Lightning crackled through Stella's ethereal spirit roots, electrifying everything about her.
Her mind felt free-flowing as she received and processed information instantly. Explosive power filled every muscle, making her feel light on her feet, as if her punches could shatter anything—even Stormglass armor.
But her insides also burned. While she could control it because of her dao knowledge, the lightning was foreign Qi belonging to another Monarch. She hadn't stolen Korrath's Qi for herself, she was merely borrowing it.
What a nice guy to lend me all of this power for free, Stella thought, rolling her shoulders. It would be rude not to return it.
Sensing her bloodlust, Korrath took up a defensive stance and raised his remaining arm. "Come," he rasped. "I can't beat you to death unless you come closer."
"I didn't need an invitation," Stella smirked and leaned forward. Lightning ignited her steps, shattering the glass beneath her. She rocketed forward and arrived before Korrath in the blink of an eye with her electrified daggers raised in a reverse grip above her head like the fangs of a great beast.
Korrath let out an audible gasp of surprise at her lightning speed and raised his arm to block. A sacrifice that Stella willingly accepted as she collapsed her domain to zero around her and brought her daggers down with all her might. They pierced Korrath's Stormglass armor, and the storm contained within erupted outward in an explosion of obsidian glass.
Stella grinned wildly as she twisted her daggers, tearing Korrath's arm further apart. She then yanked them free and was about to go for more when the world seemed to slow down to a crawl, and her attention snapped to her left as she noticed movement. Korrath was trying to strike her with his ruined left arm. It seemed like a vain attempt until Stella noticed drops of blood flicking toward her.
It was nothing but instinct, but she felt like she needed to avoid the blood at all costs. Since her domain had collapsed to allow her attack to land, she was forced to retreat. Her leg blurred as she kicked Korrath with all the lightning gathered in her leg, shattering his chest plate and sending them both flying off in opposite directions. Korrath slammed into the arena's wall behind him, while Stella managed to stop herself more gracefully.
"What is up with your blood?" Stella called out, her voice echoing through the colosseum.
A dark chuckle answered as Korrath heaved himself free from the crater in the wall.
"Your instincts are sharp, Stella," he said, shaking his head.
Stella's eyes narrowed. "So there is something wrong with it."
Korrath now had two ruined arms and was bleeding from the wound on his chest, but the blood didn't react to the air or eat through the floor like Ash's would. It appeared utterly ordinary, but Stella just couldn't shake her fear of it.
"I'll admit you are strong, Stella," Korrath rasped. "But I'm not done yet—"
A crack resounded through the glass arena, and Stella's gaze whipped to the ceiling. A fissure tore open, and shards of glass rained down in a stream toward Korrath. Instead of burying him, the shards of glass condensed around him in a vortex that rapidly grew in size to encompass half the arena. More fissures appeared on the ceiling and walls, feeding more shards into the storm.
Korrath's raspy laughter filled the space as he raised his ruined arms, and streams of blood fed into the storm, dyeing the glass shards red.
Because of the All-Seeing Fruit, Stella could see the flow of Qi. To her, the storm looked like a swirling deathtrap no different from a domain. If she were to fight inside, she would be at a significant disadvantage, not to mention the blood added into the mix.
He's tearing down his World Domain to create a more typical domain. If he keeps this up, his Inner World will collapse, Stella realized and tightened her jaw. The question is if I can hold out long enough.
Korrath began to advance toward her one step at a time, bringing the swirling storm with him, which was only growing in size as the arena continued to tear itself apart.
I need to buy some time, Stella concluded, her mind racing as the swirling storm approached. Going into the storm is a bad idea, but any usual attacks I throw will be eaten by the mass of Storm Qi he has surrounding him.
The storm served as a perfect offense and defense. Its only downside for Korrath was its immense cost. His Inner World, the arena he had built for his love of battle, was being sacrificed to feed it.
Stella's eyes darted around, looking for a solution. Her focus returned to the eye of the storm, Korrath, and she had an idea. Her spatial rings flashed, and a dozen swords manifested from silver light around her. They were all beautiful runic weapons that would fit as heirlooms for noble families, but to Stella, they were nothing but tools. She had used her vast wealth to have them mass-produced for this purpose.
