“Another one of you?” Essalina said as she approached. “When will you understand that adding to your numbers is a meaningless affair. I’ve already killed half a dozen of you by myself. No matter how many of you come at me at one, it’ll all be futile.” Her eyes squinted when she saw Rieren. “Though, I will add you have a more interesting new addition there.”
It was easy to see why she was so confident about things. Despite having been fighting several monsters at once, there wasn’t a scratch on her. Her black armour was polished and unmarred, not even sporting a single splotch of grime. The cape of black-and-gold flames flew long and bright, flapping fiercely despite the lack of wind.
Those monsters hadn’t even come close to touching her. She wasn’t the scion of the arguably the most powerful Archnoble clan for nothing.
Rieren considered accosting Essalina as Rieren, though she didn’t see any benefits of doing so. That would only incense the Arteroth scion further against her, aside from seeing her mortal enemy. Though, she could perhaps use Essalina’s emotions against the woman too.
“You cannot stand before the destroyer, you ugly hag,” one of the retreating monsters shouted at Essalina. The Shadeborn’s stomach had been slashed open, but it wielded its oversized cleaver with no lack of zeal. “You will fall by her hand.”
“Destroyer?” Essalina looked from the monster who had spoken to Rieren. “Is that a title of some sorts? Couldn’t come up with something fancy like Blightmane or Life Stifler?” She tutted, then pointed her sword at Rieren. “You will fall by my blade all the same. You, and the rest of your ragtag kind.”
Rieren had never thought she would reach the day where monsters were being called ragtag. Then again, she was facing Essalina of all people. The concept of hubris possibly wasn’t well known to her. Exactly why she had died in the first timeline, after all.
Pulling out her sword, Rieren stepped forwards. It was strange, but she could feel the monsters’ morale rising, as though their general positive feelings were buoying her up. Insane. Her corrupted Essence was suppressing most of her emotions, so why did this sensation of rising anticipation and excitement bypass it?
Now wasn’t the time to delve into the inner workings of her new body and mind. She had to focus. Whatever else Essalina might be, weak wasn’t one of them.
The Arteroth scion had come to a pause, frowning heavily at Rieren. “A sword? What use for a blade does a monster have? Don’t you have teeth to bite with or claws to rend me apart?”
“How is a sword so difficult to fathom?” Rieren pointed at the Shadeborn behind her. “That one uses a cleaver too.”
“Hold on a minute.” Essalina’s frown had grown to a squint again. All of a sudden, it twisted into outright shock. “Are—are you, Vallorne?”
“What in the world are you talking about, little cultivator?” One of these days, she really ought to claim some sort of prize for her severely underutilized acting skills. “I am—”
“Yes!” a monster yelled from behind, its growling voice rumbling across the earth as much as it did through the air. “She is the great Destroyer, the one fated to ascend from a mere mortal through the ranks of cultivators, Abyssals, Aetherians, and even Arisen, until she can lay claim to the peak of all creation. She is the One.”
This time, Rieren really did wish she had shut at least one of those pus-breathing brutes up with her sword for good. That would have impressed the others to stay in line and not run their cursed mouths so much.
Essalina stared at Rieren. Then she laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. She even let her guard down, letting her sword dip as she doubled over with uproarious laughter.
“I can’t believe it,” Essalina said. “You turned into an Abyss-cursed monster? Hahaha.”
“Forgive me, but are your certain you have not lost your mind?” Rieren looked back at the monsters. “Did any of you manage to hit her in the head during the course of your battle?”
The Abyssals just stared at her blankly. But Rieren’s insult had cut Essalina’s laughter short, which was good enough.
“I laugh because of your misfortune,” Essalina said. “I care not why becoming an Abyssal—”
“An Arisen, actually.”
“As I said, I care not. You’re a monster now. That is terribly unfortunate for you. For all the high and mighty war you unleashed upon the Abyssals and Aetherians, you’re veritably one of them. The irony alone is delightful.” The Arteroth scion grinned hard. “But even besides that, I realized that I now have more reason than ever to kill you where you stand. Right here and now.”
Rieren sighed. “Was it going to be any different had it been regular old me?”
Essalina had taken up a stance for battle, but she paused again. “Actually, no. Not at all.”
Rieren tried not to roll her eyes. “Come, then. Let us get to killing and get this over with.”
