exploded in movement when he finished his orders as different teams sprang into action.

Bears, boars, badgers, and rabbits stomped off, taking position along the river to the north.

To the south, wolves, felines, foxes, squirrels, and other small nimble woodland creatures leapt over the canal into the thicket of vines.

The vines writhed in anticipation and hunger as the spirit beasts entered. The overgrown, tangled brush shivered in rippling waves as the animals ran in. It would soon be fed. Master, that is one intimidating creation.

The thicket of vines was the remnants of Master's braided fishing line. Within a day after his fight with the demon, the patches sprang from the ground and began hampering abominations that tried to pass over it.

With every battle fought in the field, the vines grew thicker until they got to the point it was a primary defensive position for the Garden's defenders.

Hopefully, the Speed and Harrier Teams will be able last long enough for the heavy hitters to circle around.

Fluffy refocused his attention to the south side as the first abominations ran into the fields of vines and became entangled. His eyes passing over the aerial battles already taking place in the skies over the seen-to-be battlefields as the bird's dove upon the few flying abominations. Though many abominations had wings, few had either the strength or lack of weight needed to effectively fly.

If something went wrong, they would get his attention for some help. Or die.

A Behemoth-Sized Abomination lead the charge towards the southern side of the Garden.

The heavy hitters on the bank were not intimidated by the charge; they were too tired, and had seen it too many times, to feel the horror and fear the sight should instill within them.

Brown bears along the bank, with the Patriarch of the Bear Clan standing directly in front of the Behemoth, swelled in size.

Roaring at the approaching hoard, the bear clan charged forward, splashing through the river into the teeth of the enemy.

The bear patriarch reared back and slammed his claws into the chest of the massive pig-faced shaggy-haired Behemoth Abomination.

In an uneven line a few dozen feet from the river, the other brown bears slammed into the rollers, following in the Behemoth's wake.

The round ball of rolling flesh that weighed a ton or two hit the bears, knocking them to the side or back before they almost seemed to pop. Seemed being the keyword.

A hard outer shell on the rollers fell to the sides and collapsed in strips while releasing a slime that sizzled when it touched the bears' fur, eating away at it. Crawling over what remained of the outer shell laying on the bears' backs, tentacles studded in barbs dripping the acid lashed out from the now revealed fleshy heart of the rollers, wrapping around the bears and trying to pull them into their toothy maws.

Planting their feet, the bears trusted their natural resistance and armor against the barbs and acid on the tentacles as they struggled against the pull.

The bears only had to resist for a few moments before the badgers exploded from the ground, using their claws and teeth to sever the tendrils before diving back into the earth.

Freed from the rollers' spiked tendrils, at least until they grew them back, the bears surged forward, tearing into the fleshy body the tendrils grew out of.

At the same time, the boars with the rabbits on their backs, tusks releasing a brown aura, leapt over the river and then turned and charged up the bowl of the valley before hooking around and charging into the center of the hoard.

Most of this hoard was made up of fodder, misshapen and malformed creatures that might predominantly appear to be one type of animal but have aspects of others grafted onto them, like a mountain lion with the wings of an eagle and porcupine quills sticking out of its fur. Or a boar's body with a rabbit's face and a scorpion's tail.

Though their appearance was horrifying and disgusting, and every part of their body that was grafted on was functional, to some degree, they were not that strong.

It was only their numbers that were a problem.

The hoard of boars thundered over the bare rock, boars in the heart of the charge whipping their heads to one side than the other.

As they reared their head to one side or another, the glow around their tusks dropped before regaining its former luster.

Within the hoard of abominations, spears of stone that looked like tusks shot up from the ground, puncturing the abomination's bodies, lifting them into the air, and occasionally ripping them in half.

As the spears shot up from the ground, they appeared in pairs an equal distance apart, coinciding with the width of the massed charging boars, and shot small bracers of stone backward, latching onto the previous spike.

The center of the spike-lined path might be lined with abominations, but that was exactly what the boars wanted. How else would they trample them to death?

The front rank of the massive one-ton boars never used their Qi to make spikes of stone. That was for the members of the hoard farther back.

