Book 5: Chapter 10 (293): Desperate Attempt (Patreon)

Zhalen no doubt sought to catch Rieren with his speedy manoeuvre. Even after receiving ample evidence that he wasn’t fast enough to outpace Rieren’s reactions, he was still trying to beat her at a physical game. Even after having received information about Rieren’s prowess—physical and spiritual—with her high stats, he was still bent on proving he was stronger, blow for blow.

What a fool.

That dive of his should have been easy to dodge. All Rieren had to do was use Fray Passage to evade. But a split half-second before using her skill, Rieren checked the ground around her. The tremors she had felt a second ago…

Of course. Zhalen wouldn’t have committed to such an attack without setting up measures to make sure it would land. He had caused several of his vines to rise right out of the earth in facsimile of how Rieren sent her own Domain rocketing towards the sky. While distracting her with his earlier attacks, Zhalen had created a living fence to hem Rieren in.

But he didn’t know that the ground wasn’t her only means of traversal.

Rieren dug her feet into the field a blink before impact was imminent, then jumped at Zhalen.

The motion clearly took him by surprise. He was barely able to adjust the angle of his spiny, viny lance in time to account for Rieren’s surprising change in trajectory.

It still didn’t hit her, of course. As they clashed, Rieren used Earthfall Blade to deflect aside his blow. She would have countered with a hit of her own, but he shot past her too quickly for her to do so.

Zhalen crashed to the ground with a spray of dust and broken earth. He was no doubt whirling around to take advantage of her current condition. Having thrown herself into the air, she was supposed to be defenceless, at least when it came to matters of evasion. She didn’t have wings after all.

But even as he threw out a storm of spiky vines at her, Rieren used yet another little ability he probably didn’t know the full extent of.

She called upon her secondary class. Enchant turned her Receptor Blade into the Floating Blade, changing her sword to an entirely different one. It turned longer and narrower, edged on one side only and becoming the consistency of glass. Floating Blade didn’t let her fly. But with a little nudge of her blade, Rieren was able to redirect her trajectory and dodge Zhalen’s blow.

His curse made her smile as she landed on solid ground once more. The ground trembled. Rieren whirled, catching her opponent’s next attempt at landing a blow.

It was getting old. Zhalen had once more shot his vines at her, throwing them from every direction in desperation. Through the air, scarpering over the ground, burrowing under the earth. He was pelting everything at her all at once.

Rieren was done with the insipid display. She called off Enchant to let her sword return to its original form. Then she took one step forward, activated her Domain to make water gush up around her, before swinging her blade in an upward arc. River Serration was a basic, fundamental technique, but combined with Tidal Summons, it was a powerful technique for her.

It shot a rising wave straight at Zhalen. Her water was once more empowered by the destructive mixture of Divine and Abyss Aspects. It had no trouble whatsoever in chewing through the vines to carve a path straight towards Zhalen.

He dodged, diving to his left and continuing his evasive manoeuvre.

Rieren had expected it. Had accounted for it, by throwing herself at him with Fray Passage. The skill got her through what remained of his barrage of vines, flinging her in his direction too quickly for him to react to.

Zhalen’s eyes widened in shock. He started to react. Whatever he was trying, he might have pulled it off since Fray Passage only boosted Rieren’s motion to a certain extent. While it enhanced the momentum of her motion of her whole body in any one direction, it didn’t boost any attacking swings she might slash out.

Which was where Gale Blade came in. Before Zhalen could execute whatever it was he intended, Rieren slammed into him with the full intent to end this fight then and there.

Her first slash took off his arm entirely. The blow sent it flying with welter of blood off into the distance. There was no time for pain. No time for shock. Rieren had already pivoted into the second step of Gale Blade. This time, she struck him with the flat of her blade instead, the force behind her strike cracking his mask and sending his whole body sailing over two dozen paces.

Rieren pulled the skill to a halt. She pointed her sword at the distant match official. He had moved well away from the main area of the combat to not get caught by the wide impact area of her and Zhalen’s powers. “Call the match.”

He hurried towards where Zhalen had fallen. It was only as she heard his thumping steps on the ground did she realize the crowd had fallen silent.

All this while, they had been yelling throughout the whole fight. They’d certainly enjoyed a spectacle, what with her explosive geysers and the constant barrage of vines from Zhalen. Especially that move with the plantlike wing of his. That, she had to admit, had been rather sensational in terms of pure combat extravaganza.

But now, they were silent. Hushed. Perhaps Rieren had executed her final blow on Zhalen a little too quickly and suddenly. They hadn’t expected a human to fall with such ease.

