Chapter 317 (Patreon)

Chapter 317

Matt was elbow-deep inside a Republic soldier when he felt the space near the inhabited planet ripple. His hairs rose up on the back of his neck as a giant ship appeared, a ship he had just seen three days ago. A swarm of smaller ships took off from its surface, racing towards the battlefield at top speed.

Growling, he wrenched his arm free from the chest of the soldier and waited for a moment as Darrow sent the soldiers an offer of surrender. It would allow them to sit out this upcoming fight, but the general in command of the army must have thought they could hold out until the elites arrived. That was a futile hope. Matt wasn’t kind enough to play with them, given that there was a larger threat approaching. He didn’t even bother with his mana cannon, just a sweep of his hand and an overpowered [Mana Beam] swept aside the stragglers. One of them survived, but he yanked a nearby corpse to his hand with [Gravity Manipulation], hypercharged it with [Tribulation Strike], and threw it at the survivor. The modified [Lightning Torrent] lashed out and finished his portion of the fight.

Around him, the rest of Team Zero likewise stopped pacing themselves and tore into their own assigned troops with renewed vigor. Mana levels dipped precipitously and willpower reserves tapped into to get the fight over now. Matt flared his Concept across the entire group, and Allie blinked Morgan and Sebastian in arm’s reach for him to more directly refill their mana pools. 

It was a bit of a costly move, but the last thing they needed was more chaos as the dropship began to disgorge its inhabitants. Matt fired off a quick [Breach], more out of principle than anything, and was unsurprised when the ship twisted and avoided the attack given the range and small maneuver needed to do so. Joy picked up pursuit of the Sect-style ship, chasing it off with a few muttered curses leaking through their group comms.

Joy had very strong feelings about how spaceships ‘should’ look, and Matt knew very well her distaste for the Sect ‘wooden sailboat’ design. Unfortunately, her dogfight was interrupted by more Corporations-style ships, but Drifter effortlessly dodged their return fire and began engaging with them more directly. 

His teammate would be fine. Matt turned to analyze the actual members of the Harmony Accords. They too were in remarkably good shape, and while Matt couldn’t tell at a glance, neither Bulwark nor Darrow saw any signs of lingering damage or even healing cooldown. That wasn’t a good sign, though it was even less of a good sign that they’d managed to get here so quickly. At least it seemed that they’d only just gotten here instead of lying in wait, but still.

Drifter was the first to articulate it through the mind-link. “They have to have Talented pilots flying that tub, or there is no way they could have gotten here that quickly. And how the fuck did they even know we were going to be here?”

Darrow interjected almost immediately. “Some seeker Talent no doubt but they shouldn’t have been able to get a read on us. And I don’t like that. We’ll pull back to Camp Lightfoot where we can reconvene.”

Matt didn’t even blink at the order.

Shadow on the other hand said what they were all thinking. “No, I don't think we will. Not yet, at least.”

Darrow must have sensed the mood, but he made a crucial mistake. Talking reason. “Drifter is correct in that they shouldn’t have been able to arrive so quickly. We only arrived here five hours ago and it's a week's travel from our last flight’s system. This could very well be a trap set by them via a seeker or future sight of some sort.”

Everything he said made perfect sense, but Matt didn’t care. And seemingly none of the other Ascenders cared either, as not a single one of them shifted from their places in space. They were Ascenders. They did not run just because the enemy showed up where they shouldn't.

Matt was determined to make sure that round two didn’t end up the same way as round one and he liked their odds when they weren’t caught flat footed. 

Darrow, to his credit, the moment he saw that the Ascenders were refusing to follow orders, immediately changed tactics and started planning for a battle. “Prepare for swaps. Don’t let them entangle you with the counters we talked about. Prepare for spatial locks. Prepare for long-range bombardments. Prepar—”

Matt tuned him out as the first spells started flying.

