The wriggling roots twisted around for a while, but they weren’t acting as fast as Rieren had hoped they might. She even waited a while. Perhaps Serace needed some time to get things going at a decent pace. Maybe things were happening behind the walls, so Rieren couldn’t exactly see proof of Serace’s activities.

But no. If that had been the case, the chamber would have started shaking by now. Though the roots continued to twist this way and that, they weren’t making any sort of progress.

Rieren grabbed the rod again, channeling her Essence through to make it connect with the Anachron’s Essence within it. “Serace. Can you hear me? Is something the matter?”

Serace didn’t reply immediately. She had to concentrate. The Never Rods needed a strong force of will to establish a proper connection.

“I can’t extend my Essence that far,” Serace finally said.

“What do you mean?” Rieren asked back. “I can already see your Essence working through all the roots here. It is how we are speaking in the first place.”

“No. I need more Essence to do what you want. Getting this far… it’s taken a lot of what the Anachron’s Beast Core could provide. Any more is beyond me. Rieren, I don’t think I can do this…”

“You can.” She stopped. Hollow words of encouragement were only going to get them so far. For all she knew, it might be less a matter of determination and more the fact that something was blocking Serace. “Tell me what is stopping you.”

“I can’t empower these… roots any further. My Essence just won’t go that far. Except…”

Rieren seized on that last bit. “Except what?”

“Except the place where I am speaking with you. There, my Essence can go far. I can use this specific area to reach into your chamber, but the rest are beyond me.”

Ah, so that was it. The only difference between here and the rest of the roots was that this one had a strange rod sticking out of it. “Hold on then. I think I know how to fix it.”

Rieren ran. The world was shooting past her with ferocious speed as she charged towards the next root, pulling out another of the Nerve Rods she had uprooted from just outside the big chamber. Since she was keeping to the edge of the room, she didn’t have to worry about monsters attacking her or any other obstacles.

The roots were arrayed all over the chamber, however. That meant Rieren had quite a bit of running to do. She couldn’t rest between roots either. The longer this went on, the more monsters flooded the battlefield through the still-open Abyss Rents, causing further chaos in the centre of the chamber.

Rieren did her best to ignore it as she went around stabbing more roots with her rods. When she was nearing the other end of the large chamber, she finally took notice of the battle going on there, and the weird, webbed contraption she had seen before.

It seemed to be a silver spire erected at the very centre of the room. Upon closer inspection, Rieren was certain it was made of silver webs all strung together in a tight spiral, construction. But the stranger thing wasn’t the spire itself so much as the figure trapped against it near several dozen paces up along its length.

The Sect Leader.

Rieren swallowed as she swung past, keeping her main focus on Serace’s roots. Solmir was wounded severely, looking more like he was being held in one piece by all those grey strands slung across his bleeding body. It was impossible for her to tell why exactly the Gravemark Puppeteer had hung him in that manner. No doubt, it was nothing good at all.

But the more major concern was the battle just ahead of the spire. Rieren couldn’t make out much of it in the flaming chaos that raged higher and higher. Essalina’s black-and-gold fires were warring with a vicious maroon power that looked as liquid as they were flamelike. But the noise coming from amidst the conflagration sounded vicious.

From what little Rieren could tell, however, it sounded and looked as though Essalina was having great difficulty.

Her black-armoured and black-bladed form was occasionally visible through the fires, but so was her opponent. It looked like the Abyssal was a construct similar to the spire. A being made of pure webs. Except, it was bleeding that strange maroon energy all over.

An energy that was slowly but surely overwhelming Essalina.

Rieren ran on, taking care of the last few roots by stabbing the last of her metal rods through them. As she passed each one, they started wriggling harder, the chamber slowly beginning to shake more as she progressed.

Honestly, she was impressed Essalina had held her ground against the Abyssal for that long. Rieren wasn’t certain how powerful the Gravemark Puppeteer was supposed to be, but it was becoming increasingly clear that it had to be A-Grade or close enough to not matter otherwise. That Essalina had survived so far was a testament to her growth in power.

