It took Durff all of one second from standing up and making his declaration to directly charge the leading enemy cultivator from the Hardened Crown. The woman had just flung him backwards with her spiked shield but he seemed unconcerned about the damage that might have caused to him. Velvet was still concerned about him swinging his now metal-clad arm as a weapon… but she also understood that it was more functional than it should have been for him, specifically.
The Augmentation cultivator was unconcerned about his assault, and she really didn’t need to be. Unlike many other cultivators, the Hardened Crown were durable enough that Durff’s particular style couldn't’ overcome the cultivation gap even with a direct hit. As the woman used a shield, she faced nothing more than the potential of being knocked back.
Unfortunately for her, the surroundings they were in dictated more caution than she would normally take. If she were knocked backwards into a volcano, she would have stood up and walked it off. And while there didn’t appear to be anything lethal behind her, she smacked into one of the pedestals in the reward zone.
A silver chalice dropped onto her head. Two moments later she was eradicated from existence. That was twice as long as it had taken for the other Hardened Crown cultivator to burn up, but it hardly meant anything.
“Please return both unearned rewards back to their pedestals.”
“Huh,” Durff said. “Didn’t really mean to do that. But I guess we’ve got the advantage of positioning.”
The Hardened Crown had their backs to the rewards, so they were in peril. Not that such tactics were necessary when their Augmentation cultivator had died in such an inglorious fashion.
The main person at risk at that point was Durff, but even he wasn’t at much risk against other Integration cultivators. Especially not when considering his new armor. It wasn’t clear exactly how durable it was, but it didn’t seem seriously damaged by the charge of the Augmentation cultivator.
It didn’t take long for them to finish off the rest of the enemies, with Alva and Velvet killing most of the enemies. Lelka was for the most part remaining defensive, uncertain of whether she should be active. Koralo was half paying attention, as he still had to keep in mind their hopefully imminent departure.
The voice grew more insistent as it repeated, “Please return both unearned rewards back to their pedestals.”
Fortunately, they were fairly easily able to determine where they belonged, as the silver chalice had come from the pedestal it was resting next to. The shield which was the only other surviving element of the ‘solar annihilation’ was tracked to its resting place by Alva, who had been watching the selection.
They did seem to be able to take everything else, however, though the choices of the Hardened Crown Sect were somewhat dubious. Mostly oversized weapons or bulky armor, without regard for its actual quality. There weren’t any good hammers for Durff, not that he seemed to be liable to give up on swinging around his own arm at the moment.
“Alright,” Velvet said. “Clearly we can run into more people here,” she said as Alva began to burn the bodies. “Which means we should try to get out as soon as possible.”
“That doesn’t alter the plan much,” Koralo said. “Except that I need to be more certain that we take the formation with us. I would prefer not to have anyone interfering from the outside.”
“How long?”
“I guess I’ll have to speed things up. Half an hour.”
It didn’t take long before alternating groups of Hardened Crown cultivators and Citadel of Exalted Light disciples began to pour through. Alva’s arrows sought them out the moment she felt they were safe to attack, and Velvet hid her presence. Durff was left as the easiest target, but he reveled in that status, wildling swinging at anyone who got near him. Integration cultivators he could handle time after time.
Fortunately, they weren’t so replete with Augmentation cultivators that the group had to deal with many of them, but even a few dozen Integration cultivators got tiring after a while. They had to defend Koralo, after all.
“At least this is depleting both sects,” Alva commented. “This is a massive waste of life but… I do believe someone is losing a whole group for each one that comes here.”
“A couple hundred Integration cultivators isn’t that much,” Lelka said.
“Maybe not total,” Alva disagreed. “But over the course of an hour? Even with the population of the whole Exalted Quadrant…”
“I’m not saying it’s a wise decision,” Lelka said. “But both groups can afford it. This could be part of the normal loss statistics except for the Augmentation cultivators.”
“... Harsh,” Alva said. “I do understand the numbers get that big, but that’s pretty awful.”
“That is why I was not eager to become one of the statistics,” Lelka agreed.
Every time a new group was brought in, the walls re-established themselves. They could still sense beyond the walls- and in turn, everyone who entered would sense them. While Velvet could have tried to keep them concealed, without anything else to draw attention it was a losing prospect. Plus, they were having trouble with all of the blood and ash. They didn’t want to keep that in their storage bags even if they could.
Once again the walls formed around the reward selection area. Lelka tensed. “How close?” she said, her voice projected only to the rest of the group.
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“Ten minutes,” Koralo said.
“... That’s Ludek,” she said.
Koralo let his senses take in the new arrivals. “Give me one more minute.”
The Exalted Light cultivators were making their choices quickly- or rather, Ludek was making choices quickly. He had, as many of the groups, forced one of the lesser cultivators to attempt to take a second reward to test the system. Rather than punishing the one responsible, it was an ultimately unfair system where people could be forced into death. Which was rather typical for cultivators, in the end.
As quickly as the cultivator made the choices, however, Koralo was faster with setting up a tunnel. Or rather, something like a bubble. “Everyone gather around me. Defenders behind me, preferably.”
Durff and Lelka stood with their backs to him. Together, the group stepped forward towards the edge of space, Koralo’s bubble pressing against nothing. Velvet saw static beyond, a concerning jumble of shifting light and darkness instead of something comforting like the void of space and stationary stars.
