“I cannot run,” Elder Olg choked out.

“You do not need to run while I am here,” Rieren said.

Elder Olg only gave the barest shake of his wizened, withered head, too weak to even disagree vocally.

The webs were continuing to flail about. At this rate, the only reason Appraiser hadn’t come to check on them was because of the Banishedborn keeping him busy. But that didn’t mean they were safe. In fact, ferocious though the battle might be, it could end at any moment, and then they’d be caught. Which meant Rieren needed to hurry.

“Elder,” Rieren said, getting close and gripping his shoulder. “I will carry you from here. Come.”

“I will not survive this, Rieren.”

“We can re-enter the dungeon. The others are alive, Elder. The Sect Leader and the other Elders. They are all safe.” She was trying to impress upon him that the situation wasn’t dire. That she wasn’t here, outside of the dungeon because she was the lone survivor. More than anything, what Elder Olg needed was hope. “You will survive this. You must!”

“Enough, Rieren.” For the first time since she had awakened him, there was a bit of fire in Elder Olg’s voice. “This body has been… shattered by the corruption the Abyssal and the Avatar have visited upon it. I can abide it no longer. Besides, I have a duty to the Sect.”

“Duty and duty and more duty. Is that all you will take care of, Elder? Your duties? What of your ambitions? What of your wishes and desires?” She gripped his shoulder tighter than before. “Do they not matter?”

Despite his seeming frailness, Elder Olg slowly got to his feet. Rieren was forced to relinquish her grip and take several steps back.

“When you become an Elder of a Sect, Rieren,” he said with the affected air of great wisdom like he did whenever he was teaching. “You learn that you must shift your priorities. That your goals can no longer simply embody you and you alone. As an Elder, your goals must encompass all of the Sect. And that means taking actions that might even go against your best interests.”

Rieren stood still as the Elder took a faltering step past her. Her thoughts were still though her heart still roiled at the fact that, in the end, nothing she had done had been truly enough to save Elder Olg.

All those times he had saved her. All those moments he had been there for her. And in the end—

Rieren gritted her teeth. Monkey’s balls, in the end, it was his choice what he wished to do with this life, even if it meant spending it in an effort to stop their enemies. There was no time for her to waste moaning about her loss. She’d seen more than enough in her last life.

Since it was more than clear by now that this one wasn’t going to be any better, she ought to get used to the losses again too. No matter how cracked, her heart would keep pumping.

“How do we stop them?” Rieren asked.

Why might have been a better question, in truth. She was starting to understand the reason behind the Elder’s intention, though. Neither the Banishedborn, nor the Avatar could be trusted.

Essastior had already destroyed the majority of Lionshard mountain. It would be no surprise if he went on to invade the dungeon’s interiors and attempted to annihilate the Sect there as well. The same could be said of the Avatar. He might have set his sights against the Banishedborn and their divine masters, but he had chosen to be one with the Abyssals to do it.

The monsters that had been attempting to destroy the Sect from the very beginning of the apocalypse. No, they both needed to die.

“I doubt we can stop them both,” Elder Olg rasped out. He had sunk to one knee again, though he was staring resolutely at the distant battle. “But if you find a way to kill one of them, then I can deal with the other.”

Rieren wasn’t sure how she might do that at first. Abyss, she wasn’t even certain how Elder Olg planned to take down either the Avatar or the Banishedborn in his current condition. She trusted him, though. That meant all she needed to focus on was her side of the matter.

Batcat meowed loudly, as though to remind her of its presence. Rieren smiled. Or rather, it was reminding her that she could count on it too.

“Leave the Avatar to me, Elder,” she said.

Elder Olg glanced at her. “Oh?”

In response, Rieren strode past him and reached the end of where the long line of silver threads was vibrating on their own. A quick look on either side confirmed that the threads connecting the dead Anachrons to the Avatar weren’t in any state of agitation like the ones before her. For now.

All it took was one look at Batcat before the winged kitten did the same to those threads as it had done to the ones holding Elder Olg. Rieren wasted no time swiping through them with her Divine-Essence-imbued Receptor sword either.

The tide of battle was shifting. Essastior’s red lighting blitzed harder and brighter now. Appraiser’s Domain seemed more muted too, and several parts of what little of the tree Rieren could see in the gloom were on fire. It was working. With his sources of power now cut off, the Avatar was clearly struggling to maintain the same output against the Banishedborn.

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But that wasn’t enough. He was still standing his ground. Rieren would have to take further action.

Good thing she knew exactly what she needed to do.

It was a small matter to bunch up all the wriggling threads together and then clasp them onto herself. She didn’t even have to expend much effort. Once she had gathered the chopped webs, they began trying to mummify her in much the same way they had done to their previous victims.

The corrupted Essence took immediate hold of her. Her skin prickled all over as the dirty Essence flowed over, and she could feel a tug deep within her as her meridians began to pour out Essence she wasn’t even channelling. The Avatar had found a new victim to leech off.

Of course, Rieren was a poor substitute. Even after having advanced a few stages in her realm and rising a few levels since the last time she had fought Mountain, she doubted she was providing the same level of power as both Anachrons and their Beast Cores. She was also nowhere near the same potential source of energy as the Elder had been.

