The world of memories reconstructed by Batcat wasn’t going to last long. Even now, the edges seemed to be tearing into strange, colourful shreds. She had to end her business here before Batcat’s ability ran out completely.

Good thing Rieren had prepared for it beforehand. She had already purchased the few materials she was going to need to form the pact with the elixir field of her past self.

It was just the strange, unbidden flood of emotions that made things unnecessarily difficult. Rieren hadn’t been ready for this. She hadn’t thought she would need to kill her past version, and even when she had been prepared to carry it out, she hadn’t foreseen the need to watch the slow dissolution of her own former self.

Staving off the building despair, the unbridled rage, the will to fight till the very end even when things turned hopeless… Rieren’s heart had crushed itself when she had ended her own life.

But she had managed to redeem something. A shred of dignity, a hint of purpose beyond just the killing of a memory, for both herself and the past version that had never truly existed.

A goal.

Rieren didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, there was value in rebuilding the world.

Maybe a part of her had decided that she would have done her part by simply resetting things with humanity in a better position to come out of the apocalypse with civilization intact to some extent. Maybe she had thought her duty to the world would be fulfilled if she managed to defeat the gods.

She had never been charged with such a task in the place. Rieren wasn’t an altruist out to help all those who couldn’t do it themselves. One of her chief reasons for her journey in the last timeline was to enact vengeance upon the gods and all those who had stolen her life from her.

Rieren had seen just what it had done to her past self.

But would she be satisfied if she simply faded from the world itself after accomplishing such a goal? She had ideas of where she might go next, things and lives she might attempt. But Rieren was starting to realize why she hadn’t settled on any of those, why none of them had truly appealed like vengeance, was because they didn’t hold the same kind of purpose.

Instead, as past Rieren had said, she could perhaps try healing the world after the apocalypse was driven off.

She looked back over the past few months. Perhaps it had been due to the Clanmistress’s bidding, but Rieren hadn’t exactly objected to assisting the Shatterlands to re-establishing itself. She wouldn’t call it an enjoyable activity, exactly, but it did fulfill a part of her that she hadn’t paid as much attention before. It mollified the part that desired retribution against the gods.

The part of Rieren that clamoured for her to get to Vanharron, that needed her to excise the rot that had overtaken the capital, the imperial court, and possibly the Forborne Emperor himself, wasn’t as antsy as it should have been.

And that was because Rieren was already acting against them, reversing all the damage they had dealt and ensuring their plans wouldn’t come to fruition.

Batcat meowed at her urgently.

Rieren rooted herself to her current objective. She wiped away the tears that her past self had brought forth. “Yes, let us be done with this.”

She pulled out a scroll of golden paper from her storage ring. A Spirit Extraction Scroll. It was already written with the script that she would need. All Rieren had to do was open it up and let the paper rest upon the wound she had delivered to her past self.

The paper’s script was the current that would pull out the elixir field of past Rieren. To do so, one needed to deliver the right wound straight to the target’s elixir field with the right material. Her sword had already been imbued with it, of course. Rieren’s final stab had been precisely aimed to let the scroll carry out its function.

A quick little channelling of Essence through her Receptor sword set the paper ablaze with blue light. The script started glowing.

In a moment, the elixir field started bubbling out of past Rieren’s corpse.

It was nothing more than a ball of extremely concentrated Essence, glowing like a brilliant blue star. She could barely look at it straight on. Its sheer radiance was forcing her to squint.

Rieren held herself steady. The elixir field was exiting her target with furious power, reflecting the state she had taken it in. Much of the Essence bounded by the elixir field was turning into pure force, rippling the air and making the ground quake. If past Rieren had failed to make the mountain crash upon her, her elixir field might accomplish it in her stead.

There was no time to lose. Past Rieren’s elixir field was a lot more volatile than present Rieren had expected. She pulled out the last part of her preparations—a thin rod with pointed ends called an Elixir Dowser. One of the ends was much thinner and longer than the other.

Taking a deep breath, Rieren stabbed her own chest with the longer end of the rod, in the same spot she had sunk her sword into her target’s body.

Right into her own elixir field.

The pain burned in her chest, but all Rieren had to do was look at the corpse at her feet. Whatever pain she was feeling right now paled before what her past self had gone through, a mere memory though she might be.

As Rieren slowly raised her sword, the elixir field rose with it. The glowing script, which had transferred from the paper to her sword, ensured that she had some tenuous control over it.

Batcat purred loudly. Another warning Rieren needed to heed.

“Yes, I am aware, cat,” she said through gritted teeth. “I am going as fast as I can.”

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She was. This part of the process needed care and concentration. Rieren couldn’t rush it, no matter what, even if the world around her was tearing itself asunder.

With agonizing slowness, she raised the volatile elixir field all the way to where it touched the rod sticking out of her chest. The tension turning her entire body into a rigid rod finally began to dissipate as Rieren sighed. Now that she had connected the target elixir field to the Elixir Dowser, she could relax a bit.

The elixir field began moving along the length of the rod. Its other pointed end was sucking in all the Essence into its hollow centre, driving it through the rod and straight into Rieren’s elixir field.

That alone wouldn’t be enough to form the pact, of course. Rieren raised her hands and clasped them both at the spot where she had stabbed it into herself. Warm blood dashed her hands. She paid it no attention. All Rieren could focus was on the words leaving her mouth, on the intention and power behind it, on the meridians she had to concentrate on.

“I hereby form a pact with the elixir field of Rieren Vallorne.” Every word rang with Essence-fuelled might, clanging in her ears like echoes bouncing off walls a mere handsbreadth apart. “I accept the burden that we are now as one. I accept the duty that we share the same ultimate goals. I accept the fate that we are now bound by the same destiny. Thus, my pact is sealed.”

