“Watch out,” Kalvia shouted.

Her warning wasn’t necessary. Rieren had already sensed the incredible power hurtling in their direction, even aside from the evidence it threw forward.

A fraction of a second after Kalvia’s warning, golden light approached Rieren’s position. She twisted around just in time. Earthfall Blade was instinctively making her Receptor sword rise to the right position.

The bolt of sizzling gold as bright as the midday sun hammered into her sword with the force of a mountain-sized meteor. Earthfall Blade was more than up to the task. As soon as the bolt connected with her blade, Rieren twisted the sword so that skill sent the burst of power flying off to one side.

Still. The sheer might behind that attack made itself felt in the next instant. Despite the near-perfect deflection, Rieren was still hammered back several paces. The bolt itself crashed to the ground about another hundred paces away, but its explosive power easily reached their current location.

Rieren was forced to use her Domain to send herself and Amalyse ascending into the air as the crisscross pattern of concentrated Divine Essence shattered the area of the forest around them and everything upon it.

Kalvia would be fine. Her tree was tall enough. As soon as she had spotted the Aetherian’s attack heading in their direction, she had made it climb quickly again.

When the destructive power faded and Rieren landed, she found that the Blightmane was gone. A small bubble of hope arose at the possibility that the Aetherian’s power had destroyed the Abyssal entirely. After all, that had been an explosive use of Divine Essence, and Abyssals were weak to it.

But her hope was shattered before it could even be fully realized. The monster was climbing out of the smoke and rubble, appearing no worse apart from the damage Rieren had originally dealt it.

“I am glad to see you survive,” it said, eyeing her with its crimson gaze. “We can now end this charade.”

Rieren twisted around. A part of her had expected the Aetherian itself to appear, to begin assisting the Abyssal directly, but her fear was as unfounded as her hope. The strange, half-gold, half-ashen monster was still in the distance, still fighting against Oromin, neither of whom had managed to break through the other’s defences.

“Amalyse, Kalvia,” Rieren said, raising her voice so that they would hear regardless of whatever distance lay between them after their landing. “Listen to me. This monster insinuates that a modicum of corrupted Essence that I was forced to take in has converted me into—”

The Blightmane roared and rushed her. Rieren could barely cut herself off so as not to chop her tongue with her teeth in the scuffle that the monster had burst into. Curse the Abyss to eternity.

She should have mentioned the corruption it had left her with more explicitly before. Back in that meeting when she had released all the truths she had held close, she could have also explained how the Abyss had nearly turned her into a monster before she had fixed herself. All of herself, regardless of what the Abyssal suggested. All she had mentioned was struggling through another tribulation.

And now she was paying the price of jeopardizing her friends’ trust in her.

Had she instinctively feared that their treatment of Mercion, who had also been corrupted by an Abyssal, would reflect even worse on her?

No, that wasn’t the case. Rieren had simply believed it to have no significant bearing on anything. So what if there was corrupted Essence within her. It didn’t matter. There was no reason for concern. After all, she had made sure it would impact nothing.

Except, apparently, some monster having knowledge of it somehow.

The Blightmane roared at her again, though it wasn’t empowered by its corrupted Essence this time. “Seems as though I will need to drag the truth from you, imposter.”

Before Rieren could answer, it rushed at her with blinding speed. Rieren was a match for it, but her reaction needed more time than she could spare to think. Her sword could barely keep up with the furious fray of blows coming from the Abyssal’s claws.

Sparks flew at every contact between claw and sword. Rieren focused on the fight itself. It was good that the monster had stopped talking.

Now she could focus on ending its life before it turned things too complicated.

Rieren had no time or space to wonder how exactly it was seeking to “prove” her monstrous internal state. Perhaps that was its intention in the first place. For, as she focused on the Abyssal pulling out every stop to try and overcome her, she failed to notice the sudden jerk from behind before it was too late.

It made her freeze her motion for just an instant. Something had grabbed her hair.

