Rieren’s next day was spent helping the sole surviving monster in the competition prepare for its upcoming bout. The Stifling Nebula was intent on winning no matter what. It was almost a little concerning.
Not that Rieren could truly focus on that in the middle of their sparring sessions. She couldn’t fully ascertain if it had grown stronger, or if it was simply unleashing as much of its power as it could, holding nothing back. Either way, she had to concentrate to take it on. There was no room or space for her thoughts to go in any direction except for her sparring session.
She hadn’t faced it with this level of intensity before.
Rieren also didn’t bother asking about any plans or anything else it might have up its sleeve. They’d had a rudimentary chat about Rykion’s abilities, about how it might face down all the powers of light the Karlosyne scion would use.
Thankfully, the monster hadn’t tried to ask her silly questions like whether it was bound to lose no matter what it tried or not. Rieren didn’t care for entertaining hypotheticals. Not when the monster was so volatile and unable to handle the unpleasant scenario that it might indeed end up being defeated.
“Do you intend to go on like this up until the start of your battle?” Rieren asked. The intensity with which the Arisen had started training hadn’t faded. It didn’t even take a break, even though she chose to leave it at times. When she found the monster again the next day, it was still busy fighting thin air like the empty space had offended its mother.
“Of course,” the Arisen said. “It keeps up my alertness.”
She would have warned it to be wary of fatigue, especially an hour before such an important battle, but fatigue wasn’t something monsters experienced. Not even Essence exhaustion, as far as she had been able to determine. Though the latter was true for her still. A shred of humanity that she still retained.
“I will see you at the arena, then,” she said.
“Yes, you will.” It didn’t even turn to face her, continuing its exercise with its glinting, explosive stars. “You will see that I will win, no matter what.”
She wanted to tell the monster to take it easy, that victory didn’t matter as much as honest effort did. But the words would sail right over its head, so what was the point?
Its statement did make her wonder what exactly could have been the point, however.
“Welcome to the second bout of the fourth round,” the commentator yelled in the arena. “Another brilliant match is in store for us.”
He didn’t need to continue stoking the flames of anticipation. At least, not for the monsters around Rieren. They were all excited to see how the fight was about to go. Tension hummed in the air, excitement and anticipation both riddling the monstrous spectators as though they were going to directly participate in the match they were about to observe.
Rieren supposed that wasn’t too uncalled for.
The actual competitors arrived moments later. Rykion entered through one side of the arena, wearing the same old golden-white robes of the Karlosyne clan. Meanwhile, the Arisen thumped into the field as it approached the centre.
Strange how it didn’t exactly float. Both its previous forms—the Life Stifler and the Amorphous Nebula—were known to not move with the use of limbs directly. Not just limbs, at least. Yet in this tournament, the Stifling-Nebula had decided to construct its nebula form into legs that could carry it wherever it wanted.
The match official retreated with his arm raised. It made the tension soar. When he dropped his hand, and the commentator yelled, “Begin!”, the roar of the crowd and the monsters around Rieren actually drowned out the first few clashes between Rykion and the Arisen.
It had started as furiously as Rieren had expected. The Arisen had wasted no time charging at its opponent, using the starry explosions bursting out of its wing to propel itself forward with blurring speed. Rykion, as an Ascendant-realm cultivator, was no less fast, zipping across the ground faster than most eyes would be able to track.
Their collision set off an impact that cracked the ground in a radius of several paces. Too fast, and too powerful.
Rieren only just caught their actual blows as they shot past each other. The Arisen had tried to hammer in its arm, its fist bursting with the same detonating stars that emanated from its cosmic body, but Rykion had blocked it easily with his light spear.
The battle proceeded in the same fashion. Now it made sense why Rieren was forced to pay so much attention during her bouts against the monster. It really was holding nothing back, caring not a whit if its opponent ended up suffering an attack that he wouldn’t be able to survive if he failed to block or dodge.
