Chương 227: Confidence

"Ehm. Guys~," Wander called from Kite's shoulder.

"Yes- Ward! Wander?" Kite said, choosing a pair of freshly conjured barriers to shoulder check a pair of opposing drones, throwing the arthropod soldiers slightly off balance for a split second, enough to let Sage fire its transcendent beam and dispatch one of the drones.

"I think that something is- Oh. Crap. OK guys you really need to listen up now because we have what I believe is six hostile silver-rankers inbound. One of them spotted one of my bodies at the edge of the swarm, and that really set them off. And given how quickly they are moving straight towards us, I would assume that they know where we are~!" As Wander normally spoke in her carefree, playful tone, the shrill note of urgency in her singsong voice had all of Kite's group start to really pay attention.

"Oh heavens," Kite cursed as he kept battering away the normal drones who had started trickling in as reinforcement to their commander's call for aid.

"Wander, tell the others to hurry up-""Already done~!"

"And River, finish the commander now if you can-""No, keep it!" Little Crow interjected quickly from where he was leading another pair of drones in a merry circle while whittling them down with his explosive path.

"I'll use it to prepare a welcome."

"No, I-" River started objecting, but Kite cut her off with a firm nudge of aura.

"He has plentiful experience, River. Let us trust him. But let us also prepare to fall back towards the others. Wander will guide us!" Wander didn't even have time to finish her warning when the new arrivals decided to strike. The odd light of the storm above combined with the occasional flashes and lights of discharging essence powers made for plenty of shadows which danced along the floor and walls of the Labyrinth.

And without warning, one of those shadows cast by Fantina suddenly came to life as a draconian with black scales silently emerged out of it, chained sickle sweeping toward the back of her neck." Ward!" It was only Kite's expanded vision which let him note the ambush, conjuring a protective barrier for Fantina with a thought and a word. But it was the sharp spiritual senses of another who had managed to pick up the sneaky attacker even faster.

Chains of steel met those of liquid shadow as River had seemingly started her intervention before Kite had even picked up the faintest shift among the dark outlines. The sudden deflection shifted the arc of the incoming weapon, and even though their sudden assailant skillfully had his own shadow rise from the floor to grasp the haft off the sickle and continue the attack, it left enough time for Kite's barrier to snap into place.

Leaving the drone commander all tangled up in her wake, River had already started moving to take a more personal and up-close approach to her counterattack. The draconian, correctly judging that his initial assault had been thwarted, shifted again through the shadows before the incoming chains could find purchase, appearing further down the crevasse as more dark chains started crisscrossing the stone corridor.

"He's mine," River growled flatly before she sped up once again, becoming a blur of shifting air dashes that wove through the now even more complicated environment in pursuit. Even if Kite had wanted to object, he doubted that there was to be anything he could have done to stop the priestess in that moment. And as the rest of the enemy assailants had just turned the corner ahead from the widest of the connecting tunnels, the time for even considering sending anyone to back her up had passed.

As Wander had reported, there were six of them in total if one counted that initial attacker, which left five masked and armored silver-rankers for them to suddenly contend with. At the front, two heavily armored elves led the assault, golden masks hiding their features. They rode atop a stone slab which plowed through the gravelly ground as if it were water, speeding up for some kind of charging attack with the glaive and hammer which they wielded respectively.

Behind, a more lightly armored leonid woman rode the winds in arching approach, no doubt meant to bypass what defenses Kite and his companions could have prepared, while a human man brandishing a pair of short, curved blades and a seemingly unarmed elf ran in the wake of the incoming stone juggernaut.

Like their companions, all of them concealed their features in various ways and Kite thought that he could detect the ever so faint hints of aura masks in their spirits, but he had not the time nor the presence of mind to make any more in-depth attempts at verifying that before a more intense battle would be upon them. Fortunately, it was one where they at least had an opening move prepared.

A wide swing of Little Crow's parasol sent a hailstorm of glowing needles flying straight down the tunnel at the masked assailants while Fantina added her arrows to the mix.

These were deflected, however, by a wide wall of air which appeared before the incoming party like a stormfront pushing the calm before it, and at the same time something odd started happening with the momentum and perceived pace of the charging stone slab as it - and its riders - seemed to be both far away and closer at the same time when perspectives started warping.

At this time though, Kite had already started forward, raising an arm just as he passed where little crow had landed in front of the wounded drone commander which was struggling weakly against its bonds. A nudge of aura in confirmation from the celestine was all he needed to know that Little Crow was ready." Dissolve the patterns of power!" Ripple of Cancellation spread out from Kite's open hand and rushed straight into the oncoming group.