Instead, Qi gathered before the front rank of the boars and over their chests. It was a churning mass that flattened and suppressed those with the misfortune to stand before it.

Within an open field, it would be easy for most of the gathered abominations to run out of the way. Even with the spikes, given a few dozen seconds, they would shatter the stone and escape.

The abominations, though, had neither the time nor space to escape the charge. Snorts and squeals of joy rang out from the mass of boars as they trampled their way through the abominations.

As the boars trampled their way forward, the rabbits jumped off the boars' backs hitting one of the stone spikes. They would then bounce their way through the massed abominations outside the spiked pathway, severing limbs and creating foot-deep gouges in any unlucky abomination close enough for a rabbit to reach with its blades.

One moment groups of abominations were fine, then blurry lines of white would encase them before disappearing as fast as they appeared and leaving behind a severed pile of limbs.

The two-story Brown Bear Patriarch roared in pain as it staggered back with a patch of fur on its left side smoldering in black-red flames. A patch oddly similar to the flame-wreathed right fist of the Behemoth Abomination.

Fluffy's eyes widened in shock as the pig-faced abomination's face twisted in a semblance of a smile, revealing broken teeth. The malicious joy of inflicting pain was palpable from the creature.

"Flash! Help Earth Shaker, theirs a projecting behemoth on the south side!"

"Can't," a melodic feminine bubbling voice drifted up to Fluffy, "leviathan and feeders inbound."

"What?!" Fluffy said in shock.

"You heard me," Flash calmly responded, "We can not kill or stop them without support."

"Just perfect. I just Had to go and think it," Fluffy said to himself before refocusing on what needed to be done if they were going to survive this unscathed.

Fluffy glanced at the birds now diving at the massed fodder abominations gouging out eyes and slashing faces while sending gusts and blades of wind into the Behemoth's eyes. In usual fashion, they had quickly defeated the meager air forces of the abomination and moved in to distract.

"Hold as long as you can. I'll get the birds to do what they can, but don't expect much. Retreat into the channels if you're pressed too hard."

There was a long pause before she sighed, "I understand."

Fluffy glanced at the north side of the Garden. Three behemoths, with the one in the middle head and shoulders above its twenty-foot brethren, were in the center of the vine fields with the rest of the hoard spread out around them.

Rollers littered in the wake of the behemoths, their tendrils desperately trying to keep the vines and cats from tearing away at their cores.

Fodder abominations were trying to carve out patches within the vines where they could find some reprieve from constant ambushes.

The only creatures not mired down within in the grasping vines were a couple of guerrilla-shaped animals that, instead of large bulky arms, had multiple sets of mantis-like scythes scattered around their upper bodies. Those arms were wildly slashed through the vines as the guerrillas hopped around. Four wolves and a pair of pumas were trying to slow them down but were not having much success against the berserking creatures.

As soon as the wolves or cats would corner the guerrilla abominations, they would leap dozens of feet in a direction over the grasping vines or send out lightning-fast blurs of their blades faster than the spirit beasts could react. The new cut would further slow down the already wounded wolves in their chase.

The guerrillas might not be trying to free and take pressure off their fellows, but their wild attacks and movements had the same effect.

It was only a matter of time until the duo broke the rest of the abominations free. Fluffy needed to wrap up one of these battles before things spiraled out of control.

Gaze flicking to the growing wave surging towards the shore of the Garden, Fluffy gathered his Qi around his ears and legs as he shouted, "Birds to the shore!" before he focused on controlling his Qi.

One second quickly passed to five and five to forty as Fluffy prepared his attack that was consuming three-fourths of his Qi.

With a grunt, Fluffy streaked forward as he began to spin like a screw.

His ears were rigid, pointed in the direction he was traveling in a slight "s" shape. As he spun, air currents blew out behind him, marking the path of his Wind Drill Technique.

Right before he was going to impact the behemoth abomination that was about to slam its clenched burning fists into the Brown Bear Patriarch's head, Fluffy pushed off the air reinforced with his wind Qi with his hind legs, making him rocket forward at the last moment.

