The three tailed beasts jumped around while the chakram on their back spun. The chakram's ends weren't like a blade, but sported numerous inclined plates. So, when the tailed beasts attacked the flaming giant, the rotating chakram pulled out experience fragments from it, creating a geyser of experience fragments.
When the flaming giant focused on pulling in the experience fragments, the three beasts would slam with their tails to splash them and expend its Will faster. When the flaming giant focused on defending against their attacks, they would return to attacking with their chakrams. This way, they tied down the flaming giant.
The yarn, on the other hand, was soon devoured by the thousands of heads after all its Will was expended. They spun around the humanoid-serpent, not settling for the time being. For that would necessitate it to spend some time to digest the experience fragments they had consumed, time it didn't have.
The humanoid-serpent created a tuning fork, slamming it on the whisker sphere, generating sound from the clash. The sound countered the essence of the whisker sphere, preventing the humanoid-serpent's contact surfaces from crashing into it.
It was as if it had already devised all the necessary countermeasures beforehand, the humanoid-serpent created twenty tuning forks and repeatedly slammed it on the whisker sphere. The sound disrupted its form, causing it to expend greater Will to stabilise itself.
The humanoid-serpent used this cost-effective way to weaken the will in it, doubling the number of tuning forks to put an end to the fight. It focused on attacking it while creating another tailed beast to attack the flaming giant.
Even though it was besieged by the four tailed beasts, the flaming giant held on, only losing a few experience fragments in every clash. Moreover, the Will it possessed seemed to regenerate by itself, refilling the amount it had expended.
'Even that ability of father has manifested.' On one side, the humanoid-serpent was excited, but on the other side, it felt immense pressure. At the rate it could damage the flaming giant, it would need at least a decade to destroy it. Even that wasn't guaranteed. Moreover, its Will wouldn't last for such an extended duration.
'If I don't do something, I would be defeated.' The humanoid-serpent thought, gazing at the magenta giant that had walked closer to the battlefield. It decisively shrunk its body a little, expending a significant quantity of Will to create a massive tuning fork half its body size.
It slammed it on the whisker sphere, flattening it under the impact. The moment it lifted it, the whisker sphere reformed, flashing past in an attempt to hit its head. The other hands carrying tuning forks impeded its movements, attacking it with a flurry of attacks.
Using the time they gained, the humanoid-serpent lifted the giant tuning fork and slammed it once again. The whisker sphere collapsed; its experience fragments spilled out like the tide. But, it still retained a significant portion of its Will in every experience fragment.
Under their joint action, the experience fragments flowed and formed into the whisker sphere. But this time, instead of attacking the humanoid-serpent, it flew towards the tailed beasts, colliding into one.
The force behind its impact didn't even cause the tailed beast to flinch, but the next moment, it saw its tails slam into its body, the lash attack spilling forth copious amount of its experience fragments.
Just the excess, imbalanced motion destabilised its form, expending a greater deal of its Will. The humanoid-serpent didn't wish to see them fall so easily, extending its form to reach the whisker sphere, attacking it with the giant tuning fork.
This time, it slammed it like a ball, sending it reeling towards itself. It morphed the massive tuning fork into a hundred smaller tuning forks, spamming attacks on the whisker sphere from all sides, preventing it from retaliating.
Without giving it any break, the humanoid-serpent attacked non-stop, expending its Will at a furious rate. Unable to defend, and placed on the receiving end without being able to move, the whisker sphere soon collapsed after its Will was expended.
The humanoid-serpent immediately gobbled it up, grunting as its form staggered, flickering once before turning normal. At the next moment, all the heads landed on its shoulder, seeping the experience fragments of the yarn into it.
"Gah," The humanoid-serpent lost balance, crashing into the mountain, crumbling it into pieces. Thankfully, it took greater precautions on its tail segment, preventing it from moving away, lest its connection to reality got severed.
The serpents on its body became more flexible, their binding prowess becoming enhanced. As a result of the essence of the yarn, the humanoid-serpent's body stabilised further, the connection between each of its experience fragments had become tougher.
Its Will experienced an upgrade, now able to bind the experience fragments better. This change swiftly condensed its form into a stronger version. The humanoid-serpent heaved a sigh of relief and was just about to attack the flaming giant when three giants appeared.
