Rieren raised her arms heavenwards with a big smile. A challenging smile. She had reached Peak-Exalted a day ago.

Stories of the Banishedborn-killer, the winner of the Trials of the Ascendance, the last witness to death of the Forborne Emperor—who had called her a friend—had spread far and wide. They had taken Rieren’s fame to a level deemed more than worthy enough for Peak-Exalted.

Now came the moment she could climb the rungs of cultivation even further. Now was the time for her to face divine wrath once more.

Now was her opportunity to break through to the Ascendant realm.

With the battle against the Banishedborn and the imperial court a resounding victory for Rieren’s side, it hadn’t taken long for the various contingents present at the Trials of Ascendance to officially come over to their side. One by one, those who hadn’t joined Rieren’s coalition all came forward and swore fealty to the new Empress of the Elderlands.

They couldn’t not do so. Rieren’s coalition was now the most powerful faction in all of the Elderlands. She had Silvas Fraile the Sword Saint, the eastern Archnobles from the Stannerig and Ordorian clans, and of course, the literal crown jewel of her coalition—the imperial heir and her clan.

She also had the strongest Banishedborn at her beck and call, or so the rumours went, which Rieren had done nothing to stymie.

Plus, even people like Essalina Arteroth, the strongest Fury of the North, and Ceraline Selvier had thrown their lot in with Rieren and her side.

Anyone who didn’t kowtow to them was a fool. As such, all those who hadn’t participated in the battle came in afterwards. Some had come in shame, some had held on to some measure of pride, some had even been reluctant. A varied group, no doubt.

But all of their ultimate intents had been the same. They wanted in on the new empire. Even if they hadn’t been there for the main event, they still wanted to catch the tail end of the dawn of the Elderlands’ succession. Leeches, the lot of them, in Rieren’s opinion. But thankfully, more tactful heads than hers were the ones dealing that lousy lot.

And now, with all that hullabaloo taken care of, they were all journeying to Vanharron for the official coronation of Her Imperial Majesty, Kalvia Zhouven.

The imperial procession was somewhere off to the east. Kalvia and some of the others could have zipped over to Vanharron and gotten it over with in short order. But that wouldn’t have been the best course of action.

They needed to give some time for the news to spread. They needed to allow the mortals some grace to prepare and show up at Vanharron. They needed all those who hadn’t come to the tournament to at least show up for the most important event since the last imperial succession.

As such, Kalvia and almost everyone else who had been at the Trials of Ascendance were travelling at a regular pace towards the capital of the Elderlands.

Which afforded Rieren some time to take a little detour.

“Oh, heavens,” Rieren intoned, throwing her voice skywards. “Here I stand before you, on the cusp of graining true strength. One step away from immortality. One step closer to divinity.” She raised her volume, letting her words carry far and wide up the mountainside. “What is your answer?”

The answer wasn’t surprising. With the sky having already darkened, lightning flashing down was only the natural progression of events. It also wasn’t surprising that the lightning bolts hammered down near the peak of the mountain. Said peak broke, and then a landslide was rushing downslope, ready to bury and end Rieren.

She grinned. How apt. She recalled well how she had begun this timeline facing down a landslide.

Those idiotic Anachrons. Rieren shook her head. How would they have reacted, seeing her in the exact state that they had been afraid of letting her reach?

“Batcat,” Rieren said softly. “It is time we began.”

The little Spirit Beast on top of her head roused itself from its slumber. All the lighting and the thunder of the landslide wasn’t exactly helpful for napping. With a little meow, Batcat shimmered and disappeared. A moment later, Rieren felt her winged kitten bringing back the very power she was seeking to reach at this moment.

Call of the Past turned her into an Ascendant-realm cultivator.

She was perhaps cheating just a little to resort to the very realm that this heavenly tribulation was supposed to grant her access to. But considering tribulation were born from the gods themselves, Rieren had absolutely no regrets about any sort of cheating.

A thunderous crash of a broken mountainside, serenaded by a salvo of lightning bolts, slammed in with the speed of a waterfall.

Rieren welcomed it with open arms.

***

New Achievement!

You have broken through to the Ascendant Realm! True immortality is now within your reach. And beyond that, true divinity is not far off.

Rewards

* 1 Level

* 100 Credits

* 1 Skill Point

* 1 Aspect Infuser

Ah, delightful. Rieren stood among the ruins of the mountainside, enjoying her latest achievement and the new power she had gained. Her Elixir Field had expanded widely. If she closed her eyes and focused, her Elixir Field essentially covered the entire mountainside.

Batcat meowed, impressed with the display. It had emerged from her as soon as the tribulation had ended.

But the end of Call of the Past hadn’t shunted Rieren back a tremendously noticeable degree of power. No, she was at Early-Ascendant now. She was powerful, even without Batcat’s Spirit Bond technique.