A boom rang out from fluffy that flattened a few of the weaker abominations below him. The sound traveled across the valley and began bouncing off the bowl-like walls of the valley until the boom was all that could be heard.

As he continued forward, an instant passed where Fluffy was slowed down as he impacted the behemoth. A fraction of a second later, fluffy was rotating to land, creating a slight indent in the ground from his impact.

Though his landing spot might have suffered little, the area around it turned into a charnel house.

Instead of plowing into the ground and doing little to nothing to the massed abominations in the hoard, Fluffy had his Wind Qi collect at the center of his impact spot to cushion his landing. Once he was slowed down and his wind Qi massed together, it blasted out in blades of wind Qi slashing into the surrounding Abominations.

The result was minced meat of body parts raining to the ground as Fluffy raised his head to look around before he bounded off back towards the Brown Bear Patriarch. There was no time to revel in his destructive power. There was no time for anything but an endless struggle.

One hop took him to one of the stone spikes cutting the abomination hoard in half. The next took Fluffy to the waist of the behemoth that lay on the ground with a hole drilled through its chest and was a having its head ripped off by the Patriarch.

Fluffy's words were like a clap of thunder as he used Qi to enhance them, "Take your clan to the shore and reinforce it. We have a leviathan coming in." An explosion of water followed by heavy thuds slamming into the ground punctuated Fluffy's words, "Move now!"

The bear's eyes were still half crazed with bloodlust and the thrill of battle, and fluffy wondered if he would have to fight the brut before the Brown Bear Matriarch walked between the two.

With a casual wave of her paw and a snort, she hit the side of the Patriarch's head, causing him to be thrown to his side and spin across the ground a few dozen feet.

Fluffy was stunned by the sheer display of strength. His ears froze at the display, only coming back to himself as the Matriarch locked eyes with him, giving a bob of her head. She then raised her head, letting out a short but surprisingly loud roar signaling the rest of the bears to gather.

Fluffy had long since noticed that the Patriarch was larger, had better endurance and resistance, and was altogether more aggressive and stubborn than any of the other bears in his clan.

This only confirmed Fluffy's suspicion that the Patriarch was not the most physically strong member of his clan as he slunk around his lumbering clan, trying to catch up with the Matriarch leading the clan toward the lake.

None of the other bears looked at him as he passed them to sidle up to the Matriarch, who turned her head away and ignored him as they lumbered through The Garden over to the shore of the lake.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Fluffy looked down at the badger poking its head out of the ground and looking at him from the side of the Behemoth's mass.

"Clean up the remnants here with the boars and rabbits, then head over to the north side to support them."

The badger put its paw to its stomach and bowed its head to Fluffy as it spoke, "As you command, Regent."

Nodding at the badger, Fluffy watched as it dove back into the ground to follow his command.

Giving one last look from atop the corpse at the nearly won battle, he then kicked off the decaying carcass. Landing in the Garden, Fluffy began to run as he tried to regain some Qi as he raced for the shoreline and the battle raging there.

The birds were already massed above the battle, and Fluffy could see them sending wind blades and Qi-infused feathers down at the ground.

One thing that the abominations that came out of the water seemed to have in common was that they all had tentacles sticking out of a portion of their body.

Whether the tentacles were adhesive, extendable, corrosive, fast, slow, or some other nightmare-induced fantasy, every single one of them had at least one.

And the birds had learned the hard way that most of the abominations were adept at snatching one of them out of the air if they got too close.

Limited as their help might be against the fish abominations, it's not like the birds could help on the north side, given all the underbrush. They would cause more harm than good as the wolves and cats sought to set up traps and ambushes that the birds would only interrupt.

Which left the birds to hover above the water, sending down blades of Qi in an attempt to help.

If they hit one of the feeders, their attacks might cause some damage, but they had to hit the things as they dodged around. As opposed to the leviathan bulldozing its way forward, which could soak up all the damage the birds could dish out.

The feeder abominations were mainly fish with some random body parts thrown in like wolf forepaws, cat's tails, and a wing, pulse the typical tentacles.

