The quickest of kicks from Rieren sent Kalvia sprawling and tumbling into her clan members. At the same time, Rieren boosted the forward momentum imparted by the backward kick with Silken Passage again. She shot through the gaps between the clan members with lightning-fast ease.

But Remis Sharan was stuck. In between multiple other people, she had nowhere to jump to before Rieren reached her location. The shock and surprise slowed her too. She hadn’t been expecting Rieren to start the battle immediately.

And then she was done for. As the others around them scattered, Rieren reached Sharan and grabbed her head, the sheer strength of Rieren’s grip squeezing the other woman’s skull.

Sharan cursed, tried to counter. “You monk—”

“Now you die,” Rieren said.

Sharan’s maroon Essence was bursting free from her twisted soul, her skulls already forming. She had summoned her javelin too. All futile attempts to stop Rieren. The Receptor Sword was already swinging, the blade shearing through Sharan’s neck with the perfection of a guillotine.

Blood fountained and splashed everywhere. Sharan’s body started crumpling down from where Rieren kept a tight hold on the head.

“You murderous bitch!” Sharan yelled.

Still not dead. One of her skulls was already entering the underside of her neck, through the severed connection with the rest of her body.

Rieren had foreseen this, of course. She already knew how to deal with it.

With the others having scattered around her, she had free aim to do whatever she wanted without needing to consider where she targeted. Before Sharan’s body actually hit the ground, before the skulls could drag the body back over to the head, Rieren kicked it. Hard.

Her aim was perfect. The beheaded corpse went flying straight to a tree, impaling itself onto a branch high overhead. It pierced her heart and made the body stick there.

Rieren wasn’t done, of course. Even as Sharan cursed her out again, Rieren use Silken Passage once more and slammed Sharan’s skull against the tree trunk with quite some force. The impact left an oval crater that Sharan’s head was now buried in, such that Rieren could let go and still leave it completely stuck.

Just like her body.

“You… cursed…” Sharan could only mumble. That last blow had probably crushed at least a part of her brain.

No time. Rieren whirled around, surveying the consequences of her actions.

She had acted fast, with as much surprise and speed as she could muster. Still, she hadn’t been fast enough to take care of Remis Sharan before the Markand Clanmaster had decided to start his battle too. He wasn’t the leader of his clan for nothing, after all.

No surprise, then, that he had already attacked Kalvia. Or attempted to.

By the time Rieren turned around, he had only reached those defending the Empress with their lives. The Markand Clanmaster only managed to reach Zhalen, his large glaive slashing through the younger man’s defences with ease and sending him flying backwards.

But that was all he could achieve. Now, Rieren was ready to focus on the real enemy.

“Die!” she screamed as she launched herself at the Clanmaster.

Her yell got his attention. Instead of leaping to where Kalvia had fallen, he turned to face Rieren, quick as a viper. He had looked to attack with his glaive, but upon seeing the sheer ferocity of Rieren’s charge, he quickly held his glaive in a defensive posture.

Rieren reached him with the full momentum of Silken Passage behind her, power brimming through her soul and body like a thundering waterfall. An instant before she reached her opponent, she used Enchant to turn her Receptor Sword into the Stormborne Greatblade. The sword turned thicker, heavier, larger. Channeling the fury of the storm.

Plus, she also released a Heaven’s Arc as the swing connected.

When Rieren did swing in her strike, the impact crushed the area round them for over a dozen paces and sent the Clanmaster flying back.

She turned to see Kalvia and the others rising to their feet, eyes wide in alarm, bodies tensed to fight. “Are you alright?”

Kalvia looked like there was a ton she wanted to say, but she kept it all to a nod. “Kill him.”

“With violent pleasure.”

She ran ahead to meet the Clanmaster before he decided to charge into the area. Better to take him out where he wouldn’t hurt the others, whether inadvertently or on purpose.

“You… get… back…”

Remis Sharan’s stuttered words faded as Rieren put some distance between them. She wouldn’t be any real danger to anyone any longer.

“You knew,” the Markand Clanmaster said. There was almost a glimmer of grudging respect in his demeanour. “You already had the measure of how to deal with her.”

“Of course, I did,” Rieren said. “You do not live as long as I have without learning.”

Markand tutted. “So those skulls of her won’t pull her body back together if they’re stuck in different places.”

“The real limit is her skulls’ capabilities. They can help her regenerate any part of her body that she has lost, but only if that part no longer exists. A perfect severance simply means that direct regeneration is no longer possible. Instead, Sharan would need to rely on reattachment, a very different procedure.”

“Ahh. That is quite ingenious of you.”

“I have experience with advanced healing mechanics.”

Bandying words with someone she was about to kill didn’t have much point. But in the off chance he did end up surviving somehow, arming him with enough knowledge to break free of Sharan’s corruption and possibly just kill the troublesome woman couldn’t hurt.

