The Path of Ascension Chapter 525

Chapter 525

Aster was mildly surprised to find herself enjoying their jaunt through the Federation’s heartlands while they crushed any piecemeal resistance under foot. It wasn’t the novelty of traveling with an Ascender team that wasn’t Zack and Allie that stood out to her, so much as it was fighting with two other backline fighters.

Krodag was a pure support, while Brian waffled between offence and defence exactly like her. Being able to see not only their own dynamic between the two of them, themselves and their frontliners, and how they interacted and incorporated her was mildly eye opening.

She’d expected to step into Brian’s defensive role while he focused purely on the offensive. She’d seen hints of what he could do with his legions of undead, and an army on demand had a lot of uses during a war. However, with her arrival he’d stepped further into the backline, where he threw curses and assisted the other two while letting her take the offensive when she wanted.

At first, she believed he wanted to keep a low profile, but she later realized it had more to do with how Brian and Krodag typically worked. One of them pushed their teammates forward while the other tripped up their enemies.

While Krodag belted out spell laden obscenities to keep the frontline fighters in perfect condition, Brian used both his curses and undead to prevent their enemies from rallying or coordinating. With Aster there to cover the middle, they polarized farther than usual.

It was also in those fights that Aster realized she didn’t need to copy either of their styles, because their roles on their team weren't hers.

Both teams were strong in elite fights, but they differed when it came to numbers. Matt and Liz had zero problems taking care of themselves against armies, where On The Last Line struggled.

Moe could take out any single opposition if he was fully buffed, and the same thing could be said about Ellen, who easily took down her opponents, but pack tactics had long been known to be the best counter to the Clans team.

Aster understood why after working with them for over a year as they smashed vital systems on their way to the Federation’s capital. It was the same reason working together made such a large difference. Where On The Last Line might get slowed by a coordinated and well disciplined army, even she could take out an army of Tier 35’s with her Spirit Space, to say nothing about Matt or Liz.

Not that things remained fun or easy for long.

After they hit the regional capital world and stole a vault, the Federation withdrew further, abandoning secondary locations to give better coverage to the more important ones. They defended critical shipyards that made specialty ships, consumable production hubs, their capital worlds, and to Aster's chagrin, their Dankor base.

Their attempts at obfuscation either hadn’t worked or was seen through, but they hadn’t needed it too. They kept careful track as the Federation concentrated a number of elites there, along with several armies that had originally been headed to the frontlines.

Aster was just glad that she knew Manny was somewhere near them as they headed in a beeline for the Federation Capital. Their Dankor base was connected directly to the Great Power's heart the same way as all the Tier 50s surrounded themselves with their most important resources. And while some Tier 50s might risk their Ascenders getting close to a foreign Tier 50, she trusted the Emperor’s desire to protect Matt enough to know he was following along their journey.

Which was why it was so funny to hear Krodag parallel her own thoughts as they sat on the bridge. The dwarf casually emptied his sixth bottle of the hour before he smacked his lips and asked, “Ahhhh, do you think Aoife is watching over us too, Brian? I can feel it in me bones!”

Perfectly sober, he lulled his head in Aster’s direction and faux whispered, “She likes me. Like, she likes me – likes me. But who can blame her, I’m too much dwarf to resist.”

Aster wasn’t the only one to raise an eyebrow as everyone in their small private area of the bridge got distracted by the ballsy comment.

“Last we talked, she called you the largest waste of potential she’d ever seen in her life.” Moe gently reminded the other dwarf, who nodded contently at the scathing comment.

“Aye, that she did. She sees to the quick of it, she sees the heart of the matter. SHE SEES MY HEART!” Krodag clutched at his chest, even as he bellowed at a perfectly normal volume. “That’s how I know she’s watching over us, here and now, in our final moment of glory in the war Tiers. Does it not make sense? Can you not sense it? The love in the air?”

Aster wanted to clap at the show, but settled for pulling out a festive collective of ice cream for everyone as he launched into a song in excellent Empire Common before he switched midway into a newer, Dwarvish rendition of the same song.