They would use them to latch into food and tow it to the leviathan's gaping maw.

The larger ones could even use their hooked tentacles to climb onto land and scramble around. They were never as graceful as the floundering they did in the water, but they moved faster than one expected and could be dangerous.

Not for their own strength, but the leviathan always seemed to know where they were doing and where they were, and if a large or strong enough creature fought a feeder, the leviathan would react by smashing a tentacle or two onto the spot.

As for the Leviathan, there wasn't much to say about it. It was exactly what one would think of when you hear the word.

A massive ball of fins and flesh that could be described in terms of small mountains and tentacles that made the largest trees look like toothpicks.

Fluffy had a pretty good view of the abomination as it pulled itself onto the shore. Everyone did.

If a patch of thirty-foot trees were twenty feet in front of him, he would still have a good view.

The thing was that large.

With a puff of dust kicking up from the ground, Fluffy disappeared from where he was and appeared slightly above and to the side of his Floating Jade. Reaching the apex of his leap, Fluffy began to fall forward, his right paw settling onto the Wing Jade as if he was stepping onto it from walking across the sky.

After a quick hop to the other side, Fluffy settled down and looked down at the raging battle.

Fluffy needed to gather as much wind Qi as he could, and what better spot than the jade stone floating in the air that was saturated in wind Qi and wanted him to absorb it? None, that's where.

It would still take close to an hour for him to fully recover his Qi, even with him sitting on the jade stone, but while he waited for the right moment to act, the more Qi he gathered, the better.

As the leviathan's massive tentacles pulled the bulk of its body onto shore, the Brown Bear Clan roared in challenge two hundred feet away and off to the side. The bears had separated into four groups of three and one group of two, those two being the Matriarch and Patriarch.

Between the two forward bears was a shaft of stone resting on their shoulders, holding up two more bars of stone a few feet apart.

At the back, the last bear of the sets formed a round ball of stone that rested at the bast of the two bars.

With a roar, the Matriarch slammed her paw into the ball of stone that must weigh close to two tons, and the rest of the bears followed with their smaller orbs of stone.

Shooting up the ramp, the orbs arched over the sand until they slammed into the leviathan's body.

The orbs knocked the beast back a few dozen feet into the water and left craters in the thing's fleshy mass, where the stones buried themselves into its body.

Letting out a deep thrum that caused the sand to jump into the air and sent small waves rippling out into the water, Fluffy could feel the leviathan's attention focus on the bears, even if there was no outward sign.

It quickly became apparent where the creature's attention was, as all of the Feeders clambering out of the water and straight towards The Garden turned and rushed towards the bears.

As the bears rushed to load and form another volley of stone orbs, they focused all their attention on the Leviathan Abomination gathering itself to fully surge onto the shore.

The feeders could cause problems for the bears if they reached them, but the birds had no intention of letting that happen.

Given that the Feeders were out of the water, and it took most of their tentacles to quickly move across land, it was far easier for the birds to effectively attack the things.

Instead of diving directly down onto the back of the Abominations, where most of the writhing tentacles originated, the birds broke up into three groups. The medium group dove down a few feet above the ground, ten feet in front of the bears, and flew directly at the feeder abominations' gaping fish mouths and beady black eyes.

The birds skimming the ground fired off wave after wave of wind blades at the first group of a dozen feeders. The attacks slammed into and around the abominations kicking up sand and severing some tentacles.

The birds never let up, even with the attacks doing little to slow the abominations.

Right before the birds appeared like they would slam into the abominations beak first, they flared their wings and shot up into the sky.

The Feeders might not be the brightest, but even they have the instincts to ready themselves for a frontal attack.

They were not, however, ready for most of the flock swooping in from behind in multiple waves.

Using their talons and wings glowing with Qi, the birds severed all the tentacles they could reach as they flashed passed the massed feeders.

Within a moment of the birds cutting the abomination's method of movement, the eagles and hawks still hovering in the air making up the last group let out a piercing caw, then dove down, talons piercing the creatures' flank as the birds' beaks flashed, puncturing the things' heads.

