Chapter 1250: A Sudden Reversal
Meanwhile, at the underground throneroom...
^Alfonzo, is the away team ready to go?^
^Indeed, my liege. We're just waiting on the mirror.^
^Honored Ancestor?^
[Step through , now!]
___________
[Storm Rush!]
"Whoa!"
"Jump!'
Despite having delivered a fairly heavy blow to the top of Rebaba's head, Zhen Xing and Zhen Liu found themselves still locking fang and claw with the rhino bloodliner's horn.
However, Rebaba's [Regalia] was tougher than they had anticipated. As such, it managed to mitigate most of the damage that they had wanted to inflict on the man.
On the plus side, neither of them was able to get a clear advantage over the other in terms of causing immediate harm.
Under normal circumstances, where they had allies and/or their predecessors to help them, this would be a good result for the duo of Aether Masters, as they could wait for someone more qualified to take out the big bastard for them
But due to this situation being life or death and their hardest hitter being occupied, this was anything but ideal.
The more time the scions of the Zhen Clan spent dealing with this one-horned motherfucker, the more likely they were going to run out of aether and eventually get killed.
Besides, they had their pride as warriors...sort of.
"Alright, I'm going to say it; I wish we had Xiao Liu's [Possesstol] thing right now," Zhen Xing complained to Zhen Tai as they landed on the ground after jumping over Rebaba's charging attack. "Could really use a Kaijin boost right about now."
"Understandable," Zhen Tai agreed. "But we're warriors, man; we shouldn't have to rely on that sort of thing to make our way in the world."
"No, I get that; I'm just saying it would be really useful to be fighting at the level of an Aether Grandmaster right now. Especially when—"
[Storm Rush!]
"THAT FUCKING HAPPENS! JUMP!"
After digging himself out of the wall he had just crashed himself into, Rebaba immediately redirected himself and started charging towards Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai at a speed that was even greater than before.
The upside was that these attacks were straightforward and fairly simple to avoid as long as they jumped, especially when the man decided to run down a hallway.
If they attempted to leap off to the side though, they would get caught up in the shockwaves.
As for blocking him again to create an opening, that was out of the question.
Zhen Xing was able to pull off that trick once at the cost of immense internal injuries up and down his arms. He could feel it in his bones that doing it again would obliterate his limbs entirely.
But they couldn't keep dodging like this forever either.
They had to do something to flip the table and take this oversized rhino-man down in one move.
And there was only one thing that Zhen Xing could think of that could work in a moment like this.
"Hey, Zhen Tai. Is it safe to assume that the only attack of ours that had any effect on Rebaba was your [Primordial Beast Scripture], right?" Zhen Xing asked while they were still airborne.
"Yeah, but that attack did fucking barely anything," Zhen Tai grumbled, "and that was even including you managing to expose a weak point in the process. Wait, you're not thinking-"
"No, I like having arms, so I'm not doing that again," Zhen Xing quickly shot down. "I'm thinking that we try and combine our attacks to try and take him down. Like when we use [Echoing Frost]?"
"Are you serious? Neither of us are even remotely decent at using that move. Hell, I'm still barely able to use it."
"No, I'm aware," Zhen Xing assured his cousin. "Which is why I'm suggesting we combine our powers and use the [Primordial Beast Scripture]. Makes sense, right?"
At this suggestion, Zhen Tai's eyes visibly widened with disbelief.
"Are you nuts? It takes a mammoth amount of effort from either of us to use [Chaos] as is; hell, my wind-up time alone is enough to make it liability, and you want to try and combine our attacks into one? Only Zhen Guo and his father were able to combine their attacks like that, and they're not even sure how they pulled it off. How are we supposed to do that unpracticed?!"
"Well, it's either we do something stupid or we die," Zhen Xing retorted as the duo eventually landed back on the ground. "So if we're going to die anyway, we might as well do the former."
"..."
"What?"
"I can't tell if you're like this now because of the ass-whooping Zhen Liu gave you all those months ago or because of that servant girl who's been on you like a barnacle lately."