“I despise the notion that you believe I have been misled,” the Markand Clanmaster said. “All this I have done due to my own belief in myself and what I deserve. What I think is right for me.”

“Believe what you like.” Rieren hefted her sword her closer to herself. “We agreed to a battle, did we not? Let us end this. Unless you wish to surrender.”

“To you? Some upstart tournament winner?” He scoffed. “I would rather die.”

So, he had recognized her. With Call of the Past active, she ought to have appeared different enough that she should have been an unknown quantity separate from the woman who had been crowned champion of the Trials of Ascendance. Unless it was her robes giving away her identity. But it could also be that Batcat’s ability would be running out soon.

Whatever the case, Rieren could use that to her advantage.

“Then so be it,” she said.

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Rieren intended to attack first, but props to the Markand Clanmaster, he was fast. Toxic green-yellow Essence burst out of him concentrated enough to be visible with the naked eye, and he charged at her with his glaive.

It wasn’t difficult to stop the majority of his blows. No matter how strong they were, Earthfall Blade made deflections too easy. His speed might have been a concern, but Rieren was fast enough to match him, blow for blow. She even managed to deflect a stab just enough to counter with her own slashing strike, forcing him back several paces.

The hit hadn’t left a mark. His concentrated Essence armour was too strong for her to break through with a simple sword strike. She would have to put some more effort into it.

It had left him surprised, though. She could see it in his eyes, reevaluating her. His idea of her strength was still mired in what he had seen of her at the tournament. Unless he had also observed her against the Avatars recently, of course, but that seemed highly unlikely. Especially since he clearly hadn’t expected her to match his strength and be able to counterattack him.

Problem was, Rieren had no wish to get embroiled in a draw-out battle against him. This wasn’t a tournament fight. All she had to do was win. There was no point in the manner of how she did so, no audience she had to win over, no one she had to satisfy save herself.

Especially when Batcat’s Call of the Past would run out before long.

So, she de-escalated. Slammed him back and let her guard fall for a moment. “Enough.”

“Surrendering already?” The Markand Clanmaster raised an eyebrow at her. “Or are you discovering that you can’t stand up to a true Archnoble for long?”

Did he really believe that? Hadn’t she just proven herself capable of matching him? She shook her head.

“I have no wish to fight,” Rieren said.

“Then kneel before and beg for mercy.” He pointed to his feet with his glaive. “And I might consider sparing you.”

“I have no wish to fight, is all I said. I still believe I can kill you, however.”

His eyes flickered with momentary uncertainty. “How in the Abyss are you going to do that?”

“A test of might. Pure power, for all the world to see. You claimed that strength was everything, yes? That it is the ultimate deciding factor on whether one deserves what one seeks? Then come prove it to my challenge, Clanmaster.”

He couldn’t deny that without appearing a hypocrite. Not when they had an audience. Not without losing his honour. “What do you propose?”

“I am tired of fighting. Tired of constant, protracted battles. If we must test out strengths, then let us do so in singular confrontation, even more direct than what we have used so far. My proposal is this—you will strike me with all the strength you possess, with all the might you can summon. And if I survive, you will let me do the same to you.”

The Markand Clanmaster laughed. “And if we both survive? What then?”

Rieren grinned. “We go again, until one of us falters.”

“How is that any different from an actual battle?”

“You forget one key thing. You will not survive my first blow.”

His eyes flared. The gauntlet hadn’t just been thrown. Rieren had practically slapped his face with it. The others were looking on. Distant though they might be to prevent themselves from getting caught up in the battle, they were still able to listen in on and see everything happening. They were well aware of Rieren’s challenge.

And under their observance, under the words that would surely spread from this event, the Markand Clanmaster had no way to back down from Rieren’s test.

“As you wish then,” he said. “Forget the moment you decided to face me, I will make you regret the moment you were born.”

Rieren laughed a little at the absurdity of that. “Come, come, Clanmaster, none of us here have all day.”

That riled him up just right. Markand began preparing his blow.

He raised his glaive on high. Energy gathered onto the curved blade, making it glow a pure white brighter and brighter. The air was warping around the tip. Even space itself was contorting. His Domain had materialized too, the greenish-yellow gas obscuring the strange shapes forming inside the veil.

The sensation roiled over Rieren like a wrongness in her surroundings. It made her skin prickle. She took a deep breath, then prepared to face down whatever Markand was about to fling at her.

Markand’s Domain expanded outwards. The greenish-yellow vapour soon had Rieren surrounded. A second later, the arms began forming. They began grabbing her all over, clasping her throat, holding her limbs still, locking her in place and preventing her from doing anything at all.

Good thing her defence against whatever he might attempt needed no motion.

As his strength gathered, Rieren closed her eyes and focused. Call of the Past was advanced enough now to take her deep into the Ascendant. Deep enough for the manifestation of her Aspect unto herself. So, Rieren concentrated not on the battle, not on the blow she was about to be hit by, but on water.

