It wasn’t difficult to see how the current, overwhelming circumstance had come to be. Even after the enormous Abyssal had escaped the initial clutches of the powerful cultivators trying to keep it trapped down, they had rallied and once again nearly managed to force it to the ground once and for all.
But that wasn’t enough.
As Rieren had last seen, the burly cultivator had risen high to launch his own meteor shower. This had resulted in a veritable storm of burning rocks hurtling towards the monster. Since they were of a similar elevation, and due to the monster’s superior mobility in the air, it was able to dodge more of the meteors flying at it. But the meteors had just been a distraction.
The true danger had come from the woman with the green energy. Using the storm of meteors as a cover, she had been able to get in close enough to launch whips of green aura at the Arisen.
They had solidified into a long trail of blades, which had gone on to strike through the monster’s wings. This had caused the Arisen to fall.
Right to where the last, younger cultivator was waiting with his sparkling mist.
As soon as the Arisen had crashed to the ground, he had enveloped the entire monster with his strange fog. Rieren didn’t have the faintest clue what exactly that was doing. It was working well, though. The Arisen writhed and twisted where it lay. Something told Rieren that the sparkling mist had eaten through the many wounds on the monster’s torso.
But the Arisen wasn’t done. Far from it, in fact. Downed though it was, the monster was still able to raise its flesh-flower mouth into the air and open it wide.
The screech that should have been loud and earth-rending was eerily silent.
It still worked, though. Whatever signal the monster had sent had reached its intended target. The dark sky parted, revealing the wider cosmos, from which came a rain of golden meteors burning through the outer layers of the world.
“That’s insane,” one of the defenders near Rieren said. She could hear the panic dripping from his words, from his every sped-up exhale. “We’re going to die!”
“No one is dying,” Rieren said with some force. “Take Mercion and get yourselves to safety.”
“Where are we going to be safe when there’s a whole cataclysm about to fall upon us?”
“You idiot.” Another man slapped the one panicking on the back of his head. “Can’t you see some of the cultivators are already trying to stop it?”
He was right. The burly one was rising even higher in the air with the help of his Domain, which was spreading outwards to cover the area with a blanket of floating rocks. Rieren wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but it wasn’t like they had better options.
The woman was helping too. Her green energy snaked through the floating rocks to tie them all together, solidifying once more to form a rocky mesh.
“Go,” Rieren said. “Find cover. Shelter. I cannot protect any of you from that by myself.”
Despite the obvious fear, they managed to get going. It helped that they were in a little group. Numbers provided moral support.
“Take care, Rieren,” Mercion said groggily. “Don’t let them catch you. Don’t let any of the monsters catch…”
His voice faded as he was pulled away by the very ones he had dragged here. Rieren silently wished him fair fortune and speedy recovery, then headed towards the Arisen.
The young cultivator was still keeping it trapped with the mist somehow. Rieren swallowed. What a powerful Domain to keep an A-Grade monster in that sort of condition. Despite his apparent youth, this was someone who had advanced well into the Exalted realm, if not higher. Of course, with cultivators, apparent ages could easily be lies.
It was weakening, though. Despite the trap and the damage the Domain was dealing, the caught monster’s furious jerks and struggles were getting stronger.
The reason was obvious. With what was occurring far above them, the cultivator was both distracted and likely trying to conserve his strength if it was needed. There was no telling if the Domain made of floating rocks stitched together would hold for long.
“Who are you?” the cultivator asked distantly.
“A former disciple of a destroyed Sect,” Rieren said. “Will your friends be able to stop the meteor shower.”
“I have no idea.”
“Will you?”
He looked at her with eyes as light silver as his mist. His hair was silver too, like Silomene’s, but much lighter. Almost snow white. The resemblance was uncanny, all the same. “I might be able to assist, yes, but I am stuck here.”
“You do not have to be.”
“What do you mean?”
Rieren pulled out the Temporal Recollector. Breaking open the little amber crystal released the tiny pulse of virulent energy within, which quickly sank into her body. A second later, she was flooded with incredible power.
The changes were the same as ever. Her body grew stronger and bigger, her skin gaining a slight silvery hue. Her eyesight sharpened, her senses turned more acute, and she had even obtained several new ones complementing her regular senses. Best of all, she could feel the incredible Essence flooding her, her elixir field now standing tall and wide beyond her body.