Not that caring about Rykion ought to be high in the Arisen’s priorities. The monster was facing off against an Ascendant-realm cultivator, against Rykion Karlosyne of all people. It could afford to let loose its innate violence without worrying overmuch.
It didn’t help, unfortunately. As Rieren had told it and all the monsters, unbridled violence wasn’t the key to victory, especially not against stronger opponents.
Of course, she couldn’t be happy that it was Rykion proving her right. Nor could she deny the Arisen was putting in a valiant effort to claim victory. The monster attacked with the intensity of a hurricane, throwing its stars all over the arena and rushing pell-mell at its opponent with relentless aggression.
But Rykion was fast and powerful enough to survive everything that was thrown at him. He dodged the stars, blocked the monster’s direct attacks with his own forearms, even counterattacked with his light spears here and there.
Rieren glanced at the crowds. The speed and intensity of the powers in display would be tremendously difficult for regular mortals to keep track of.
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But they didn’t appear confused. If anything, the brilliant light show, the constant thuds of impact and boom of explosions, the way the entire arena was tearing apart, all combined to keep them sated. They were cheering on their representative with ceaseless fervour.
The same couldn’t be said for the poor match official, however. As the fight continued, spilling all over the arena with no discernable rhyme or pattern, he was forced to move every which way to keep himself from getting caught by the powers flying all over the place.
Rieren turned her attention back to the actual battle. The Arisen was summoning up its former powers as a Life Stifler, creating limbs and appendages separate from its body that it could control remotely. Then it attacked altogether, trying to get at Rykion from too many directions and overwhelm his ability to cope.
But the Karlosyne heir’s Domain proved too tricky for that. Light shimmered into being all over the battlefield, twisting into spears less than an instant later.
A second later, they spiked into the Arisen and all its limbs. It was able to break itself off the spears in time and retreat, for they had exploded into showers of coruscating light a second later. The fluidity of its form came into play there, allowing it to restructure its body to evade the worst of Rykion’s counterattack.
But it had also forced a change in the fight’s momentum. The Arisen could no longer continue attacking relentlessly as it had done from the start of the battle.
It was Rykion’s turn now.
He decided to show just why everyone rated him as the potential champion of the tournament. If his Domain with all their light twisting into spears had been bad before, now it solidified into what looked like a prism, imprisoning both competitors inside a complex crystalline array of light so bright that even Rieren was nearly forced to squint.
She realized that she had never seen him use his Domain to this extent before. He had been holding back during their battle.
Well, either that, or he had grown in strength since then, increasing the effectiveness and power of his Domain. Rieren concluded it was more likely the latter. She had herself grown. Why wouldn’t the others in the tournament do so too?
Either way, her eyes were now riveted to the actual Domain. If Rykion won, she might very well need to face it herself.
The crowd oohed in pleasant surprise. No wonder. This was an incredible display of dazzling power.
Unlike the human spectators, the monsters weren’t wowed. They were consternated. Several of them rose from their positions and reached the same railing Rieren stood before, gripping it tight to watch with bated breath and tensed muscles. She hadn’t seen them this agitated before.
Not that it was surprising. The Stifling Nebula was their last, direct participant in the Trials of Ascendance. If it lost, then they would have to rely entirely on Rieren.
The Arisen tried to break free of Rykion’s Domain. It could still move within the prismatic shell. But then it found the fatality within. As soon as its body passed through one of the panes of the crystalline prison, the pane cracked like a broken mirror and the monster’s whole body shattered.
Rieren’s eyes widened. The Arisen had been cut cleanly into dozens of pieces that floated on their own, spilling blood and bursting light everywhere. Insane.
Even worse, the pieces of the monster’s body were burning up. Some property of the light within that enhanced Domain of Rykion’s had imbued it with a heating power, sizzling all that was caught in his radiance in moments.
But the Arisen survived. That amorphousness from before came back into play, the surviving pieces of its body joining back together to reform its original shape.