Despite the distraction, despite most of Rieren’s surprise, alarm, and attention flying rearwards, instinct forced her to keep her eye on her actual opponent. To deflect its next blow with the aid of Earthfall Blade and redirect its aggression at an angle so that it went careening to her right. Giving Rieren the opportunity to deal with whatever madness was going on behind her.

All it took was a rapid heartbeat to notice the disembodied dark hand wrapped in shimmering golden threads clutching her dark locks. The next moment, Rieren had slashed her sword upwards with a twist of one wrist.

She could have aimed for the hand. It looked exactly like the cursed Aetherian’s arm, the one she had crushed with her attack with a little help from Oromin.

But slicing through her own hair was faster. It had freed her fast enough to react to the Blightmane. The monster had shifted the direction of its charge to throw itself bodily at her. Rieren’s eyes widened. There was no singular attack for her to deflect. Instead, it was the entirety of the monster she’d have to deal with.

Rieren tried to slash aside one of the Blightmane’s arms jerking at her. But that was no punch or swipe she could bat away. The monster grabbed onto her sword, its vice petrifying her blade in place. Not good.

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At the same time, its maw gaped wide and came at her head. Monkey’s hairy balls, its breath stank to the high heavens.

Freeing one hand from her sword, Rieren ensured it was coated with Essence concentrated enough to be visible before shoving it into the monster’s mouth. It chomped down, likely intending to rip off her limb entirely. But its fangs found no purchase against the concentrated Essence. Rieren grinned. Cursed monster couldn’t bite off her hand.

With a scream, she slammed the entire monster downwards. Benefits of having a high Body was that manhandling even enormous and heavy beasts like a B-Grade Blightmane wasn’t beyond her.

But even as Rieren shattered the ground with the Blightmane’s head, its other arms swiped in too fast for her to react too. Briefly, she tried raising a foot to deflect with a kick. But a body that was still majorly mortal wasn’t capable of such an acrobatic feat.

The Abyssal’s claw hit Rieren on the head with nothing to block it. Well, save for the Essence she had concentrated around her skull. The monster’s arm was long enough to grab onto her head and squeeze. She growled at the pain, but her Essence armour kept her safe. And then it slammed her head into the earth as well, the shock of the impact immediately disorienting her.

Briefly, as the disorientation and pain dissipated, Rieren wondered how a clean-cut battle had reduced to wrestling with monsters.

She was about pull herself up—now that she was on the ground as well, her smaller size meant she could kick herself free from this angle—but something yanked at her hair again. That Abyss-blasted Aetherian’s hand was at it again and—

And she had no concentrated Essence protecting her hair.

At any other point in time, it wouldn’t be needed. Losing her hair wasn’t going to hurt her. But she realized the Aetherian’s actual, rather intelligent intention a split second after the monster carried it out.

Her hair was the weakness of the Essence armour around her head in much the same way the Aetherian’s weapons had been for its translucent shields. There needed to be holes for the monster’s weapon to emerge from close within its body, just as there needed to be gaps in her Essence armour, minute though they may be, for her hair to flow loose.

Rieren hadn’t had time for anything complicated enough to wrap around her hair as well. There had been no time to pull in her hair close to her head either. She was on the ground, struggling bitterly against an Abyssal, after all.

With a ferocious tug that Rieren was in no position to counteract in any way whatsoever, the disembodied monstrous arm yanked much of the remainder of her directly off her head. Vicious agony ripped a scream out of her gullet, muffled by the metallically furred paw enclosed over her face.

The pain in her scalp was like a thousand heated needles digging right into her brain. She could barely think through it, though it was fading rapidly.

Enough to remind Rieren that her feet were free to kick. Which she did.

A few rapid, powerful blows were enough to free her from the Abyssal’s deathly grip. Rieren rolled away, blinking back the unbidden tears at the agony and straightening as fast as her dizzy head allowed.

Her Essence helm had disintegrated. Blood dripped down her face, the top and back of her head nothing but a messy open wound. She was certain the very bone of her skull had to be visible. The last remainders of her red-draped hair drew down over her head curtaining her vision in strands of black, crimson, and gold.

Rieren froze. Gold. Gold.

She didn’t have blonde hair.