"It's both; now focus!"
Once the duo landed back on the ground, they found themselves staring down Rebaba once more, after he had missed them for the sixth time in a row.
At this point, he was done playing around.
^Alright, you brats,^ Rebaba snarled while preparing to charge for the seventh time in a row. ^This time, I'm going to use something special to take you down. Something that you won't be able to jump out of the way from.^
^Funny, we were thinking the same thing,^ Zhen Xing snapped back in an attempt to sound brave.
After making these declarations, both sides began to circulate their power until the utmost limit.
Rebaba began to circulating aether throughout his whole body, until the shadow of a giant rhino-troll monster began to encapsulate his body, with eyes like storms and arcs of lightning covering it from head to toe.
Meanwhile, Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai began circulating [Chaos], causing a giant flaming fox and a giant burning snake to manifest behind them like looming shadows. Unlike Rebaba's lighting rhino-troll though, theirs looked significantly more lively.
Once these shadows of energy fully manifested, both sides prepared for what they felt was the final confrontation.
[Celestial Rhino's Thundering Stride!]
ROAR!
As both Rebaba and his rhino-troll construct roared in unison, they surged forward like a tornado with the goal of annihilating everything and everyone in their way.
[Primordial Beast Scripture: Qiuzhudingi Charge!]
[Primordial Beast Scripture: Titanoboa's Dance!]
AOOOO!
HISS!
Under Zhen Xing's and Zhen Tai's command the giant fire fox and giant fire snake rushed towards Rebaba's thundering rhino troll in an attempt meet it head on.
On their current trajectories, the two burning beasties would be impacting the rhino-troll at two different points and would definitely get overpowered in the process.
However, that wasn't going to happen.
As the burning beasts kept charging, Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai proceeded to lock eyes. "You ready?"
"No, but fuck it!"
Manipulating their [Chaos] to the best of their abilities, Zhen Tai and Zhen Xing proceeded to try and combine their attacks into a cohesive whole.
Surprisingly, this went a lot smoother than either of them had anticipated.
"Holy shit!"
"It worked?!"
Not only that, but a brand new name manifested in their minds as their respective [Chaos] constructs merged with one another.
[Primordial Combination:Nguruvilu Rush]
HISSAOOO!
The giant fire fox and giant fire snake merged into one chiemric beast of flames that managed to wrap its entirety around the rhino-troll construct and began to constrict.
^Gah! G-get off me!^ Rebaba roared as he tried to get his aether construct to the tear off the nguruvilu, only to fail as the [Chaos] that composed the latter continuously broke down the aether of the former, literally burning it into smoke in the process.
That stated, the two Zhen Clan scions could see that Rebaba and as about to break free from the attack, so they decided that the best course of action was to do something mildly stupid.
[Burst!]
And that was to use a surge of [Chaos] to will their shared construct to explode in a massive conflagration of flame that consumed both Rebaba and his rhino-troll in their entirety.
The resulting explosion was strong enough to not only leave Rebaba thoroughly roasted yet somehow alive, but also knock the wind out of Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai.
The two young scions found themselves panting for air as they laid on the ground feeling utterly exhausted.
"Well...I'm fucking tired as shit. What about you?" Zhen Xing asked his cousin.
"Same."
"..."
"..."
"Question, do you sense those enemy auras too or—"
^Hola.^
"Fuck."
...Meanwhile, in the same building...
[Yin-Yang Punisher!]
^Gah!^
While Abbott Longhorn was distracted by Zhen Liu's flippancy as the "Lord of Desire", Porcelain Doll and Corpse Doll proceeded to perform a double palm strike on the old monk's back and knock him forward.
Once this had occurred, Zhen Liu used this as a chance to follow-up with Nepeherage and Blazejudicator in tow.
[Double Harmonize—]
However...
^Don't fucking move!^
"Huh?"
"Honorless fucks!"
"What?!"
Before he could deliver the finishing blow, he saw that this cousins had been captured as hostages by a bunch of Silver-Tongue bastards.
"You mother..."