Orb turns his head all around himself and looks around the room, but starts to lose his balance as he moves, and Elia, not missing the opportunity, tries to grab the amulet.
He freezes his foot to the ground and swings his body backwards, but due to his completely dishevelled state, the amulet is hit and flies upwards into the sky. Liberating himself, he quickly jumps up and grabs before landing away from her.
"It looks like the battlefield has changed, hasn't it, my little wolf?"
"You set me up!"
"I simply distracted you with a tantalising experience. It's not my fault that your lack of knowledge brought you into such a situation. Take some responsibility, Orb."
"You really are evil?"
"I would have you know I am a holy maiden. Keep your perversion, which demands an evil woman to yourself."
"I will be keeping this to myself."
"Too late." From Elia's pockets, she brings out the bouncy balls bought for her earlier, and holding her hand back, she throws one directly at Orb, who dodges, but they continue to ricochet from wall to wall, and then strike Orb in his wrist, breaking his grip.
Orb quickly tries to grab the amulet, but a series of other balls are release by Elia, which either knock him in the wrist again or hit the amulet, keeping it moving far away from Orb.
"Hey, stop doing this! I bought those for you!"
"I would have gotten them myself for a better price, I might add."
"Blackmail and threats aren't a good thing."
"Yada, yada, yada. But at least I won't have to do such things anymore after I claim what's yours."
Orb continues to run around trying to get the amulet, and as he does, under her breath, Elia counts down, "3, 2, 1." Then lets out all of the oxygen in her body.
Soon, a second change in pressure hits Orb, and all of his senses fall into an even deeper chaos than they were before, making him completely lose balance and giving Elia the opportunity to bounce the amulet towards her.
Orb's eyes quickly fall to the floor underneath him as a way to regain his senses, but as his eyes cross the floor, his head turns silver, and then green. Within the room, he releases a wave of ice towards Elia that blocks the amulet from reaching her and sends it right into the ground beneath her.
"Orb for shame! Do you know what you have done by desecrating this holy ground?"
"SAVE IT. I know what is going on now."
A pile of snow fell right in front of Elia, and he says, "That's the snow that I used for my foothold earlier, right when I felt the pressure change, I saw it up in the sky. In this room, there are many layers of air covering every aspect of it. If I had to guess, it's a measure to protect it from decaying agents within the building. It seems that every now and then these layers of air release in an instant, causing a change in pressure. It doesn't affect you that badly since you empty out all your air, but someone with senses like mine is shaken by such an event to a far greater extent. This is also why the fire you started earlier has disappeared."
Elia rubs her cheek and says, "What a great explanation. But just like a law with an nonexistent punishment, SO WHAT! How does that change your situation? I have already won, and when you pass out due to the differences in pressure, I am going to enjoy the punishment I will put on you."
ΦShe is right. I don't have a way to counter this short of grabbing her and jumping out of here, but I barely have the coordination for that. And after the next pressure layer gets released, I am falling unconscious. The way she flings those bouncy balls gives them way too much power, and their accuracy is far beyond what should be humanly possible. She is an utter freak of nature when it comes to calculation, like I am fighting 30 brains at once. Still, a brain is only as good as the information that comes into it, and in that regard, I have the best.
ΦOrb activates his legacy, then turns the giant mass of ice he created into snow, then dashes forward towards the amulet, and Elia sends out the next volley of bouncy balls, which ricochet and knock the amulet away as Orb rushes after it. The chase continues with Elia saying, "It's too late for you to gain any sort of victory, Orb; it's my win!"
"You're right, I won't be able to get the amulet, but I can still reach my other target."
Orb manifest his dog ears, along with his human ones, and says, "FOUR EAR POWER!" And his coordination increases slightly. He runs towards Elia, and she says, "You fool, you only have 2 seconds left."
"I know."
2 seconds pass, and no change in pressure occurs within the room, and Elia says, "What is going on!"
Orb holding her from the back tight, directs, puts his hands over her mouth blocking the movement of oxygen within her and then says, "Lookie over there."
In the corner of the room, Elia sees a pile of all the snow he created surrounding the statue of the Cordum. "Did you know that when contrasting anything using wonderbeasts, there is a key idea that must be kept. Otherwise known as adherence to life, or in the original heroes' song Dílseacht don bheatha, an original beastkin idea which the humans copied."
"Do you think I don't know this? It means that when crafting an item of a beastkin to properly get the best out of it must when reconstructing it into your desired outcome, you must keep the motif of the given animal inside of it. A primitive way of weaponising beastkin before the science truly understood how to do it."
"But how do you do such a thing when you try to combine multiple different wonderbeasts within a single project. Their motifs clash, and it becomes incredibly hard to apply all of their abilities without it completely falling apart."
"It's a problem that most people face when trying to craft wonderbeasts into anything. There isn't an exact solution that many would be able to know."
