Rieren could finally take a moment to relax. She had taken care of the greatest danger here, so she deserved some time to rest.

Perhaps there was a little embellishment going on. She wouldn’t have had such a relatively easy time of it with the Arisen had the other cultivators not softened it up so much. The monster had been fighting continuously with a vast number of enemies for a long while now. It had to have been fatigued.

There was also the fact that cultivators had severely wounded and weakened it by the time Rieren had faced it by herself. She wouldn’t have won as easily without all those factors playing a part.

Besides, there was a valid argument that the Arisen hadn’t been the greatest danger. Rieren simply had to look up to see where the cultivators were doing their best to stop the shower of meteors from wiping them all out. She considered joining in to help them however she could, but it didn’t look like they needed assistance.

As such, Rieren turned her attention back to the outpost itself. Even there, the battle was beginning to die down. With the greatest monster now dead, the other Abyssals had lost a great deal of their morale. The defenders were killing them with ease and forcing their enemies back.

Rieren didn’t go to the town just yet. First, she hurried over to where the Arisen had fallen. It was a bit distant but a quick run took her there quickly. At the same time, it was exhilarating to just run without abandon. She could exult in how fast she was in her empowered form. Something to look forward to and aim for. A good motivation to keep cultivating.

When she reached the smoking corpse of the Arisen, she rooted through its body until she found what she was seeking. No point in letting a powerful Beast Core go to waste. The last one had been tremendously valuable in terms of earned Credits.

Rieren plucked the Arisen’s corrupted Beast Core out of the cavity she had dug in its chest. She was thankful it hadn’t taken her too long to find it. With how enormous its body was, it could easily have taken her far longer to get to the Beast Core. Thankfully, her Essence-infused eyes made finding it a cinch.

Selling it provided her a ridiculous number of Credits again. Certainly not enough to replenish the Temporal Recollector she had used up, but a good way towards doing so.

Rieren turned her attention back to the settlement. She hurried back, intending to take part in the end of the battle and mop up the rest of the Abyssals. That proved unnecessary. The monsters were fleeing as she made her way back to the outpost, with the rest of them dead at the hands of the defenders.

She could feel the effects of Temporal Recollector beginning to fade. That would have been slightly worrying if the cultivators had failed in their defense against the meteor strike, but that wasn’t the case. They truly were safe. Finally.

Rieren reached the outpost as defenders had begun to celebrate. A sense of relief lay thick and heavy. She couldn’t blame them. From their perspective, this battle hadn’t been easy at all.

Several people threw her wide smiles and looked at her in awe. Rieren wondered how many of them had seen her full battle against the Arisen. They had been quite distant. It was what had allowed her to go all in with her Domain and her Domain Summons. With no one in the vicinity to worry about, she’d had the freedom to unleash her full power.

“Welcome back,” one of the grateful men said.

Another woman flashed Rieren the widest smile she had ever seen on anyone. “You made it! Thank you so much.”

“If ye hadn’t taken care of that thing,” a stooped old man said. “I got no clue what woulda happened to any o’ us.”

“We’d have survived anyway, Estollen,” the woman said. “Just maybe not so easily.”

Their talk was interrupted by the arrival of Batcat. Rieren smiled at the little kitten and picked it up to place it atop her head. A deserved crown for her efforts, even if it was rather furry and tended to tangle her hair.

Rieren nodded back at the men and women near the gates, then headed past them into the outpost itself. She needed to find what had happened to Mercion. Hopefully, he had been taken to safety and hadn’t tried to fight the monsters despite his condition. Once she found Silomene, she could ascertain all of their fates.

“Are you looking for your master?”

Rieren stopped short. It was the same old man who had been the de facto leader back at the first outpost. Unlike the others, he didn’t seem particularly happy with their victory. She understood it. After all, while they had survived and protected this outpost, his one was lost. Rieren wasn’t sure if any of them would wish to venture out to reclaim it.

If anything of it even remained any longer. That Arisen’s rampage hadn’t looked like it had left anything standing in its wake.

“I am looking for Lord Mercion, yes,” Rieren said. “Do you know where he is?”

