The jump in skill between the first lightning manifestation and the second one was too big!
The first lightning manifestation was pretty much the alien equivalent of a rookie. Even if it possessed a huge charge of tribulation lightning, its overall lack of skill and strength made it easy for Major Jankowski to dismantle his opponent up close.
The new thunderfire manifestation was a different story altogether. The swordsmanship and more importantly the elemental fighting techniques were on a much higher level, making it so that Major Jankowski and his living mech had to fight much more seriously from the onset!
The fact that the Elemental Lord was unable to finish off the thunderfire warrior right away did not make Ves more optimistic about the future waves!
Fortunately, there was still hope of beating this opponent.
The Elemental Lord was not a swordsman mech. Much of its combat power rested in its living fey, which were contributing to the fight in many ways.
The fire fey and the earth fey were constantly hammering the thunderfire manifestation with ranged attacks.
Different from before, their output no longer aimed at the center mass but focused on targeting the limbs of the tribulation manifestation instead!
The fast and skilled movements of the thunderfire swordsman caused a lot of these attempts to miss, but the few hits were able to produce greater results than before.
In addition to that, the five brothers were considerably faster and more proficient in harnessing and combining their energies to produce different effects.
Ever since Ves had merged one of Lucky's gems with the mech, the five brothers were not only able to merge three elements in more varied ways, but also became more skilled at multitasking.
For example, the fire fey not only worked toward reinforcing the defenses of the main body by taking part in a fire-earth-metal chain, but also enhanced the firepower of the luminar crystal cannon by forming a water-wood-fire chain!
The burden on the fourth brother had increased dramatically as a result, but the living fey had grown so much during this fight that he was truly beginning to live up to his potential! "No tribulation will cut off my path to life. I will burn everything that attempts to do so, even if I have to ignite those storm clouds myself!"
The fighting intent of the five brothers grew with each passing second as they constantly improved their ability to wield the elemental E energies that they were meant to control. However, Ves was not as optimistic as his living mech.
His mind was not focused on the present, but rather on the future.
If the threat level of the tribulation warriors continued to grow at this pace, then the next ones were bound to inflict serious damage onto the Elemental Lord!
This was no time for the living mech to feel comfortable. The five brothers needed to make the next step and begin to combine four elements at the same time!
However, that was not the only way to increase their power.
Ves had always kept an eye on the thunderfire warrior. Compared to its more proficient swordplay, he was much more interested in how this four-armed alien manifestation used the elements to its advantage.
For whatever reason, the thunderfire swordsman was able to draw in lightning and fire energy and mix them up in a highly combustible combination that produced much more damaging explosions than if these two elements operated separately.
One of the keys of this combination was that the two elements had been merged in such a profound way that they maximized the power that could be generated from the absorbed E energies!
This was one of the reasons why the thunderfire warrior was not losing its charge that quickly despite launching all manner of thunderfire-augmented attacks.
The earth fey suffered another fiery shock as its sword failed to block a quick jab after it had made a mistake and overextended itself.
Before the sword strike could strike the main body of the Elemental Lord, the earth fey quickly moved in the way and resisted the strike with its thick and sturdy construction! CRACKLE-BOOM!
The earth fey launched away with cracked armor plating and a few damaged components, but it had bought enough time for the main body to recover and launch a quick counterattack that severed the sword arm of the thunderfire warrior!
"Good job!"
Of course, the thunderfire swordsman instantly compensated by transferring its sword to its other greater arm.
Unlike the first tribulation warrior, the second one possessed a much stronger mentality. Not only was the latter able to cope with its crippling wound a lot better, but it was almost just as skilled with fighting with its off-hand!
Fortunately for Major Jankowski, his opponent lost just enough combat effectiveness for him to gradually gain the upper hand in this duel.
Hostile lightning and fire energies regularly entered the main body and the fey as they intermittently got struck one way or another.
Each strike produced a fair amount of explosive damage to their chassis and internals, but much of the damage partially restored for mystical reasons.
The same went for Ves and Lucky. They experienced a fraction of the tribulation forces that sought to crush the Elemental Lord entirely, and grew in ways that could not be fully described.
As Ves experienced the power of thunderfire first-hand, he developed a much more comprehensive understanding of this compound element.
According to a few sources of cultivation science that he had read in the past, lightning was sometimes treated as a separate element, and other times treated as a derivative of the air element.
Different ages and different schools of thought all came up with different interpretations of the lightning element, which caused them to work with it in vastly different ways.
What mattered was that it was a lot harder to work with than one of the classical elements. The chance of suffering self-harm was much greater, so Ves could not imagine how much pain these four-armed alien swordsmen went through in order to master the power of lightning.
However, the reward was great as the lightning element was regarded as one of the most powerful offensive elements.
Combining this volatile element with another offensive element such as fire was incredibly hard as their interaction never led to any stable combination!
They only ever produced one form of explosive discharge or another. It took a lot of skill, effort, talent and most importantly persistence for a cultivator to master effective ways to combine these two elements!
What impressed Ves quite a bit was that the four-armed alien swordsmen did not fight like high-ranking mech pilots or traditional swordsmen.
Unlike willpower cultivators whose very intentions could forcibly rewrite the laws of reality within their domains, the two lightning manifestations fought as if they were in harmony with the environment!
This method of energy utilization reminded Ves a lot of his mother as well as his design spirits.
Though Ves found that to be rather odd as he had always associated swordsmen with willpower cultivation, it appeared that this four-armed alien race preferred to combine their swordsmanship with qi cultivation!
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