One was the magenta giant, one was a spear, and the last was a light sword.
'Marble, Warlord, and Light.' It thought, creating three enhanced versions of the tailed beasts, commanding them to attack the flaming giant.
It condensed a massive ball of rope and threw it towards the magenta giant while a hundred thousand heads on its shoulder flew towards the sword and spear.
The rope ball collided with the magenta giant, failing to damage it. But, in the next instant, it collapsed into thousands of serpents that crawled all over the magenta giant, connecting to create ropes that bound it.
Despite the magenta giant's struggles, the rope didn't snap. It was thanks to the yarn's essence it had absorbed. The humanoid-serpent frowned at the expenditure of its Will as the heads bombarded the spear and the sword.
The sword and the spear were fast, each of their attacks collapsing a head, the Will in it fully expended. The humanoid-serpent used the formless force to pull back the experience fragments splashing forth from the destroyed heads, expending some Will in the process. Thankfully, the effect it desired took place.
After the sword slashed through tens of heads with a single swing, something caused it to fly towards the spear, crashing into it. The spear similarly flew due to an unknown cause, crashing into the sword. The sword slashed apart a piece of the spear while the spear bore a hole through the sword.
The process repeated every time they destroyed some heads. The cause was the essence of the whisker sphere within them.
In the meantime, the humanoid-serpent's innumerous hands extended in length, latching onto the flaming giant. The flaming giant already had its hands full against the beasts. So, it couldn't even retaliate against the hands that latched onto its body.
The hands had sharp nails that dug into it, scooping out a handful of experience fragments each. The hands pressed and relaxed their hold on the clump of experience fragments they held, shaping them into different shapes until they collapsed.
Once the Will in them were expended through this action, the hands returned. Its innumerous hands had pulled out almost half the experience fragments in the flaming giant's form. This massive reduction made it easier for the beasts to bite and tear through it.
Even though the flaming giant was still going strong, ready to recover at a moment's notice by absorbing the experience fragments from the beasts, the humanoid-serpent didn't give it the window of opportunity to do so. Another batch of hands arrived and repeated the same process, finishing off the flaming giant after expending all its Will.
The humanoid-serpent swiftly absorbed the experience fragments of the flaming giant, thrashing in pain the moment it did so. The boulders that were the result of the mountain were ground to dust from its trashing.
Its form destabilised as a tremendous reserve of its Will was expended to rearrange the flaming giant's experience fragments. It caused its form to before unstable, looking on the verge of dissipating. The humanoid-serpent slammed on the ground, looking weak, its form barely condensed as compared to before.
It looked like it was about to shatter. Despite that, the humanoid-serpent expended more of its will to reorient the flaming giant's experience fragments, almost collapsing into a sea of experience fragments when the rearrangement was done.
"Phew, I almost died now." It muttered with a weak breath, slowly lifting its head as its expended Will was getting replenished. The energy in the Mental Realm gushed into its form, morphing into its Will, solidifying it, slowly recovering its state to its peak.
The Mental Realm showed signs of protest, unwilling to see its energy be absorbed by the entrant. Followed by the sounds of laughter, Laila's voice echoed in the Mental Realm, "From Tier 3 onwards, to finish a breakthrough, the Mental Realm imposes certain conditions on the entrant, like the number of experience fragments they had to absorb, the type of experience fragments they have to obtain, etc."
"Only the breakthrough from Tier 1 to Tier 2, and Tier 2 to Tier 3 lack such restrictions." Laila's laughter resounded, "So, that makes this the only time I can do this without having to face off against your laws. Even you cannot break the laws that form your core being."
The creaking sounds from the Mental Realm intensified, but no action was taken against the humanoid-serpent. With a constant influx of Will, the humanoid-serpent battled without any worries. It had already tided past the prime hurdles: Rhachis Ancestor Parasite's form, and Rhachis Ancestor Dawn's form.
Giants belonging to almost all the Ancestors that had appeared on earth arrived and were killed one after another by the humanoid-serpent and devoured. Even though it felt tremendous difficulty in digesting each giant, with an unceasing supply of Will from the Mental Realm, it could continue to do so without issues.
"Woof!" Just when the humanoid-serpent devoured the final giant, the bark of a dog resounded. Flying from the horizon was a being that even it dared not confront, despite possessing all the advantages it had accumulated now.