They had to take up a somewhat new formation with the addition of the newcomers. While Rieren’s older recruits continued circling her in case she needed surprising backup, the three new members of their party were staying much closer.

One of them ranged ahead to scout out any potential dangers or obstacles, one of them accompanied Rieren herself, while the third stayed at the distant rear to watch their back.

“Are you sure this is going to be safe?” Morel asked, eyeing the newcomers suspiciously. “I don’t like the looks of that woman.”

“Her name is Olis,” Rieren said. “And I believe her companions are Sonk and Artel. Might be better if you refer to them as such, instead of this woman and that little, crook-mouthed git. We want to get along.”

“I never even used that last one.”

“Be that as it may, we must cooperate, Morel.”

“Argh, fine. If you want me to trust you, you could just remind me to do so instead of being patronizing about it.”

Rieren blinked. “I was… being patronizing?”

Morel’s mouth fell open a little. “You don’t have much social experience, do you?”

“I have an adequate amount of social experience.”

It was Morel’s turn to blink. “I’m going back to my position. Holler if you need any help. We can at least clean up the corpses.”

With that, he leaped away, jumping from branch to branch until he had turned into a speck before disappearing altogether. Rieren stood there for a moment, wondering how exactly she had been patronizing there.

Perhaps she did need to modulate how she was acting with regards to her companions. She had seen them as potentially expendable members of her little team, her subordinates who needed to act how she deemed fit. That had changed. They had earned her trust. Better yet, they had earned her respect. Maybe they really had learned their lesson, as Morel kept saying.

But it could be that Rieren was letting her original estimation of them slip into her treatment. She’d have to keep an eye on that.

“What’s the protocol?” Artel asked, breaking Rieren out of her reverie. He was the one keeping her company personally. “Do we run as soon as we see any sign of trouble?”

“We do,” Rieren said. “Our target is the smoke signal. Repeat after me. Our. Target. Is. The. Smoke. Signal.”

Artel stared at her with a flat expression. “I am not repeating that. But yes, the intention is clear enough.”

“Good. We only fight if absolutely necessary.”

“I suppose you don’t have a horde of the tokens to offer to anyone else who might want to stop us.”

“Not at all. Just the one I could spare for you lot.”

“Figures.”

They continued their journey in silence. The path was laid out before them, just as it had been so far. The forest didn’t allow them to veer in too many different directions. In other words, further confrontations were more than likely. But Rieren didn’t worry overmuch. She would deal with them as the situation arose.

One such situation did arise rather quickly. They had only been travelling for perhaps twenty minutes before Sonk called in a halt.

“There’s something up ahead that I don’t recognize,” he said, having returned from his position farther ahead to join up with Rieren. “Has to be some kind of Domain by the looks of it, though I can’t say what exactly it might do. Looks dangerous either way.”

Rieren decided to have a look for herself. By the time she reached the area from which the Domain was visible, Sonk was shaken. The Domain had apparently advanced.

He was right. The Domain was indeed strange. It looked like a continuously ongoing blizzard, little crystals of snow and ice forming and breaking apart everywhere in its expansive vicinity. Rieren didn’t feel any chilly sensations, however. There wasn’t even an ounce of cold. What in the world was that Domain’s purpose? She couldn’t recall seeing it in the past.

“It’s heading towards us,” he said. “Even though I don’t see the Domain-user anywhere.”

Rieren frowned. “There is nothing to fear. We will simply find another way around it.”

She brought up her Comm Shell and relayed their findings to Morel and the rest of her primary recruits. Unfortunately, they informed her that they were facing the exact same thing.

“Did I not tell you all to circle around farther?” Rieren asked.

“I thought we did,” Morel said. “But it looks like this Domain is huge.”

Another powerful opponent. Just Rieren’s luck. And there was still no sign of the actual Domain-user. Not that it was likely they could fight and take down the cultivator and proceed along quickly.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, they were accosted by the Domain-user directly.

There was a sudden bloom of Essence channelling that Rieren could sense. She and her current companions all started, but the man appearing from ahead didn’t seem to be intent on attacking them.

“Looks like we’ve caught our next round of fish,” he said. He was wearing grey, fur-lined robes that doubled his apparent size said.

“What do we do?” Morel asked.

Rieren countered with a question of her own. “How far away are you from the Domain?”