Casting the largest [Bulwark] he could, he activated his Tier 25 Talent, strengthened it with [Reinforce Mana], and then dropped his connection to the spell, using just a touch of [Telekinesis] to hold the fifty foot tall and two hundred foot wide block of mana crystal in place as cracks webbed across it, then webbed together under the volley of spells. Of course, shieldbreaker skills quickly followed and the defense started to collapse, but that wasn’t the point.

Just before the entire construction was about to collapse, Matt broke the remnants into fragments and threw them. Not at the elites, but at the mercenary corps who had managed to approach the battlefield before Drifter had chased off their transports. The hail of mana stones didn’t hurt them, but it did make them wary and blocked a few spells that they got in the way of. It was a minor hindrance, but a hindrance nonetheless.

Light kicked their side off with an [Arc Lightning], whitish-green bolts traversing the distance instantaneously, then becoming an eerie red as he twisted the travel mana into armageddon mana the instant before it struck home. The explosion tossed away one of the Federation soldiers furthest from the center, and knocked Colton’s hat off his head while leaving a few blistering wounds on his face, but failed to leave any serious damage on anyone closer to the center, where Gan Le was. The man in question was, of course, completely unfazed.

That confirms Gan Le’s defensiveness wasn’t a fluke. Even if we can break through that, it’s not worth the effort. We just need to get them spread apart and test the limits of his shared defenses. 

Matt nodded at Darrow’s observation. They were learning and that would enable them to pick through all of their enemies' tricks.

Lorlael countered Light’s follow-up, dispersing a bolt of prismatic flames with a purple mist.

They had drifted close enough to engage in melee by that point, but while Gan Le beelined straight for Matt, he was waylaid by the combination of Stick and Torment, who had Sorrow and Lost Love as his primary summons at the moment. Ensnaring strips of cloth entangled the tank, while the summons darted forward with apt ferocity.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones with a team, and the Federation rune soldiers swooped in, clearly intent on freeing their teammate.

***

Gan Le cursed internally as the Federation rune soldiers rushed over to free him from Stick’s cloth clutches. In an ideal world they would leave him to slowly work his way out of his entombment but no, they had to follow orders and come get him out post-haste.

Really, he was asking for too much and he knew it.

At least when he was being wrapped up he wasn’t protecting a dozen other people from Master-level lightning storms. They’d already blasted through his outermost defenses, including his amulets of protection.

He really needed to get some proper armor made, the kind that covered your entire body in metal. Sure, it may be inferior to a proper defensive Technique, but there was no reason he couldn’t use both. He could ask the Republic smiths when they returned to the ship, he decided. They knew the proper way to balance protection with form, but he was not coming back into battle unless he could have something that could keep the attacks he was taking away from [The Unseen Guardian Which Halts All Assault] for at least a few blows.

As the rune squad started hacking at the binding he struggled. He was trying to keep himself entangled but he had to make it look like he was doing the opposite. 

With barely three days to recover since their last fight, his spirit felt sore from spreading himself so thin. He’d never had his own defenses so seriously tested, and his Technique had yet to properly adapt to all the new forms of assault he’d subjected it to. Even his Revelation-empowered refinement could only do so much so quickly, and he never wanted to get more than halfway past his personal protections ever again. It had even pushed through to the topmost layer of his skin. That was way too close.

If he could just sit this fight out… and maybe the next one, and if he was really lucky, the one after that, then he’d be able to be properly defended from that monster Titan’s ludicrously powerful attacks, and could focus on refining his defenses against Light’s own techniques. That would be preferable. What was less preferable was how his spirit got punched while his Talent intercepted an attack before it could blow a hole in the head of the rune squad. It was one of… Bolt’s bolts.

Such an inelegant and overly-generic name, it made thoughts and conversations so redundant.

Still, he did his job, even as he winced at the pain that radiated through his spirit as his Talent struggled to project itself outward and cover Clarisse. 

A dagger came from nowhere, aimed directly at his eye. It managed to break through his primary defenses, and he fell the draw on his Second Revelation as it tried to remove him as a threat despite being bound in place. When that failed, it reinforced his defenses, stopping the dagger a hair’s-breadth before it could come into full contact with him. He tried to blink, but found his right eyelid stopped on the razor-edge of Ascender Shadow’s blade.

