Though simple monsters presented no real challenge for Cyril, let alone the elders of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe, the mere presence of wyrms was a cause for concern. Various defensive arrays and formations should have been activated upon sensing the intrusion, yet none of them flared to life. Breaching through these measures required either direct sabotage, or the presence of a wardbreaker.

At least they were still some distance away--several thousand paces south, and at least twice as far underground, by his rough estimation. He couldn’t detect the actual wyrms, only the peripheral signs of their passage. Impossible to say how many there were, only that their force was sizable enough to send tremors radiating through the world.

Attempting to keep his mind calm and focused, Cyril took a deep breath and began circulating Earth qi throughout his body. Excess energy surged throughout his channels, begging to be used. He shaped it according to the advice Loras had offered during his last golem transformation, avoiding the natural pitfalls that had riddled his initial attempts.

This time, instead of blessed stone, he suffused his body with E-grade bronze. The material was a higher tier, and the one he had defaulted to the most since he had discovered it, especially given the increased affinity from Hosjin’s cursed blessing. Cyril’s mind, flooded with elixirs and pills, had no difficulty shaping and directing his newly-refined Late Condensation qi into the appropriate framework. In a sense, the transformation was not much different than materializing plate armor, except the process was directed internally.

Bronze usurped flesh and bone, then proceeded to expand upon the skeleton of his base form. Tendons and ligaments became high-tension wires, thrumming with latent energy. His Magmatic Heart pumped incandescent qi throughout his body like molten ichor, tracing new pathways parallel to his original spiritual network. His darksteel mask was the only part of him that didn’t transform, contrasting against the dull monotony of surrounding bronze like some eerie visor.

Interestingly, his mental connection to the storage ring remained, despite it being buried beneath a slab of artificial flesh. He summoned his spear into one hand, where it looked like a stick in comparison.

More than a few gazes shifted his way, taking in the presence of a fifteen-foot-tall bronze golem in their midst. From his vantage, the others appeared almost comically small. Tyrin looked up at him with one eyebrow raised, while Loras stood with his arms folded across his chest, not bothering to comment. Cyril took it as a good sign that the metallic cultivator had no criticisms worth voicing at the moment.

“Right,” said Tyrin, tearing his gaze away to address the crowd of guards. “Our duty is to protect the mundanes and support staff in the area. Continue directing stragglers toward the central compound. Secondary priority is preventing any attempts at infiltrating the Obsidian Prison. Unknown quantity of hostiles approaching underground from the south.”

It soothed Cyril’s ego slightly that his elder brother also couldn’t determine the exact extent of the approaching wyrmhorde, though to be fair, detecting and analyzing underground tremors wasn’t part of the man’s skillset.

Loras spoke up, dashing Cyril’s budding confidence. “Small swarm. Twenty adult wyrms, thirty-six wyrmlings, and one anomaly leading from the front.”

“Anomaly?” said Tyrin, spitting the word out like a curse.

Loras nodded slowly. “A big one.”

Though neither of them appeared particularly concerned, an expectant tension hung heavy in the air. Size meant little in the grand scheme, especially at the higher tiers where cultivators could manipulate abstract concepts in defiance of natural law. At most, it provided some additional force output, though Cyril found he quite enjoyed the sense of towering over others, even if it made him a larger target. Still, a large wyrm meant an old wyrm, and that meant they were likely dealing with an Ascended.

The guards moved into formation, arranging themselves in a line behind Cyril, Loras, and Tyrin. Cyril remained in place, staring up at the sky. Distant explosions rocked the heavens and the earth. The sky transformed into a patchwork quilt of vibrant qi as cultivators from both sides extended their domains, dividing the world into pockets of contained violence. Techniques flashed back and forth as initial volleys were exchanged. Diving phoenixes collided with glaciers; veils of mist refracted beams of ethereal light; raging infernos merged with oceanic tsunamis to form islands of steam.

In traditional large-scale warfare, defender’s advantage incentivized combatants to hunker down behind their wards to outlast a prolonged siege. At the level of the two armies, such measures would prove futile. Few defensive arrays would last long against the concerted onslaught of cultivators in the Nascent Soul and Spirit Severing Stages. The entire infrastructure of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe would have been annihilated by stray techniques, dooming the mundanes and noncombatants to perish in the crossfire. And so, the warriors of his tribe had flown off to meet the enemy in the distance, sacrificing any potential defensive benefits to protect those unsuited to war.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Neither side had an obvious advantage after the opening salvo, though that meant little. The battle may very well rage on for days until the balance shifted. In the meantime, Cyril, Loras, Tyrin, and the assembled guards were the final line of defense, a bulwark against the encroaching tide. Altogether, around thirty men and women, mostly in the Foundation Stage, made up their reserve force.

