Chapter 257 - Bottom of the Sky III

Claire narrowed her eyes as the queen’s men filed into the room, led by the crocodile that had escaped them at the end of the previous year. The sewer runner stiffened when he saw the corpses scattered all over, sighing only as he confirmed that the monarch was still in one piece. His solace, however, was short-lived. The relief quickly turned to horror when she was spirited away at Arciel’s command.

He spun around the moment she was warped and craned his neck up to her new location. Eyes wide and fists trembling, Sir Deilos immediately made for the still-crowded exit, but Claire gave the pet lizard no chance to reconvene with his owner.

She stuck out a hand and grabbed him from afar. He had shrugged off her vectors during their first encounter. Back then, she had only been able to tear a few scales and hinder his movement, but with her points invested, she had no trouble lifting him off the ground. The confused lizard flailed about, but it was a fruitless effort. She seized all four of his limbs at once and pulled them in different directions, drawing and quartering the warrior in midair.

He was unable to break free until he enraged. His eyes filled with madness, he turned towards her and unleashed a bestial roar. He kicked off the ground, followed by a group of elites almost twenty men strong. They were the guards that served as the ministers’ right hands, accomplished fighters the key government figures were willing to entrust with their lives. Alas, they were too late to fulfill their duties. All their masters lay dead on the floor. And they themselves were quick to follow.

Stepping in their path, Natalya allowed only Deilos to pass. She dove into the crowd with both her weapons drawn, the horse-slayer in one hand, and the rapier in her mouth. The first man she challenged blocked both her blades, but she raked her claws across his throat before he could recover from the heavy impact.

Another man rushed her as the first fell. He roared at the top of his lungs, his sword raised overhead and his feet pounding against the sand. The kelpfin’s bloodthirsty charge was fearsome as a bull’s. His raw energy screamed that he would trample everything in his path. But he was too slow. She closed the distance between them before he could lower his blade and delivered a heavy slash that arced across his chest.

A third assailant snuck up on her from behind, but she whirled around and struck with her rapier. He raised his sword in time to block it, only for the catgirl to release the blade from between her teeth. Catching it in her free hand, she impaled him, effortlessly running him through with no concern for his defense. She was swarmed upon his death. A dozen soldiers charged her all at once, but the results remained unchanged. The catgirl almost seemed unstoppable, at least until an elephant met her head-on.

She was a petite, tuskless female that stood a full head shorter than the feline berserker. But despite her small stature, she had no trouble rejecting the blademaster’s attacks. The katars in her hands were not made of steel or iron, but a bright blue metal, the very same material used in the cat’s heirloom sword.

The elephant jabbed her blades forward one at a time, like she was delivering a series of punches, and forced Natalya to retreat into the path of an enemy pike. It nearly pierced her side, but she spun out of the way before it could land and kicked the spearman into her assailant.

Unfortunately for the man in question, the erdbrecher had no concern for his well-being. She cleaved him in two with a sadistic chop and dashed between his parting halves. The petite mammoth drew a third katar with her trunk as she closed the distance and swung all three blades at once.

Lia took half a step back and caught the onslaught in a single, well-placed parry. With her hips as a fulcrum, she pushed forward and led into an attack, but the erdbrecher backflipped out of her range. The agile demonstration earned the long-nosed warrior only a moment of relief. Her foe lunged and intercepted her right as her feet touched the ground.

There was another clash of blades. Metal sparks filled the darkened room as Lia led with her horsekiller. The rogue barely parried each blow as she backed away. Her allies stepped forward, only to be slain each time they came to her aid. Before long, she found herself with nowhere to go; her back was against a pillar, and the catgirl’s swords were closing around her neck like a pair of scissors. She barely evaded by ducking and springing forwards, only to discover that she had fallen for a feint. Natalya threw her rapier towards her mouth as soon as the katar-wielder lowered her stance and swiped at her with her claws instead.

A plume of blood spurted into the air as she caught the smaller warrior’s trunk, but the wound was too shallow, a mere glancing blow. The prehensile nose darted towards the cat undeterred, leaving a cut on her face following a narrow dodge. Three others surrounded Lia and slashed at her with their blades, but she ducked beneath their attacks and cut their legs out from under them. This retaliation earned her a shallow cut from the elephant, but it was hardly damning.

They exchanged several blows in close quarters, quick thrusts, weak slashes. Neither side suffered any major damage, but it soon became clear that the cat was at a disadvantage. Her weapons were longer, unsuited for an extended melee, and the elephant wasn’t giving her the room that she needed to deal with everyone else that came her way.