The match official stood back to his full height. There was a strange glimmer on his face. It made her frown. “This match is ov—”

“No!”

Despite the lack of an arm, Zhalen was forcing himself to his feet. The injury Rieren had dealt should have debilitated him, but he had cleverly wrapped the stump of his missing arm with his vines to staunch the blood loss. Pale though he’d become with much of his blood around him and on him, instead of within him, he was still willing to fight.

“I can continue,” he told the match official in a shaky voice. Shaky, but loud enough to carry to the crowd.

The spectators cheered. Their hope had been rekindled, their fervour renewed. There still remained the possibility of beating the crud out of Rieren, frightful monster that she was.

“Are you certain? the match official asked. “There is no shame in defeat.”

Zhalen disregarded him and stepped towards his opponent. “There is no such thing as defeat for me.”

Rieren shook her head. “Are you intent on killing yourself?”

“You think you’ve won so easily?” Zhalen sneered at her. “Don’t be so hasty, monster.”

He did something, then. His good arm stretched out and he dropped something to the ground. Several tiny somethings, actually. Rieren frowned. Those had looked like… seeds?

A second later, vines burst out of the earth around him. They grew tall in a second, then began wrapping around his whole body, tearing through much of his robes in, almost mummifying him in the process.

Then they dried to husks and fell away, leaving several seeds embedded on Zhalen’s exposed skin.

“I am ready,” Zhalen said. He pulled off the ceramic mask attached to his robe and placed it over his face, approximating the look of a Masked Avatar. The one Rieren had cracked.

The match official raised his hand as he backed away, bidding the competitors to wait until he was distant once more. His arm fell once he was far enough once more. “Then, continue!”

Unlike last time, Zhalen didn’t waste a single second. He rushed at Rieren with even greater speed than before.

She was actually caught off guard for a second. Her opponent wasn’t flinging spiky vines or trying to use any other ranged ability as he had done before. Instead, he attacked her head on, like a brawler attempting to use bare fists to crush her whole.

It would have been a rather wild attempt with only one arm, but that wasn’t the case for long. A burst of vines erupted right out of the fleshy stump of Zhalen’s cut-off limb, quickly hardening to recreate his lost arm in a mere second. It seemed Rieren wasn’t the only one with surprises. So much for ending the fight by cutting off a limb.

Rieren was thankfully inured against things like shock. Her sword was already in position. Earthfall Blade was more than good enough to deflect away every blow.

Zhalen was stronger this time. There was no doubt about that. His punches and thrusts came in a furious storm, each hit feeling like a strike from someone twice his power. His strength had increased a lot. Had he been holding back all this time? No, that didn’t feel right. This didn’t feel like Zhalen at all.

Those seeds sewn all over his skin had now germinated into his body and sprouted little plants that wriggled like parasitic tentacles. Whatever he had done before resuming the battle, it had raised his power by five-fold at least, if not more.

Rieren was a match for it. More than a match. Even as she deflected away every hit from actually landing on her, she was able to angle her Receptor Sword so that she was using the edge.

It didn’t bite into flesh as she had hoped it might. Where she had thought their exchange would begin to leave cuts and gashes across Zhalen’s arms, all she found was that chips and pieces flew off at every impact. Not blood and bits of flesh. These were more akin to splinters of wood.

Those parasitic plants were turning Zhalen into a wooden puppet.

Then the real surprise struck. The hammering blows had been a distraction. Something she realized only after the distraction’s purpose was served.

As she continued deflecting blows, Zhalen’s grimacing mouth suddenly yawned open. Her senses caught up with her far too late. A spiny tendril rocketed out of her opponent’s gaping mouth like a chameleon shooting its tongue at a bug.

It was nothing more than instinct that made her twist her head to one side to avoid the strike. Even then, it hit her hard. The swipe of the tendril gashed across the left side of her head, taking off a chunk of her hair, skin, and flesh. Rieren was pretty certain the entire top half of her ear had been torn right off.

She put some distance between them before she was caught by any more surprises. Fray Passage took her out of Zhalen’s reach.

“You can’t run from me!” he yelled.

He was certainly making the effort to ensure that Rierne didn’t get a single moment of reprieve. Even with Fray Passage taking her over a dozen paces away from her opponent in a breath, Zhalen was already almost upon her.

That wasn’t going to do. As much as Rieren could have taken him head-on, she had no wish to do so. She hadended the fight when she had taken his arm.

It was time to make Zhalen realize his loss.