It was all quite nice until Ellen finished her serving of banana seaweed crumble and pointed out, “You know, you’d better hope you are wrong about her following us in here.” 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Krodag looked genuinely confused as he asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean if she heard that song and dance, she might come down and kick your ass. She might even kill you. I don’t think there are any rules about a Tier 50 killing their own Legend."

When eyes turned to Matt as the other ‘know it all’, he helpfully added, “There’s nothing that I can find on the publicly known treaties and it did happen once before. Safe to say she’s allowed to invert you. Or maybe you're right, and she was here watching over us and saw your show, but does actually like you, which is why she didn’t pthhh you.”

Krodag glanced at the ceiling, as if he’d ever see the blow coming, at Matt’s raspberry. Liz had to cover her mouth at the dwarf’s reaction, but Aster was more honest with herself and laughed her heart out behind a polite illusion.

The quartet were strange, but she enjoyed the energy they brought with them. A trait that was never more on display then when they reached the Federation’s Capital.

As they approached, their sensors went haywire as they picked up two people who’d stopped bothering to hide themselves right outside the Tier 46 world node.

Krodag nearly tossed a bottle on the floor before the death glare from Matt made him keep hold of the container at the last moment. “Oh, come on, so she didn’t hear my serenade? That’s bollocks! I rehearsed for minutes in my mind! Minutes, I tell you!”

No one else was able to respond before they received a message from Manny. “The three of us are here to act as witnesses, not to interfere in the fighting.”

Aster didn’t bother trying to figure out who the third Tier 50 was. If they didn’t want to be identified, she’d never be able to do more than randomly guess.

Doing exactly that, she put her mental money on Tobias. He made a good third party who both hated the Federation and didn’t want to see the Empire gain any advantages, which made him as neutral as feasible.

It also gave Aster an idea for their return trip. They’d need to drop off their dwarven guests, but she didn’t know why it wouldn’t work. Putting that thought in the back of the cooler, she refocused on their fight as Liz, Ellen, Matt, and Brian fell into a familiar debate about the merits of hitting the capital first to remove them as potential reinforcements, or going straight for the Dankor system.

Chances were that no matter which they hit, the Federation would move to collapse their forces in an effort to push them out, rather than letting them pick off their pinnacle elites. It was a point no one could refute, and it was the deciding factor that led them to go after the Dankor base, which would have weaker defenses than a Tier 50’s seat of power.

Aster felt things were way simpler than all of that, but agreed with the outcome no matter how they got there.

“I can stick the ship and the crew inside this little guy here for twelve hours.” Brian offered as he pulled the frog out of his voluminous sleeve.

No one else saw any reason to complain, but when they spread word to the crews, the dwarven contingent uniformly looked spooked.

Rather than be surprised, Brian shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, “Oh, don’t complain! I added the lights like you whiners asked for. It's a perfectly valid use for Volume Frogs. Look it up in the history books I drafted. It said so right on the plaque this guy was mounted on. You guys are just getting in your own heads. It's twelve hours max. I’ve never pushed that timer by even a second!”

When everyone had been tucked away, he turned to the three of them and winced his skeletal face. “They are a hundred percent correct in it being haunted. When I revived the body, you have to remember it was preserved as a decoration, not for necromancy. The specimen wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was in good shape given how old it was and where it was stored. So while I did my best, the frog came with some… well let’s call them side effects.”

Brian only received glares from Liz and Matt, and he quickly continued as he held up his hands and explained. “Rather than a purely enlarged space, which the frogs were known for, it is filled with spooky purple mist that passes through physical non-living material with a tiny bit of psychosis if exposed too long. Took forever to find a light source that dispelled that, but it works! Now it's just about keeping people inside calm so they don’t spook themselves.”

Matt looked close to throttling Brian, but his voice was still calm as he asked, “So why did you put our people inside the nightmare toad if it’s cursed?”

“In my testing on rats there were never any negative side effects if they stayed inside for less than a day. I keep it limited to half of that just in case. Besides, animals only started to experience unfixable side effects like turning into a zombie after being left inside for a week or two. Twelve hours is nothing. This is the best thing I’ve got, so unless someone has something better, this is the only way we won’t have to worry about the ship as we go into the best fight of the war. Come on guys, I’ve been saving this trick for a moment just like now! I can’t not use it where it’s maximally effective! Do either of you really want to fight while defending the ship?”

