The only thing Rieren felt in the explosion was the sheer audacity of the opponents she was facing. If it hadn’t been clear enough from the knife-wielder’s actions that they didn’t care about the attention they drew, it was now obvious that secrecy wasn’t in their vocabulary.

They certainly weren’t holding back. Setting up about a hundred Domain summons—small though they were—to explode all at once? Rieren had to applaud them for trying to be thorough.

It packed a powerful punch too. The explosion set off a shockwave that ripped through the surrounding canopy and tore several trees in half, making them crash to the floor. The blast itself had attempted to burn Rieren, tear her apart, and then slam the remains down to the earth all in one, earth-upending blow.

But she had made sure to put her extra Essence to good use. Thanks to concentrating it into an armourlike coating over her entire body, she barely felt the blast. It went so far as to protect her from the fierce flash of heat and the detonation’s auditory impact as well. Her clothes weren’t singed, the hairs on her skin went unburnt, and her ears made it through unscathed.

The only thing Rieren did end up feeling was the thump against the ground. Sadly, the explosion had been ferocious enough to shatter her concentrated Essence defence. So, when the blast propelled her against the earth below, Rieren definitely ended up feeling it.

It was too fast for her to react in time. Too fast, and too strong. Her reinforced body with the increased Body stat could take the hit without breaking too many bones, but the impact wasn’t pleasant.

Rieren groaned as she tried to rise. Her right side was throbbing viciously. Most likely, her shoulder had broken, as well as a few ribs. At least her arm seemed fine enough.

She’d been thrown away from the point of greatest interest, though, which gave her a little time to see what else was going on. A minor blessing.

Rieren’s current location was perfect for appreciating the true devastation wrought by that explosion that had laid low her concentrated Essence defence. Trees had been broken down and set aflame in a wide radius of at least a few hundred paces. Ash and burning leaves and twigs were raining all over the place. The cloying stench of smoke stung Rieren’s nose.

Worse, the branch jutting from Kalvia’s Domain had been torn apart too. Had they made it through that explosion?

Both Kalvia and Amalyse had powerful defensive capabilities they could use, but that blast had been instantaneous. There had been no time to react. It was why Rieren had prepared her concentrated Essence armour before exiting Kalvia’s Domain.

But then Rieren caught sight of their assailants. Two more figures appeared high above her head, standing on the trees that hadn’t been broken. They were still for barely a breath before dashing towards the large burning stump of the branch from Kalvia’s Domain. Apparently, Rieren’s companions were alive.

As was proven when a large crimson shield materialized at the end of the stump. One of the assailants had flung a bolt of roiling fire while the other had summoned a storm of the same blood-red lines that had sought to keep trapped. Ah, so that was the Domain summoner.

Neither made it past Amalyse’s shield. Her skill had improved greatly. Rieren wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was at A-Grade by this point.

While Amalyse blocked the enemies’ attacks, Kalvia counterattacked. Her power was all around them. In this forest, where her favoured Aspect was abundant, Kalvia was already in her kingdom.

The twigs and leaves still raining due to the blast now began twisting around in the air to attack the ones who had torn them from their parent trees. They didn’t remain as simple, broken pieces of the forest either. In mid-air, several of them began growing into branches and even started to form actual trees with trunks and roots, all attacking the fur-robed figures.

With their opponents distracted, if only for a few moments, Kalvia and Amalyse executed the main part of the secondary plan.

Rushing out of their seemingly cornered position and hightailing it out of the area.

“They’re running!” one of their enemies screamed. “Don’t let them get away.”

Late though they were, the fur-robed figures twisted around and fought off the flying twigs, leaves, and branches to give chase. The third of their party—the knife-wielder who had acted as the trap’s bait—rushed towards Rieren’s location to follow his companions while remaining on the ground.

That was all fine. The little exchange overhead had lasted just long enough for her perk to heal up the major wounds. Of course, the entirety of the healing was far from over, and now that she had begun to move and act again, it would take even longer to complete. But her shoulder was no longer broken and she could breathe without wincing, indicating enough of her ribs had been repaired.

As such, Rieren rushed to her feet, ignoring the lingering pain, and prepared herself to attack her distracted enemies.

They saw her, of course. Knife-wielder was the first to catch sight of her. He continued to hurtle in her direction, a sharp whistle from him alerting his companions that their first quarry hadn’t fallen just yet.

“How in the Abyss did you survive?” he asked, voice growing louder as he got closer.