“He is recovering. I would suggest not disturbing him at the moment.”

“I understand. I simply wish to ensure that his condition is nothing to worry about.” She thought about Silomene. “And find my other companion.”

“What need do you have for companions? You would be better off without them.”

The old man’s voice had changed. He sounded sharper, almost younger somehow. Rieren frowned at him. There was a light in his rheumy eyes she didn’t like, like the glint of a dagger in low light.

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you really want to drag these new friends you’ve made into all your troubles?”

Her hackles were beginning to rise. Even Batcat was rousing itself atop her head. The feeling coming off this old man had the shades of great danger and fear.

And Rieren realized that the effects of Temporal Recollector had almost faded by now. She was back to her old self. Had this man actually noticed something like that and planned this strange confrontation accordingly?

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Her hand went to her Receptor sword. “Who are you? Speak clearly, before I strike you down.”

She didn’t dare take a look at what was happening around her. Taking her eyes off her potential enemy would be foolhardy. But was no one else seeing this? Had anyone else stopped to stare at this little altercation? Her senses prickled as though something was horribly wrong. The worst part was that she hadn’t seen this coming at all.

The old man had a little smile on his face, accentuated by the lines on his face. Slowly, likely so as not to make Rieren attack, he pulled something out.

A ceramic mask.

Rieren took a step back despite herself. “You—you are an—”

The old man placed the ceramic mask over his face, where it attached itself without any apparent support. “I am the end of your tyranny, Arianaele.”

Before Rieren could react, the Masked Avatar summoned his Domain. Rieren would still have acted against it—and she did, to an extent, jumping back with all her senses on high-alert—but the surprising method of his summoning forestalled any further.

A strange, twisted tree formed from thin air above Rieren. The spherical trunk and the branches twisting outwards in every direction were all entirely black. All the leaves sprouting from it were a blue so bright, they were difficult to look at for long.

“Heed my words,” the Avatar said, raising his voice so that it echoed over the entire outpost. “I am a Masked Avatar of the Forborne Emperor, and I have come directly from Vanharron, the imperial capital itself.”

For the first time, Rieren took a quick glance around herself. The other defenders were all frozen in place, watching wide-eyed as events unfolded. Several looked like they were about to act, though they appeared unsure how exactly to do so. A few had even pulled weapons. Most were entirely frozen though. Frozen less in shock and more in fear.

Rieren swallowed. She understood it acutely. Just when they had begun to think things had settled down after the monsters were repelled, a Masked Avatar had appeared from nowhere.

“I see I have your attention,” the Avatar said loudly. There was no sign of the old man any longer. The typical embroidered black-and-green cloak had replaced the dirty, ragged garb he had before. Power flowed around him, the vitality clear in his every motion. “Listen well, then.

“I have come here to take those among you who have dared to stand against the imperial court itself. Those who intend to take action against the Elderlands, those who are a danger to the harmony and prosperity ensured by the continued rule of the Forborne Emperor. Stand back and allow me to perform my duties, and no harm shall befall any of you.”

As the Avatar spoke, the shock coursing through Rieren began to fade. She still didn’t have the faintest clue how exactly he had discovered her location and decided to unveil himself here. For all she knew, it could be a coincidence that he was here, and she’d simply had the unfortunate luck of running across him.

Whatever the case, he had been waiting until Rieren had lost the effects of the Temporal Recollector to make his move. That much was clear now. Which meant that he had either likely only noticed her after her transformation, or he actually had a heart and didn’t want to cause a commotion while the battle against the Abyssals had been ongoing.

But if he had thought to catch her after the battle so he could take care of her easily, he would have to think again. Batcat was hissing on her head at the ostentatious man in the ceramic mask. Clearly, it didn’t appreciate being woken up.

The Avatar had looked over at the others while addressing them. Now, he had turned his attention back upon Rieren. “This woman is the one I seek. The criminal you have been unwittingly harbouring, one who intends to cause grievous harm to us all, just as she did in the last timeline. The Forborne Emperor will not allow a destroyer of lands and lives to walk free.”