She withdrew, and Gan Le desperately focused his spirit at preventing that from happening again. The knife, and the inconsiderate woman using it, were gone the next moment. 

Then the rune soldiers, barbarians that they were, decided their best option was to burn Stick’s cloth while he was wrapped in it. The fact that it ended up working only encouraged Charlie and Cynthia to keep at it, and Gan Le held very still to keep their burning light and raging lightning from hitting him as well as the enchanted cloth. 

He had been hoping they didn’t think of that and just kept trying to cut him free. Shame that, considering how much work he went through to make sure that the spatial ring the Harmory Accords people had given him was right in the blast zone of Ascender Light's first attack. That had been so full of escape methods. He didn’t want to be captured, the Sects were far more comfortable than anywhere else, but maybe he could persuade them that he genuinely was out of his depth, and get transferred to somewhere else? 

Maybe the Guild front? He’d heard there had been some upstart new cultivator there who fought with pillows and blankets, that sounded quite lovely to him. There was probably some horrible trick to it, but it was still better than here.

It had seemed like a really workable plan, too. Until the idiots freed him.

The moment he was free, he burst forward and resumed his job because he still needed his retirement fund if he wanted to find some higher Tier woman to mooch off of later in life.

Conan and Clarisse were busy dealing with a pair of nightmarish things, one a crying snake whose tears made its watery body keep getting bigger, and the other some horrid two-faced beautiful girl and shadow monster, but Gan Le was more than happy to leave them behind as Lorlael triggered some spell combination on him and teleported him…

Not directly in front of Titan, like was nominally the plan. Instead, he appeared in front of Shadow, who now tried to stab him in both eyes. He tried to block, but found that Shadow barely seemed hindered by that. Her arms phased through his techniques, bent around his arms at impossible angles, and struck like a mountain. 

His head snapped back and he went tumbling through the battlefield. Gan Le managed to direct his headlong flight such that he nearly bowled into Queen as she tried to take Chase’s head off. She barely even looked his way, just summoned a second sword and, without even grabbing the blade, swung it and sent him flying once again. 

He at least was close enough to Chase that blocking Queen’s stab of the Federation soldier didn’t hurt too much, and the man in question disengaged to grab Gan Le, right him, and in a blur of color, ran Gan Le up to where… Ascender Titan was fighting.

He still wasn’t sure the others appreciated just how hard the Ascender hit. He had talked about it in their debriefing but all they saw was that none of the attacks did any damage to him but they failed to realize while a dagger to the eye might kill you just as surely as a [Pillar Of Pure Annihilation And Destruction], the latter did more damage to get the same effect.

The first was a targeted blow that bypassed defenses in a small area. The second was an overwhelming amount of damage applied in an unfocused wave and to get the same effect it needed to destroy a lot more flesh and therefore did more damage. Gan Le could take a few dozen blows from the other Ascenders, even Light, for the others on the Harmony Accords but blocking Titan’s attacks was like trying to stop a train with his face. 

And all of Titan’s attacks were like that.

Then they had the audacity to act like he was the crazy one for not wanting to throw himself in front of such a monster. Especially with an already stressed spirit like he was currently working with.

Right now, the man was a genuine titan, twice as tall as he normally was, a pillar of terrifying black metal. His sword blazed with so much lightning it nearly hurt to look at it, his arms kept bending in ways that shouldn’t have been possible with that much armor on, and he was seemingly effortlessly fending off a massive nightmare of metal and crystal that was probably Maven.

“Get moving and interfere with Titan, now!” Synoid snapped through their mental link, “Shadow’s running rampant and we can’t check her without you covering Titan!”

Gan Le hid the part of him that wanted to weep and dove into the fray with a roar.  

***

Liz drifted through space. Or at least, the mind residing within a few scattered drops of blood did as they tried to think quiet thoughts. Her skills should help hide her from any sensory specialists the Corporations had, but she’d never really tested it against all their unique detection methods.

