It’s merely a weak reflection of the real thing. Damien suddenly said while Yuriko’s thoughts lingered on the Imperial Path’s advantages.

‘What do you mean?’

Your father mentioned the ability to transform his Animus into Boreal…or maybe Zephyrial energies and back into Animus. That’s part of what the Transformation Stage allows Ancients, except it's not just those measly two Transformations. Your body to Radiant, as well as turning your entirety into Anima, are the simplest Transformations you can make. I believe there are other Ancients who’ve made use of that Stage to permanently improve their bodies beyond the baseline…like I did.

Yuriko nodded, ‘But I have to learn to do it on my own.’

Yes, but the potential is unlimited. Don’t be envious; Ellana worked on that shortcut for millennia, but an easy route to power will always sacrifice some things…

His voice faded away as his storage of natural Radiant energy ran out, leaving Yuriko with even more things to consider. Sighing, she returned her attention to the chamber.

After wiping out the Femorant horde, she found out that the chamber only had one other exit, another tunnel. They had little choice but to proceed.

The tunnels were replete with Femorants and the two of them alternated the slaughter. Yuriko pointed out that her sunshards don’t cost all that much Animus and her combat endurance was definitely higher, but Da refused to let her do all the work. Either way, they rested after clearing the big chambers. After the fifth one, the pattern was pretty much set. The Scorpion variant commanded the Femorants and then escaped before the ants were wiped out, only to gather even more swarm fodder later.

The variant’s strategy and tactics evolved, too. The first time, it sent every ant to attack. The second time, it sent them out in waves. When that didn’t work, the third chamber’s ants tried to ambush them by hiding above the tunnel entrance and pounced when Yuriko entered the chamber. Well, if not for her perception, that might have been a spot of trouble.

The fourth time it gathered ants that were capable of acid spitting and used the other warriors to hold her off while getting bombarded. Virgil took care of the ranged units while Yuriko decimated the frontline. And the fifth time, it set bulkier shield ants to protect the spitters from getting sniped, but Da’s plasma bolts curved around the bodyguards anyway.

How would it attack them once they get to the sixth chamber? she wondered. But by the time they reached the sixth one, she couldn’t help but stiffen in surprise. The cavern wasn’t the same as the others, which was just a large cave with the stalactites and stalagmites removed. This one looked to have multiple chambers, and she could perceive a couple of them through her perception. More importantly, she could feel a malevolent presence turning its attention towards them.

A few moments later, a glowing streak flew towards them. Yuriko gritted her teeth and raised her sunblade even as her sunshards converged to protect her. The streak twisted around the shards, attempting to bypass them, but her control over the shards, the second sword dance, and the Ender’s Waltz allowed her to easily see its attempted trajectory.

The shards and the streak, which turned out to be a flying ant roughly twice the size of a sunshard, collided. The Femorant Queen’s manifestation bounced back but immediately used the momentum to swerve around, again attempting to bypass her sunshard screen. It took half a dozen shards to even match up to the flying ant, but the way it twisted and turned, it was only when Yuriko split her shards’ grouping into two that she was able to reliably keep the thing from getting to her.

Every impact caused the sunshards to slightly crack, and the accumulated damage to one caused it to explode in a blossom of Animus and Radiant energy. The flying ant wasn’t unscathed when it passed through the cloud, but the damage healed over in a few seconds. Yuriko gritted her teeth and summoned another shard. Afterwards, she tried not to let the ant strike the same shard too many times. Unfortunately, the ant was a bit too agile for her to control the pace, and in short order, it struck the same shard a dozen times, exploding it into its constituent parts.

And that was just one ant. Her face paled when she saw another couple flying in her direction. She was already having so much trouble fighting against one! The last time she encountered the Femorant Queen the only thing she could do was run away. The Queen was an existence within the Manifestation Stage, roughly equivalent to a Knight-Commander. If she couldn't even fight with a simple manifested flying ant, what chance did she have against the main body? It looked like her increased Anima reach, as well as the other things she learned…

Hmmm…perhaps she should use the Trinity?

Before she could act, however, a brilliant purple plasma bolt struck the flying ant. The bolt and the ant obliterated each other until nothing was left. A glance back at her Da showed that his expression was grave, and his eyes flicked towards the other two incoming flying ants.

“Hold them off for a few seconds each,” Virgil said. “I’ll destroy them then.”

“Alright!” Yuriko created another dozen sunshards and controlled them using the Waltz and the sword dances. She used Jade Mountain along with it, hoping the earth elemental energy stirred by that Style would make her sunshards tougher and harder to break. Her Animus consumption increased to a point where she could only last a few minutes even with the speed of her regeneration. With another strand of consciousness, she began converting her Radiant energy to replenish her spent lumens. Even so, it would only extend her battle endurance for half an hour or so.

‘It seems my expenditure rises with the more advanced techniques I use.’ She muttered in her head. With the increase of her Animus regeneration she thought it would be more than enough to keep up, but the Ender’s Waltz and the fourth dance really guzzled the lumens.

