How could she possibly manage to burn the powerhouses that possessed the strength and the abilities to snuff out her resonance-empowered flames?
"It is not enough to possess stronger willpower." Isobel believed. "The Emperor Tree does not possess any willpower that comes close to my own, but it still managed to douse my flames."
She suddenly figured out the most fundamental reason why she failed to burn down the calamity plant.
"My King Killer Flames fail to live up to their name because they… aren't able to burn everything that makes strong enemies like the Emperor Tree so difficult to defeat."
Venerable Isobel thought back on what stifled her attempts to burn down her opponents.
What did transphasic energy shields and the Emperor Tree's own flame suppression methods have in common?
They both relied on energy to stop her fire from burning solid matter!
No matter whether it was warship hulls or the wood of the Emperor Tree, her flames were technically able to burn them all up given enough time.
The problem was that energy-based defenses and countermeasures continually stopped her from burning what she wanted.
The solution was therefore simple.
"I need to evolve my flames to the point where they can burn energy much more easily."
Power in this universe was based on energy. Without energy, nothing could be done. Only when someone possessed a huge amount of energy would they be able to change nature, win difficult battles and maintain dominance.
Venerable Isobel firmly set her sights on those who wielded a lot of energy and therefore power.
What if she became good at burning the energy that they relied so much on to remain at the top?
They would instantly lose the foundation of their strength and collapse!
Her eyes blazed with fire as she instantly fell in love with this idea. In a dwarf galaxy and environment where the focus had shifted from matter to energy, becoming good at countering the latter would grant her the qualifications to threaten every powerhouse of the new frontier!
Her fire did not necessarily need to burn any hotter. There was no urgent need for them to spread at a faster rate.
What Venerable Isobel truly needed in order to defeat the likes of the Emperor Tree was to gain the ability to burn its greatest strength!
The calamity plant's most important reliance in battle was its astounding command over wood energy. Its sheer size and mass allowed it to leverage far more wood energy than a more reasonably sized opponent.
However, Isobel noticed that while the Emperor Tree was able to command a monstrous amount of wood energy, it was actually really bad at refining it. The quality of energy under its command was terrible because it absorbed a huge amount of wood energy from the environment without spending enough time and effort into assimilating it. The calamity plant was too young. Its rapid growth in the past few years had resulted in a very unstable foundation that possessed a lot of inadequacies.
Yet just because it possessed a few glaring weaknesses did not mean that the Larkinsons were able to exploit them all. Venerable Isobel first needed to gain the power to burn the Emperor Tree's enormous reserve of wood energy in order to exploit the calamity plant's greatest shortcoming!
She grinned. "It just so happens that I know what to do now."
The transcendence glow truly lived up to its name, unlike the current state of her King Killer Flames.
Form should follow function. She already settled on the criteria that her flames had to meet in order to fulfill her desires.
Now, the most important decision she had to make was to choose an image that her flames should conform to. Only by visualizing something more specific than a simple fire would she be able to evolve her power and overcome her bottleneck!
How should she visualize the concept of a king killer?
"An assassin?"
No. She immediately rejected this image. She was not discreet at all and did not like to attack her enemies by surprise. Her compatibility with anything related to assassination was vastly inferior to the likes of Venerable Zimro Belson.
"What about a rebel leader?"
That sounded more to her liking. Her ambition was to develop a flame that was powerful enough to destroy those who were stronger than her, at least on paper.
How could she do so if she only dared to attack those of equal or lesser strength than her? The only enemies that were truly worth fighting against were those that were objectively more powerful!
Unfortunately, the vast majority of cases where the weak confronted the strong ultimately spelled defeat for the former.
It was a statistical certainty that a lot of powerhouses were able to maintain their dominance due to the simple fact that they could easily defeat their challenges.
Isobel wanted to be the exception rather than the rule. She wanted to excel at overcoming those who ostensibly commanded more power and energy than herself.
How could she possibly make that happen?
By undermining the foundation of their strength.
Just as a rebel leader or a political agitator was able depose kings and sovereigns by turning their own subjects against their tyranny, Venerable Isobel wanted to produce similar results by burning up the energy commanded by her own enemies.
Fire was nothing but an exothermic reaction that caused flammable objects to turn into other substances.
Nothing actually got lost. The fire merely transformed something intact into burned husks and other byproducts.
This was what Isobel wanted to accomplish with her flames, but on a different level than before.
In the past, she was able to defeat formidable opponents by letting her flames convert their 'loyal' matter into 'rebellious' ash and soot.
In the future, she wanted to be able to defeat even more powerful foes by doing the same with energy, which was the true foundation of strength for every powerhouse!
"Just like how a rebellion can spread like a wildfire across a nation, my flames shall gain the power to spread across the energies commanded by my enemies and transform them into greater flames that cannot be commanded by anyone, no matter whether they are friend or foe!"
Rebellions were messy businesses. They could easily spin out of control and turn against their original principles. They produced huge amounts of collateral damage and often left the survivors miserable.
However, that did not always turn them into mistakes.
There were times where the rot had set in so deep that it had to be eliminated at all cost. Venerable Isobel intended to provide the spark that could topple an empire!
As for whether her actions started a chain reaction that produced a vast but uncontrollable configuration that harmed those she did not intend to threaten, Isobel couldn't care as much anymore.
There was always a price to pay for power.
"I am much more comfortable if I put myself in the shoes of the underdog."
As a former third-rater who climbed her way to her current height, Venerable Isobel lacked the arrogance and sense of birthright that first-raters possessed.