There was a moment Corvayne and Rio charged the man and woman, with Rio and the man trading attacks in a lightning fast barrage before either Corvayne or the woman with the Scythe had taken more than a few steps.
Corvayne used [Cross-Skill: Flows-Like-Water] to cancel his charge and fly back as the woman swung her scythe, magical energ at the rim likely a skill that would let her slice through water.
Corvayne heard a crack and saw the attack had blasted a jagged line through the walls, ceiling, and floor.
"What's wrong, boy?" The woman sneered. "Come here, I'll make a man out of you. Half a man! Hahahahah!"
She swung and Corvayne dropped under a wave of force, backing up, eyes tracking both her and the fight between Rio and the man. His shadow hands helped him make sure not to stumble.
"All those impressive looking weapons and you're too big a coward to fight me? Daddy not give you a ring of courage?"
Corvayne thought carefully about how the Brides had acted before. He tried to think about Nyx's delivery of barbs. "Sorry, I was just wondering what puffed up idiot would be stupid enough to marry you."
That did the trick. She charged and swung, keeping perfect balance as she sent barrages of force at Corvayne, energy from the Scythe essentially blunt as he rolled and used gravity to change directions, doing a dizzying backflip through the gap she tried to used [Reap] to trip him.
He picked a dark corner and merged into it. At this point the show room was empty besides the mangled bodies of cowtivators and mutate form of the shapeshifter strippers.
When she appeared in the hole in the wall. manic grin visible under her bridal veil, Corvayne smiled as well. Gotcha.
Corvayne swung the hive greatsword at the gap, then on the downswing, flung the arm with the swarm gauntlet up, firing off it's payload of humming monsters. Just as he had seen in the dungeon, the ring turned the weird gems in the sword and the bees into tiny golden machines, trailing blue fire as they flew at the Bride. She swung her scythe in annoyance, a dark aura trailing it. Probably an area of effect Scythe attack like [Gargoyle Wing] or [Sonic Scythe].
Some of the little ships fell, but at least twenty of them hit her with twin lasers, most of the hits coming from above and driving the woman into the ground. In a single attack, she was covered in burns and the sneering expression had been replaced with shock.
So, Corvayne swung again while she wasted time saying "What?!"
Once again, she used a wide swing special ability, this time certainly [Gargoyle Wing] as it batted the ships back. They had cut off her path back into the ruined hallway, so she dove for the doors out to the lobby. Not that it did her any good, as all the bonuses to minion intelligence and accuracy caused them to hit her path with enough shots to land a few more.
The first wave of attackers came back to the sword and merged back into the current green gems, which Corvayne felt made the sword slightly heavier. He used compass on her, and while it was slippery, he could feel she was waiting around the wall. Corvayne had a weird desire to call out 'Useless!' which he resisted, instead just flinging his sword while willing the little ships to blast through the wall to hit his target.
The wave of buzzing gold did an organic looking school formation that dive bombed the wall in question, scattering as they unloaded blue bolts and pulverized the wall, sending smoking bits of wallpaper and brick flying before a woman said "Fuck!"
There was a counter attack, causing the rising dust to distort as a wave of force moved through it. Some of the ships he sent died, but it didn't matter. His sword had half replaced it's green gems. He pointed the swarm gauntlet towards the open door. He willed his ships to just scout, [[Unity]] and [[Understanding]] combining to imbue his will into the little craft.
He fired off his eight wasps from the gauntlet, each of them splitting into two craft that dashed into the door. At the same time, he pulled his spear out and used [Cross-Skill: Sundering Blade] to blow a hole through the ceiling, then again to punch through the roof, sending gravel flying as he followed, adjusting his gravity to make a smooth landing to run across the roof, then hop down to the parking lot already swinging into the lobby as his ships flew back to him through the glass, more then a few damaged but feeding him information.
He resisted another urge to scoff and say 'too easy' as, from his point of view, it was perfectly fine to let someone else have to scramble and figure out a way to deal with his bullshit rather than the other way around... for once.
Subtly changing the way he swung, he flung a swarm off into the dark alley where the fire exit would lead. A few seconds later, he saw blue lights flare up as the hovering ships unloaded their attacks. He shot off two more wasps from the four that were in his gauntlet, once again pushing them to scout for him. Did she close the door or was she going to run?
The scouts returned. There was another lady fighting the one with the scythe. They had some weird desire to 'shoot the bug lady' which he noted might be a quirk of the item having trouble telling the scythe Bride apart from Gylwin.
He crouched then lept into the air, giving himself a little twist so he was gliding through the air facing downwards. In the ally he saw Gylwin parrying a quick trio of scythe attacks with a pair of bone blades.
"Kill the woman with the scythe. Do not harm the bug lady she's an ally."
