Feeling the trembling Dyon sighed. He was already at half mast, but it seemed he wouldn’t get the chance to do anything this time. Planting a soft kiss on Ri’s lips, he set her down.

“I don’t think we have time to change, they definitely need us now.”

Ri nodded at Dyon’s words, a serious expression coloring her face as they flashed out of the world.

They immediately appeared inside a shaking vessel. It was meant to be a luxurious cabin pulled along by Grimbold family beasts, but right now, it couldn’t have been further from that.

The roof was completely torn off, revealing a dark and still darkening sky. Endless cyclones whipped about, kicking up the dust of the grey roads and drowning out the roars of the white tigers.

Dyon’s lips twitched as he listened to Akash yell out orders from her position in the middle of the pack. ‘She’s quite ruthless…’

Hundreds of beasts were pulling vessels were crossing what looked like plains, except for the fact there was no tall grass to be seen. Endless grey flatlands stretched out and in the far distance, you could see what looked like a massive lotus. .

‘That must be Lotus Tower.’ Although Dyon had been prepared for the landscape, he was still a bit off put by the fact a lotus wasn’t surrounded by lush greenery, but instead what smelt and looked like death.

Ri raised her eyebrows, looking up in the sky. “Even with the Tree of Life and Death manifestation, I can’t sense any normal energies…”

Nodding, Dyon leapt up to stand on the edge of the torn roof. “Nothing but Death qi…”

This wasn’t Dyon’s first run-in with death qi. Back at Focus Academy, the pools of energy they sacrificed their students to form was laced with it. If Dyon was forced to absorb this energy, he’d end up in an even worse situation than he was back then, even with his aurora being much stronger.

“It must be Lotus Tower,” said Ri from the floor of the vessel. She looked off to the distance tower, shaken by how similar it was to Ice Petal’s Dance and even the present Dyon had given her for her birthday.

“It’s either Lotus Tower absorbed all the energy but death qi, or it’s quite literally turning all of the energy it absorbed into death qi.”

Although Dyon rarely referred to his wills as qi, that was what they were. When wills manifested themselves as a sword blade, or a wind cyclone, or Dyon’s dripping demonic will, as some examples, they took the form of energies of their own that you could call qi.

The fact the ground was so filled to the brim with such qi meant that. ‘This place might have a perfect catalyst for death will…’

Dyon shook his head, now wasn’t the time to be thinking of gaining catalysts for the Florence family technique. He had to help make sure the casualties were kept to a minimum, especially when it came to his army.

Snapping his head to get a good look around, it seemed they weren’t doing too badly. Members of the Nodin major family were being directed by Akash, their main specialty? Wind will.

Much like Dyon’s humanoid manifestation, their souls manifested themselves as wings. Although, theirs looked much different from Dyon’s.

Almost illusory in make, the Nodin family manifestation was actually wings made of wind. The only sign that they actually appeared was the swirling air behind them and the vicious fluttering of their long light green hair.

Much like every other major family, their tier of talent decided the power their manifestation would hold. Therefore, the weakest among them had one pair of wings, whereas the strongest had three.

Dyon watched with interest as the major family worked in tandem to deviate the path of the cyclones.

‘This isn’t how you should do it…’ Dyon’s brows scrunched together. The Nodin family was trying to, for lack of a better explanation, ‘untwirl’ the cyclones… but that was borderline idiotic. Dyon felt like he was watching a circus act, for lack of a better descriptor. He wasn’t the type of person to cast aspersions on those who simply didn’t know better, but this was connected to the lives and deaths of all those here. It made his skin crawl.

Trying to spin the wind in the opposite direction would just waste unnecessary energy. A fact that was being proven because it took hundreds of Nodin family members to tackle a single cyclone before they moved on to the next.

‘Fuck. Don’t these people read books?’

“I can’t let this continue.” Not wanting to overstep his bounds, Dyon began to secretly send messages to Akash. This way should could maintain her air as a commander.

The plan was simple. Cyclones, and formations of the like, were usually the most powerful above warm water. In addition, they were formed by low pressure systems. However, it was obvious that there was no water here, and yet the cyclone was still raging, therefore what was driving it was either death qi or the low pressure. In the end, Dyon decided that it was likely both.

Hearing Dyon’s advice, Akash looked over to him and nodded in appreciation. “Hear my command!”

Akash immediately began repeating Dyon’s words.

The first to move was the Aedre family. They specialized in water will, and as such, the souls manifested as rivers – which, of course, meant that the length of the river denoted their talent.

Those that specialized in ice type wills as a branch of their techniques stepped forward, joining hands to create a gush of ice water that coated the ground. Beads of sweat poured down their faces as they pushed themselves to limit. Although they didn’t lower the temperature nearly as much as Dyon had against the scaled elephants, they did their job.

Then came the Sigebryht family. Dyon had long since studied their manifestation, but this was the first time he was seeing it in action. And it was truly a sight to behold.

Updated from 𝘪.𝘤𝑜𝘮