Speed Is King

"Resist it!" Black shouted frantically as he unleashed his powerful skills on the red dragon in an attempt to distract it from attacking their Combined Energy Manifestation.

Ten huge earthen golems glowing with dark energy rose from the ground and heaved massive chunks of solidified earth at the red dragon.

Another ten golems with massive hands and arms rose up from the ground as well. But instead of attacking the red dragon, they moved to block the red dragon's fire breath from landing on Yellow's tree.

"I can't absorb his fire energy! It's too powerful! It's even burning up my fire!" Yellow screamed in panic and in pain.

"What do you mean it's burning up your fire?!" White screamed at Yellow as she furiously unleashed torrents of black lightning down at Elliot who was calmly resisting them with an energy shield.

"It's too powerful!! Block it! Block the fire attack!!" Yellow screamed in agony! She had unleashed all of her fire and wood energy upwards to resist the red dragon's fire breath attack, but it was almost like throwing firewood to a raging inferno.

It was no use! In fact, it seemed like the red dragon's fire energy was growing even stronger as the seconds ticked by!

"I am trying! The fire attack is blasting through my golems as though they are made of paper! Just what sort of monster is he??" Black shouted as he desperately summoned another twenty golems to help resist the fire breath attack.

White frowned deeply and quickly weaved a high grade defensive spell using her dark energy.

A circular disc appeared above their Combined Energy Manifestation and started to slowly harden into a solid mass of dark energy that seemed to be quite effective.

Combined with Black's golems, they managed to bring the situation under control.

The fire breath breath attack was stopped!

But it was too late.

Too much damage had been done, and too much Red Cosmic Dragon Energy in the form of pure fire had made its way into Yellow's energy manifestation.

Yellow's agonized scream rose to a high pitched crescendo as her energy completely ran dry and allowed the fire energy to finally cause the tree to implode!

Poof.

One second, the tree was there, and in the next second, it was gone.

With nothing in its way, the Red Cosmic Dragon Energy started to rampage freely within Yellow's body.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Within a single second, Yellow's internals were burned to crisp. Her scream was also abruptly cut short and she fell down to the ground in a smoking, unmoving heap of burnt flesh.

It was a short but clear display of one irrefutable law of nature.

Energy Manifestations, no matter how many were combined into one, were no match for Energy Awakenings.

Energy Manifestations occur when the level of quantity, quality and mastery that warriors have over their elemental energies were able to reach a certain high level.

The manifestations take on the form and shape of the energy spell that the warrior was most intrinsically suited with.

Unlike spells, Energy Manifestations didn't need to be cast, and would constantly exhibit the function and the nature of the manifested form.

For example, most earth elemental warriors who were able to manifest their energy would manifest a huge mountain, which would serve as a powerful defensive measure against most attacks. This would free up the warrior to focus on attacking while his manifested mountain absorbs all the damage coming his way to the maximum capacity of his energy level.

However, energy manifestations represent a part of the warrior. And so the warrior could take damage if the manifestation was to be forcibly broken apart. In a worst case scenario, if the damage was dealt at high enough levels and speed, the energy manifestations would even serve as a conduit along which the enemy's attack could reach the warrior's main body!

That was exactly what happened to Yellow.

She thought that with her fire element, she would be able to resist the red dragon's fire attack. Her tree even had the very special attribute of being able to devour fire energy to boost its growth.

She completely didn't expect that the red dragon's fire attack was so overbearing that it could even burn up her fire energy!

Her blackened and charred body lying lifessly on the ground was the price she paid for her miscalculation.

With Yellow's energy manifestation completely broken apart, the Combined Energy Manifestation weakened considerably.

GRAAAHHHHH!!

Elliot red dragon swooped down from the sky and continued its fire breath attack on the mountain that was still standing firm over the three Hegemons.

"Stop attacking him! Attack the damn dragon!" Black shouted at White even as he continued to pump in massive amounts of energy to support his mountain Energy Manifestation.

Although they were extremely close to Yellow, they absolutely had no time to grieve or even get angry over her death. They were in a fight for their lives, and judging by how quickly even the fire elemental Yellow died once the fire got to her, they would probably die almost instantly if the fire breath attack managed to break through their defense.

Thankfully, White's black lightning clouds didn't catch fire like Yellow's fire wood tree did. It meant that somehow, dark energy was resistant to the fire breath attack!

CRACK! BOOOMMM!!!

The black lightning bolts stopped falling pointlessly on Elliot and started to attack the red dragon instead.

Fortunately for the two Hegemons, the black lightning seemed to be more effective on the red dragon than on Elliot.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn't really enough to stop the red dragon from attacking them with its fire breath attack.

GRAAAHHHHH!!!!

The wounded red dragon let out a furious roar and unleashed an even more intense fire breath attack which finally broke through the mountain's heavy earthen defense!

"White!!" Black shouted in horror.

"I'm on it! Support me with your dark energy! It's weak against it!" White shouted as she summoned layer after layer of dark-energy based defensive spells.