Rivers and oceans, lakes and puddles, rain and waterfall. She hadn’t even counted the other myriad forms it could take. There were so many existences water could embrace. So many places it could exist.

One of those places just happened to be the human body too. Of course, that wasn’t a vital realization. Ascendant realm cultivators could turn into their primary Aspect, regardless of whether it was something natural like water, or something ludicrous like the void of the cosmos. What mattered was the spiritual connection.

For Rieren, that connection was built on the foundation of just how present water was everywhere, just how much it sustained in this world of theirs.

So much of cultivation was about becoming pure enough to ascend higher and higher, and what better purity was there than to turn one with the environment itself? The greatest vector for doing that was her primary Aspect—water.

Rieren drew on that connection, on the presence of the life-giving liquid both within and without her. One. She was one. A singular being, comprising both herself and the world beyond her. Internal and external. Mind, body, and spirit, yes, but environment as well. Rieren wasn’t simply one with the universe, she and her world were one.

The Markand Clanmaster’s power made her open her eyes. His glaive blade now glowed a brilliant white, shining so brightly that it turned everything almost dark by comparison. It was impossible to see the Clanmaster himself.

“Ready to die?” he asked.

Rieren would have answered, but one of the accursed hands had clamped itself over her mouth too. How annoying.

The Clanmaster flashed forward and struck.

Rieren lowered her head just a bit, almost by instinct. But her main focus remained on her own defence. She summoned her Domain just as the Clanmaster charged in.

Water rose in a geyser around her. It didn’t stymie Markand much. Whatever technique he was using was too powerful. It crushed through the water, vaporizing it away without even touching it as though the glaive blade was superheated.

Then it touched Rieren.

A scream ripped free from her gullet as it struck. The Markand Clanmaster had landed the blow right on her midsection, probably trying to do to her what she had done to Remis Sharan. It sheared through her body, crushed her organs and bones, the power shimmering on the blade blowing everything around it to smithereens too small for the naked eye to see.

All the summoned arms within the Clanmaster’s Domain made it worse. Rieren couldn’t be sent flying back. Instead, she was locked to her position while that shearing blade tore through her.

When the Clanmaster’s strike ended, there was a detonation. Of course. That much power shoved into one singular spot would refuse to be contained forever, and there was no better moment to unleash it than when it struck its target.

So it was that, when the blade struck, it wasn’t just Rieren’s stomach brutally torn apart. The resulting explosion ruptured her entirely. Her limbs were crushed, her ribcage shattered, her torso demolished, her whole body near-annihilated. The Markand Clanmaster was certainly being thorough in destroying her.

Except, much of what he struck was nothing more than water.

When the dust cleared, when the rain of rocks thrown up by that explosion ceased, Markand’s grin slowly died. Rieren’s grin, meanwhile, grew. His face was a delightful sight to see after suffering such agony. Almost rejuvenating, in fact. Because, even after all he had done, all he had hit her with, Rieren wasn’t dead.

“How?” Markand’s eyes were wide. “How are you still alive? I made sure to set off that explosion and destroy you even if you used Aspect transfiguration.”

Rieren laughed. It sounded so wrong, sent a lance of pain shooting down her whole abdomen. No surprise there. Bastard must have ruined her nose, her lungs, her windpipe, and everything in between. “I just used one of my skills.”

“Skill?” He slashed his glaive through the air. “Impossible! What kind of skill could you possibly possess that allowed you to survive?”

“It is called Reaver Stance. A skill that boosts all my attributes as soon as I suffer any damage. Including my innate healing, defences, pain tolerance, concentration, and everything you can think of that might allow me to withstand anything you could do, Markand.”

He stared at her, eyes wide. Apparently, the sheer disbelief made words impossible. Another little rejuvenating look. Old men like him always discounted the sheer power and possibility afforded by one’s class if advanced correctly.

Rieren looked down at herself. Oh, Abyss. He had clearly done a lot. The gory hole in her midsection was big enough to drive a battering ram through. Bits of crushed ribs, pulped flesh, and sizzling blood continued falling through it. One of her legs had been crushed and severed so that it was leaning on the other. Her left arm was missing entirely from the elbow down.

No wonder he couldn’t believe she had survived.

She probably would have suffered far, far worse if she hadn’t had the combination of Reaver Stance and converting as much of herself as possible to water. Thankfully, Divine Resilience was already healing up her devastating wounds.

“Your turn, Markand,” Rieren growled out.

That seemed to bring back his ability to talk. “You think you can do anything to me in your current condition?”

“Cease your futile attempts at running away with your tail between your legs and prepare yourself. Unless you mean to renege on our deal.”

He spat at her. “Do your worst.”

Rieren laughed. It hurt, but the prospect of delivering pain felt too good. “Oh, I doubt I will need anything close to my worst.” She hefted her sword close. “Now, prepare to die.”