The battle went much more smoothly than Rieren had at first thought it would. That was, of course, thanks to all the cultivators who were arriving to fight back the monsters.
The big man who flung himself into the midst of the fray wasn’t the only one. A woman with flickering green energy was clearing swathes of Abyssals on their eastern front, taking the monsters down with ease regardless of their Grade.
To their south, another man, this one looking much younger, had summoned several copies of himself as they all tore into the Abyssals trying to flank them and attack from the rear. A few seconds of observation gave Rieren the sense that he had a strange Domain. It looked like fog, but it was reflective and sparkly as though it was made of fine crystals.
In the end, they had received some timely reinforcements. Rieren wasn’t certain where they had come from, but it wasn’t surprising that they existed in the Shatterlands, and she was thankful for their arrival, whatever the reason may be.
This was especially true because the Arisen was just about to land among them.
Or, it would have done, had the meteor-riding cultivator not engaged it head on. It was clear by the way he fought the enormous monster all by himself at first that his strength far superseded that of the ones Rieren had seen in the first outpost they had tried to protect.
When the gigantic monster tried to throw its barrage of golden bolts at the cultivator, he simply leaped into the air and summoned his Domain. A powerful one at that. The air was replaced with a void as dark as the deepest night, interspersed with strange rocks floating without support. These were so densely packed, they formed an excellent shield against the golden bolts.
But they weren’t just an effective counter. As soon as the Arisen’s first salvo was done, the cultivator rushed across the array of rocks. Several of them immediately shot towards the monster, turned into burning meteors like the one the cultivator had flown in on.
Rieren didn’t get to see if the meteors’ impact with the monster had much effect, or even if they were able to strike at all. The Arisen was rather sprightly.
No, she had her own issue to deal with. Despite the arrival of the new cultivators, they were by no means safe from the invading monsters. All those who had been fighting still needed to reenter the fray and assist as best as they could. The cultivators had only come in to provide a boost to their morale.
Rieren summoned her Domain and shot into the nearest fray.
The battle was chaotic, but she knew how to navigate such madness. Not straying into the path of other fighters was key here. Rieren had to be mindful of their skills and techniques, of the grounds they covered with their abilities, and whether she might get caught in them if she got too close.
It wasn’t difficult, though. All Rieren had to do was maintain the correct distance, and then she could unleash herself on the hapless monsters around her.
Her first ones were weak. One Gale Blade led to another until she had reduced an entire side of the Armistice Enforcers’ army to nothing but chopped limbs and broken bodies. Her Domain’s water was now marred with far too much dark Abyssal blood. She had also been far too fast for any of the monsters to respond in any way.
The next bit came to tackling the stronger Abyssals. The Blightmanes were charging over the ground with habitual speed and ferocity, and the Shadeborns determined to use their enormous gut-mouths to swallow all opposition before them.
Rieren had to be a little more considerate about her skill usage here. Deflecting the Blightmanes’ attacks was easy with Earthfall Blade. Quick counterattacks, while not breaking their toughened, metallic fur, also let her twist their momentum so that the monster careened past her and fell in a heap of limbs. This allowed the defenders behind her to jump in for the kill.
The Shadeborns needed a slightly different approach, but it was no less easy. All she had to do was maintain her distance and draw out their engorging gut-mouths. Once she dodged and the monsters had swallowed a mouthful of her Domain’s water, the Divine-Essence laced in the liquid then made them explode from within. It was quite gory, she had to admit.
Rieren was able to carve out a small reprieve for herself and those who had fallen behind her. As soon as their little area was clear, some of them moved on to assist the others.
But several of them, like Rieren herself, had to catch their breath and watch the battle with the Arisen unfold.
The enormous monster had been pushed back by the meteor-riding cultivator. His Domain was an effective defence and offence. None of the Arisen’s various attacks reached him, and in turn, his attacks had little difficulty landing upon the gigantic beast. But Rieren couldn’t see much evidence of leaving any real damage on the beast.
It was an incredible spectacle, though. Especially when another cultivator joined in.
Seeing as how their initial battle wasn’t granting him quite the results he was hoping for, the burly meteor-rider had risen higher into the air, well above the monster itself. Before the Arisen could attack with its golden bolts, he summoned his Domain again and launched all the strange rocks in a meteor shower.
This caused the monster to flail about in an attempt to avoid the storm of falling rocks. It wasn’t successful. Several hit it and interrupted whatever counter it had been planning.