When Colton had riddled one of her clones with bullets, she used that opportunity to have a spare consciousness hitch a ride on the projectiles. The angle and distance was right enough… and there were a lot of Corporation mercenaries, just waiting for her to sacrifice them and use their blood as fuel to power her own army. 

She just needed to get over to them without them figuring it out. As she had learned the hard way in her fight with Eliana, the combined Great Powers were ready for her blood tricks so she couldn’t just send a clone over and expect it to be fine.

Despite her personal perspective of the trip being that of a leisurely float through the inky abyss, she was moving quite quickly, and so she only had a moment to act as she neared the weapons platforms. Fortunately, most eyes were on either the main battle or Drifter, as she chased down several fleeing artillery groups. Nobody noticed a few errant drops of blood speeding by. 

Nor did they notice that drop of blood expanding into a tiny scarlet miasma invisible to nearly all senses. Nobody saw as that miasma drifted towards one of the cultivators manning the mana cannon, nor as it slipped through solid steel armor and infected the man. He didn’t notice as his blood was rapidly assimilated and converted.

They did notice when she tripped some defensive system, and a protective shield sprang up around the platform. It wasn’t intended to defend, but to trap, and Liz mentally shrugged and cast aside her attempts at stealth. She shredded the man’s body, tried for a moment to usurp his power armor- it was, alas, keyed to his spirit- then burst out in a cloud of blood. She set upon another mercenary in phoenix form, only to have reality shudder around her, and a sudden detonation killed her.

Liz parried Long Zhiyuan’s attack with her spear and glared at nothing in particular. That was the third body she’d lost to the mana cannon’s self-destruct features. Well, she’d get one eventually, and she was technically succeeding at eliminating their artillery support. 

There was, after all, plenty of her to go around.

***

Matt wanted to use those precious few moments to enter the backline and cut down Lorlael, or even better enter the Corporation mercenaries’ lines and find the sniper, but he was immediately blocked by Maven.

He had expected that. He also was ready for her incredible physical strength, thanks to the warnings from Shadow. Matt slashed down at her but she slipped to the side and brought a pair of massive claws down on his side, phasing them slightly out of reality in an attempt to bypass his armor. This time, he was ready, and he caught the attack with his off-hand. He flexed his body, puffed out his chest, and temporarily doubled in size. His armor followed along for the ride, its enchantments ensuring that his rubberfruit affected the steel construct just as surely, then met Maven’s follow-up strike with a backhand of his own.

Despite the fact her claw only skittered alongside the outermost layer of his armor, it still carried some form of curse-poison that dove eagerly into his body, the simple contact enough for its spread. 

Already it began corroding his flesh but while [Regeneration] struggled to heal it at the low level he normally kept it at, ramping up the spell’s intake quickly overpowered and eliminated the effect. He wouldn’t be able to reduce the amount of mana he spent on the spell until after the fight ended, but even at this increased rate it didn’t take up that much of his mana generation. 

He wasn’t surprised they were ready with counters to [Regeneration], it wasn’t like it would be hard to figure out he was using it after all, but most counters relied on being able to wear down the effect over time or outright overwhelming it. Neither of those mattered to him.

Maven reared up and slashed with a pair of wicked-looking natural scythes, leaving energy crescents in the air behind them, then sent those attacks flying at Matt. He tried to cut through the first one with [Dispelling Edge] but instead was forced to parry it off to the side. The second one, he contorted his body out of the way to avoid it, trying to hit someone behind him.  

There.

Except he was wrong.

Ari Kai had targeted Aster instead of him.

She spun even as the blade was driven into her back, then her body shattered into ice, rapidly turning black. The destruction of her decoy came with an eruption of an iridescent aurora, limning the decaying ice, but also some unimportant person on the battlefield. Who had just attacked Aster, and Matt unleashed a [Barrage] of [Gravitic Bolt]s before Ari Kai could slink away again. Dozens of the projectiles lashed out even as Maven used that opportunity to tear at Matt’s back. His armor held, as did his body, but the attacks carried some kind of spiritual wounding effect that felt like they were carving furrows down the back of his head. It seemed really important, why wasn’t he doing something about that?

