Daneel expected his words to be met with either bravado or a string of courses, but surprisingly, there came neither.
That meant one of two things: either the situation was much more serious than he had thought, or he had just uncovered the secret behind the strange responses from these assassins until now.
All of these thoughts fled his mind, though, when he felt the entire orb begin to shake as power started to congregate on the outside, at all the swords which had shot that futile attack just now.
The reason behind Daneel's fascination was that it was completely different now. Before, it was only the reptilian who had used her power, but now, the strength of all three began to be used at once, and it was such a seamless combination that he could only stare with admiration, while cheering on the system in his mind that had begun recording and deciphering everything he was seeing.
Of the three, it was unexpected that it was actually the feline man, or woman, or whatever it was that actually poured forth the most power. This amount eclipsed that which had been deployed by the reptilian before, so much so that the attacks which had been colorless rays of dazzling light before were now tinged orange, which was the exact shade of the fur he had seen before.
The least power came from the man made of rock, so at first, Daneel assumed that this must be because his main job was to protect them.
However, the mage inside him who had always had an endless love for all complex feats of magic awoke, and as he studied the technique that was being used now, he slowly understood that what was happening was much more complex than he had initially thought.
Power, by itself, was an unstable thing which had to be stabilized constantly, especially in the case of those like these individuals where it was easy for one small mistake to ruin everything, and even cause the Energy that had been absorbed or was being used after being drawn from the air to explode and endanger the one who had been foolish enough to not pay enough attention, or focus to their task at hand.
Hence, mixing power from two different people was like pouring two explosive substances into the same flask, igniting it, and hoping that it wouldn't destroy the building it was in, even when there was a 99% chance that this would definitely happen.
It was different when people combined their power to cast formations together, as in that care, it was more like they were creating gaps that could be filled in by others, rather than letting the power from different individuals mix.
So, it was only when Daneel studied it further that he saw its true beauty: the quality that the third kind of power brought was that of stability.
Almost like a chemical reaction where a stabilizer was introduced to counter the volatility of the other substituents, the man made of rock was making sure that the explosive elements that he was coming into contact with stayed in a steady form, until it was time to let them explode in a controlled manner which would shoot forward an attack whose power would be many times more than that of two Heroes attacking together.
Sure enough, even the members of the Church seemed to have felt the threat that was soon going to be hurtling towards them, as they all took out figurines which were all the exact shape as the illusion that they had cast over the defensive formation.
In fact, Daneel had even seen this figurine before: when the Church had attacked during his foray into the Fortress, the two who had come had also been equipped with these objects which clearly stored Energy in such a compressed form that they blew Ker gems or even Ker roots straight out of the water.
With excitement, Daneel hoped that the system would be able to analyze these objects now and see the secret behind them, but for the first time since the upgrade, he was due for disappointment.
[Method of compression is being veiled by inbuilt protection mechanism. An attempt can be made to bypass, but at the moment, this attempt is such that it will trigger certain warning protocols in the objects. Would host like system to proceed?]
There was no way that he would risk exposing the system, or his capabilities to the Church for something that he might be able to obtain and study in the safety of his home later, anyway, so without hesitating, Daneel told the system to stand down, while waiting for the trio who seemed to be charging up their power with each passing second.
When one reached the higher realms of power, attacks could seem very underwhelming if one watched them with just their eyes, while actually containing enough strength to wipe out entire cities. This was the case with these assassins, too, who were actually supposed to act without any flashiness so that they could finish the job and leave without alerting anyone.
Hence, there was no other change in the attack except the change in color, but as soon as it left the tips of the swords that the reptilian had transformed into, even he, who was under the protection of the very source, felt extremely threatened, as the entire atmosphere started to heat up in response to such compressed Energy whose objective was to pierce through anything and everything that dared to come in its path.
The faces of the members of the Church weren't visible, but their body language was enough to show that they felt the same danger. In a moment that was fluid and exactly alike among all of them, they grasped the figurines and bowed their heads as if in prayer.
Right away, their bodies began to glow as if they were absorbing insane amounts of highly concentrated Energy, and sure enough, that was exactly what they were doing.
Daneel hoped that the system would be able to study the mechanism now that the protection protocols must be deactivated as the compression was being unraveled, but sadly, the Church had thought of everything.