"Yet I have one. The idea is the use the human body as the base. The human body is already a complex system of interconnected parts that sometimes intentionally clash with each other, so using the human body as a base allows people to, in a way, understand the constant clashes of the motifs and how to solve them without fully understanding why they aren't working. Each organ and organelle will represent a single wonderbeast, and together you'd be able to form a cursed object or item that incorporates all their abilities. Though this can really only be done on a large scale."
"How would you even know of such a method? It isn't the type of thing written down for everyone to read. Wonderbeast engineer is an extremely limited knowledge-based passed down regional and through master student relationships, not books."
"Word of mouth, specifically, all of this is knowledge expressly told to me by Arend the architect. It's called being social."
Elia grits her teeth and says, "So what? The entire process is not something even you could understand in the little time you have known Arend; there is no way you would be able to break the system within this room."
"Correct. I only understand how this works conceptually; the nitty-gritty is completely lost on me. But one thing Arend did tell me is that these systems tend to be incredibly delicate, especially if they aren't made specifically to be attacked like castle walls. And things like rapidly extreme changes in temperatures can throw the system off slightly before everything returns to normal."
Hugging Elia from behind, Orb points his finger past her at the statue of Cordum and says, "If you look at the positioning of the statues that one in respect to each of the five others, all look like the major regions of the human brain, don't they? And since Cordum's statue looks like the frontal lobe responsible for the majority of thinking, I don't think it was a bad guess that it would be the most important part in maintaining the layer of air within the room."
Elia, with an exhausted look on her face, completely relaxes her next, which tilts her head to the side, exposing her neck to Orb as if she were waiting for him to suck her blood.
"What a smart and wonderful idea. But understand there is a reason you don't go tinkering with complex systems without knowledge, Orb. Because you never truly understand how they work, no matter how you guess."
"What do you mean, Eliaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" As Orb speaks, all the air compressed over the room in layers instantly releases and sends both of them flying out of the room through the hole they first entered.
In the air, Elia quickly grabs her bouncy balls, which are sent out with them, and as they fly right through the air directly over a rooftop, Orb creates another giant snowman to break their fall.
As the snowman hits the building, it bursts, and both of them fly out with Orb landing on his two feet, and Elia landing on the palm of her right hand.
Turning his head to her, Orb sees that despite her entire body being vertically with her legs in the air, her skirt is completely defying the laws of gravity and is staying up right.
"How is that even possible?"
"Do I have to keep explaining it to you, Unbeliever! It's the power of the Messiah!"
Rubbing his chin with wonder as her head turns teal then silver, and he says, "So if I rip open another human being to inspect their insides as long as I pray they won't die."
"HELL NO!"
Orb laughs and says, "Then I guess my dreams will never come true."
She stares at him with disgust, and then throws her body upwards, and slowly tries to skip her way towards Orb, but activating his legacy her sends all of the snow from the snowman around her legs, then freezes the entire area around her, saying, "You are far too tenacious, for how adorable you are."
"My grandfather said the perfect woman is a fiendish, dominating beast that does it adorably."
"Truly wise words, but you'd think your father would have stopped it before it became this bad."
"I don't have a father," Elia says while wiping fake tears from her eyes.
"Make sense, it explains your behaviour."
"As well as why you are such a pervert, Orb. The clear lack of a woman's touch in your life is apparent."
Orb's hair returns to white, and he asks, "Do you ever wish you had your parents with you?"
Composing herself, Elia says, "I have free will, and I had books. Enough to be a good person. Besides, I have a mentor I can rely on for any of the things that bother me, so I am ok."
With purple hair, Orb smiles back at Elia and says, "I agree with that wholeheartedly."
"How about you give me the amulet then?"
Stepping on the ice, Orb says, "If you can make it over here, then."
Elia takes off her flat shoes and steps on the ice, and then, like a goddess, she skates around on the ice as if she were born to be on it. She dashes around and sticks out one leg and her arms into the air while maintaining her balance and spinning like a dancing ballerina toy.
Clapping Orb says, "Excellent, magnificent."
Building up some speed, she jumps into the air, twists, and then lies before posing, and Orb says, "Brilliant, impressive, overwhelming."
Stopping, she says, "When you have coordination on my level, such tasks are simple."
"Must be fun."
Confused, Elia says, "You talk as if you can't do this."
"I can't dance."
"What?"
"I can't dance on any level; I cannot even ice skate."
Elia bursts out in laughter and says, "You can't be serious."
With red hair, Orb says, "I am serious and it isn't funny."
"Oh, it definitely is funny!"
"So what! Who needs to dance anyways? There is more to life than that."
Skating over towards Orb, Elia holds out her hand and asks, "Then do you want to learn how?"
"Are you asking me what I think you're asking?"
"Orb not-Nightfall Rian, do you want to learn how to dance?"