With her breath increasing, a scream bubbling in her throat once more, Rieren twisted around. The hand. That gods-blasted disembodied arm. Where was it? Where had it go—

She froze again when she found it. The arm was just a pace from her, disintegrating to nothing. If she had been a second later, she would have missed it entirely as its form crumbled to ash, releasing the golden strands. Strands that were connected to the back of her head.

Barely keeping the scream down, Rieren thrust both of her hands to her head. She found the remaining strands of her hair and pulled them loose. Every lock she could find and reach, black or red or golden, she tore them all from her head. Not a one of them could stay. Didn’t matter if she was injuring her scalp more, Rieren couldn’t risk it.

Those golden strands from the Aetherian… Rieren was hyperventilating but she was in no position to control it. Those strands were trying to inject themselves into her very soul.

She could feel it. The way her head was dizzier than ever, more than what the blood loss and pain should have caused, the way her Essence was turning turbulent within her at a pace too slow to notice if she didn’t pay particular attention. The way her very soul seemed to disconnect from the reality around her.

The Aetherian was trying to pull out the corrupted Essence she had locked away.

Rieren staggered back once she was done. A few quick rub downs by her hand could feel only blood and broken flesh, no hair at all. Monkey’s blighted balls, she had to look like a living corpse now.

“Ah, success!” the Blightmane said, stepping into view. “Now do you accept the truth?”

“Shut up,” Rieren said. “Shut up. I have had enough of your insanity, enough of you abusing the ability to talk with your cursed, demonic mouth. Die.”

She turned around to finally put an end to the monsters, both the Blightmane and then the Aetherian too, but found herself facing Amalyse and Kalvia. They had finally climbed out from wherever they had gone when the Aetherian’s attack had destroyed most of the battlefield.

They were both staring in horror at Rieren.

No. With great mental effort, she stomped down the rising panic from the implication that they now thought she was some kind of monster. These were just wounds. Divine Resilience should fix it up in moments. She had to focus on the monsters themselves.

Rieren turned properly to face the Blightmane. Oh, how she was going to tear off its every fang with her bare hands and crush that evil grin.

“It worked, Aetherian,” the Blightmane said. “Be proud. We have won.”

Rieren didn’t need to look anywhere else to see that the Aetherian was indeed arriving at her location. It had managed to push away Oromin and rush over. Rieren’s stronger companion had given chase, but he too had come to a stop a little farther off in the distance. Like the others, his eyes had widened at the sight of her.

“It would seem it has,” the Aetherian said.

“I am hesitant to say it but we might actually make a decent team in the end.”

Rieren tensed. Her sword had fallen closer to where the Blightmane stood. No matter. She could crush that beast with her bare hands, she was certain of it.

But first, if she was going to fight without her favoured weapon, she had to summon her Domain. Water bubbled to life around her, spreading outwards in slow ripples. Rieren’s eyes caught something strange on the water’s surface. Loathe as she was to pull her attention away, she briefly looked down.

Then felt herself grow hollow.

Her reflection… no, that couldn’t be her. That twisted head, those monstrous markings, that… that corruption couldn’t be her.

Rieren stepped back, staggered in place. Too late. She’d been too late. All this, after staving off the corruption and sealing away the Abyss-Aspected Essence with her artificial meridian network thanks to the boost to her Spirit with her title for over a year. This shouldn’t—couldn’t—be happening.

Those threads. The Aetherian’s golden threads really had somehow unravelled her artificial meridian network. It was the monsters. They’d done this. After all, they were crowing about it right in front of her.

Rieren didn’t realize when she had fallen to her knees. Conversation was floating around and past her, tension and hostility warring in the air. She couldn’t pay attention. She couldn’t even attempt to decipher what was going on. Now that she was closer to her water, all she could focus on was the distorted reflection of the monster she had become.

Of the monster she had always been, ever since the Abyss.

And then, the rest of the Abyssals and Aetherians arrived. With thunderous crashes, the monsters landed around Rieren from every direction.

A horde had come, ready to welcome in the newest monster into their ranks. Their prophesied saviour.

Their destroyer.