Who was he attacking?

Matt queried his [AI] but when even it was confused as to his last actions he started to turn but halted as something twisted and collapsed in an anti-spray of blood. Ari Kai. One of his [Gravitivic Bolt]’s had hit an arm and obliterated it along with a large chunk of his chest.

The [Mana Beam] Matt aimed at his head should have ended the man right then and there. If that didn’t work the [Icicle] Aster shot at him should have skewered him as well. But both attacks created little more than small scratches thanks to Gan Le, who was careening towards the Republic fighter.

Matt dropped his spell as Maven began to properly carve into his armor. Spinning, Matt let loose another [Tribulation Strike] and [Mana Slash] from his sword as it turned white and unleashed its own stored energy. The effects mixed and multiplied with each other, blowing the rabbit woman back.

Her burnt and charred metal-crystal body froze over a moment later as Aster cast a dozen area of effect spells in rapid succession slowing everyone from the Harmony Accords. Lorlael was immediately trying to dispel the effect, but Shadow interrupted her attacks by driving a dagger into her chest from behind.

Gan Le was too far away for his Talent to do any appreciable damage negation but that only emboldened the rest of Team Zero as for the second time they had drawn blood. Once might be luck but two was a pattern and they tasted vengeance. If Shadow had a few more moments she could have possibly finished the mage off but a bullet silently passed through the space her head would have been if she wanted to continue the attack. 

The sniper. So they were still around.

Despite interrupting the mage it would only take a few moments for the others to break free from the debuffing spells and Matt wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity to dish out some more damage.

He parried a slower-than-normal spell from Maven and then slashed at her neck. In a burst of green energy the debuffs sloughed off Maven allowing her to dodge his ink black blade. She carried through with a potent attack that Matt redirected much of his movable defenses to block, but despite there being no visible tells as to what he was doing, Long Zhiyuan moved with practiced ease to exploit it. He dodged a small [Mana Beam], sweeping behind Matt, and striking on the exact gouge Maven had left with her earlier attack. He broke through, cutting a furrow into Matt’s back and severing his spine.

Matt finished blasting Maven’s attack away and spun to meet Long Zhiyuan’s followup. [Regeneration] was already knitting his spine together, but his power armor made the damage essentially irrelevant regardless. Matt quickly aspected his armor to be force-based, stalled the Sect man’s hand with a blast of [Telekinesis], then swatted it away with his sword. 

A moment of thought, and a query of strategy with Darrow confirmed it wasn’t worth it for Matt to call upon his Intent to massively concentrate his mana. If the attack hit, it would probably kill Long Zhiyuan, but the risk of Matt bottoming out on willpower was too high for the predicted kill chance. 

Instead, he mercilessly split off a [Sword Twin], cleaving into Long Zhiyuan’s shoulder and sending a chunk of blood and bone away. Maven struck, twisting into something that looked like a giant pile of vines, and grabbed Matt’s sword arm. In response, he split off the rest of his [Sword Twin] copies and tried to cut into Maven’s binding ties. Frustratingly, they made no contact, instead just passing through her extremely tight bindings like they were an illusion. 

She kept coiling up his arm though, cutting off multiple paths of escape as space hardened around him. He channeled his Concept repulsion as powerfully as he could, but while it slowed her tendrils' advance, she kept pushing against the force and climbed past his elbow.

Long Zhiyuan slammed his good arm into Matt’s chest, not quite denting it, but with enough time…

Matt made a snap decision and cut off his own arm.

Maven had just about reached his shoulder when Matt brought a [Sword Twin] down on his armor. He’d withdrawn most of its reinforcements and disengaged its connections to keep from damaging it too much, but there were still a few bindings he had to cleave through to get it to work. 