Aster saw Matt soften slightly and added, “I was going to put them in my spirit space, but that would mean everyone is sitting on ice, along with the ship. That means hours running at a lower efficiency as we warm things up safely, ignoring the crew's discomfort about being frozen. I think this is the right call.”

She’d tried to create pockets of warmer regions in her spirit space so she could store friendlies easier, but that seemed anathema to her Tier 25 Talent. Together with Matt, Liz, and Zack, the three of them had gotten some fire-aspected areas to exist, but they’d still been flavoured by her Spirit Space. The fire had been a freezing flame, reminiscent of her Folded Reflection Concept Power that chilled things further rather than warming them.

She had enough control not to kill those she’d kept on ice, but avoiding the situation all together was better still.

Matt looked like he wanted to say something, but he stepped back as he conceded. None of them wanted to have to look over the ship and their crews during the upcoming fight, Brian wasn’t wrong about that in the slightest.

In fact, Aster had her own suggestion.

“Since they know we are here.” She pointed at the small, single man vessels that jumped in and out of real space every few seconds. “Why don’t we prepare our own disposable welcome wagon and give them something large to shoot at?”

The four Clans Ascenders looked confused, but Aster saw the acceptance she needed in Matt and Liz’s faces.

As she started to expand her spirit space in reality, she reached internally for one of the edges where she’d dropped a fortress before the war. Her Spirit Space naturally expanded as she grew her mana pool, but she’d long since maximized its growth thanks to her forum. With the sharing of information, she’d discovered that while the other typical methods people had were atrociously inefficient, they did work. She’d spent fortunes gathering the properly aspected materials, aspected essence, and bloodline energy to make her Spirit Space as large as possible.

Because one thing above all others had become clear from her forum, size was directly correlated to strength and durability.

She’d also found the trick on how to keep completely foreign items inside a Spirit Space without rejection. Acclimating items wasn’t hard, but it was time consuming. Not that she’d ever expected to take the fortress home after she used it.

Meant for only five to twenty people to defend, it used ice adjacent materials, which made growing and doubling up on its armor easy for her and Matt.

Brian didn’t need to be told twice, and from out of his sleeve a swarm of thumb sized birds flocked out and nestled into the cracks. Inside their undead beaks, she felt them start to create a type of necromantic ice.

Aster instinctively wanted to withdraw from the sickly perversion of her core concept, but she was far too disciplined to do so. Instead, she inspected it like she would any other wayward fox she encountered. She was well past her childish days of biting fire foxes’ tails, she could now debate them with her words like a proper lady, and only resorted to biting if she lost.

She treated the new ice the same way as befit her position of the Princess of Frozen Stars. That Courtly Warfare title and a lifetime of stretching what ice meant to her gave her enough experience she was able to get a good sense of the… oddity.

It was still very much ice, but its sub-aspects made it wonky. Death and decay were seamlessly interwoven throughout the mana structure, having replaced portions without affecting the mana aspect’s stability. None of it should have worked according to what she knew about ice and ice mana, but she was only passingly familiar with any necromancy, let alone someone as deep in the field as Brian.

Aster also knew after that single glance that she didn’t want anything like that for her space ice. It was wrong for her, but she still noted down the insights it provided. Her gut told her it wasn’t going to be that easy to make her space ice, but every piece of information helped.

She just couldn’t help the ever growing feeling that she should just go ahead and create her Aspect. It wasn’t logical, but the idea had begun nagging her over the last decade, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that feeling was one she needed to explore. She wasn’t so dumb as to risk her Domain shattering by forming her Aspect without some form of help, but she still couldn’t dismiss the notion that was exactly what she needed to do.

The idea didn’t make any more sense the dozenth time she had it, and she shoved it down like all the others.

Instead, she glanced at another flat area of her Spirit Space that housed a few hundred frozen cultivators. She’d dropped her latest round of prisoners to an Empire prisoner hub before they slipped the leash, but she was already collecting another batch and wanted to familiarize herself with the clear spaces so that she could better stack her guests.

A few moved snowbanks later, and she was ready.

Even during a population war, Tier 35 elites were worth more alive than dead. She’d been diligent in her collecting on both war fronts, but her real focus was in the Collective’s elites.