Projectiles disappeared and the bigger magical effects such as the stone slab and the flight power of the flying leonid halted and sputtered somewhat. But another projectile came soaring into the corridor in the wake of the dispelling wave, albeit one much larger as Little Crow picked up and flung the body of the drone commander straight at the attackers.

The poor arthropod variant ended up ignobly cut in two by a rippling sweep of the glaive carried by the female armored elf, but that only revealed the intensely glowing needle thrust straight into its sternum. A needle which belonged to Little Crow's execution powers from his potent essence.

Execution powers were always potent when a creature was near death, of course, but this particular needle took that to a new level as it would not only deal greatly increased damage to the target the more gravely wounded it was, but also channel any excess damage into a building chain-reaction through the target's body. And when applied to a silver-ranked creature beaten to within a hair's breadth of its life? It turned out that the excess damage from a being with so much life force became quite impressive.

"Wall!" Most of their foes realized the danger in time to escape from the drone-turned-cataclysm, with the leonid surging upward and away on a burst of air, the man with the dual blades blinking away and the unarmed elf woman seemingly just not being where she should be.

But that left the two armored elves suddenly caught with an impending disaster inside a fresh cage of force, even though said barriers snapped and broke a mere instant later when Little Crow's explosive execution finally unleashed all of its stored, cascading power. The resulting detonation was blinding even to the silver-rankers, creating a brief pause as neither of those foes outside the walls of Leyline warding seemed to want to step too close.

The light winked out as soon as it appeared however, revealing the matching pair of elves and the crumbling layer of stone which was falling away from their now a lot less pristine forms. The hammer-wielder of the pair was even missing the lower part of her left arm as the stone protection which had enveloped them both seemed to have been just a moment too slow.

But what might have been a decisive, killing move at lower ranks turned out to be just a potent opening gambit; injuring and burning some kind of potent defensive powers but otherwise unable to instantly take one of the foes out of the fight. And that was when the real clash began, and pandemonium ensued.

"Why didn't you say anything earlier!? And where the heavens did all these drones come from?! Kyaaaaaah!" Dragonfly shouted at the rat atop her shoulder, words falling away into something more wordless as she spun into a whirling attack which carried her through a pair of the ordinary arthropod soldiers while she accepted a pair of light - if stinging - hits in return. At least that made her faster.

"Don't you think I would have if I could? You try being in over six hundred places at once and see if you can keep track of it all~!" Wander shot back while holding on for dear life to the vines of Dragonfly's armor.

"And I told you, it was that leader-thingy who called them. The line has partially fallen into disarray. But hey at least our side is pushing forward too~!"

"So you mean that Kite and the others won't just have these cursed silvers to deal with, but a small tide of drones as well?!"

"Well… That might be one way to put it…~" To that, Dragonfly only gave out a frustrated growl in response. And ran faster.

"Even a world in turmoil or a cataclysm is nothing before nothingness itself. The void moves through all of that, unchanging, and if you can learn to emulate even a mere sliver of the concept, so too will you find an unshakeable foundation for your mind."

As he was currently engaged in a rather intense series of exchanges with the two armored elves, Kite found a new appreciation for the teachings which Ardent Horizon Seeker had managed to instill as the somber man's words seemed to echo within the surprising calm of Kite's mind. He hadn't been able to really put his finger on it, but something in those words seemed to have resonated with him and - more specifically - with the combat mediation which he had worked on continuously for most of his adventuring career.

They made sense, and as Kite once again rebuffed the earth-conjuring glaive-user's assault with shield and barrier to one side while the using his staff and unseen blade to shatter the conjured hammer of the other even as Matra's descendants whirled to intercept what projectiles and attacks he could in the other conflicts going on around them, Kite also found that it made sense to his path at some deeper level.

"To be the void…" his mind somehow found the time to muse even as the earth-user changed tactics.

"Mountain falls, order crumbles." The chant was followed by a quick gesture as the stone walls above them cracked and splintered into a small, localized landslide bearing down on Kite with a lot more force than it should have." Ward!"