“About seventy paces.”

Ah. More distant than Rieren and her cohort. It was likely Morel’s group hadn’t engaged anyone yet. Likely, they hadn’t been accosted by furry phantoms coming out of the stormy gloom.

“I am going to suggest you stay away from it,” she said. “Circle back and come join us from the rear if there are no open pathways ahead of you.”

Morel said something unsavoury under his breath, but then he agreed. “We will join you soon. Hold out till then.”

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Rieren was tempted to tell him not to come here expecting a fight, but the call cut off. Besides, the strange man before them had engaged her new allies, and things weren’t looking good on the peaceful resolution front. They’d been slowly escalating their threats and displays of hostility. It was moments away from breaking out into an actual fight.

“You need to get out of here before I kick your hindquarters to the next month, Galorian,” the woman, Olis, was saying. Ah, so these ones knew each other, though it didn’t look like an amicable partnership. “And turn off that cursed lightshow of yours. It hurts my ears.”

The newcomer scoffed. He glanced scornfully at Olis, before surveying the rest of them with the same arrogance. “You can’t bait me into anything, Olis. You’ve got no clue how strong we’ve become.”

“We?”

In answer, the newcomer snapped his fingers. Apparently, he wasn’t alone. Out of his blizzarding Domain, several others started to appear. Most weren’t arrayed in the same wintry robes like the first newcomer, but they all had the same resoluteness about them. The same determination. They were here to see to the end of Rieren and her team.

“Got yourself a bunch of lackeys to do the hard work for you, have you?” Artel asked.

The newcomer spat to one side. “We outnumber you three to one. At least. I’m not the best at math, but I do know how best to make you all kiss the dirt at your feet. So if you want to avoid any embarrassments, I’m going to ask just this once—hand over all your tokens right this instant and I may consider letting you all go with your skin still on your flesh.”

“No, Galorian,” one of his companions hissed. “You can’t threaten them and insult them at the same time. That’s not the most effective way of doing threats. It’s an art form like anything else, one you need to practice and master.”

“Thanks, grandfather.” Galorian rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Anyway, what’s your answer? As you can see, you’ve got no hope of defeating any of us, and you can try to escape, but we’ll catch you eventually anyway, and we won’t be kind when we do. Surrendering is your best option. Trust me.”

Olis gripped the handle of her mace tight. Around Rieren, Sonk and Artel were tensing in preparation for a fight as well. Rieren frowned at her new allies. What in the world was wrong with them all, trying to get into fights against their best interests?

Maybe it was whatever past history they shared. Hmm. Considering none of the ones in Morel’s group had recognized any of Olis’s team members, it suggested that they were northerners. Morel’s Ardent Stream Sect was in the south. In other words, all these newcomers were from the north too. People who either knew or were familiar with Essalina Arteroth.

“Stand down,” Rieren said, making sure her voice carried through to them all. “We do not need to engage in pointless combat.”

“Oh, not this again,” Olis muttered.

“Yes, this again. Enough of squabbling and fighting and any other pointless action. Our primary goal is to reach the smoke signal. Everything else comes secondary to that fact. So, I have a counter suggestion… Galorian, if I may call you that.”

Galorian frowned. “What in the Abyss might your name be?”

“Call me Ren,” she said. Best not to tell Essalina’s followers her real name just yet. “Instead of fighting, I believe we can come to an amicable accord, one that can benefit us all.”

“I thought you didn’t have anymore tokens to buy your pacifist way through the forest?” Artel said.

Rieren stared at him. He was being extremely unhelpful here. “I never said I would use more tokens.”

Another of the newcomers stepped up. The look on his face was both quizzical and greedy. “Wait, did I hear right? You have more than one token on you?”

That made the rest of them take notice of her more. Well, Artel had gone and done it. Now it was going to be even more difficult to claw them all back to a point where they could negotiate to a scenario that didn’t devolve into a battle.

Or perhaps, just this once, Rieren could let loose and show them what it truly meant to face her.

She let her Domain slip out from her position. It was a slow, subtle summoning. There was no need to let the stormy waters range out this way and that, no need to stir up and cause more panic among her enemies. All she needed was to let them know the extent of the very baseline of her prowess. Of the power they would face if they dragged out Rieren’s wrath.

