5495 Contesting the River
Ves underestimated the Azure Tornado Dragon.
Its demonstrated powers suggested that it was good in creating wide area destruction, but lacked the ability to channel its elemental powers in more focused attacks.
This gave Ves the impression that the Azure Tornado Dragon simply hadn't developed any effective solutions in defeating singular powerful foes.
After all, the vast majority of its challenges could only keep up with the Azure Tornado Dragon in the air or underwater, but not both!
According to the records of the Hunting Association, the Azure Tornado Dragon had spent much of its life as a rapidly growing mutated beast by cleverly making use of its advantages.
The creature was highly opportunistic and avoided direct confrontation when it could easily exploit the weaknesses of its adversaries.
Ves expected the Azure Tornado Dragon to leap out of the river and fly into the air in order to take advantage of lack of flight capabilities, but the dragon instead chose to remain in the water!
Just as how the Azure Tornado Dragon wanted to show its latest challenger that it was the undisputed master over water, Ves did not want to resort to his other means to escape the current trap!
While he would not hesitate to teleport away if he could not break this trap by controlling the elements, Ves still believed he had a chance of beating the Azure Tornado Dragon at its own game.
This was the main reason why he did not hesitate to challenge this powerful mutated beast, after all. The Oceancaller had a lot of potential that he had yet to tap. This was the best possible occasion for him to find out what else he could do with his new relic!
Ves began to play a tune that strangely penetrated through the water without any distortion or interruption.
He continually channeled the air element in a controlled fashion. All of the hours of practice over the past few weeks paid off as he was able to play a relatively simple melody under turbulent circumstances.
His concentration was excellent. He had worked under pressure and under threat many times in the past. A single overgrown reptile could not make his body shake!
This contrasted sharply with how Captain Gheri and her hunting team constantly feared the worst whenever they confronted the Giant Stone Eater and many other beasts.
It was in their nature to fear for their lives. They were all humans. They were too small and weak to defeat these powerful beasts by themselves.
Their mechs partially made up for the enormous disparity, but it was not quite enough to succeed in every hunt.
Any accident could ruin a hunt or lead to even worse consequences. Mechs might be able to give them the power to defeat a mutated beast, but victory never came easy.
The Hunting Association set up so many rules in order to encourage hunters to never hunt prey that were far below their station.
Danger was ever present in their lives so long as the hunting community continued to revere hunters that constantly pushed their limits!
Ves still had no way of estimating the true strength of the Azure Tornado Dragon, but he did not feel it was powerful enough to pose a massive threat to him. The creature was well within his tolerance range.
He began to change his melody, allowing him to play different notes that produced different effects on the water.
It was a challenge for him to play the right notes in a pattern that sounded pleasing to his ears.
During the weeks where he painstakingly experimented with the Oceancaller, he found that playing a real melody always produced better results than playing random notes!
The latter might allow him to active different functions with much greater precision and direction, but he always had the sense that he was manually flipping individual switches.
The former weaved his notes together in a song that somehow tied all of the individual effects together in a more profound way.
Music itself held power. There was a real purpose turning the Oceancaller into a musical instrument.
Ves certainly did not expect that he would dedicate so much of his precious time into becoming a musician!
Though Ves was nowhere good enough as his oldest daughter, his frequent practice had advanced his understanding and appreciation of music by a considerable extent.
While he had yet to find or develop his own personal style, he at least gained enough confidence to play a tune correctly!
His fingers continued to press the right key pads at the right times. His massively enhanced learning speed enabled him to gain a level of fluency that would have taken his old self years to master!
Ves did not play a tune so that he could serenade the Azure Tornado Dragon.
Instead, he leveraged the power of the Oceancaller to weaken the mutated beast's control over the whirlpool.
He was starting to make a difference. Ves tried his best to cooperate with the artifact flute. A number of runes associated with currents, whirlpools and other related concepts started to glow a lot brighter.
The more these runes exerted their power, the easier it became for Ves to calm the spinning currents.
The Azure Tornado Dragon had to exert increasingly more power just to get the whirlpool to spin a little faster.
Ves was not as powerful as his adversary in his control over the water element, but his melody still enabled him to drastically reduce the power to the whirlpool to the point where he could move through it with considerable effort!
His suited true body continually pushed against the strengthened water resistance and forcibly broke through the side of the weakened whirlpool!
His sight became clearer. Ves grinned at the mutated beast that had moved a lot closer than before.
"TAKE THIS!"
Ves abruptly switched to a more aggressive tune. The air energy under his command flowed faster through the holes of his flute as he channeled his intent to inflict severe harm onto the beast!
One of the lessons that he had learned about the flute was that the songs had to match his intentions.
The tempo, emotions and other variables could all amplify or inhibit the final results.
These variables are such a big difference that Ves realized that the Oceancaller was not just centered around channeling the water element.
It was actually an artifact that fused the power of music with the power of water to produce amazing synergies!
