Chương 239: Flow of Water, Resolution of Earth

"Curse this!" There was no retreat.

"Curse all of this!" No good play to make. No threads to pull.

"Curse the Builder and his cultists!" No good or viable way out except the slimmest of hopes that the cultists would hold true to their word on the off-chance that they actually managed to buy enough time for the dimensional tunnel to be completed. But given that the stable and secluded trial realm that was promised them now literally seemed to be coming apart at the dimensional seams, Verses found that chance to be miniscule. Yet that was what they had.

Striking at the other Ruler had been an even longer shot, so now they were engaging with the adventurers again. With smaller numbers and less options. So that was why Verses had decided to use her ring, an artifact of Discord's most destructive concepts. It was a thing to use when there were no other good options, but even with its power coursing through her, the Pathbreaker kept the initiative while thwarting most of her attempts to finally remove him. And now, that ring was the thing that was destroying her.

She was failing to leverage it quickly enough. Even should she win now, the consequences would be dire. No way out, and the way through gradually growing fainter and fainter every time the young man kept her at bay.

"Curse you, Pathbreaker. Curse your name throughout the cosmos!" If nothing else would come of this, then Verses felt that she would at least make someone hurt for this. For putting her in this position, backed into a corner. Jin would have been a good candidate. Or Sunless, even if the grudges between them felt a lot less important as of late. But at this moment, she had only one of her antagonists close by.

And as she felt the crystallization creep up along her arm, marking that she would soon be unable to keep the connection to the artifact through the limb's ruined meridians to keep the effects going, Verses made that decision. The Pathbreaker was resourceful though, so far having goaded out and rebuffed her attacks with annoying competence. But she had another target nearby that should do the trick and force out a more desperate response.

"May your life unravel, Pathbreaker, picked apart by the growing garden of Discord!" Verses shouted, treating herself to letting go of her usual composure. She sent a few discordant bolts of magic his way to keep him somewhat in place before giving the mental command to the ring at her hand. Verses could no longer feel the limb, or so she had at least thought until new and more intense waves of agony proved that assumption to be false.

But such was the prize for channeling the most destructive aspect of her deity that made magic fall in upon and clash with itself. And the bodies of higher-ranked essence users were mostly made of just that; magic, creating the most impressively damaging results. But Verses did not direct the hand and the more intensely glowing ring towards the Pathbreaker himself.

No, she pivoted on the spot and pointed straight towards his shimmering familiar who still clashed with Sister perhaps fifty meters away on the rocky slopes. The armored elf also proved her worth as she recognized what Verses was doing, letting herself be snared in one of the dragon's spheres of water in order to land a restraint of her own as stone talons rose from the ground to briefly immobilize the creature with its head turned at an awkward angle to the side leaving its fangs to close around empty air.

There was a certain shudder of cold satisfaction inside Verses as she saw the Pathbreaker realize her intent and spring to action, finally feeling a tiny bit in control of her circumstances again. She even held the discharge that was to come for a few instants longer than needed to let him have a chance of getting into position between Verses and the dragon. Then she released everything left in the ring which burst outward like a roiling beam of beautiful clashing colors and discordant concepts.

It mattered little that the Pathbreaker had seemed to recognize the energies from what had been used during the clash for the throne, as that knowledge should die with him. Verses did not know any details of how the Young Master Valor had managed to get a hold of a gold-ranked weapon from their church, but that was knowledge way above her head either way. As the energies left her ring, they also left Verses' body.

The relief of their absence was as intense as their presence had been agonizing, and the numbness started to set in just as the Pathbreaker managed to somewhat interpose himself before the dragon after a leaping sprint across conjured platforms of force.

"Void!" A dark disc that looked more like a gate to nothingness appeared between them, hiding the young man from view for a moment. At first, Verses felt a twinge of worry as it wasn't a power she had seen before, but that feeling soon passed as she saw the discordant energies tear their way through the aperture in a way that looked a bit like someone ripping a hole in a seemingly open doorway only to reveal something else behind it.

The young man seemed to have expected it too, returning to view as he was already swinging his chiming staff which rippled with dispelling energies, looking less intimidating as he had apparently decided to let his glowing tattoos and arms fade. The strike was well-timed too as the weapon met the beam. Verses could only see a split second of the dispelling force cutting through part of the attack while pushing the rest a bit to the side as if redirecting a raging river.

