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The Swordwing Saga [LitRPG Cultivation]
Book 4: Chapter 28 (251): Taking Advantage of Devastation

Book 4: Chapter 28 (251): Taking Advantage of Devastation

It took a little bit of time before Rieren’s team of recruits were ready to get going. Healing from the wounds she had delivered was one thing, but then, they had to plan how they were going to proceed and what exact task she needed them to perform.

Feeling slightly responsible, Rieren had purchased a mechanical leg for Stade from the System Shop. It was mostly a static metal model of a leg, nowhere near as complicated as the automaton models that Rollo had attached in place of his missing lower limbs. But it would suffice to get Stade moving.

Of course, there was the pain to deal with. Limb loss was a traumatic injury, one that most people needed a tremendous amount of time to recover from.

Unfortunately for them, they had no such luxury. Stade had purchased some Narrower Pills from the System Shop, which apparently helped one focus on a specific objective to the detriment of losing awareness about other things. Useful for those looking for severe pain relief.

The other two needed less attention, though it was good they got a little while to recover as well.

All the while, Rieren couldn’t truly let her guard down. There was no telling when the three of them might try something. They might have failed once, and they might understand the gulf between theirs and Rieren’s power, but she wouldn’t put it past them to try something regardless. They were quite motivated to make their Sect proud.

“We can talk through this?” Morel asked skeptically.

He was holding a little Comm Shell Rieren had purchased for him and his team from the System Shop. That was the means they would use to stay in touch and coordinate their foray from this moment on.

“Try it out,” Rieren said.

He looked suspiciously at her, then walked away a little. Rieren raised her own Comm Shell to her ears.

“Hello?” Morel said a little awkwardly. “Can anyone hear me?”

Rieren pulled the shell closer to her mouth. “Yes. Now come back here.”

Hearing her voice made Morel jump a little. Satisfied that it actually worked, he hurried back.

“Now that we are all prepared,” Rieren said, looking between her three recruits. “Let us head out.”

They nodded. She couldn’t see the beginning of any treachery or deceit in their eyes, but looks themselves could be deceiving. Rieren would need to not rely on them overmuch.

When they set off, Rieren went in one direction, while the other three went in another. Her main target was still the smoke signal, of course. That was all that mattered. Since she was bearing all the tokens, as long as she made it there successfully, then they would all qualify for the next round. As such, her recruits’ goal was to see her safely there as well.

For now, keeping themselves distant and seemingly disconnected would be to their benefit. Rieren didn’t want to run around the entire forest with a squad of her personal murderers in tow. Surprise was a powerful element in these situations.

After all, the Ardent Strem Sect had sent her recruits into the tournament because they needed surprise on their side.

As before, Rieren had to take a certain path laid out in the forest for her. The trees were so thick elsewhere, it was impossible to make headway off the beaten track.

She called Amalyse and Kalvia through the Comm Shell as she travelled, just to share updates about their situations.

“You enslaved them?” Amalyse asked, slightly aghast.

“It is not slavery, Amalyse,” Rieren said, trying not to roll her eyes. “But I admit that it is close to coercion of some sort.”

“Close to, she says.”

“Are you sure they won’t betray you?” Kalvia asked.

“No, I am not,” Rieren said. “However, they understand that their chance of progressing to the next round is stronger with me than against me. But enough about me, what has happened with you two?”

Amalyse and Kalvia decided against arguing with Rieren further, which was pointless anyway since the decision had been made already. They quickly explained their situation, how they’d been staying low so far in an attempt to not attract any more trouble. It meant they hadn’t been able to make much progress, especially since they’d been slightly worried about Rieren.

“We need to meet back up,” Rieren said. “So we can execute the same strategy, if necessary. It worked quite well this time.”

“We should, yes,” Kalvia said. “but you need to keep going towards the main target. We’ll meet you along the way, circle around to your path and catch up.”

Rieren was tempted to ask them about the exact direction they had gone, but she knew Kalvia was right. Their target was reaching the source of the smoke signal. Everything else was secondary, including each of their individual safety.

Cutting off the call, Rieren focused on the journey ahead. She had been travelling on the Dawn Cloud, Batcat dozing peacefully next to her. The winged kitten had tried to perch atop its regular spot on her head, and when Rieren had declined, it had tried to squeeze on her lap. That wouldn’t do either. She didn’t want to wake the cat up if some new obstacle presented itself.

Like the rest of her powers Rieren hadn’t used yet, Batcat was another important card up her sleeve. She couldn’t play it without proper consideration.

The forest eventually thinned and Rieren bid the Dawn Cloud halt. Through the opening in the trees ahead, a sight of pure devastation greeted her. She wondered if this was another location where the floating madman had chucked down one of his spears. This destruction looked even worse than that, however.

At a glance, the swathe of blistered, bubbling ground stretched almost two-thirds of a league in every direction. All the trees that might have been there had vaporized to nothing, leaving piles of ash here and there. The air itself was clogged with a cloying stench and a light smog that blanketed the sky.

