With the deal complete, the monsters all took their leave. They had nothing further to discuss. However they might have intended to help her, it would need further planning, but only after they had received their assignments on who they were to face.
A part of Rieren wouldn’t put it past the organizers to have the monsters face off against each other just to cull their numbers. A part of her might have even agreed with that approach once. In the past, when Rieren had still been mostly herself, she would have wanted to cut the monsters’ participation down by forcing them to fight against each other.
But she also understood now that the judges and officials might also take a different approach. The first tack would strictly enforce a reduction in the monsters’ numbers by half. No more, no less.
However, if they made every Abyssal, Aetherian, and Arisen face off against powerful cultivators, they could potentially end the presence of all monsters in one fell swoop. Not only would it take care of the problem that one monster might somehow end up at the court in Vanharron, it would also bolster and reinforce the righteous standing of cultivators above monster-kind.
But that would only work if and only if every single cultivator won their bout. It would be a bold move, no doubt. Rieren wanted to see the matchups enough to almost call it anticipation.
There was still some time before the next round began, however. Time she needed to take proper advantage of.
“Batcat,” she said, waving at the kitten to come to her. “I have a little mission for you.”
The little Spirit Beast looked a little suspicious. It was such an odd look on a cat, Rieren could only stare for a minute. Eventually, Batcat decided to pad over, its wings beating lightly as it approached.
“Remember how you spied upon the different Archnoble clans in the Shatterlands?” Rieren said. “Do you think you can gather some more memories in the same manner? I want to see how the others are preparing. I would guide you to more specific targets, but that will have to wait until we have a list of exact matchups in our hands.”
Batcat sniffed. It raised its little head like Rieren had just given it the most demeaning task possible, before it flapped its wings harder and took off. A second later, it disappeared.
“Thank you,” she said after its departing furry back.
Rieren could wait in the glen and continue attempting to cultivate. That wouldn’t work, though. She had already verified that her usual methods of cultivating Essence through the spiritual channels in her body no longer functioned in the way it used to.
But there had to be a different way she could cultivate. Her [Status] had proven that cultivation wasn’t beyond her.
The System Shop was her answer. She pulled it open, narrowing down her options for purchase to cultivation manuals. Applying a few specific filters reduced her options to a much smaller handful. “Abyssal”, “corrupted”, and other such key words made sure that Rieren was only seeing manuals that would be helpful to her current situation.
Problem was that they were all rather costly. Even the cheapest one had a price tag of two hundred and thirty Credits. All she had at the moment was a mere nineteen Credits.
Rieren sighed. Another bottleneck. But no. She perked up a moment later. There was a rather simple way of getting past that obstacle. All she had to do was acquire more Credits. Lucky for her, she knew the exact method she could employ to raise her system-designated wealth by at least an order of magnitude.
She just had to do some grave-robbing.
Rieren focused on her Domain and called on her Domain Summons. Dawn Cloud was still in that constantly-regenerating state. It broke apart only to reform a second later, over and over, just as it had done during the tournament’s first round.
“Can you not be a normal Domain Summons any longer?” she asked.
The little puff of hazy darkness remained silent.
Rieren got aboard her ride and ordered it to climb past the treeline and return her to the old battlefield. She had a feeling she might be spotted. There had to be Masked Avatars and others who were keeping an eye out over the entire grounds, and upon the monsters specifically.
She couldn’t care less. All that mattered was Rieren reaching her destination as quickly as possible. In fact, it would have been more alarming if she was heading with great speed deeper into the tournament’s main area. They wouldn’t want their precious Archnobles to come to any surprising harm.
Especially since Rieren already had a track record of killing pesky Clanmasters who got in her way.
Dawn Cloud might tear itself apart too easily, but it was still speedy. In fact, with her latest Domain upgrade, it had grown a few degrees faster than before. Rieren was carried aloft, past the brazier that marked the boundary of the first round from the second, reaching her destination in less than ten minutes.
The final battle, which had decided which of them went on to qualify for the main round, had happened close to the braziers.
Rieren’s aerial view of the entire expanse was definitely strange. She was witnessing the devastation she herself had led. A charge by all the monsters who had participated in the Trials of Ascendance, with her at the head, tearing through their competition who were desperate to stop them by any means necessary.
That had led to a furious battle that had torn apart the forest. Cracks and craters marred the entire forest floor, the conspicuous lack of trees with only stumps in their place sticking out like wounds upon pale skin. Broken trunks and branches carpeted the forest floor like a rash.
Rieren pulled herself down and sent away her Dawn Cloud. The corpses she sought weren’t going to be far.
