Rieren’s intention was simple. Now that she had a good approximation of her strength through Call of the Past with Batcat’s assistance, she knew she wasn’t going to struggle against the Avatar. Most likely. An Avatars’ strength could vary just as a monster’s could.

She was confident she could handle this Avatar, though. That was just going to need Batcat to disappear and turn into strength.

The winged kitten didn’t even need to be called. As Rieren began stepping away towards where she supposed, the cat vanished in a burst of light, eliciting a yelp from Silk.

“Your cat is gone,” she said. “Are you going to use the same trick like in the dungeon?”

“Close enough,” Rieren said. “Just stay back.”

“How chivalrous of you.”

Rieren paused, then gave her a sidelong glance. “You weren’t so flirty when you were accusing me of abandoning the Sect some weeks back.”

Silk didn’t look even a hair abashed. “I had to put up a stern face in front of my future subjects. We all have roles to play, Rieren. You would do well to assume the—oh!”

That next gasp had come from Batcat’s ability finally taking root. Once more, Rieren transformed. She grew, both physically and spiritually, strength flooding her core and power burgeoning at her fingertips.

At the same time, she sensed the Avatar changing her stance. The woman with the Ceramic Mask was drawing in Essence in response to Rieren’s dramatic change.

She was getting ready for a fight.

The Avatar was already summoning her Domain. Rieren wasn’t at all surprised to see a gigantic tree with blood-red bark and leaves as white as bones rising in the distance, covered with more trees and flowers ranging all over it. It reminded Rieren a bit of Elder Alm’s Domain with his field of flowers. She suspected this was a great deal more dangerous, though.

This was proven when one of the enormous tree’s branches twisted so that the end faced her directly. The branch’s pointed end turned into the bud of a flower. It opened, then immediately fired off a deep-crimson stream of energy at Rieren.

Monkey’s balls, this Avatar was wasting no time in taking her out. Maybe the woman had heard from her fellow Avatar just how much of a pain fighting Rieren could be.

Thankfully, she was more than prepared for it. All Rieren had to was summon her own Domain, and a bursting geyser acted as the wall between her and the beam of energy shooting at her. The explosion was typically vicious, but Rieren was able to deflect the shockwave away with a well-timed Earthfall blade.

Then it was her turn to attack.

Perhaps the Avatar thought that Rieren wouldn’t be able to combat the woman’s ranged prowess. That was true, to an extent, she didn’t have any abilities or summons or anything of the kind that created massive, ravaging beams of energy.

However, Rieren did have certain abilities that could deal with foes that tended to stay back. She had to develop them. They were an important part of any well-rounded cultivator’s repertoire.

Rieren summoned Wrath of the Swordwing once more. A burning orange halo materialized behind her back. With it came the vast array of gleaming, near-molten swords of every form, all brimming with explosive power. As the Avatar’s next stream of energy cannoned at Rieren, she flapped her wings forward and sent the swords flying at her enemy.

The Avatar’s beam took out a good number of them. She had aimed it in such a way as to reduce whatever impact the blades would have on her Domain.

Wherever the beam struck the flying swords, thunderous explosions made the air shiver, rippling waves of force blooming outwards in all directions. But it wasn’t enough to stop the sheer storm Rieren had flung at her enemy. The vast majority of the swords survived the Avatar’s counter, going on to cannon into the crimson Domain tree.

That series of blasts was even more intense than the one preceding it with the Avatar’s beams. In her normal form, Rieren would have been forced to shade her eyes.

Thankfully, there was no such need in her empowered form, which allowed her to take advantage of the fact that the Avatar was distracted. She stepped forward and assumed the stance of River Serration. A few more forward steps, then a heavy upward slash, which released a rising geyser of water rocketing toward the base of the Avatar’s Domain.

As soon as it struck, the water turned into dark clouds, which instantaneously converted into lightning. This left a violent gash across the half the entire length of the Domain tree.

The water and moisture Rieren was throwing out had dampened much of the heat, but the lightning still burned the tree. The first use of River Serration left little fires burning in the deep vertical groove it had cut in the massive tree’s trunk.

Rieren wasn’t done. She was bringing down that enormous tree and the Avatar with it. But of course, using more River Serration right into the same spot wouldn’t be ideal. It would both wipe out the fires and be less effective since the deeper trunk was the strongest section of the tree. No, better to aim her next moves at different areas.

Though, doing that wouldn’t be easy. Despite how big the tree was, Rieren wasn’t going to be able to target more than a couple of locations from her current position. As such, she would need to move around it soon enough.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

But she never got to fling even the second River Serration.

By the time she entered the stance to unleash the technique, the Avatar had recovered enough to counter. She had taken too long waiting to see the effect of the first use.

If the Avatar’s attack had been the regular salvo with her flowers throwing their beams and whatnot, Rieren wouldn’t have minded. Unfortunately, the woman summoned her tree’s roots to attack Rieren. Roots that were as gigantic as the Domain tree itself, bursting out in an overwhelming assault that covered the entire area before Rieren could react.

It didn’t harm her much. The good thing about oversized roots was that they were easy to avoid. She wasn’t about to be crushed so easily.

However, the Avatar apparently wasn’t intent on squashing the life out of her with the roots directly. She flung out a ton of them, each one overlapping with the next, twisting through and crisscrossing over one another until the entire area was a gigantic mesh of earthen roots.

Rieren blinked. She was trapped.