And in that manner, constantly being cut up before stitching itself back together, the monster passed out of the Domain to stand on solid ground. It had made its way out, albeit with much of its body immolated and stars dimmed so that it looked like a construct of pitch-black tar, instead of the boundless form of the night sky.
It made Rieren reconsider if he had already possessed this enhanced version of his Domain, or if he had learned it anew.
Maybe that was why Rykion had used it against the Arisen. He had probably known the monster could survive through the use of its unique properties.
Against any regular human cultivator, it would have been instantaneously fatal. Since the tournament was doing its utmost to keep all competitors alive, Rykion hadn’t been able to use it willy-nilly. His previous monstrous opponent hadn’t been anywhere near as strong and ferocious as the Stifling Nebula to warrant the Domain’s use either.
Free from the prismatic prison, the Arisen now roared out its challenge. It was time for it to counterattack. The remaining stars within its body began glowing brighter, slowly emerging from it to shoot at its opponent.
Except, Rykion’s Domain wasn’t done. Rykion held out his hand. Then the convoluted entire prism of light exploded.
Thousands upon thousands of light shards crashed down upon the entire arena. A large chunk blocked the shooting stars with ease, while another major concentration landed right upon the Arisen’s location. The detonation was searingly bright. Even Rieren was forced to close her eyes, unable to see anything for the blinding moment when the whole world turned white.
When the light and explosions cleared enough for her to see again, her eyes pierced through the glinting veil of dust to see the end result.
The Arisen looked dead.
More of it had become that burned, tarry consistency, sloughing off its body to slop to the ground. Almost all the stars within it were now dead. It had fallen to its knees, such that it was still able to maintain, but its form was quickly falling apart.
The crowd roared at the sight. Another monster down. Another hated participant eliminated from the tournament.
Around Rieren, some of the monsters began to cry out. Keen, despairing growls that slowly sharpened into shrieks. She stared back down at the battlefield. Two tiny stars still glimmered fitfully within the Arisen. At least that proved it wasn’t dead, though the way they were flickering suggested they weren’t going to last long.
But the match official never got to reach the Arisen and verify its defeat. The commentator never managed to yell that they had an official winner.
Before either could happen, a monster jumped over the stand’s railing and entered the arena.
“What?” If Rieren’s heart could still have beaten, it would have pumped like a maddened bellows now. The Abyss was that creature doing? “Get back here!”
It wasn’t the only one. Another monster leaped into the arena, then another, and another. She was pulling out her sword, impulsively seeking to threaten them to stay in line lest they ruined everything. The rest of the crowd were blasting the monsters with roars of disapproval. Rykion had summoned his Domain and the match official was pulling out his cultivator techniques too.
But they all froze when the Arisen acted. Its body had fallen apart completely by then. Except for two parts. Two small, shapeless blobs coloured like the night sky and wrapped around its two remaining stars.
Those shattered into several tinier chunks, each with their own miniature star too. A moment later, they all shot with the speed of thunderbolts into the monsters invading the arena.
Oh. Oh. Rieren had frozen at the sight. So that was the Arisen’s plan.
The blobs that had fired at the monsters had grown to take over the creatures entirely. All the monsters that had entered the battlefield had never had any intention of fighting. Instead, they allowed themselves to be consumed whole by the Arisen’s amorphous form, granting their strength, their power, their very lives to this cause of theirs.
To this monstrous champion of theirs.
More stars were born within each of the larger blobs now. Slowly, they moved closer together until they were one once more, their shapes twisting and deforming until the humanoid form of the Arisen was once again whole and true.
Except, the majority of it was blindingly bright now. Too many stars, crowding out all the night-sky darkness. A radiance that put even Rykion’s power to shame.
“This battle is far from over,” the Arisen said. Its voice rang as though dozens of the monsters were speaking all at once. “Now, come and face your demise!”