The Path of Ascension

Chapter 321

Aster wanted to be happy. Actually that was an exaggeration. She didn’t need to be happy. Happiness seemed like a distant dream. She just wanted some good news. It had been closing in on three months straight behind enemy lines, breaking everything they could get their fangs on, and while that should have cheered her up, it just didn’t. It certainly seemed to help Allie, who was working the hardest out of everyone by teleporting them everywhere, but it did little for Aster.

That was why, when they returned to the rift for a break after testing how far they could push the Harmony Accords, she hoped for good news. Surely, their efforts had paid off and could buy them a modicum of relief.

The moment her [AI] connected to the base's intelligence center she looked at the map of the war front. The results of her initial glance weren’t great— the Empire had lost even more planets with their absence from the frontlines— but the more she looked, the more she liked what she saw.

The other Great Powers had in fact reacted to their incursions into Republic space beyond sending the Harmony Accords to chase them down. That information was like a weight lifted off her shoulders. It made their gamble of going off and doing their own thing worth it.

Something like ten percent of the armies in the Tier 25 range that had been moving from the Guild war front had redirected to their respective Great Powers on trajectories to reinforce supply depots and manufacturing faculties. The Guilds had been pressing the attack somewhat, pressuring them in turn and essentially preventing those reinforcements from smashing into Empire systems, thus upsetting the balance of power even more.

It matched with the reports that the war was about to enter the most ferocious time period, but to Aster, it looked like a light at the end of a long dreary tunnel. If they could just persist through the next few decades, maybe a century, they could come out the other side of this war.

Running around and plugging holes might be the most effective way to slow the enemy advance, but the last sixty years of the war felt less impactful than the last few months. Matt said that was just her pride talking, though.

It was the unseen which could have the greatest effect, after all.

Her eye was drawn to the convergence point of The Citadel.

The reds, oranges, and whites of their opposition were closing in tight on the purple Empire forces around the Citadel, and while Aiden kept saying he had some big grand plan for how he’d turn it all around… Aster was pretty sure she saw nervousness and worry tinging his spirit every time he spoke about it.

Or maybe it was excitement? Aiden was almost impossible to read but she was pretty sure it was nervousness.

She knew firsthand about the faith that people put in Ascenders, and as much as she loved the attention and faith people put on her… they were, in the end, only people. There was a lot of pressure to figure out something new, to show up everyone, to be legends. If she were in Aiden’s place, she’d probably also be confidently saying he could handle it, even if she had no idea what she would actually do. She’d come up with something on the fly, be light on her paws, and do something. And Aiden was twice the showman she was. Who knew what was going on in his fathomless mind? It certainly wasn’t ice cream. Grilled fish, maybe? She actually didn’t know what his favorite food was, but that was probably it considering how much he barbecued.

Well, she’d just have to trust Aiden in much the same way she trusted Matt, trusted Liz, and trusted herself in that when things got truly dire, they’d make it work.

Aster did let a smile play over her face, shimmering her hair happily as she saw their personal stats. Team Zero was rapidly closing in on the record of ‘most armies routed in a single war’ from the past half-millionish years. At their current rate, they were on track to take the record from The Mechanic within the next thirty years. There was, of course, the standard ribbing that they had an advantage in their two Ascenders, and the fact there hadn’t been quite as many armies to rout in The Mechanic’s day, but Aster didn’t care.

Besides, their real value wasn’t in defeating armies but in defeating elites, especially the Harmony Accords. If they could not just defeat but either kill or capture the entire operation, she expected the other Great Powers would be far more willing to capitulate. Twenty pinnacle elites might not sound like a lot, but that was possibly about a quarter of what they had at the tier.

Their deaths would be a devastating blow to their Great Powers, but their capture might be even more effective. Capture of elites was strange, and was a reminder that this war was a game to those with real power.

Ideally, the captives would be held until the end of a war, but oftentimes elites, pinnacle elites especially, were traded back and forth just to be sent back into battle months later. It might be for the release of other elites, entire armies, or rare resources, but she had faith in her team and their power.

They had been caught on the back foot in the first fight, but the last fight had shown them the Harmony Accords was far from undefeatable. Killing an elite might hurt the enemy Great Powers in the long term, as they permanently lost a valuable asset, but capturing an elite could be held for ransom for a handful of low-tier planets, whether the Empire won or lost.

