Chapter 621: Goals [Bonus - ]

Chapter 621: Goals [Bonus Chapter]

Her left hand snapped forward with her fingers coated in a dense diamond-hard shadow.

She drove her bare fingertips straight through the base of the creature’s skull, severing its central nervous conduit in a fraction of a second.

SPLAT!

Before the dying beast could even begin to plummet, Tasmin used its collapsing spine as another launch platform.

BOOM!

She leaped upward, her chains singing through the air and what followed was something that could simply be defined as a... slaughter.

Tasmin danced across the falling flock with terrifying weightless elegance.

She stepped from shadow to shadow, from falling wing to falling horn with her daggers carving clean crescents of destruction through the sky.

SHRIT! CRUNCH! SPLAT!

A Skystriker had its wings sheared from its ribs by a spinning chain... another had its chest cavity blown open by a concentrated blast of dark fire and a third was decapitated before it could turn its head.

Every time she killed, the shadows beneath her boots solidified, creating an ascending staircase of lightless stone that allowed her to climb higher and higher into the storm clouds.

THUMP!

High above the burning towers of Sector Two, at seven thousand feet of elevation, Tasmin reached the apex of her climb.

Her Shadow Heart throbbed violently against her ribs.

’Now,’ she thought, her eyes flashing with pure obsidian fire. ’Let us see the true reach of the blade.’

She crossed her arms over her chest with the thirty-meter tungsten chains pulling taut.

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The shadows radiating from her daggers coalesced into two colossal, sixty-foot-wide scythe-blades of pure concentrated mana that crackled with black and purple lightning.

Tasmin uncrossed her arms, driving both colossal blades downward in a sweeping scissor-like execution arc.

SHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!

The sky tore open as the two massive shadow-blades cleaved through the entire descending formation of forty Skystrikers in a single horizontal stroke.

The beasts weren’t merely cut... their physical mass, their souls, and their corrupted lightning were severed at the molecular level, disintegrating into a colossal drifting cloud of black ash that rained down over the city.

"Hah... Hehehe..." Tasmin exhaled with the black mist flowing smoothly back into the pores of her skin, replenishing her core with refined essence. "I think I got up another stage."

She looked down through the falling ash.

A massive four-winged alpha-beast was plummeting toward a residential terrace four thousand feet below, where several families were trapped on an open balcony.

SWOOSH!

Tasmin dove.

She landed directly upon the alpha-beast’s neck with her knees locking around its armored crest.

Her hands thrust forward with dark ribbons of solidified shadow shooting from her palms, wrapping tightly around the beast’s serrated snout and jaws like a set of impenetrable agonizing reins.

"Come on!"

YANK!

With a brutal merciless wrench of her arms, Tasmin forcibly hauled the monster’s head upward, overriding its flight muscles and steering the shrieking abomination like a winged war-chariot as she banked sharply toward the south.

She looked down at the burning city spreading across the horizon.

’Level up notifications are probably cascading through my Lord’s status,’ Tasmin thought, a cold satisfaction settling into her chest as she felt her physical attributes ticking upward with every beast she purged. ’The power of these creatures... the volume of spiritual essence...’

If she maintained this pace... if she continued carving through the vanguard of the breach, she would advance further in three hours than she could in an entire month of standard territory defense!

She looked down toward the distant streets where Brida was currently smashing through rubble with an auburn speck leaving a trail of collapsed rooftops in her wake sounding loud and clumsy and somehow always exactly where the worst of it was.

A faint grudging smirk touched Tasmin’s lips.

’Thank you, you oversized brute,’ Tasmin thought dryly. ’You actually gave me the high ground.’

Down on the shattered asphalt of the Sector Two intersection.

Brida stood with her feet planted wide with her massive hands resting on the pommel of her titan-cleaver as her head tilted back as she squinted up into the smoky sky.

She watched the distant microscopic flashes of black and purple lightning tearing through the clouds four thousand feet above.

