Rieren continued attacking, of course. She was here to win the fight, not stand gawking at whatever new trick Silvas was about to pull out.

But his “trick” turned out to be what stopped her.

She had used Gale Blade once more, this time with water wrapped around herself. The twisting motion of the skill effectively created a whirlpool around her target. Silvas was submerged in water in less than a heartbeat. Unlike Rieren, he had no way of controlling it. No way of defending himself when the water hammered him from a dozen directions at once.

Rieren should have been able to end it then. Swoop in for a blow that would make him collapse to his knees. That was the plan.

But then Silvas glowed for a brief second. The molten orange light of his sword encapsulated his whole form. Then everything detonated and Rieren was flung backwards under severe, explosive pressure.

She righted herself quickly, eyes trying to pierce the misty veil to see what—

No, that wasn’t mist. It was burning too much. Nearly scalding her skin. This was steam.

So his swords were glowing like they were melting. Had he transferred that heat to himself somehow, using fire-Aspected Essence? Rieren hadn’t seen him use fire Aspect before. This had to be new.

A slight shadow swooped over Rieren. Her reaction was instantaneous. A quick dodge away with Fray Passage took far enough and fast enough that she was able to see what had been about to strike her a second before impact landed.

It was a giant wave of spiky glass.

The glass struck the ground where she had been a moment ago and shattered into a thousand splinters, flying everywhere just like the chunks of earth from that titanic blow from the sand construct. Rieren was quick enough to draw her water around her in a protective shell to prevent any of the shrapnel from hitting her.

But where had that thing come from? A skill from Silvas, most likely. What other options were there?

Silvas emerged from the steam with slow steps, his swords still glowing. Rieren stared for a moment, before her eyes narrowed. The same glass that had tried to hit her was now adorning her adversary’s chest like some sort of strange armour. Glass… heat that created steam…

The realization struck her a second later. “You created a new Aspect.”

Silvas’s smile stretched a little wider. Now she began to see the self-satisfaction in it. “Created is perhaps being a bit generous. But yes, I did learn to combine some of my Aspects into a more powerful one. Guess who I learned it from?”

Rieren’s face grew grim. Glass was not an Aspect she had faced before. What were its properties? Sharp, brittle, but still potentially too hard to break. Had Silvas advanced enough to use its property of bending light? There were so many more tricks he could pull out with this…

She never got much chance to figure out anything further. Silvas was done enjoying Rieren’s surprise. He attacked furiously again, his new Aspect following in tandem.

Water protected her from the sheer heat billowing off his body. It also made sure her sword wasn’t bent out of shape by the curved hunks of nearly molten metal in Silvas’s hands. But the heat was beating down her Domain. Making it boil into steam and escape her clutches.

Ruining all of Rieren’s protection.

It wasn’t just his swordplay she had to keep track of either. His enhanced Domain attacked at the same time, determined to take advantage of the fact that her own Domain was failing.

She blocked a series of strikes, almost attaining an opening for a counterattack, only to throw herself back. Otherwise, the spears of jutting glass would have torn her midsection to shreds. At another instance, an avalanche of broken glass icicles would have crushed her to meaty pulp had she not thrown herself back with Fray Passage in time.

Rieren was constantly being pushed back. It was bad enough dealing with Silvas’s direct sword strikes. He was already an incredibly proficient swordsman who was at least on par with Rieren herself in pure skill.

But now his Domain was smashing through her own to attack her directly as well. He seemed to be able to control it with a precision that rivalled the freedom that the Arteroth displayed with their free-form black-and-gold flames. His sand crashed into her water, but the heat he applied to it made all the water boil away, leaving the forming glass free to spear in.

Rieren was forced to fend off the crystalline spikes of glass from stabbing into her with her sword. This took away vital concentration from Silvas’s own strikes.

She couldn’t keep going at this rate. Silvas was eventually going to land a decisive blow, and that would be the end of the match. Sure, she might be able to weather more hits in her new form—even if her Essence armour was broken—but this was a matter of pride.

To Rieren, being hit enough to the point of faltering was tantamount to being defeated by Silvas.

But maybe she was thinking about this weirdly. Some part of her had believed that this was going to be a battle between herself and Silvas, a toe-to-toe fight between two experienced and highly skilled sword wielders.

It didn’t matter that they had both called upon their Domains eventually. Her water and his sand were known quantities. The Domains were simply another aspect to the real test of sword fighting skills. Just an aspect of how skillfully they could weave their favoured Aspects into their swordsmanship.

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And then his glass had come into play.

Silvas didn’t care as much about pride as he did about victory. That was why he had decided to use a Domain that could so easily crush through her own.

It wasn’t that her water couldn’t deal with Domains that were too solid. She had faced cultivators who used Domains of rocks, earth, metal, and other such hard materials before. She had also overcome them all. But Silvas was taking advantage of a very specific process.

Her water countered his sand Domain by breaking it apart, but in the process of doing so, the sand became interspersed within it. Water was stronger when it was altogether. A wave was more powerful than a simple puddle. But with the sand interfering like that, much of her Domain lost its strength, at least in the areas where it had struck that of her opponent’s.

It would still have been fine. Both their Domains were supposed to have been nullified if it remained that way. In the end, pure swordplay would have been the decider.

But Silvas had a trick up his sleeve. He still retained control of the sand, however drowned though they might be. Which was why he was able to apply fire Aspect to all his sand remotely, heating them up to the point of boiling away all of Rieren’s water. The rapid expansion of his sand into glass also burst out from within her Domain, so she had no defence against it.