When Rieren was finally done, when she could finally come to a pause as her fatigue threatened to make her limbs shiver out of their sockets, she stood and admired the effect.

Rieren had to admit it was a rather awe-inspiring sight. She had spotted several roots bursting from the walls at locations here and there all along the chamber’s walls, all of which had come alive like earthy serpents. A quick focus of Essence in her eyes revealed how they were filled to the brim with the Anachron’s Earth-Aspected Essence.

The shaking was intensifying too. With unstoppable power, the roots were digging through the chamber’s walls as they rose as one towards the ceiling. Their force made the whole area tremble.

Rieren just hoped that the room had adequate support underneath, unlike her previous one. Strong as Elder Veylie was, Rieren doubted she could hold this place together too.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A little closer to the centre, the rest of the battle was quickly devolving into chaos. Both the Abyssals and the cultivators had been thrown off-balance by the shaking. Finding it difficult to kill each other when the world was about to pitch them off their feet, they had all separated for the time being. Even better for Rieren.

She would have difficulty surviving the falling ceiling by herself. So, dragging in a deep breath and trying her best to centre herself against the fatigue, she ran towards her companions.

The first cracks started appearing on the ceiling, dust and debris beginning to sprinkle down into the chamber itself. Bless Serace for being fast and efficient.

“Watch out!” Rieren shouted. “The ceiling is about to fall in.”

Most of them heeded her warning, though that might have been mostly because the cracks were loud as thunder overhead. She was still too far away to make herself properly heard. They all knew that it was going to be difficult to evade an entire roof falling down together.

“Gather around,” Elder Veylie yelled at them all. “Hurry!”

The Elder’s Domain was already active. Thorny vines and roots were bursting out of the ground at her feet. Several more had wrapped around her limbs to empower the grounded vines, which were steadily growing larger over time. As the ceiling started breaking apart, they grew thick enough to protect the inhabitants against the worst of the raining debris.

Rieren reached the little congregation in time, thankfully. The Elder’s protection was what she had been aiming for. Though, she did have to stop and catch her breath when she finally reached them.

“What’s going on now?” Amalyse asked, having pushed her way through the little crowd to reach Rieren’s location. “Are you alright?”

“Fine enough. Serace is bringing down the roof.”

“Serace?” Elder Veylie asked. “How in the world did you reach him?”

“The Nerve Rods,” Rieren said. “The ones Essalina used to get to the Dungeon Core. The same concept applies to nearly anything that can channel Essence. They allow a means of establishing communication via Essence, and a means for utilizing the power from a distance.”

“But why?”

“Divine Aspect.” Rieren quickly explained how she had seen the water raining down into the dungeon had held a great amount of Essence, and how Silk and Cerill had discovered the Abyss Rents could be closed with Divine-Aspected Essence applied in a specific, destructive technique. “Serace can use the water in conjunction with his roots all at the same time.”

It was a bit of a long shot, of course. There was no guarantee that Serace could replicate the same technique the Arteroth soldiers were using and do it fast enough. But the others had no better ideas.

The cocoon of black thorns made it difficult to see what was happening outside. As the roof fell, all the monsters’ screams were cut off by the crash of the broken rocks.

Their little barricade was hammered down as well. Elder Veylie’s Essence was powerful, however. Rieren had seen it handle B-Grade Aetherians. A collapsing roof was nothing.

Eventually, the chaos slowed and the noise died down. There was no time to waste, so Elder Veylie let go of her barricade, warning them all to prepare themselves. Rieren had her sword ready. The little moment of talking with Serace and then the subsequent “rest” within the thorny barricade had been enough to replenish a good bit of her dwindling energy.

The very first moment after releasing the black thorns doused them all with chilly water. Rieren looked up. The rain was coming down hard and fast.

