"Damn it! Again? Raya, get us out of here..." Muku shouted while looking at the hole in space.

"No. Look. It's closing up. It seems this place has a stronger recovery system" Raya spoke after taking a closer look..

She was also more sensitive to space for obvious reasons.

She could sense that the void was being pushed back instead of advancing.

And unlike before, they could still love despite being hit by the void's pressure.

They might not be able to survive contact yet, but at least they could run away if they wanted to now

Anyway, the others no longer panicked after she spoke.

As if to back her words. The void was completely pushed back and space was restored.

"Did Chloe's attack really do that alone? Isn't that a bit too exaggerated?" Lisa spoke in awe.

"No. It wasn't her attack alone. In fact, it was a group effort including the statue. All of you destabilised the space together with your attacks that didn't give it enough time to recover. Her over-the-top move was just the last straw. Though it was definitely something special since that last resistance is really hard to breach" Raya the resident space expert explained.

"Oh. Okay. We'll make sure to never let her use such an attack in an area that has already been destabilised. Of course, we can't sense that so it's your duty to warn us from now on" Muku replied.

"Sigh. Fine. Can we go back to our fight now? It already doesn't feel good that we were beaten despite having more people. So can we not make the difference longer for no reason?" Raya spoke in a slightly annoyed voice.

The competitive Layla agreed behind her. She didn't like losing either... As expected really.

Though they were actually just about to finish off their statue when they had to run away from Chloe's attack.

If they weren't disrupted they might have finished within a few seconds after Chloe. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

But now all their progress has been reset. So they had the restart.

You'd think that with Raya's space element added to the mix, they would have finished sooner. But the statue seemed to be specifically immune to that element alone.

So when she tried cutting away the space it stood, nothing happened. So she could only use her other elements.

They weren't weak, but they were definitely not as quick to end the fight.

Anyway, that didn't matter now. They were going to change their way of fighting after all.

"So we've decided to give each other a chance now right? Attacking together just made the fight longer" Emily spoke to her teammates.

"True. Our sustained attacks just made it recover quicker turning it into an undying monster. If it were a creature that felt pain then maybe I wouldn't mind torturing it like that. But this thing was expressionless from start to finish so I just want to end it as soon as possible" Jade supported in a bored voice.

As for why she wasn't insisting on fighting it alone. Well, she, like the others had long realised that it wasn't something they could defeat alone.

While they wouldn't lose either. That was only in the short run since the statues seemed to have endless power. So in the long run, their side would get tired and lose.

Their current strongest attacks couldn't take it out in one go. And it would recover almost instantly after that. So a one-on-one fight was out of the question for the time being.

It sucked for the group that was used to dominating in solo fights, but they were willing to do what needed to be done.

While they had preferences, that didn't mean they couldn't accept anything else.

"I'll take a defensive position" Freya who believed in her mecha-like avatar's defence stepped up.

"I'll join her" Raya who didn't like not being able to dominate decided to try out being a distraction where she didn't have to worry about dominating.

That way she can tell herself that it's not that she can't dominate but just doesn't have to.

Deep down she knew the truth but so what?

"I'll throw the first ultimate" Layla spoke next.

"I'll go after that" Jade stepped up.

"I'll go after you" Emily added.

"Well... I guess I'll finish it. If there's anything left..." Hope spoke in an uncommitted voice.

Which was understandable as the likelihood of there being anything left of the statue after the others were done was pretty low.

"Great! Now let's get into position" Emily led the team forward.

Muku and the other girls just watched from the sidelines.

Like always, he prepared seats and snacks.

The girls could swear that he was always looking for a reason to pull out seats and refreshments.

And they were right. It was an important part of watching the show for him. Like popcorn when watching a movie.

Anyway, the girls were soon in position. Raya and Freya were already distracting it with normal light and dark attacks and energy beams.

Of course that was normal to R7s but any single one of the attacks could easily destroy a planet and have some power left over...

Behind them, the others were gathering mana for their attacks.

Layla was preparing a huge black spear that looked awfully a lot like Audrey's crimson spear from before.

But she actually wasn't the copycat. Audrey was. But she didn't mind.

And it had already been recognized by everyone that Audrey would shamelessly copy your move if she could. She wasn't even shy about it too.

Maybe because she was already a mature lady before the apocalypse. She had long abandoned her imagination and focused on work and raising Layla. So now, it was harder for her to think of new moves, so she just copied.

But that wasn't an everyday thing since she had her own moves. They were few but each one was deadly.

And the ones she copied her own twist to them. Like the spear from before. Hers exploded while Layla's didn't.

Of course, their different elements played a part in that. But still, what mattered was that it was different.

Another thing was the name. Layla's had a name and hers didn't. Yeah, she couldn't think of anything. She will definitely have to look into that later on.

"Shadow Charged: Unstoppable Spear"

Yeah, she changed the name after advancing. She took inspiration from the immovable shield and unstoppable spear story.

In fact, she has wanted to use the name for a while now. But it felt presumptuous until now.

She figured that having the power to destroy a solar system gave her the right to claim such things even if she was far from being the strongest...

As soon as her words fell, the spear moved so fast that it practically disappeared. Which was to be expected at that point. After all, she herself could travel faster than the speed of light, so what about her attack that was obviously faster than hers?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

It destroyed the obstacle in its way upon impact.

It wasn't as loud as the attacks from the other team. But that didn't make it weaker.

This was because she targeted the statue's head and completely destroyed it before the spear continued forward.

So there wasn't enough resistance or backlash to warrant the sound.

The fact that it didn't stop and kept on flying into the distance was rather poetic considering the name.

"ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!"

immediately after Layla's attacks did it's part a beastly roar was heard. Then...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A huge wild-looking flaming red tiger's head slammed into the statue's midsection and a huge explosion went off.

That was Jade's ultimate attack. [Empress's Wrath]... At least on that day.

The girl was always changing her ultimate every few days. Which was on brand for her.

But then again, with such a versatile power that can copy other elements, it was understandable why she couldn't stick to one.

And after reaching R7. It seemed she could now tweak the copied attacks even more. Well, it was more of combining the copied ability with her own personal spells to get the abilities' elemental attributes, like how the tiger head has the fire attribute.

Though it wasn't as hot or destructive as an actual fire elementalist's fire attacks.

But that didn't matter to Jade. Her Beasslt Aura was already destructive enough on its own. Adding the attribute was like adding wings to a record. Even without it, it's still devastating.

She cleared up the energy immediately after to see the damage she had done.

And she was pleased with her work. Only the lower body was left. She had successfully destroyed the upper body.

It was almost like they had given each other sections to take out.

Anyway, with that done. It was Emily's turn.

What she did wasn't something any of us expected.

Instead of some huge attack that erased the remainder, her avatar's golden eyes started glowing. Then...

SHOOO! SHOOO! SHOOOOOOOOOO...

Golden beams flew at the statue's lower region and diced it into thousands of pieces in less than a second.

"Hope?" Emily called out.

"Sigh... Fine" Hope replied then summoned her erasing poison and erased the tiny pieces left over of the statue.

She did it while rolling her eyes. She understood that Emily did it so that she wouldn't feel left out. But she felt it was completely unnecessary.

Like there was literally no benefit to it.

But then again, Emily has been especially careful with her since that tournament incident so she could only accept it for now until Emily's guilt completely disappeared.

"Finally over. What no..." Muku asked no one in particular.

But before he could finish, they all disappeared...