The conversation truly was done. Essalina placed her blade in an attacking stance Rieren recognized all too well from their prior encounters—the Arteroth Scion held her long blade pointed straight at her target with the hilt close to her body and high up. Then she charged.
Essalina’s cape turned into a jet stream of dark fire speckled with sparks of gold. She turned herself into a comet of pure darkness with sparks of gold flying off randomly.
Rieren’s first impulse was to dodge. She could do so easily with Fray Passage. But for one, that would let Essalina barrel onwards into the monsters. While Rieren didn’t particularly care about their overall wellbeing, she was going to need that collection of bastards to make her way through the battlefield.
For another, she really wanted to test the limits of her new strength.
Summoning her Domain around her, Rieren stood her ground and held her sword in a defensive posture. Essalina struck a second later.
The next impulse Rieren felt was regret. Thankfully, that was just another emotion her current form suppressed. Bad enough the blow from Essalina pushed her back by almost two dozen paces, ripping apart her Domain and threatening to tear the concentrated Essence armour off her body. She didn’t need to feel awful about taking the hit directly too.
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Rieren had survived direct contact. Her new form was strong enough to survive a powerful, Ascendant-realm cultivator’s attacks head-on.
Nevertheless, it didn’t mean Rieren was in any way willing to repeat that experience.
As soon as Essalina had crashed into her, she launched into a furious storm of blows with her oversized sword. Rieren’s Mind was high enough to spot each slash, as was her strength to block them as well. But the blows came in thick and fast, always from a slightly different angle that switched up mid-flight. Essalina’s sword flowed. Rieren was being pushed back.
Things took a more relieving turn when Essalina added her cape into the mix. It swished like a tail, moving seemingly with a mind of its own. The flaming cape curved in over Essalina’s body and shot at Rieren with the same speed that her opponent’s blade struck in.
The only reason that was relieving was it allowed Rieren to simply put a halt to this pointless exchange of blows. Resummoning her Domain and making it rise in a geyser, all in a fraction of a second, allowed her to both protect herself from Essalina’s onslaught and put some distance between them. She needed a break.
“I can’t believe you didn’t decide to dodge,” Essalina said, walking through the steam that the clash of their powers had resulted in. “My, my, you’ve truly grown confident in your abilities, haven’t you? You were far more cautious in our last battle.”
Despite Essalina’s seemingly more relaxed posture, Rieren didn’t let her sword drop even a hairsbreadth. “Perhaps I should return to being more cautious then, considering I killed you in our last battle.”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing you attempt to repeat that fluke.”
Essalina was done talking. So easy to predict. Whenever Rieren insulted her in any form, even when the Arteroth scion pretended that she wasn’t affected by it, her actions always betrayed her.
For instance, right after the reminder that Rieren had been victorious in their last encounter in the previous timeline, Essalina raised her hand and snapped her armoured fingers. The light, metallic clang immediately summoned the Arteroth’s Domain.
The ground cracked around Rieren. Black-and-gold flames ran through the fissures, spewing out here and there like the fires from a volcanic eruption.
“I trust you recall my Aspect,” Essalina said. “You should be familiar with it now…”
She didn’t mean familiar from their previous encounters. That was normal. No, Essalina was snidely hinting that Rieren’s current condition made her intimately aware of the main Aspects that her opponent—in fact, the majority of the Arteroth clan—channelled. A combination of Abyssal and Divine Aspects.
But more than the Aspects themselves, it was the way the Arteroth clan made it manifest through their Domain that was truly impressive. The ground alone was bad enough. Like Rieren’s Ocean—or Demonic Ocean, now—the Aspects could manifest in explosive bursts from the surface.
The more curious ability besides that was allowing the channeler to summon the Aspects at will anywhere at any time and in any shape, density, or other preferred function the cultivator preferred.
Which was why Rieren wasn’t surprised at all to see several black-and-gold fireballs materializing into existence all around Essalina. Nor was she expecting anything different from her opponent’s subsequent laughter, accompanied by the fireballs shooting at Rieren with the speed and power of fiery comets.
Her defence was ready. She had already faced this in her previous encounters. A quick summoning of her geyser protected her from the worst of the fiery blasts.
Essalina charged through the resulting steam—which was interestingly somewhere between grey and purple in shade—her sword flying in to cut down Rieren. Thankfully, Rieren’s Mind was high enough to both catch her opponent’s motion and prepare her counterattack.