Except, of course, for Earthfall Blade. Her invincible skill allowed her to shift away all attacks away from her, so long as she could make them meet her Receptor sord.

He was even mixing up his attacks with his sonic skill as well, forcing Rieren to stay on her toes and ensure she had shrouded herself in watery protection against the disembodied slices. So annoying.

Rieren had been pushed back nearly against the other side of the arena. It was perhaps a little concerning that she wasn’t able to hear the crowd roaring even when she was this close. Her battle against Silvas had taken on a pitch that blotted out the rest of the world.

But enough was enough. If Silvas was determined to take advantage of her weakness with his new powers, then she ought to return the favour.

As Rieren continued blocking and staving away any blow from landing on her, she concentrated on her Domain. Her Abyss and Divine Aspects bloomed within her water. She let them mix together, holding them in tight balance. A balance that Silvas broke when he summoned more of his glass within her Domain.

As soon as his glass shattered the balance between the opposing Aspects within her Domain, they exploded. Little detonations rocked out around Rieren at the points where Silvas’s glass was trying to get to her. All the glass was broken to smithereens in short order.

Silvas took the surprising turn in stride. His concentration on their exchange of bladed blows didn’t falter for a moment. A sign of over a century’s worth of experience at play.

But it still made it easier to fight him, to deflect his blows with Earthfall Blade and find moments where she could counter with her own strike. She didn’t get through to hitting him. There was always one of his blades ready to defend, even when she used Gale Blade.

Rieren wasn’t done, however. Two could play at enhancing Domains.

As she kept fighting, Water Dancer Blade allowed her to wreathe her Receptor Sword with her Aspect. Not just water, however. This time, Rieren brought forth all her Aspects together. Water formed the medium, absorbing all the Divine, Abyss, and lightning Aspect she could summon up to turn her sword into a blade of pure destruction.

Silvas had done something similar already, wrapping his swords in sand and turning them molten orange. But his eyes widened when he beheld Rieren’s new sword. Nothing he had done matched that.

With a ferocious grin, Rieren redoubled her efforts. Her Domain continued to destroy anything Silvas tried to throw in from the sides. Meanwhile, her blade cleaved through the air, every contact with Silvas’s swords sending out stronger and stronger blasts right between them. All that protected them both was their own Essence armours.

And then, Rieren got her opening. Maybe it was the fact that, unlike her opponent, she didn’t have to worry about fatigue. Maybe one of the blasts their contacts were causing had finally got to him.

Whichever the case, Silvas faltered. His swords sliced in and were explosively repelled by Rieren’s deflect, but it wasn’t just Silvas’s swords that fell back. He staggered too.

Rieren took advantage like a shark sensing blood in the water. She stabbed in, rapid as a lunging praying mantis.

Silvas still attempted to reflexively dodge back, but he hadn’t counted on Rieren’s sword expanding on its own. She had already noted his motion. Had already accounted for it, using Rippling Blade to extend her sword.

The extension of her sword wasn’t white as it normally would have been. No, this was a mixture of black and gold, tangled up with electric arcs wrapping the whole thing.

Silvas was blasted off his feet, sent flying back pace after pace in a mere heartbeat to crash through all his Domain. By the time he came to a stop, his shoulder almost blown apart thanks to the calamitous combination of Aspects, Rieren was already standing over him. Her sword was pointed at his face.

“Have I proven myself, then?” she asked.

The whole arena was silent. It was starting to get quite familiar. No matter how many times she came out victorious, the crowd simply couldn’t help but be surprised at the fact that a monster like her had won. At the way she had claimed victory without too great a difficulty, in the end.

“Perhaps,” Silvas said. “There is some merit in revising my way of tackling our shared matter…”

Rieren smiled. She didn’t let up, though. Not until the match official had arrived to their exact location and confirmed that Silvas had no intention of continuing the fight, not with the injury he had suffered.

“Our winner of the bout,” the commentator yelled after a signal from Starloper, who continued to pretend he had no idea who Rieren was. “Is the monstrous convert, the new Arisen, Rieren Vallorne!”

That was when the crowd found their voice again. Some continued chanting Silvas’s name, some threw out insults and condemnations in her direction. Most, thankfully, simply got up and left.

Rieren reached down and finally helped up Silvas, keeping him propped upright until the healers arrived to help him away. “I hope it is nothing lasting,” she said, jerking her chin at her wound on his shoulder.

He was nonchalant about it. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“I also hope I can count on you when the time comes.”

“Of course.”

“Soon.”

Silvas frowned. But before he could ask anything further, the healers arrived to take him away. The look he left her with confirmed that the chat they’d had before the battle wasn’t going to be their last.

Rieren glanced briefly at the match official, but he was already following the healers out of the arena too. Oh, well. So much for conversing with Starloper. Now wasn’t the time, anyway.

Though, if nothing else, she would have liked to know why he insisted on officiating only her matches specifically.

Rieren turned briefly to face the dignitaries’ stand. Most were leaving as well, but several were staring right back at her. The new Emperor, the vast majority of the competitors, including those who had been eliminated, and some of the imperial courtiers and nobles too. Dozens of different feelings running across dozens of different minds.

She didn’t turn around. There was no point in doing so. The monsters’ stands were devoid of life. There was no one there to cheer for Rieren, not the way the crowd might have done for their human champions.

But that was fine. Rieren raised her sword and pointed it at the dignitaries’ stand anyway. She smiled. The tension spiking out of her almost made a strange feeling pervade through the hollowness within her.

A feeling of triumph.