Hallowed words. Rieren didn’t fully understand what made that exact sequence of syllables more correct than any others, but she had learned that if the words were incorrect, the pact wouldn’t form.

All she knew was that the creator of the Spirit Extraction Scroll had imbued that specific sequence of sounds with permanent Essence through Forging technique that was well beyond her capabilities. Sometimes, it was grounding to recall that, for all her power, that even if she had become something akin to a goddess, there were some powers she would never fully grasp.

The volatile elixir field continued sinking into the rod. Rieren stood stock still, concentrating on the meridians that would carry the absorbed, concentrated Essence through the correct route that would meld it with her elixir field. That would construct a central core that went above and beyond almost any other elixir field in existence.

All of a sudden, it was done. The elixir field that she had pulled free from her former self was gone.

As was the memory world around her. Everything was back to normal. The colours had returned, as had the senses. Rieren could smell the leaves, hear the wind rustling through the canopy and grass.

All that was left was the Elixir Dowser sticking out of her chest.

She wasn’t certain if she had been fast enough. Had the memory faded before she had completed the pact? No, that couldn’t be right. Perhaps all she had to do was find a—

New Achievement!

True Summons performed! You have formed your first pact. However lonely the path of a cultivator might be, it cannot yet be trod alone. You are rewarded as much for realizing that as the pact itself.

Rewards

* 1 Level

* 1 Skill point

* 10 Credits

* 1 New Skill

A lonely path, was it? Well, considering Rieren had killed her past self, she supposed it couldn’t get any lonelier than that.

For the moment, she focused on finding her new skill. Her emotions were still a mess. She should have felt excited at finally getting the opportunity to fill up her extra skill slot. Yet what little eagerness drove her was faint, felt only in the far reaches of her soul.

A new skill couldn’t outweigh the sheer horror she had perpetrated, after all.

[Skill Tree]

You have one available skill evolution point. Pick wisely.

Swordstorm Severance [E]

* An [Offensive] skill that allows 10 rapid strikes in a radius of 7 paces around a target.

* Use: Once per battle

* Special: [N/A]

Timeless Passage [E]

* A [Movement] skill that creates a temporal impression of the wielder along the passage of travel

* Use: Ten times per battle

* Special: Blade must be sheathed

Rippling Blade [E]

* An [Offensive] skill that extends the blade’s reach by 20 paces.

* Use: Five times per battle

* Special: Extended blade carries along buffs, boons, enchantments, or other effects

Bladereaver Posture [E]

* A [Buffing] skill that greatly enhances the Body stat for 3 minutes if a wound has been suffered.

* Use: Once per battle

* Special: Wound severity increases stat enhancement

Rieren glanced through the skills. Some were familiar ones from before, of course. But a couple were ones she hadn’t yet seen in this timeline. Rippling Blade was what she would need here.

As soon as she had the skill in her [Status], Rieren activated it to test her new ability out. She had made sure to point the blade in a mostly harmless direction first, of course. The skill made the Receptor sword’s entire length glow, before the blade extended to about twenty paces ahead of her, just as the description had said.

Rieren swung the sword experimentally. She smiled as she did so. The blade’s extended length didn’t add any further weight. It was just as though she was slashing her normal sword.

Though, the motion did remind her that she had a rod jutting out of her chest.

With a little grimace, Rieren pulled it out and then immediately sold it to get some of her Credits back. She made sure to wipe the blood off first, though. Items sold back to the System Shop retained anything they had on them while being sold, to a certain extent.

Blood certainly fell within that extent. Rieren didn’t want her blood to fall into any strange hands. She had seen people perform rather maddening acts with even a lock of hair.

Batcat plopped back onto its back as though, with its job done, it could now relax.

“Perhaps I too have earned a little break,” Rieren said.

After all, she had just killed her own, Abyss-cursed self and stolen her elixir field to boot. She needed to let her emotions settle back to their usual, botherless state.

Batcat meowed at her inquisitively.

“Yes, I am certain the elixir field is mine now,” she said. “Though it will take some time to fully settle in and be properly usable. Nevertheless, I should be capable of far greater techniques soon enough.”

The use of her new skill had improved her mood slightly. That was ever the way of things. Rieren could distract herself from her roiling mind and soul by focusing on all the things that were laid out in a regular, achievable manner. Namely, her progression through her class and cultivation.

Divine Resilience was already healing up her wound, so that didn’t really matter. What Rieren had to do now was focus on her new capabilities.

All that meant was that Rieren needed to summon her new True Summons.

This wasn’t going to be a normal summoning. After all, the elixir field she had formed a pact with wasn’t a sentient creature who existed elsewhere and had its own free will to act however it best saw fit. No, this was purely a vessel full of highly concentrated Essence. A vessel she had merged with herself. With her own elixir field.

Rieren focused on what she could achieve here. The concentrated Essence started bubbling out from deep within her own elixir field. Trails of teal-coloured Essence materialized just outside the tips of her fingers of her outstretched hand.

She knelt down. With a bit more focus, Rieren narrowed the Essence ejection to one finger. It grew brighter and more solid-looking. A single stab into the ground in front of her took no effort at all. Despite the apparent solidity of the Essence, the pointed ejection sank into the earth without any resistance at all, as though it was no more than an illusion.

But when Rieren pulled back her finger, having let go of the Essence channeling, there was a deep hole just above where her finger had stopped.

She smiled as Batcat came over to investigate. “See there, kitten. I now have the power to change the world with nothing but Essence itself.”