Rieren wasn’t certain how long she could keep it up. There was only so much fighting she could do before she would exhaust herself and the amount of Essence she could use.

Besides, her skills were running out as well. She had used a good deal of them against the first man, and while she had the full loadout against the second woman, if they both wouldn’t die, her skills wouldn’t reset. Eventually, Rieren would have to rely entirely on her techniques, and then her Essence supply would be exhausted. Not a great scenario.

The woman she had flung back was getting back up. Rieren decided that she would need to take down crystal-man before the woman increased complications further.

Another glinting barrage was already flying towards her, so it wasn’t like she had a better choice anyway. Rieren used more Earthfall Blade to deflect away the innumerable flotilla of shards trying to kill her. It was a good thing that at least Earthfall Blade wasn’t going to run out easily.

She did her best to defeat the first cultivator quickly. Unfortunately, the Dreadflood’s intelligence came into play. The monsters had learned about her powers and her various tricks in their last bout. Now, it knew how to counter her.

When Rieren tried to use Gale Blade this time, the cultivator summoned several crystal pillars around himself. These were large and thick, almost entirely encasing him like a second set of armour. Powerful as Rieren’s blows were thanks to her raised Body stat, they couldn’t break through that shield of thick crystals.

Right at the moment Rieren’s skill ended, the cultivator shattered the crystals himself. They shot outward, aiming to tear through her whole body in one, quick burst.

All that saved her was a quick use of her Domain. Concentrating the high waves around her acted as a shield that slowed down the jagged pieces of the shattered crystals enough to reduce their momentum to harmless proportions.

Except, it also blocked her vision.

Rieren didn’t see the cultivator swinging in a gigantic crystal like an oversized sword. She barely blocked it, but even Earthfall Blade couldn’t stop an oversized weapon like that. This time, it was Rieren who was sent hurtling off her feet. Her Domain cushioned her fall, though her left side shook at the heavy impact.

Thankfully, Divine Resilience had nearly healed up her right side. She could wield her sword with her right hand again. She was going to need it. The other woman had recovered as well, lightning rising off her shoulders.

Rieren’s fight with the other cultivators spiralled into chaos.

They attacked with wild abandon. There was no sense of teamwork, no way Rieren could use normal human intentions against them. If she tried blocking one of them by assaulting the other, the second would attack both of them with no regard for the ally.

Which was what happened when she tried to take down crystal-man first. Rieren was exchanging blows with him when the woman’s thunder materialized in a storm around them both. Rieren was quick enough to duck her rising waves and protect herself against the lighting, but the man wasn’t so lucky. He was burned and shocked, finally falling back.

Rieren had thought that at least it took care of one of them. That wasn’t how it worked out.

When she switched her focus to the other woman, she sent a quick wave through Tidal Summons to reduce the effectiveness of her abilities. The lightning was rapidly dispelled by her water, which also blinded Rieren’s opponent. She used Fray Passage to close the distance and strike her before she could recover from the wave, but then crystals burst out of the ground.

Rieren was forced to leap back, growling at the annoyance. This was getting frustrating. She was about to redirect her aggression at the crystal cultivator, but then spears of light shot in.

“You look like you’re in dire need of some assistance,” Rollo yelled.

His attacks didn’t have a great deal of effect. All the undead man had to do was summon more gigantic crystals around him. Rollo’s spears of light shattered against the large shields with little to no effect.

But it had created a distraction. One Rieren needed to take full advantage of—

Rieren shook her head. She was starting to think as though she could win here. That wasn’t possible. These undead creatures would keep rising back up no matter how often Rieren or anyone else put them down.

That was why Amalyse and Rollo had used a combination of their powers to keep the monsters trapped on the surface.

Several spears jutted out of the ground. Most were glowing brilliantly, indicating that they were created by Rollo. With how sparkly light was glimmering everywhere over the monsters, Rieren figured that his Domain was acting heavily there.

But his powers weren’t alone. Several of the spears were translucent and glassy red. Those had to be Amalyse’s ones. That she was able to create dozens to help stake the monsters to the ground proved just how much she had grown while they’d been apart. Back in the Sect, she had only been able to summon one or two weapons.

Their help wasn’t going to be enough, however. Even as Rieren and the others turned their attention to their more human enemies, more of the corpses the S-Grade Abyssal had swallowed rose out of its gloomy murk. Most were weaker Abyssals, but there were a few more undead cultivators in there too.

“We can’t keep this up for much longer,” Amalyse said with rising alarm. “Rieren, how long till your meteors get here?”

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“I cannot tell,” Rieren said. “We will need to keep this up for a little longer, at least.”

“I’m running out of energy and Essence.”

“So am I.”

Rieren could feel Amalyse’s glare boring into her back. Well, it wasn’t like she was being purposefully unhelpful. She hadn’t foreseen the Dreadflood being this resilient down to the very bodies it was controlling, but then again, they were facing an S-Grade Abyssal. It wasn’t going to be easy by any means.

“Where is Batcat?” Amalyse asked.

She must have been thinking about the same thing Rieren had displayed back at the dungeon in Lionshard mountain, and more recently in the Shatterlands as well. Using Call of the Past to reclaim the times when she had been powerful, when she felt as though she could take on the whole world.

“I cannot say,” Rieren said.

Amalyse made a frustrated sound as their enemies closed in. Rieren understood her. She was starting to get a little tired too. Any advantage would help greatly here.

Which apparently manifested in the rest of their allies coming to their rescue.

“Watch out!”

All three of them instinctively threw themselves back as a dark blue beam of energy crashed into their area. It rocked across the dark flood’s surface and crashed through the S-Grade Abyssal’s summons, making the whole area explode a second later.

