"I see. I have questions, but I suppose I should thank you for your help, Pon."
"Think nothing of it. May I hear the name of the elegant lady on your shoulder?"
"You speak well, but my name is not one to be given casually."
With a haughty tone, Miss Spirit replied with a shake of her head. Pon appeared shocked, but he showed no anger and instead shook his head with a wry smile. It was a drastic difference from how she was with Shui, but he didn't bother pointing it out. Unfortunately, she didn't plan on reverting to her previous character while they were here.
"Now servant boy, introduce your precious person to me."
"Servant boy? My name is Shui."
"Servant boy, Stew, same difference. Just introduce her."
Figuring that arguing would just be a waste of time, Shui suppressed a sigh and introduced Kate, who was barely restraining her laughter.
"This is Kate. She's my childhood friend."
"Childhood friend? Is that what you humans call your wives nowadays? Or is that your lovey nickname for her?"
"Huh?"
"Pfft!"
Kate quickly turned her head away, but it was obvious that she was enjoying this situation.
"No. She's like family to me, but we don't have that kind of relationship."
"Tsk tsk, what's the point of being shy at this stage? I was going to give my blessing seeing as she's decently talented and charming, but it's above my station to get involved in these little love affairs."
Shui really wanted to reject the notion that he had wished for her blessing in the first place, but he eventually swallowed his frustration.
"Anyway, what's the situation?"
As Kate was still suppressing her urge to burst into laughter, Pon explained the circumstances in her place.
"So that's it. I also didn't expect them to take advantage of the spirits so directly. Do you think the guest elder will provide any additional support?"
"No, based on my sources, he's a greedy man, but he's also very cautious, so I doubt that he'll interfere to that extent."
"Good. In that case, handling this should be simple. We'll continue to the elemental lakes and destroy their trap head-on."
"Glad to hear that we're on the same page."
Kate agreed with Shui's plan, if it could be called one, but Pon was more skeptical.
"Wait, I do admit that we're probably enough to win against their preparations, but wouldn't it be too reckless to walk right into their trap? Furthermore, if they get desperate, then they might gather the strange men that attacked Kate and have them self-destruct to take us down with them."
"You're not wrong, but if Kate's observations are right, then those men won't be much of a threat with me here. Besides, based on what I can tell, this is just a distraction."
"Huh?"
Kate didn't seem to understand what Shui meant, but Pon's steady expression said otherwise.
"It's nothing solid. I just think this plan is more aimed at hindering us and drawing attention than doing any serious damage. Am I right, Pon?"
"...Given that they should know that I'm standing behind Kate, an attack on this level wouldn't be enough to threaten her life."
"If that's the case, then what are they trying to draw our attention away from?" Kate asked.
"That I still don't know, but we'll find out about it soon enough."
Seeing that Shui and Kate couldn't be persuaded, Pon raised no further objection. Kate was a little worried about Luke, Reinhart and Cassandra, but they had means of sending distress signals and it was unlikely that they could be defeated without a chance to use them even if Mater confronted them himself.
Kate and Pon had already gotten relatively close, so after Shui joined them, it didn't take more than an hour before they arrived at the elemental lakes. Rather than a flat piece of land, the area before them rose and fell like the circular steps of a staircase that had been split apart. Each elemental lake had a step for itself and different phenomena accompanied the lake based on its element. Fire elemental lakes were shrouded in steam, Wind elemental lakes attracted strong gales, Earth elemental lakes were surrounded by gravity stronger than normal and so on. Most of the elemental lakes were closer to ponds in size, but that didn't mean the larger ones were the best. Shui and Kate would have liked to take their time exploring the place, but the enemy was already in place.
"Get them!"
Without a chance for negotiation, a group of five disciples pounced on Kate while the rest fired at Shui and Pon. With a wave of his fan, Pon cast a massive vortex barrier that pushed back all attacks targeting them. When the vortex barrier went down, only Kate remained in position as she finished casting a spell.
"Eye of Storm."
The disciples reacted frantically to the spell, hastily running away to avoid entering its range. However, Shui had confirmed the presence of spirits watching the area so she wouldn't offer evidence of her killing fellow disciples even if they did attack first. Once the spell landed, it created a tall tornado that spun the disciples into the air but did relatively little harm.
It was worrying for the opposing disciples that Shui and Pon were out of sight, but Kate was their main target, so they steadied themselves in the air and prepared their next attack. Unfortunately, Kate was just a distraction in this case. Though the three had the power to defeat this group, there was no reason to show their cards when they were being watched. Therefore, Shui came up with a way to take advantage of the natural environment.
"Thankfully, there's a high concentration of elemental energy in the area, so with just the right push,"
While hiding near the base of one of the lowest elemental lakes, Shui designed an array that could work in this scenario. He drew the array beneath the floating disciples by directly manipulating the earth using the Four Element Technique, and then activated it with his own energy once the disciples fell. Thanks to the dense elemental energy, there was no need to use evolved beast blood as a catalyst. Upon activation, six types of elemental energy, fire, water, earth, wind, lightning and wood, gathered around the disciples and formed a cube, with one element for each face.
"Hmm, so humans can now use tricks like this. Not bad."
The red spirit said something that could hardly be called a compliment, but Shui didn't bother reacting to her. Once trapped in the cube, the disciples tried to break out, but they could no longer control their spells and caused friendly damage, and even accurate attacks had little effect. Furthermore, their nature energy was being absorbed by the cube, with those possessing high elemental affinities losing nature energy faster.
"I see word of your expertise in the art of arrays wasn't exaggerated," Pon commented.
He had some knowledge of arrays as well, so he could tell that Shui had created a tier 3 sealing array by borrowing the influence of the natural environment. Other tier 3 array masters could likely do the same, but completing it as quickly as Shui would only be possible for higher ranked masters.
"It's nothing. How much effort they put into resisting will influence the time it takes, but it shouldn't be long before they lose all of their nature energy and fall unconscious. Now there's only one more thing left to take care of."