Rieren did her best not to pay attention to the actual battle going on behind her. She had gone ahead to meet the spear-wielder on her own.

It was more distant than she had thought at first. Over two hundred paces at least. The distance was magnified even more for the monsters had to range out to meet the human competitors rushing at them.

In other words, there was enough distance between the two main battles—one that was ostensibly a one-on-one battle between her and the spear-wielder and the other that was a pitched battle between the remaining monsters and the human competitors—that they wouldn’t be interfering with each other.

“I admit,” the spear-wielder said. His golden hair fell in straight pleat down to his lower back, and his white robe decorated with bands of red and gold was as spotless as Essalina’s armour. A mark of great power. “I was a little taken aback that you monsters chose to send only one representative to face me.”

“Was it the audacity, heir of the Karlosyne?” Rieren asked. The spear was what had enlightened her that he had to be from the Karlosyne clan. Rollo used a similar technique, one she had faced in her previous lifetime as well. “Or the fact that the move was smarter than you thought possible?

The use of his identity had surprised the spear-wielder. “Both, now that I think about it. Though the fact that a monster is aware of my identity is even more surprising.”

“Can monsters not be knowledgeable?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure you were smart enough to be knowledgeable before this moment, so…”

If Rieren was a monster in truth, she supposed she might have taken some offence at that blatant insult. She simply shrugged it off in her current condition. It was time to fight.

“You will answer for your insult with your words,” she said, hefting her blade close and keeping up the act. For now. “Come, face me!”

“Yes, let us waste no more time. I suspect you have one of the tokens, yes. A tragedy that you needed to resort to plain theft, but such is the way of the world.”

Rieren stared at him. She was starting to see where Rollo had gotten his initial arrogance from.

“But before we begin,” the Karlosyne heir continued, still not beginning the battle. “Since you seem to know me, allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Rykion Karlosyne, first heir to the great Karlosyne clan, strongest of the Archnobles.”

“Can we begin the battle?” Rieren asked with a glare.

In answer, Rykion grinned. So far, despite his arrogance, he had seemed normal enough. But now that the fight was truly beginning, his face shifted, the expression changing rapidly.

Gone was the controlled, arrogant cultivator about to put his opponent in her place. In its place was a manic grin that would have given Ledorne a run for her money. Pure bloodlust roiled off him, a hunger for the chaos and bloodshed of battle etched into his stance, into his every subsequent motion.

“Yes,” he said. Even his voice had changed, turning to a feral growl. “Let us begin!”

With that, Rykion threw his spear. Rieren thought she was ready for it, but like last time, it flew in with the speed of lightning.

She was able to raise her sword fast enough to deflect the spear of sizzling light with Earthfall Blade, but only barely so. Rieren would likely have failed if she didn’t have the improved stats of her class evolution to assist her. As it was, the bolt of pure light struck her Receptor sword and went flying off to one side, where it caused a miniature explosion on contact.

“A monster fighting with a blade?” Rykion shook his head. “What is this world coming to?” Then he grinned hard again. “Let’s see how you handle this.”

Rieren realized she had no reason to play along with his tune. As the Karlosyne heir summoned a salvo of spears constructed from burning light, Rieren pulled out her Domain, letting her stormy water rage over the battlefield.

A quick use of the geyser made it rise, blocking the spears and making them explode before they could hit her directly.

Rieren burst out of the water with Gale Blade active. Even as Rykion had fired off his spears, he had summoned more in his hands and charged her directly. That just meant that she could face him in direct combat, which she wasn’t wholly against doing. While he was likely at least as powerful as Essalina, unlike the Arteroth scion, he hadn’t faced her before.

She made sure to use the advantage of possessing overpowered skills against him quickly and decisively.

Unfortunately, Rykion was strong enough to handle it. Even with the greatly boosted speed from Gale Blade, he managed to block all three of the strikes with his spears. In fact, he even managed to nearly poke a hole in Rieren. The only reason he failed to do so was because the skill’s speed carried her past him just in time.

Rieren swallowed when she came to a stop. Alright. Perhaps he was faster than she had realized.

To be quick enough to block Gale Balde at his level… he wasn’t just an Ascendant-realm cultivator, he had to have high stats from his Class too. Which meant he likely possessed powerful skills in the same way Essalina did.

Speaking of strong abilities, now that Rieren had momentarily fallen back, it was her opponent’s turn to charge into her.

The backs of Rykion’s spears seemed to turn into jets. They flared with a burst of power exiting outwards in a horizontal stream, the momentum imparted from them making Rykion hurtle forward with literally blinding speed.

Thankfully, Rieren was fast enough to block him. His twin spears in each hand fell upon her with a flurry of strikes. Most were pokes that Rieren deflected without trouble. To handle the fact the spears were constructed entirely from light-Aspected Essence, she had to imbue her Receptor with Essence too.

