I Reincarnated As A Stick

Chapter 300: The True Power of Buffs

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

In less than an instant, four thousand royal blue lightning bolts came down from the dark clouds, briefly lighting up the dark sky for a few seconds. Not long after, these bolts went ahead and decided to separate into groups, only for them to recall what had happened when they clumped up into groups. Surprisingly, rather than split up into individual bolts to reduce the chances of multiple of them being hit by the beams that dispelled their previous brethren, they decided to continue with the group idea, moving closer to one another.

And just like that, 40 incredibly dense bolts, each of which was made up of 100 Calamity-level lightning bolts, now gradually made their way to where Herellia was, with the intent of striking her down and letting her fail her Existence Tribulation. At this point, Herellia had finally gotten over the initial shock brought about by the sheer number of bolts that came down from the clouds. Infusing her energy into the ten crimson petals surrounding her, Herellia decided to make the first move, lest she wanted to be swallowed up by the hundreds of bolts out to kill her.

But just as she was about to start hovering and tilt her body to allow the trajectory of the beams to be aimed at the dense bolts, she had a hunch that the destructive effect the beams would have on the lightning bolts would be diminished due to their current formation. Working her mind in overdrive, she soon decided that she was going to fight fire with fire, circulating the energy inside her body before forming another crimson rafflesia.

Unfortunately for her, even the first petal of this third rafflesia was enough for the burden on her mind to increase exponentially, making it seem like the formation of the third rafflesia was going to fail. Thankfully, Herellia was someone who did not give up every possible method under a situation of life and death, prompting her to endure the painful feeling brought by the formation before continuing to form the third rafflesia.

12…14…15…

Eventually, the third rafflesia was formed, with Herellia radiating an aura of exhaustion, which was soon replaced with confidence and expectation as she took in a deep breath to get used to the increased burden brought by the newly formed rafflesia. She then went ahead and fused the third rafflesia to the layer of petals below it, bringing the total number of petals in a layer revolving around her to 15.

Naturally, with the third rafflesia now formed, she went ahead and continued with the thing she was about to do before, utilizing her movement skill to hover off the ground and tilt the petals to face the incredibly dense lightning bolts. At this moment, the dense lightning bolts were only around a dozen meters away, with some only being a few meters away from colliding with the ground.

Without hesitation, she infused all of her energy towards these crimson petals, bringing forth 15 golden beams, which were shot towards 15 dense lightning bolts.

Bang!

Being accompanied by the sound of explosions going off from the collision of beams and bolts, the first round of golden beams were able to dispel a large portion of lightning bolts. Unfortunately, unlike before where the beams would be able to dispel a single lightning bolt group without a problem, a few dozen lightning bolts remained from the dense lightning bolts that were hit by the beams. In other words, 40 dense bolts were still heading down to strike Herellia down, but 15 of these were less dense than the others.

Whoosh!

Just as Herellia was about to fire a second round of beams to dispel the less dense lightning bolts once and for all, she noticed that the amount of energy in her body was not enough for her to do so. With that in mind, she went ahead and utilized the energy to turn around and run away from the dense lightning bolts instead, recalling that the lightning bolts usually swerved around the trees while chasing up to her. This action done by the lightning bolts gave her time to prepare a stronger attack, allowing her to dispel the lightning bolts without asking for help from Argentum.

But just as she turned her sense of vision around to look at the current position of the lightning bolts…

Boom!

The dense lightning bolts had finally collided with the ground, bringing forth a quaking of the ground that was far more intense than before. Since Herellia was hovering, she was not affected by it. The same went for Argentum and Horell as well, utilizing their skills and spells to hover off the ground. But even though that was the case, they were still affected by the collision of the bolts with the ground in another way, with all of them radiating auras of shock and surprise.

Why is that, you may ask?

That’s because the dense bolts did not swerve around the trees before colliding with the ground, but instead…collided with them directly! With the great amount of force behind the lightning bolts, the trunk of multiple trees cracked, eventually falling down a few seconds later. This effect was further amplified by the quake, with some of the trees even falling in front of Herellia.

Of course, she utilized the crimson petals around her to push these falling trunks away from the path she was heading through, wanting to make sure that the lightning bolts were as far as possible from her so she could unleash a stronger attack.

Naturally, as the lightning bolts birthed by the heavens to become the obstacles hindering Herellia’s dream from being fulfilled, they were not going to let Herellia have her way around them, hastily removing themselves out of the ground, with some removing themselves out of the trees they collided with. The latter was even surprised that the trees were not burnt from the collision at all, with a crater the only evidence that they had collided.

Recalling their mission, they discarded these useless thoughts before congregating with the other dense bolts, moving in the direction where Herellia was running.

On the other hand, Argentum and Horell were looking at the current state of things from afar, looking at each other for a bit before looking back at Herellia and the dense lightning bolts chasing her through their own means. At this moment, both of them could not help but feel that things were going south for Herellia, wondering as to whether or not they were going to tell her to use her trump cards.

After a while, Argentum let out a sigh, breaking the silence between the two of them. He then looked at Horell and told him, “I think we’re going to have to make a move this time.”

“Eh?” Horell uttered as he had not yet processed the words Argentum said to him. After he had done so, the aura radiating from him had undergone an immense change as it was changed with that of immense excitement as he looked at Argentum and asked, “Do you mean…?”

“Yeah,” Argentum said as he nodded in response to Horell’s question. He then added, “We’re going to have to cast a few buffs on Herellia.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Horell replied to Argentum’s words with a light chuckle before asking, “So…what buffs are we going to ca—”

But just as he was about to finish his question, he remembered that casting buffs would increase the difficulty of the subsequent rounds, bringing him to a crossroads. On one end, he wanted to cast buffs on Herellia so she would be able to survive this perverse bombardment of lightning bolts while giving him a sense of purpose. On the other end, he suppressed the urge to cast buffs as he recalled that thought.