In her investigation about her mana type, she’d had more than one Seeker point her into deep chaotic space, but despite bringing several trusted Seekers into chaotic space via Allie, they’d never been able to identify what or where to go, even with less distance to cover. She’d bounced around the stronger and more powerful Seekers, hoping one might be able to point her where she needed to go, but she’d given up when even they failed.

That was until the war with the Collective offered her an opportunity to get access to one of the generationally best Seeker’s Talents.

Aster hoped that if she could earn enough war score to make things truly painful, Manny could convince the old turtle that giving her this millennia's treasure box was easier than paying for all of his elites back the normal way. To make that pill easier to swallow for Manny, she’d been collecting Federation elites along their fights, so that he could recoup some of his potential losses out of them.

The moment the fortress was fully reinforced, they jumped into real space, where they immediately came under a heavy bombardment of cannon fire. Dozens of ships, layers of mines, and spells from what felt like every cultivator in the system smashed into their icy prison the instant they appeared in the Dankor system.

Aster continuously fused the ice back together as the fortress rocked back and forth under the bombardment, but between her ice, Matt’s [Bulwark]s, Krodag’s shields, and Brian’s wards, they kept up enough defensive layers to manage.

Moe started laughing, which quickly brought the rest of his team down with him.

The dwarf whooped as he threw himself out of the fortress before the barrage reintensified. “I’ll go be a distraction!”

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Liz left one of her phoenix bodies behind perched on Aster’s shoulder like usual, but the rest of her slipped out with Matt and Ellen as they took advantage of the next lessening of impacts.

All three of them had prebuffed the frontliners, but Krodag didn’t sit idly by with no immediate targets. He stitched together three armor spells laden with curses and bad puns into a robust floating barrier around their fortress.

Brian seemed ready for the move as the undead birds that had survived the onslaught amongst the ice unleashed their own storm of ice-based attacks that passed through the shield as if it didn't exist.

Aster took a moment to focus on bringing her spirit space to bear, but it was unbelievably hard as layers upon layers of spatial stabilizers sought to prevent her from doing exactly that.

An interesting thing about a Spirit Space was that once it got even the tiniest foothold, it was almost impossible to stop its expansion. Its total size limited how far it could spread, but unlike a balloon that took up physical space, a Spirit Space overwrote and replaced, which meant traditional spatial stabilizers struggled to push out what was already there.

It took three attempts, but on the third she managed to push her spirit space from her body into the ice covered room around her. The temperature dropped as wind and ice started to whip around the three of them, but she kept the worst of the effects away from her fellow mages as they worked.

Not that Brian minded at all, being a mere controller of an undead body. In fact, he’d happily spent a few days exploring her Spirit Space none the worse for it, in contrast to Ellen, who tapped out after only a few hours inside. Krodag wasn’t so lucky, but Aster had given him a scarf she had made for exactly such an occasion.

As she spread her Spirit Space and with it her awareness outside the fortress, she finally got a true look at what the Federation had prepared for them at the Dankor system.

Five Tier 35 armies marbled with elites interspersed through their ranks to bolster the defences was an impressive commitment on its own, but she didn’t miss that one of them was a full legion of the Federation's runic bone soldiers. That Virgil had invested so much into an army to get them to reach Tier 35 was even more telling than her bringing them out to protect the Dankor moons.

The same could be said for the two accompanying teams of elites that were outwardly identical to the ones that hit Aiden.

She doubted they were quite at that level, given just how many total bone soldiers there were, but she also knew that with each death, they’d grow stronger. Thankfully, they had plenty of the Collective’s poison thanks to On The Last Line, and Matt could always break out his Meld. That last fact made the choice to use the soldiers against them questionable, but Aster was already planning for when that method no longer worked. She doubted they were any more ice proof than the rest of the Federation's elites.

She didn’t think Virgil or her generals were so dumb as to waste troops if there was zero chance for them to survive one move from Matt.

Three of those teams raced at their fortress, but they were careful to only enter her Spirit Space after activating flame body talismans. They were aura escape talismans without the movement component, and made it exceedingly difficult for her to absorb and freeze them.

She understood what they’d done the moment she saw it.

