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If anyone can look closely amiss the raging fire and right at Snow's expression, a sly grin was given back to the opponent with flying colors. The daggertail didn't stab itself close enough to the jugular vein, and his neck appeared mostly unharmed due to immobilizing that portion of the opponent's weapon with the physical barrier.

He spread his hands parallel to the ground, facing away from each other as both of his fallen blades rose astonishingly into the air suddenly, and then whisked past Jean before settling down on both hands of his. The blades were then stabbed right down onto the ground, before Snow folded his arms across his chest, muttering a few words beneath his breath.

The clay did come forth and wrap itself around Snow. The clay also did cut off the air as it molded into the shape that Snow is holding....
It seems successful to Jean that the clay columns were able to immobilize the prey....

Yet....

The blades around Snow started to vibrate in a resounding tone as the shadow casted by the clay started to morph and grow in fevor and size. Tentacles out of the shadow itself literally shot through the air like living creatures as it then impaled the clay through all sides, piercing the baked, solid area as well as right into Snow.

To Jean, it looks like suicide in style. Unless....

The clay crumbled away, broken off into pieces and segments as Snow now stood there, still with arms folded across his chest as well as the tentacles sticking to him from almost all sides, a teeming mass of illusion and darkness.

And the darkness within his mind awoke to the battle beforehand....

Jean would smirk if he could, but with his face baked, no expression could be made. With the clay successfully baking him, even if it was for a second, he had finally had his opponent where he'd want him. As soon as the clay shell immobilized him, Jean rose his arms up, causing the earth underneath Snow to shatter, where a large hand made out of clay would rise in its place. It would grab Snow less than a second after the clay had taken shape, and would bring it down 1...2...3...4...no, 30 feet under the ground, squeezing Snow tightly as to crush all of his bones! As this would happen before the darkness even came to have a crack at piercing the clay shell, all would be hopeless. As he could not move, particularly that the arm would start crushing him as soon as he was grabbed, he would be given a solemn burial well below the surface...

However, Snow did not know that Jean would revive, him, as his lesson would soon be learned as long as everything went according to plan.

The ploy would've worked. Yes, in fact, it most likely had worked.
Had Snow not finished muttering something before that unexpected dive. Relying on darkness to use as a catalyst, inside the clay...

It's black everywhere.

So the tentacles didn't work out as planned. That's all right. Under the ground where everything is shielded by sunlight, it's even better for Snow to use his more...how shall he put it -- unfortunate abilities.

For a second, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for Jean. The opponent is presumely dead under the crushing force, and there is no possible way that Snow can even escape that attack just that quickly without problem. But when the ground rumbled, cracks appeared across the surface, and a writhing mass of black tentacles ripped its way out of the ground and into the air, the opponent would have known that something is wrong. Terribly wrong. With the writhing tentacles lashing out at everything around its perimeter, craters were formed just by its violent nature as it pummeled the life out of any nearby beings.

The blades that Snow had left automatically vibrated from the unnatural turn of events, in which underneath Jean--

A right hand shot out of the ground where Jean's shadow was and went to grab Jean's foot, followed by it quickly pulling the opponent down as Snow - miraculously - shot out from the shadow Jean made, his clothings tattered and ripped, but nonetheless alive from the near-death experience.

How did Snow escape such a trap, one might ask?
Simple.

Darkness, to an extent, can create a link between one entity to the next. With each light casted, a shadow would be made because of an obstruction, or through that link itself. Did Jean really believe that Snow will just allow the opponent to kill him without any fight? Of course not!

The baked clay around Snow gave that hollow shell a perfect structure to momentarily link the darkness within to the natural shadows in the stadium. And from that link, Snow can momentarily enter from one point to the next, the exits endless but limited again to the stadium, unfortunately.
A gateway, in short.

Snow had decided to choose the link between the inner clay's black void and Jean's own shadow as the main gateway during the crushing depths of the ground pressure. The tentacles, to be exact, was a mere means to distract Jean and force the opponent into focusing on the strange attack as Snow would pop right behind the opponent during the distraction, and force the opponent into the same gateway he used. That would explain partially why Snow will grab Jean's left leg, and yank him right down as Snow pops up to the surface.

Therefore, Jean would literally be thrown right where Snow was before, and Snow would just sever the link of the shadows to deny Jean the ability to try and get back up to the surface.

It's a risky maneuver, and Snow can't say that he himself is all right. Had he not enacted that unfortunate abilities quickly though...

...Having one of his ribs broken is considered acceptable losses....

((Nice copy and paste.))

Gamba jumped back forming a barrier between he and the exploding sand and ground. The force was strong and his feet hit the ground hard, he looked disappointed and not really caring, this being had wings; Gamba would rip them off. Gamba brought his hands together, and screamed the words. "Sution, Suishouha!" Suddenly under Gamba's feet water began to trickle outward, and then a tremendous amount of water erupted from Gamba's feet, like a tsunami, rising high into the sky, crashing down upon Ertai with an intense rush of immense pressure.

Gamba smiled as the being made his attack, the barrier encased around him was not made of solid material but of energy, tiny neutrons swirling around to emit a barrier, contracted from the world around, as the planar plane of existence cut through the water with ease and brought along with it, its imploding effect on substances of this existence, the slice and the implode would simply bounce off the barrier, and go off into some other direction, since energy is neither a material nor a substance and can neither be created nor destroyed, Gamba's barrier was impervious to an attack that used any form of energy.