Rieren had to shield herself with her arm as the detonation’s debris went flying everywhere. She was pelted by bits of the earth shooting as fast as shrapnel. A rain of broken bodies and torn limbs thudded around them. The dark flood went splattering in every direction too, and they all had to take care not to get hit by that.

Not that it destroyed most of the monster’s minions, of course. Several had managed to get out of the way, including the faster monsters like the Blightmanes and the undead cultivators who had been harassing Rieren and company all this while.

But the devastating beam’s culprit appeared a heartbeat later.

Rieren shouldn’t have been surprised to see a gigantic monkey storming through the area towards them. But the initial shock couldn’t be pushed back for long.

In its mouth, it had a crushed skull of what to have been from a weaker Life Stifler the Dreadflood had absorbed. Its fur was steely silver, and wings sprouted off its back, flapping hard to aid in its jumps forward. The enormous Spirit Beast landed ahead of them, then began tearing through the Abyssals that the Dreadflood had coughed out.

Rieren considered joining in on the battle, but then one of their allies came running up to them.

“You’re still alive.” It was the stringy man who had been skeptical of Rieren’s plan. “Good to see you have succumbed to the beast yet.”

“We were supposed to stay separate, weren’t we?” Amalyse asked. “Then why are all of you headed here?”

She wasn’t wrong. Rieren had been so transfixed on her own battle with the cultivators, she hadn’t bothered to check how things were going with the others. Apparently, they were well on their way to destroying through whatever the Dreadflood had thrown at them.

But only because they had banded together.

Apparently, with their powers more concentrated, they could deal with the various summons of the S-Grade Abyssal more easily. Rieren could see that. After all, it was Rollo’s and Amalyse’s intervention that had granted her some breathing room against the Abyssal’s undead cultivators.

“Change of plans,” the man said. “Now, we’re going to drive a wedge straight into the heart of the monster. See how it likes that.”

Rieren shook her head. “That will only make the main body rise faster.”

“We’re well aware. But at this rate, the battle is turning into one of attrition, and an S-Grade monster would win that any day. So instead, we’re going to hammer it hard enough that it takes long enough to recover.” His eyes narrowed on Rieren. “Long enough, hopefully, for the meteor strike to come in.”

Rieren took a deep breath. So much depended on her ultimate goal. Calling down a vast storm of meteors would certainly deal a hefty blow against the Abyssal.

Problem was, they could get caught up in the blast as well. The meteors would come down in a fast flurry, and if they weren’t able to exit quickly enough, they would get caught as well.

“You are putting yourselves in danger,” Rieren said. “When the meteors come, how will you extricate yourselves?”

“Or, you could think of it as us giving our lives for your foolhardy plan. Who is to say the Dreadflood doesn’t have some counter to a rain of meteors? This is to ensure that your plan isn’t stopped by some unforeseen defence that it can summon.”

That was a concern Rieren hadn’t fully considered. One would think a few literal meteors wouldn’t be stoppable, and yet, she had flung one back herself a few months ago. It wasn’t impossible at all.

Especially considering how many people this monster could summon up to channel their various abilities.

“He’s got a point,” Rollo said.

Amalyse nodded. “We should all join up, though I don’t want to get caught in someone else’s charge or something.”

“No one’s that stupid. We’re still leaving significant space between each group. We’re simply close enough now to reinforce each other, if need be, and apply some focused pressure against the Abyssal. Not everyone can do everything well, you see.”

Rieren looked past him to see a demonstration of what exactly he meant. The last of the defenders of the Shatterlands were fighting against the Dreadflood with practice coordination.

Those who could channel powerful techniques from range were staggering the Abyssal’s summons. This allowed the ones more close-range oriented to swoop in and take advantage of their weakened foes.

At the same time, the ones fighting head-to-head against the undead were slowly but surely corralling them to one location. It gave the ones with the most powerful abilities with wide areas of effect to take out entire groups of the Dreadflood’s minions at once. The combination was supremely potent.

Of course, the Abyssal’s summons didn’t intend to stay down for long. However, while they were stymied and trying to resurrect themselves, the attackers forged deeper into the dark flood, determined to reach its centre and pin the Dreadflood in place.

That could only work if they weren’t trapped from behind by the resurrecting Abyssal summons, however.

“Looks like we need to watch their backs,” Amalyse said. “I hope you know you can’t kill these monsters.”

The stringy man before them smiled grimly. “We might not be able to kill them. But, we can make their resurrections a lot more difficult.”

Even as he said so, his gigantic ape tore apart a smaller Shadeborn limb from limb, throwing every piece far away from the others. Chunks of Abyssal meat and organs slopped down into the murk, the dark blood melding with the flood.

Rieren paid close attention to what happened to the bits of the destroyed Abyssal. They were slowly moving across the flood. She hadn’t seen how exactly the Dreadflood’s resurrecting powers worked, but it looked like the pieces of those it intended to revive had to be close enough. With so much of its attention diverted elsewhere, gathering the pieces proved difficult.

“So there is a way to stop them from coming back,” Rollo said. He whistled low. “We’ve been doing the exact same thing, just unknowingly.”

He was right. Farther back, all his spears were keeping the various parts of the monsters they had killed trapped down. Not only could not rise, they also couldn’t rejoin with the other pieces of themselves to be resurrected whole again.

“They need our assistance all the same,” the stringy man said. “I will keep the ones busy here. Destroy the ones in pursuit of the main thrust.”

As good a plan as any. Rieren and her former Lionshard disciples headed off to back up their allies.