The cultivator himself was streaking downwards. When he was close enough, his entire body turned into a glowing amethyst comet that streaked into the monster’s head. The Arisen screamed as it crashed to the ground. Rieren and everyone nearby shook as the ground trembled.
“Now, Kalcya!” the cultivator’s shout echoed. “I’ve got the bastard.”
Kalcya, it turned out, was the woman with the flickering green energy. She had already left the area where she had been confronting a horde of Abyssals, having wiped them all out, and reached the location where the gigantic monster had fallen. Now, she unleashed her power where the Arisen had crash-landed.
The green energy formed little lines that snaked over the fallen monster quicker than heartbeats. As soon as they crossed a section of the creature, they solidified, turning dark and forming a mesh that tied the monster down.
Kalcya was basically constructing a solid net around the Arisen to keep it trapped.
Shouts and screams reverberated in Rieren’s ears. The battle was turning furious and there was no time for them to stand around and gawk, even if it was only for a few seconds.
“Let’s go!” one of the men shouted, leading the rest of his party to where they were needed somewhere to the left.
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Rieren waited. Her first impulse was to follow them and carve out the same kind of gap in the monsters’ ranks she had done here. But it would be better if she took a proper look around and determined where her power would be most effective. She wasn’t just another defender depending on her D-Grade skills.
Her eyes roved over the chaotic battlefield, spotting multiple locations where she could charge in and wreak havoc among the Abyssals’ ranks. But her eyes landed on Silomene in the distance.
And one of the retainers of Mercion that she was helping.
She rushed over. They shouldn’t have needed her assistance. Both the retainer and Silomene were powerful cultivators in their own right, and they should have been able to handle themselves.
But the man who had so doggedly followed Mercion and always took care of the Spirit Beast they used for transport was wounded. Gravely. Silomene was defending him against a handful of Blightmanes, as were the little group of defenders from the previous outpost the retainer had been in charge of.
Rieren attacked and took care of one of the Blightmanes from the rear. Fray Passage let her catch up to the monster with ease despite its incredible speed. At B-Grade, the skill had twelve charges, each covering twenty paces. Rieren could cover a good distance before she ran out of the skill entirely.
Her arrival shocked the Blightmane enough for it to stop its ongoing motion. It tried to lash out at her, but Fray Passage let her dodge with ease.
Before the monster could figure out how it wished to attack her next, Rieren activated Gale Blade. A more powerful Blightmane might have been fast enough to either dodge or at least block her charge, but this one was at no higher then D-Grade. Weak against someone in the Enlightened realm like Rieren. One quick slash across its lower guts killed the monster.
She looked around. Silomene had taken care of another Blightmane without difficulty as well. Spears of sparkling silver had pierced through the monster, ignoring the impenetrability of its fur.
The last Blightmane was giving the defenders trouble. Rieren and Silomene joined in to finish the monster. While Rieren zipped past it with another use of Fray Passage, Silomene claimed the kill for herself when she pelted more silver spears that killed the Blightmane easily.
They were safe. For the moment.
“You need to protect the others,” the retainer said before Rieren could ask anything. “They are to the west.”
“Who?” Rieren asked. “Lord Mercion?”
“And the others. I only managed to protect this group from the Abyssals chasing us. They are in trouble.”
“Can you pinpoint their exact location?” Silomene asked, worry digging furrows in her brow.
The retainer shook his head. “Somewhere to the west.”
They already knew that, but it made sense he couldn’t tell them something more specific. If Mercion’s group really was in trouble, it was unlikely they were staying in one place, especially not when there was a horde of monsters all around the area.
“Can you take care of them?” Rieren asked Silomene.
She nodded. “Will you be finding them?”
“Yes. I will keep them safe.”
Silomene nodded. Her eyes held no doubt at all. They had spent enough time together, fought enough times by each other’s sides, that she knew she could trust Rieren. She had seen what Rieren could do. Besides, Rieren suspected Silomene harboured her own suspicions about Rieren’s true capabilities.
She left them and hurried over in the direction the retainer had pointed. It felt odd running away from the ongoing battle. She was supposed to be partaking in more of the battle, not fleeing it.
Monkey’s balls, that was the silly outlook talking. The location the retainer had pointed to was closer to where the Arisen was fighting against the powerful cultivators. If anything, Rieren was heading into greater danger by leaving the safety of the group behind.