In the gauntlet the wasps agreed, but once they fired he felt [[Unity]] the faintest sub sentient grumbling, something about a 'lurker'. He wondered if they would complain once they saw how much hiding he did. He swung his blade, throwing a wave of ships down from above. His arc took him over the last building before the wall, the spin of swinging the sword helping him get his feet to hit the wall and let him use gravity to 'stick' for a moment before dropping back to the ground and running.
At this point, he could hear police sirens. More importantly, danger sense suddenly went from a three out of five to zero. Corvayne ducked as a high pitched keening noise passed through where his neck had been. He used shadow hands to stab out at the invisible enemy.
"You slippery bastard!" The woman cried out, once more blending into the surroundings. Corvayne used essence sight to track her, everything else having massive trouble with finding her, even [[Unity]]. She had feelings, but it felt like a light across a dark lake rather than an open book. She was trying to move to flank him again.
"Come out. Maybe I can fix whatever the Magus did to you if you surrender."
She made a little hand gesture and extended a bit of essence that formed a mouth in the wrong direction.
"Never! I'm his wife! He LOVES me!"
He sidestepped the next attack, feeling the edge of what he assumed was a weaponskill called [Decapitate] or [Headless horseman] or whatever. He needed to do some mundane practice with weapons and start filling out his techniques. She tried to do the same trick, moving her voice a few feet off of where she really was.
"Every moment you waste here, your little cowgirl is getting mangled by Iron-Jeng."
Pretty smart to direct him nearer to where she was, after attacking from behind. Corvayne pretended to hone in on it.
She took a step to the side and attacked. Corvayne used [Cross-Skill: Juxtapose], which triggered a swarm of machines. He mentally asked them to blast where he was just standing, and there was a scream as the Bride faded back into view, her veil smoking and backpedaling. Corvayne saw her footwork, and this time stepped right next to her as she overextended her arms into a two handed scythe attack. Corvayne let her forearm push him to the side and got her into a choke hold.
She dropped her weapon and dug her claws into Corvayne's arm, trying to apply the same energy to her fingers nails to maybe, cut his arm off? He clenched his other hand and four interceptors came out and blasted her face, the smell of burnt fabric and ozone mixing as she panicked and desperately tried to claw his arm off.
He channeled [Cross-Skill: Grand Slam] into his swarm gauntlet. It froze his hand in place as energy built in the weapon. A moment later, a single huge bee flew out, becoming what looked like a pair of floating gold lawnmowers. Corvayne was blinded and knocked off his feet as the things blasted the woman he was pinning. He tossed her burnt body off him, stowing her gear.
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He didn't bother holding back. "Decapitate me once, shame on you. Decapitate me twice, shame on me."
He confirmed that Gylwin was tracking all the runners AND the mundane victims who had ran away, then moved in to see how Rio was doing. He wasn't surprised to find she had won by filling her enemy with lead, but it was alarming that she was bruised and cradling an arm. He put his hands on her back and used one of his Grasping Armsmaster techniques: [Back Staunch] which was mend that did more healing when flanking. She moved her arm and winced a little but flipped clothes, ending up in a mismatched set of pants, shirt, and gauntlets with a phoenix feather cap.
“Let's leave. I assume you can evade the police?”
They left out the back then scaled up to where he had left the Hoverbike. Hopping on, he aimed for a different section of town where Gylwin had reported one of the scouts going. Below them, low flying swords with lights and sirens were honing in on the trashed strip mall.
“We unfortunately killed the people we needed to talk to.” Rio said, with her tone and emotions suggesting it was his fault even though they had both killed their respective targets.
Corvayne shrugged. “We solved some of the disappearances. Namely the sucked off bodies. We are following the scouts, whom I suspect we can disable.” The hive greatsword combo was, as Gary would put it, pretty broken. He'd have to have Mosh take a look at all the parts.
Rio elbowed him. “That's NOT how you should say it!”
“Sorry Assistant Acting Sect Overlord.”
He tried not to laugh as she huffed audibly.
“We can guess that it's the Red Line Sect, and a faction that has ties to the Magus in it, if not the main branch.”
“I got from your story that the Magus is a wizard, but what makes you so sure?”
“That scythe user was the naked woman I barely beat in the tomb...” He had not lied while telling his story, but he had basically side-stepped the time loop by just not mentioning events. The story hadn't made perfect sense without the loops but he had learned from watching movies you could just sort of keep going through absolute nonsense and sometimes people wouldn't even ask basic questions like 'Why doesn't everyone just crash their ship into other ships then? Or build a torpedo that does that?'
“If they were hunting you... why did they end up here?”
“No, she was after Diamonds-In-Passing. I suspect that means whatever she was trying to do with Diamonds, possibly causing them to go nuts, she was going to try to do to the Sect Leader.”