Just as he landed within striking vicinity of Rieren, she used Fray Passage once. He growled in outrage as she shot away once more, rushing after her with blistering speed again.

But the little bit of space Rieren had carved out was enough. She concentrated, summoning her Domain and her geyser of explosive water. The timing was perfect. Divine and Abyss Aspect infused water rose around Rieren at the same time as Zhalen reached her.

It didn’t stop him. Not as it had done his vines before. Nowhere close. But it did slow him down, just a little.

Despite the water’s ripping and tearing effect, Zhalen burst through the vertical jet stream with unstoppable fury. But when he broke through the barricade of churning water, he found nothing. Rieren had used the opportunity to sink down low, out of Zhalen’s sight.

“Looking for me?” she shouted as she rose.

He wasn’t able to react to her rising blow. With the flat of her blade, Rieren retaliated against the brutality she had been inflicted with. The motion of River Serration made her strike the flat of her Receptor Sword with Zhalen’s chin, sending him flying backwards.

The blow should have crushed half his jaw. But Zhalen recovered way too quickly for that.

Even as he flew backwards, gold and green light popped off his back as all the embedded seeds and germinated plants started growing. In less than a moment, Zhalen had once again summoned his wings made of vines wrapped around tree branches. An enormous gliding canvas parachuting his flight and allowing him to turn around.

At least it granted a clear sight of his face. Rieren was tempted to tut, but even though she hadn’t knocked him out cold as she had hoped, she had bloodied his broken mask.

“That was nothing,” Zhalen yelled. His voice roused the crowd who’d hushed at Rieren’s surprising strike. They redoubled their efforts at buoying their champion onwards. “You’re going to fall, monster.”

Rieren readied her sword. “Is that so?”

Zhalen’s wings flapped with a ripping noise, like he was tearing them apart to reverse his momentum and charge at her. He had even recreated the spiky lance on his constructed arm to spear her right through.

She never let him begin.

As Zhalen just began her motion towards her, Rieren used Rippling Blade. The technique activated faster than anyone, including herself, could react. It was even faster than her raised Mind could have reacted to. As such, Zhalen had no chance to prepare, no opportunity to dodge or block.

The extension of Rieren’s sword via Essence concentrated into an elongated blade stabbed right through Zhalen’s ribcage.

Whatever momentum he had been about to imbue himself with, his wings now fell drastically short. He wasn’t done, of course. Even as the white extended sword spilled his blood on the ground, he began hammering away at it to free himself. It wasn’t going to work. Not when the Essence was that concentrated.

But Rieren was out here to end this. She sent a pulse of lightning Aspect running through the core of her sword. Zhalen went rigid as the shock travelled within his body. The lightning intensified, electrifying his organs and flesh from the inside.

Rieren didn’t pause just yet. Zhalen had proven resilient after chopping an entire arm off. She wasn’t going to show any mercy.

That raised the risk of causing irreparable harm, but she had already crossed that line. She just had to hold herself back from killing him off altogether.

It was only after Zhalen’s whole body had begun to smoke, after a piercing scream ran through the entire arena and the match official started running in their direction, that Rieren stopped. She ended her technique. The extended white blade with its sparks of lightning disappeared, Zhalen’s unconscious and bleeding form slumping to the ground.

Apart from the hurried motion of the match official, pin-drop silence greeted Rieren. If this hadn’t ended the match…

“There you have it, folks,” the commentator said as the match official signalled him. Loud though his voice still remained, even he didn’t possess his usual exuberance. “The bout is finally over. Our victor is Rieren Vallorne.”

With the match over, she was about to turn away, when the glimmer on the match official caught her eye again. His form seemed to flicker. One second, he was a regular mortal cultivator, the next—

The next, he had marron skin, gleaming hair, tiny horns on his head and bare shoulders with wings sprouting off his back.

Rieren blinked. The match official was himself again. The same cultivator she didn’t know.

Not Starloper.

She swallowed. Was her mind playing tricks? The match official wasn’t looking at her. His attention was focused entirely on Zhalen on the ground. For a brief second, she considered accosting him, demanding the meaning of that little moment.

Instead, Rieren headed out. Later. She would need to find a way to meet him later.

Rieren didn’t wait to see if Zhalen was alive. He would be alright. Eventually. The healers were already rushing towards their location from the end of the arena.

She raised her head at the stands for a brief moment. At the monsters in the distance, at the distant dignitaries, at the other competitors, and at the gathered crowd. Her look was resolute. Assured. Just as her victory had been.

Then Rieren left.