Adepti way of war

Yanfei’s curse was short, vicious, and directed entirely at herself.

High above the artificial geyser, Cloud Retainer’s crane form cut a clean arc through the spray. Shape-changing had never been listed among the forbidden methods. The omission now looked catastrophic.

The adeptus folded one wing and released a compressed-air detonation that hammered the already unstable water column from the side. The explosion did not simply splash. It atomized and launched an entire section of the nearshore in a single, rising mass — thousands of liters of seawater mixed with sand and air pressure, momentarily hanging like a dark, glittering cliff. Then her wings snapped open in a single, enormous beat.

The cliff fell sideways.

What came down on the four entangled teams was no longer a water-gun fight. It was a localized natural disaster. A roaring, horizontal tsunami of driven water and compressed air slammed across the cabanas, the dunes, and every fighter still standing in the engagement zone. The sound alone drowned out shouts. The volume of water turned the air into a solid, choking wall. Visibility dropped to nothing. The ground itself seemed to vanish under the sudden flood.

No one was shooting anyone else anymore.

Ningguang’s geo constructs flared at the last possible second, thick golden barriers interlocking just long enough to shield Beidou and Yanfei as the deluge hit. The barriers cracked and steamed under the sheer mass, but they held. A few meters away Jean poured everything she had into a vertical Anemo column, spinning the worst of the flood up and over herself, Amber, and Mona. The three of them stayed inside a narrow, roaring pocket of breathable air while the rest of the world turned into white water.

Yelan, still half-stunned from Lisa’s earlier electro and directly in the open, took the full force of her own teammate’s attack without protection. Cloud Retainer accepted the friendly fire without visible concern. Removing one ally in exchange for the potential wipe of four separate teams was, by pure efficiency, an acceptable trade.

The wave kept coming for several long seconds — an out-of-scale, almost biblical volume of water driven by adeptal power that turned a friendly soaker match into something closer to a coastal catastrophe. When the worst of it finally drained toward the lower beach, half the previous battlefield was simply gone under a new, temporary lagoon, and the survivors were left gasping, half-drowned, and staring at seals that had never stood a chance.

The women who had just been washed out of the match sat or stood in the receding water looking distinctly shell-shocked.

Whatever private reservations they had carried into the starting circle about certain participants were now fully confirmed. A friendly water fight was not supposed to feature localized natural disasters. Seals were soaked, hair was plastered flat, and more than one contestant was still coughing up seawater while staring at the cratered, flooded stretch of beach that had been a battlefield thirty seconds earlier.

The surviving members of Ningguang’s and Jean’s teams did not linger. They pulled back in tight groups, already calculating new angles and safer ground while the temporary lagoon continued to drain toward the lower shore.

Cloud Retainer settled onto the wet sand in human form, feathers still dissolving into her usual sleeves. Her gaze tracked the retreating figures with cool precision, already weighing which of the remaining teams offered the highest efficiency of elimination for the least further expenditure of effort.

She never finished the calculation.

A pool noodle whistled past her head close enough to stir the air against her cheek. The woman holding it came with it — a red-eyed blur of pure acceleration that treated gravity and distance as polite suggestions. Zibai shot past the landing crane like a launched rocket, foam weapon already realigning for the next strike, her entire trajectory locked on the aftermath of the water column she had seen rise from the opposite side of the engagement zone.

Cloud Retainer pivoted on pure reflex, the near-miss registering only as a single raised eyebrow.

The other adeptus did not slow down, did not acknowledge the pass, and did not waste a single stride on courtesy. Whatever target Zibai had chosen after watching that artificial geyser climb into the sky, she intended to reach it before anyone else on the island could react.

Yun Jin stood at the edge of the receding floodwater and watched the two adepti collide.

Zibai had closed the distance in a straight, ruthless line; Cloud Retainer met her without hesitation. Foam noodles became irrelevant the moment the first real exchange of force cracked the air above the shallows. Water exploded outward from every impact. The sand beneath them compressed and split. They moved in short, violent bursts that ordinary eyes could barely track — pure adeptal speed and power turned on each other with no restraint left for the original rules of the match.

Further back, Xilonen and Citlali were sprinting hard to catch up, seals still dry, weapons ready. Zibai had abandoned them the instant the water column rose; they were only now closing the gap.

Yun Jin looked at the oncoming pair, then at the escalating duel, and made her choice with a performer’s sense of timing.

She stepped directly into the open path between the approaching teammates and the locked adepti, planted her feet, and raised her own modest water weapon in a clear, dramatic challenge. The gesture was pure theatre and pure calculation at once — a deliberate sacrifice meant to force Xilonen and Citlali to deal with her for even a few extra seconds, buying Cloud Retainer a sliver more time before reinforcements arrived. She knew exactly how outmatched she was. She did it anyway.

The two groups were a heartbeat from colliding.

The duel in the shallows reached a new peak of force; a shockwave of displaced water and compressed air rolled outward—

Then the air itself changed.

A thin, wrong layer slid across the entire stretch of beach, subtle enough that most of the remaining contestants only felt a sudden unease. To the two adepti it was a blade against the spine. Cloud Retainer and Zibai broke apart in the same instant they had come together, the personal conflict erased as cleanly as if it had never existed. Both turned toward the same unseen point beyond the immediate battlefield, eyes sharp, every sense locked on something that did not belong.