But though it looked like she would soon be whittled down, Lia showed no signs of panic. She dug her feet into the ground and leaned into the base of the erdbrecher’s right knife. Her fist flew forwards as she shouldered the attack and drove the butt of her rapier into the elephant girl’s gut. Backed by a thousand points of health, the empowered strike was heavy enough to send the katar-wielder into and through the pillar.

A different elephant nearly struck her from behind before she could pull back her fist, but she side-stepped his attack whilst drawing a pair of runes in the air. One was the usual, a quick enrage to restore her missing health and fix her wounds, whereas the other was a trick she picked up when her berserker class had evolved.

It was a character available only to those that walked her master’s path. She was no longer an ordinary, run of the mill runecraft berserker, but a fervent runeblade. And it was precisely the eponymous rune of fervour that she had inscribed into the air in front of her. The ancient, powerful letter shook like a ringing bell as its form was completed. And for a few moments, it remained, ingraining itself into the fabric of reality before lighting up like a match and burning to ash.

The spell came with few visible changes. The glimmer in the catgirl’s eyes grew brighter and wilder, and her claws grew three times longer. Her back was hunched and her knees were bent—her whole body was closer to the ground. It was a bestial stance, showing no signs of training or reason. And yet, the seasoned veterans inadvertently backed away with beads of sweat forming atop their brows. There was a strange pressure radiating from the catgirl, one that their bodies understood better than their minds.

Had her master been present, he would have surely been glad to explain the rune’s effects. It was a modifier. The magical letter allowed her to enrage with a far lesser penalty, or at least that was the gist. To be more specific, she could achieve the same status boosts as she would when she dived to the deepest levels while only activating the drawbacks associated with the first. With the class just over five hundred, she could dive to level eleven. And with each stage increasing all of her ability scores by roughly thirty percent, she found herself with eighteen times her usual strength. All exchanged for a few pinches of sanity.

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For the most part, her mind was still intact. But her inhibitions were gone, her sense of morality replaced with raw bloodlust.

The difference in her speed was made immediately apparent. She moved through the room, dashing between her enemies with her swords and claws flashing through the air. At first, there was no sound, nor any other obvious results. But then it all caught up with her at once. The distinctive roaring of thunder. The knights were torn apart, the slashes so violent that they completely obliterated them with the raw bludgeoning force. Their blood and guts exploded all over the room. Raw viscera painted the scene in a thick, goopy layer of red.

And yet, there remained a number of survivors, among which stood the tiny katar wielder and a grug shrouded in a holy shield.

She directed her attention to the final target without even a moment of hesitation. Her mind was hazy, but she recognised the cat-pawed frog as the most powerful of the three queensblades. He was Sir Klaun, an enemy VIP that they were meant to approach with caution.

Alas, the concept was one that did not exist within the realm of the catgirl’s mind.

Lia dashed right up to the holy frog and thrust her swords toward his heart. She was blindingly fast, but the man was unperturbed. He stood and waited, his hands behind his back, as the tip of her blade crashed into his golden barrier. For a moment, it looked like the magical defense would hold, but the cat stomped her feet into the ground and pushed the weapon forward with a feral yowl.

Her two-handed blade pierced right through the defense. It was slow and steady at first, but it accelerated as she twisted her hips. Evidently, the man wasn’t expecting his shield to be so easily destroyed. He was half a moment too slow in his retreat and lost the hand he was using to maintain the spell.

The paladin grit his teeth and placed his remaining paw on the stump. With a pulse of magic, he immediately saw the missing limb restored. The same holy light spread throughout the room and healed the few that still clung to life, while another, bluer aura bestowed upon them the vigour they needed to stand.

More troops poured in through the open door before the cat had a chance to re-engage. The reinforcements consisted primarily of erdbrechers and penguins, with the latter group dressed from head to toe in traditional military attire.

Ignoring the fresh blood, Natalya shifted her focus to the erdbrechers that had lived through her prior attack. She snaked her way through the room and appeared in front of each to deliver a back-breaking blow. Their freshly healed bodies were torn apart, destroyed again with greater accuracy and power. The priest immediately set to fixing them, but alas, there was little he could do with the damage so heavy.