Laughing softly to herself, she focused on defence. The sunshards struck at the flying ants, though not head-on. She sought glancing hits that forced them to alter their direction, either to the side or towards the ground. The Ender’s Waltz allowed her to intuit which moves and which angles of attack were optimal, and once she got used to the ants’ flight patterns, she was able to pull back the waltz a slight bit, allowing her to lower her consumption. A minute after the two engaged, Virgil’s plasma bolts disintegrated the ants.

But less than a second later, another flying ant shot out from behind the corners, three of them, actually. Yuriko hissed and pushed everything she could to defend herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Virgil’s face was covered in sweat.

Da’s Animus reserves weren’t limitless, even if he was working with denser Animus than she was. If she remembered correctly, Knights had liquid Animus the consistency of water, Knight Captains’ Animus were more like honey, while Knight-Commanders’ lumens were halfway between grains of sand and muddy water. Liquid Animus was about eight hundred times more dense than photonic Animus. Syrupy Animus was about three times denser than that, and sludgy Animus was about twice as dense as the one before. Meaning, a single lumen Da used was…er…about five thousand lumens that a Novice could use?

Of course, the techniques he used required Animus of that density otherwise they wouldn’t work. As for her Animus, her outer reserves were photonic while her inner reserves had been converted to liquid. Funnily enough, she didn’t need to keep converting Animus from a lower density to a higher one when she used up her inner reserves, but they condensed that way naturally now, from the pressure her Anima exerted.

Anyway, all that meant was that Virgil wouldn’t be able to keep it up. Three flying ants so far, and another three on the way. How many powerful shots does he have left? She asked it out loud and he grunted, “Forty.”

Yuriko frowned. If this set was three would the next one be four flying ants? Also, why was the Femorant Queen sending progressively more manifestations rather than overwhelming them immediately?

“Let’s pull back for a bit,” Yuriko said.

“Alright.”

They retreated into the tunnel. Yuriko fended off the flying ants until Virgil was able to muster up the empowered plasma bolts to destroy them. As soon as they moved a couple of hundred paces away, the attacks inexplicably stopped.

Father and daughter exchanged disbelieving looks, until Virgil said, “Well, that metal man did say this was a trial, right?”

“Ah, then this place isn’t really the Chaos Lake back in Rumiga? I felt that it was familiar…”

“There’s something like this in Rumiga?”

“Yeah, underneath the Zarek Mountains…”

Virgil looked distinctly uncomfortable, “Who do we pray to for the lost Anima of the Avos?” He muttered. Zarek’s death would touch off many things. The surrounding Avos would vie for ascendancy, but more importantly, the Stonetoise’s death meant one less guardian for the planar core.

“I don’t know.” Yuriko admitted. She clicked her tongue, “I thought I’d get a chance to fight the Femorant Queen without any worries…”

Da’s eyes blazed and he scoffed, “You’re telling your old man that he’s a burden?”

“Eh? Ah! No, no!” She squealed, only to stop when he broke into gales of laughter.

“Oh so serious, my dear?” He patted her arm. “Let me meditate while thinking of a way to get through this.”

“I’ve an idea, too.”

“Alright, let’s see what’ll work then.”

Yuriko nodded and both of them sat down. She didn’t need to meditate to recover her Animus, but Virgil certainly did. Well, eight hours of sleep would do the same, but it was early in the day yet.

Instead, she focused on the Trinity. Destroy, Harvest, Channel. If she looped the strain and turned it into a cycle, there was little doubt that it would be a potent weapon, however, she didn’t know how hard it would be to control. If it escaped her grasp, it could hurt herself or her allies. So, the key should be to create a failsafe, isn’t it?

But what kind of failsafe? Perhaps a timer that would disable the pattern after a set time? Hmm, that had promise.

She created the pattern, anchored into a sunshard. At the linkage between the loop, she set a disabling runescript pattern to undo the link after five seconds. When she created the shard, it had a darkness within its golden light, one that gave her the shivers. Swallowing nervously, she shot the shard towards a wall.

As soon as the tip made contact, the pattern activated. A moment later, there was a burst of dust and heat. It was more than enough to melt the surrounding rocks and sent acrid smoke into the tunnels, prompting both of them to yell in surprise.

“What the–?” Virgil yelled as he got thrown out of his meditation. “Yuri!”

She grabbed him around the shoulders and fled down the tunnel. The heat and the smoke, as well as the dust, accumulated for a couple of seconds, and then…

Boom! Whoosh!

It ignited into a conflagration.

Yuriko’s condensed aura absorbed the shockwave, and she used her Animakinesis to protect her Da. The Light Infantry Armour activated its emergency protocols, starting by closing his helm and concealing his face. Runescript lines lit up around the metal armour and produced an Animus Barrier, which then ablated as the shockwave ate through it.

But thankfully, five seconds passed by quickly, and Yuriko felt her link to the sunshard vanish as the construct unravelled. But the destruction continued for a couple more seconds before the source of the flames disappeared.

Things settled down a few minutes later, but the two of them had fled farther down the tunnel. Finally, when the tremors stopped, Da rounded on her.

“What was that?”

Yuriko blinked, then grinned, “My new weapon.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, then returned the smile. “Then let’s go exterminate the ants.”