The barriers of Heaven-and-Void Warding appeared at an angle above him even as Kite stepped to move out of the way, but that unfortunately left less defenses available for the two enemies still bearing down on him and his shield proved incapable to bear the brunt on its own as the glaive of his foe splintered into a burst of stone which punctured Kite's armor in two places while the hammer-wielder had moved back and started to harass his more open side at range with torrents of freezing vapor which were harder for his weapons to ward off.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. A mental command to Unyielding at least let the force of the stone projectile push Kite back and out of the way of their attacks, creating a brief opening for him to better survey the fighting going on around him. Flittering all around the more open crossing, Little Crow was engaged in a fierce - if odd - duel with the other elven woman who wore more traditional combat robes.

She still fought unarmed, but her motions and strikes seemed all wrong somehow; as if everything from the intentions to the actual motions were obscured and warped. None of the strikes were made with much force but rather precision, making Kite suspect that she might be using mostly touch-ranged spells rather than special attacks.

The assassin got to more properly show off his own skills though, the brief inspection allowing Kite to take note that his seemingly off throws might be made with more intent than expected as they sometimes seemed to impact something only half seen and sensed around him. And close to another of the tunnels, Glint and Fantina were using their combined forces to ward off the man with the two curved blades and the leonid woman who slid through the air with a controlled grace.

The pair was circling one another, almost back to back as they took turns casting restraining spells, reaching out with similarly restraining tentacles or firing precise and debilitating arrows. Both were aglow with Fantina's boons, but the pair was slowly being whittled down by their more offensive opponents.

Given both of their paths, they should hold for some time though, which was good because Kite's moment of observation was violently shattered as his two opponents came at him again, leaving him unable to do much to come to their assistance.

In short order, he shattered another conjured hammer, managed to ward off the glaive and even got in a Pattern-Shattering counter to deflect some kind of sneaky secondary attack from the glaive-user which at first was almost undetectable, reminding Kite a lot of the enchantments of the Veiled One's Decree. Then, surprisingly, one of his assailants spoke.

"Sister, don't we recognize this one? We have seen his path before, have we not?" the masked man asked even as he kept pressuring Kite with jabs and thrusts from his glaive which he interwove with spells from what Kite assumed to be his earth essence.

"You know, Brother, you are right. He's the one calling himself the Pathbreaker, is he not?" the hammer-wielder replied even as she started conjuring more temporary replicas of her weapon which started appearing all around Kite to swing at him.

"The brazen outcast who dared to make such a name for himself."

"I don't know how you got one of the Crows to come in here with you, Pathbreaker, but it is a waste. You will all die here-," the man said, but was cut off as he missed one of Kite's conjured attacks that slipped through and struck him in the side of the head.

"If you know of me-," Kite replied, "- that means that you have been in the capital for quite some time. Perhaps you are the brazen ones, followers of Discord."

"Discord is everywhere, outcast," the man retorted haughtily.

"Wherever there are people, our god's purview runs strong. The capital is no place of danger to us. On the contrary, even." Unfortunately, the pair didn't enjoy taunting Kite enough to keep themselves from spilling some more hints, instead renewing their assaults. A massive conjured hammer appeared above Kite, trailing frosty vapors as it swung downward right as the man cast another spell. Fortunately, it was one that Kite recognized, and knew his path would handle.

"Inescapable grip of the earth!" Claw-like earth spikes shot up to hurt and restrain Kite in a direct, brutal fashion, no doubt keeping him in place to be crushed by the chilling hammer from above. But if one of the same rank meant to restrain Kite Flown in on Winds of Fortune these days, they would have to do a lot better than that.

With a simple flex and a bit of mana, Kite broke through the stone spikes in a quick dash towards Glint and Fantina even as he swung upward, the rippling projection of his strike rising to meet the crushing manifestation of the spell.

The tiny pinprick looked quite inadequate to deal with something of that size, which made it all the more spectacular when the collision between the two powers cracked the huge hammer like a piece of overly tempered glass as the addition of a charge from Potential of Stolen Power made itself known.

And while the woman staggered slightly from the no doubt significant drain of mana she was just subjected to, Kite noted that Fortune - even silent in this place that was out of her reach - smiled on them as Little Crow had just managed to maneuver the elf woman with the obscured fighting style to the same side of the open space as her two armored companions. Which meant that it was time to enact the second small plan they had come up with in the meager time they had received to prepare.

"Now!" Kite thought, sending his mental command to Glint while he nudged Fantina's aura. The shimmering draconian acted immediately, conjuring restraining spheres of water around their two adversaries as Kite too cast a spell." Wall!" Layers of barriers suddenly cut off the open space, leaving the three elves on one side and all of Kite's allies - along with the restrained leonid and human - on the other.

