Rieren hurried over to the arena. Amalyse had known about the plan to meet with Starloper. She was aware that Rieren would potentially miss the entirety of her match. Nevertheless, Rieren moved as fast as she could without arousing too much attention to head towards her friend’s battlefield.

The monsters made space for her when she finally arrived. Several of them looked surprised at her appearance, which reminded her that she could let the Enchantment drop then. That just consternated them even more.

“Is that one of your powers, Destroyer?” the Stifling Nebula asked. “Turning into other beings?”

Rieren nodded. Her attention was fixed on the arena. It seemed she was late, but not too late. The battle was still ongoing. Rather ferociously too. Though the way things were going, she could tell it wasn’t going to last much longer.

Both the Arisen and Amalyse had taken a beating. Several of the monster’s golden plates were scorched pure back by its opponent’s flames. Gory wounds poured out sickly blood that reminded Rieren of oil. But the Arisen wasn’t paying them much attention. Its focus was entirely on Amalyse.

She was sporting several wounds too. Blood dashed half her mouth and daubed her robes around her waist. Her shoulder looked a little stooped too.

“Can you give me a summary of what has happened so far?” Rieren asked.

The Stifling Nebula looked at her strangely, but then nodded. “As you wish.”

Apparently, according to the monster, the battle had been rather evenly matched. That took Rieren by surprise. Amalyse was strong enough to contend with a B-Grade Arisen already? Had she grown in strength that rapidly? If so, good for her.

The truth was a little more complicated than simply a matchup of strength against strength. Amalyse’s favoured Aspect was fire. This worked excellently against the Arisen, for it was a combination of a Higher Aetherian and a Gravemark Puppeteer. All the silken threads it attempted to use were burned away with ease by Amalyse’s fires.

Her other method of attack was her skills that could summon any armament she wished. That was where Amalyse faltered against her opponent. While her skill was powerful and she herself was quite strong, the Arisen’s golden plates proved a powerful defence against her blows.

So it was that they both had counters against the other’s powers. Evenly matched, as the Stifling Nebula had posited.

Rieren tried to pay closer attention to the actual fight.

Amalyse tried various approaches to break through the Arisen’s defence. She slammed in a gigantic crimson greatsword, but it broke into glowing shards upon contact. A spear materialized in her hands next, and the thrust behind it held enough power to send the monsters travelling back several paces. But the spearhead was broken by the contact too.

The Arisen counterattacked. Rieren’s eyes widened at the sheer fury and ferocity it displayed. The swipes of its clawed hands flew in a storm around Amalyse, every blow seeming to hit with the force of a falling boulder.

Amalyse protected herself with a quickly summoned greatshield and her own armour. It seemed she had progressed far enough in her class to summon the crimson, glassy material as a breastplate, grieves, and gauntlets encasing her body.

Seeing that it couldn’t get through Amalyse’s defence, the monster tried to throw threads at her instead. She counteracted them with a quick use of her chosen Aspect. Flames burgeoned around her, burning away the threads long before they reached her position. They were even intense enough to send the monster retreating, granting Amalyse the space she needed.

Ah, so that was how it had gone so far. Despite the crowd cheering her, Amalyse couldn’t find a breakthrough. Neither could the Arisen. Rieren had just been granted a first-person showcase of how neither human nor monster had made much headway in the battle.

Until now.

Amalyse attacked again. This time, it was she who unleashed an unrelenting ferocity. Weapon after weapon materialized in her hand as she hammered away at the monster.

A read greatsword slammed the Arisen back, then several spears struck the monster one after the other. Next was a crossbow shooting a quarrel aimed at one of the monster’s wounds, sticking out like a stake driven through its shoulder.

It wasn’t just the weapons either. Amalyse had imbued them with her flames as well. Half the arena was burning with coruscating fire at this point.

She had good reason, too. The monster had unleashed its threads again, but they lasted bare seconds before being burned away entirely. It couldn’t counterattack either. Amalyse was refusing to give it any space to do so. When one of her attacks failed, she quickly switched to the next to keep pegging the Arisen back. She was ending this now. No doubt about it.

When an overlarge halberd guillotined in from above, the Arisen caught it. A little shriek escaped its mouth. The heavy blade of the halberd had eaten into its claws, the fire setting alight its oily blood. But the monster gripped the halberd tightly all the same.

For a moment, they were frozen in place. Rieren wasn’t sure what was happening. Amalyse could simply release her skill and reform her weapon out of the monster’s grasp.

So why was she holding it there.

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Then Rieren saw it. The threads. More threads were coming out from underneath the Arisen’s golden plates, wrapping around the halberd. But these weren’t the regular grey silk strings that Amalyse had burned away with ease before.

No, these were golden. Shining with their own Aetherian light. Just like the ones Demargo had used against Rieren.

Those threads had to be interfering with Amalyse’s skill somehow. She had a counter to it, though. Nobody could hold pure fire. So, Amalyse turned her entire weapon from the summoned crystalline red material into absolute flames.

The Arisen growled as it jerked several steps backwards, the flames falling around it in a burning rain.

That created the opening Amalyse needed to attack. She materialized two shorter swords in her hands and charged at her opponent with blinding speed, both blades quickly engulfed with her fire. But the Arisen was still aware of what was going on. Just as she reached striking distance, one of its legs shot out. Amalyse crashed right into the limb.

Her red armour cracked as the monster’s clawed feet dug in, stopping her charge completely. With a heavy shove, the Arisen sent her staggering back.