She grinned as the tugging sensation intensified and her senses started to dull. So this was what the Elder had felt before he had completely lost consciousness. But no matter. Rieren wasn’t about to let it last long enough to get to that level of danger.

“Rieren…” the Elder said from behind, a warning note in his voice.

“I will be alright, Elder,” she said. Though, the tone of her voice undercut her words. It was turning raspy and weak just like Elder Olg’s. She managed to twist her head to look down at her feline companion. “Batcat.”

The winged kitten made a face of distaste before padding closer to her. It hesitated for a few moments before opening its little mouth wide and landing a heavy bite on Rieren’s calf. She barely felt the sting of its little teeth over the sensation of the Avatar drawing out her power and her faded senses.

But then the whole world shifted as Batcat’s power took hold. All her sensations disappeared as a series of images flashed through Rieren’s mind.

She did her best to hold onto her consciousness as well as she could. This was Batcat’s power of manipulating memories coming into effect, just as she had intended. It was creating a link between her spirit and the Avatar’s memories. A link that Rieren was about to use to devastating effect.

Once she got over the flood of Appraiser’s memories, of course. There was a lot to parse. Batcat had simply opened the floodgates of all that was stored in the Avatar’s head into her own with nothing to damp the flow.

Rieren watched a little boy travelling the streets of the capital aboard his father’s expensive palanquin. Even as a youth of no more than a decade, he had been made to wear a mask of whitest ceramic.

That same youth had grown into a young cultivator showing great promise. Under the imperial clan’s direct tutelage, in the wide practice courtyards of the Forborne Emperor’s palace, he had summoned his Domain far earlier than most of his contemporaries. A tall tree of golden bark and silver leaves towered into the sky a few paces from the sweating youth, his Elders looking on with pride.

It wasn’t long before the youth was properly inducted into the imperial court as a direct arm of the Emperor. One of the youngest Avatars to join the illustrious ranks.

Mission after mission he went on for the Emperor he was growing to love and respect. Dozens of clans he brought under the Emperor’s heel, scores of dissidents killed all over the Elderlands, and thousands subdued so that all could live in relative harmony. He never faltered. No matter what was required of him, he never balked. Never hesitated.

Not even when his own father turned out to be a ringleader of traitors. Young though the Avatar was, he had learned to be decisive long ago.

And at that moment, he knew the Empire superseded any other loyalty he might have once borne.

His father was certainly not the last of his victims.

Almost a century passed before the first signs of true upheaval showed themselves. Powerful beings with no seeming origin began roaming the lands. More monsters flooded the Elderlands, Spirit Beasts leaving to the corners as new beings called Aetherians and Abyssals threatened to upend the order.

Not long after, the revolts began as the apocalypse started. A new source of power came into being—a system that granted strength via stats and achievements, where one could use skills without needing to train them.

Even the imperial court itself began shifting. Old courtiers and ministers gave way for new, nefarious ones. Trails of deceit led farther and higher until the Avatar was looking up at the heavens itself. The apocalypse had come down from the gods, and they had entrenched their clawed hooks into the Emperor and his imperial court without anyone the wiser.

And so began the Avatar’s journey to find a way to rid the influence of the gods from the imperial court. A journey that had led him here, conjoined with an Abyssal in an effort to defeat one of the gods’ Banishedborn.

It was difficult for Rieren to exert any measure of control over the river-rapids flow of images and sensations. In the succession of memories, she couldn’t fully comprehend the magnitude of the Avatar’s feelings. She couldn’t absorb the weight behind them. But she did see that his conviction burned as bright and powerful as his Domain tree had been.

Nevertheless, the connection offered by Batcat was twofold. What Rieren could properly feel was the Avatar straying into her memories in much the same way as she had seen his.

Of course, that was likely to be a fatal distraction in his worsening fight against Essastior. He was shutting her out, preventing her thoughts from infringing upon his concentration. But the interchange of memories didn’t have to be passive. Instead, Rieren wrenched control of the connection into her own hands directly.

Then she slammed the Avatar with her past life.

The riot of images Rieren had seen was nothing compared to what went through Appraiser’s consciousness. An unending succession of defeat and victory, of growth secured from the jaws of loss, of triumph and heartbreak in equal measure, of the sacrifices she had gone through for over a century. Of the final moment she had confronted the gods themselves.

And that was what finally broke through. All of a sudden, the connection between Rieren and Appraiser was severed.

She found herself standing exactly where she had been just when the world had disappeared, staggering a little. The webs entrapping her were falling off, limp and dead. All the corrupted Essence around her was puttering out. Extinguished like candle flames in the wind.

The battle had stopped too, as far as she could tell. There were no more furious shouts and clashes of power, no bright lights bursting through the dusty gloom. The Avatar’s tree had crumbled to splinters and was slowly turning into more dust. As the veil cleared, Rieren could finally make out the effect of her interference.

Appraiser had finally fallen to his foe.

She couldn’t make out the exact wound at this distance or what might have finally killed him. Essastior was standing over his dead foe, spear of red lightning still in hand.

With a jerk, he turned to face Rieren. Her spine turned rigid at the prospect of fighting him in her condition—groggy and disoriented after having occupied a mental space for longer than she considered ideal.

But any prospect of a battle between her and the Banishedborn was dashed when Elder Olg stepped past her, frail legs and all.

“My turn now,” he said.