“What—” Rieren’s voice failed her at the surprising turn of events.

“Be not alarmed, Rieren,” Elder Olg said, with all the equanimity of a stroll on the Sect grounds. “We are here to assist you.”

“What in the world are you doing here? And how is there—” Her eyes landed on Batcat, floating placidly as the Abyss Rent disappeared behind it. “Did you summon the Abyss Rent, cat?”

Batcat meowed an answer that sounded like a proud affirmative.

“Well, I say we, but in truth, it’s really the cat who’s going to be doing most of the assisting.”

Rieren frowned. The monsters below had begun to howl, getting impatient and anxious to kill her as soon as they could. They didn’t look like they wanted to attack yet, though, likely because they were as surprised as her at the sudden appearance of the Elder and the little Spirit Beast.

“You can grant me the memory of the past?” she asked Batcat.

In response, Batcat slid Elder Olg’s head off its back to drop him on the cloud beside Rieren, then jumped straight into her. It was going to take a long time before Rieren stopped being surprised by that.

More important than her surprise, however, were the changes coming into effect. As before, she was growing stronger. Her muscles hardened, her body grew marginally bigger, and power flooded her. The growth through the realms of cultivation was so steady, it was difficult to compare that she was more powerful than before.

Not so now. Rieren stood, the air twisting around her, Essence lighting up in the sight of her Essence-infused eyes.

“I will end this quickly,” she said.

Elder Olg tried to nod but failed without the proper base for his muscles. “I would ask fortune to favour your steps, but I imagine the monsters below are going to need it a lot more than you.”

Granting him a departing grin, Rieren jumped right off her cloud. She ordered it to deposit the Elder’s head far enough away that he would be safe while the cloud still remained within the vicinity if her influence—it would dissipate if it got too far from her.

Rieren landed next to the dead Shifter’s body. She had left it in a bad state with her attack, but the crash from that high above had squashed a large section of its body too. But Rieren didn’t pay it much mind. Not when there were three monsters before her who needed her direct attention.

They seemed to be hesitating again. Even the Blightmane and the Shadeborn, both at powerful B-Grade levels of strength, had sensed that she was now possibly mightier than them both combined.

“You have finally come down and chosen to die with some dignity,” the wounded Abyssal said. “I will grant you a smidge of honour, then.”

“And in return, I will grant you a quick death.”

The monster growled in reply. Then it jerked its paw at the other Abyssals. The battle began as all three rushed at her.

They were fast, of course. Even the Shadeborn was quick on its thick legs. In her previous form, Rieren might even have had trouble keeping up with their motion, especially the Blightmane’s. But in her current state, there was no such trouble.

Batcat had granted her a great deal of strength.

Thanks to all the Beast Cores she had fed Batcat, its ability was now stronger. It was still weaker than what Temporal Recollector could have granted, but much more powerful than what Batcat had been able to conure when they had first executed it on the broken slopes of Lionshard mountain.

As the monsters got closer, Rieren summoned her Domain. Water burst out of the ground in a stormy spray, bounding and spreading outwards even faster than the Abyssals were moving towards her. Their movement was stymied by the flow of her Domain, but they pushed past it quickly.

It was a good thing Rieren was fast now too. She rushed straight at the Blightmane, the fastest of the Abyssals outpacing the other two.

Fast and fluid though its every motion was, her Mind was stat was more than enough to keep up with it. Earthfall Blade let her deflect its flurry of blows with ease, her increased Body stat letting her rebuff the physical force behind its strikes with ease.

Even better, her stats were high enough now that she could actually counterattack the Blightmane in between its blows. Once she blocked its swipe, there was a tiny amount of space where it was forced to draw its arm back. Thanks to her advanced stats, that tiny window was enough for Rieren to launch her own blows against it.

Not that they did much. Its fur was too impenetrable even for her increased strength, and it was doing well to ensure its midsection steered clear from her range.

They couldn’t continue the exchange in that manner for long. The other monsters reached them soon enough. Perhaps they had hoped to overwhelm her by attacking altogether and prevent her from deflecting every attack.

Rieren had other methods of making sure she wasn’t hit. Silken Passage turned her motion as fluid as the water she moved across. A few quick bursts of the skill let her evade the Shadeborn’s crushing blows from its cleaver as well as the unidentified Abyssal’s swipes and the thrusts of its claws and tail.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

That said, the sheer ferocity of their attacks and their numbers were preventing her from counterattacking. She couldn’t just keep defending and dodging. Call of the Past would run out soon enough, and then she would be in great danger of being overwhelmed by the Abyssals.

So, Rieren jumped far, far back from the monsters, keeping them all on one side of her. They tried not to give her any space, charging at her with blistering speed that might have worried her before.

But now, she was more than fast enough.

Rieren used Wrath of the Swordwing. A burning, golden-orange halo rippled to life behind her back, shading the water before her burnt copper in colour. The next second, a thousand swords formed in the shape of wings at her back, bursting out from either side of the halo and glowing as though they were about to melt.

The wings—her swordwings—were under her full control. If Rieren wished, she could have used them to take flight, could have flapped them or twisted them however she saw fit.

But for now, she simply raised them high, then stabbed both swordwings down into her Domain’s water. The gleaming swords broke off her wings to stab into the stormy surf. At the same time, she pulled her sword back and slashed in a wide, arcing motion, using her Heaven’s Arc technique simultaneously.