Even though Ves did not mean to, he inadvertently learned that music held great power in terms of E energy manipulation.
On its own, music had the ability to influence or even mesmerize people. Only truly passionate and dedicated musicians could develop their powers to this extent. A part-timer like Ves simply did not have the time or interest to turn music into a weapon by itself.
He was much more interested in how well it could enhance his power over other E energy attributes!
For example, when he started to play an aggressive song, his control over the surrounding water energies increased by over 50 percent, and he knew that this was far from the limit!
If he became as good as a professional flutist, then it would not be out of the question for him to amplify his power by at least several times!
However, the current amplification was enough for him to shape a few pockets of water into sharp spears that launched themselves towards the Azure Tornado Dragon!
The spears blurred through the waters and struck the surprised beast's scales and did... almost nothing.
The scales dented a little bit, but they hadn't cracked or broken in the slightest.
Ves still needed to work on that. His ability to concentrate water and turn it into a sharp blade was too poor.
"THEN LET'S TRY THIS INSTEAD."
He no longer wasted his time on powers that he lacked practice with and instead began to play a simple tone that gradually became louder and more oppressive over time.
The Azure Tornado Dragon did not sit still. The powerful being taught Ves a lesson by channeling the same water spears and infusing them with water bubbles that propelled them forward like supercharged torpedoes!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
His spatial barrier shook multiple times as every water spear produced powerful physical impacts that also disturbed the surrounding water elements.
Yet Ves did not cease his current actions. He put his trust in his ability to withstand the creature's attacks while continually building up his control over the surrounding waters.
The flow of water in the river started to accelerate.
Ves was situated upstream in relation to the Azure Tornado Dragon. This had been a deliberate choice on his part. He was able to borrow the power of the existing current and amplify it so that it began to flow faster.
It made little difference at first. The mutated beast paid no attention to this small effect and began to pelt Ves with multiple different water attacks.
Though Ves found it difficult to maintain his spatial barrier while also making extensive use of his Oceancaller, it started to get easier as he built up more and more momentum.
Above the surface of the river, waves started to build up over time. They continually escalated in power and speed.
As the Azure Tornado Dragon started to sense that something was amiss, the persistent actions from Ves had already caused the river to flow a lot faster down the river!
Note after note pressed onto an invisible accelerator, causing the river to flow at such a rapid rate that the Azure Tornado Dragon actually started to get pushed back.
While the mutated beast utilized its own power to wrestle back control over the river water, the creature found it increasingly more difficult to counteract the growing momentum of the flow!
Though Ves' comprehension of water was not as good as that of his opponent, the epiphany he gained during his recent boat trip had substantially promoted his understanding of the concepts of waves and currents!
Similar to the powerful ancient phase whale known as the Tidecaller, Ves was able to apply his power in a way that enabled him to build up progressively more powerful forces.
Though this was not an entirely unfamiliar phenomenon to the Azure Tornado Dragon, he lacked the ability to stop the waves now that it had built up to this point!
As the raging river became so violent that the dragon found it difficult to maintain its position, Ves amped up the volume and aggression of his tune!
The water flowing around the dragon started to press into its body. It was as if a giant invisible water hand had gripped the Azure Tornado Dragon and started to squeeze!
Though Ves' control over the water element was not powerful enough to inflict actual damage onto the beast, the pressure of this enormous hand slowly started to escalate as the growing river current seemed to feed into its power!
It became harder and harder for Ves to maintain these processes. He was only able to keep this up because the Oceancaller was providing him with a considerably more powerful boost than in the past.
His actions had earned the approval of the young replica artifact!
This gave Ves a greater rush. The positive feedback from the Oceancaller encouraged him to leverage the water element even more!
However, the Azure Tornado Dragon did not let Ves push itself back with impunity!
The cunning beast changed its strategy and began to swim against the current!
It did not attempt to wrestle control over all of the water. The current, while annoying, inflicted no direct harm on the beast. It merely hindered its advance, but the Azure Tornado Dragon counteracted this by forming a water tornado that stuck close to its body.
Like an enormous turbine, the Azure Tornado Dragon utilized the rotating water to speed up its movements and arrive directly in front of Ves!
BANG!
The two entities collided against each other!
Both of them got pushed back. The collision interrupted Ves' performance, causing him to quickly lose control over the powerful water currents. His spatial barrier also took a hard hit.
However, the Azure Tornado Dragon did not feel so good at the moment. Its humanoid opponent was heavier and tougher than he looked, so its physical advantage was not as big as it appeared.
That did not stop the dragon from continuing its plan to attack Ves with its body!
The beast opened its powerful maw and released a wave of water and air that temporarily blinded Ves.
A split second later, the Azure Tornado Dragon darted forward and clamped its powerful jaws onto Ves!
The struggling spatial barrier barely managed to prevent the large beast from sinking its teeth into his flesh!