Pondering on what was the best course of action to take right now, Horell went silent for a bit, only for the aura surrounding him to become solemn and serious. Contrary to the aura surrounding him, he asked Argentum in a slightly unsure tone, “But Argentum, doesn’t that mean that the difficulty of the subsequent rounds would increase thanks to our actions?”

“Of course, that’s a given,” Argentum said as his sense of vision was still focused on Herellia’s current condition. At the moment, she would turn her body around to fire at the large swath of dense lightning bolts out to get her, reducing the total number of dense lightning bolts to around 30 or so. Thanks to the help of his enhanced senses, he was able to sense that Herellia was giving it her all to retaliate while maintaining distance from him, not caring as to whether or not her energy was about to run out.

With that taken into consideration, he felt that it was the best course of action for them to cast a few buffs on Herellia, even taking the increased difficulty of the next rounds as a factor in the decision. Nevertheless, he decided to ask Herellia’s opinion on this rather than make his own decision, prompting him to look at Horell and tell him, “Just so you would feel at ease, I’ll ask Herellia whether to cast her some buffs or not.”

Whoosh!

Before Horell could reply to his words, Argentum sent out a strand of energy towards Herellia, instantly forming a connection between the two as Argentum asked in a slightly serious tone, “How’s your current situation?”

“To be honest, better than I expected,” Herellia replied as she focused all of her attention on running. After a while, she stopped in her tracks before sending out a wave of beams to fight against the dense bolts, dispelling a great number of them. She then continued to run after that before saying, “Then again, I feel like I’m reaching my limit. Although I could use a trump card to turn the tides, I wouldn’t have enough energy to make use of it, so it would be useless.”

“I see,” Argentum said in response before the sounds of hemming and hawing resounded in Herellia’s mind. Fortunately, those sounds did not last long as Argentum asked her, “So, would you like us to cast a buff on you?”

Argentum then followed up with another statement, not letting Herellia respond as he continued, “Before you say no, this buff would increase your combat power to a great extent. I’ve thought about the consequences brought by casting this buff, and I can say with full certainty that the pros outweigh the cons.”

“If you say that…then I have no choice, do I?” Herellia said not long after in response to Argentum’s words, letting out a light chuckle before adding, “Cast it as fast as possible, I might be swallowed up by the lightning bolts at any second.”

“On it,” Argentum responded to Herellia’s words before cutting off the connection between them. Noticing that Argentum was not preoccupied anymore, Horell went ahead and asked him, “So what did Herellia say?”

With an aura of slight happiness, Argentum replied, “We’re going to cast some buffs.”

“Alright!” Horell said with immense glee before asking, “What buff should I cast?”

In response, Argentum went ahead and started to mutter a long incantation as a ball of blue energy gradually manifested over one of his hands. While he was doing so, he turned his head to look at Horell for a bit and said, “Save your buffs for now.”

“For now, this buff I’m casting will allow Herellia to turn the tides without a problem,” Argentum added soon after. A few seconds later, he stopped chanting incantations as the ball of blue energy hovering over his hands radiated an aura that made one feel like they were going to be reborn if they were basked in it. Not long after, Argentum went ahead and utilized his enhanced vision to locate where Herellia was before flinging it towards her at lightning speeds.

“[Supreme Aqua Benefica: Selfless Variant]!”

Whoosh!

Although Argentum did not know if it was due to the spell being a Blessed Water spell or not, the ball of blue energy headed to where Herellia was within a few seconds, with Herellia’s body absorbing the ball of blue energy not long after.

Swoosh!

In an instant, the effects of the blue energy ball had shown itself, increasing the gap between Herellia and dense lightning bolts chasing her in an instant as she felt that all of the cells making up her body were in an energized state. Not only that, but she also felt that the amount of energy she could hold at once was greatly increased, which meant that she could fire out more attacks at once before running out.

Seeing the effects brought about by the ball of blue energy she had absorbed, Herellia instantly thought that this was one of Argentum’s buffs, thinking to herself, ‘I wonder what hardships Argentum had to go through to obtain such a buff like this?’

Soon after, she placed the thought at the back of her head as she continued to increase the gap between her and the dense lightning bolts, allowing her energy to recover. Eventually, she stopped running away from the lightning bolts as she felt that the energy in her body was more than enough for her to fire a salvo of golden beams, hovering off the ground to position the petals to face the lightning bolts.

Swish!

Not even a second later, a wave of golden beams was soon fired towards the lightning bolts, thinking that only a few dense lightning bolts would be dispelled from the wave she fired. Contrary to what she had expected, the golden beams instead wiped out a greater amount of dense lightning bolts at once, making Herellia soon realize that this was all due to the buff Argentum cast on her.

Nevertheless, seeing as a great number of dense lightning bolts were being dispelled with a single round of her golden beams, she gained more confidence in her power as she allowed her aura to be released to its fullest extent. She then fired another salvo of golden beams once she met the energy requirements.

Swish!

And just like that, the remaining dense lightning bolts, which had plagued Herellia with the feeling of dread and despair a while ago, were dispelled as a great swath of royal blue strands made their way to where Herellia was. After those strands were absorbed by her body, she felt that the power improvement brought by the strands this time around was at least ten times higher than the power improvement brought by the last ten rounds combined.

While allowing her body to get used to the increase in power, she could not help but recall the feeling brought by the ball of blue energy after it was absorbed by her body. Although it was still activated, it was only at that time did she feel like she had ascended to a higher level of existence, as if the dense lightning bolts chasing her were nothing to her.

With that in mind, she could not help but ask herself, “Is this the true power of buffs?”

——–

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