Chapter 617: Good Luck!

"Alright," Grey said as the Dark Kin Cycle continued plunging toward the crater. "There are four Fire Elementals down there and probably two Earth Elementals, so this is on you guys. Good luck!"

"Wait, what the fuck!" Brad shouted, but the Cycle had already vanished out from beneath them, leaving him flailing in freefall while the Dominion hammer dragged his body awkwardly to one side.

Amara looked considerably calmer as she fluttered downward, adjusting her phase just enough that the violent heat and pressure barely seemed to affect her, while Grey’s laughter rang across the crater as he kicked away from them and headed for the nearest tree.

It looked like Grey had abandoned the two of them to six Elementals, but that wasn’t remotely what was happening.

Brad’s boost after Ma Famille evolved had been substantial, especially where his connection with the hammer was concerned, since the upgraded treasure had finally let pieces of Grey’s higher-level comprehension pass through clearly enough for Brad to understand more of what he had been holding all this time.

Before, he had been dragging around a Dominus Class treasure while grasping only fragments of its real use, but now Grey could already feel the difference in the way Brad’s Frame responded to it.

Amara was more of an unknown, though everything Grey had seen so far suggested that her phasing ability was exactly the kind of irritating bullshit that could let someone fight far above what their raw numbers suggested.

BANG.

Grey kicked against the air and accelerated toward the inner wall of the volcano, the Solveign Frame responding more violently than usual as it took advantage of the superheated, highly excited particles filling the crater.

The atmosphere here was so saturated with thermal energy that charged molecules and turbulent currents were everywhere, giving Grey far more to manipulate than he would normally have in open air, but even that wasn’t the main reason he was comfortable leaving Brad and Amara below.

Veyrath’s bracelet flared around his wrist, and a blanket of fire control spread through the crater until the four Fire Elementals suddenly felt as though most of the world they relied on had been ripped away from them.

Their bodies visibly faltered as Veyrath seized control over the ambient Fire Energy, and one nearly collapsed into the lava before managing to hold itself together.

Grey grinned as he landed against the volcano’s inner face, one foot slamming into black stone while his left hand caught a thick branch growing out over the magma.

The tree beside him was exactly what he had been looking for, its bark dark enough to look charred while thin golden-red veins pulsed beneath the surface where the sap moved through the trunk.

Grey reached into his inventory and pulled out the siphoning tool he had bought before leaving Melix, its aura immediately revealing it as a Command Class treasure. High-Class materials were far too valuable to butcher with ordinary harvesting equipment, so Grey drove the siphon through the bark and directly into one of the thickest channels before attaching a bottomless spatial bottle beneath it.

Amber sap began flowing almost immediately, and Grey left it to fill while turning part of his attention toward the fight below.

Brad reached the first Fire Elemental before it had recovered from Veyrath’s suppression, and the Dominion hammer came down hard enough to flatten the flames around its body before crushing its head into nothing.

Brad stared for a moment when the scattered fire began dragging itself back together, but surprise quickly turned into amusement once he realized the Elemental could still reform while remaining weak enough for him to smash apart again.

Within seconds he had turned the whole exchange into a game of whack-a-mole, laughing every time another flaming head appeared above the lava only for the hammer to come crashing down before it could finish reconstructing itself.

"There are still two Earth Elementals," Amara reminded him gently while moving across the lava nearby, though what looked like graceful dodging from a distance was much stranger once Grey focused on her properly.

She wasn’t actually moving out of the way of most attacks at all, she was phasing only the portions of her body that needed to become intangible while leaving everything else solid enough to maintain balance and momentum.

A fist of volcanic stone passed through one side of her torso while her legs continued moving normally, then her body became solid again before the attacking Elemental had even completed the swing.

But even that was just the surface. She didn’t seem to only have a phasing ability, but also a deeper level of well-hidden illusions as well.

Grey’s grin widened as he watched her for another second.

Most fighters wasted enormous amounts of movement avoiding attacks, but Amara could surrender only the exact portion of space an attack needed while keeping everything else about her positioning intact. She hadn’t joined Ma Famille yet, but that was mostly based on trust, not how powerful she was.

Considering her performance now, though, she at least didn’t seem like she was leaving Brad out to dry. She was subtly helping him here and there.

Almost as if responding to her warning, the lava below bulged violently and the two hidden Earth Elementals finally tore free from beneath the molten surface.

Their bodies were composed of dark volcanic stone threaded with glowing orange fractures, and unlike the Fire Elementals, Veyrath’s suppression did almost nothing to weaken them directly.

Fortunately, this battlefield still worked against them, since the surrounding Fire Energy was so overwhelming that their connection to the earth was constantly being disturbed by heat, softened stone, and molten material they couldn’t fully command.

That was the real reason Grey had been willing to trust Brad and Amara with the fight.

Brad had Ma Famille and a Dominus Class hammer he could finally begin using properly, Amara had a Frame uniquely suited to surviving direct attacks, Veyrath could suppress the Fire Elementals, and the volcano itself weakened the Earth ones. Grey might look reckless from the outside, but he had already stacked enough advantages in their favor that all he needed from the two of them was time.

His gaze returned to the spatial bottle as the sap level continued climbing, then moved toward an open patch of stone beside the tree. Once he finished the mech, the six Elementals below would become irrelevant anyway, and that meant the only thing standing between Grey and everything he needed was the construction itself.

Grey reached into his inventory and pulled out his Cyber Mat.