664 10/11 2:57 (Autumn, Day, Midrar)
The cube currently imprisoning Luna darkened under the combined gaze of the Party called "Lunar Crackers", hardening into harder and denser version of stone, Grug being careful to strenghten it starting from the inside so that Joules had free reign to delicately carve their previously worked out Runic Array over its surface, further reinforcing the whole, starting from the inside.
"How much more do you need, Aler?" Mark asked using his Artifact, the same one that connected all of his Party members together to speed up the transfer of information as much as possible, the final combact-focused member of his Party, the Elf that until now did not actively partecipate in this battle.
"A minute should be more than enough for me to be ready." The quiet answer soon reached him back, causing the Human to nod once, continuing on with his own preparations, mostly being completed by Joules precisely manipulating his Mana.
"Grug, can you maintain this for three minutes?" The Party Leader asked the sweating and breathing heavily Half-Dwarf, well aware that reinforcing and sustaining the cube would be extremely hard and costly for a prolonged period of time, especially if Luna went all out in order to escape her current binding.
"Three minutes?! Are you crazy?! If we are lucky, I can last two!" Grug exploded, sweat flowing freely from his forehead as he needed to repeatedly clean his eyes from it before he was actually distracted by it, gasping heavily as the continuous Channeling of Mana to sustain, reinforce and repair the wall was slowly starting to burn him from the inside out.
Having barely finished his exclamation, the tallest member of the Party was forced to bring one of his hands to his mouth, coughing blood as some of his internal organs were briefly destroyed before his Vital Energy and various Artifacts he was attuned to patched up the damage. "Oh, I am rea-really g-going to-to feel this t-tomorrow…" He wheezed in pain, barely able to stop himself from hurling, before shaking his head, unwilling to lose concentration in so crucial a moment, especially considering how Mark was almost done carving his Runic Array into the walls of his cube.
Meanwhile within said cube, Luna was calmly analyzing it, all of her limbs being held far away from her body and each other by long pillars made of the same condensed rock that formed the rest of the cube, a similar mass enveloping the rest of her body and doing its best to stop any chance of her being able to free herself.
She carefully tested the strenght of the stone, taking note of the way that the Half-Dwarf's Mana was constantly reinforcing and slowly converting it into harder and more Mana efficient Materials. "[Annihilating Conversion] is more than enough to free me, even enough to kill one of my opponent if the beams reaches them." She affirmed aloud, her closed eyes opening as the cold light within pierced the complete darkness held within the inside of her prison.
"He should know about this ability yet both the previous barrier and this one should be easily able to be dealt with. I suppose, considering how Counterspell is included in it, it is hard to respond to. Yet to not have included anything to even try to stop it would be extremely foolish, especially considering how I could just launch it at any time.
"It's possible that he just has nothing to respond to it, sure, but it's extremely unlikely that he didn't find any counter to it, considering how he has Regressed to fight me at least three times. At least for now, let's work on the assumption that he does have a counter to my ability. In that case, the main purpose behind both the previous and current cage would be to push me to activate it, especially considering both its power and long Cooldown. He didn't even line himself up with anything relevant to me as a way to stop me from launching it without reguard.
"In addition considering the power of my attack, I doubt that a Skill or even a Spell would be even close to enough to fight it on pair, considering their level. I suppose in that case that an Artifact is the easiest way to stop the release of my [Annihilating Conversion]. And the more efficient and easier way to hide such an effect would be by using a Runic Array whose Language I don't understand." She calmly asserted, the complete absence of light negating her ability to expand her shadow at all.
Having understood from the way that the stone enveloped her that she shouldn't wound herself as otherwise she risked the stone invading her wounds, Luna's Familiars returned to her Rings and in so doing causing her armor to destabilize once it was no longer held together by either her own or her Familiars' efforts, exploding in a soft rain of Black Blood that stained the inside of the pillar she was held into, solidifying and pushing against her container, taking advantage of the difference in volume now that she no longer had her wings, horns or tail to create a brief opening in the pillar, launching herself free.
As her lips moved upwards to form a twisted smile born of a mix of contempt and calculated killing intent, her Aura flared wildly and in so doing flickeringly illuminating the new area she found herself in, her short-lived shadows being used as the origin points for the incoming eruptions of Black Blood, eruptions that she rendered even more dangerous by actively using her Divine Power to push her Black Blood and Vital Mana even further, starting to erode and eat into the rocks, especially those that kept her stuck in place.
Her ring containing Core started to glow even brighter, its Aura pulsing in tandem with her own as she shared in the Skill Dragon Heart, increasing her ability to handle the Blank Flames currently rampaging within her body as a single-center system became a bicentric one, in so doing lowering the stress of the flames enough for her to release another Attribute that she Altered to function using only her No-Attribute Affinity.
Sparks the deepest black it could be started flaring around her body uncontrollably as the Energy that she devoured from her would-be-cage was not added to her body, a risky proposition in her current situation, but was instead directly used to fuel her Ruinous Thunder, the black sparks growing more and more violent, more and more eager to destroy and rampage.
All of her No-Attribute-Altered Attributes were at their core an extremization of their nature set free to rampage.
Hollow Jewels stored an immense amount of Energy but at the first mistep and they could detonate in an equally immense disaster if someone, even the wielder, was not cautious about their use; Blank Flames simply devoured everything and converted it into more of itself, possibly aiming their fangs even towards their wielder at the first mistep, as demonstrated by their attempt of eating her from the inside; Vacuous Gale was simply a layer of almost solid air sharpened enough to cut even wind itself in half, a wild gust that would not allow itself to be stopped.
Similarly to those example, Ruinous Thunder was simply the extremization of a lightning bolt's sheer destructive power that simply aimed on piercing the wall of her prison, entering in a contest of power that sapped more and more of the cube's Energy, scouring everything in the vague direction of the initial release and branding long scars in the wall, repeatedly destroying the constantly repairing wall.
As the cube's Energy was being used to repair itself to stop the creation of any exit from the prison, less of it was being Channeled to repair the pillars that formerly enveloped her, giving her enough time to cause further detonations around her body, escaping her initial binding and allowing her eyes to peer through the darkness around her, fully revealing the new layer she found herself in.
"Multiple layers of protections and layers to assure I would waste as much time as possible. Yet "Seal" is not being inflicted on me despite the fact that it is evident that they know how to cause the Alteration in other individuals and this process would cause me a much greater amount of hurry, probably enough to force me to activate [Annihilating Conversion] yet they are not trying to cause it in me."
Luna thought to herself aloud, analyzing the progress of the Status Alterations currently affecting, watching as they were being rapidly drained, this continuing on even once she turned her Presence: Charm on herself to inflict aforementioned Alteration, noting how it was rapidly weakening.
"I suppose this is an additional function of the prison itself, devouring Status Alterations from me to help fuel itself and in so doing lowering the stress it would cause in its Caster." Her red eyes explored the room briefly, noticing how the pillars that previously caged her did not reform together, the Energy that would have caused such instead moving to reinforce the rest of her would-be-prison.
The two meters wide room she now found herself in presented presented itself to be too small as once her black thunder exhausted all the Energy she had previously used to form its form, detonated in an explosion that ripped a hole right to the next one, forcing her to shield herself with a release of her Aura and Vital Mana, her Senses trying to stretch to the next room through the room.
The hole in the meter-thick wall rapidly closed, sure, and in so doing painfully slamming down on her Senses, almost enough to cause an headache but not rapidly enough to evade a lump of Black Blood being thrown in by the Lunarian, infiltrating the deeper layers while she made sure to cost as much Energy as possible.
This prison could never hold her for long after all.
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