Sadly, the others didn’t want to hear that. She had tried to broach the subject, but the others almost uniformly disagreed. Allie was just generally bloodthirsty, and was more than happy to go for the kill, even when capture was possible. Dena felt the same way, but that was understandable after her loss. Morgan, Sebastian, Ai'la, Joy, Arthur, and Darrow, on the other hand, understood her perspective. But the non-Ascenders just wanted to get through the battles alive. Capture was harder than a kill, so why bother?

Susanne, despite not being an Ascender, was confident enough in her abilities that she didn’t particularly care about the spike in difficulty, but she wasn’t championing Aster's point of view either.

Zack was, in fact, the only person who agreed with her. Despite his injury at the hands of the still unknown sniper, he was logical enough to agree with her.

The real issues were Matt and Liz.

She loved the lug, but Matt had taken the death of Eric harder than anyone but Dena herself. She wasn’t sure if he had even processed the death fully. Actually, she knew that he hadn’t thanks to their bond. Not really. He had processed the death logically, but his emotions were like a tangled knot of muscles clenched to the point they refused to move. She had tried to broach the subject, but Matt was so insistent that he was ‘fine’ that nothing she said penetrated, and he threw himself into the war for vengeance in an effort to find… something, forgiveness maybe but Aster wasn’t sure.

Liz on the other hand had agreed with Aster when she brought up both topics. Matt was not processing his emotions and it would be better to capture their enemies if possible, but in the end, Liz didn’t care about logic. Their enemies had hurt Matt therefore they should die, the other considerations didn’t matter. If Matt didn’t want to capture their enemies Liz wouldn’t go for the capture.

And that was the issue.

Matt.

Darrow was their nominal leader, their tactician, the mouthpiece of the army at large, but Matt was the real leader of Team Zero. He didn’t even seem to realize it a lot of the time, but he was the core from which everyone else derived their strength from. He was endless and dauntless, the foundation of everything.

It was most obvious in his mana. Between his concept and the runes they all had, Matt was single handedly keeping Team Zero in positive mana. And yet he brushed over it, never thinking twice about how much he was providing. She hadn’t thought about it until Allie had made a comment one day. But he never lorded the fact over anyone, never called in favors, never complained about how much of his day was eaten away by people who had undeniably started spending mana way less conservatively than they would otherwise.

But it wasn’t just the mana, either. He spent time tinkering with mana alongside Zack, creating elaborate clockwork gadgets with Ai’la, playing strategy games with Arthur, talking with Sebastian, and cooking either dinner for the entire team. He even set aside time to bake scones just for Allie. He had his roots spread deep in the entire team, far more than anyone else.

It made him the nucleus, so when he went in for the kill, everyone else followed. It was why she needed to convince him to put aside personal vengeance for the greater good. It wasn’t like Aster didn’t hate them for killing Eric, he was her friend as well. She was all for killing Maven and the sniper, if they ever found them. Slowly, if she could manage to lock them in her spirit space. Allie had certainly hated the sensation every time she’d ventured in that Aster was sure she could make the duo suffer enough for their crimes.

But the rest of the Harmony Accords? Aster wanted them captured. They would make fantastic bargaining chips. As everyone stood for their seats, Darrow spoke up. “I’ll have an update in three hours, but we will have at least twelve hours of downtime.” Knowing the incoming complaints, he quickly added, “I’m going to push for more time, but you’ve all seen the reports. The Harmory Accords will be able to return to the frontline in roughly three weeks real time.”

Aster nodded with the others, but hoped they got at least a full eight days off. The war effort could spare them for one real day off.

After they dropped off their armor and weapons to be looked over and then got checked out by the healers, Aster put on her best cheery face and grabbed Matt’s arm. “I need some help with my forge. Can you help me?”

She looked up and fluttered her eyes, concentrating on their bond, trying to feel past the general tenseness that Matt exuded.

She nearly cheered when a spike of irritation rippled through the bond, but even that was quickly lost to the clenched control. “Of course I can help.”

Aster was no therapist, but had been hoping for something. She even would have settled on him lashing out, but getting him to spend some time with her would help.

Aster shot a grin at Dena before pulling her along with a similar excuse. There was nothing wrong with her ice forge, but there were a few upgrades she had been sitting on and she could use the free labor.

It was even a little fun. It took a lot of effort, but she managed to keep the conversion light and cheery until they were given notice of how long their break would be. Eight full days like she hoped. It sounded like a dream, and Aster took the time allotted to kick everyone else out and to pass out. She slept for a glorious two days before crawling out of her room.

The remaining six days flew by just as quickly, and before she knew it, they were back out in the battlefield, with them teleporting to four or five battlefields thanks to a combination of Allie’s Talent and Joy flying them around the mundane way. The only reason they returned to the rift was to abuse its time dilation, as it allowed Allie’s spirit to recover from all of the hyper long range teleports.