A few of the larger birds flared their wings with a burst of Qi, lifting their abominations into the air.

They carried them up until they were a hundred feet in the air, then they dropped the creatures onto others of their kind or the leviathan itself.

Though most of the birds swooped in and out without any trouble, the bodies of an owl, hawk, and crane lay broken upon the sand after they were clipped by a tentacle. More losses they could not afford.

Even with a dozen feeder abominations down, thirty more were still charging at the bears.

The Bear Clan roared as they released another salvo at the leviathan.

Glancing at the orbs, Fluffy was surprised to see Flash leading a school of fish and a flock of ducks along the shore. He had thought they had already retreated and were helping the north side of the Garden.

A sparkling line shot out from Flash as she surfaced, pointing towards the shore before dissipating.

As one, the ducks turned and started swimming toward shore as Flash led the school of fish around to the back portion of the leviathan still in the water.

Fluffy could feel spikes of Qi as they began their attack but paid little attention. His focus was on the twenty or so ducks a few feet from the water's edge.

With a quack, Qi began streaming from the ducks into the water. The water started to rise behind the flock and form a mouth as a five-foot diameter section of water weaved forward over the sand.

Halfway across the sand, the details of the Qi projection resolved in the gaping mouth and neck of a duck. If one looked closely, they could make out tiny feathers running up and down the water duck's neck.

Swooping forward, the water duck scooped up and then smashed one Feeder Abomination between its jaws. It then slammed its solid mass down onto another, squashing it like a grape before the jaws snapped down on a tentacle of another feeder that wandered too close.

The water ducks head retracted into the mass of water, pulling the feeder along for the ride across the sand. It squirmed and thrashed, throwing up sheets of sand as it fought to escape the pull, but it was no match for the flock of ducks and their Qi projection.

Mallards—as they demanded to be called—were a weird species of spirit beast, Fluffy found. Individually, their strength could slightly differ as they determine their hierarchy, but there is never a significant variance from one individual to another within a flock.

If the strongest member of the flock wanted to increase in strength, it would need all the members of its flock to do so if the weakest was as little as a fourth weaker than him. The trade-off for such restrictions, though, could be devastating to others.

First off, new members of the flock would quickly rise in strength until they matched the weakest member. Meaning the total combined power of a flock could more than double every generation.

They could also pool and collectively control their Qi. It might take the mallards a few moments for them to get going, but once they did, none could match their defensive and offensive capabilities when you are concerned with the category of Qi projection.

Physically, they were far from the top, but no one messed with a lone mallard, for if you messed with one, all would come.

After the water mallard pulled the feeder into its depths and grounded it up, the water fell to the ground cutting off two-thirds of the beach for the feeders.

A few feeders tried to circle around in birds ducks going into the Garden, but they quickly discovered that the plants of The Garden did not take kindly to intruders, and they were torn apart.

Once, a feeder approached the remnant of the water mallard and was consumed by a mallard mouth that surged out of the water that lay on the sand's surface without draining into it, the feeders kept their approach to the small strip of sand the birds defended.

Though the feeders gathered up and tried a concerted effort to break past the aerial birds, they were outmatched and quickly defeated.

In the meantime, the leviathan made steady progress onto the beach. Even with the bombardment of the bears and the harassing of Flash and her school of fish, the leviathan still managed to crawl onto shore, and its eight-foot-around tentacles reached out to consume and destroy the life of The Garden before it escaped the valley.

With just under a third of his total Qi reserves, Fluffy rose from his stomach onto his paws. It was now or never. Fluffy would not allow this thing to escape because he did not join in in an attempt to conserve his strength.

He could have attacked before the creature made it out of the water, and he might have even been somewhat effective as he bounded around the thing's mammoth-sized body and tentacles, but they would never kill it that way.

The best they could do was hurt it enough to force it to back off and perhaps show up again when they could not afford to fight it.

So they needed to lure the thing in with a defense weak enough that the abomination's small mind thought it could win, then kill it in one coordinated attack.

This was far from the first time they had done this. There was very little that needed to be said at this point. Or for the last couple of days, for that matter. Weeks?