The Karlosyne heir tried to switch things up. At times, he turned a seeming stab into a wide sweep. At others, he added overhanded hammering blows.

Rieren blocked them all. Her strength was wearing down from the power behind each blow, but luckily, he didn’t have some weird skill that made his very blow stronger than the last. His base might wasn’t as overwhelming as Essalina’s either. With her stronger monstrous form, Rieren was able to stand her ground.

Though she could have done without all the light constantly trying to blind her.

She was being pushed back, though. Every blow forced her to take a retreating step, every hit making her fall back bit by bit. But it seemed that wasn’t fast enough for Rykion.

That was when he began adding more Aspects to his spears too. Apparently, mastery of light wasn’t the only Aspect he could boast about.

To execute those, Rykion put some distance between himself and Rieren before firing a salvo of light spears. Multiple Aspects flashed into being on each gleaming shaft. One had fire spiralling around it, one was accompanied by a powerful wave of water, one flickered with lightning, and one even had a strange light-blue coating encasing it that Rieren didn’t recognize.

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They weren’t difficult to deal with. Thanks to the space between them, Rieren had enough time to draw on her Domain to make it rise like a geyser. The resultant explosion from the contact of each spear sent steam flying everywhere.

Just what Rieren needed.

She focused on her other Aspects. Using water and lightning on top of the steam to condense it all to a dark cloud which immediately exploded into light should have at least forced Rykion back, if not damaged him outright.

Unfortunately, the Karlosyne heir had decided to take the skies long before Rieren had finished even constructing the cloud with her Aspects, even though it had taken a mere second to do so.

Rykion had begun glowing. His skin began turning brighter and brighter as though he himself was becoming light personified. That wasn’t a stretch for Ascendant-realm cultivators. After all, they were known for being able to embody their Aspects directly. But if he turned into literal light, Rieren was going to have a much harder time landing a hit.

“An interesting combination of abilities you have, monster,” he said, trying to be as patronizing as possible. “I had no idea a monster could be so adept at combat that feels so… human.”

“I was not aware humans were in business of flying to get away from certain death,” Rieren said in turn.

Rykion grinned. It seemed Rieren’s words had incensed him, though he expressed his ferocity in the madness writhing across his face. “I fly for a better perspective of your death.”

With a wave of his hand, Rykion Karlosyne summoned his Domain. Light sparkled everywhere to make the entire area shine brighter than midday. With dusk approaching, the sort of light Rykion brought forth made Rieren’s eyes squint.

And then came the spears. There weren’t just a handful this time. Rykion was intent on being thorough, so had made dozens upon dozens materialize around him, all sizzling with his obliterating radiance. As expected, he fired them all at once too, a blizzard that made his previous one look more like child’s play.

Rieren knew well enough that a simple use of her Domain wouldn’t be enough to block everything. The only real way to stop that attack was to close the distance between herself and her enemy.

She used her geyser to get rid of the first portion of the storm of spears, though. As soon as those exploded, the steam released allowed her to craft her next defence, namely the storm clouds. The lightning that burst from those took care of the following section of light-crafted spears.

But even that wasn’t enough. The sheer amount of spears continuously being created and flung down by Rykion was overwhelming.

Which was why Rieren had allowed herself to rise with one of her geysers too. She had taken to the air in a bid to close the distance to Rykion, slightly angling herself so that she was flying in a shallow parabola.

He countered by throwing more spears at Rieren’s new, constantly shifting position. There weren’t anywhere near as many with this many though.

Interesting. So he needed a more stationary target to fire off the storm of spears.

As Rieren sailed towards her target, she slashed aside the spears aimed at her with Earthfall Blade. She was certain she would reach him without suffering anything, but Rykion put those thoughts to rest. Another spear materialized, but horizontally under his feet instead of pointing at Rieren. With it, he shot off.

The blunt end of the spear had fired up, shooting Rykion through the air as though he was flying upon a ballista bolt. Needless to say, Rieren missed him by leagues.

His flying spear was fast enough to reposition behind her. From there, Rykion summoned more spears to fling at her back, perhaps hoping to take advantage of her vulnerable position from where she wasn’t supposed to be able to defend herself.

Rieren grinned. She used Enchant to turn the Receptor sword into the Floating Blade. While it wasn’t about to let her fly in the same manner Rykion could, she could certainly orient the flight path itself to prevent herself from being skewered by spears made of light.

As each spear shot in, all Rieren had to do was angle her blade just so, twisting her momentum in a different direction. While she continued to fall downwards the entire time, it didn’t have to be straight flight at the end of her parabola. Rieren could impart angles upon her flight path, turning the plummet into more of fall that resembled leaping forward from a platform.

