The fact that the guardian looked and acted just like it had during our first confrontation provided me with a comforting sense of relief. If it had acted in an entirely different manner, maybe already trying to counter the way we had fought against it before, it would be evidence of a fair intelligence, making it all the more dangerous. A powerful foe was one thing, but a foe that was both powerful and smart? That was an entirely different kettle of fish, one I wasn't sure I wanted to open up casually.

But after the guardian's roar and with the way it was already rearing up, as if it was about to launch an attack similar to the one it had launched last time, I wasn't as worried about that as before. Not relaxed, never relaxed in mortal combat, but I was shifting into a state of mind that allowed me to worry about more than the guardian's next attack. Like the things that needed to happen so we could defeat the guardian, not just survive the encounter.

As it crashed down, causing a wave of spikes to shoot up below me in an effort to impale me, I drew the salty water from the lake to counter the attack. Not directly, trying to block anchored projectiles made out of solid rock with water was foolhardy, but by directing some of it against the guardian while using the rest to blunt its attack, while I was riding it by taking to the air. I didn't want to completely go aerial; the guardian would completely focus on my family if I did, but with the water to redirect its attention, a short flight shouldn't pose a problem.

Further back, Silva and Sasha were making a massive racket, growling, howling and jumping around like mad. Additionally, Sasha was doing her best to funnel power into the powerful effects Silva was channelling, but those were, quite frankly, secondary.

The primary use of their presence, and the racket they were causing just outside what we considered the guardian's range, was to be a distraction. The distance should allow them to easily evade any attacks going in their direction, and if the guardian was paying any sort of attention to them, it couldn't pay as much attention to the rest of us. It wouldn't do much; we were all well aware of that, but it was the best these two could do in a battle like this. I certainly wasn't about to ask either of them to bodily charge a monster that powerful without a very good reason. Or without some seriously advanced defences placed upon them, neither of which we had here.

As I was dodging the guardian's spikes, the water I had pulled from the lake struck the guardian. I had managed to form it into a thin beam and give it a fair bit of momentum in an attempt to make it capable of threatening the guardian's rocky form, but that was, as it turned out, a bit of a pipedream. Maybe with more time, some form of abrasive in the water or a great deal more power, I would have been able to slice through the stone. As things were, the water simply splashed against its form, washing away some of the earth the guardian used to round out its form, but that was it.

Well, almost.

The guardian demonstrated a clear lack of intelligence when it started to pump Ice Astral Power into the water I had sent against it. Normally, that would be a somewhat useful trick, using my own attack to create some additional Ice it could use as a weapon against me, but in this case? With the massive amount of salt in the water, things became significantly less efficient. An intelligent being would likely have noticed that it took a massively larger expenditure of Astral Power to achieve the desired effect. Here, the guardian demonstrated its lack of intelligence once more, forcing the water to freeze by pumping enough Astral Power into it to make Liquid Moonlight or something similar. All to get some fairly brittle and impure Ice.

It likely wouldn't change much, not with the guardian's overwhelming power, but any advantage we could gain was useful.

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Which was why Lia had immediately started to weave together illusions similar to the ones I'd usually use, even if she was a lot worse with them than I. We were simply trying to add more and more distractions to diffuse the guardian's power as much as possible and leave it vulnerable to our actual attacks.

And we had more than one actual attack planned out, even without the Eisblumen seeds Luna was already deploying. Her own attacks, conjured roots and vines trying to bind and slow the guardian, were a mere distraction in the grand scheme of things. The real attack, the seeds, was only carried by those vines. We had readied them long before the attack. Once they were infused with our power, they would last for hours, ready to strike and dig into their target at a moment's notice.

Knowing that our best bet was on those vines, I launched another beam of water from the pool, this time adding a bit of Lightning Magic into it, just to see what would happen. Then it was back to dodging attacks from the guardian, something Lia had to do, too, as did Luna. But with the added distance between them and the slowly distorted perception of the guardian, they could get out of the way easily.

Afterwards, since the Lightning hadn't done a whole lot, I tried the same with Crystal Magic. This created a bizarre, iridescent effect in the water as the salt transformed into a glittering powder. However, it was as effective as it looked bizarre. These glittering crystals increased the cutting power of my water beam by an order of magnitude, causing me to blink in surprise. It wasn't enough to seriously wound the guardian, but it didn't have to. The sudden gouge appearing on its side was enough to draw its attention to me, allowing the others to relax a little more easily.

With that success, I decided to try something entirely different, just to make sure the guardian wouldn't be able to predict my actions. Knowing that Lia had started on the foundation, I added my own Mind Magic to the mix, twisting it together with my Darkness Magic in an attempt to create mental illusions all around us. They had to be completely within the guardian's mind, as I only had a limited idea of what senses the guardian had, so trying to fool them was difficult. But its mind? That was a valid target, and soon the guardian was turning this way and that, launching attacks at empty areas and foes only it could perceive.

Further back, Lia was starting to lob some of her interesting concoctions at the guardian. By now, the guardian was somewhat hindered by the veritable forest of vines and roots Luna had conjured up all around it, allowing Lia to launch her attacks against a nearly stationary target. It likely wouldn't last; the guardian was too strong to simply get tied down, but it was useful nonetheless. And, more importantly, I could faintly feel the Eisblumen start to take root, digging into the guardian, making me redouble and triple my efforts to cloud its mind.

Knowing that this was now the most precarious moment of our plan, I activated Overflow and Bullet Time, pouring out power in an incredibly inefficient manner. However, right now, I didn't need efficiency; I simply needed impact. And for that, those two techniques were instrumental. As I circled around the guardian, trying to obfuscate my location as much as possible, the drain on my Astral Power left me a little faint.

But the effect was quite obvious and profound. Even as the guardian trashed around, trying to get rid of the vines binding it to the ground, it didn't try to shed its icy shell, despite the vines growing on said shell. Each moment, the vines were rooting themself in deeper, each moment they drained more of its power and, by now, I thought I could see the effect.

Instead of a simple, massive creature made of Ice and Rock, the guardian's physical form was starting to come apart, chunks of rock falling away while the grasping roots of the Eisblumen devoured blocks of ice.

Blinking on my Soul Sight, I was treated to a fascinating spectacle. The spirit, previously filling the entire guardian, was reduced to mere tendrils while the grasping vines were akin to a net, digging deeper and deeper into the Ice in search of more Astral Power. It was, quite frankly, fascinating, at least until it all changed once more.

Suddenly, the guardian seemed to completely fall apart, its internal cohesion completely gone. For a moment, I was stunned, but quickly sharpened my focus, bringing my Soul Sight and every sense I had to bear. We might have beaten the shell, but the spirit wasn't dead just yet.

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