Just then, more flowers bloomed at the ends of branches that hadn’t been destroyed by Wrath of the Swordwing. Rieren hadn’t expected one salvo of her flying swords to end the entire top half of the enormous tree, but still. She hadn’t intended to get caught, either.

It was no trouble, in truth. Rieren only had to summon up Wrath of the Swordwing once more. The halo burning at her back ejected the burning swords out with enough force that they cut through her viny, wooden cage. A quick swipe with her wings on either side sliced away all the roots in her vicinity.

But Rieren was only free to face the beams hammering down onto her exact location. Thankfully, she had her wings to protect herself with.

A quick tug on either side of her ensured that the wings made of gleaming blades formed a protective cocoon around her whole body. For a fraction of a heartbeat, everything turned overheated orange under all the glare from her various blades.

And then the Avatar’s attack hammered in. At first, Rieren was glad her swords were up to the challenge, and that the Avatar wasn’t the most powerful of the bunch. The thunderous beams crashed down upon her location and made everything around her explode, but her swords barricaded her safely for the time being.

But then her swords detonated too.

The blades in Rieren’s Swordwing had the twin properties of both defence and offence. In specific terms, so long as they were a part of the winged formation at her back, they would repel anything flung upon them. This was integral to their ability to operate as wings. After all, repulsion of the world’s inherent attraction was what allowed the bearer of a Swordwing to fly.

When it came to offence, the swords needed to be pulled free from their regular formation. This had the effect of reversing the repulsion effect. Since the swords themselves were imbued with rather volatile energy, chances were that they would often explode when they came in contact with anything.

Rieren had often used those properties to excellent effect in the past timeline. She had done so in this one too.

But it seemed the Avatar was stronger than Rieren had given her credit for. Strong as her swords’ defence was, they couldn’t keep out something far more powerful than themselves. As such, the jet stream of energy coming from the flowers did break through Rieren’s defence, and while she was protected from the worst of the blast by her swords, she was still flung back hard.

One good thing about the flowery power was that the beam of energy had destroyed all the roots too. Instead of striking a root hard, Rieren simply tumbled over the ground a few times, before she was able to get to her feet again.

That settled it. Ranged combat would be Rieren’s downfall here. The firepower she possessed was strong, but the Avatar had counters to them, which the woman likely knew and was trying to take advantage of. There was yet another beam erupting out of a different flower-ended branch.

Rieren was having none of it. Along with the geyser, she had turned most of her summoned Domain into steam, which had the wonderful effect of shrouding her both physically and, with the addition of Essence, spiritually as well. This hid her exact location from the Avatar well enough. The next beam missed her entirely for Rieren had moved in a different direction.

The wide spread of her Domain allowed her to make good progress towards the Avatar’s Domain without trouble. That was, until Rieren’s enemy went for a different kind of approach.

This time, when a flower opened up, it was at the very peak of the enormous tree. The beam it shot straight upwards then curved in on itself and rained down in several chunks like a meteor shower.

It wasn’t too dangerous. All Rieren had to do was keep using Earthfall Blade to deflect away several of the broken beam’s chunks that got too close.

But the Avatar wasn’t done. Instead of placing the beams from her other flowers to attack specific locations, she was now sweeping them across a wide swathe of the area, in the faint hopes of catching Rieren by chance. Of course, not a single one came close enough to even touching Rieren.

She arrived at the base of the gigantic tree without difficulty. Climbing up that thing via traditional means was going to take too long. Instead, Rieren trusted her Domain to do it for her.

Focusing on her specific location, Rieren summoned her Domain again, turning the water to a boiling eruption with the help of her steam Aspect. She was sent flying upwards at a great velocity. Around her, the water and steam were rising with equal momentum.

None of the Avatar’s attacks hit her now that she was so close. As Rieren reached closer to the peak of her ascent, she held up her sword high and summoned the power of Heaven’s Cleave. Water and steam began swirling around her sword through the power of wind and stitched together with virulent lightning.

Except, as she climbed past the canopy of the enormous tree to slam down the mountainous swirling vortex of all her combined Aspects, the Avatar wasn’t there. Rieren was just quick enough to see the woman jumping from the canopy and shooting under Rieren.

She summoned Wrath of the Swordwing on her back. Anchoring the ends of the wings on the canopy, Rieren forced herself to twist around until she was facing the same direction the Avatar was fleeing. The other woman was still in the air. There was no way for her to dodge. If Rieren slammed down Heaven’s Cleave now, she would catch the Avatar with her blow.

But she would put Silk in danger too.

Cursing to herself, Rieren twisted using her wings once more. There was no point in wasting Heaven’s Cleave. She slammed it down right on top of the Avatar’s enormous Domain tree. The whole oversized plant disappeared under the torrent of ripping and tearing combination of Aspects.

As she fell, Rieren turned around once more. The Avatar hadn’t stopped fleeing. Was she finally aiming to attack Silk directly after having only observed her so far? That made no sense.

Whatever the case, Rieren wasn’t about to let her get away. She rushed right on the Avatar’s tail, intent on catching the woman before she reached her apparent target. The chase was almost exhilarating in a way. It was a direct test of their speeds matched up against one another. A challenge that Rieren won.

Well, she won in the sense that she was faster than her opponent. Fast as the Avatar was at dashing over the ground, she couldn’t outpace Rieren’s Domain-boosted speed.

Unfortunately, Rieren didn’t reach her enemy fast enough. The Avatar still managed to reach her goal.

Silk was now in mortal danger from the Masked Avatar.