“Then why is she at a Cultivator themed strip club?”
Corvayne didn't have an answer to that. “Maybe there's something in the life-force of these cultivators they felt they needed to break into the tomb? Or she was helping them infiltrate, weaken, and destroy your sect so that she could sneak in and take out the leader while things are in chaos.”
They headed downtown and turned to a street where nightlife was booming. Every building looked like it was a bar, open to the public and spilling out music. Regular folks and Cowtivators were everywhere, with flannel robes and leather boots and all sorts of cowboy hats.
“They are trying to lose themselves in the crowd...” Corvayne said, though [[Understanding]] had some additional ideas. “Or they have a fortified safe house... something about the operation suggested an alliance of convenience.” He hoped the hunch was correct, as if the Magus's minions were entwined with the enemy sect it was more likely he would run into the wizard himself.
They parked in an alley. Gylwin's parasites had tracked them to a bar on the second floor. He suspected there was a safe house in the building, given the number of dark windows on the apartments above.
Corvayne looked over to Rio. “Do we need to call backup? If these are Red Line Sect members... How many of them can beat you in a fight?”
“At least thirty of them. But the entire point is that if they took us out, the recruits would dry up. Our style resonates with some people that cannot cultivate, and vice vs.”
“Do they send anyone down?” Corvayne said as he walked around the building, taking note of the buildings around it and any walkways or obvious escape routes. There was what he assumed was a shopping area that someone could leap out of a window and fall through a skylight.
“Not often. There's very rarely anyone who can survive the path down if they don't have a talent for cultivation.
Corvayne could see that there were things in the building that had essence leaking from them, a pretty clear sign of enchantments. From the way they were strung through the building, he suspected it was an alarm: that or much weaker wards than what he had seen at the academy.
“We check out the bar, I see someone on that floor that's leaking magic like the scout was.”
Corvayne made his way up the metal steps to a neon tombstone and cactus. “End of the line.”
He opened the door into a bar with a bunch of people that radiated hostility as danger sense suddenly woke up and started screaming at him to freeze in place. Corvayne kept his face steady, tipped his hat, then closed the door and grabbed Rio's hand and started pulling her down the stairs.
“What are you doing?” She hissed. “We need to find the scout.”
He sent through [[Unity]], stressed as he was, his assessment of the patrons of the bar. A moment later, the door to the bar shot off, and Corvayne jumped off the metal stairway as it halfway wrenched off the building. He felt someone start to suplex him then realized that Rio had picked him up.
Dangling on her shoulder, he could see two red robed figures leaping at them. “Hovercycle!”
A moment later one of them tossed a staff and blew a hole in the concrete where the vehicle had been. Rio jumped, shoulder driving itself into his gut. Corvayne noted he'd practice princess carrying people. Seeing the cultivators aiming a jump, he summoned a shadow shield and stuck it on a lamppost. It bought them a few moments as Rio juked away from the street.
Running into the crowd would just doom innocent people, and with the boom of the hovercycle dying they were starting to run. Corvayne lifted an arm and used [Cross-Skill: Reap] while firing off bees. They morphed into dark vehicles, and when the two cultivators appeared they fired the beams at the ground before them, perfectly causing both high level warriors to pretty much vanish as they tripped. Corvayne saw two streaks of dust, one hitting the corner of a building and leaving a trail of dust, the other crashing through a parked car and knocking over a street light.
“Rio, get us somewhere away from people!”
“That's the idea you idiot! And don't say my name! What's the point of the disguise!?”
She jumped as the dust clouds reversed. Corvayne drew gravity in and got them flying, then weighed them down as both Cultivators flew into the air at them, robes fluttering as they flew by. Corvayne used [Cross-Skill: Shadow Stealer] and fired off another four bees, his machines struggling to reach the Cultivators as they produced weights from their rings and threw them to change their midair direction.
Rio moved serpentine and dodged both of them using what looked like some sort of drilling fist.
Corvayne swung his sword using [Cross-Skill: Reap] to again trip them up, little shadowy robots firing patches of shadow onto the street.
One of them pivoted through the patches and came at them flying, and clipped Corvayne with a flying kick that left green light after it. They bounced from wall to wall in an alley and Corvayne instinctively used [Juxtapose] to avoid the followup [Thunderbolt Dive Kick] which demolished a dumpster full of garbage.
Rio stumbled to her feet, and Corvayne activated [[Agility]] and tried to send a little into Rio. She nearly tripped over her feet but then course corrected for the highway. Behind them, one of the cultivators was on a flying sword and sped ahead. Rio slapped a bracer clad hand on the ground and turned 90 degrees in a manner that should have caused even a super human whiplash. She switched as she hit the ground, and Corvayne had an idea. He used Gravity to lighten everything else and link himself to her back, then threw out [Cross-Skill: Sundering Strike] with his gauntlet and [Sundering Blade] with the hive greatsword. Red vehicles flew out and blasted the road into a dense red cloud. A moment later, the cultivator flew through it and his sword sparked, sending it and him wildly out of control and through a billboard then into a river.
