I wanted to grit my teeth in frustration at Kazuma’s ultimatum. Thankfully, I had better control over myself to let a tell like that through, if only thanks to Acting. Honestly though…

  I’d been expecting something like this from the man for a while. I think we had all been expecting it. He had never hidden his intentions from us. In the end, I couldn’t fault him for being patient and waiting for the right opportunity.

  Even if it was a pain in my ass.

  As rain fell from the shrouded heavens all around us, I met his eyes calmly. “We’ll see. After all, there’s still a chance we’ll get to the mountain in time.”

  Behind Kazuma’s back, I saw Azarus make a doubtful face. He didn’t get a chance to speak, though. Not before Venix abruptly stood up from our little huddle, pushing my cloak aside as he did.

  “Enough,” He announced. “We cannot linger here. Every moment we waste speaking is another that the Wyrm grows in strength. A decision on our course can wait until we reach the spire of Gorenzan.”

  We all stood to join him, and I dismissed Kazuma’s ‘proposal’ for later consideration. Venix was right.

  We had to keep moving.

  Together, we scanned the ridgeline, and when we found a stable enough path that didn’t seem to be infested with Oni, we set off on it.

  Well.

  It wasn’t currently filled with the giants.

  I didn’t expect it to remain that way for long.

  …………………………………..

  It was unexpectedly exhausting working, hiking through these mountains. Our impromptu paths along the ridgelines were narrow at the best of times, and hair-thin at the worst. Occasionally, we would encounter larger, flat-topped areas that seemed to be acting as arenas for the feuding Oni. These battlegrounds, whenever we came upon them, all seemed to have seen fighting recently. The scent of Miasma hung heavy in the air on those flat-tops, and cracks and craters pockmarked the surface from blows that had been thrown and flung. However, we had yet to run into any of those combatants on our march. From what Venix told me on our scant few breaks, the fighting in these feuds started on the outskirts and moved inwards, like the closing of a circle. It acted as an almost…tournament, for the Oni. Stronger and more worthy monsters clashed with each other constantly, seeking ever mightier opponents in their path toward the Wyrm.

  We were moving just behind the battle lines of the impromptu war.

  I didn’t have time or attention to worry about that, though. The footing along the ridges was already treacherous enough, from the way any possible stone was likely to slip out from underneath you at any moment. But it was only made trickier by the rain that fell constantly, never once letting up over the next few hours of careful travel.

  Frankly, I think a climb like this would have been impossible for anyone who wasn’t an Awakened. Even the lowest level person with a Status had a certain degree of enhanced physical acuity that was necessary. I think Renauld was the least physically able person in our party, and despite that, he was able to react in time to save himself from many potential falls. The rest of us did the same, carefully balancing our way along the precarious parapets of this rocky cascade. At times, the path along the ridges was so narrow that we had to hold out our arms to act as ballast, if only to maintain our equilibrium. It was almost equivalent to games I would play as a child, carefully skipping through squares etched on the sidewalk in chalk, laughing and playing with long-gone and distant friends.

  There was no laughter to be found here, though. Only focused determination, tense physical control, and a silence broken only by the occasional rest on battle-scarred mountain planes.

  It was there on one of those battlefields after several hours of careful traversal, that Azarus edged up to me. I looked at him from the corner of my eye as I replaced the cap on my travel canteen. I’d been letting the rain refill it when he sidled my way.

  He…had some bad news for me.

  “I think it’s already too late,” My dwarven friend murmured to me, barely audible over the rain and thunder.

  I took a deep breath at that, my eyes flickering over the rest of my companions. From the way Liora’s ears twitched, and Venix’s head turned, I think their Perception might be high enough that they heard him, despite the distance. Bella, Renauld, and Kazuma seemed oblivious, however, from how they didn’t react.

  I sighed that breath out. “You sure?”

  Azarus nodded, his long crimson hair, drenched from the rain, swaying with the movement. “Yeah, pretty sure. I’ve been keepin’ an eye on the rivers below,” He said, nodding to one of said mountain rivers raging off into the distance. To my layman’s eye, it almost looked more furious than the ones we’d seen hours and miles previous. “I don’t think the elevation markers on that map were accurate. I’m thinkin’ this range is steeper than it said. Whoever made that map was a dumb sack of shit that wouldn’t know proper geographical notatin’ if it reared up and bit ‘em in the ass.”

  “And what does that mean for us?” I asked him quietly, eyes on the horizon. I think I could see another Oni battle happening a few miles away from us, but the sight of them had ceased to surprise me.

  “Means they shoulda hired a proper dwarven map-maker fer these mountains, that’s what it means,” Azarus said grumpily. At my look, he held up his hands and sighed. “Rivers are flowin’ faster, which means more water toward the inner bowl, which means we’re shit out of luck Nate. Only way we’re gettin’ in that bunker is with help, with the dragon dead, or by waitin’ for all this shit to blow over and drain away.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  My eyes flickered over to Kazuma where he was watching over Renauld, and frowned slightly. “How long do you think it will take, for the inland sea to drain?”

  The former Savoy tilted one broad hand back and forth. “Hard ta say. But, I’m guessin’ about two months or so? Shit, Nate. I ain’t exactly a trained prospector. I just picked up a thing or two livin’ in the mountain holds.”

  I frowned, and after a moment, just shook my head. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose. We’ll take things one at a time.”

  At that, the conversation died. Our break was over, judging by the way Venix had nearly started pacing.

  We packed back up and got underway.

  …………………………….

