Before emerging from seclusion, Zel took a few moments to double-check that the new Fog Storage bangle from Ingvald was safely attached to her belt, and that his new shells were securely on her belt. She hadn't dared actually fire them down here, after the horrifying output they demonstrated during the test-fire on the surface.
The shells and projectiles of course weren't the only factor by far, but even with Atrine-enriched powder, they somehow produced around two-and-a-half times as much power as normal brass, and sent back half the usual recoil. Zel could scarcely wait to return with her spoils and find that Collier had some insane powder formulation that would be useless for anyone but a cultivator with dragonsteel shells.
On the dawn of the next day, two larger-than-life figures departed for the Crescent Jungle, both enigmatic and surpassing humanity in a way not many in Oasis City did; clan leaders and honored elders, great druids and warriors without equal. Draugrs. Living legends and reclusive immortals. Beings who could no longer be considered entirely human as far as "being human" meant being bound to a limited body with a limited lifespan.
Even many cultivators fell under the umbrella of humanity... But neither the Lady in Red nor the Manufactured Paragon fell among their ranks.
Indeed, they were inhuman creatures.
They departed from Oasis City side by side, one upon a blackstone dragonfly, and the other upon a monstrous motorbike with a metal mammoth's skull at its front.
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There were none who witnessed their bout from a close enough distance to document it; or rather, none who would speak of it and make its course or its result known to history.
It was a terrible battle which forever left marks upon the Crescent Jungle and the ice sheet alike, marks which remained as they were because the Revenant King willed it so, commanding the leshies to only repair what damage had to be repaired.
That terrible battle, which unfolded over the course of three days in waxing and waning bouts, took place many meters off the ground, rarely ever reaching the undergrowth of the Crescent Jungle. Whether jumping from tree to tree, simply flying, or using manifested Thundergods as grapples, neither Karmesin nor Zelsys had any need to conform to the grounding demand of gravity. At times, Zelsys would even put electromagnetism to task in levitating herself or slowing her fall by manipulating her own semi-metallized flesh, but she could not fly in the same unfettered manner as Red.
A carnivale of deathly northlight filled the ancient jungle, rays and myriad arrows screaming through the air and filling it with a phantasmagoria that would send those with weaker minds into seizure or else force them to temporarily blind themselves lest they be struck to the ground in convulsions. Uncountable pillars dotted the treescape, a twisting maze that only grew more complex with time, being added onto faster than it could crumble away. For the better part of ten hours, they battled around the perimeter of a single tree, and in the course of this battle, Karmesin uprooted it with her constructs, slowly, undetectably. She then brought it crashing down straight onto Zelsys, after having already surrounded her with a formation that would hold her for mere seconds, but that was enough.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Karmesin dared not hope when the tree crashed down on her foe and silence reigned. Her hesitation to hold out hope was proven right when the absolute terror of a woman simply emerged at the tree's edge, having dug through hundreds of meters of root-strengthened earth with barely any air, as if her breathing technique no longer required it. By comparison, the feat was akin to digging through the same distance in solid mundane stone. She had prepared, however; she had detected Zelsys' impending emergence and prepared, arranging three of her subcores as the pillars of a formation, while herself using the fourth as an amplifier. The rainbow orb floated in the palm of her hand, reflector plates revolving around it and sending rays of northlight to each of the pillars in turn. Her skull threatened to pull apart. Three more horns emerged from the back of her head as the crystal substance of her nervous system strained. Blood, so filled with northlight strands as to nearly lose its crimson shade, poured forth from her eyes, her ears, her nose and mouth, from the very gaps where the Crown of Horns grew through her skull. She hated that shape, hated it for reminding her of the wretched form she'd taken in the Dungeon, but it was the only way she could exert the world-bending power that this formation demanded.
From the surrounding soil and wood, and couple out of thin air, eleven black pillars slammed into place to enclose the emerging Newman Elder as she exploded out from beneath the fallen tree. Between each pillar, further branch pillars formed connections. They weren't mere faux-blackstone. The accursed lilac magic of the Black Rod pulsed through them. Back then, during the blood feud, a fragment of eldritch knowledge had lodged itself into Karmesin's brain. Unlike mortals, she hadn't had the privilege of merely forgetting or going mad, she had to parse it and learn what it meant, just as that Doppelsoldner had done.
The formation pressed inward until the physical space within it was no more than, at most, half a meter across.
What better to suppress the Walking Tribulation than the power which imprisoned the Sun itself?
IDOLATRY SIGN
SIX TRIGRAM ELEVENFOLD BURIAL
CRIMSON COMMAND: PANDORA 66
Zelsys found herself trapped in another plane, in a dome of blackstone pillars, half-submerged in the Sea of Fog. Almost like that time back in Arches, but much, much smaller, barely large enough to stand up in. She prepared to simply smash her way out, but the blackstone pulsed with lilac light illustrating uncountable trigrams on the dome's many surfaces, and merely glimpsing them dragged at her eyes and made her brain ache. She found her strength waning, a crushing, choking pressure robbing it from her. It was almost as if she had just been forced back down to the state she was in on the road from Arches to the Meat Market. Almost.
She sat down, closed her eyes, and did what she could.
This was halfway between the material world and the Sea of Fog, after all.
Karmesin had inadvertently handed her the means by which she would break this formation.