It was fun to go back to basics, using her body to seduce men. Omilaena had to admit, she had enjoyed playing that role in her younger life, and it was still entertaining to see men's jaws drop and tongues roll. One appearance at a time, she lured Jonijix and his men northward.
The strange thing was that it wasn't quite as fun as it should have been. Her two virgins had definitely managed to infect her with some of their values, so playing the seductress just wasn't the same. She had to admit that what she most wanted to do with her new beauty was show Kai and Zin Nim.
And why not? That would be way more satisfying than taunting random assholes.
Though she made it look easy, she actually had to be extremely careful when taunting Jonijix. He no longer had overwhelming power, but he did have natural phases that required her constant focus. Perhaps worse, she couldn't fight him normally, both due to not triggering the other invaders and because she needed to keep teasing. For his part, he wasn't trying to kill her, just pin her down, so she managed to keep leading him on.
Running into Troulon and the demons had been a surprising diversion, one that had nearly thrown off her plan. She had convinced them that this was a terrible time to try and attack, so hopefully they could be useful resources later. It was always hard to tell with demons, and she no longer truly knew Troulon.
And so, hip shake by hip shake, flirtatious wink to flirtatious wink, Omilaena lured the invaders toward the Slumbering Colossus.
During the last stretch she had to watch while standing on a flying ribbon - her Physique had frustratingly not granted her any flight abilities - hoping they would take the right path. If she had danced right up to it, they would have been too suspicious for the sleeping Insanity to serve as any sort of trap, but leaving them alone meant that they might randomly turn in a different direction. When they hit the lower mountains, she worried that they could go off in a different directions.
Once the invaders finally saw the Slumbering Colossus, however, they began shouting in surprise and she knew that it had worked. They had left behind all their local allies in the effort to chase her down, so they had no one to explain. As they tromped closer to the mountain where it lay, they shouted all kinds of speculation to one another.
"Some kind of statue?" one of them asked.
"They love making huge shit here," another said.
"Yeah, but it's all fragile. Made out of paper."
Omilaena's plan had many possible paths, most of which led to success in one form or another. One possibility that she had secretly been rooting for was that the invaders would recognize the Slumbering Colossus. If it was from the outside world, it might be familiar to them or, heaven forbid, be one example of an entire species.
Instead the Colossus seemed to be entirely novel to the invaders, which she had to admit was a little disappointing. It was possible that her theory about the Insanities was wrong and that they hadn't all come from the outside world. Or, based on how several of them began pissing on the giant's feet, they might just be dumbasses.
"Hey, this thing is pretty tough!" One of the invaders had run forward and was whacking at the featureless crotch with his sword. For once, their weapons didn't slice right through unphased matter, but they weren't smart enough to be worried about that.
"Out of the way, idiots." Jonijix waved them aside and raised his hand to summon his water. "I think this thing is made out of real stone. You're not going to cut it with a sword. But let's see what it can do against some real power..."
He gathered up a sphere of water in front of his hand, and Omilaena had to admit that despite her recent boost in strength, the raw power of it still made her nervous. After building up the intensity a little longer, smirking at the other men, Jonijix unleashed the sphere against the giant's chest.
When it struck, the water exploded backward violently enough to sweep away a few of the invaders, who just laughed and cursed about it. In the wake of the water, the Slumbering Colossus appeared unchanged... except she could see that there was a thin crack across its stone chest. For the first time in recorded history, the Slumbering Colossus had been damaged.
"Damn, it's tough." Jonijix waved his hand, preparing to summon more. "How many blasts do you think it will take to blow it apart?"
"Five!" one of the others shouted.
"Four!"
"Oh, you want to bet on it?"
"What the fuck would we bet? We own everything here!"
"First shot at the elves, then."
"I'm betting ten or more!"
Behind the bickering and gambling men, the Slumbering Colossus opened its eyes.
Each was a perfectly round circle, taller than a person. A dim light flickered within the rocky circles, as if barely alive, but the Slumbering Colossus began to move. The invaders who were still on its body panicked and began running in multiple directions, shouting wildly.