It was not enough though, as Verses saw the roiling punishment of her deity wash across the Pathbreaker's left side just as her world started to fade as her own over-taxed and partially collapsed magical matrix started to give out. Then they both fell as one from the air, with Verses' last impression being the bittersweet feeling that at least something inside this cursed place had gone her way.

Even as the raging beam of discordant energies hit his body, part of Kite's mind was busy with catching up with the decisions of the last few moments of his life. Seeing the priestess go for Glint with something so destructive had made his mind partially blank out, especially as the stone claws held her head at an angle in which he was unsure if she would be able to bring her Breath of Karmic Retribution to bear.

If it would even work against such a force as this that ripped through his barriers as if they barely existed. So Kite had acted. He barely remembered flashes of the sprint and the strain as he channeled what mana he could spare into Gate of Nihility to buy himself enough time to make an empowered Pattern-Shattering Counter.

Given the very, very odd kind of pain he was currently enduring as he felt strange things happen along the left side of his body, he at least felt a modicum of satisfaction in his all-round vision having revealed that the beam had at least been turned enough to miss Glint by a good margin. The sense of wrongness soon took over though as things within the magical parts of his system were affected as well.

Kite did not know overly much about the magically created anatomy of a silver-ranker, but his time with Gauntlet had imprinted at least some knowledge on the matter. Enough to know that when the panes of force keeping him up faltered as the mana did not flow as it should throughout his system, something had gone quite wrong indeed. That was how Kite found himself falling towards the ground around a dozen meters below, struggling to compensate for the damage to his magical framework the way he had been taught.

The pull of the earth did not leave much room for trial and error though, and he hit the ground with a decent impact that fortunately meant little more to his silver-ranked body than bouncing once, even if said body wasn't functioning entirely as it should at the moment.

"Heavens, what is that thing? No wonder the Young Master thought it able to threaten the King," he thought while coaxing his body back to its feet while working to get his mana under control. The left side of his body moved oddly though, especially the arm which remained stiff and unresponsive inside Kite's armor.

He did not get much further in his investigations though as his expanded field of vision revealed a slight flicker in a shadow beneath a nearby boulder, and that was all the warning Kite got before a dark sickle and chain scythed out of it to strike at what should have been his blind spot. Instincts took over, and while Kite's body moved sluggishly, he discovered to his immense relief that his mana flowed as easily as ever through the tattoos of his mantle.

Throughout the battle, he had noticed that whatever warping energy the priestess' ring had used, it had a harder time affecting rigid materials like his weapons and armor, which might explain the mantle working just fine. Kite had let the channeling of the mana go for a moment as he wanted to protect the remaining two spectral arms from potential destruction. This proved a fortunate decision as one of the arms appeared with his shield to block the incoming sneak attack, easily covering the odd angle.

"Tssk," was all that could be heard from the draconian before the man emerged from the same shadow while his animated shade companion struck from another. They came at Kite from two sides at once, but he managed to guide his mana enough to form a barrier of Heaven-and-Void Warding to one side while his shield warded off another strike from the persistent agent of Discord.

Kite was just about to conjure the walls of Leyline Warding to buy himself some more time when Wander - now in a fresh body that had come running over the moment Kite hit the ground, as the previous one at his shoulder had been thoroughly annihilated by the earlier attack - hissed in his ear.

"Braid needs just a few moments and for you to keep him still. Can you manage~?" Even though his whole body hurt in several different ways, Kite took only a moment to consider before he nodded in a way that he hoped would pass unnoticed by his new assailant. Fortune was at least kind enough to have left the priestess in a shape slightly worse than Kite's own if the feel of her aura was anything to go on, but one opponent was more than enough in his current condition.

"So, little unifier, not so tough now, huh?" the draconian snarled, trying for a flurry at dizzying speed to overwhelm Kite's defenses only for his weapon to be dispelled upon contact with Kite's interposed hand.

"Gah! You're so annoying! I can't wait to finally see you broken." He slipped away through the shadows to avoid Kite's counterattack, moving about rapidly even while trying for more openings with other forms of attack. As during their earlier clashes, Kite's attempt at locking the man down with Spirit Singularity was resisted.

It wasn't an immunity though, but even the times when Inescapable had taken hold it had not lasted for too long before whatever power the agent of Discord possessed managed to shrug it off again. Shadowy claws and lashing umbral tendrils met Kite's shield and barriers time and time again, some blows slipping through his defenses biting into his body as the shadow-stuff seemed to bypass at least some of his armor.