Cyril had no idea how he measured against other cultivators at this point. Behemoth greatly skewed the balance, not to mention he had ingested enough alchemical concoctions to supply a small tribe for a month. In the end, Stages and Spheres offered a rough estimate of how strong any particular person may be, but monstrous outliers like himself threw the standard hierarchy into disarray. While he doubted anyone less than a Nascent Soul cultivator in the Fifth Sphere would pose a serious challenge, it was theoretically possible for him to enter an unfavorable matchup. At least the Sect of Sacred Tears would have prepared measures for Dominions related to the Phoenix such as Sun and Fire, drastically lowering the probability of a direct counter to his Earth affinities.

A flare of crimson light devoured the sky to the east as his sister joined the fray. Immediately, the forces of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe rallied, driving back their foes in all directions. Though she turned the tides in one fell swoop, the Sect of Sacred Tears must have accounted for her if they dared invade her territory. Honorless scum they may be, but they were not fools.

In the back of his mind, Cyril sensed the Knowledge Network that Elys had extended to most of the combatants. Focusing on it only brought a flurry of vague whispers to the forefront, a confused mess he couldn’t decipher. He clenched his fists against the shaft of his spear, wishing he could make sense of the chaos around him.

“Approaching,” warned Tyrin.

Cyril forced his attention away from the raging heavens, back to the tremors beneath his feet. The ‘small’ swarm of monsters was closing in. He crouched and placed one hand against the ground, closing his eyes to better focus on his spiritual senses. Soon, the ground began to rumble beneath him, and he could make out the silhouette of a colossal wyrm breaking through the perimeter of his senses.

Dissonant music filled the air around him as Loras began to play his flute, armor turned completely black. Though Cyril wasn’t the target, the world began to spin around him as his equilibrium was disrupted. His seismic sense detected the offending vibrations in the air, tracked as they slipped deep underground. The rumbling intensified as the earth shifted and split, slowing the advance of the monster at the vanguard. It writhed and pushed against the assault, forcing its way through.

Behind it, the rest of the swarm seethed and squirmed. Unlike the vanguard wyrm, they shuddered to a halt as they entered the range of the music, contorting in their death throes. A few of the larger ones slipped through, disoriented but alive.

Cyril pumped qi into the ground, transmuting the base earth into blessed stone in a wide radius beneath them. The colossal wyrm broke through it as easily as dirt, but the remaining wyrms imploded as they charged into the reinforced stone. Death energy leaked upward; he funneled it into the Dominion of Earth, adding a several hundred points to the Third Sphere. While it was often considered rude to steal the rewards from other peoples’ kills, their essence was a drop in the bucket for someone like Loras.

A few moments later, the vanguard wyrm broke through the surface in front of their group, surging upward like a cerulean pillar at least a dozen feet wide. To Cyril’s surprise, the entity didn’t appear to be a normal sandwyrm as expected—its luminescent scales and sharp fins identified it as a river or seawyrm instead. He was reminded of the monster that had dragged him into the Underdark, traversing through the earth as if it was water.

The wyrm made it halfway aboveground before it turned completely limp and collapsed. For a moment, Cyril wondered if it had somehow died upon breaching the surface. Then its cavernous maw opened wide, and a humanoid figure stepped out.

The entity appeared androgynous, lithe and nude save for the disgusting saliva coating its form. It lacked reproductive organs, its chest and groin nothing more than smooth flesh, pale as a fish’s belly. Cerulean hair fell in a waterfall down to its waist, and a pair of matching scales sparkled beneath its sea-blue eyes like teardrops. As it exited the gaping maw of the wyrm, the ground rippled beneath its feet. Strangely, Cyril sensed that the figure and the seawyrm were one and the same, as if it wore the monster as a second skin—or had shed it, like a molting serpent.

Before he could better analyze the bizarre nature of the Ascended, a barrage of techniques from the guards rained down on it—fireballs, swooping phoenixes, flashes of incandescent light. Cyril and his two companions waited, content to observe for the moment.

The Ascended stood in place, unconcerned at the Sun and Fire qi exploding around it. It was buried beneath the conflagration, no more than a vague silhouette. Screams rang out from the guards. Cyril turned, confused, in time to notice their formation disintegrate as many of them collapsed, uniforms and hair aflame, their skin livid with burns.

“Guards, cease attacks and retreat!” shouted Tyrin. “Reflector!”

The inferno died off around the Ascended, revealing its unscathed form, not a hair out of place. It grinned, displaying row after row of sharp teeth.

It took Cyril a moment to understand what his brother had meant. Like Lady Firouza, the Ascended must have invested heavily into the Dominion of Reflection. However, instead of using it to create clones or teleport, it had specialized down a much different path: it appeared that, whenever it was attacked, it reflected the technique back upon the original wielder. There was no obvious physical redirection, but the effects themselves were transferred in some esoteric manner. The guards had decimated themselves with their own onslaught—perhaps the reflected attacks had even been augmented, judging from the devastation they wreaked despite the natural resistance most of them would have against their own primary affinities.

Guards helped one another to their feet, making an orderly retreat to a safe distance; most of them gathered around the Obsidian Prison or rushed towards pockets of refugees still caught outside, attempting to make themselves useful. Only Cyril and his companions remained, side-by-side, staring at the Ascended.

Tyrin sighed and raised his sword, grasping the hilt with both hands. “This is going to hurt.”