Chapter 2232: The Tree of Healing
Sage Kole gritted her teeth as she protected the Kandrian Empire from countless attacks across the span of her battle. BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!
One after another, she chopped down the incoming attacks with her technique, ensuring not a single one of them reached her new home. Yet, her Divine Inferno Fist was taxing as it was powerful.
It was not something that could be maintained forever.
On top of that—
STEP
With each attack, she found herself moving closer towards the Kandrian Empire, unable to keep her opponent at the same distance.
BOOOOOM!!!
"Rgh...!" She grimaced as she suffered a wound from a sneaky attack while she was chopping down her opponent's attacks.
"Hahaha!" Sage Senpu laughed at her plight. "What's the matter? Can't even protect yourself from a single attack?"
She glared at him with cold fury.
"Hehehe..." Sage Senpu grinned. Yet, inwardly, he was rather tense about the situation that he was in.
For one, the appearance of seven new Sages was still an enormously complicated variable that completely threw their operations for a loop. Ideally, he would just retreat in the face of such an enormous deviation from the expectations that the entire operation was founded on.
However, if he retreated before the Masters did, then they were as good as dead. Thus, he needed to wait until the Masters were done with their battle. The most frustrating part was that he had no way of contacting any of the Masters via remote communication so long as he was facing Martial Sages. The sheer amount of energy that they outputted jammed all remote communication, offering far too much interference for him to inform the Masters of the dire need to retreat as soon as possible.
Thus, he needed to wait for the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate to hopefully retreat of their volition.
Until then, he and his peers had no choice but to keep the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire preoccupied. They continuously fought to threaten the Kandrian Empire with attacks after attacks, forcing their opponents to push themselves to ensure not a single attack reached their home.
It was highly risky, of course.
If an attack did get through, the Sekigaharan Sages were screwed.
After all, there would be good chance that they would violate the genocide law of the Panamic Martial Federation. Although, that wasn't a guarantee due to how absolutely gigantic the Kandrian Empire was with its vast amounts of empty space. Not to mention, the citizens in the Kandrian Empire had been evacuated, which would also reduce civilian casualties.
However, he knew that there was no way in hell that any of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire would ever let an attack go through with intentions of using it to hurt the Sekigahara Confederate.
Looking into Sage Kole's eyes, he was relatively certain that she would rather die than let any harm befall the Kandrian Empire. Most of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were also of a similar mindset.
BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!
"Rgh...!" Sage Kole strained herself as she blasted away three more attacks in rapid succession. "Damn you...!"
"Hahaha! Oops, there goes another one!" Sage Senpu laughed cruelly. "You're doing a great job protecting the Empire thus far, I must say. However, I can't help but wonder how long you can last protecting the Kandrian Empire from my wrath all alone, hm?"
"She's not alone." A raspy whisper rang in his ears as chills went up his spine. Sage Senpu immediately surged to leap away, yet it was too late.
SPLAT!!
"Rgh...!" Sage Senpu gritted his teeth with a pained expression as he lost a whole arm. "Damned assassin."
He gazed at the Whispering Widower with a hateful expression, panting heavily.
Yet, the threat was behind him.
"You..." Sage Kole's voice quaked with fury. "You dare harm the home that I swore to protect."
"Hah!" Sage Senpu scoffed with derision. "Don't be such a drama queen. You've only been here for like, what, three months?"
Unfortunately, words weren't able to stall her rage at everything he had put her through.
BOOOM!!!
"ARRRRGHH!!!" Sage Senpu shrieked with pain as Sage Kole blasted him with her Divine Inferno Fist.
This time, it wasn't going to be over with a simple graze. The quark-gluon plasma didn't just ignite his body, it wounded his body on a sub-atomic level. Sage Senpu gritted his teeth as he warped the fabric of space in a vain attempt to redirect the immense materia prima that her flame were generating away from him.
"Don't kill him." Sage Lemolen's raspy voice was stern. "If that had been the objective, I would have taken his heart instead of his arm. Rael wants him and the four other captured Sages alive as bargaining chips. We will have Farana incapacitate them for safety."
Sage Kole paused when Sage Lemolen mentioned her liege's will. She had no intention of defying the will of the Emperor of Harmony, even if she was itching to kill the obnoxious Sekigaharan Sage.
"Ah, you should have killed me when you had the chance."
BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!
The Kandrian Martial Sages shielded themselves with shock as they were batted away by a powerful attack. Yet, their eyes widened when they saw that both his critical wounds had been completely healed.
"What...?" Sage Lemolen whispered with incredulity. "Impossible!"
He had known Sage Senpu for a long time and never had the man ever demonstrated such extraordinary healing powers!
In the first place, only healing specialists could accomplish such a feat, and it was usually because they had sacrificed all other parameters of their Martial Body for maximum healing power.
In other words, it was not something someone like Sage Senpu should have been capable of.
"How...?" Sage Kole stared at him, stunned.
"Hehehe, come now." Sage Senpu chuckled. "Just about every Sage-level powerhouse has one, you know?"
His grin widened. "A national treasure resource, that is."
Sage Lemolen grew grim. "The Tree of Healings?"
The Tree of Healing was an esoteric fauna lifeform that occasionally bore fruits that gave those who consumed them extreme healing and regeneration powers for a temporary period
Including Martial Sages.
It was a legacy treasure of the Sekigahara Confederate, just as the Topaz of Time was for the Kandrian Empire.
"We all consumed one before coming here, just in case." Sage Senpu grinned. "Too bad, so sad. You're not going to be doing any capturing today, I'm afraid."