“Could we perhaps go a little bit… faster?” Lelka asked.
“No we cannot,” Koralo said, stepping forward with great intention.
At that point, the wall fell. Whatever words Ludek had were lost to the void between space, as he put in little energy to maintain their transfer. He did, however, gather a great quantity of upper energy, projected forward in a beam of light the shape of his own silhouette.
Lelka shrank herself behind her shield, calling upon her own energy to make use of its properties and scattering the attack, if only for the moment. “See? I told you I should hold onto this.”
At the moment, they were an apparent one hundred meters away from the edge of the stable space. That was an almost irrelevant amount of distance for cultivators of their level. Except, the empty space between was not as convenient to move through as a vacuum. Energy fell apart, and even light was rapidly disintegrated. Most of the other cultivators were unable to launch any attacks. One other Augmentation cultivator managed to reach them but caused no real damage- except perhaps to destabilize their formation, which would be a problem on its own.
Alva’s shots skipped the unstable space in between, her experience with exactly the same construction of subspace having led not only to her advancement to Augmentation but also a new style of archery. Her arrows struck her enemies from wherever she pleased, appearing right next to them in ways they were unprepared to dodge, if they’d even had the speed. All except for Ludek, as her arrows were met by motes of light that broke down her energy with each attack upon him.
“... Still not as bad as a Domination cultivator,” Alva said. “As long as we can hold him off for long enough-”
Suddenly, he was among them. His body was glowing bright like the sun. Lelka spun around, trying to protect herself and maybe somehow protect Koralo’s back. But one among them had already been moving.
Durff swung his metal clad arm, striking it into the ribcage of Ludek. The power of upper energy around the man was sufficient to negate the force of Durff’s attack… but that was not where things ended. There was a clash of principles. The Exalted Light valued a certain sort of power, and frailty was not something they accepted- even if they weren’t so durable as the Hardened Crown. With a cultivation in the late stage of Augmentation, it truly wasn’t possible for Ludek to be damaged even with Durff on the edge of breaking through himself.
But Durff wasn’t in the state of mind to even try to cause damage. His recent experience told him that certain things were practically indestructible to his attacks, but rather than discouraging him it just made him focus more on what he cared about most. Which was hitting things hard enough that they died. If his attack couldn’t kill them… he just had to knock them into something that could.
He didn’t even properly know who he was attacking when he’d spun, he just knew there was something he had to hit. He didn’t have the angle or reaction time to knock Ludek into one of the pedestals, so he settled for a random direction into unstable space. It was in time to save Koralo, but not quite fast enough to stop him from flinging away one of the formation flags Koralo was managing.
The flag flew off in one direction, Ludek in the other.
Instantly, the bubble around them began to bend and distort. Koralo could force some amount of effect from the energy flow around them, but with one flag gone he was propping up more than he’d bargained for- and he had already rushed their departure.
Alva instantly sprang after the formation flag, flickering through the nothingness trying to catch up to it before it was ground down to nothing.
Velvet grimaced, knowing that she should have reacted more quickly. Or perhaps instead of reacting, she should have anticipated.
Step by step they continued onward, and Velvet erased her presence from the mind of even her companions. Ludek would attack them again. That was a surety in her mind. Even if it was dangerous for him, there would be at least one more assault for the insult of attempting to defend against him. That was how people were.
No doubt a man with such power was well aware of killing intent. Velvet might have experience concealing it, but no method was completely perfect. The gap in power made it risky. So, Velvet did the only thing she could do.
She clutched her voidsteel blade in hand, feeling its balance. It was amazingly constructed, as it needed to be to withstand her battles up to that point without the benefit of enchantments. But it was balanced for thrusting and cutting, not throwing.
Runa might forgive her for this someday. Velvet changed her grip on the dagger and threw it off into the void, guided by Instinct alone. It was a terrible idea, brought about by many foolish examples. Durff and Chikere were the biggest proponents of such inanity, acting without thought. Velvet doubted she’d ever be a dagger master- they were simply her weapon of choice- but sometimes, people got lucky.
Obviously she’d had the idea to hit Ludek, but without even knowing quite where he was it couldn’t properly come with killing intent. And the voidsteel would be a patch of nothing in the chaos of unstable partial dimensional subspace, a blip that wouldn’t be noticed.
She only knew her attack met its target when their bubble was clipped by a beam of brilliant light for a single instant… instead of an enduring assault. Too bad she’d never be getting that dagger back. Maybe if she brought the Spirit Slicing Sect the head of someone important from the Exalted Quadrant she could get a replacement.
It wouldn’t be Ludek, because he was sensible enough to make his way back to the stable section away from the group. He would doubtless make his way back to real space… though the rest of those with him were another matter.
Alva made it back, her clothing tattered and carrying about two-thirds of a formation flag. Koralo had them gather closer together, shrinking the bubble as they drew further from their enemies. Each step of a half meter brought them an unknown amount of true distance, and the further they got from the stabilized subspace the more rapidly they lost connection to it, until soon they were surrounded by nothing but a small bubble of energy… and the hope that they could return to somewhere stable to break out layer by layer into real space without being annihilated.