The rippling crescent-shaped shockwave that burst outwards slammed towards the onrushing monsters with incredible speed. As it passed over her Domain, it gathered the roiling water around.

And her swords went with it too.

In essence, Rieren had created and let loose an enormous tidal wave, which was studded from crest to trough with her numerous burning swords. They hadn’t called her the Thousand Bladed goddess for nothing.

The monsters didn’t stand a chance. There was nowhere for them to dodge, not at the rate it rushed at them, and one of the greatest weaknesses of many Abyssals was that they didn’t have any adequate defensive measures. Rieren’s move struck them head-on, the blades piercing through their flesh and rending them apart as much as the stormy water borne by Heaven’s Arc.

A furious explosion burst out when the combined attack landed. Whatever screams the monsters might have let loose were lost in the chaos of the brilliant light and furious noise.

When the enormous wave passed and her swords slowly evaporated into floating bits of glowing energy, all that was left was a flooded land filled with Abyssal blood and dozens of broken corpses, two of which stood out from the rest.

Rieren blinked. Two. Not three. There had been three B-Grade Abyssals still alive.

She stared up. Ah. The wounded monster had been fast enough to jump into the air and use its aerial mobility to get out of harm’s way. It had hung back, likely because it was still wary of the fact that its injury would make it lose against Rieren. Especially now that she was overpowered compared to it.

“Come down,” Rieren called up to it. “And face your end.”

The Abyssal stared down at her. There was no change in its stance. Not that she had expected one. It was still holding one limb against the deep wound she had left against near its waist. If it came down, that meant death by her hand for certain. But what was it planning? She couldn’t exactly wait here all night for it to conjure up some miracle.

“If you will not come down,” Rieren said, stepping forward. “Then I will need to come to you.”

That agitated the Abyssal into action. “Let us bargain. Why conduct pointless fighting when we can both exchange more important matters?”

“I have nothing I wish to say to you. Bargaining would only be a loss for me. Your Beast Core however…”

Rieren was rapidly approaching the spot around the area under where the monster was floating almost two dozen paces in the air. She didn’t need to summon the little cloud again. Her Domain would take her to where she needed to be to kill that thing once and for all.

“Do you not wish to know what I am doing here, Arianaele?”

There were too many things in that sentence that made Rieren want to pause. It had used her moniker as a goddess. How had an Abyssal come to know it? Besides that, there was the surety in its voice, as though it knew the answers it held were tantalizing indeed. Almost as though it knew Rieren wanted those answers.

“Enough with your prattling,” she said. “It is time you died.”

“Hold on a moment!”

This time, it wasn’t the Abyssal that had spoken. Rieren glared behind. It was the Elder.

“Tell us what you know, Abyssal,” he said from his perch atop her a tree branch at the far end of her Domain. “If your answers satisfy us, we might consider letting you leave peacefully.”

Rieren shook her head. She had said nearly the exact same thing to the Gravemark Puppeteer that had taken over the dungeon within Lionshard mountain, mostly as a way of finding out the truth. But what truth could this lone B-Grade Abyssal have?

Though, Elder Olg’s voice did catch her by surprise a little. He was so far away that he had to shout to make himself heard. Yet, he had no lungs. Nothing to pull in and compress air before passing it out. And why hadn’t she ever wondered how exactly he was talking before, when she had noted the lack of mobility of his head so clearly?

Questions whose answers didn’t really matter. Well, not as much as whatever the Abyssal might say.

“Is that amenable to you as well?” the Abyssal asked Rieren. “I will not agree to it unless I have a guarantee from you.”

Rieren frowned at up at the creature. Something was making Elder Olg resort to such… negotiable solutions to their encounters, instead of resorting to brute force. He had always been one to use his intelligence to find unique answers to their problems, but this was happening a little too frequently, in Rieren’s opinion.

“Speak your truth, and I will decide,” she said. “Why would you put any faith in any guarantees I might give, when I have no compunctions killing monsters such as you? Betrayal is merely a human concept, Abyssal. It does not apply to the likes of you.”

The monster seemed to be considering something. Then it grinned. Despite the distance separating them, Rieren could see the way it bared its fangs at her. Her soul turned cold. Something wasn’t right.

“I would perhaps have acquiesced,” the Abyssal said, elation making its voice rise. “But it seems I no longer have to.”

Alarm bells rang wildly in her head. Rieren twisted around, trying to see if there was something strange going on. Was the monster about to receive some surprising reinforcements? Had it somehow contacted the third sub-army and wasted time until they could reach this location? That made no sense. She would destroy them as easily as she had done the rest so far.

Then a light fell upon her. A brilliant, heavenly light.

Eyes widening, Rieren turned once more, this time facing the heavens. A meteor was erupting out of the starry canvas, streaking towards their general direction and burning through the atmosphere.

“What is that thing doing here?” the Elder shouted.

The same alarm coursing through Rieren was loud in his voice too. It seemed he had realized, just like her, that this was no ordinary meteor. The stars. Those accursed stars. Monkey’s pockmarked balls. She had seen them rushing across the sky. She should have seen this coming. It raised too many questions about the one she had deflected near the dungeon.

This meteor heading straight for them wasn’t just a meteorite. All signs pointed to one thing.

An Aetherian was about to land among them.