Book 4: Chapter 56 (277): Monstrous Minds (Patreon)

Rieren wasn’t sure whether they were allowed to call it a victory, considering she knew full well that Essalina wasn’t dead. Not yet. That woman wasn’t one to fall so easily.

But the battle was over, for now. Rieren had the power to make that decision, at least. That she had even engaged in such a protracted fight set her anxieties off the deep end, but her current state smoothed away those pesky emotions in no time at all. In fact, at this point, Rieren could safely term most of her emotions as no more than impulses.

She wasn’t certain that was a good thing or not, but again, now wasn’t the time.

“We need to keep moving,” she said.

Rieren had climbed out of the trench that last explosion had caused and stood back upon the surface. She had needed the help of some of the monsters to do so.

Climbing with one hand was a tall order.

That final blast had destroyed her right hand entirely. Everything down from her wrist was simply gone, leaving only a fleshy stump with a bone sticking out and bleeding copious blood.

Black blood.

That had stuck with her more than the fact that her hand was gone, more than the pain trying to poke holes in her consciousness. Rieren had killed so many monsters in her two lifetimes that the sight of black liquid had branded itself in the back of her mind as a sign of death and destruction.

And now she was spilling the same filth from her own body. That, more than anything else, solidified that she had truly changed.

Just, hopefully not irrevocablyso.

As she had directed, the monsters had moved off with Rieren in tow. She had to go a little slow. Eternal Beyond had done an excellent job of taking care of most of her injuries, but that had meant Reaver Stance losing efficacy, which in turn meant her perk losing some of its power. Rieren still hadn’t fully healed her legs, which ended up making her walk with more care than normal.

Eventually, they reached a spot deeper into the battlefield, but not so far that they were mired in yet another battle. Just far enough away that they were no longer in any immediate danger from Essalina Arteroth.

“Where to now, Destroyer?” the Blightmane asked.

The other monsters were looking at her with whatever approximation of an expectant expression that their various monstrous faces could summon. Rieren looked through the bunch. Two Blightmanes of slightly different shades of off-white, a Shadeborn with a bulging stomach big enough to house a… a house, and there was even a Limbthief.

That last one surprised her a little. Rieren hadn’t seen one of those since the one she had killed on the day Lionshard Sect had fallen. Again.

Absurd. That she’d gone from recruiting a handful of cultivators to her side to… whatever was going on here.

“We must head towards one of the braziers.” A plan was starting to form in Rieren’s head. After all, the only reason she hadn’t killed the creatures around her was so she could make use of them and their apparent adoration of her. “But we must do so carefully. The one at the bottom of the hole isn’t the last cultivator of strength we might meet.”

“We can be discreet,” the Limbthief said. Rieren wasn’t so sure about that but she didn’t argue. “In fact, I suggest that we carry out a little scouting before we go ahead. Map out our exact route through the mess to avoid attracting the least attention.”

“Why are we running?” the Shadeborn asked. “We can kill them all, can’t we?”

The other Blightmane agreed with a nod of its spiky head. “That’s right. The Destroyer alone was able to handle that one.” He pointed a claw at the bottom of the dust-riddled pit. “Imagine how strong we’ll be if we all start fighting together.”

“Destroyer.” The first Blightmane turned to her, cutting off conversation with the finality in his tone. “What is your recommendation?”

Rieren really needed a moment to wonder if Abyssals were always this considerate and thoughtful, or if this was some strange phenomenon brought about by her presence. Every time she had fought these monsters before, they certainly hadn’t given any impression of any higher level of thought beyond annihilating anyone and anything in their path.

Although, Rieren had to admit that, at times, their overall manoeuvres did indicate direction and guidance from more intelligent sources.

Oh, right. She herself was an intelligent source now. “Monkey’s balls.”

“What was that, Destroyer?”

“Nothing.” Rieren raised her voice. “Our goal is to reach the bottom of the smoke signals still in the air, faint though they may be. We must reach our destination with our tokens. That is all that matters. Everything else can fall to the wayside.” She looked at each monster in turn. “Get that through your heads. Nothing matters other than submitting our tokens.”

“Of course, Destroyer,” the Shadeborn said. “But we cannot reach the target location with all those nasty humans blocking the path. The cultivators are not an easy bunch to push aside.”

“I believe that you are right.”

The Shadeborn blinked. “I am?”

Likewise, the Limbthief stared. “He is?”

“Yes,” Rieren said. “While finding out the lay of the land might be important, we must keep moving right now. The longer we wait in one spot, the greater chance we become targets of roving cultivator bands. But that doesn’t mean we can move any way we wish. We must head towards the smoke, shifting our path as is needed to avoid unnecessary conflict.”

“But not all conflict,” the Shadeborn said.

Rieren nodded. “Correct. Though not ideal, some further fights are likely to be unavoidable. These we must deal with as fast as possible. At each such encounter, you are to follow my directions. We will execute one single type of plan for every obstacle we encounter.

She didn’t need long to explain. It essentially boiled down to the monsters acting as a distraction, which Rieren would then use to swoop in to end any threat posed by any human competitors they met.

With her rather short planning done, they got moving. Rieren was certain Essalina was about to exit the pit any time now. She didn’t want to be around when that happened.

It was somewhat satisfying to plan things with the monsters. They were adaptable, their entire faith resting upon her seemingly expert guidance. Not once had they questioned the viability of her plan, nor had they voiced any other concern. No waste of precious time they couldn’t afford to lose.