If Allie wasn’t such a battlemanic, she would have probably snapped under the pressure, but the only thing that changed was that she had her scones delivered to her house instead of jumping around the Empire for unique snacks. They were running right on the edge of pushing Allie too far but Aster knew that was where the teleporter liked to be.

They spent three weeks real time jumping from fight to fight before they were finally given the news they had been waiting for.

The Harmony Accords had reappeared.

Not on top of them; their locations varied so much that even with future sight, arriving where they were didn’t mean they would engage in a fight. Instead, their report said that the Harmony Accords was the group attacking a supply line.

Either by accident or their future sight, the area they arrived in was a full day's travel away from Allie’s nearest teleport waypoint which meant they had more than enough time to search for ships. Still, they couldn’t ignore their presence, just like the Harmony Accords hadn’t been able to ignore them destroying Republic assets.

As they arrived she saw the mercenary companies were tearing into the supply ships' defenders while the rest of the Harmony Accords watched their approach ready for a fight.

Aster swept herself up in a cloud of mist, cloaking herself in dispersions, illusions, and disguises until she was an utterly unfindable [Winter Spirit]. Around her, chilled [Dispelling Wind]s swept out, invisible save for brief flickers of color. Once the battle started in earnest, it would be self-sustaining, but for now, she still had to feed it mana.

Fortunately, while she was unable to fully manifest her Domain, with physical access to the spirit space already being blocked, she could withdraw enough mana to not even touch her mana pool. Gan Le was still her prey, and if the opportunity aligned, she would absolutely pounce, but it seemed like she’d still need Allie’s assistance if she was going to imprison him within the lands of eternal winter.

[Chill of the End] came next, as did [Headwind], [Absolute White], [Winter’s Harvest]... And there was Lorlael, starting her counterspell routine. While the woman’s talent wouldn’t start to accumulate unless she was casting spells targeting Aster specifically, she had backup in the form of Colton and Corvis, one of the rune soldiers.

They couldn’t focus their efforts on her for too long, as Zack started engaging his counterpart and the chaos began.

[Headwind] made some headway, dragging projectiles off-course and knocking their flying foes off-balance. Their armor’s enchantments, along with a hefty dose of buffs from their supports, helped to counteract the effect. But [Dispelling Wind] shredded a good half of those, subtly carrying their effects and re-applying them to Team Zero as they were needed.

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But beyond the passive effect of her dispelling area-of-effect, she didn’t directly contest the countering. Their defenses were designed to shrug off a lot of her broad-area effects, forcing her to focus her efforts on a small area if she wanted to get anything done fast. She also could eke out minor, incremental benefits by wearing down their defenses, which was completely fine in her estimation. The cold didn’t kill quickly. Ice would, but cold was slow and insidious, creeping in until your fingers were gone and your eyes were frozen.

She channeled her [Ice Manipulation] through her tiara, summoning its elemental. Unlike the lumbering hunk it had once been, it was now a perfect doppelganger for Aster herself, and she channeled [Astral Path] through it, leaving a rainbow trail through the middle of the battlefield. Matt skated through it with his [Air Slide], getting a massive boost to his speed as he charged towards Maven. Gan Le, in rapid pursuit, simply bounced off the multicolor wake, and Saziel flicked his hand to send the tank around the rainbow.

Aster nudged the motion such that Gan Le went perpendicular to the main plane of the battle, forcing one of the rune soldiers to dart up, grab the Sect man with a coiling metal whip, and drag him back to the battlefield.

After a short while, Aster turned her [Ice Manipulation] doppelganger invisible, then created an illusionary double of it, sending it skating off in a different direction, accumulating clouds of mist that obscured its position.

Ari Kai chased after the illusion for a brief instant, and Aster unleashed a praying mantis with wickedly sharp icicles for hands on the antimemeticist. The man faded from reality, and the [Cracked Shatter]’s elemental’s blades passed through nothing. [Skill Freeze] forced the man back into full corporeality, but before the mantis could take advantage of that fact, it stumbled, lowered its blades in confusion, and was promptly melted.

Aster tisked, but she resummoned it and created a dozen illusionary copies of it, siccing them upon the rune soldiers. Three of them looked like obvious illusions, but the rune soldiers had learned their lesson. They turned from their attack on Morgan, Sebastian, and Arthur to destroy the illusions, focusing on the ‘obviously fake’ ones first. This time, they were right, but that meant the nine illusionary copies were able to deliver their [Illusionary Fang] spells unimpeded.

