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That was why he'd opened with those exploding javelins. As a proof of concept, they'd been successful. Explosive force could indeed displace the smoke. Now he needed to scale up the intensity. Would've certainly helped if he'd ever practiced this technique before, but oh well. Learning mid-combat was something he'd been doing since day one, it felt like.

Rather than trying to disperse the smoke with one big burst, he went with a flurry. More javelins. Dozens of them, flying all at once, followed by an immediate second and third wave.

Molten coatings for all of them as soon as they touched the smoke.

A stream of explosions, bursting the smoke apart in clusters, not unlike bubbles in boiling water.

It wasn't doing much, Hector saw. Banda was still plowing through it all, chasing after him relentlessly.

But it wasn't doing nothing, either. He followed up with fourth and fifth waves, and he could see the smoke dispersing more and more. Momentarily, he saw what he'd been waiting for.

A few whiffs of red, isolated from the rest of the smoke--and seemingly not of Banda's own volition this time.

Hector pounced on the opportunity, clapping thick iron orbs around the separated smoke.

This was how he'd defeated the worm in the Undercrust. Cutting it up into manageable chunks. Maybe Banda would--

No.

This was wrong, he realized. In the back of his mind, he could sense it with the Scarf. The volume of smoke wasn't like that of a worm. It was changing constantly, growing and shrinking as it pleased, whipping towards him, then slinking back to try to flank him.

Banda was in pan-rozum. Which meant he had access to materialization, too. His smoke couldn't run out until he reached his volume limit, which was probably gargantuan.

This wasn't going to work. Hector knew that much. Hell, the whole fight had obviously been hopeless from the start, but if he didn't think of something different to try, then Banda Toro was going to kill him soon.

And then everyone else, too.

And worse still, emergence wouldn't help. Even if he did achieve it again, what difference would it make? More powerful materialization wasn't the answer when he couldn't even touch this guy.

The problem was a fundamental one.

In background thought processes, while he concentrated on evading each deadly attack, these thoughts were stewing.