It was clever, and might have proved effective if she was alone in the backline like normal. However, she wasn’t alone, and their ice defense did little to stop the two lightning lizards Brian summoned and that Krodag had enhanced with platinum sparks. Every one of their deceptively small attacks blew through the soldiers' shields and armor as if they didn’t exist. They even managed to kill one of the attackers in the first few volleys.

Not to be outdone, she pushed her awareness out to the melee fighters and recast [Dispersing Squalls], [Afterimage], [Dampening Snowfall], [Grace of Wraith], [Winter’s Harvest] along with anything else she had in her arsenal.

No single spell lasted long with so many mages ready to dispel her area of effect working, but Aster was faster at rebuilding the skill structures in her spirit than they were to break them.

Not that she allowed herself to grow complacent. There were six pinnacle elite teams arrayed against them and twice that many peak. None of them had time to dawdle.

Not that Moe or Matt did.

Moe had raced out into the fight and engaged with the first group he’d encountered as if this fight was like any other on the frontline. They were normal soldiers only there to buy time, and they tried to keep their distance in a textbook example of how to handle Moe.

The Federations played the fight perfectly, right until the moment Matt arrived.

Contrary to the Federation soldiers' assumptions, rather than team up with Matt, Moe hit his temporary teammate with his hammer.

Before anyone could react, her bond's blue clad form was sent careening off at the closest Dankor moon faster than a sniper's projectile. He was moving so fast, he punched through the defensive line’s fortresses the defending armies had erected, as well as the magical shielding they hid behind.

If Matt had been anyone else, he’d have exploded under the blow, even if Moe had chosen to spread the hit out through his entirety.

A peak elite known for his elephantine strength and durability tried to punch Matt and change his trajectory, but her bond had increased his weight to obscene levels, and the elite lost his arm in the failure.

That ended up costing him his life, as the Liz who’d been hiding on Matt transferred over to the man with the brief contact. It only took her a moment to infect and explode him from the inside.

After crashing through the bulwark and outer shields, Matt arrived at the final layer of defense; a laser net that was too elastic to be offensive.

He hit the netting boosted by her speed buffs, multiplied by Moe’s physical strength, his weight, and all of Krodag's group enhancements. Whatever the netting was meant to stop, it failed to halt him.

The glowing strands grabbed at Matt and stretched alarmingly, and even as Aster dispelled a summoned dragon, she saw the netting try to burn away some of his momentum. Slack was pulled from the rest of the system immediately, but the barrier failed the instant it ran out of room.

The bands held together surprisingly fine, which was a bit of a worry for future Aster to deal with. It was the supporting infrastructure that collapsed as it tried to hold him back and failed. Gravitic anchors slipped from their position or were overloaded. The net structure collapsed in on itself as Matt slammed the nearest moon.

The successful impact only moments into the battle caused the various elites and army soldiers to unleash an even more fervent offensive. The bombardment on their base spiked and then further picked up steam for an instant. Most of the initial attacks were focused at the three of them in the rear, but the battlefield directors quickly saw how little that got them and they refocused onto Liz and Ellen, trying to overwhelm them before they could reach one of the two intact moons.

The short human earned more than her fair share of attacks, but she had enough skill and practice to use her opponents as shields without losing any combat effectiveness. Even when the Federation stopped caring about friendly casualties, she still effortlessly slipped between projectiles, dodging any that her armor or magic couldn’t absorb. For those attacks that did injure her, Krodag was there to belt out a ditty to put her back together without missing a beat.

Liz, on the other hand, took things a step further. While a few of her fought with various pinnacle elites, Aster knew her well enough to tell she was spending most of her attention on her bodies that were carving through the normal troops as she worked to expand as fast as possible.

With all of her buffs out, Aster pulled two of her towers from her Spirit Space and started casting through the amplifiers she attached to their fortress. She mixed in just enough offensive spells that she ensured there was an immediate response directed at her. Then, before they could land, she shuffled her towers into another portion of the battlefield where her Spirit Space had crept to with the smallest twist.

She used the distraction to forcefully expand her Spirit Space another dozen feet outward. She paired it with an illusion that made it seem as if she retracted most of the distance in a failed surge.