They didn’t miss the Domain summoning, of course. Rieren simply made sure that it wasn’t threatening enough for them to react with anything other than wariness.

Ripples extended outwards from beneath Rieren’s feet. They spread out, a few dozen paces at first to cover the entire area around them, and then they kept going. And going. Where Rieren had held back the water’s regular fury, she had allowed its strength to come out in the area the Domain covered, which extended far, far outwards to swamp even Galorian’s Domain.

“The Abyss?” someone said, staring down at his reflection in Rieren’s summoned water. He looked back, continuing his cursing. “How far back does it even stretch? Look, Galorian, it’s got our Domain covered up too.”

Our Domain. Interesting. So it appeared that the enormous, blizzardlike Domain they had seen covering up a great deal of area was actually constructed by several smaller Domains. Apparently, a bunch of the newcomers possessed the same Domain.

The sheer extent of her Domain had surprised Rieren’s allies too. They had figured she was strong, especially after her recruits’ testimony, but the expansiveness of her Domain proved it to be true.

“This is nothing,” Galorian said. “Parlor tricks. For all we know, she’s using some stolen item from the System Shop to extend her Domain’s effective range. It’s not natural for someone at her stage.”

“You don’t even know her stage,” Olis said.

They all looked inquisitively at Rieren, who only smiled. “Oh? What does this Domain suggest my strength is?”

The cursing newcomer shook his head as though Rieren’s return question was nonsensical. “This Domain is something only a Late-Exalted or Peak-Exalted cultivator can produce. Maybe even Early-Ascendant. You can’t be that strong.”

Rieren channelled more Essence. The water around her started bubbling and rising. She had called upon her True Summons, the elixir field of past Rieren materializing inside the surf under her feet to solidify the Essence. As the column of water started rising, she ascended with it, her footing firm thanks to concentrated Essence under her feet. “Can’t I?”

It filled her with indescribable joy to see the newcomers take a few involuntary steps back. They were starting to understand the extent of abilities that Rieren possessed.

“Do we attack?” Morel asked all of a sudden, appearing from behind.

It was just him. His companions were hiding somewhere. Smart. Giving the impression they could pop up behind the newcomers’ line, thus attacking them from behind. She saw several of them looking back nervously.

“I do not think we need to resort to violence,” Rieren said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Now do we?”

Galorian didn’t look like he wanted to appear cowed by Rieren’s display of power. No matter that she was stronger than she had appeared at first. No matter that she had more people working under him than just the three present here from the beginning—Morel’s use of we suggested there were more of his kind, hidden away. Galorian had appearances to keep up.

However, while he couldn’t be seen surrendering as the de facto leader, he also had to take into consideration anything his subordinates said. That was why, when a woman placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered urgently in his ear, he nodded morosely.

Where he had appearances to keep up, he also had to act like the proper leader. A proper leader who took heed of the concerns of those under him.

“Fine, fine,” Galorian said. “We can consider not fighting. Though, we won’t just be up and leaving. You don’t want to fight anymore than we do, right? So, you’re going to pay for the privilege of peaceful passage. All we ask is for the tidy sum of one of your many tokens.”

Rieren raised an eyebrow at the same time that the woman chopped Galorian on the back. He muttered incoherently under his breath, before straightening and modifying his terms.

“We’ll let you go so long as you accompany us,” Galorian said. “We don’t want any funny business.”

“Accompany you?” Olis asked, scoffing. “Are you insane?”

“Actually, I was thinking the same thing,” Rieren said.

Olis now stared at Rieren, who had begun to descend. “Are you insane?”

“We have a much better chance of getting through the rest of the round unscathed if we go as a large group. Considering the lack of urgency in their behaviour so far, I am tempted to assume they do not lack tokens. They simply seek that of others’ as insurance against any potential losses. Am I correct?”

Galorian looked like he would rather spit in Rieren’s face than admit she was right, but he managed a terse nod. “Yes.”

“Can we at least kill that one?” Morel whispered after getting close to Rieren, indicating Galorian with his eyes. “He’s going to be a right pain in the posterior.”

“No,” Rieren whispered back. She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “If all unpleasantness has been taken care of, let us proceed onwards, shall we? We have wasted more time than we should have already.”

They all looked at each other with frowns that didn’t lack for suspicion but in the end, they all decided to cooperate. Following Rieren’s footsteps, they headed to their destination.