Rotating and pressing the inside of his ears together, Fluffy created a blade that stuck five feet out as he jumped off his jade rock and began to rapidly flip over and over with the help of Qi.

A shriek could be heard as he and his blade cut through the air like a sharpened scythe, ready for a harvest.

The bears fired off another volley, but this time the Matriarch's projectile was spinning and shifted in mid-air until it was a cone pointed at the leviathan's body.

Quacking, the ducks flashed with Qi, and the water duck pulled itself off of the ground, racing towards the leviathan.

Before Fluffy hit the creature, he could have sworn a new sun had appeared from behind the leviathan's mass.

Down and down Fluffy went as he dug into the abomination's mass with his Spinning Wind Blade technique.

During his fall, Fluffy felt a thud followed by nothing for a moment before he was rocked to the side as the entire body of the leviathan jerked like it was hit with a fist of a mountain.

Fluffy had seen what caused the effect before, even if he could not see it now. It was the bears and their orbs of stone.

When the Matriarch launched the cone-shaped stone, it attracted all of the orbs within the leviathan's body to it, then caused them to explode.

Shortly after being thrown to the side, he noticed a slight bump that must have been the water mallard colliding into the abomination side.

Blade hitting the ground, Fluffy's momentum continued to carry him forward along the ground until he popped out the back of the Leviathan underwater.

After exiting the abomination, he quickly dispersed his technique and began to float.

Fluffy floated in the water for only a moment before Flash swam by scooping him up and carrying him to the surface.

As he got to the surface, Fluffy leapt off Flash, giving her a nod in thanks. It took most of what was left of his Qi to carry him over the shattered, decomposing body of the leviathan and make it to shore.

Inspecting the creature as he passed over, Fluffy saw a scorched three-foot hole drilled through the abomination. Flash sure is getting strong.

He didn't even try to preserve his dignity and poise by using Qi to land properly. Instead, he tumbled across the land until he flopped to a stop about forty feet from the bears saying, "Kill what's left in the south, then rest for the next attack."

The Brown Bear Patriarch gave a weary huff and nod of his head as he plodded off. Bears were creatures of endurance and stored power waiting to explode out.

And they were growing tired from the constant attacks. The rest of the spirit beasts, including Fluffy, were already long past tired. It was more like they were stumbling around in a haze of constant exhaustion.

Even with the Qi-filled food they were all eating from the bounty of the Garden, they could not regain their strength fast enough between attacks.

Hitching a ride on a giant eagle's back, Fluffy dropped off as the bird glided past his Floating Wind Jade.

Looking around, Fluffy noticed the only Abominations still around were two of the three Behemoths on the north side. The bears would make quick work of them.

Though the air inside The Garden was absolutely dripping with Qi, the spirit beats could only absorb so much.

It took time to assimilate the ambient Qi into one's body and core. Even if the Qi was utterly pure and composed of a single aspect, wildly absorbing Qi into oneself will destabilize one's cultivation and destroy it at worst. At best, it would strain one's meridian channels as they processed the Qi.

On the first day, Fluffy rapidly absorbed Qi a half dozen times, and his channels became sore. It was necessary.

They were fighting an enemy none of them understood nor knew the limitations of their new enemy. If he wanted to survive, being at his best was needed.

On the second day, his meridian channels were still sore, and he tried to not rapidly absorb Qi so he could recover, but the constant attack forced him to do it again. And then do it again. And again.

The third day followed a similar series of events.

And in the following days, or perhaps weeks, Fluffy lost count at some point, he was forced to make the same decision until he could no longer rapidly absorb Qi, even if his life depended on it.

By now, Fluffy either carefully absorbed Qi, or his internal Qi and core would destabilize and kill him. He needed to take his time to recover his Qi.

Time he probably did not have.

Settling down in a half-meditation-half-sleep, Fluffy tried to regain his strength before the next wave of abominations came. They would always come.

Wake up soon, Master. I do not think we could last much longer… Fluffy thought. He was not hopeful. No, that would take energy, and he did not have the energy to spare.