"Hm."

Brida watched the massive shockwaves parting the smoke, followed by the majestic sight of an alpha-beast being wrestled into submission and steered like a common horse.

Brida let out a slow heavy whistle through her teeth.

"Damn," Brida muttered to herself, her voice quiet for once and lacking any of its usual boisterous thunder. "Tas really did get stronger, didn’t she?"

She lowered her gaze, staring down at her own calloused palms.

Despite the constant teasing, despite the endless, petty bickering over rations, library books, and mining rights... Brida wasn’t stupid.

She was simple, yes.

She preferred a straight punch to an intricate mathematical formula, and she would rather carry an entire iron ore cart on her back than spend twenty minutes balancing a ledger with Aeli but she had the sharp instinctual intuition of a born warrior.

She knew Tasmin was driven by something profound.

Brida didn’t know the exact details of the Shadow Commander’s past as she didn’t pry into the quiet dark silences that sometimes settled over Tasmin when she looked out over the northern ridges of Blessed Land but she knew that whatever goal burned inside Tasmin’s chest, it was an all-consuming fire that pushed the woman to train until her muscles tore and her shadow bled.

Brida swallowed hard with a rare dry knot forming in the back of her throat.

"I think..." Brida whispered, her voice barely carrying over the wind, "...if we fought ten times... full-on, to the death, no holding back... Tasmin would probably kill me six times out of ten."

The thought sat heavy in her chest.

It didn’t make her angry and it didn’t breed resentment since Brida wasn’t the jealous type.

She loved her fellow champions with the fierce protective loyalty of a big sister who would take an arrow through the neck to keep them breathing.

’So what about me?’ Brida wondered, her fingers tightening around the cold grip of the Titan’s Cleaver. ’What is my goal?’

Everybody in Blessed Land seemed to have a grand poetic motivation.

Rowenna wanted to unravel the fundamental mystery of runes and become a God of Runes one day...

Aeliana simply wanted to be the best secretary that she could be and write the best smut books that the Sovereign Realm had ever seen.

Tasmin... Now Brida wasn’t so sure about that one however she did know that Vala wanted to master the five elements and prove herself worthy of being Lord Silas’s sword-wife.

’And what about Brida?’ she asked herself, looking down at the massive dark slate armor strapped across her chest.

Her initial goal had been remarkably straightforward... She wanted to be Lord Silas’s most powerful soldier.

She wanted to be the immovable, unbreakable wall that kept the monsters from touching his boots.

That drive had carried her far...

’But is that enough?’ she thought, letting out a deep rumbling sigh that shook her breastplate. ’To just be a soldier? Just a wall of meat that takes hits until the battle ends?’

...She wanted more.

She wanted a fire inside her chest that burned as fiercely as the one driving Tasmin through the clouds and she wanted a reason to become so terrifyingly strong that not even the ancient gods could lay a finger on what she loved.

THWIP!

A familiar whistling sound cut through the air thirty yards above and Brida snapped her head up.

Perched upon the stone parapet of a four-story administration building overlooking the intersection was a slender agile figure draped in a weathered traveler’s cloak of forest green.

Her long honey-blonde hair was tied back in a high ponytail that whipped in the desert wind as she wore fitted leather bracers reinforced with thin strips of brass, and resting in her left hand was an elegant recurved longbow carved from heartwood.

It was Fenna...

The former D-Rank Shieldmaiden-Archer, now standing proudly as an S-Rank sniper whose attacks could pierce a fly’s wing through three stone walls, was crouched on the parapet.

Her sharp eyes were calculating everything like a predator that was hunting its prey.

THUUUUM!

Brida bent her massive knees and leaped.

The street cracked beneath her, and in a single effortless bound, she landed upon the four-story parapet right beside the archer.

"Fenna!" Brida boomed, dusting off her cleaver.

Fenna didn’t jump, hell she didn’t even look up from her sights.