Maven’s vines snapped back at high speed towards the rest of her mass, and Matt got to enjoy a moment of shock rippling through Long Zhiyuan’s spirit before Matt shot forward. Though his arm was only superficially regrown, and not enough to handle the full force of the spell anyway, Matt blew his own fist up with his [Tribulation Strike], made into a spiky gauntlet with his thrice-upgraded [Reinforce Mana].

Long Zhiyuan opened a hole in his chest with some skill in a way that reduced the impact to mere knockback, but he still spasmed as some aftershocks wracked his body. 

Maven pounced on Matt once again, now with Gan Le for support, pushing him to retreat while he regrew his hand again, and filled out the rest of his appendage with [Regeneration]. After tanking a point-blank [Mana Beam], Maven’s grip loosened on Matt’s severed arm for him to recall its armor to his still-healing limb. 

Now wholly armored once more, Matt kept on the retreat, extremely careful to avoid Gan Le’s glowing hands. He wasn’t about to actually get locked down again. 

Maven tried to disengage and redirect to Torment as he swooped somewhat nearby, but Matt slowed her down with [Hail], then dragged her back with a [Cosmic Pressure]-empowered flicker of his Intent. Even controlling gravity with his attraction was a bit more draining than he’d wanted, so he cut it off, but it was enough to accomplish what he wanted, as Maven once again turned back to keep attacking.

Matt played defensively, accruing some damage under the Sect warriors’ relentless and reckless assault, but nothing terribly concerning. That he couldn’t dissuade their attacks with his own abilities was annoying, but he could at least appreciate watching Gan Le’s gray skin grow darker and darker from exertion as he protected his countrymen. It was a slow process, but still fun. 

And besides, he wasn’t alone. 

Shadow came in with a vengeance, blades flashing, tearing up Maven’s back. 

Maven turned and lashed out while tentacles grew out of her back. Those fleshy appendages tried to entangle Matt’s blade but he didn’t care and simply hacked down, trying to push Gan Le to his limits, and right past them.

Long Zhiyuan didn’t sit idle and landed several attacks on Matt, but he blocked most of them with a combination of [Bulwark] and his armor’s inbuilt shields. The rest splashed against his armor, harmlessly. Only one attack landed, some kind of twisting black ball of thorns that weaseled into a crack in his armor while Matt parried an opportunistic shot from Colton, on the far side of the battlefield. 

It set into his flesh like a chainsaw, rending his leg into clumps of meat, but it wasn’t lethal quite yet so Matt ignored it while he took aim at Maven tangling with Shadow.

Gan Le used that moment where he was occupied to land a blow on Matt’s head, and even though he was ready for it this time, Matt felt the tether snap into place. 

“FUCKKKKKK!”, Matt lashed out but Maven and Long Zhiyuan were already moving away, relying on the pale and panting Gan Le to keep him occupied.

Unlike last time where Matt tried to just blast Gan Le away through pure physical strength, he instead moved into grappling the Sect fighter.

Once they were close, so close that Matt could feel the spell buzzing inside the other man, Matt started unleashing skills with abandon. Not at Gan Le but at everyone else around them.

A number of them were so weak as to be useless with the counter measures Gan Le was projecting but he didn’t care; that wasn’t the point of his attacks. No, he wanted to force Gan Le to use his Talent at range, always a fairly reliable counter for damage-stealers.

He was effective enough that Long Zhiyuan was already turning around, but after a brief pause, he hesitated, before flying away even faster, just before the world went blue with mana.

Matt’s armor dented, gaps opening between its plate, and then the shrapnel hit. Hundreds upon hundreds of shards of metal raced into the crevasses opened in Matt’s armor before they closed themselves up. Across from him, Gan Le was also bleeding in a few places, but all Matt could really focus on was that whoever had made that bomb needed to patch up their work. The detonation had definitely involved more mana than most of Matt’s attacks, but it was clearly approached from the angle of ship artillery. 

Battlefield-scale munitions needed a very different approach to properly maximize their power. 

Still, he couldn’t argue too much with the results given the thousands of enchanted metal slivers it had left in his body. Damage over time, healing, mana disruption, enchantment nullification, the whole set. Each one was simple in its design and execution, but there were just so many, with so many different techniques, that Matt’s comparative blunt-force methods wouldn’t do much of anything.

