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265 - Archibald Branstein's Plight [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-07-09 19:13:29 +0000 UTCThe Flying Needle Sword flew into the courtyard, and striking one of the sect building’s decorative pillars, exploded with a directed blast of lightning. The pillar broke, as did the Flying Needle, spraying fragments of both stone and metal across the load-bearing wall behind it.
Zelsys, seeing Archibald visibly struggling to stabilize the formation, shouted out that she had no ill will towards his sect and that, as much as she enjoyed it, continuing this fight was pointless. Still he pushed on, sending swords to attack her and using some to fling beams of swordlight, and she defended herself… By summoning Fulguris and letting the spirit take care of it. Doing it this way was certainly more expensive, but it also sent a message all the more clearly. She could clearly see that he was shocked, but when he valiantly kept up his defense and refused to back down, she simply thanked him for entertaining her, offered that she would welcome friendly contact in the future, and threw down several swords as a gesture of repayment for those she had broken. Then, she left. Just like that, she walked away, defending against the formation’s lashing-out even as she got onto her sturmgandr and drove away.
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Archibald Branstein felt a wrenching pain in his liver as his disciples collected the stranger’s swords and found that not only were they utterly devoid of any curses or other traps, they were of good enough quality to usurp spots 12 through 18 in his personal Top 20. He recognized two of them as having belonged to Toza of the Fourteen Guardians, though in his prime, they would have easily topped the ranking. Even as badly decayed as they were now, they were both instant no. 12 and 13… And it drove Archibald up the fucking wall.
“How? Who is she? What is she?! Contact the Root Branch!”
“But, Elder Archibald, your Seclusion Directive-”
“-is null and void as of now. Clearly, the War of Fog hasn't crippled the continent’s cultivation… Or it has recovered absurdly quickly.”
“Or That Woman is some old monster that just came out of seclusion to screw with us.”
“I surely wish that to be the case. An old monster is infinitely easier to deal with than an upstart savant that neither understands nor cares for the delicate balance of sect politics…”
Sighing, his hands shaking, Archibald Branstein retreated into his personal chambers and began drafting a letter. He didn’t care if this made him lose favour with the Root Branch, he wanted to know who he was dealing with and whether she would listen to reason.
The truth was, Archibald had hoped that activating the Hundred Hands Sword Union Formation would suffice to drive off the unwanted visitor without needing to actually use it. The Formation had been conceived by and for his father’s use, and he had yet to adjust it for himself; it was at best half as powerful as it should’ve been, and far less stable, evidenced by the backlash issue. It had worked several times in the past, and on powerful wandering sword cultivators to boot. It had worked on Toza of the Fourteen Guardians, just months ago, though no confrontation had taken place back then.
He had wanted to back down the moment he saw that woman bring out the Fangs of Defiance, that impossible weapon of whose creation he had dreamt, alongside several others in the sect. However, the duty of keeping up faced and a strong facade bound him, and Archibald had thus attempted to resolve the conflict without anyone dying. Therefore, how this supposed Newman Sect Elder handled the situation was actually the best possible outcome for him, allowing him to keep dignity by lying through his teeth about how friendly the exchange actually was. The way she had handled the confrontation was, by sword cultivator standards, a master-class in conflict de-escalation. Nobody died, and as far as he could tell, none of his disciples had been gravely wounded either.
Archibald really hoped this Newman Sect wasn’t just remnants of the Willowdale Branch, but truly a new sect. If that were the case, amicable relations could still be established, even if it came out that the Root Branch didn’t like them for some reason. As one of the four Inheriting Branches, the Artat Sect had more independence than others.
Many questions as this Zelsys Newman’s identity and cultivation gnawed at him. Despite the extreme interference of his own sect’s barriers, he had managed to discern a few things. Not an iota of swordlight, even less than the least talented among his disciples, and yet his swordlight broke against her techniques like waves against a cliff, despite having the special property of simply flowing around most obstacles. Clearly, her aura was both dense and strong, but it was more like that of a cultivator-beast rather than a human cultivator… Yet he felt undeniable humanity from her, smothering the possibility of her being an advanced cultivator-beast in the crib.
Then, there was the matter of Seven Thundergods; the woman’s practice of Storm-soul Cultivation was abundantly obvious, and the fact she somehow gave six of them in physical form left no room for doubt that she had at least seven of those daemons dwelling within her soul. It was impossible short of some absurdly specific foundation. The only other explanation for that which made sense to him was, perhaps, being born as a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, but that was no better than a guess. Her Silver Conduits were absurdly overgrown, to the point where Archibald genuinely wondered if it had something to do with how forceful everything she did was. Perhaps that was the level of force required for her to generate any level of internal pressure with those riverbeds she had in place of channels.
Her appearance, the implication of draconic ancestry in her eyes, the weird armored sleeve with a small cannon on the forearm, that distinctly non-Ankhezian automaton steed… None of it made sense. Twenty years. Just twenty short years, and it felt as if the world was sprinting ahead so it could have a laugh at him when he brought his sect out of seclusion.
Comments
Tehd11
Rip the Flying Needle.
