Under normal circumstances, the fangs or the venom wouldn’t be much of an issue for Tze Cha, probably.
But right now, he was already suffering from lingering damages and wounds from his previous misadventures and explorations. And with his power grossly weakened, he was instantly feeling the price of being greedy and careless - the two fangs pierced through his scales and skin and poked into his muscles and tissues, and high density venom was seeping from the tips of the fangs into his body, poisoning his body and corrupting his power.
What made the situation worse was that giant wasp monster from afar, who did not join in on the battle by itself but kept sending in minions to harass him in attempts to wear him down. It was preparing for a critical kill strike, he could already feel it.
Tze Cha howled, and his eyes and horns lit up in an acane pale grey light, a spell was cast, and an energy seal appeared in the air facing the bottom of the ball lightning. Right now, after absorbing the energy of the additional lightning bolts, the ball lightning started radiating energy waves that made Tze Cha as well as the team of five worried. The energy seal slowly rose and got absorbed into the ball lightning.
“Boom - Crack!” some disturbing changes took place inside of the ball lightning, and with a swing of two front claws, Tze Cha split up two sizeable blobs of the energy from the ball lightning and with the command of his will, the two blobs of energy became two devastating energy balls flying in the serpent and the wasp monster’s direction.
The wasp monster screamed and jetted out of the way, the serpent wiggled its body and lunged over to another position on the mountain ridge surrounding the basin. But the two energy balls still followed them as they fled. They were not too fast for either of Tze Cha’s opponents, which actually made them appear more imposing and dangerous.
On the other side, the team of five, made of five members from the Grant Academy were finally able to reach the ridge, despite they were actively being hunted by the creature whose body was lying in an underground cave, while its tentacles that looked like worms with teeth and tentacles of their own were burrowing in the mountains and under the ground.
“Boom!” the energy ball targeting the serpent ended up hitting it at the end of its tail and exploded. The serpent’s entire body was instantly thrown over the ridge by the shockwaves, the surface of its body being charred and burned to a crisp by the heat coming from the explosion.
The shockwave spread through the entire area. The impact was no less than an intense earthquake, which almost made them lose their footings.
“Let’s hurry.” Professor Kapur cast a stabilizing spell that helped her four students stay where they were, while Josephine Wong just focused on her power and patched up the disorienting field that was losing power much faster than it normally would because of the chaotic energy fields around this area.
“Boom!” the other energy ball exploded in midair, and the wasp monster was thrown across the sky with its wings and legs all shredded and burnt - it had to send thousands of its minions towards the energy ball and trigger the explosion while the energy ball was a far enough distance away from it. But it grossly underestimated the sheer power contained inside of the energy ball, and thus it paid its price.
The shockwave from the sky also reached the ground below, which made the entire ring of mountain ridge around the basin shake once again, and the team of five had to stand and hold themselves in their places again.
Just when Tze Cha thought he could relax, about a dozen worm heads from the mountains shot from the grounds below, they wrapped their long and rubbery necks around his body like snakes and bit into his body with their razor-sharp teeth.
“Fucking damned slug!” Tze Cha cursed in his own language, and since his claws and most of its body were tied up by the worm heads, he had to tried one final desperate gambit: he opened his mouth, and a beam of grey energy shot up at the sky and it struck the ball lightning at its base, right where his energy seal was absorbed earlier.
Strange, deep and dangerous buzzing sound came from the giant ball lightning, and beams of immense energy started shooting out from the body of the lower part of the ball lightning and onto the ground and mountain slope beneath.
Some of the energy beams actually aimed quite well - they either struck right at the holes from which the worm heads came from, or in the general vicinity that was just a few human steps away. These beams of energy did not explode on impact, instead, they just melted through the dirt, the earth and the rocks.
But the other beams, they just hit a bunch of random spots on the mountain slope and basin , leaving giant red hot holes in the ground flowing with fresh lava and one could sense the skin-cracking heat from yards away.
The ground shook and cracked from the constant assault of the rock melting beams of energy. And all members of the team of five could sense that with the beams of energy shooting into the ground had led to the build up of more unstable energy from under the ground.
Almost all of the worm heads were cut off, either they were cut from their long necks in the air, or from the parts that were still underground. Tze Cha was thus able to shake those worm heads off, and he was ready to leave, and find another place to rest and heal.
A low rumbling came from the bottom of the basin, the earth and rock started growling and boiling like the entire ground had become liquid.
With a heaven-shattering explosion, a volcano erupted right from the bottom of the basin. Thick steam and lava shot up into the sky and collided with the ball lightning, which shrunk in size due to its outflow of energy through the beams, but still retained much of its terrifying power. The ball lightning in turn exploded in the sky, vaporizing all the clouds in the sky, and even left the hole in the entire atmosphere.
The team of five were thrown into the air by the violent shockwaves coming from the ground, and were then sent flying in four different directions.