She wasn’t far from being the strongest cultivator in the entirety of the Elderlands.

Minus the remaining Banishedborn, of course.

Rieren put the skill point into Earthfall Blade for now, letting the Aspect Infuser—a bottle of milky white liquid—disappear into her storage ring.

She would have started to think about her new realm of cultivation and how she might plan to get through it, especially how long it might take her. But then, a distraction materialized. Rieren sensed the presence first, before it grew into Silvas in the distance, riding an enormous golden scorpion.

“I saw the tribulation,” Silvas said. His True Summons dissolved to sand as he stepped off. “Marvelous!”

“I saw you coming in on your golden scorpion,” Rieren said. “Shiny.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He stared at her. She stared back.

“What?” Rieren asked. “I thought we were stating the obvious.”

Silvas sighed mightily. “An Ascendant before me again…” He shook his head to banish his apparent envy. “I came here to retrieve you. The others are getting a bit uppity again, and I thought our new Empress could do with a show of force.”

“With another show of force, you mean.”

“Correct.”

Rieren was tempted to sigh just as Silvas had done moments ago, but she held herself back. “Then let us get going.”

***

Overall, Rieren felt that the way she had conducted business and gone about attaining her goals in the last timeline hadn’t been the healthiest of methods. Fueled by rage and the need for vengeance, determined to reach her ultimate target no matter what, refusing to form any meaningful connections. None of that had allowed for a life that was worth repeating.

In this timeline, Rieren had gone about things differently. It was one of her primary goals to do so, even if things hadn’t always gone smoothly.

Sure, it wasn’t as though she had gone out of her way to make herself beloved by people and made a great many friends and allies. On the scale of extroversion and introversion, Rieren firmly placed herself in the “reserved” camp.

She still remembered that promise she had made to Demargo as she had killed him.

A hundred thousand times, if necessary.

Rieren shook her head. A temporary blip in character, hopefully. She had regained her humanity while gaining a better understanding of the monsters plaguing the Elderlands. Better yet, she had regained all the connections and friendships and alliances she had been forging in this new life of hers.

Overall, Rieren would certainly say she was living her new life a lot better than her old one. Things might have teetered towards a reprisal, but she had clawed her way back to her goals.

But sometimes, when people she didn’t care for decided to be complete nitwits, Rieren felt as though her old life’s approach definitely had its merits.

She still recalled the last meeting she had attended all too well.

“Nonsense!” an Archnoble had roared. He had slammed his hand on the meeting table in Clanmistress Avathene’s pavilion just for emphasis. “We need to reroute at least seventy percent of the resources in the Blisterlands to the Fissurelands!”

“Seventy percent?” another one had yelled. “Seventy? Are you insane?”

“How in the Abyss are we going to rebuild after we lost everything if we don’t get what we need?”

“No. Never. The Direlands needs at least a third of what the imperial court can spare. You taking seventy percent is insanity.”

Beside the second Archnoble, Silvas Fraile rubbed his temple.

Essalina Arteroth laughed harshly. “You bungholes really think you deserve to simply take that much?”

“We’ll provide collaterals, of course.” The first Archnoble seemed to pull a younger version himself out of thin air. Or at least, Rieren hadn’t seen the younger man yet. Maybe he had just been obscured by his father’s girth. “You can keep my son till I return every iota of what we use up.”

The son blanched, several people gasped, and a few others began insulting the first Archnoble.

“We can’t spare seventy percent,” Kalvia said with a voice that cut through the tumult. She glared at the second Archnoble too. “Or a third. That’s way too much.” She glanced at Zhalen beside her, who had donned the black and green robes of a Masked Avatar, the ceramic mask upon his breast instead of his face. “That’s way too much right?”

Zhalen whispered something in Kalvia’s ear. She nodded, then refocused on the rest of the gathering. “Yes, way too much.”

The argument had gone on a little too long in Rieren’s estimation. She had been tempted to step in and put a stop to it, even if she felt as though she had done this before and shouldn’t need to do so again.

But Rieren’s presence wasn’t needed actively. Kalvia managed to handle it in time, mollifying the disparate coalition she had constructed after the tournament’s aftermath.

All Rieren’s presence really served was as a reminder of just what kind of power anyone would face, should they choose to oppose the new Empress.

That had been just one of the meetings Rieren had attended. Now, as she arrived at their temporary camp not far from Vanharron with Silvas in tow, she wasn’t expecting it to be any different from the last few she had a been a part of.

“I was not expecting your company,” Rieren said.

Silvas didn’t react, for it wasn’t him that the message had been directed to. Instead, with a flutter of pages, Ceraline Selvier appeared next to Rieren.

