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264 - Hidden Sect Contact Attempt Gone Wrong (Gone Violent)(COURTING DEATH) [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-07-08 19:18:11 +0000 UTCA/N: If you haven't already, go back to 263. I rewrote the final 1/3 of the chapter.
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Eisengeist’s blood was, of course, much too intense to be stored in such a bottle. Most of what she had gotten in such bottles was made up of Tertiary Spring water, sap from a specific kind of tree, the honey of the Crescent Jungle’s bees, and several kinds of beast blood useful for alchemy. Coincidentally, all of these things were somehow involved in making blood mead.
During her second attempt at inter-sect contact, Zelsys visited the Fourth Inheriting Branch of the Black Horses, located in a mountain gorge in southern central Ikesia, isolated from the rest of the country and only accessible through the Valley of Six Streams. She had learned of its location from her predecessor’s records, and had chosen to go there based on his personal notes about them, regarding them as relatively welcoming, being respectful to anyone who manages to find and reach them. It was one of the few sects that hadn’t lost significant numbers due to the war, thanks to being so isolated.
Though it didn’t take her long to reach them, she understood why they would be known for welcoming travelers. Anyone who went through that trek was either a fairly strong cultivator or absurdly determined and at least somewhat lucky. The trek alone demanded respect, not even including the forest with numerous naturally-occurring confusion formations, innumerable venomous, sentient plants, and monstrous animals. The so-called Artat Mountains, and by proxy the Valley of Six Streams, were hazard zones and treasure troves in equal measure, completely uncivilized save for the Fourth Inheriting Branch.
Clearly, things had changed since those notes had been taken, as they met her as if she were there to directly attack their sect. The Branch’s Elder, one Archibald Branstein, came out to face her personally, declaring that he was a direct descendant of the Great Founder, Lord Branstein, and that a pretender to the mantle of the disfavored branch would not take a step into his courtyard so long as a single member of his branch sect lived. They remained hostile despite her making it abundantly clear that she had no ill intent towards them and that her sect made no claim of being Black Horses or being affiliated with the Root Branch.
“At least answer me this, then - how come the last Elder of the Willowdale Black Horse Sect had your branch marked in his records as welcoming and respectful to any who managed to find you?”
“My father’s foolish openness very nearly led to our sect’s downfall, it is not a mistake I will make! I will strike you down here and now, you who would so brazenly invade our territory!”
Archibald, alongside some two dozen other sect members, activated a supposedly impenetrable defensive formation. It was all rather impressive, from the meticulously synchronized breathing and movements, to the unified flaring of each participant’s aura. Firstly, each supporting participant’s sword flew out, forming a perimeter around the sect grounds. Giant, ghostly versions of themselves took form, creating an auratic wall as an additional layer on top of the sect’s permanent barrier.
As Archibald so readily made apparent in his exclamations, the uncreatively named Ghost Sword Wall was a secondary aspect of the formation; it mainly allowed him to puppeteer dozens of swords at once and amplified his own Armament Aura to such a degree that he could wield each sword as if it was the only one under his control.
Perfectly content to accept this offering of violence, Zelsys engaged the man, pushing herself to produce as many Fang Rippers as possible. When it inevitably and rather quickly became obvious that her Rippers couldn’t match a whole sect’s dedicated entrenchment formation on their own terms, she let her Fang Rippers fall apart, baiting Archibald into attack. She formed Carnifex into a many-segmented spiral around herself, and when Archibald’s many flying swords fell upon her, she uncoiled the spiral with great violence, scattering them all about. Into the ground, the trees, the canyon walls. Several unfortunate trees in the vicinity were torn down, and a cloud of dust and deris obscured her position, only for a machine-gun deluge of lightning-beads to come zipping out from within, peppering the Ghost Sword Wall.
PREDATION SIGN
AN INDISCRIMINATE ACT OF HYPERVIOLENCE
BUTCHERING ART: UNCOILING SCOLOPENDRA
Three swords got through.
Two struck her, one of which inflicted a grazing wound to her side as it swerved in an attempt to compensate with her dodging. This was in spite of her having used Skin of Iron, thanks to the sword being absurdly sharp and sheathed in powerful swordlight to boot.
One got a direct hit. It would have gone through the right side of her chest, only, she caught it before it could even reach her ribcage and tore it out. The sword was very pretty, with a needle-like quality without any distinct guard or handle, and a similarly wicked point. She managed to make out one of the disciples calling out: “The Flying Needle…!”
Zelsys hadn’t at any point gone out of her way to destroy any of the formation’s swords… Until this one. She felt it trying to tear itself out of her grasp as Archibald pulled back all his swords, blood running from his nose, eyes, and mouth alike from the exertion. Zel simply let go of Carnifex, gathering a vast charge such that the air around her turned into a little storm and bolts of lightning struck down the small handful of blades that were sent her way in an attempt to exploit her apparent lack of defense.
There was a weak point in the Ghost Sword Wall. Well, there were several, by virtue of its design, but her instincts drew her to a particular point. She forced her own power on the Flying Needle Sword, forcibly pushing the First Thundergod into the blade until Archibald’s influence over it vanished. Then, cracking and resonating just as many blades had before it, the Flying Needle was whipped with a supersonic crack into the Ghost Sword Wall. It tore straight through the construct and passed unimpeded through the permanent barrier underneath, with one of the supporting disciples grimacing in pain as the backlash made blood dribble from his nose.