They found that the entire battlefield had changed with the crashing roof. Instead of a dome of rock overhead, there was now a twining growth of earthen roots. The gaps between them were more than large enough for the water to fall through and fill the whole chamber.

Rieren wondered how long it would last. It had to have gathered from a spring whose regular channel down the mountainside had collapsed thanks to Lionshard mountain’s demise. So now, it was falling into the mountain.

Farther around them, the landscape had shifted too. The collapsing roof had created several rocky mounds here and there, debris littering the floor nearly everywhere else. There wasn’t a single spot of flatness to be had anywhere any longer. They would have to be careful where they stepped.

“Some of them are still alive,” one of the Arteroth soldiers said, raising his spear burning with his black-and-gold flames. “Look alive, comrades. Our job isn’t done.”

Correct. They still had much to do. But Rieren’s plan had been successful, at least when it came to severely reducing the Abyssal’s numbers. For one, the weaker Abyssals didn’t have any way of protecting themselves against collapsing rooftops. For another, they couldn’t replenish their numbers as they had before. Rieren’s plan really had worked on multiple fronts.

The rest of Serace’s roots were slowly but surely closing the Abyss Rents.

As before with the one Cerill had been sealing, these ones didn’t allow monsters to use it while it was being closed up. Which was strange, now that Rieren really thought about it. The last Abyss Rent she had closed, the one where they had been attacked by the Gravemark Puppeteer, had been used while it was being destroyed.

At least, the Puppeteer had been able to use it. Was it because it was a powerful monster, something that was even stronger than just another B-Grade Abyssal by now?

She looked back. Far off near the very middle of the large chamber, where Essalina had been battling the Abyssal there, things had changed. At least, there was no longer the furious storm of the black-and-gold flames as there had been before.

Rieren grimaced. Dust obscured much of what might be happening in the distance, but she figured that the falling debris had affected the battle negatively. Not good.

Of course, considering Essalina’s level of power, this was a foregone conclusion. When Rieren had ended up killing her in the previous timeline, she had been just about strong enough to defeat a B-Grade monster on her own. An A-Grade Abyssal was well beyond her, and by no small margin either.

That said, it was likely Essalina had been spurred on by her previous life’s events to grow in power, explaining how she had lasted this long. Maybe she was now powerful enough to pose some sort of challenge to the monster far ahead of them all. But current views suggested that wasn’t going to be the case for long, however.

It seemed the Elders had noticed much the same thing as well.

“We will need to leave you as of this moment,” Elder Alm said. “You must defeat the rest of the Abyssals by yourselves.”

“We will take care of them, Elder,” Silk said. There wasn’t an iota of fear or uncertainty in her voice or her stolid expression. “Leave them to us.”

Elder Alm nodded, first to her, then to Elder Veylie. A second later, he dashed off.

“Ensure the Abyss Rents are closed,” Elder Veylie said by way of farewell before disappearing in a burst of thorns from underground.

Amalyse watched them go alongside Rieren. Closer at hand, the battle was restarting as the Arteroth soldiers all charged as one at the surviving Abyssals. Some of the guards and disciples weren’t far behind. But for just a moment, Rieren watched what was going on in the distance. It seemed Amalyse shared the same trepidation too.

“What if it’s not enough?” she asked quietly.

Rieren was considering the same line of thought. None of them here were powerful enough if the Abyssal they were facing was indeed an A-Grade one. She recalled just how much they had struggled against the Fellserpent not so long ago.

This was going to be even harder, considering the Gravemark Puppeteer was more cunning and had been building its power for a while.

“Then we will have to find a different means of defeating it,” she said.

“Means? What sort of means?”

In the back of Rieren’s mind, she had been thinking of this exact scenario since the moment it had been clear that an invasion of the central chamber was imminent and there was no Masked Avatar to assist them. No easy trick to beating a powerful Gravemark Puppeteer as there had been with the undead Fellserpent.

They would have to fight head on.

Rieren took a deep breath. “I might have to take on the Abyssal myself.”