Rieren raised her sword in time. Before her opponent had reached her location, he had summoned a volley of knives from nothing and flung them all in her direction. Using her sword would be silly here. He’d seen the blade belted at her waist and known she ought to be able to deflect a simple throw. That was why he had thrown so many at once.

A quick application of her Domain stopped the knives well enough, though. All Rieren had to do was summon a small pool around herself and make it rise like a geyser.

Knife-wielder had sought to use that as a distraction and attack when he reached her exact location. Maybe he’d even thought that the column of water gushing around Rieren that she had used to block his throw had obstructed her sight.

She quickly disabused him of that notion. Her sword sliced through the water before it had even begun to retract. A wet but sharp clang confirmed that she had deflected his attempt to stab her. As the rising water began to fall back down, they exchanged a quick flurry of blows, Rieren making sure to block every single strike aimed at her.

Knife-wielder jumped back. “You’re good with that sword, I’ll grant you that.”

“And you have passable skill with that metal toothpick,” Rieren said.

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He stared at her. Then his mouth burst open in a laugh. “I’m going to make you eat your words.”

She thought he was going to do so literally. His body had tensed, as though preparing to leap at her again with another flurry of probing knife blows seeking to get past her defence.

But then she felt a channelling of Essence somewhere behind her. A caw sounded, loud and harsh, not too far from her location. It was Rieren’s turn to tense. Another explosion? She didn’t have any sort of protection against detonations any longer, especially not if there were more than one heading in her direction.

When Rieren turned to face the crow, however, repositioning herself so that she could keep her direct opponent in her field of view, all she was one of them. One black bird that wasn’t even aiming its flight at her. Not directly.

Instead, it swung past, a harsh caw striking her nerves.

Knife-wielder tried to use the cursed bird as a distraction to get an underhanded blow in. Rieren’s Mind was more than fast enough to see it coming. She didn’t counter yet, though. The last of their opponents, the one who wielded the blood-red wires, wasn’t here. She needed them all in one location for this.

Her opponent rushed at her again. His speed was impressive. At any other time, he would have made an interesting opponent.

But he had no intention of fighting fair or simply pitting their skills against each other. The crow zipped in again, distracting Rieren so that the knife-wielder could slash at her without needing to worry about protecting himself.

It forced her to take a step back. She had to keep an eye on it as much as possible to see when it might explode. The bird would keep trying to pull away her attention while her enemy continued to try to get a hit in. So long as he kept closing their distance, the crow wouldn’t detonate. But he could also pull away all without a moment’s notice, and then she’d be caught.

For now though, it was a continuous dance of warding off the darting knife blows while mentally fighting off the crow’s zipping motion towards her. It tried pecking her with its beak and clawing her with its small talons, but Rieren struck them away without trouble.

“This is getting tiring,” knife-wielder said.

Rieren thought that signalled his intent to pull back. It should have meant that she would need to prepare for an explosion from the bird.

But the knife-wielder only charged straight at her faster and fiercer than before.

Rieren held her sword tighter. The crow shot at her with greater speed too. She quickly eyed both of her opponents in quick succession, before moving in the direction that would expose her least.

The crow sped past with an ear-piercing caw. Rieren did her best to focus on the real threat. The Receptor sword rose in time to deflect the long, curved knife. Her enemy passed her on the other side. Rieren thought she had succeeded in protecting herself, but then the knife-wielder was on her right side as well as her left.

Her eyes widened, a significant chunk of her attention shifting to her right. It wasn’t the entirety of the knife-wielder.

No, it was just his arm jutting through the gaping maw of the crow that had flown in close. An arm with a knife.

Rieren was too surprised to react quick enough. As the crow continued on its path past her, the arm jutting from its mouth slashed through half her midsection with a burst of blood and pain. Her strength went out of her legs and she fell hard on the ground. She’d lost enough blood in just that little moment to cause a little splash when she struck the red-tainted earth.

She had enough strength to turn around, biting through the agony to keep her opponent in her field of view. The knife-wielder was approaching her with slow but sure steps.

“This was almost fun,” he said. His grin was as feral as when she had first seen him. “Time to die.”

“Morel,” the crow said. Rieren had to ignore a strong urge to turn and stare at the talking bird. That voice was all too human. “We need you. Hurry up.”

“Almost done, Stade.”

“No. Leave this. We need you now.”

Morel growled. He stopped and faced the direction ahead where his companions had gone after Rieren’s team. “Are you having trouble with tree girl?”

“She’s the Abyss-cursed imperial bastard!”