The young cultivator had stepped back, his eyes wide with awe and surprise. “Who are you?”
“A former disciple of a destroyed Sect,” Rieren said. “One who will not stand for the destruction of this realm. If you can promise that you will end the shower of meteors, then I will promise to end this monster in return.”
“You will end this Arisen?”
She stared at him straight in his eyes. It was wonderful in a sense to note that she didn’t have to angle her head up to do so now. “Do you doubt me?”
The cultivator swallowed. “I do not.” He turned back to the monster slowly getting free. Its mouth had opened wide again, summoning black-wreathed golden energy to form them into the bolts it typically fired everywhere. “Then I will leave this Arisen to you and ensure that we are not eradicated by that cosmic rain. May fortune favour your steps.”
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“What is your name?” Rieren asked, feeling curious.
He glanced at her once more, then jumped straight up. “Oromin.”
His name faded to nothing as he rose higher and higher, seemingly unsupported.
As much as Rieren wanted to see what was going on in the sky, her attention was drawn back to the monster rising back to its full strength. The wounds all over its torso were deep. The many holes were dropping dark blood, creating a small flood where the monster stood.
The Arisen was empowering itself. That was obvious in the way it stood, in the way its power came off its wings, in the way the golden bolts were far larger than before now.
In the way the whole world around Rieren was shaking with the monster’s rising strength.
Good for Rieren that she had grown in power too.
When she summoned her Domain next, it turned the whole area into an inland ocean. Waves rocked around her, concentrated Essence was alive under the water’s surface, ready to burst forth with the steam she had as well. The water sizzled wherever it struck the pools of the Arisen’s blood.
The battle began with blood-curdling fury. All the black-wreathed golden bolts flew at Rieren with blinding speed. She was already acting, however. Her Domain exploded, sending her flying upwards on a powerful geyser of water and steam stitched together with concentrated Essence.
Beneath Rieren, the Arisen’s volley of bolts exploded upon contact with her water. Rieren didn’t pay it any mind. As the momentum from the geyser receded and her ascent slowed, she used Wrath of the Swordwing. The burning halo at her back summoned wings made of gleaming swords, each nearly molten with the amount of energy and Essence they had been infused with.
Rieren wasted no time aiming her body downwards, pulling her wings back, then flinging a storm of explosive blades at her monstrous enemy.
She had seen the burly cultivator execute a similar move with the meteors from his Domain. It worked well for her as well. The monster might have been rather mobile despite its size, but that very size meant it couldn’t avoid a downpour of bursting swords.
Unfortunately, it had learned about other defensive measures. Maybe it had used them against the burly cultivator as well. Rieren hadn’t seen it.
What she did see was the enormous, dragonfly-like wings shattering into a thousand shards each big enough to cut her in half. They flew upwards, meeting her rain of swords. Rieren grimaced. She couldn’t tell if a single one of her summoned blades made it through the monster’s barricade.
The Arisen wasn’t waiting for her to make another move either. As Rieren fell back to her Domain, it had rushed forward to attack directly with its oversized limbs.
She was forced to defend for the time being. Earthfall Blade was still a skill she had, even in later stages of power. It was simply too versatile at letting her deflect attacks and counterattack in turn. For now, though, Rieren used it to good effect to repel the monster’s furious, hammering blows.
But she wasn’t about to let it become something like her fight with the B-Grade Life Stifler. Rieren wasn’t here to fight. She was here to win.
Apparently, the Arisen recognized that she was about to make a move. It had resummoned the golden wings like panes of glass on its back, only to crush them into a storm of shards again.
In response, Rieren summoned another column of water rising up from beneath her after her latest deflect. She had been about to do so anyway, to grant herself some space, but now it became imperative. As her water stopped the shards from hitting her and granted her a fraction of a second’s reprieve, she threw herself back. Silken Passage took her far away from danger.
The Arisen had caught her retreat. Now it was constructing another volley of golden bolts to attack her from range.
Rieren had no intention of trading blows. Quickly stopping her rearward momentum, she threw herself back straight at the gigantic monster. The Arisen quickly gave up on its idea of hammering her from range, snapping its mouth closed and trying to attack her with its many limbs. She was too fast, quickly swerving directly under the monster’s long torso.