Rieren frowned. This seemed familiar…

“We are turning around.” She began rerouting the Dawn Cloud to take a different path, pulling out the Comm Shell to call her three recruits. “I have come across an area we should avoid.” Rieren quickly described what she had seen before turning around. “Have you seen it?”

“Yes, we just came across it,” Morel said. “We weren’t sure how we were supposed to proceed, so we haven’t touched it for now. Are you sure we should take another direction? It could be a trap.”

“Believe me, it would be in our best interest to avoid a direct confrontation with the person who caused this.”

“I see you speak from experience. We’ll follow your lead and circle around from a different direction. But since we’re taking opposite directions, we’ll be separated for longer, so if something comes up…”

“Fear not. I can handle myself. But I expect your presence as soon as possible.”

Morel sounded like he was grinding his teeth together. Most likely, he wasn’t appreciating being treated like an underling. “Of course.”

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It turned, unfortunately, to be exactly what Morel had warned and what Rieren had secretly feared it might be. The devastation wasn’t just the aftermath of a battle. It was a trap.

Rieren sensed them channeling Essence long before she saw them. But that didn’t mean she could withdraw. Going back would simply mean reaching that blasted, blistered patch of the forest again, and it would ensure that she would have to enter the vicinity of annihilation, and she had no wish to do that.

Pushing herself off her Domain Summons, Rieren quickly confirmed with her recruits that she was indeed heading towards a confrontation. The Dawn Cloud hovered in place, holding its lone feline occupant atop its cloudy surface.

Gripping her sword’s hilt tightly, Rieren stepped forward into the clearing that was to be the site of the trap. Sometimes, one had to swallow a bitter pill to avoid fatal poison.

A quick glance around revealed that it was a small location. There wouldn’t be much space to manoeuvre. Unless she could get them all past this clearing. The canopies of trees here curved around on themselves to block out the daylight, aside from packed together so tightly that there was going to be no way out except straight ahead.

Looking up also revealed one of the ones who sought to entrap Rieren. A young woman was dangling from one of the branches.

“We’ve got a brave one here,” a high-strung male voice said.

Rieren pulled her glance back down to ground level. The bearer of the voice walked into the clearing from the opposite end. He was a thickset fellow wearing heavy armour to boot. A meteor hammer dangled from his hands, while the top half of a spear jutted from over his left shoulder.

“I thought this was a tournament,” Rieren said. “Not a war.”

The woman dangling above landed behind her with feline grace. “Don’t mind Astosind.” She smirked at her companion. “He takes everything a little too seriously.”

Rieren glanced behind her. Her opponents now covered both the rear entrance and the forward exit. There would be no escape for her, except through the cultivators. But there were just two so far. The third was yet to appear. Could be that they weren’t sure if Rieren was truly alone or not, so the third one was staying put for now.

All the better for Rieren to take care of these two as quickly as possible.

“Never underestimate a single opponent,” Astosind said. “That’s how you get this.”

He pulled off his lobster-tail helm. Rieren couldn’t hold back her grimace. A part of his head seemed caved in, like a dented helmet. No hair grew from the injured area, so he had combed his remaining auburn hair to fall sideways over the distorted area.

“Yes, yes, we know Astosind.” The woman’s tone was more than enough to convey her eyeroll. “Let’s get this over with. Hopefully, this one has a token.”

Rieren faced the seemingly more dangerous Astosind and pulled out her sword. Neither of these two was the one who had used the devastating technique. It could be the third member of their team, or it could just be that they were taking advantage of the one Rieren was truly wary of, who might not even know about these three.

Astosind stepped forward, swinging one end of his meteor hammer around so fast that it started to blur in seconds. He was clearly an adept with the weapon.

Rieren decided it was best not to take her eyes off the opponent in front of her just to check what the one behind was doing. Not if she intended to take advantage of their positioning and turn their intentions back upon them.

Astosind took one step forward. That was the signal Rieren needed to get going.

She lunged at him, baring her sword with a quick motion. At the same time, Astosind launched the meteor hammer end he had been swinging at her. There must have been a skill attached to the move. The speed behind it could be explained by his own innate stats, but the glowing purple aura crackling with power could only come from a skill.

It wasn’t too fast for Rieren’s Mind. She saw it coming, held herself back just enough to use Earthfall Blade at the last possible moment. The deflection sent the flying meteor hammer crashing to a different side, sending up an explosion of amethyst power behind her.

More importantly, the deflection had come too late for Astosind to try anything else. He didn’t have the time to make use of the other end of his meteor hammer before Rieren would get to him.

But maybe, he had never intended it in the first place.

Rieren pulled herself to a quick halt as her spatial awareness fired off. It wasn’t developed to the point where it could be termed as its own separate sense of Proprioception, but it was still enough to notify her that the woman she had neglected behind her was now moving. Not just moving but attacking.

