A large majority of the ants had been dealt with. However, there was still a large number of them that remained.
On one hand, it wasn’t as overwhelming as before, but on the other hand, it was pretty much only the strong ants that remained. So mostly Apprentice-level beasts and above.
The turrets had gone back to shredding everything that moved, but the difficulty was apparent as now, the creatures were withstanding far more bullets than previously. The reason for this mostly being due to their tough exoskeletons.
The flame turrets were forced to retract into the ground since, unlike the normal turrets, they couldn’t constantly unleash their contents due to certain risks of overheating. That and supplying fuel to them constantly wasn’t possible for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which being how volatile said fuel was.
Even so, the flames that were unleashed still raged across the battlefield, constantly eating away at the weaker ants.
’It’s still not enough.’ Fredrick frowned as the first of the ants passed through the inferno and raced forward, only for it to get torn apart by pullets, his exoskeleton already weakened by the flames.
However, the number of ants passing through the flames grew until there was a sizeable church charging forward.
The snipers and ranged Tamers were picking them off, and the occasional landmine dealt significant damage. But it wasn’t enough as a sizeable swarm reached the melee tamers.
Fredrick clicked his tongue.
He sent a command to Hydro, and the beast quickly carried it out.
Suddenly, several balls of water about a meter in diameter appeared in the air across the lines of the Melee tamers, the moisture in the air being used to create them.
As soon as the ants got closed, the balls suddenly exploded into numerous beams of water, many of which punctured some of the ants and killed a few of them, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to how many there were.
However, that wasn’t Fredrick’s goal. The beams seemed to interlock with one another before entering deep into the ground.
"Freeze." He said. A moment later, all the water suddenly froze over and turned into what looked like a strange wall of ice that protected the tamers. It was sharp and gnarly, making it difficult to just run into.
’Phew. We managed to pull it off.’ He exhaled as he watched his work. The ants smashed into the wall of ice, which groaned under their collective weight but held. At the same time, many of the ants were unable to slow themselves down and got impaled on the sharp edges of the wall. Not enough to kill them, but enough to injure and slow them down.
Fredrick wasn’t too perturbed by his own feat, but everyone on the battlefield was staring at him as if he’d just used magic... like he’d just used forbidden magic.
The reason for this was simple. He’d just used another affinity besides the one he’d shown them so far.
Now, under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Sometimes, beasts could develop two or even three affinities. An example of this would probably be Gale. He could use wind magic, but that had simply been an extension of his Sky Affinity, which covered most sky-related concepts.
But even then, Osho was the only one who knew about the sky Affinity.
There was a reason why all beasts didn’t just apply their affinities in a scientific way to make it seem as though they had multiple affinities. Think about it. If a water affinity beast could just make frozen constructs the same as an ice affinity beast, then there was no point in the ice affinity. Same with affinities like mist, steam, and so on.
In that same vein, Gale should just be able to use Mana to heat up the oxygen in the air and cause it to combust, allowing him to control fire to an extent. Or something with a sand affinity should be capable of creating glass, and so on.
In theory, and based on science, such things should be possible. But by doing so, it inadvertently undermines the concept of affinities since it defeats the point of a beast having an affinity.
That’s why, under normal circumstances, beasts and tamers couldn’t make use of another affinity even if the one they possessed was closely related to the other affinity. Like water and ice.
The reason for this wasn’t exactly simple, but it was understandable.
Each affinity had something called a core nature. Essentially, something that defined that affinity to be the way it was.
Each affinity had a different Core Nature. Some were similar, but never the same unless it was the same affinity.
In this situation, the Ice Affinity and Ice Mana possess the Core Natures of Cold, Frost, Stagnation, Stillness, Rigidity, and Preservation. While something like water had the Natures of Flow, Fluidity, Change, Adaptability, Formlessness, and Constant.
This was why one couldn’t just make use of another affinity due to having a similar one to begin with.
But then that begs the question, how had Fredeick managed to bypass that rule?
Well, there’s a few reasons, but two stick out.
The first is that science still worked. One could freeze water normally if they lowered the temperature enough, and Mana wasn’t required to do so. However, freezing the water didnt mean they had control over it, and that is another reason why one couldn’t just make use of another affinity.
Back to the example of Gale just igniting oxygen particles with Mana. He could do so in theory, however, he woukd have no control over the blast, moreover, he wouldn’t be protected from its effects either, meaning that he could hurt himself just as, if not more than his opponent.
The same applied here. Remember that Fredrick had the water take the shape he desired before he froze it, as if he’d frozen the water balls before trying to create the wall, nothing would have happened and they would just fall to the ground, inert.
So Fredrick wasn’t controlling the ice, he just made the water take a certain shape before freezing it. As things were,he no longer had control over the wall, so it had now become its own independent construct free of his control.
Well, not totally free, as Fredrick was still capable of supplying Mana to it to keep it sturdy, which played into the second reason for why he was able to do what he did.
After his Evolution, Hydro had begun to show inclinations towards the Ice affinity.
However, inclination didn’t mean control. Not yet at least, but Hydro had started showing signs of closeness to the affinity.
After he evolved, Fredrick did a comprehensive test for the beast (A/N: There are centers for stuff like that.) And he found out that above everything, the Octopus’ resistance to cold had received a massive spike.
His resistance to frost-based attacks had also increased, and his diet had begun making way for things with ice-related. Usually feeding a beast food that didn’t fit in with its affinity would cause a rejection, with food poisoning being the best result.
The same idea behind Core Natures applied to food and affinities as well. Which was why Ice beasts couldn’t eat water beast food and vice versa.
Yet Hydro had no problem eating Ice affinity food. Well, not that he didnt have any problem at all, he couldn’t take it in large amounts. But he could take it, and that was before he evolved to the next rank.
As such Fredrick had started to experiment, a d he discovered that while Hydro couldn’t make use of the Ice affinity just like that, if he froze something over, he could establish some modicum of control over it, and the bigger the construct, the harder it would be to control.
Like right now, all the beast could do was continue to pour Mana into it and prevent it from breaking immediately. However, that was more than enough in the current situation.
It only took half a second for the combatants to snap out of their stupor before they took full advantage of the wall Hydro had erected and began to take down the ants that struggled to get past it.
The snipers focused on the ants that tried to crawl over the wall, the turrets on the main wall focused on the ants that were behind the ants trying to climb over the wall, and the melee combatants made use of the openings in the wall to take down as Many ants as they could.
Fredrick stood back, content to let things progress as they were. However, there was a but of a frown on his face.
’We have no flame turrets here, and its too dangerous for them to use that Napalm again, not while they are so close. So the corpses of the ants are gonna pile up. When that happens they’ll have an easier time climbing over the barrier, and that’s if they don’t break through it first.’ He sighed and looked up.
’What countermeasures will you guys use this time?’