Whatever else the Arisen might have been, it was apparently smart enough to know what Rieren’s intention was. Even as she manoeuvred under its massive body, using Enchant to call upon her Stormborne Greatsword, it twisted its torso away to the left. As Rieren jumped while she kept rushing forward, her slicing sword missed its body.
She had twisted around and slashed her sword in a wide crescent from her right to her left to release Heaven’s Arc. Unfortunately, it missed the Arisen’s torso.
But that didn’t mean it was completely ineffectual. The monster was quite large. Even if most of its body was just outside the range of Heaven’s Arc, the attack still caught one of its limbs. The Arisen screamed out with its fleshy mouth wide open as the lopped-off limbs crashed to Rieren’s Domain water, the stump of its wound sizzling at the contact.
Rieren wasn’t free from the creature. She was looking to land, turn, and keep up her assault against the Arisen, but it appeared that it had already counterattacked.
All that alerted Rieren was her Proprioception. Her sense of space distorting around her rang alarm bells that it was happening too quickly. Too furiously. A quick twist around revealed the Arisen charging straight at her, its flesh-flower mouth opened wide to swallow her whole.
Rieren had only a split second to react. She had a few options, but experience had taught her the list of which would be faster, even if it was by mere fractions of a moment.
When she used Enchant again, her sword shifted shape to a thick cone of black edged with blue lines. The new blade’s skill was Rapturous Charge, which Rieren activated immediately. From the base of a blade, a ferocious stream of power exploded behind her, halting her backward momentum and flinging her forward instead.
Straight into the Arisen’s tooth-riddled mouth.
At the moment Rieren was about to enter the huge maw, she used Enchant once more to turn her sword to Keen Bleeder. Everblade Cross was just as effective as she had expected it to be. The first vertical slash made use of the gap between two of the fleshy “petals”, carving a bloody channel in the middle. The follow up horizontal slice sent the petals flying on either side.
Rieren was past the monster the next second. The boost from Rapturous Charge and her following attack had carved a hole into the side of the monster’s mouth. This had let her come out unscathed on the other side.
The Arisen didn’t stop once Rieren was through it. It didn’t even turn around. Instead, it kept hurrying over the ground onwards away from her.
Rieren almost laughed in realization. The Arisen was fleeing.
She looked up for a few heartbeats. Far overhead, the cultivators were successfully stopping the meteor shower. She couldn’t see what exactly they were doing, but it was effective. Not even one meteor had come through their combined defence to trouble Rieren in her fight against the Arisen.
But she wasn’t done yet. She considered using Heaven’s Cleave as she had done with the last Arisen, but that had been more or less stationary for her purposes. The way this monster was moving, it would make it harder to hit.
Rieren still had ways to make Heaven’s Cleave more agile, but there were better options. Such as calling upon the improved version of her Domain Summons.
Instead of Dawn Cloud, the cloud she had upon her beck and call was Dusk Cloud now.
There was a specific summoning technique Rieren had to follow. It required her to perform a short summoning ritual, involving stepping in the correct patterns and moving her body into the right configuration. One footfall ahead of the other, then a quick twist around to bring the other foot in front, while her arms followed the opposite motion, elbows tucked in close.
The Dusk Cloud appeared. It was so called because the cloud that did get summoned was dark as nightfall. All the steam Rieren had released now rose into the air, taking with it a good deal of her Domain, all condensing together to form an enormous, pitch-black storm cloud.
Her summons had been rather quick too. The cloud cover stretched over the distance, fully shrouding the ground that the Arisen hadn’t even begun to get through.
“Not so fast,” Rieren said.
The storm that her summon unleashed erupted into being all at once. A regular thunderstorm pelted rain at incredible pace, threw wind everywhere constantly, and flung a lightning bolt now and then just to keep things fresh and unpredictable. The Dusk Cloud did all that in the blink of an eye.
All the lighting it might have thrown down was summoned in an instant, forming a column of brilliant illumination that was impossible to look at that. This enormous bolt conducted down the path created by a veritable lake of water released by the Dusk Cloud.
Rieren’s raised potency had allowed her to reinforce her eyes to the point where looking into incredibly bright light did no damage. She didn’t even have to blink at the radiance, brighter than the sun though it was for an instant.
When everything cleared, all that was left was an enormous, blackened crater where her entire Domain had been. In the centre was the Arisen. Or rather, what was left of its corpse.
There. Threat dealt with.