The erupting mountain caused the surrounding area to shake as if a giant were passing by. It created a lot of noise that drew a lot of attention to it.
Loki was very far away from the mountain, so the area he was in didn’t shake as much. But he still noticed the erupting mountain, and he decided to check it out. This was because he saw a phantom giant appear on the mountain.
The phantom giant made him suspect that there was a warrior on the mountain. This warrior also seemed quite strong and should be at rank 5.
Since a warrior is a member of another sect, this makes them a potential source of merit points for him. It didn’t matter to him if they were rank 4 or rank 5. What mattered to him was that killing them would earn him merit points, so he was determined to kill them.
With his mind made up, he stopped flying towards the nearest large city. He decided to rush towards the erupting mountain.
On the mountain, a phantom giant was punching the mountain. The phantom giant is humanoid but has four arms and one eye on its head.
There was also a female warrior at the center of the phantom giant. The phantom giant was replicating her movements and doing everything that she was doing.
Right now, the phantom giant was hell-bent on digging up the mountain. Each of its punches struck the mountain like an explosion from bombs. Rocks shattered, and were thrown into the air as gravel because of the punches of the phantom giant.
All four of the phantom giant’s fists were smashing into the side of the mountain again and again. This much vibration made the mountain fragile and caused the calm lava within the mountain to become riled up.
With the mountain becoming fragile after being smashed again and again, the pressure that had been building within the mountain was able to push its way out through a crack. This caused the mountain to erupt with lava.
The point of eruption was the same place that the phantom giant was punching, so hot lava had been sprayed directly into the face of the phantom giant as it was punching. But the phantom giant didn’t seem to care about the lava.
The phantom giant didn’t stop punching the mountain despite all of the lava erupting around it. The warrior within it didn’t stop punching, so it couldn’t stop punching either. It was completely unbothered by the lava and continued to dig like a machine that couldn’t feel pain.
The mountain took a long beating from her. By the time she was done, the entire top of the mountain had collapsed.
The majority of the top of the mountain had been crushed into rubble, but some portion had fallen into the lava and sank into the mountain. But the part of the mountain that fell in was the minority and wouldn’t interfere with her plan.
The first part of her plan was to create a large enough opening for her to enter the mountain. Now that this part of the plan has been completed, the next part is for her to enter the mountain.
So she made the phantom giant step into the massive opening that she had created. Right now, the mountain looked like a large pot of red-hot lava to her. But she didn’t hesitate to step into it.
After the first leg entered the opening, the second leg was also placed there. Then the phantom giant began to sink into the mountain.
The passage that led from the depth of the mountain to the top was wider at the bottom and narrower at the top. So once the giant phantom was able to enter the passage, she found that the passage opened up for her. This made her descent to the depths even easier to accomplish.
She is sinking into the depths of the mountain to reach the people hiding beneath it. It is clear that those people really don’t want to be found, and they don’t want to meet anyone if they choose to hide at the bottom of a volcano.
Since she was trying to force a meeting between them, they decided to do something to stop her. The guardian of fire and the guardian of earth both stepped forward to take action. Both of them directed their power at the lava, not at the giant sinking through the lava.
The guardian of fire absorbed the heat from the lava while the guardian of earth forced the lava to solidify. With the two of them working together, the lava was quickly transformed into solid rock.
Not only did this put a stop to the progress of the phantom giant, but it also trapped it in solid rock. So she couldn’t give up and leave easily now that she couldn’t sink anymore.
But she wasn’t willing to stop just yet. She controlled her phantom giant to shrink to half of its normal height. This gave the giant a lot of freedom that she could now use.
She decided to use this created space to start smashing at the feet of the giant. Because she was within the mountain, this time her punches caused the whole mountain to shake.
The shaking was just a side effect, though. The main effect of something with the power of a falling mountain exploding again and again within Mount Iris was the cracks spreading throughout the mountain.
The cracks spread down to the depth of the mountain, where there was still lava, and spread up the mountain to the edges of what was left of the top of the mountain. And as her four fists smashed into the ground, the cracks continued to grow deeper and become larger.
As she punched and punched, she laughed without a care in the world. The sound of her laughter passed through the cracks and went down below so that the three guardians could hear her laughter.