Though, the monsters hadn’t provided any suggestions or amendments either. Rieren wasn’t certain that was a good thing.

Farther out, the battle only got more chaotic. Pockets of fighting had sprawled everywhere. Just as she had seen earlier, too many monstrous corpses littered the battlefield. The few cultivator bodies lying in lone positions were few and far between. The vast majority of the corpses belonged to the Abyssals.

Not a single Aetherian had died, as far as Rieren’s quick glance on the dead revealed. Curious. Aetherians tended to be stronger than their Abyssal counterparts, and there were far fewer of them competing in the Trials of Ascendance than Abyssals.

She still wasn’t sure that was enough to explain the sheer difference in the bodies. There might be something else going on.

A deeper plan that the back of Rieren’s head was slowly starting to realize.

“Keep an eye out to see if anyone is close,” Rieren said. Then she summoned Dawn Cloud, once more noting how the Domain Summons was tearing itself apart and regenerating at the same time, before jumping aboard and climbing high. “I will set the route we must take.”

It didn’t take long for Rieren to note where exactly the battle was worst. The problem was that those locations weren’t going to be fixed. This was sprawling chaos, after all. In an ever-shifting battlefield, they would need to remain vigilant and be adaptable at changing the direction they were heading. Even if it meant going away from the brazier temporarily.

Rieren landed moments later, dispelling the Dawn Cloud. “Come, follow.”

The monsters didn’t question her. Such an obedient lot.

“What about the tokens?” Rieren asked as they began their hurried journey through the battlefield. Considering how the battle was still ongoing with such ferocity despite the number of corpses, the human competitors must have failed to find many tokens upon the monsters they had killed so far. “Where are they? We cannot let them fall into the humans’ hands.”

She couldn’t outright ask for the monsters to hand them all to her, of course. For one, having all eggs in one basket was a strong path to failure. For another, she was certain it would erode the trust these monsters had placed upon her, no matter how rock-solid that faith appeared.

“We are ensuring that the warriors do not have them,” the first Blightmane said. “If any have a token, they surrender them to the ones staying away from battles before heading into combat.”

Rieren nodded. A smart plan, ensuring that even if they fell, they would not be granting their opponents any real benefit.

But with the number of monsters falling, it would only be a matter of time before the tokens started concentrating on a few specific monsters. And then the battle would begin to end.

Unless, the monsters enacted one final trick.

“Make them follow us,” the Shadeborn said. “Since we are ensuring a thrust straight to the next round, they should align their paths with ours. With the Destroyer on our side, there is no better place to stay safe.”

Rieren held back her curse. That wouldn’t be good. It might draw more attention to her route, which was the last thing she wanted. But she couldn’t simply say no either.

If there was one thing Rieren hadn’t foreseen, it was needing to play politics with Abyss-cursed monsterstoo.

“What about all of your tokens?” she asked her specific group. “Do each of you possess some? Our route relies on the fastest path to the brazier. Stopping to gather more followers is not a luxury we can spare.”

“But the followers will come on their own, Destroyer,” the first Blightmane said. “We will continue to make our way forward, no matter what.”

The Shadeborn kindly made sure not to leave her initial question unanswered. “Not all of us have tokens, but all of us here are in a team that does have a token in this group.”

What a convoluted answer. Rieren was distracted trying to figure out where to go next since one of the battles had shifted and a swathe of frozen ground covered up the route she had planned. Well, now was the time for that flexibility she’d known she would need.

“This way,” she said, shifting direction with no hesitation. A gap had opened up not far from their current spot, one they would need to take advantage of and rush through.

She understood why the monsters were still cagey about revealing the exact specifics of their tokens. Her line of questioning was no doubt raising their hackles, even if it could be argued that all she wanted was to ensure that enough monsters qualified for the next round. She would be a little suspicious in their shoes as well.

Their first real obstacle tore away all such thoughts. One of the battles ended with a sudden motion, where a woman with a rocky sword managed to crush a Life Stifler’s core. As the enormous monster’s smoky body and oversized skeleton both collapsed, likely under Astosind’s gravity effect from somewhere nearby, Ledorne spotted Rieren’s group.

“Ha,” she crowed, clearly not recognizing Rieren at all. “Monstrous reinforcements? Far too late. Now come, let me end you all as well. This little Life Stifler went down just like the smoke it’s made of.”

All the monsters with Rieren bristled as one. They weren’t one to back down from a challenge set down by a lowly human.

“Destroyer,” the first Blightmane said. “We will not let that insult—”

“Get to your heads, yes,” Rieren said, putting some force behind her words. “We have a plan to execute, remember? Both for an open route and for taking on any cultivators we might come across. This situation calls for the latter. Remember our truegoal.”

She pulled her sword into a battle-ready stance. A part of her momentarily felt a fleeting glee at facing Ledorne again. Monkey’s balls, considering how much of her stats the woman must have dumped into Body, she might still be stronger than Rieren. Physically speaking.

But Rieren’s capabilities had grown. If Ledorne had thought she could kill Rieren after their last meeting, she had another think coming.

Still, the feeling faded like all others. All Rieren could see was just another obstacle to her real goal of getting through this round. An obstacle she knew very well how to overcome.

Ledorne attacked. It was time to fight.