She dashed right up to the katar girl so she could repeat the execution, but she was more powerful than her next of kin. With the buffs increasing her speed, she was barely able to avoid the attack and retreat back into the crowd. To the enraged cat, her fate was hardly of notice, but Lia chased her nonetheless, lashing out at everyone and anyone that crossed her path. Technically, the attacks were slashes, and slashes performed with masterful finesse, but the sheer violence that accompanied her strikes completely changed their nature. Everyone that she touched was effectively turned to goop.

One full second was all she needed to trim the crowd and shred the three dozen reinforcements; the cat was only half a step away from claiming the tiny erdbrecher’s life when the paladin inserted himself between them and deflected her blade with his fist.

His other hand, he drove towards her face, the barrier transformed into a wall of serrated blades. Her nose was only half a centimeter away when she twisted her head out of its path and retaliated with a long, swiping slash. The rapier between her lips whistled through the air, an attack backed by the full, rotational force of her hips.

The grug threw up his guard right away. But it was precisely because he reacted so quickly that he failed to defend. Dysfunctional as ever, Lia’s rapier whipped through the air only after a brief delay. The supple metal wrapped around his arm like a piece of rubber, looping around and tearing a hole in his unprotected flank.

It would have pierced his heart in the same swift motion, had he failed to retreat. The blade erupted from the front of his body instead, splitting his ribcage and spilling its contents.

She stepped forward as he stumbled back. Her longsword was raised over her shoulder in preparation to deliver the final blow. But it was only as she committed to the attack that her broken mind noticed the smirk on his giant, froggy lips.

He raised his hand, which had only two of its digits extended, and dyed everything around them in a bright yellow light. Like how Arciel could pray to the moon and sear her foes with Griselda’s beams, the anuran could pray to his lord and entreat him for judgement.

For the seaside people that worshipped Krebb, the god of cylinders, every such instance manifested in the form of a rounded piston. The catgirl was fully paralyzed, frozen in place as the ground beneath her feet flattened into a perfect circle. A second, equally perfect cylinder appeared directly above and slowly descended from the sky. It was only as the cylinder touched her that she was given control over her body again. She pushed against it with all the strength her enrage had bestowed, but it refused to slow, let alone stop. The catgirl kicked off the ground when she realised her mistake, but she couldn’t fully escape the trap. One of her legs was caught, completely crushed beneath the celestial weight.

Though maimed, she sprang forward with her gait off balance and unsteady. It was a haphazard assault led by a predictable, horizontal sweep. Having fully read it, thanks to her broken stance, the paladin drove his empowered fist straight into the feral beast’s fingers, shattering them to bits before her weapon could reach his gut. He sidestepped the rapier slash that followed and prepared a more powerful counter imbued with the might of his god, only to find the heavier weapon still travelling toward him.

Klaunn grit his teeth as he realised that he had been tricked. There was already a blob of flesh growing to replace her leg. It was a mess of raw sinews and bits of broken bone, filled with leaky veins and half-formed tissue. Had her rage not dulled her pain, she surely would have screamed and howled as her exposed nerves were rubbed against the sand. Because she had driven the bloody stump into the ground and used it as a pivot.

The attack had never been a horizontal sweep, but a spinning slash. And when he pulverised her right hand, she had only continued by catching the weapon with her left.

The paladin was able to expand his blessed aura by clenching his stomach and digging his heels into the sand. But while it had blocked her attacks before, the barrier shattered as it was introduced to her greatsword again.

And it was then that a second realisation struck.

He could tell from the way her sclera had blackened.

She was a dark knight. And she had empowered her next blow.

Panic set in as he worked as quickly as he could. He straightened just two of his fingers and uttered a prayer at lightning speed. Knowing that his lost lamb was in danger, the deity obliged immediately and formed a defensive shell around his body.

There was a loud crack when the catgirl’s attack landed. But not because the barrier was broken. Her longsword was shattered instead; being made of mere steel, it had been unable to handle the brute strength that backed her swings. Klaunn breathed a grateful sigh and began to thank his Lord, but the pious act was cut short by the feline’s second blade. Her rapier spun to life, its blade becoming something of a blur as she drove it towards him and cut right through his godsent shield.

The warrior ducked under the blow just in time to avoid it, and with two fingers extended, summoned a second cylindrical press with the few points of faith that he had left to spare. The prismatic tool froze the catgirl and descended from the sky. It caught her in its jaws, but she ripped through it just as easily as she had penetrated his barrier.

Planting her good foot on the ground, she twirled to bolster her momentum. And delivered the final blow straight across his neck.