Jonijix hesitated, water still building in front of his hand... then he turned and fled. He might not be the brightest, but there was a shrewd cowardice in every bully.
The Colossus - no longer Slumbering - lurched forward like a toppling mountain. From a great distance, the movement looked absurdly slow. But when Omilaena compared it to the running of the invaders, she realized just how much ground it was covering. It practically fell forward, one over-sized hand sweeping out - not just to catch itself, it landed atop the slowest of the invaders.
Omilaena winced, wondering how large of a blood splatter the hand had caused. But no, the way the Colossus was drawing its arm back, beginning to curl its fingers... she saw that it hadn't flattened the invader, it had grasped the man like a pebble in a person's palm. Slowly the Colossus raised its arm back to its face, and its jaws began to open unnaturally wide, revealing only a stone cavern within.
At a distance Omilaena couldn't see the details, but she knew when the invader got close because he let out a scream. His body seemed to explode in ribbons of energy that flew into the Colossus's open mouth, disappearing into the stone until it was gone and the giant slowly lowered its hand.
Its eyes, which had been flickering so weakly, began to glow a steadier green.
That was when Omilaena first began to fear that this had gotten outside her expectations. One of the most probable paths had always been that the Slumbering Colossus would prove to be powerful, but she had missed one little supposition. Most likely it did come from the outside world... but here in the Deadlake, it couldn't find the energy it needed to live, so it fell into hibernation. Over the years it had been invulnerable, and it had never seen anything with sufficient energy.
Until now. She wasn't sure how long it could keep moving just from absorbing one invader, but considering that it had managed to hibernate for millennia, she didn't want to take bets. On all fours, it was slower than the invaders, yet it still pursued them with slow and steady movements.
No, not just them: Omilaena saw the massive head slowly move until the eyes fixed on her, and she realized that there was another source of energy for the Colossus to absorb.
She retreated immediately on her flying ribbon, outpacing the Colossus, but that didn't make her feel much better even as it turned into a silhouette in the distance. It seemed that she had interrupted Jonijix's raping and pillaging, but she had unleashed something new on Rosemount.
Her luck with Insanities was just awful.
.
..
.
So far, Zae Zin Nim had done all her cultivation in the Brightwind Pagoda. It had been built upon a particularly rich location for qi, and it was filled with various qi-rich treasures, so her progress had been easy. Now that she reached the final stages, however, she retreated to one of the sacred grounds and ordered the sect members to leave her alone.
With nothing to bother her, she fell into a trance of cultivation where days melted away. Only occasional outside thoughts interrupted her, as she reflected on the fact that at any moment she might hear that Yangix was invading east, or that atrocities had begun. But the greater worry always undermining her was the fear that everything she was doing was wrong.
She stayed close to the fundamental principles she had gleaned, concentrating the qi within her dantian without making it spill over. That should have been impossible, yet the process continued. Perhaps absorbing the Brightwind Meridian Perfection had simply made it more difficult, or perhaps she had unknowingly fallen into a subtle deviation. All she could do at this point was push forward and believe in the path she had chosen.
Instead of focusing entirely on her dantian, she mixed qi with the Coldfire Corona around it, and the Pure Yin Shroud underneath. Mana and chakra surged alongside her dantian, and then almost to her surprise, without any fanfare, she slipped forward.
At first she wasn't even sure what had happened, since it felt so different from normal cultivation, but when she looked at her soul, it was undeniable:
<
Name: Zae Zin Nim
Total Power: 1862
Cultivation: Earth Soul 101% (534)
*Heavenly Sash: Cultivation +10% (53)
Coldfire Corona: 46 (438)
Pure Yin Shroud: Spinel Rank (285)
True Blackblood Physique: E-12 (472)
Soul Level: 9 (81)
>
Her other abilities had stagnated due to her single-minded focus on cultivation, but they hadn't abandoned her: she had reached 101% of Earth Soul. It should have been impossible, yet she saw the numbers clearly, and more than that, they felt right.
How far did she go beyond that? She wasn't sure, but for the first time she truly believed that she would find answers. Zae Zin Nim set aside other concerns and fell deep into meditation.