Her towers were more vulnerable further away, but the ability to redirect them at a thought made them hard to deal with in such a chaotic fight, though it also made them susceptible to a lucky shot. Proven by the fact that she lost three in the first moment of the battle.

She pulled them behind the shields as she felt a wave of curses slam into the three of them. They bypassed Brian’s dark bubble ward, but she realized why as her inspection showed they used light aspect mana as the base. Rather than force Krodag to deal with Brian’s counter, which was undoubtedly the curse's purpose, she started picking at the spells.

Lessons Luna had once been forced to drill into her were second nature as she found all the places that the spell wasn’t perfect. Such imperfections weren’t typically problems, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t turn into them. As soon as she found one, she poked, prodded, pulled, pinched, or twisted it in whatever way she thought would do the most damage to the stability of the curse. She only did as much as was easy in any particular spot, and she never continued to dig when things grew difficult. Any time that happened, she moved onto the next low hanging fruit.

Most spells fell apart with only one or two weak points tackled, but the light-based curses took six before they started to unravel. More annoying than that, they tried to reform themselves in a new configuration as they fell apart. Two managed it and tried to merge into a large singular mass, but the attempt only managed to prolong their existences for a few more moments as she pulled their unstable structures apart.

Her efforts were rewarded as she added a refreshed [Grace of Wraith] to Ellen’s lunge as she saw a potential opening. The other woman wasn't disappointed and used the burst of speed to turn a feint into a lethal strike.

Aster’s attention snapped to Liz a moment later as her teammate revealed her talons.

***

Liz fought ferociously with her elite-facing bodies as she tried to cover her exertion. It was hard, but she tried to make it look as if she was struggling to fight the three pinnacle elites at the same time. It helped that she was struggling to fight them, but the moment her bodies inside the army hit twenty percent, she went ahead with her reveal.

Three should be more than enough to turn the tides.

A small part of her noted it was one more than Matt had managed, but she needed to pull it off if she wanted to brag.

A part of her still couldn’t believe the Federation had brought an army, despite knowing she was there. It was the Federation saying countering On the Last Line with swarm tactics was worth the increase in her lethality, and she intended to make them regret that decision.

It would have been one thing if they’d come up with a new anti-blood defence during the course of the war. However, she knew that wasn’t the case, she’d already infected ten percent of the army and had only found the same reused poisons and potions from earlier in the war.

If they’d had something new, they’d have used it.

She doubted they’d make that mistake again after learning she’d created her Aspect and seeing what she could do with it. It had been hard enough to hide her formation of the Domain stage, but On The Last Line had gotten her into the Clans’ Dankor moon cycle, where there was less scrutiny after Matt’s spectacle.

And it had all been for an opportunity like this, where elites and normal soldiers alike let her get far too close.

In the instant the Lizzes which had infected the normal soldiers exploded in droplets of blood and spread to the rest of the armies, her bodies fighting the elites recklessly charged in close and went on the offensive. Liz wasn’t a typical clone fighter, it was all her, she didn’t need to think and coordinate to act in perfect unison any more than a professional juggler needed to think about where to put their hands.

Right before her blows landed on the elites, Aster’s winds lightened each step, speeding her onward. Two of her bodies were injured in the rush against the pinnacle elites, but all three landed their blows and drew blood.

Liz activated her Aspect in the instant of those impacts, capturing that moment. She harmonized with her third Domain stage, which caused her to glow in a brilliant but impossible to stop wave of gold, as every drop of her was a cauldron of immortal life meant to refine that same life into something stronger.

The first effect was the most obvious as the buff passed through her. The nearly one hundred Liz bodies across the battlefield kindled into golden crackling flames as every one of their spells grew noticeably stronger.

Some of the Lizzes used her spear and cast magical spells, other Lizzes purely cast physical attack spells, but others yet cast curses and various, more subtle, magics. However, the one thing they had in common, beyond the sudden increase in power, was that not a single spell missed their target.

As much as Liz’s Truth was that Ichor is the blood of Immortals, there was also another truly immortal substance in the Realm: essence. Unable to be truly consumed or even transformed, essence was as fundamental to immortality as Ichor was to the beings that reached that cultivation tipping point.