To extend the reach and lethality of the aether. Because, unlike other affinities, the aether's strength came from clever applications rather than raw destructive force.
Korrath's arena taught me something, she thought, watching the Stormglass Monarch. Lightning isn't terrifying because of the damage it can inflict. It's terrifying because of how far it travels in an instant. Her eyes narrowed. So what happens if I make a sword do the same?
She peeled her domain away from her own skin. It was a cold, naked feeling as reality's weight pressed down on her, and she felt exposed without the bubbles' protection. The storm was fast approaching, so she was only going to get one shot at this before having to call her domain back.
This had better work. Stella imparted her peeled-off domain onto a single floating sword, and the runes along its surface blazed with otherworldly light. Instead of making her domain manifest as a bubble around the sword to protect it, she stretched it as thinly as possible into a tunnel, aimed right at the slowly approaching Monarch. To her relief, it worked. A tunnel that covered an immense distance in the aether lay between her sword and Korrath.
Now for the expensive part.
Stella laid a finger against the pommel and fed her Qi to the blade.
In the aether, the sword flew. It shrieked down the aetherial corridor like a shooting star, trailing a wake that set the aether rippling. In reality, it hung lazily in the air before her, drifting slightly, wobbling on its axis, pointed in Korrath's general direction.
The Monarch looked at the floating sword. Then at her.
"Even your sword quivers at my approach," Korrath spread his ruined arms, offering her his cracked chest. "Don't be scared. Come and face me!"
Oh, don't worry. I'm coming, Stella thought, feeling her Soul Cosmos gutter as the technique drank a full tenth of what she had left. If this works, you're about to be in a world of pain.
She stopped feeding the corridor and let it collapse.
Thousands of miles ceased to exist in a heartbeat. The sword was pulled back into reality, and all the momentum and Qi it had been fed had nowhere to go but forward. The sword didn't shoot forward like an arrow—it all but teleported even to Stella's electrified senses.
Korrath didn't stand a chance. A hole appeared through his chest, and the wall behind him took the rest. The sword buried itself to the crossguard in the arena's glass, and a web of cracks exploded outward from the impact. Only then did the sound of the blade's journey catch up. Reality screamed, torn apart by an aetherial blade.
"What," Korrath rasped as he stared down at his mangled insides, "was that?!"
Stella looked through the hole in his chest and now realized that Korrath was no longer human. He had forfeited his flesh for Stormglass and his bones for runic silver. She staggered and almost dropped to one knee before catching herself. The demand on her reserves to unleash such a technique had been anything but light, and the technique had too many flaws. It was terribly telegraphed if someone knew what she was capable of, and she was unable to aim it.
If Korrath hadn't been so arrogant, he could have dodged it.
"Maybe I would tell you if you hadn't lied to me about your World Domain having no advantages," Stella said while trying to hide her exhaustion. She needed to end this battle, and fast.
I don't have enough reserves to unleash an attack like that again, nor can I recklessly charge in and fight him. That leaves me with one choice.
She sat down and crossed her legs. Expanding her domain once more to its maximum of a meter, she prepared herself to weather the storm.
"After landing a hit like that, you're giving up?" Korrath rasped and staggered forward. The storm quickly eclipsed Stella, and she was drowned in a whirlwind of bloody glass shards and Storm Qi that would tear lesser cultivators apart.
But none of it got close to Stella. The moment the shards of glass hit her bubble, they came to an abrupt stop and began to gather, encasing her in an egg of bloody glass. Perhaps noticing his efforts weren't working, Korrath lumbered closer and stood over Stella.
"Well, it looks like we have a bit of a stalemate," he mused. "To strike me, you have to collapse that bubble around you. But if you do that, you will be sliced to pieces by my storm."
"I don't have to do anything," Stella assured him. "Your storm will never reach me, nor will your fists."
"While that is true, I know something that can," Korrath said, and lightning crackled across his armor.
Stella gritted her teeth. "Do your worst."