This time, Rieren had no intention of testing strengths. She stood her ground once more, but simply used Earthfall Blade to redirect Essalina’s blow to one side. Then she slashed her Receptor sword against Essalina’s armoured shoulder.
Forget even denting her armour, her blade couldn’t even pierce through the concentrated Essence covering her opponent.
Ah, that explained why her armour looked so pristine despite the constant battles she must have gone through. The Essence itself was a translucent black hue, barely visible over the armour itself.
Failed though the counter strike had been, Rieren wasn’t surprised. Nor was she taken aback when Essalina quickly sliced at her again. Her recovery time was extremely fast. As expected of an Ascendant-realm cultivator.
They moved across the battlefield together. Essalina’s blades swiped in from every direction just as it had done before. She withheld from using her cape, however. No reason to make Rieren use her Domain again. This time, the Arteroth scion was intent on overpowering Rieren with just her swordplay.
And, as it turned out, with the associated skills.
Their exchange of blows took them over the field of battle. Rieren was forced to keep moving as Essalina shifted position to attack from different angles, making Rieren jump to different positions and reorient herself.
But worse than that, every blow from Essalina grew more and more powerful. Rieren arm’s shook harder and harder as she kept blocking and defending. This had to be some sort of passive skill, one that made Essalina’s strength grow exponentially from consecutive strikes or something along those lines.
Rieren was going to be overwhelmed in moments at this rate.
Earthfall Blade saved her. A sudden use of the skill in between her regular blocks and deflects sent Essalina’s longsword careening to one side, leaving her wide open.
The thing about attacking with greater and greater power meant that there was far more momentum behind each strike. Rieren was careful enough to know when exactly she could use her opponent’s own strength against her.
She counterattacked hard as Essalina surged past her. Her blade didn’t leave much of a dent. The concentrated Essence armour over the Arteroth scion was too strong. Not even a careful strike complemented by her new Abyssal and Divine Aspects combined together into Rippling Blade broke through her opponent’s defences.
As Essalina swung past, she used her fiery cape like a blade. It had been compressed into a plane so thin, the flames would shear right through whatever it touched in a second.
Rieren had seen it coming. Just as before, she had used her Domain, making the dark water speckled with Divine Essence rise all around her. The cape in a little fast for her Domain to get to it, but her Receptor sword was already in position to halt it until the rising geyser could douse it to nothing. The collision of powers sent up another gout of purplish steam.
She had seen Essalina’s next move coming too. Less than a heartbeat later, a meteor of black-and-gold flames barrelled through the position where Rieren had been standing.
Had been, for she had already leaped away, jumping in an arc carefully oriented so she would be in the right position to counterattack. Carried by that meteor of her own creation, Essalina had just positioned herself exactly where Rieren needed her to be.
As she twisted into the right position, still mid-air, mid-leap, Rieren activated Rippling Blade once more, applying as much Abyss- and Divine-Aspected Essence to her extended blade as she could. She aimed it at the exact spot she had the last time—right there, on her left side, in the chink of armour between her shoulder and her breastplate.
It didn’t work fully, of course. Essalina had thankfully turned around, allowing Rieren’s Body-Mind coordination to hit the right spot without too much difficulty. Her repeat use of the Essence-infused skill even managed to break through the concentrated Essence armour, displaying the actual metal armour underneath.
But her skill had faded with the use too. There was no point in reducing the Essence armour if she couldn’t take advantage of it. Something Essalina had realized, going by the hard grin on her face.
Except, the Arteroth scion was positioned for another attack immediately following Rippling Blade. One Rieren didn’t even have to make much effort towards.
All Rieren had to do was channel her Essence as quickly as she could. Essalina’s charge had taken her into Rieren’s Domain space, right where all the steam was concentrated. With a little focus, Rieren was able to bring water and lightning Aspects to bear as well. She was more than close enough for it.
The dark storm cloud formed in an instant, too fast for Essalina to react. In the next fraction of a breath, lightning sparked. The whole area went up in a blitzing explosion of a sparking golden bolt erupting from nowhere and everywhere in their little vicinity.
Striking right where Rieren had opened a crack in Essalina’s Essence armour.
The monsters cheered as one, their triumphant roars momentarily buoying Rieren up as well. It faded in moments however, less because of the suppression of the corrupted Essence that didn’t seem to work when it was related to something monstrous, and more because of the result of her lightning explosion. It hadn’t worked.
With her longsword trailing on the ground, Essalina Arteroth walked out of the blast zone utterly unharmed.