But instead of just dead bodies, Rieren found ones that were quite alive up and about.
A handful of uniformed tournament officials were roaming the battlefield. To one side, several human bodies had been pulled into a respectful row of the dead. A couple of the officials were pulling another body into the line as well, while yet another was constructing a body out of several parts that had been torn apart.
Ah, so that was what they were doing here. Corpse collectors. No doubt the richer deceased participants had families who would wish their bodies to be recovered.
Rieren wondered what was happening to the ones who didn’t come from wealthy clans, who weren’t a part of powerful sects. Were they simply lying in the battlefield with no one to tend to their corporeal forms? A part of her considered that cruel. The rest of her wished they all would have been ignored.
It would have made her goal much easier to achieve.
The men and women weren’t the only intruders here, though. Rieren’s electroreception had fired off, alerting her that there was another figure higher up.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A Malomen Shifter. The monster was keeping watch upon the proceedings while floating high up in the air with its large, beating wings. The officials were aware that they were being watched. At times, they stared up at the monster hovering far above their heads. Rieren was too far away to catch their exact expressions, but she was certain they didn’t appreciate the audience.
She turned away from the scene. It didn’t matter what the humans were doing. It didn’t matter why the monster was keeping a close eye upon the tournament officials.
Rieren walked farther towards the outer boundary of the forest. Towards the location he had started her charge to the brazier from. There would be more corpses along that path. More bodies to loot and sell to the System.
The first one she came across was a Malomen Shifter. Ironic. She sold it, body and core and all, to the System Shop to cash in over twenty Credits. Not bad. She needed about a dozen more to get enough Credits for the manual she had targeted. Good thing the forest was littered with more monstrous bodies, all lying dead and broken and ready to be sold off.
Rieren had acquired over a hundred extra Credits worth of corpse-cleaning when she was interrupted. Her electroreception fired off again. The Malomen Shifter—the still living one—she had seen earlier was approaching.
“Destroyer!” It slowed down its approach once it recognized her. Still. The monster was big, easily a C-Grade creature. It landed on the ground with a heavy thump. “I didn’t recognize you from afar. What are you doing here?”
Its eyes darted past her to and on the nothing beyond her. Monsters weren’t capable of humanlike expressions of emotion, but Rieren could still taste its sudden suspicion.
“I am here to find some bodies,” she said.
“Bodies?” the Abyssal asked. “Monstrous or human? Perhaps I can assist you.”
“All of them, in all honesty. What are you doing here?”
“I was safeguarding my fallen comrades. Those nasty tournament officials want to clean everything up.” It leered its lupine mouth like cleaning was a terribly idiotic act that humans had to perform. “They intend to remove our fallen brethren from the battlefield as well. Can you believe it, Destroyer?”
Brethren.
Rieren didn’t know why, but that word ignited a memory from what felt like so long ago now. Brethren. That was exactly what Akohr had called the other gods.
“That is certainly heinous of them,” Rieren said. “Tell me, how exactly do they intend to clean the corpses?”
“That is my point of contention, Destroyer. For their own race, they simply gather the bodies and keep them arranged in a neat, little pile. You must have seen it yourself. But for us monsters, we are being sent into the system.” The Abyssal growled. “Like we’re no more than mere objects.”
Rieren nodded. “I can see why.”
“Why what?”
“Why they intend to sell off the corpses. It would be more beneficial instead of letting them rot out in the open. But you are correct, it is a gross misrepresentation if they simply collect the human corpses but sell off the monstrous ones. That is not at all fair.”
“That is why I was keeping an eye on them before I spotted you, Destroyer. Are you here to put a stop to this atrocity they are committing?”
Rieren supposed she wasn’t exactly being truthful here when she nodded. “There is no point in trying to reclaim the corpses that have been already sold off.” She smiled as a different idea popped off in her head. “However, we can give them a little taste of their own medicine, now that I am here. Give me your hand?”
“My… hand?”
Rieren proffered her own hand. She summoned her Domain around her, letting the dark water form a bubbling pool around her feet. “Yes.”
With slight hesitation, the Malomen Shifter raised its own clawed hand until it was close enough for Rieren to touch. Shimmering Water Cage Cloak. It had been quite a while since she had used that Enchantment. Now was a good time to see if her class evolution and her new Abyss-Aspected Essence had affected her profession.
Once the consent had been established, the water began rising up. It coated her to form a mirrorlike second skin. A surface above her natural exterior that twisted and distorted and refracted the light enough to change her apparent appearance.
The Malomen Shifter’s eyes had gone wide. “You—you’re me!”
