The last time Dia used Domain of Swords, the skill had generated thousands and thousands of swords, which fell with a tri-folder’s might. This time, however, the change was far more extreme. The moment she used the skill, Dia could faintly feel that she had obtained control over her surroundings itself. Furthermore, the thirty-three thousand swords that had manifested in the sky in her skill’s previous iteration now only appeared if she wanted them too.
In other words, in this five hundred metre sphere around her, she could will a sword into existence from anywhere.
Swords appeared all around the shadowy being protecting the young man, surging forward with a might that had surpassed a tri-folder’s strength. The thickness and quality of mana was far above that, and Dia watched on blankly as sixty-odd swords clashed against shadow.
The swords rippled out of existence, only to be replaced by a fresh new set of swords that charged forward once more. Before long, the shadowy power that Absolute Terror’s guardian had been employing vanished, replaced by a pure blue light.
It would seem that the Dark’s stronger combatants had access to more than one form of energy.
At the same time, the duo continued to use all sorts of means to escape, but no matter how many skillsticks and skillstrips had been tossed out, the duo was unable to leave, and Dia glanced at the heavens once. As a thousand-odd swords stabbed at the two of them without abandon, Dia couldn’t help but think that this entire scenario had truly been planned in one way or another.
The Moons had already locked the area down, and Dia could faintly tell that her main opponent had been drastically weakened. In other words, if her target really escaped…
A terrible scream followed as the next wave of swords stabbed into the shadow directly. “Go! I’ll buy you some time!”
Blue light poured out of the shadow, whisking the young Bearer of Destiny into the distance. A moment later, deeply intertwined circuits lit up on the shadow, and Dia intuitively manifested all her remaining swords — more than twenty-six thousand of them — and used it to build a wall between her and the self-detonating shadow.
The world shook a moment later, and a burning spike of pain rammed through Dia’s skull. Nausea overtook her a moment later, and a faint dampness ran down her lip as a horrifying stream of energy tore into the skies. Metal dust followed it upwards, whirling into the air and then vanishing into blue motes of light.
Her skill had been deactivated prematurely.
Intuitively, Dia understood that the shadow had redirected the force of its self-detonation into the sky. If the released force from the self-detonation had slammed into the wall of swords she had erected directly, the resulting impact may have very well killed the fleeing Bearer of Destiny and flattened the forest too.
Even though most of the force had been redirected upwards, just scratch damage from the self-detonation of a high-rank mana-user had been enough to obliterate every single sword she had thrown up to defend herself earlier.
The blood and the pain were the result of her forcibly deactivated skill, which had been broken with force.
Wiping her face slowly, Dia willed her legs to move forward. The Bearer of Destiny hadn’t gotten far, and the Moons had prepared the terrain in advance. Before long, she regained her mobility, and then chased after the Bearer of Destiny, who she caught up with just a minute of chasing.
Her eyes flickered as she looked at the young man, who looked very unprepared for an action of this scale. If she didn’t get it wrong, this Bearer of Destiny had been overly reliant on his hidden guardian to protect him and to make travelling easier in general.
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Now that his hidden guardian had been killed, Dia couldn’t help but see this young man as a fish out of water.
“Sorry,” Dia muttered.
Her sword drew a silvery arc through the air. The young man tried to resist with a small knife, but the strength and speed behind her swing simply shattered the blade and took his right forearm.
The young man let out a terrible scream, but before he could even do anything else, Dia whirled around once, and a head flew up into the sky.
Lightning tore through the skies, and time seemed to stop for the briefest of moments. Colour seemed to drain from the world as intense gazes from the heavens fell upon her, and a tri-coloured screen appeared in front of her.
Thunderclaps tore through the world once more, and colour returned to Dia’s vision. Moments later, the sky turned into a silvery radiance, and the clouds that had shrouded the heavens simply vanished. The Moons and the Dark had completely vanished from Dia’s perception, and with a quiet plop, a decapitated head fell next to her.
Dia glanced at the head once, took in the anguished, frightened expression on it, and then bent down to pick it up. Before she could touch the head, however, multiple screens appeared in her vision once more, each of them the familiar, translucent blue.
[Mission available: Peace unto Eternity]
[Alignment locked in. The passive skill, Salvation Star, has been awarded.]
[You have been awarded the passive skill: Understanding!]
Dia shook her head once more, and then glanced at the new mission. The Mission bit had unlocked for her the moment she and the others joined up with the Moons — like everyone, she had received the mission called Moonlit Victory. That mission had sat all by itself for some time, but now…
Thoughts flickered through her mind, and she opened up the new mission that had appeared.
[Mission: Peace unto Eternity
Mission Introduction: The great age of change has come. By the covenant of the five grand skies, the three major powers are destined to fight each other to prove their doctrine right. However, in the ranks of the Absolute lies a usurper, whose goal is to herald infinite change. Chaos will reign for eons hence if the Omen succeeds, hurling all life into uncharted territory.
Mission Requirements: Neutralise the Omen.
Mission Rewards: Enhances your authority level, unlocks
Additional Remarks: This mission is only open to you, the Prime Salvation Star. If the Omen neutralises all other Bearers of Destiny, this mission will fail. Failing this mission will result in immeasurable outcomes for the entire world.]
Dia looked at the mission once, and then felt something in her head clear up. Immediately afterwards, she glanced at the second mission in her list, and then shivered once. In the additional remarks section of Moonlit Victory, which broke down the contributions by kills, there was actually one part she…hadn’t given much thought to.
There, at the end. Anything who killed ‘the adversary’ would gain 22% of the overall contribution. Dia wasn’t sure why she and the others — and just about everyone involved, actually — hadn’t talked about ‘the adversary’, but now that she had this weird skill, the connection had drawn itself.
The being mentioned in that new mission, the Omen, was almost certainly the adversary.
Or at least, that was what her intuition was telling her.
She looked at the mission once more, and then frowned. She had gained this mission and alignment the moment she slew the Sixth Bearer of Destiny, and…
Her back throbbed once, and with a jolt, Dia realised that she had stayed in this hunched position, one that was poised to pick up a head, for more than five minutes now. Bones creaked as she picked up the head and walked over to the body, before putting them together.
“…What else am I supposed to do here?” Dia muttered. “Dig a grave?”
She looked at the corpse, and then at the approaching Moonlit soldiers, before letting out a long sigh. Physically, she was fine, and she still had quite a lot of mana, but the mental stress that had come with confronting Absolute Terror, as well as fighting the Sixth and his protector, had taken a heavy toll on her.
Fortunately, there was now someone else to clean up what she’d left behind. That young man, who had been so overconfident with his power, had died, and the Moons were bound to be pleased at how she had managed to redress the balance.
All was, for the time being, well.
Letting out a small groan, she staggered slightly, and then made her way into the camp. The others were probably waking up soon, and for some reason, the ground seemed very close to her face right now—
The last thing she saw before her consciousness winked out was a particularly small patch of grey soil.