Sage manifested again, having been subsumed into Kite's body before he attempted to intercept the blast meant for Glint, and the familiar's occasional beam of disruptive force kept forcing the flanking shadow image to pick its moments more carefully.

"Heavens, what is going on with my body?" Kite thought to himself, dreading to see what awaited beneath his armor should he eventually find the chance to remove it. Both his balance and motions were off as some parts didn't respond as they should while his left arm did not respond at all, locked in a rigid pose that kept messing with his motions.

"I nee-" The thought cut off as Kite saw something which made him dedicate all of his focus to the next few strikes as he went on an awkward offensive with one of Matra's descendants as trying to wield his staff with only one functional hand would be even more clumsy.

"Oh, getting desperate, eh?" the Draconian taunted as he easily defended against Kite's attempted slashes and thrusts. He seemed to take particular pleasure in goading out attacks only to deliver stinging punishment when Kite's currently lacking speed and precision created huge openings.

"Well, it won't matter-" But his eyes went wide as a series of chains suddenly wrapped themselves around his ankles after soundlessly having slithered closer just above the ground.

River's aura crashed into his a moment later with all of its vicious force as the acolyte of Pain rounded a huge boulder - previously a part of the stone spire before its demise - but the spiritual assault was more of an afterthought to what really mattered at the moment; that the touch of River's chains and their inflicting of the Inescapable affliction seemed to tip the unseen scales enough as they joined Kite's own efforts to keep the draconian in place.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The affliction locked into place with a firmer hold than Kite had ever sensed before, and he realized that this was probably as good an opportunity as they would get.

"Now! Wall!"

"Braid! Now~!" the rat at Braid's shoulder shouted with all the gusto available to her tiny form. Her warning proved unnecessary though as the weaver had already seen the development from across the crater where he had made his preparations. Multiple glowing threads were already making the final adjustments before they all flared with mana to activate several ritual circles at once.

These weren't constructed on the ground however, but floating in a row in the air within an even greater circle that kept the ambient mana in that location stable. And if one looked through their center, they had all lined up to where a certain draconian had just been caught by River's chains. A tight box of force walls appeared a moment later around him, open only in Braid's direction, and by that time the rituals had already finished activating.

An armlength of thread glowing like the sun and straight as a spear was sent through the first circle, accelerating and absorbing more mana with each of the dozen more it passed before crossing the crater in what felt like an instant even to the perceptions of a silver-ranker. It struck the draconian man right in the chest, and seeing the results even from a distance made Braid nod with satisfaction.

"A tad overkill perhaps, but I had originally intended it for the gold-ranked construct after all. But Fantina made the right call in this, I think." Only a breath after Kite had his Leyline Warding snap into place around the draconian, he could feel the control he and River were exerting over the man's teleporting start to slip. But the rising alarm in his chest didn't get much time to grow further, as Braid's intervention struck a heartbeat later.

The caught agent of Discord had just started to try and escape his conjured confines when a thin bright line of thread struck his chest. Given the speed it was moving at, one would assume that it would pass straight through and continue out the other side, but Braid proved to have other ideas as it instead seemed to unfurl and split to spread out in all directions as soon as it pierced into the draconian's body.

And given the speed and sheer magical charge that had been pushed into the thread, the results were soon obscured to Kite as the insides of his force cage were instantly painted a gory red all at once with pieces of armor, chunks of skin, flesh and armor showing as darker spots before they started to slide down the barrier.

"Woo! What a shot~! And really, Kite? Showing off your gains in front of all these cultists like that~?" Wander cheered from Kite's shoulder while he steadied himself, finding what balance he could in his current state. It was only belatedly that he realized that Wander's last statement was directed towards the fierce silver glow of a racial gift evolution which had started emanating from him the moment the draconian fell and some of the tension left him.

But given their circumstances and the battles still going on around them, Kite decided to scrutinize those changes later. Letting his barriers fall as the light from within him started dying down, Kite then met River's eyes briefly, a pair of questions passing silently between them before he nodded to the priestess who immediately set off towards where Glint and the armored elf were still struggling.

A moment later, his body was filled with rejuvenating energy as a pale tentacle reached out to land upon his shoulder, attached to the rapidly approaching Fantina who he had seen flying towards him in his expanded field of vision.

"Oh I swear you children," the priestess of Fertility said as she halted her floating disc nearby.

"What was that beam even? Through this trial I have yet to see anything that could bring you down with such speed, Kite."