Rieren smiled. Her form hadn’t changed in truth. But the water had continued to rise, climbing well over her head to recreate the shape of the monster before her.
“What are you going to do, Destroyer?” the Shifter asked.
“Trick our human friends. You are correct,. The injustice will not stand. Come, I will tell you my plan.”
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The execution of her idea was near-flawless. She had never expected a monster to be so adept at not only following her orders, but also carrying them out so adroitly.
Thankfully, that was at least in part due to because she knew just what exactly monsters would be good for.
The Shifter had ploughed into the tournament officials with a furious attack. It wasn’t acting. After all, its rage at the mistreatment of its brethren was all too real. It took next to no pretending to make it fly at the humans in a misguided attempt at seeking vengeance for its fallen Abyssal companions.
Just a little distraction for Rieren to work her way around and arrive at the other end of the little locale where the dead bodies were being kept. The human bodies.
With distant screams and curses of the fleeing officials accompanying her little mischief, Rieren began pulling the bodies into her storage ring. She wouldn’t be able to get all of them. Space within was limited. But some of these were powerful cultivators. They’d fetch a much better price for on the System Shop than any monster.
Though, once she was done here, she would need to circle back to grab some of the monstrous corpses as well. Thankfully, for those, she wouldn’t need to store them. Thes cultivator corpses had been “claimed” by the officials, so she would need to perform an actual theft before the ownership reverted to her and she could sell any of them.
Unfortunately, Rieren couldn’t get them all. In fact, she couldn’t even fill up all the space within her storage ring. However the Shifter had attacked the officials, wherever they had fled to, some had found their way back to the corpse glade.
“Another one!” a man in white robes yelled. “I thought there was only that crazy one.”
“What’s it doing?” The other official, a tall woman dressed the same as her companion, was staring at the ground. At where some of the bodies were missing. “What have you done, Abyssal?”
Well, Rieren’s time had come. She twisted, then hurried off. The officials gave chase, of course, but not for long. Now that they had seen some of the bodies disappearing, they would’nt dare leave the rest for long. Not unless their lives were threatened or something of that magnitude occurred.
Rieren ran off fast enough that her disguise eventually dropped. It was well after she had left her pursuers far behind, though.
Only once she had reached the location where the fallen monsters lay that she finally stopped. Her return had taken enough time for her to finally be able to sell off the corpses of the cultivators. Rieren smiled. By the time she was done cleaning out her storage ring, she had earned over three hundred Credits. More than enough for her cultivation.
Just for good measure, she began selling some of the Arisen and Abyssal corpses on the former battlefield as well. These were powerful monsters. At B-Grade, she got a hefty sum for each one she offered up to the System Shop.
By the time the Shifter was returning from its harrying sojourn, signalling Rieren that her indiscriminate dead flesh merchanting had to stop, she had acquired almost eight hundred Credits.
“Did it work, Destroyer?” the Shifter asked, landing heavily before her.
Rieren nodded. “Their corpses are no longer with them. They will know the pain of having their brethren be offered up to an uncaring system.”
The monster bared its teeth in a vicious grin. “Serves them right! Bastard mortals deserve no mercy.”
Rieren didn’t return its delight. It hadn’t been that long since she had exacted a promise that the monsters would no longer target humans once a home for them had been secured. They would no longer attack, pillage, and destroy everything they could reach.
They would no longer think like this Shifter was doing.
“I would caution against letting this devolve any further,” she said.
“What do you mean, Destroyer?” the Shifter asked.
“You are participating to secure yourselves a home where you can live in peace, yes?”
It took a moment, but the monster eventually nodded. Almost like it had needed a reminder about what its purpose was truly supposed to be about, and not what its impulses suggested.
“A degree of cooperation is needed to achieve that goal,” Rieren said. “So there is no point in antagonizing anyone any further, understand?”
The Shifter growled, clearly reluctant to admit the same. Its eyes fell on the ground. “My brethren… “ He looked around some more, eyes widening in alarm. “Some of them are missing!”
“They are mere bodies. Getting worked up over them serves no one.”
The Shifter didn’t look impressed.
“What are the rest of your kind doing?” Rieren asked. “The ones who didn’t qualify, like you.”
“We are waiting. Here, elsewhere, it doesn’t matter. But we await our triumph. It’s all but assured.”
That was a surprising level of belief for a creature who was no longer a part of proceedings, but who was Rieren to judge how a monster’s mind worked. Ironic, considering what she was now.
Rieren decided it was time to head back. She had cultivation to catch up with. She raised a hand as she left. “Just make sure you do nothing more than wait.”
The monster’s answering grunt was non-committal at best.