The monster looked to attack, but Amalyse recovered far too quickly. She jumped forward, twisting in the air as she summoned an enormous scarlet war hammer, seeking to slam the glassy hammer head that was the same size as the Arisen upon her opponent.

But the monster reacted quickly too. It jumped straight up. Rieren’s eyes widened as two of the plates on its back shifted and a hundred threads shot out from underneath. They all glowed golden too, flickering in the air like hair caught on a breeze. Then they shot at Amalyse.

She had struck the ground with her hammer, sending a flaming reverberation rocketing over the battlefield. But just as she had twisted around, the threads reached her.

They didn’t burn under the duress of her flames. Without too much difficulty, the Arisen was easily able to restrain Amalyse. She was well and truly caught. Even at this distance, Rieren could sense her friend’s panic. Amalyse was trying to free herself without success, her Domain of fire intensifying in heat until the ground had scorched and the air itself began miraging.

Ideally, it should have created another impasse. The heat ought to have been far too intense for the monster to withstand directly. In other words, it shouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the trap it had thrown upon Amalyse.

Even if it pulled Amalyse to itself, her Domain would simply move with her. Those flames would sear the monster to the bone if it got close.

But that apparently didn’t daunt the Arisen. With a loud growl, it shot at its adversary, disregarding the thick wall of fire between them. Its claw reared back before punching Amalyse right on the head.

She had no way of resisting. A shield had materialized before her but the monster simply went past it. Amalyse couldn’t move the shield, after all. She even tried creating a new crimson helm around her head. Something to stave off the worst of the blow from the Arisen.

None of it worked. The Arisen crashed through the fire to strike tremendously hard at her head, sending her tumbling to the ground.

The crowd roared as the fires dissipated almost instantly. As the Arisen staggered backwards, the match official hurried to their exact centre to determine the full extent of the damage and whether Amalyse could continue.

He raised a hand, and the commentator yelled, “Over!”

Rieren didn’t pay attention to anything else the man said. He was announcing the victor of the bout—the Arisen, of course—but Rieren’s eyes were focused on her friend, Amalyse was still on the ground. Had she been hurt that badly? That bow from the Arisen had been vicious, though Rieren had to admit it could have been a lot worse.

Her fears were somewhat allayed when the healers arrived to look over the fallen scion of the Arraihos clan. They paid no attention whatsoever to the Arisen trudging towards the end of the arena. Why would they? They were here to heal human competitors only, after all.

Thankfully, Amalyse was able to get to her feet with the help of the healers. That she walked out of the arena instead of needing to be carried off was relieving in and of itself.

“We have won, Destroyer!” the monster next to her said. The Stifling Nebula had no expressions to display on its cosmic face, but all the little stars within its body were glowing bright as tiny suns. “We have another representative in the next round.”

Another. Rieren had to be the first one. And now she had company besides just human cultivators.

Nodding at the others and the monsters’ general euphoria, Rieren headed away. She had to see Amalyse. Her friend couldn’t be taking the loss well, and she had to be there to mollify her. Things weren’t as bad as they might look.

Amalyse never handled defeats very well. It was one of the factors that had led to her death at the hands of Essalina in the last timeline.

Rieren wasn’t able to get to her, unfortunately. She never left the human combatants’ waiting location within the arena. Rieren would have gone there herself, but the officials wouldn’t allow a monster to enter. Even after waiting until dusk began filling the sky, Amalyse never exited.

Wishing she could sigh, Rieren headed to her little glen. She would have to resort to other means to meet Amalyse. Rieren would need to wait a bit.

***

She was meeting with Mercion and Silomene again the next day. They should have had Amalyse with them, but she wasn’t there. Rieren wasn’t surprised in the least. It was this exact reason why she had wished to see Amalyse personally yesterday after the battle.

“Do you know how she is faring?” Rieren asked.

“She is slightly depressed at the moment,” Silomene said with a morose expression. “Not taking her defeat well at all, unfortunately.”

“Yes, quite a terrible turn of events.” Mercion shook his head like they were talking about someone slightly famous passing away. “Were you able to find out everything from this Starloper, Rieren?”

Silomene shot him a little glare. “Lord Mercion! Please, we are dealing with a bit of a sensitive matter at the moment.”

“How is anything more sensitive than the truth of this charade of a tournament?”

“The tournament is not a charade.” Rieren took a second trying to figure out how best to explain what Starloper had said, before just deciding to repeat everything word for word. Both their eyes widened a little as she went on. “So you see, we are in this strange position where there is no right or wrong.”

Mercion crossed his arms. “Well, I believe it’s certainly wrong to hide such malicious intentions.”

Rieren wasn’t so certain about that. The ultimate intention was to use the tournament to instill peace. So long as there was an accepted winner, all the conflict in the Elderlands would simmer down. Ideally. That included the conflict with the monsters, though that depended on whether their demands were sufficiently met or not.

Certain people just had sub-agendas within that overarching goal of seeing the tournament through to the end. It wasn’t like any of them could claim that all they wanted was to win the tournament. Victory was simply a means to an end. A tool to achieve their real goals.

“Where are you going?” Silomene asked.

“To see Amalyse,” Rieren said. She had turned away, but she realized there was an easier way to go about it. “Can you give me your hand, Silomene?”

She offered it with little hesitation. Rieren used Enchant with Waterborne Passage to assume Silomene’s form. Now she could move about the camp with ease.

“I will see you later,” Rieren said.

As she left, she beckoned Batcat, and the kitten trailed after her. Rieren didn’t know what state Amalyse was in at the moment, but she was going to find out. She owed her friend that much.