"Something which I recognize, but that will have to wait," Kite replied, gesturing over to a nearby cluster of rocks and boulders.

"Please join me. We have something which needs to be done." Fantina nodded her acquiescence, flying ahead of Kite as he awkwardly made his way over. He saw her pause as she understood his intention, reaching down among the rubble with a trio of tentacles to fish out the limp form of the elf priestess of Discord.

Her ring had lost its glow, leaving the cost of its usage even more plain for everyone to see in her crystallised arm, veins of the same material having crept up her shoulder where her robes had been disintegrated. Given that he had felt her fluttering aura during his clash with the draconian, Kite knew she wasn't dead, but given how weak it felt she was at least thoroughly spent.

"If you'd please," Kite called to Fantina, throwing her an appropriate suppression collar which the blonde woman clipped around the throat of their now captive.

"Wander, can Braid contain her while we try to use this shift in balance to our advantage?"

"Of course! Let me tell you, that guy knows some impressive knots. Come! Give her here! I'll get her over~!" the rat at Kite's shoulder called even as more of her bodies came scuttling, around four dozen of them soon gathered and reaching their front paws up to receive the collared silver-ranker before setting off like a scuttling, living stretcher that navigated the broken crater at speed.

While they had spoken, River's appearance in the conflict between Glint and the armored elf had thoroughly tipped the scales against Discord's servant. The woman fought like possessed, but with both Glint and River constantly attempting to catch her in their restraints it was only a matter of time before she was caught a bit too firmly, netting Kite's group their second captive in short order as River drained all the woman's stamina and then some through the agonizing touch of her chains.

"Let us return to the others," Kite noted to Fantina as he began making his way towards Glint.

"They have done admirably in keeping this construct in check, but we only need one mistake for our fortunes to shift."

"Let me return to the others, Kite. You're in no position to fight," Fantina countered, gaze once more gaining that aura of command that had probably intimidated many a defiant child into stumbling confessions. But at least in this, Kite and the healer were in agreement.

"No, you are right. But I can still protect them even from afar," he replied, getting back onto Glint's back as the serpentine dragon had come floating over to join him.

"Better now than ever, it would seem." WWJS: Human racial ability Steadfast Channeler has evolved into Flow of Water, Resolution of Earth. Flow of Water, Resolution of Earth - Gain the ability to continuously channel mana into one nearby active ongoing spell to lengthen its duration. Mana cost varies with the spell in question. You may also channel mana into active barriers to freely move them.

Cost starts at low ongoing mana for a moderate pace, and may be increased to further increase the speed and force of the motion. Fantina gave him a long, frowning look before she eventually nodded.

"Alright, but you will stay close to me. And don't strain yourself too much, physically or magically. I saw your barriers falter, which means that your meridians may be damaged."

"Understood, honored healer," Kite replied, Glint and him joining Fantina in flying back towards the battle with the construct in the near distance. The thing was moving even more awkwardly now that two of its spindly metal legs had been taken out, but its movements were still powerful even in such a state. Fortunately for the adventurers though, its speed left much to be desired meaning that they could usually evade the more ferocious tackles and thrashings it sent their way.

The beam it occasionally fired from its mouth seemed to be the most dangerous option it had left as Dragonfly had gotten reinforcement from Little Crow in handling the mass of mechanical minions when River had rejoined the fight." Ward!" As he tried to actually follow Fantina's urgings to be careful and take things slow, Kite began with a simple Heaven-and-Void Warding, conjuring his barriers to intercept a hail of metal shrapnel aiming for Soul's side.

The celestine had already begun her dodge, so the action was perhaps a bit superfluous, but the experimentation came when he then tried channeling some mana into the ward. Normally, this would reinforce and repair it which he had used plenty of times during his life as an adventurer. But now with the racial gift evolution, he instinctively sensed that there were more options available to him.

A brief mental command had the disc trail Soul, floating a bit awkwardly in her wake as the strain Kite felt while channeling the mana - along with the unfamiliar application of his power - had his focus waver somewhat. But he managed to at least shove the barriers into a mechanical minion climbing its creators back to fall upon the celestine from behind. The impact wasn't overly impressive, not making the construct more than stumble, so Kite tried spiking the channeled mana.

This resulted in a flash of pain from parts of his body, but also in a satisfying burst of momentum from the barriers that sent the smaller construct flying off the abomination's back.

