TN: And we're back! sorry for the week long hiatus, it was not intentional since I had to get my right leg in a cast after tripping 3 floors down a stairwell (like an idiot ://) and be unable to use my PC setup upstairs BUT I should be OK now.
Anyways, Thanks for Arcanic Madness, WeissAkumu and WolfWTF for becoming as Supporters!
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This desert had already suffered far too many senseless calamities, yet Victor Wang still had no intention of leaving.
[Sun Flare] did not require each elemental layer to rotate at high speed like Erosion Blast, so it was not entirely constrained by the upper limit of split mental control the way Erosion Blast was. If he really pushed it, stacking three hundred layers would definitely be possible—could it even reach five hundred layers?
Compared to one hundred layers, how much stronger would it be?
Stacking layers took too much time, and it was unusable in real combat. This time, Victor Wang did not continue experimenting. He decided to spend his time on attack methods that could actually be used in battle.
[Sun Flare] was merely the most cost-effective of all the attack methods he had mastered. The strongest, in terms of sheer power, was still the all-or-nothing Delusion Burst.
A Delusion was a tool similar to a Vision that helped its user draw upon elemental power. If wielded properly, it could rival a Vision holder—but the price was far steeper than that of a Vision, as it simultaneously consumed both mental strength and life force.
Yet in Victor Wang's hands, the Delusion's drawback of endlessly draining life to exchange for power instead became an advantage.
With [The Two Ends of Beginning and End], as long as he limited the duration to within five seconds, no matter how much life force the Delusion consumed, it could all be rolled back without loss.
What Victor Wang needed to do was simple: within five seconds, let the Delusions drain as much of his life force as possible in exchange for greater power.
Relying on a single Delusion was obviously impossible to exhaust his life force within five seconds. Then two, three… By continuously using [The Two Ends of Beginning and End] to probe how many Delusions his current body and mind could simultaneously control, the final number settled at fifty-seven.
This meant that during the five seconds of Delusion Burst, the power Victor Wang unleashed was equivalent to the combined full-power burst of fifty-seven Delusion users over five seconds—terrifying by any measure.
Thankfully, he had confiscated a sufficient number of Delusions back on Watatsumi Island. Otherwise, as his power increased, he might have run out of Delusions first.
And fortunately, those Delusions were all crafted from Crystal Marrow, meaning they were all Hydro-aligned.
Elemental uniformity was a good thing.
The elemental power drawn by Delusions was already extremely violent, and once the quantity increased, it became even harder to finely control. Coupled with the fact that [The Two Ends of Beginning and End] could only roll back up to five seconds, having a single element made control far easier.
The downside lay in the element itself. Electro and Pyro possessed the strongest direct destructive power. If it were simply a matter of piling up raw elemental force and smashing it down, those two were vastly more suitable than Hydro—so much so that Victor Wang had even once considered hunting down the Fatui just to confiscate their Delusions.
But now that he had mastered Dendro and gained access to Dendro Cores, Hydro's value skyrocketed.
During Delusion Burst, if he could manipulate Hydro and Dendro reactions to generate Dendro Cores at the highest possible ratio, the ideal outcome would be a sky-filling sea of Hydro being converted into Dendro Cores, all detonating at once. The power of that moment would far surpass any brute-force stacking of a single element.
So, what was that ratio… This desert was about to undergo another round of baptism.
Victor Wang first placed a Dendro Core at some distance away, then tightened his grip on [The Two Ends of Beginning and End] and began drawing on the power of the Delusions.
The sky overhead was completely obscured. The Hydro in the air was so dense it was practically real water that continuously cascaded downwards. The moment it touched the Dendro Core, the Dendro absorbed enough Hydro to successfully generate a second Dendro Core—but before a third could form, the Hydro was simply too abundant. The Dendro couldn't neutralize it fast enough, and the Dendro Core was crushed and detonated by sheer weight.
As expected, that won't work.
The ratio was too skewed. Even though Dendro dominated the Bloom reaction, it was still overwhelmed.