It was undeniable that every immortal had reached an impressive accumulation of essence. That was all immortality was at a base level. Liz was fairly sure that it was her toil with her Image that had given her the mental flexibility, but that connection, as tenuous as it was, let her Ichor spells lock onto concentrations of essence with a terrifying tenacity.

That first wave of deaths didn’t only spend their essence into the vacuum of space, it was swept up by her upgraded [Blood Sacrifice] and burned for further power as she prepared for the final act, while the pinnacle elites tried to pull away from her strengthened assault.

The quarter of the battlefield she’d been fighting in was littered with corpses, and she reached out to them through her connection to the bits of her she’d spread with her self explosions. She connected to the flesh, the bones, the vestiges of Natural Treasures in the bodies left behind, and any other enhancements remaining.

With her hold on the various energies, she pulled the entire amalgamation into the nearest globule of blood. From there, she abused the fact that every drop of Liz was as core to herself as her original body, and siphoned all the energy into her growth cauldron and Aspect’s anchor.

The mass of energy twisted as it was converted by her cauldron anchor and it stripped each component of the chaotic mixture into their purest and most condensed forms. She took the unrefined power and focused it all on a fist sized portion of herself nestled at the bottom. She made it stronger, more durable, and more potent one pass at a time. It took every ounce of effort that a hundred of her could muster, but she controlled the refinement of nearly two armies and a large portion of their accompanying elites.

However she wasn’t quite done yet.

She wanted the pinnacle elites too, and didn’t let her working drop as she raced to bring them down.

One failed to defend his armpit well enough and she drove her spear into his chest, where an [Ichor Sickle] ravaged his insides. She capitalized on that by slipping inside his chest and drawing his flesh and blood into the absorption.

His spirit almost immediately collapsed and she added his everything into the mass of energy she was refining with her cauldron.

The other elites saw the fate of their companion, but with every passing second, her advantage grew.

They tried to activate escape talismans, but Liz was ready for it.

Her bodies fighting the pinnacle elites detonated and covered them in a spray of golden blood. Their damaged armor failed to adequately rebuff her, and she drilled her way inside their flesh and spirit, where she wasn’t so easy to escape or remove.

They tried to force her out of their spirits with their Domains, but each droplet of Liz was an independent entity intent on wreaking havoc. That would have made things difficult, but the boost from her Aspect made all the difference as she managed to fend off their reprisals, even three on one.

A moment later, she devoured all three pinnacle elites from the inside out and added their energy to her still churning cauldron. With their deaths, she finally let her Aspect fade to a more defensive utilization.

As she did so, every Liz on the battlefield collapsed. She hadn’t died, though she was tempted for the boost she’d get upon revival, but rather she’d retracted her consciousness from the now comparatively weaker ichor to that core, cauldron refined piece of herself.

From that single mass, she stretched and reconnected to her previous body. The golden blood didn’t reform a Liz, but twisted in on itself and reduced in size as she brought her former blood up to her newest standard.

Refining that much energy with so many cauldrons all at the same time had taken a large portion of her willpower, but her baseline had risen that little bit higher, and it made the effort worth it.

The difference was apparent as Liz started collecting blood and rebuilding her namesake legions.

Just before she finished, she felt as Moe reached the second Dankor moon and the real targets of the fight.

Even she felt a bit of disbelief as Moe picked up the entire moon as if it was a pillow and pulled it over his head in a clear preparation to strike. Then, as if he wasn’t carrying a moon, he ran towards where Matt was still destroying the first one from the inside.

While normally planets and moons weren’t viable targets for destruction, and any such damage would be severely punished, Dankor moons were something of an exception due to the fact that no one lived on them. They were treated more like magical equipment than celestial bodies, but even she winced at the impossibility of the act.

Liz knew the moon only moved without tearing itself apart thanks to Moe’s own unique brand of abilities, but it was still strange watching such a large object defying all material constraints as the dwarf smashed it down on its twin.

The unreality lasted far longer than it should have, with the weapon moon remaining far more intact than it should have as the target moon crumbled from the impact.

The only thing that hadn’t been moved was the man who'd been inside stealing all of the core components from its depths.

Matt had never moved, which caused massive damage as he was cut through the moon while Moe brought the moon back and forth over him in silent laughter.