Korrath took that to heart, and lightning erupted from his eyes, tore through her aether bubble and struck her. White-hot pain spiked through her body. She threw her head back and screamed in pain.
Her Ruler bloodline howled.
It flooded her veins with something older than Qi, the ancient arrogance of the Crestfallen line that could not, would not, abide defeat. Her position was threatened. Her pride was on the floor. The bloodline took the foreign lightning in and dominated it into submission. Slowly, the burning pain receded. Only by a little, but it was enough for Stella to stop screaming and focus on venting the invading lightning into the aether.
"Come on, Korrath," she taunted through clenched teeth. "Is that all you've got?"
Korrath upped the output, sending her into a world of pain again.
But this was all part of Stella's plan.
During their battle, she had figured out that Lightning Qi was the greatest drain on Korrath's reserves by tracking how his spiritual pressure dropped with each attack via the All-Seeing Fruit. His World Domain was already in a rapid state of collapse, so he didn't have the Qi to expend carelessly on lightning.
Torturous seconds that felt like hours crawled by as Stella weathered Korrath's wrath while keeping his storm at bay. Her hair and skin burned off in charred flakes, her body felt like it was on fire from within, but still, she pressed on, even as her body broke down.
"You're a monster," Korrath rasped, and the lightning abruptly stopped. He staggered back, the glass fissuring underneath him, and the storm lost its ferocity. His World Domain was on its last breath. "How can you survive that?!"
"Because," Stella said, her voice hoarse to her own ears, "I'm a Crestfallen."
She snapped her fingers, and the eleven remaining swords that had hung beyond the reach of the storm until now crashed down upon Korrath. The Monarch had no strength left to block, so the swords skewered his Stormglass armor and brought him to his knees.
The moment he fell, the world around them shattered.
In the blink of an eye, they were back in the corridor where the arrogant and imposing Korrath had first cast Stormglass Severance. The man who had towered over her was now on his knees with a dozen swords spiking out of his back. Blood poured from his wounds, pooling beneath him, and Stella could tell he was near death.
Yet, before she could finish him, a terrible pain consumed her. It was like pouring spirit wine on an open wound, but for her entire body. It was somehow more agonizing than being cooked alive by lightning.
"Stasis."
The voice came from behind her, oddly familiar, and the pain was suddenly gone. In fact, it felt like time itself had frozen as she was caught mid-scream and unable to breathe in or out.
Is this time Qi?! Stella panicked. It was an affinity that was supposed to exist only in legends, not in reality.
"Silly girl." A person she knew all too well slipped in front of her view. "You can't destroy your physical body and expect to survive in reality as nothing but an aetherial being wearing some charred flesh."
It was the Sin of Sloth, also known as the Still One.
He shook his head. "I know I warned you about inaction, but this is too far. To die so young would be a shame, and the Yearning One has had her eyes on this one for a while," he gestured to the dying Korrath. "So I will be taking him with me."
The Still One yawned as he grabbed Korrath by the neck and began dragging him away. "Oh, one last thing, Stella," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "Besides the Hollowed One, who has already begun his feasting, the rest of us plan to stay out of your way. At least until the Era of Ascension is complete. After all, ascension was our original goal before the heavens struck us down."
He waved at her dismissively and yawned again. "Until next time," he turned to leave. Having said his piece, the Still One leisurely dragged the dying Korrath, who hadn't said a word as if he were a corpse, down the corridor and vanished from view.
Time resumed, and Stella screamed.
"Stella?!" Ashlock's voice rang in her mind. Khaos and two other void Ents appeared around her in an instant.
The doors behind her crashed open, and Diana rushed to her side.
She couldn't hear anything they were saying, as the pain was all-consuming. Reality ate away at her, and she now understood why Maple was so hesitant to go all out.
Reminding reality that you weren't supposed to exist was a harrowing experience.
[Author Note]
Hello! I will be going to LitRPG Con in Denver next week so there will be no chapters until Monday 13th. I had planned to finish book 10 by today and take the after book break during next week. But it's going to take a few more chapters to get there, so I'll take the break now, and then have no break between book 10 and 11!
Thank you for your continued support and hope to see some of you in Denver :)