Amalyse cursed loudly. “That—that was—”

“I will find him,” Rieren said. “Take care of the monsters.”

She didn’t wait for any confirmations from them. Time was of the essence. The way Serace had been grabbed by the Shadeborn’s appendage, he was likely horribly mangled, if not dead already. Nevertheless, Serace was a cultivator. Someone who possessed great determination. The least Rieren could do was see if he had survived or not.

Besides, as hard as it was to comprehend that a Shadeborn had been hiding inside the Anachron’s body, she had her priorities. The Beast Core was still in danger of falling into the wrong hands. If nothing else, Rieren would retrieve it.

Around them, the Abyssals were already starting to charge in their direction. She would have to trust that Folend and Amalyse would be enough to deal with the monsters.

The ragged hole in the Anachron’s side was pitch-black. Rieren took a moment to see if she could sense anything. It was too dark, and the sounds she could hear didn’t tell her anything. The squishing, the occasional crunching, and the ripping and tearing all made her heart attempt to tremble in dread.

Taking in a deep breath, Rieren dove inside the Anachron.

It shouldn’t have creeped her out. She had traversed the innards of monsters before. They had all been dark, dangerous, and disgusting to various degrees. But she had never entered one with the hope of retrieving someone alive from within its guts, even in her previous life.

“Serace,” Rieren shouted. “Can you hear me?”

There was no immediate response. Just the continued squelching and tearing noises.

Rieren stepped forward. Her body was already half-covered with the slime and blood of the dead Anachron’s innards. Since her feet kept failing to find proper purchase, she summoned her Domain to flood the area. That didn’t help with the smell, of course, but there was little she could do about that.

A sudden grunt made her hackles rise. Heavy squishes announced something approaching. Something big.

“A pest has made this far?”

The voice was loud but gurgling, as though the speaker was drowning. An Abyssal that could talk. Rare as they were, it wasn’t unheard of. But since Rieren hadn’t met one talking with her since the first day she had arrived in this new timeline, it still caught her a little off-guard.

“Show yourself, Abyssal,” Rieren said. “I will give you three breaths. If in that time, you haven’t revealed yourself, I will kill you.”

“Bold words, for a weak one such as yourself.”

“Continue hiding yourself, then. You will see first-hand how weak I am.”

The monsters laughed. A belly-rumbling laughter, the thought of which made Rieren’s skin crawl, considering how its mouth was mostly in its torso. “You… you must be the one I was warned about. Now it makes sense how such a weakling made it this far.”

“Warned? By the Puppeteer?”

“You know of the Webbed One? My intrigue grows. Who are you in truth, weakling? How does one such as you reach this far?”

This time, Rieren was the one who laughed. It was rather gratifying to be placed in the position where she was the one who held sought-after information, where she was the true mystery that others had to decipher. For once, she wasn’t the one seeking answers from any source available to her.

Then again, she did have many questions about this Abyssal that seemed to know her.

“I am willing to answer your questions if you will answer mine, Abyssal,” she said.

The Abyssal in the dark was silent for a moment. “That is an intelligent deal. However, I cannot reveal everything you may wish to know. As such, I may demure certain inquiries.”

“My words exactly.”

“What a coincidence. I will allow you to begin, weakling.”

Rieren considered. The longer she waited, the more Serace was in danger, if he was even alive in the first place. However, she couldn’t ask that. Not without putting him in further peril and revealing far too much about herself. She couldn’t give the monster any leverage against her, either.

She steadied and held herself still. “What do you look like?”

“What a strange question to begin with.” The Abyssal laughed again. “I will show you.”

He stepped forward, his big feet squishing the Anachron’s innards under him. Just enough to come under the sparse light. Just enough that Rieren needed.

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She stepped forward and immediately activated Gale Blade. The Abyssal didn’t even get to grunt out in surprise. Her first slash flashed past him, cutting through most of the tendons of his thick leg.

The monster tried to bring its axeblade to bear, but Rieren was already moving in the other direction. Her next violent slice cut right through the other leg of the toppling monster. Before it could consider bursting its already-bulging chest-mouth to gobble up more of the surroundings in order to heal itself, Rieren stabbed in with the third slice of Gale Blade.

This one split open the top half of the Shadeborn’s torso. Her sword carved right through its pudgy head, meeting little resistance. The monsters fell in with a splash.

Rieren’s body shook as she pulled Gale Blade to a stop. The skill’s aftermath was already roiling through her body, but she decided to ignore it to the best of her capabilities. “Serace. Are you alive in there?”

There was some slimy slithering coming from within the Shadeborn’s corpse. Rieren headed over to pull her companion out, but it wasn’t Serace in there at all. She stepped back, eyes widening.

It was an Aetherian.

Rieren’s breath caught in her throat. There was Serace too. He was shaking underneath the Aetherian’s body, struggling with something that wasn’t immediately apparent to Rieren. She couldn’t approach to help him, though. The Aetherian was pulling itself out of the dead Shadeborn’s corpse to stand tall.