It also allowed her to observe for a moment what was going on with the main battle. The Arisen had clearly broken out of the net constructed by the woman with the green energy. It was rampaging around, throwing golden bolts everywhere wreathed with corrupted black auras. At the same time, its wings broke apart to keep pelting the cultivators with flying, exploding shards.
The cultivators were having trouble counterattacking. They were constantly on the back foot. There seemed to be a plan going on, however.
They were trying to separate. While one held the monster’s attention, another—a third had joined the burly man and the woman in green, the young one with the reflective mist—the others tried to attack from the flanks.
It was working, to a degree. Even from this distance, where Rieren was safe enough from the erratic blast of ranged attacks from the monster, she could see wounds all over the monster. They weren’t deep or debilitating, but they were sufficiently numerous. Most were weeping a good deal of dark blood, so much so that a little flood was forming around the Arisen.
The monster’s latest rampage was the result of its attempt at protecting itself. Apparently, it was smart enough to understand that it held a significant enough aerial advantage over the cultivators. It was flying in the sky. Keeping itself several dozens of paces in the air, with far greater manoeuverability, it was able to avoid a great deal of attacks while launching its own.
While the Domain of the burly one could allow him to reach the skies, and the second looked like she could form strange wings of solid green, the third one was stuck on the ground. Besides, their capabilities so far up in the sky were worse than they were on the ground. The woman didn’t even look like she could summon her Domain.
Rieren didn’t see what their next move was. She had a job to do, and it was time to complete it.
There was no immediate sign of Mercion or any of the others. It seemed her original fear had come true. Whatever they had experienced here had forced them to keep moving.
But they had been attacked while they were moving. This meant that Rieren had a very clear trail to follow. Destroyed trees, monstrous corpses, a good deal of blood, the effects of various skills, and more besides all led her farther to her left.
She heard the sounds of fighting before long. The crackle of lightning accompanied the shrieks of several monsters. Fires burst in the distance, likely the effect of some skill being used by someone else to stave off the monsters from getting close. Rieren swallowed. They were in trouble. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen any corpses. Now that she was here—
The earth-shattering scream tore through everything. It was followed immediately by another familiar sound, an increasingly loud keening noise that indicated something speeding towards them all.
Rieren’s eyes widened to see a volley of golden bolts heading towards them.
There was no time to waste. She targeted one of the nearest monsters and used Fray Passage. The boost to her speed took her past the Shadeborn before it, or anyone else in the vicinity, was aware of her presence. As soon as Rieren was close enough, she summoned her Domain.
Stormy water burst outwards in every direction. Rieren had already summoned steam underneath the water’s surface, and she let it burst upwards in a huge geyser to her right.
The rising column of boiling water was enough. All of the Arisen’s black-wreathed golden bolts that would have struck Mercion and his group now hit Rieren’s Domain instead. The detonations tore through Rieren’s ears and made her head throb, but it was far worse for the monsters around them. Her column of water was only protecting her and Mercion’s group.
With screams and shrieks, the Abyssals died as they were torn apart by the Arisen’s attack. When the chaos ended, and Rieren could once more pay attention to what was going on, she tried to see what had caused the Arisen to attack them.
She blinked. It was a lot closer than it had been moments ago. The gigantic monster wasn’t paying attention to their direction, still busy dealing with the trio of cultivators. That must have been a stray blast that had the unfortunate effect of being pelted in their direction. When the cultivator it had been aimed at had dodged instead of defending, it had come straight to them.
“Rieren!” Mercion said, then immediately fell to the ground.
Several of the men nearby bent down to pull him up, slinging his arm across their shoulders.
“We will get him to safety,” one of them said. “Thank you for your timely assistance, honoured retainer.”
Rieren supposed she ought to be tired of being erroneously referred to as Mercion’s retainer, but all she could do was nod. “The settlement is under attack. You might not find an easy way to safety.”
“We’re aware. We will do our best.”
“Noooooo,” Mercion mumbled, somewhat incoherent and sounding like he was drunk. He had overtaxed himself once again. “We need to take action against that despicable creature. That giant grasshopper. We need to stoooooooop its tantrum.”
“We will,” Rieren said. “There are already…”
Her voice dwindled as yet another strange development took place. The most harrowing one yet, if she was being honest.
She and the rest of them all looked straight up as the dark sky suddenly turned a different kind of dark. Instead of being cloudy, it was now a stretch of heavens that had opened to the cosmos, a blanket of star-strewn night.
And from this hole in the sky, a true shower of uncountable golden meteorites was heading down upon them all.