Hearing a message from Darrow, Matt pushed [Regeneration] as hard as he could. In a few places, the spell ran afoul of mana-disruption and only caused worse injuries, but it kept him alive… at the expense of empowering some of the needles stuck in his flesh. In a few minutes, if he didn’t get any additional attention, they’d detonate and rip his body to shreds. Or the rest of the way, at least. [Regeneration] kept his body running but it wasn’t putting him back together anymore.

He’d deal with it later. His muscles weren’t working quite right, and his armor kept malfunctioning, but he grabbed his own body with [Telekinesis], pushed himself with [Air Slide] past Gan Le and swung his sword, fully recombined with all of its [Sword Twin]s and blazing with [Tribulation Strike]. Long Zhiyuan loomed large in his vision, and Matt attacked. Not at the man’s core, but his still-injured shoulder. He was more vulnerable there… and it was easier to dodge.

Long Zhiyuan obliged, and the blade struck Matt’s true target..

An entirely unassuming man startled and began to fade from tangibility, but a storm of lightning wrenched through his body and tore the semi-corporeal man to pieces. Space rippled and fragmented, momentarily breaking through the spatial locks in the area, and Ari Kai vanished. No essence pulse which was a shame, but he was definitely out of commission.

Long Zhiyuan struck, but Matt teleported behind his attack and struck out with a [Wind Cutter] [Barrage]. The former young master spun and dodged them, striking Matt several times with his own attacks. Many of the attacks even made it through the still-damaged armor, but they hardly did anything to Matt’s still-ruined body.

Then Matt grabbed the man with his left hand- the only part of his body other than his head still fully functional- and crushed his arm. Bones snapped, Long Zhiyuan cried out, and Matt finished cutting off the man’s arm with a [Telekinesis]-wielded sword stroke.

The tide of battle wasn’t just shifting, it had turned. 

They’d all been bloodied at some point or another, but Bulwark had kept their more fragile members upright. Stick had stopped screaming at some point, but her ferocity had yet to fall away. There was also a Liz flitting between them to provide patch healing where it was needed, but as a massive explosion sent a half-dozen federation soldiers away from Light, Matt felt the battle settle. 

The Harmony Accords must have felt the same shift because just as Gan Le looked like he was going to vomit they all vanished in bursts of spatial mana just like Ari Kai had earlier. Shadow reached out like she was trying to snatch them out of space but her cursing told him whatever she had tried to do hadn’t worked.

A moment later, the ships vanished back into Chaotic Space. 

Matt glared at where the oversized flagship had been. They were victorious but it wasn’t the overwhelming victory he had been hoping for. Still he couldn't linger on that thought, there was still a system to finish saving, and all of them were more injured than they should have been after a more normal fight. None of the Harmony Accords had been killed, with the possible exception of… Ari Kai, but he wasn’t going to count them as dead until he felt the burst of essence. 

Eric had yet to be avenged. 

There was more war to be fought.

It wasn’t over yet.

A pair of Liz flashed over to him, one of them resting her hands on his temples and casting, while the other became blood and dove into his body. With her aid, the metal shards came loose and [Regeneration] finally started doing its job. Even as his flesh knitted together, his spirit started complaining about soreness, and he’d probably have to be a bit careful about high-Tier skill overuse for a bit… but he was fine and could even go for round two. Though he might be the only one.

Flying over to where Dena floated in space listlessly he pulled her into Drifter's ship where Darrow had already gathered with most of the others.

Dena’s words brought him back to the present like a punch from Maven though. “I was trying so hard to join him, but I didn’t even manage it. I kind of hate myself for that.”

Matt rubbed her armored back ignoring the gashed in the metal which threatened to tear his flesh even more.

He wanted to say things would be ok but that was an outright lie. Instead he went with, “Eric wouldn’t want that, but you know that already. No one here wants that.”

“I do.”

Matt didn’t have an answer for that and let the silence linger.