  Our luck had to run out eventually. We were pushing hard despite the precariousness of the climb, and the consequence of that haste was incaution. With the pace we were setting, it was only a matter of time before we pushed straight into the advancing battle lines of the Oni conflict.

  I just…didn’t expect for our luck to tank as hard as it did.

  With our sight obscured by both the fading light of the shrouded sun, and the increasing thickness of the storm, we didn’t see them until it was too late.

  We edged our way straight into a full-on war.

  Here, on this mountain top much larger than any we had yet to set foot on, more than simply two different violences had found each other.

  It looked like there were four of them out here. The result was that there must have been hundreds of different Oni infesting this mountaintop that was almost akin to a plain. Easily the largest grouping of not only Oni I had ever seen, but the largest collection of monsters, in general, I had seen, since the Break Stones had been set off back on the mainland. The cacophony of their chaotic battle was loud enough to drown out the storm that raged on above us. Roars and cries crashed alongside the flash of thunder and lightning, both artificial and the product of Vereden itself. Mud and Miasma were thick on the ground from the stamping of feet and the sundering of the defeated, forming a treacherously unstable footing, obscured from sight by a thick black mist.

  From what I could see through the chaos of battle, there were reds, blues, yellows, and a type I had yet to encounter yet here on this field.

  Greens.

  This type of Oni specialized in wind element, if not in a different manner than I’d seen it used before. I was only able to catch a single glimpse of a green conjuring gales that swept opponents off the mountain face, before that Oni was crushed by a furious, burning comet of a red elder that crashed down upon them with a roar. Similar scenes abound all across the field of war, in the brief moment of shock we were allowed.

  A blue, goring a yellow upon his horns, Miasma pouring forth from the wounds to coat the victor in a cloak of murk.

  A yellow, slamming his open palms upon the head of a red, a shockwave emanating from the point of impact that shattered the skull of the defeated.

  A monstrously huge green elder, sweeping his hands in wide, dramatic gestures. Each swipe generated winds stronger than the storm that raged overhead, sending opponents flying from the mountaintop to fall, screaming, in the flooded, raging gutters and valleys below.

  And then we were noticed.

  A pair of yellow juveniles, so similar in appearance to the one we had ambushed out on the stony plains, bounded out of the thick of battle in our direction. The gait of the juves almost reminded me of nature documentaries I had seen in my youth, of gorillas charging down challengers to their thrones.

  I was at the front of our party, and I’m not sure my friends and companions had even noticed the danger that was bearing down on us. We had only just set foot on the battlefield, and now we were being charged. With the way the ridge sloped down behind us, each of them in a single file behind me, they might not be able to react in time to the approaching danger.

  That didn’t matter, though.

  Knuckles down, churning the mud and Miasma, blood-shot eyes trained upon us with murder apparent in taut muscle of their thick frames…

  We were forcibly inducted into the Oni rite of supremacy.

  I grit my teeth and drew something that I believe would have confused my old self. I didn’t draw my bow, to pick off the chargers. I didn’t draw Terractus, the side-arm I had so painstakingly forged, half as a status symbol among the Kawamarans, half in desire to emulate my mentor. I didn’t draw my unnamed extendable daggers, which had so loyally seen me through so many conflicts I couldn’t put a number to.

  No.

  Instead, I drew the staff I had been left by a Lich I had known for such a short time. And through it, I channeled the Skill that had become the cornerstone of my fighting style.

  The Scintillant Blade.

  A spark, deep in the core of the topaz crystal, nestled within a basket of pitch black, ebony wood. That spark grew into an inferno that rushed forth from the stone in a billow of rainbow flame. In only an instant, however, it suddenly sharpened. The fire of my racial ability hardened, shaping itself into a facsimile of the form that I had used to slay the soul of a Calamity.

  A long, thin, razor-sharp blade, the definition of its form giving no doubt as to its purpose.

  Death.

  You see, I had made a discovery, in these months since that dramatic confrontation within the Concord. At the time, I had been incredibly shocked at how The Scintillant Blade had manifested in that realm of spirits. The Skill was only supposed to work upon the edge of a blade, from prior testing. But there, it had blazed first into a beacon not unlike that of a lighthouse, and then into the form of a gargantuan blade, so large I hadn’t even needed to swing it to slay Rhazal. The first time, I had eventually chocked that up to shenanigans on behalf of the Great Spirits. Somehow, someway, I think I had been prepped to act as the key to a lock that denied them Rhazals space in that realm. I don’t know when, or how, or even if I cared. In any way, they had saved both me and Vereden as a whole. Tarus had even hinted that before he left the Concord, accusing Elys of meddling. But it didn’t matter.

  What did, was what else I’d discovered.

  I could replicate the formation of that sword. Not to that extent. Not by far. I think the incredible power and size of that blade had been from the equalized strength I’d been granted from the Rite of Combat. What I could create was instead a long, thin blade of the fire from The Scintillant Blade, half-crystalized into a form that it would accept. It sprouted from the Aetherically charged crystal of the staff, attached to it as if the stone was a crossguard that cradled the blade. The result was what I could only call a sword-staff of sorts.

  And it was powerful.

  I stepped forward, calling upon the strength of Vis Maledicta Exactoris as I did.

  I swung, just as both juveniles reached us, leaping forward with outstretched palms to rend us limb from limb.

  Both juveniles died, falling always into pieces, sundered at the trunk.

  As the startled juves fell into pieces around me, I gripped my blade-staff with two, scaled, chiropteran hands, and called to my party. “To arms!” I shouted as they joined me on the mountaintop. As blades and Skills and Spells and Arts were readied at my back, I flared my wings wide.

  And charged into the fray, my companions a half-step behind me.