Midnight Wolf didn’t just react to her - there was no latency, no reaction delay. It was as if Midnight Wolf was part of her body, reacting to her intentions as readily as her own limbs. She met him in another head-on clash in order to get an opening on him; she intended to finish him off by ripping his armor open with another Thunderclap Sting before forming a single projectile from the blades held by her braids, shrouding it in crimson lightning. She meant to propel it into him by firing her Thundercannon into it, using Staggering Shot to disperse the gunshot’s kinetic energy, and furthermore imparting upon it all the kinetic energy in her retributive battery.

It was a good plan. A great plan, even, were Zel to describe it.

Unfortunately for her, Von Wickten had some degree of tactical sense, and he had noticed that her braids couldn’t move as quickly as the rest of her body - she hadn’t figured out how to make hair strands as effective as real muscle fibers, no matter how much she tried.

Closing in on her, for the first time he did something he hadn’t done even once in the course of this battle: Feint. Feigning a pincer attack using his tail and a continuous, welding torch-esque blast of curseflame from his left hand, he baited her into dodging in such a way that the momentum made her braids spread out. At that moment, he focused the curseflame jet into a single Blaze Schneider while stepping forward with a right-handed uppercut swing.

To his credit and to her genuine surprise, he actually managed to blast off one of her braids’ ends and cut three more, sending their respective blades flying, each embedding in the soil. Each respective braid’s Thundergod just manifested a longer spectral body to make up for the lost length, but their arclines were severed. Although Von Wickten had no way to know for sure, he’d made a correct guess - the guess that Zelsys couldn’t create an Arcline without a strong breakout point for the arc, like the point of a blade or her own tongue. She sent herself out of his reach, using Midnight Wolf to blast a short distance away as she reassessed the situation. Von Wickten gave pursuit, using curseflame to propel himself much in the same way, so Zel grounded herself and decided to only use the nearly-depleted servitor when necessary.

With that energetic demand gone and four Thundergod manifestations freed up, however… She could just bombard him with a machine-gun deluge of ball lightning, and that was just what she did. It lacked the penetrative power and was overall more expensive compared to charging and throwing an external object, but it still worked all the same. Combined with Zef’s suppressive fire, a continuous bombardment of semi-homing lightning-spheres was effective through sheer volume of fire.

All this, she combined with intermittent Thundercannon shots, using Type-1 shells to fill in for the loss in ranged firepower and Type-2 shells to confuse the silver-armored monster, and yet further still obfuscating her own position using the clouds of Fog exhaust the Impelling Arm vented each time it was reloaded after firing.

The terrible intensity of Zel’s subsequent assault on and clashes with Adalbert devastated their surroundings. Clouds of shredded flowers filled the air like chaff and chunks of blackstone were gouged out of the Suncage Grid pylon around which they fought due to Adalbert’s constant attempts to use it for cover from Zef’s equally constant downpour of flaming lead and glacierglass. Green scales had begun to form on Zel’s right arm after this long, though it had once meant she was mere seconds from her effective limit, she now took it only as a general warning to wrap things up - there was still time… Even if she could feel exhaustion beginning to settle in.

Clash after clash, Von Wickten’s sword held strong, while she could plainly see chinks and cracks in the edge of hers, and that was even with her using the arcline to imbue it with Metallum for reinforcement. Whether it was him or his armor made no difference, the truth was that he could reinforce his weapons in a way she couldn’t. The more this flaw of Storm-soul Cultivation reared its ugly head, the more she felt the need to reforge her weapon into its proper state.

Another Blaze Schneider ripped past her head, only missing by centimeters because she leaned out of the way. Zel returned a barrage of three thrown swords in rapid succession, supplemented with ball lightning. She intended to shed the sword currently attached to the Butcher, pick up a fresh one, and try another variant of her original plan, using up another precious Type-1a shell, only for this, too, to be nipped in the bud by the reception of a short-range message from Zefaris. It carried the intent to fire a burst ball, and the idea of Zel kicking it into Von Wickten after he dodged.

A Mogralt Burst Ball was easily as valuable as a Type-1a shell, but… Zel wasn’t about to argue. “I can always use the Type-1a if this doesn’t finish him off…” she thought as she sent back a reply with her intent to open up his armor using Thunderclap Sting beforehand.

Zel re-engaged at a short-mid range, still trying to maintain some distance to fully leverage her range advantage. The way Adalbert’s tail moved kept screwing with her eyes; it was like a tendril, but it didn’t move like a limb, rather snapping from one semi-stiff position to the next. She continued to fight with him for a short time, further demolishing their environment; he was clearly getting desperate, aggression washing away even his basic tactical sense in favor of a full-on assault.

“Is he running out of steam?” she thought. Upon receiving a mental message from Zef signaling that the Burst Ball was ready, Zel moved into the next phase: Opening up Adalbert’s defenses so she could well and truly open him up.