...She had already calculated Brida’s trajectory the moment the titan bent her knees.

"Brida," Fenna replied, unbothered by the giant woman looming over her. "You made quite a mess of the intersection... Boss told us to minimize structural damage where possible."

"Bah! Those buildings were already half-cracked!" Brida waved her hand dismissively.

She planted her weapon against the stone, leaning forward with an uncharacteristically serious expression. "Listen, Fenna. You hold the fort over here for a minute and cover the bunker entrance down below."

Fenna blinked, finally lowering her bow by an inch, tilting her head with mild curiosity. "Hold the fort? Where are you going?"

"I’m going on a walk," Brida grunted, turning her massive back to the parapet. "I need to find a reason to get stronger."

Fenna stared at her, her blonde eyebrows drawing together in complete utter bafflement.

"A... a reason to get stronger? Right now? In the middle of an active breach?!"

"Yeah!" Brida barked over her shoulder, already stepping onto the edge of the roof. "A girl’s gotta have priorities, Fenna! Watch my back!"

WHOOSH!

Before Fenna could utter another word of protest, Brida launched herself forward.

She simply hurled her massive, plate-armored bulk across the rooftops of Sector Two like a two-legged siege engine, jumping from building to building with terrifying earth-shaking velocity.

Fenna stood alone on the parapet, looking at the receding auburn hair of the titan, and let out an exhausted affectionate sigh.

"Idiot," Fenna muttered fondly, shaking her head. "She’s going to drive Boss insane one of these days."

Fenna’s lips twitched.

’I want to claim that reward for myself too.’

She raised her longbow with her fingers smoothly nocking three mana-tipped arrows to the string simultaneously.

TWANG-TWANG-TWANG!

Three blinding streaks of golden light whistled through the smoke, perfectly piercing the eyes of three trench-crawlers attempting to breach the alleyway below.

"Maintain the line!" Fenna yelled down to the fleeing citizens in the street. "Keep your heads down and proceed into the shelter! The archers of Blessed Land have the perimeter!"

CRASH! BOOM! CRUNCH!

Brida bounded across the city like a runaway boulder.

Every time her heavy boots slammed into a rooftop, terracotta tiles shattered, concrete parapets cracked, and the buildings groaned under the output of her travel.

SPLAT!

A Tier 2 gargoyle lunged at her from an ornamental spire but Brida didn’t even break stride, simply smashing her elbow through its stone-armored chest as she passed, turning the creature into gravel before leaping across an eighty-foot boulevard.

’What the hell should my goal be?!’ Brida grumbled internally with her brow knotting tighter with every rooftop she cleared. ’Think, Brida, think! You’ve got a head on your shoulders, use it for once!’

It had to be related to Lord Silas... That was non-negotiable.

Her entire existence, her strength, her evolution, her armor, the cleaver in her hands had been gifted to her by the man who had pulled her card from the ether and treated her like an irreplaceable treasure.

’Should I aim to be his personal warrior? The one who guards his bedroom door?’ she wondered.

’No... Tasmin already hides in his floorboards like a creeping ghost, and Aeliana watches him from the library with that ridiculous telescope of hers she found there... That market is completely saturated.’

’Should I aim to learn runes with Rowenna? Forge weapons for his army like Thora?’

She immediately shook her head, a cold shiver running through her massive shoulders.

’Hell no. The last time I touched one of Rowenna’s delicate runic styluses, I snapped it in half like a dried twig, and the woman burst into tears and hid away from me for three days. I’m built for breaking things, not drawing pretty squiggles...’

STOMP!

She landed upon the roof of a three-story residential apartment complex overlooking an open circular plaza.

SCREEECH!

A sharp terrified scream cut through the rumble of the falling city and Brida froze.

Her round amber eyes snapped downward toward the center of the courtyard.

There, cornered against the iron gate of a dried-up ornamental fountain, was a monster.