The filth covering it failed to hide the ostentatious splendour of its form. An angular head with no other features save three horns and a large blue eye in the middle. Two arms, handless and tapering to sharp points. A lone leg under the angular torso, this too ending at a single point. All covered in shining plate that was as white as it was gold. Like pure sunlight.

Rieren shouldn’t have been surprised. The way the Fellserpent had dug holes for the Abyssals to invade the Sect was proof that the Aetherians and Abyssals were working together. But to discover one in the belly of an Abyssal, not to mention one that felt powerful to her, made so little sense.

Her mind was having difficulty wrapping around the possibility that the Shadeborn had eaten an Aetherian that was stronger than it.

“Free,” it said, its voice ringing in from all around it. “Finally.”

“You have been freed.” The development was too surprising for Rieren to determine what the right thing to say was, but it couldn’t hurt to ensure it knew who it owed its freedom. “How did you come to be in the stomach of an Abyssal?”

The Aetherian glanced at her once, then looked away. Apparently, she wasn’t worth its attention. “Hmm, I hear battle outside. Fighting, fighting, and more fighting. I have had enough of these creatures. Enough of their silly squabbles and their rapacious instincts. To turn it against me, a Higher Aetherian, is a sin they must eternally suffer for.”

“What are you going to do?”

“They sought to trick me. They sought to use me. Me! I will not only end them, I will end their hopes and dreams. Crush them down to Abyss dust. Destroy this whole world they would dare to call home.”

Rieren stood still as the filthy, gold-plated monster floated past her. A Higher Aetherian. She had suspected that she was no match for it at her current level of strength, and that settled the debate. Higher Aetherians were at least B-Grade. She couldn’t fight and win against that thing.

Unbidden came the question again what in the world it had been doing in the stomach of a Shadeborn that couldn’t have been more than D-Grade, but that didn’t matter. The Aetherian’s fury might have been directed at the Abyssals, but the way it sought to give vent to its rage would put them all in danger. Rieren had to warn the others before it was too late.

She was about to head outside, following the path the Aetherian had taken, but there was still Serace to think of. Swallowing down her momentary nausea, Rieren plunged her arms into the Shadeborn’s corpse and pulled him out. He was still twitching and twisting as if something invisible was attempting to strangle him.

“Serace,” Rieren said. His eyes were closed. Even if he was alive, his condition was worrying. “Serace, can you hear me. Serace?”

He didn’t reply to her. Not directly. “He did this,” Serace mumbled. “He did this. Stop him. He did this. He did everything and now he regrets it. I can see it inside the Core. He did this. His regret, his anger, his unwary subjects. He did this. He—”

Rieren slapped him. There was no real effect. His skin was far too hot, and now that there was some light to see with, she noticed that he had strange growths on him. They resembled tiny shoots sprouting out of his skin as though his flesh was becoming soil.

Once more, her breath caught. The Beast Core…

“Serace, did you absorb the Beast Core?” she asked. She shook him even as he kept gibbering. “Serace! Did you take in the Beast Core?”

Rieren’s mind felt like it was trying to stay afloat in the shipwreck of information that was trying to pull her under the surface. But even as it struggled, a line of understanding was starting to become clear. That Beast Core was at the centre of this little debacle.

That, and the Aetherian that was about to destroy everything outside—the Abyssals, and likely Amalyse and Folend as well.

If the Beast Core was now within Serace, that meant it had to have been inside the Shadeborn as well. Ironic that despite their headlong charge, they had been too late from the beginning.

But the important thing was that the Aetherian had been within the Shadeborn, and judging by its words, the Shadeborn had used the Beast Core to keep the Aetherian subdued.

“I will return,” Rieren said, gently lowering Serace back to the ground. “I will be back.”

She headed outside. There was no immediate sign of the Aetherian. Her fears weren’t assuaged when she saw how well Amalyse and Folend had done to take care of the Abyssals that were still alive outside. Wasn’t the Aetherian going to make all the other monsters pay? Then where was it?

Rieren didn’t have to look long. A glance upwards revealed the gold-plated monster rising higher and higher, glowing brighter and brighter.

“Amalyse,” Rieren shouted at the top of her lungs. “Folend. Take cover.”

Her shout thankfully pierced through the din of their battle. They both turned in her direction, their eyes immediately drawn to the glowing monster climbing into the air.

Amalyse wasted no time summoning her crimson greatshield. Folend expanded his mace as well, taking cover behind it. Maybe they both felt it too. There wasn’t much room for doubt that the Aetherian was terrible news for all of them. The truly difficult thing was that Rieren wasn’t sure any of their defensive capabilities were enough.

Rieren looked up again. As the Aetherian climbed even higher, little dots of golden light burned into being all around it. It—he, as she recalled facing his kind before, long ago in her previous life—was determined to end everything in sight, it seemed.

Unless Rieren could distract him.