"That… will be useful," Kite mused to himself as ideas started to crop up in his mind while he went back to more ordinary interventions around the small battlefield.

"Very useful. As well as something which will require practice. So much practice… Another piece of complexity for my path. Let none say that the Pathbreaker's climb towards the heavens is a simple one." Still, with his meridians and magical pathways in their current state, now was not the time for more in-depth strategizing. Along with Fantina, he helped his friends and companions keep up the pressure against the construct which tore up more and more of the crater with each new thrashing sweep of its heavy body.

The balance was turning in their favor quite steadily when Braid apparently decided that it was time to slam a sledgehammer down on their side of the proverbial scales.

"Fire~!" all of Wander's bodies around the crater shouted at the same time, and moments later another glowing line of thread was launched from the weaver's ritual circles. It didn't carry the same potency as the one which had taken out the draconian, but the large target apparently left the more simple enchantments a lot more mass to rip through. The second shot took out another leg and the third, around a minute later, squarely struck the core hanging suspended in the abomination's open jaws.

"Now!" Will bellowed loudly enough to be heard above the din of battle as the construct seemed to momentarily lose control of its front half, grotesque face crashing to the ground as the back legs twitched and thrashed." Lancer's judgement delivered!"

"Kyaaaaaaaaaah!"" Virility restored, potency assured. Let Fertility's touch surge through you!"

"Sage, if you please." Will's bellowed spell became the opening shot of the companions throwing some of their most potent powers toward the head of the construct. All the conjured spears scattered around the battlefield - and by now there were hundreds of them - rose into the air of their own volition and shot towards the downed abomination in a final act of piercing glory, detonating in bursts of disruptive force a moment after impact.

Little Crow's exploding needles joined in, as did River's tearing chains and Sage's beam of transcendent light. This first wave of potent damage and execution powers tore the remaining flesh and chitin from the monstrosity's head, revealing a rough metal framework beneath forming a grotesque kind of skull not unlike how Kite would have imagined that of a crocodile's. And in the wake of the barrage, Soul and Dragonfly descended in unison.

Kite's lover and intended was a fiery wheel of flames as she spun down in a vicious finisher that sent a jet of flame shooting through the insides of the hollow skull and billowing out every crack and opening. At the same time, Soul landed with a lot more grace before leaning down and placing the tip of her fingers against the metal beneath her. Kite thought that he could feel the celestine's aura steadying for a brief moment before she delivered her punch, aglow with transcendent light.

One moment, her hand was straight like a blade, with extended fingers touching the surface. In the next, it was buried deep into the skull of the construct in a motion so explosively fast that not even Kite's perception managed to see the actual motion. The result spoke for itself though, as the tandem moves were what finally seemed to make something vital within the huge abomination snap. All felt its aura shudder before it cracked.

One moment, the thing was trying to regain control over its long body, but in the next all motion simply seized. It slumped down onto the slope, sliding a bit further in the gravel before coming to a stop up against one of the larger boulders that had previously been the stone spire. It was only when the oppressive aura simply winked out that Kite realized how silent the astral space felt in its absence, as if one had become somewhat used to the roar of a nearby waterfall only for it to suddenly cut out.

The spiritual silence felt deafening even as the crater was still filled with settling rock and debris along with the sound of construct minions collapsing.

"We did it," Kite eventually breathed, the first to speak. The second one was a lot louder.

"Retribution! The just cause has prevailed! The honor of the Queen has been upheld! Glory to the trial-taker! Glory to his minions!" The trumpeting shout of course came from the officiator orb which came floating back from the other side of the large crater. It looked undamaged from all the calamity that had raged in the center of the Labyrinth, but for the first time during his trials within the Queen's gate, the orb was not unchanged.

Calling it an orb was probably not even appropriate anymore, as it was now a construction of two spheres which seemed to have partially melted into one another leaving it segmented a bit like an insect even though the extending piece was simply rotating around the central one in slow circles.

"Officiator," Kite greeted while the others were making their way towards them.

"It seems that you have been victorious as well."

"Such is the Queen's will, bestowed upon me through her herald," the construct replied as if it was the most obvious of conclusions.

"The weakness of this other one will be analyzed. It did not fare well from the corruption of the trial. But that is for the Queen to do once she deems it worthy of her illustrious time. As for this trial, it is time that it came to a close. Given the subversion and damage done, this space does not have much longer. But even so, you have taken down the opposing Ruler. Which gives me the authority to declare you the victor. And dispense the appropriate reward."