“I could do without your company too, Vallorne,” Remis Sharan’s disembodied head said, hanging in the strange, paper-made construction under Ceraline’s arm.

“I was also not expecting Ceraline of all people to have picked up your head.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

Ceraline hummed.

Rieren stared at her. Silvas did so as well, and even Remis Sharan tried to twist her head around to look up at Ceraline.

She didn’t return their questioning looks for a while, purposefully stretching out the moment until someone was clear and upfront. Rieren sighed.

“Why did you pick up Sharan’s head, Ceraline?” Rieren asked.

“I thought it would be apt.” Ceraline’s voice sounded like a well that had been dry for two generations at least.

“Apt.”

“Yes.”

Rieren supposed it made sense. The four of them, the team who had been such a vital part in defeating the imperial court in the last timeline, were back together again.

It hadn’t been just them, of course. There had been more. Gorint Malloh leading the Shatterlands. The Forged Children who had been allied with Remis Sharan. And of course, they couldn’t forget the lynchpin of their whole operation—the Forborne Emperor himself.

“We’re missing a few people,” Silvas said. “But I do feel rather nostalgic with just the ones we’ve gathered so far.”

“The others are with us in spirit,” Ceraline said, with some reverence.

“Of course.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Remis Sharan said.

“Too bad,” Ceraline said.

Rieren had to admit that it did indeed feel rather… satisfying, in a strange way, that they were all together again. The only difference was that they had come together victoriously. Last time, they had come together out of necessity before their efforts against their enemies.

Well, apart from the other differences such as Sharan being a murderous snake and Ceraline being even more inscrutable and just plain weirder than before.

“Still no messages from Starloper?” Silvas asked.

Rieren shook her head. The last communique they had received had stated that the remainder of the Banishedborn were nowhere close to the capital. Since she had full faith in Starloper’s words, it was decided that Vanharron was ripe for the taking.

They had continued walking, heading for the camp in the distance. Rieren came to a stop now. Silvas had pulled her here to attend the meeting, but it turned out that her presence at the gathering was unnecessary. At least, that was what she assumed, going by the fact that Kalvia was walking straight towards them.

“Your Imperial Majesty.” Silvas bowed, swishing his arms in the western style. “Has the meeting ended already?”

Kalvia surveyed them all, glancing at the dangling head of Remis Sharan before settling on Rieren. “I don’t need you to be present all the time.” She looked away, briefly. “Though, it certainly makes things easier,” she added with a mutter.

Rieren slowly smiled. The old Emperor had been right. The Elderlands was in good hands now.

“Come on,” she said. “It appears a break would do you well.”

With the meeting over and with no other immediate responsibilities to attend to, Rieren led the little group away from the campgrounds towards the nearest hill. The highest point in the area from where their destination was visible in the far distance.

“There it is,” Silvas said, shading his eyes as he stared ahead. “Hard to believe we’ve almost made it.”

“There is no almost about it,” Kalvia said. “We have made it.”

Rieren stood there, staring at the distant walls and spires of the capital of the Elderlands. The smile she had found earlier still remained.

Kalvia was right. They had achieved victory. But for Rieren, the path wouldn’t end here. This was only one success, albeit an important one that would help set up the goals that were to follow.

Noises distracted her for a moment. Behind them, the camp was beginning to pack up. People were getting ready to move on. At the very rear of the camp, the few monsters who had remained with them to follow Rieren were getting to their feet. Vanharron awaited their arrival. All of their arrival.

“But you are right, Silvas,” Kalvia said. “It is indeed hard to believe…”

“No.” Rieren shook her head. “No, it is not.”

“No? Well, I suppose this is merely a small step for you.”

“No, it is not about that.”

Rieren closed her eyes for a moment, wondering how best she could explain. How best she could describe the feelings that roiled through her, made her feel alive. Grounded her in that moment.

“This is decades in the making,” she eventually said. “Year after year, through much suffering and bloodshed, through the contributions of not just us, but many others besides. Because the events at this moment, in this timeline, would not have been possible without the groundwork of the previous. Do you understand?”

They were all silent, but the resolute looks on their faces confirmed that yes, they did indeed understand.

“I am starting to believe a bit more,” Silvas said.

Rieren snorted. “So you say.”

“Yes, well, isn’t that a nice little conclusion,” Sharan said. “But I for one will—oomph.”

Whatever Remis Sharan might have said was cut off as Ceraline’s paper contraption expanded and closed off Sharan’s mouth. Rieren certainly didn’t disapprove.

“Some peace and quiet is necessary,” Ceraline said.

That it was.

The smile that had come onto Rieren’s face still needed no effort to remain there. As the camp behind them began moving, she strode forward, heading downslope. Heading towards Vanharron.

“Come on,” she called to her companions behind her. “Our destination yet awaits us.”

Together, they journeyed on.