After both moons were thoroughly destroyed, the two melee fighters took off to the third and final target, even as many of the defenders rallied to stop them.

It didn’t do any good, but things went from bad to worse for them as both groups of rune soldiers moved to intercept.

The battlefield turned black and white as if the color of the realm’s light itself was inverted, and Matt’s Meld snuffed out every other Domain like a wet blanket tossed over a campfire.

Liz felt some of the pressure as her Domain was pushed in by the inverted darkness, but he wasn’t targeting her, which let her continue to fight mostly unhindered. The Federation soldiers without Aspects of their own were another story. Most of them were fully inverted, with many who fell unconscious from the overwhelming pressure bearing down on their spirits alone.

The elites with Aspects were another matter. Some of the weakest elites who had one only managed to keep their cores in color, but on the other side of that spectrum, the remaining pinnacle elites uniformly managed to rebuff the inversion from their bodies entirely. Though their moves were noticeably more sluggish, which cost them in every exchange as injuries mounted.

Liz was grateful she was rushing towards the rune soldiers, in that she got to see as the color inversion washed over them and was able to record it for Matt’s later study.

In the first moment it appeared as if their bodies would remain in color entirely unaffected, but as the inversion encompassed them, cracks rapidly started to appear in their colored bodies. Unlike the normal elites, once a single flaw appeared, the workshop elites Domain’s shattered. With the loss it took their spirits with them which caused their bodies to melt in on themselves.

Their runes sent what essence it could to the survivors and strengthened them, which bought them a few more moments of life, but it didn’t do them much good.

The flaws were already there, and like overstressed glass, it shattered after one false move. Many died as the infusions of power pushed their Domains over the edge.

Liz was grateful to see that Aiden’s understanding of the rune soldiers having artificial Domains hadn’t changed, despite the rest of the improvements they’d seen. That fatal flaw spelled a quick death in a fight at their caliber.

And if that hadn’t been enough, a dozen Lizzes were happy to add to their immediate problems.

As they fell, she absorbed and converted them into ichor, creating new bodies. That grew easier as the last fell and Matt dropped his Meld. He then activated his Aspect as he pummeled the third moon with Moe.

At the same time, reinforcements from the Federation Capital arrived, with another six pinnacle elites entering real space from the central planet’s orbit.

Ellen appeared next to a Liz with a pulsating silver wound in her side, and Liz had to dedicate a significant amount of attention to healing the injury. She managed it and was proud of being able to do so, even if she knew her efforts would be overshown by Krodag when he refocused on them.

Contrary to her expectations, the pinnacle elite reinforcements didn’t immediately attack. They pushed forward, controlling the field, but they didn’t move any farther. When a fleet of ships and barely mobile defensive structures were pulled into real space an instant later, she understood why.

In a wall formation, the six new armies that had been stationed on the capital arrived and started to advance into the system.

Liz was about to rush forward when Ellen hooked an arm around the Liz and said, “Nope! Time to fuck off! We did the mission. No need to linger.”

In a quieter voice, she whispered, “It's better not to kill too many more peak and pinnacle elites. Between the Federation's attack on you guys earlier and this, they’ve nearly lost half of their top level elites during this war and can’t be happy.”

Liz wasn’t Matt, but she didn’t need to feel the weight of Virgil’s gaze to know it was there and undoubtedly furious.

After a moment of deliberation, Liz’s logical side won out and she agreed. Thus, the two of them retreated to rejoin the others.

Before they left the real space system, Liz took the opportunity to look over the floating wreckage that had been the Dankor systems. Millennia of work lay scattered in pieces that floated in a wide and ever more diffuse cloud, and that wasn’t the worst of it.

From the grin on Matt’s face, she suspected he’d successfully stolen the most valuable enchantment core of the first world he'd hit. When the Federation got over that, they’d discover Matt and Brian had worked together to infect every system that survived the initial hit with viruses to ensure they’d truly need to throw everything out and rebuild.

It wasn’t irreparable damage, but it would take them centuries to get even a single moon back online, and that would only be possible if they spared no expense in the reconstruction efforts. Something that would be a lot harder with such a recent string of losses.

Liz let herself smile as they tore into chaotic space. She’d challenge anyone to call this anything but a successful trip into the Federation.