Combining the shifting motion of her flight with Fray Passage allowed her to evade Rykion’s attacks with ease. She even managed to cushion and angle her fall such that, as soon as she touched the ground, she could continue using her skill to dodge.

Rykion had realized the futility of his current attacking method, going by how he had stopped firing his spears. But that didn’t mean he was done.

Instead, he was constructing one, powerful spear this time.

Rieren’s eyes widened a little at that. She remembered that attack. It was the exact same thing he had used the last time, when he had attempted to eradicate her along with Morel’s group.

“Dodge this if you can,” he said, his manic grin professing that he actually expected to be more successful than last time.

Though, she supposed he didn’t know about last time. Rieren neither looked like what she had done then, nor was she accompanied by the same group.

But then, he held the mistaken assumption that she was going to try to evade it, wherein lay the success he foresaw. That attack couldn’t be dodged. The radius of the blast from that blindingly bright spear rotating like a drill was big enough to swamp the entire area. There was no place to dodge to.

But Rieren was grinning. She had thought that there would be no opportunity for her to use the Mirrorblade in the first round, which wasn’t a terrible thing.

The more powers she could reserve for the second round itself, the more she would be better off. Surprise was a key element of all cultivators’ arsenal. That was why she was hesitant to use Batcat’s Call of the Past or even Reaver Stance, though Essalina, that cursed woman, had dragged it out.

But as with Reaver Stance against Essalina, saving oneself from certain death trumped the necessity to save something for the optimal future use.

So, using Enchant once more, Rieren turned her Floating Blade to the Mirrorblade she had recovered from Mercion’s guts. With a shimmer, the sword changed shape. Where it had been a thin, glassy construction before, it had now become a shimmering longsword constructed entirely from silver, one that reflected Rieren’s monstrous new form with immaculate detail.

As the brilliant spear from Rykion landed, Rieren swung.

The Mirrorblade acted as well as she had hoped it would. Her first slash compressed the entire power behind the spear into one point in the air right before her, glowing so bright that Rieren had to all but close her eyes, even after imbuing them with Essence.

Her next slash sent all the compressed power flying back at Rykion. Mirrorblade halted any ability it touched into the point in space where it had made contact with said power. At that moment, all the power built up into that tiny point was capable of flying in any direction, depending on the direction it was hit next.

If Rykion had been no more than a pace or two away, he could have used his greater speed to hit the gleaming point of compressed Essence in Rieren’s direction. Fortunately for her, he was nowhere near close enough.

As such, it was Rieren returning the blow. All the power behind the spear that had been crushed into that one location now burst outwards in a jet stream the size of a small mountain.

Rieren had to admire the sheer potency of Rykion’s skill. It was bright enough to force her to close her eyes entirely, loud enough to make her ears cringe, filled with such might that she was forced to stop back even when she was the one reflecting it back in its entirety.

As for Rykion, he completely disappeared from view, his scream of surprise cutting off suddenly.

Rieren wasn’t about to be fooled so easily, however. She forced her eyes to open, which was safe enough, considering the power behind the stream had lessened just a little, though it was still turning the oncoming dusk into daylight.

She had opened her eyes just in time, however. Rykion was flying at her over the ground, his twin spears aimed straight for her heart.

Too fast. Too powerful. He was upon her in the very moment after she had opened her eyes. There wasn’t even enough time for Rieren to even being to wonder how he had come down this fast upon her exact location, all while his own power had been flung at him.

A distraction. All the while that Rieren had turned her focus onto his ranged prowess, he had been drawing her attention away from his close-quarters combat ability.

Manic, ferocious, and almost mad though Rykion seemed, he was devious all the same.

Rieren failed to protect herself fully. Her sword clanged hard against one spear, Earthfall Blade pushing it to the side with little difficulty. But there was the other one to deal with. While her control over her Essence was enough to focus her concentrated Essence armour mostly upon her chest to protect herself, the sheer strength behind Rykion’s attack was unfathomable.

His spear detonated as soon as it came into contact with Rieren’s defence. She was flung back, sent flying into the distance to crash down with a great gout of earth and broken trees.

But Rieren was grinning, even through the pain that was almost as bad as her last exchange with Essalina. That fool. He hadn’t realized that she had reoriented their battle just so, repositioned herself and flung his attack back so that he could only hit from one direction.

Rykion had thrown her straight at the brazier. Rieren had nearly won.

Now she simply needed to—

The Karlosyne heir, recognizing his mistake, had immediately launched himself in another attack. Despite the dust and the fallen trees obscuring the truth of whether Rieren was dead or not, he was intent on being thorough.

Except, his spear never landed. Another struck it in mid-air, the collision making both disappear.

“Enough, brother!” That voice. Rieren froze in her attempt to rise out of her painful predicament. That was Rollo. “Don’t you see you’re wasting your time on a human.”