Anticipating this, after waiting ten minutes for the hourglass cooldown, Victor Wang changed tactics. This time, he placed the Dendro Core atop the massive volume of Hydro.
The instant the Dendro Core contacted the Hydro, it absorbed enough to generate a second Dendro Core. Then the two cores simultaneously gave rise to a third and a fourth. From there, the number of Dendro Cores began to grow exponentially. Unfortunately, time was limited to just five seconds. Although the growth rate was fast, not even half of the Hydro was consumed before the reaction ended.
If it could react at all, that was enough. Next came fine-tuning the ratio.
While racing against time during Delusion Burst to condense Hydro, he also had to reserve some mental strength to condense Dendro. The spatial arrangement was Dendro above, Hydro below. The amount of Dendro used to initiate the reaction had to be sufficient to produce the maximum number of Dendro Cores within five seconds…
Each experiment required a ten-minute cooldown of the hourglass. To reach the desired result, Victor Wang spent over an hour before finally determining the optimal ratio between Hydro and Dendro.
The violent Hydro that would normally dissipate on its own without Delusion constraints was transformed into Dendro Cores so stable they could even exist independently for a short time.
When he exited Delusion Burst, arcs of lightning spread from Victor Wang as his strength recovered. The densely packed Dendro Cores were stimulated, and crackling explosions erupted nonstop. The desert's terrain shifted under the onslaught. Although the flowing sands quickly filled everything back in after the explosions subsided, the trace of a massive chasm was still visible.
"Haa…"
Even though his life force had not actually been taken by the Delusions, repeatedly experiencing that state where both body and mind felt near collapse left Victor Wang utterly exhausted. With all his ideas finally tested, he let out a sigh of relief.
At this point, only pure Dendro remained untested in depth.
Dendro itself was not as offensively powerful as Electro, nor as free-flowing as Anemo. Aside from elemental reactions, the only area where it could compete was in elemental constructs.
But in terms of constructs, Geo was top-tier. Tasks like creating temp housing were far more convenient with Geo. Moreover, elemental constructs required constant maintenance by their creator—building houses for people to live in was simply unrealistic.
If anything, Dendro constructs were probably more resilient than Geo constructs. As the saying goes, "excessive rigidity leads to breakage." Perhaps there were other uses to be found—which could be worth a try?
Dendro constructs could never replace true life. Even their appearance was semi-transparent and suffused with green light, constantly reminding observers that they were not real plants. Still, they did possess plant-like traits. For example, vines shaped from Dendro were extremely tough. If one tried to break free through brute force rather than sharp blades, they were even harder to escape than Geo constructs.
And then… there didn't seem to be much else.
Ah—constructs also included [Pseudo Dharma Manifestation]. That long-cherished Pseudo Dharma Manifestation… Victor Wang's thoughts stirred. That technique was far too difficult to approach directly, with no logic to rely on, but settling for something simpler—like stone golems or plant golems—was much easier.
Especially after comprehending sword intent, allowing him to control elemental power with will rather than pure mental strength. That previously unwieldy "colossus" that could barely move had already become capable of simple motions, though it was still stiff—after all, it was pieced together from blocks of stone.
Victor Wang immediately created a towering "tree golem." Branches served as arms, and it temporarily lacked legs. However, with no joints and limbs fused together, it was even harder to move than the stone golem. After reconstructing the entire body from interwoven vines, its movements became far more flexible—but it still lacked the stone golem's raw strength.
If… if I combined the tree golem's flexibility with the stone golem's power… using stone for the body and joints, and vines for tendons…
Half an hour later, a majestic stone golem constructed from distinctive blue highlights—Colossus No. 2—was born. In addition to humanoid movable joints, its interior was threaded with vines. The tension of the vines worked in tandem with the rotation of the joints, truly allowing it to move like an ordinary person.
This creation was hardly a cost-effective option, but it was a labor of interest. Having realized it, Victor Wang returned, weary yet satisfied, with his harvests complete.
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