The casting had been precise enough to manage to get between the more intense melee of Little Crow and his foe, and the assassin wasted no time in diving towards the corridor next to Glint and Fantina, with Kite soon following. The man with the curved swords did attempt to teleport out of his restraints, but having seen him perform the feat before, Kite had already made sure to lock the attention of Spirit Singularity onto him which spoiled that particular avenue of escape.

This gave the group a few precious seconds with which to sprint into the corridor and get just that much further away from their opponents. But more importantly, that much closer to the direction from which Wander reported their friends were arriving from.

"Still, the bigger group of drones is getting closer too," the rat at Kite's shoulder remarked.

"Please be quick. Because getting caught between them and these guys in that tunnel would really ruin my day~."

"Given your nature Wander, can you even get stuck?" Kite asked where he ran, guarding their rear while using his barriers to deflect wind lances thrown by the leonid who was the first to get through her restraints.

"Well, no. Or at least not without someone making a lot of preparations on the matter. I just wanted it to at least sound like we're in this together~."

"Much appreciated," Kite replied dryly.

"We've- Ward!" Kite had to stop and instead focus on reconjuring a set of fresh barriers as his force walls back at the intersection also fell, which was immediately followed by a stone launched with such force that it flew in a completely straight line along with another conjured hammer which spun end over end like a glowing pinwheel. The impact cracked the first of Kite's barriers, but the second held due to his well-timed casting.

But at the front, complications also arose as a group of the forewarned drones appeared at the mouth of the tunnel ahead of where Little Crow had taken point.

"We need to break through! Little Crow, can you-" Kite began even as more projectiles came chasing them down the more cramped confines, the arms of his mantle all working overtime to project what attacks they could to intercept.

"Perhaps, but my path isn't too well suited for it!" The assassin replied, sending a hail of needles into the new foes which detonated in a ripple across the shield wall the approaching drones formed.

"But my very being is! Let this young mistress handle things!" Glint called as she floated to the front and sped up while her body started glowing. In a moment, the robed draconian had shifted to the more serpentine, sinuous form of the carp-dragon. Mist trailing in her wake, Glint then accelerated all that she could during what was left of the tunnel, conjuring a watery karmic image of herself to bear the brunt of the magical projectiles which the drones started throwing her way.

Given her size, dodging was not an option in the cramped confines. But neither was it for the drones, and once Glint connected with the shield wall, sheer mass and momentum won out. The squad of drones was sent tumbling and flying out the way they came as the celestial carp emerged in a small geyser of conjured water.

Once out into the more open space, she once again returned to her draconian form, even if it stung Kite on multiple levels to see her pristine face now marred by several wounds from magical attacks too powerful to completely shunt onto her karmic image.

"Brutish work, but sometimes a necessity," was Glint's only comment as she held her head high, crystal horns still unblemished as they caught the light of the storm above. There wasn't the time for any further comments however, as their pursuers were gaining on them. Kite turned to hold the mouth of the tunnel while Little Crow and Fantina sent their own share of projectiles back towards their pursuers while the priestess simultaneously reached out with a tentacle to provide Glint one of her healing spells.

"Any trace of River?" Kite asked Wander just after sending another Ripple of Cancellation down the tunnel which was followed by more projected attacks.

"No, sorry. Lost track of her and sassy guy. Those two move fast! Oh right, you weren't there. Sassy guy is the draconian. ~""I kind of- Ward! - got that from context," Kite replied, teeth half gritted in focus. Spirit Singularity kept the blade-wielder from teleporting in among them, but the others were pushing hard. Once the robed elf woman did something odd to flood the whole tunnel with distorted perspectives that shielded their movement and gods knew what else, he knew that it was time to keep falling back.

Matra - the real one, not a mere copy - appeared in Kite's hand. Given the amount of special attacks that he had unleashed during the battle with the drone commander and now followed by the ambush, the longer, wavy blade was brimming with power.

Channeling a significant amount of mana, of which Kite still had surprisingly much given the reserves of his new shield, the edge shone with a silvery light which winked out as he swung it towards the corridor, unleashing a torrent of silver slashes which completely filled the area like an avalanche of slashing fury. Still, there wasn't time to admire the handiwork, and Kite soon joined the others, turning down another corridor which Wander had been indicating. And the running battle continued.

"Domination-," Unmaker of the White Seal had said many times during River's training, "- is all about stripping those before you of control. Physical restraints or applied social pressure are the most obvious ones, but limiting oneself to merely those concepts is beneath those like us. You will find that merely shifting the way a person perceives themselves or their situation might be enough to give you an edge.