Rieren swallowed. There it was. She hadn’t exactly tried to hide herself and her identity—after all, that transformation to defeat the Arisen had surely given away that there was much more going on with her—but this blatant public outcry certainly wasn’t doing her any favours.

“What is going on here?”

Rieren was distracted from her formulations about how best to take on the Avatar when Silomene appeared. She looked part mad and part scared, holding her meteor hammer in her hand with a tight grip.

“Leave us,” the Avatar said without turning to face Silomene. “I will not repeat myself again. This companion of yours is an undesirable and must be brought to heel. I will warn you only once to not interfere in matters of the imperial court.”

Credit to Silomene, she didn’t take a single step back. If anything, she stepped closer to the Masked Avtar, her hand clutching her weapon with a stance that screamed that she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. “This is the Shatterlands. Not Vanharron. Your jurisdiction is limited here. You cannot act—”

“I am a Masked Avatar of the Forborne Emperor. To stop me is to stop the Emperor himself. Do you dare defy me, girl?”

“You cannot do this. Rieren has been a great help to us. She is the reason we are here, why we are all alive here. She is the one who defeated the Arisen.” Her appeal wasn’t just aimed at the Avatar, who had no intention of listening. She was looking at the people around them. “Can’t you see, she’s no criminal. Undesirable, only by the imperial co—”

“Enough.” Mercion staggered up from behind and pulled Silomene back with a harsh tug. “Enough, Silomene.”

“What?” Silomene tried to pull her arm free from Mercion but his grip was as tight as an iron vice. “What are you talking about? That so-called Avatar is about to kill Rieren. We can’t let such a crime happen in the Shatterlands.”

“I said enough.”

Rieren swallowed. Could it be Mercion who was behind this all along? Her heart constricted involuntarily at the thought. Betrayal shouldn’t have affected her. She had faced down Eneyra, had taken it in stride when she had discovered Auri’s intent to kill her. But Mercion…

No, what shook her about him was how he had known. From when he had known. If he was the one behind this in the first place, of course.

His eyes met hers and she found an apology there. A regret, and a helplessness. So maybe this wasn’t a betrayal. Just inaction. Well, a betrayal in the end, but not a calculated one. Mercion hadn’t led the Avatar here to capture her. He was simply refusing to act now, most likely because of the political fallout of an Archnoble’s scion directly opposing a Masked Avatar.

“That is the right decision,” the Avatar said. He sounded one step away from gloating, as though relishing the fact that no one could oppose him without offending the most powerful entity in the entirety of the Elderlands. “You cannot interfere. Step back and allow me to carry out my duties. We all have a place in the empire, and it is good to remember it.”

“Mercion,” Silomene said again, anguished and tearful. “We can’t just stand here…”

Mercion only stood there, keeping a tight grip on Silomene’s hand and shaking his head slightly but resolutely. His eyes met Rieren’s again. This time, there was a different message there. A message she understood well.

He wasn’t taking any part in this debacle. That meant whoever came out on top would still be able to lay claim to his goodwill.

Not that Rieren was feeling particularly charitable to feel anything positive toward Mercion at the moment. But then, all her efforts had earned her the cooperation of the Ordorian clan, at least when it came to her cultivation. Besides, she was this close to claiming a spot as an official member of an Archnoble clan. Would an Avatar dare attack her then?

“I will give you one last chance, Arianaele,” the Avatar said. “Will you cooperate and come with us quietly, or must we force your hand? Understand that you have no chance against me.”

Above all their heads, the Avatar’s Domain had continued to grow. The twisted, black-barked tree had expanded outwards until it was now the size of a small building, the brilliance of its leaves shading the whole area with an eerie cerulean light.

He was right. In her current condition, Rieren was no match for an Avatar. She would be destroyed in short order.

But the Masked Avatar was wrong. She did have a chance. One that was sitting on her head, that she hadn’t used yet in front of anyone who might have known.

“Batcat,” she said.

The Avatar frowned. “What?”

Rieren grinned. On her head, the little kitten purred. Call of the Past activated, making Batcat glow for a brief moment before it disappeared.

Power flooded Rieren. Enough power to take on a Masked Avatar.