Rio wasn't stopping, pivoting then switching gear into stealth, ripping a manhole cover off and more or less throwing Corvayne down. She put the cover back on loosely over them and then they started crawling through a grimy pipe. She turned to him and whispered. “Follow me. No magic.”
They spent about an hour crawling, then another hour walking. Every so often she'd stop near a source of light and listen, and Corvayne could hear her breathing heavily. It may have been a long time since she was in danger.
They had moved, what, twenty blocks?
“Stop.”
She froze. Corvayne sat down.
“You're... something like six hundred some years old, right?” Corvayne said, barely above a whisper.
“It's very rude to guess a woman's age.” She was quiet.
“You were handed this sect when the old leader basically vanished, a few hundred years ago. He picked you because you were the strongest. He also trusted you.” Corvayne said, reciting what he had read in the report.
He thought about what he had seen, her methodology, the economy of what they sold, vs the weapons he had strapped to his back. “The Sect was falling apart for a long time. Everything accelerated though a few months ago. The Red Line Sect muscled in when he left, and you've been trying to run things close to how he had, and it stopped working because you weren't ready.”
He could see, even in the near total darkness, her face scrunch. He held a hand up.
“The sect leader was trying to create something, and you were trying to preserve it, alone. Any time you try to advance, you have to wake up and put out fires. You know that an operation like this, it should be done with backup, but you don't trust your second or third in command.”
At this point she had pushed herself to sit up, leaning away from him. He kept going. “They need more recruits, and given what I've seen, at least some of them end up dead. You knew the two cultivators chasing us.” He was certain of this. She would have fought the suggestion to run, otherwise.
Why kidnap them and do nothing with them? Because that was how she could throw people away to the Red Line sect and keep her numbers up. “I'm guessing some of those attackers we killed were recruiters?”
“No! It's not like that.”
A miss. “But some of the missing people it's certain now were getting siphoned off, and the two Red Line officers that just tried to kill us suggests to me that they are moving operations to this floor.” He had a theory about that too. Lady Blood Claw had long ago said that the Tower regenerated super slow, and it took people much longer to advance. If the Tower recovered quicker, it followed that some floors where a group could cull enough monsters to carve out a safe space were no longer safe.
“Heh. Clueless. Why would they need to move, they have treasures you cannot imagine on floor 60 and up. There's an outpost on floor 80...”
“It's gone. I would bet you a literal ton of black crystals that when the monster count went up, they couldn't keep up. Everything about how they operate maps to how I understand cultivation works. There's not enough resources to do anything but make a broad pyramid. Even the cowboy version you guys have made into a thing only supports a few really strong fighters. What's Lepin now? Third rung from the bottom? Now scale that to floor 80. I don't even know what the numbers are, what... a level 1000 T-Rex goes from showing up once a month to spawning packs of five every night and eats all your level 200 servants and guards suddenly... well you don't live on level 80. You can visit, but you can't live there. You also lose a few level 400 disciples. You're starting to fall behind here in the same way... I'm betting you've never had a digging team attacked by monsters before. Some of those stable kids hadn't been in a real fight with a monster before.”
“I told you, the digging area has maybe one or two monsters a year!” She huffed and then lowered her voice. “I lost people out there. It had nearly been everyone if not for you.”
Corvayne did have questions about why they had been digging, and suspected it was a paragraph that he didn't read in the report, something so hidden or new they didn't know about it, or so obvious that the report glazed over it, perhaps like not stepping back to say 'oh yeah they make the guns. Everyone knows about the guns!'
“Do you think you can keep this up, another... two hundred years?”
She shook her head.
“Can you keep it up another twenty? Two years? What are the chances that in two months, you have a bunch of floor 60 bullies stroll in and say, 'nice place I think we'll take it?'”
“The leader could stop it!” Rio cried out, and Corvayne felt it. Heartache. “Tell me your him! Please! I failed your test, I couldn't do it on my own, it's falling apart! I'm not a leader! Tell me your Dusky!” She grabbed his robe, tugging him.
Corvayne sighed and shook his head. “You know I'm just a random outsider. I only came here to get Kirae back. Plan A wasn't get kidnapped.” He put his hands on hers. “Let's wake him up. Either he can push back these guys trying to steal your home, or he can't.”
“He locked himself in.”
Corvayne looked her in the eyes. A girl playing at being a tyrant. He sighed. This was supposed to be a quick rescue. A fun little in an out heist.
“Okay. I'll get him out.”