And once they do, their pain is inevitable; agony inflicted upon themselves as they either feebly rage against their confines or accept the chilling bite of surrender and defeat." As she fought at a blistering pace with the black-scaled draconian, the pair weaving, sprinting and shifting down the maze of crevasses that was the Labyrinth, River once again found herself grateful for the perspective. Because the draconian was good. Frustratingly so.

Leagues ahead of the agents of Discord which River had previously caught and exposed. His presence and competence also hinted at some kind of inner circle among the clergy of River's hated foes, and that thought caused a thrill to run through her. Still, it was one she shoved down and shut away deep inside herself. Domination could never be rushed, after all, and any premature attempts would only result in the tables being reversed. But this laughing, sneering and taunting draconian?

Him, she should be able to manage.

"- and really though, it baffles me. I have no idea how you all managed to even get here, but at least that can be somewhat understood. If one party could tamper, then two could. Miscalculation on our part, it seems," he said while slipping through River's chains as a trail of inky shadows yet again, the inescapable affliction somehow failing to take hold once more.

"No, what really baffles me is why they would bring someone like you. Don't think we haven't heard of some remnant washup from a failed project running around and trying to - what? - take some kind of vengeance? But how, oh how, did you manage to convince them to actually let you tag along? Please tell me, I really need to know. Otherwise I won't be able to sleep at night."

As she had done so far, River ignored his blathering, shifting through the air three times in quick succession before springing off one of her floating chains to launch her in a different direction. The nine chains of Catena, her conjured weapon, struck in a staggered sequence, pursuing the laughing draconian through his shadow jumping even as she used her aura senses to glean where he might next appear.

And as for auras, the spirits of the pair had long been locked into a grinding combat against one another, with River slowly gaining an upper hand. Or at least that was her intended state of things for now.

"No fun, huh? Those adventurer types are usually more easy to poke fun at; all high and mighty in the name of their sects while they really are just alone and scared that someone will recognize that the proud institutions actually care pretty little about them as individuals. The perfect seedbeds. But you should know, I suppose.

Weren't you raised in one-" It was with some satisfaction that River finally managed to make the man shut up as she used one of her more potent powers of her dance essence to finally close the distance properly. Moment of Lightning Cadence, as the power in question was called, let her view the world with amazing clarity as it seemed to slow down as her perception and body both sped up significantly.

For a moment she could see each link in both her chains and the inky black one of her opponent, hear every piece of gravel shifting below. And then, a pulse, the first of three. Boom River stepped along her chains with an easy rhythm, following its loops as easily as one might a wide city street.

Boom She bent beneath the draconian's shadow, a being that she was unsure whether it was a familiar or simply a very sophisticated essence power, who had started to leap out of a nearby shadow to swipe at her with dark claws. Boom And just as the last beat resounded within her moment of speed and clarity, River had appeared before her black-scaled foe and delivered a swift strike with two fingers that hit the middle of his sternum.

It would deliver a somewhat debilitating special attack that would be quite agonizing and drain the man's stamina as it also hampered her movement. But the strike itself, or even the burst of resonating force which accompanied her final step, was not the actual attack which River had prepared. Because just as her two fingers met his lightly armored torso, River let the full might of her aura unwind like a striking snake, unfurling into a soul attack which was as sudden as it was delightfully agonizing.

Already straining against River's, the draconian's spirit crumpled like a taut sheet of parchment suddenly pierced by a knife. And along with it came his aura mask, the delicate, subtle magics ripped to shreds. Even though he didn't scream, River could feel the agony upon his spirit as clear as day. But even through the first convulsion and his eyes widening in that delectable moment of realizing that he was outmatched, that frustrating competence from before still remained.

Without another word, he disappeared in a dark cloud that vanished into a nearby shadow; something more potent than any previous power he had shown. But unlike the other times he had vanished, this time he stayed gone.

"While the soul is immutable, it is not stronger than the will that guides it," the words of River's father echoed in her mind once more.

"And one of the many seams in one's will is one's confidence. Subvert it, break it, make it doubt that what it assumed to be the balance of things was a mere figment, and it will be all the leverage you need." But while the remembered teachings carried a hint of sweet victory as River had sensed her opponent's facade crumble once she showed her true spiritual fangs, it also brought something else; the memory of a speartip at her throat, and how - through that simple contact - her heart was somehow laid bare.

It only lasted for a brief moment though, the feelings lashed back to their place in a dark recess of River's mind as she set off in pursuit. Or, failing that, to rejoin the others. Her so-called companions.