“What?” Morel laughed. It wasn’t a mirthful sound at all. He looked at Rieren for a moment, almost regretful. “Looks like our little bout has ended. No matter though. That wound is deep. You’ll lose enough blood and die in time. Too bad you don’t have the token. Enjoy your last moments.”

Without a further look back, the knife-wielder ran off after his companions. The crow followed too. Its departing caw sounded almost triumphant.

Rieren sighed as she finally let the tension fade from her shoulders. It would help with the healing. The knife-wielder was right. In anyone else, that surprise blow he had landed on her would have been fatal. Even Rieren had already lost far too much blood.

But she had her perk to protect her. Divine Resilience was healing her up as fast as it could. It had already ensured that the wound was no longer fatal, though she was still losing some blood. Nevertheless, it only took a handful of minutes before Rieren felt she had healed enough to get back to her feet.

The agony remained livid. Not good. But nothing to worry too much about. This wasn’t truly a setback. In fact, this was only a part of the secondary plan to their secondary plan.

It was Rieren’s turn to construct a trap.

Just as she began to move, a little meow went up overhead. She looked up and smiled.

“Good timing, Batcat,” Rieren said.

The winged cat had steered her Domain Summons into their little battlefield. It was smart enough to arrive after Morel had properly left, so he wouldn’t sense anything untoward going on and stick around in suspicion. That was important. After all, Rieren had to sneak up behind her enemies. It was a good thing her Domain Summons would allow her to do so quite fast.

Rieren wasted no time jumping aboard. “Let us go, cat.”

The Dawn Cloud shot off, wending between the trunks and branches.

Rieren pulled out the little communicator they had purchased before the beginning of the tournament. The abalone shell glimmered in the low light. “Amalyse,” she said into it. “Kalvia. Can you hear me?”

There was no answer for a while. Hopefully, she wasn’t distracting them in the middle of a fight for their lives. It was obvious that their opponents had interesting tricks up their sleeves. She wouldn’t be surprised if they’d managed to actually put Kalvi and Amalyse in a troublesome situation if they had managed to catch up to them.

Though, that summons by Stade sounded like a call for reinforcements. A desperate call. One only did so when one was in dire straits.

“We’re fine,” Amalyse said. “You?”

Rieren smiled. “I will be arriving shortly.”

“Then we proceed with the plan?”

“Of course. We will meet at the appointed spot.”

They shut off the call. Best to focus on their own battles and objectives for now.

It was a good thing Batcat had arrived with the Dawn Cloud when it had. That meant Rieren hadn’t needed to run on her own feet, which would hasten her healing through her perk. It also gave her the opportunity she needed to properly prepare.

She had a decent viewing of her opponents’ abilities. There was fire Aspect that she’d have to be wary of, the liberal use of suicidal crows with their own strange powers, an adept knife-wielder, and that Domain made of unbreakable, blood-red wires. Well, unbreakable for all who lacked powers like Kalvia’s, and Rieren certainly had nothing that could compare to a giant tree.

There was also the fact that they had to have more abilities they hadn’t showcased yet. One couldn’t be as powerful a cultivator as those three undoubtedly were without more skills and techniques under their belts. Rieren would have to be wary of more surprises.

But that was fine. Her bout with the knife-wielder had taught her one thing—she wouldn’t need to be on the defensive, which meant she could keep them on the defensive.

After all, the best defence was an overwhelming, annihilating offence.

She was catching up to her quarry. Despite moving quite fast, they still hadn’t escaped out of this area of the forest just yet. Unless, of course, this chunk of the woods was unending all the way to where the smoke signal was rising from.

But that was proven false when another clearing appeared ahead of them all. Rieren didn’t halt the Dawn Cloud even when she reached her enemy’s location. Instead, she bid the cloud climb higher, past the canopy and continue further onwards. She finally paused when she reached Amalyse and Kalvia’s location.

Interestingly enough, this was just inside the new clearing as well.

Rieren let her Dawn Cloud dissipate. She began falling. Batcat, thankfully, remained floating in the air, recognizing that the fight below was Rieren’s own. She bought a sack of salt from the System Shop—salt was rather cheap, needing only a dozen Credits—and spilled its contents everywhere, summoning her Domain at the same time.

The wind whistled past Rieren. She grinned as she neared the ground. Kalvia and Amalyse were well past the location of Rieren’s landfall. In their place, their pursuers had fallen right under Rieren’s trap.

By the time they thought to look up, it was too late. Rieren, along with her Domain, crashed right upon them.