So, as Astosind jumped back without warning, Rieren managed to halt her momentum to do the same, throwing herself back in the nick of time.

Good thing she had done so. The woman landed right where Rieren would have ended up if she’d charged headlong at Astosind. She had leaped all the way from where she’d been standing to land right atop Rieren, a strange, rocky sword crashing down where Rieren’s body should have been.

That wasn’t all. Apparently, the woman hadn’t simply intended to crush Rieren with that weird sword of hers.

For when Rieren launched her own attack, she found herself blocked, and then repelled.

As soon as the woman had landed, Rieren had pulled her sword back, activating Rippling Blade to turn it glowing white and extend its length. Lightning crackled along its length as she applied her newest Aspect to the Receptor blade. Then she swung. Rippling Blade had made her sword long enough to shear through both the woman and Astosind farther ahead of her.

Except, that was when the woman activated her skill too. While her rock-crusted sword was buried in the ground, gleaming curved arcs sliced to life all around her. An entire storm of them erupted into being.

Rieren’s skill was stopped cold. One of the glowing arcs rammed against the extended blade. The power behind the arc made her arm shake with the effort. That was an incredible amount of strength behind whatever strange skill the woman had employed. And that was just for that one, lone arc.

Several more arcs manifested alongside the first. Where Rieren might have pushed past the one arc, three more alongside the first made it impossible.

Then the arcs broke through Rippling Blade.

Rieren had to stare a little as the arcs expanded outwards, breaking apart her sword’s extended length into glimmering splinters sent flying every which way.

It was just instinctive quick thinking that allowed her to use Earthfall Blade to deflect away several of the arcs flying in her direction. Those, and all the rest not aimed at her specifically, crashed into the surrounding forest to shatter several trees and send them crashing down. Their entangled branches were the only thing preventing them from falling to the forest floor.

“She’s a spritely one,” Astosind said. “She even blocked Bladestorm, Ledorne.”

The woman, Ledorne, turned around to frown at Rieren. “More than that, she sensed exactly where I was going to land and used her own skill at the exact time I landed to get me, and probably you too, Astosind. That blade of hers grew quite long. She’s skilled. A little too skilled.”

“Are you thinking she’s one of them?”

Ledorne didn’t answer.

Rieren’s eyes darted between the woman and the man. “One of whom?”

“Oh, just one of those we may have fought before,” Astosind said. “You know, in the previous timeline. I don’t recall you in particular, but I know there are some people who’ll remember a face from even the smallest meeting.”

Rieren laughed slightly. “Apologies, but I do not recall either of you from my past. I have faced one with a meteor hammer before, but I have never seen a skill such as hers.”

She wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t. A lot of those who had access to skills in this timeline hadn’t had them in the previous timeline, due to not everyone having access to the system. which meant that a lot of the skills Rieren might spot would look completely new to her.

“Be that as it may,” Ledorne said. “Let us end this here and now. Astosind.”

“On it.”

As Ledorne pulled her sword freed from the ground and Astosind stepped to one side, Rieren decided to act first. She summoned her Domain, letting stormy waves erupt all around the clearing.

Her opponents were caught by surprise only momentarily. Their own Domains came into a play second later.

Blobs of darkness seeped out from the ground, rising through Rieren’s water as though her Domain didn’t exist. Along with them, the earth began heaving upwards as well, cracking apart as chunks rose into the air. Broken trees and their leaves and branches joined the floating miasma.

Rieren frowned. A Domain that manipulated gravity. Powerful. Though, it curiously had no effect on her or her Domain water, except for the area right next to Astosind. There, the water was floating upwards in spiralling droplets along with the shattered ground.

Ah. Now Rieren understood how exactly it worked. For something to be affected by his Domain, Astosind needed to have touched it first.

The woman’s Domain was coming into play as well. Strange particles like sand were materializing around her, spreading slowly outwards. They didn’t seem to be affected by Astosind’s gravity manipulation, following their own trajectories as they reached out in every direction.

Rieren had no intention of facing either of those Domains head on. Not yet, at least. So, after a moment’s focus, she made her own Domain explode into a vicious explosion of steam.

Her opponent’s screams were cut off thanks to the combination of superheated vapour and the remainder of water swirling around them all. Sound also turned weird when Rieren was moving so fast. Fray Passage was carrying her through any and all danger.

Her enemies had immediately flung their countermeasures at her, but Rieren’s skill was far too fast. The burst of steam had given her too much of a surprise head start. She wove away from glowing slashes cutting through her roiling steam and dodged another end of the meteor hammer from Astosind.

And then Rieren was through the exit. She was free from those who would keep her trapped. She—

She was facing the third member of their team. One who summoned an enormous serpent’s head constructed entirely of blistering, white-hot flames. A head that opened its maw wide and crunched down exactly where Rieren ended up, setting off an erupting inferno.