Fear was a funny thing. On unthinking enemies, it could cause them to flee. On thinking enemies, it forced wariness. On the most elite of enemies, it made them so incredibly twitchy. She left one of the spear-wielders, Calvin, alone, because his danger sense opened up other opportunities.

Cynthia lashed out with a blast of lightning at Calvin, who instinctively responded with a [Meteor Swarm]. The use of a fire spell was enough to dispel the illusion he’d been layered with, courtesy of of her ice-mantis, but that still left the rune soldiers dealing with a high-tier explosive spell as the real [Cracked Shatter] elemental emerged from invisibility to take off the arms of Clarisse, the team’s healer.

The shock and pain on her face was delightful, and Aster feasted on the outrage.

Not literally, though. She was still working on that. Instead, a blast of wind picked up the severed limbs and tossed them to the nearest Liz, who happily took their blood into her swirling sanguine vortex before the limb dissolved in chaotic space.

“Protect the convoy.” Darrow's command went through both his Talent and his [AI] and caught Aster off guard.

She expanded her awareness. Gan Le had managed to close in on Matt without her noticing. How had that happened? He was on the other side of the…

Aster stripped the magic from the Gan Le she’d been focused on, revealing she’d been paying excess attention to Ari Kai. When had that happened? Regardless, Matt had been locked down and was being steadily separated from the group of himself, two Lizzes, Sebastian, and Susanne fighting off a concentrated force of Maven, Saziel, Colton, Eliana, and Long Zhiyuan.

Aster swept her [Ice Manipulation] doppelganger, still hidden by [Black Ice], towards the action, leaving behind a suite of illusionary and semi-illusionary monsters to keep the rune soldiers occupied for a while. Once there, she stripped Colton of a good set of his buffs, forced a form-change from Maven by pelting her with frozen rain, then tried to snap-freeze Long Zhiyuan where he stood.

Long Zhiyuan wreathed his hand in flames and clawed through the [Polar Beam] aimed at him, but Aster was already moving on. An illusion of herself swept through the area, drawing a few bullets from Colton. She gleefully swiped the projectiles from the air and sent them at Eliana. The golem-woman dodged, and Aster sicced an elemental [Headwind] on her. Most of Aster’s debuffs didn’t work on the Federation woman, but objects and humans alike could be restrained by the powerful ribbon-like elemental. Within moments, she looked like a mummy, and while the elemental was destroyed shortly thereafter, by the time Eliana was free, she was staring down a sand-colored dragon and a pack of red and black lightning wolves instead of Liz, as Sebastian set Awe and Hatred upon Eliana.

Liz had taken the opportunity to target-change to the rune soldiers, and Aster helped out her attack by hiding her sister-in-law inside an illusion of a [Cracked Shatter] elemental, identical to the illusionary creatures they’d just finished destroying.

The Lizes fell upon the rune soldiers like a barbarian deep in its bloodrage, and within seconds, three of them had vanished in a flash of blackwater mana as their lifesaving enchantments activated, dragging them back to the ship. That was interesting. She didn’t know that blackwater could do teleports. Shadow’s expertise filled her in on the ways that basic shadow magic could do teleport-like things, but she was also surprised at the specific application in question.

Maven unleashed a massive lance of moonlight, but Matt dragged Gan Le into its path before it could get far. Aster took the opportunity to try and strip the man of his defensive skills, but her spells skittered along the outside of the defenses, finding no purchase. Even the tether seemed to be defended by the man’s inviolable talent, but it didn’t stop her from flinging Maven far away, carried on her own little private wind. She’d come back at some point, but she was no longer attacking the convoy. She was glad that the attack had finally worked, she’d been trying to get that to stick on Maven for ages.

Long Zhiyuan attempted to charge at one of Aster’s illusionary decoys, but she wrapped him inside of a [Fog of the Lost], trapping him in a cloud that would take quite a bit of…

And he just blasted through it. Like a surgeon’s scalpel, he immediately found the weak point of the working and tore through it. Bleh. Winds snapped around him, but the Sect fighter was proving oddly resilient and smacked the winds aside with a single gloved hand wreathed in red, green, and blue.

Before she could retaliate more, Colton blasted Aster’s elemental doppelganger, stripping its invisibility. But before any of the shots could actually land, the elemental burst into snow, reformed under his feet, and tripped him up. The moment his momentum was no longer fully under his control, he was caught up in Aster’s fell winds, stripped of his buffs, and thrown bodily into Saziel as he engaged with Susanne.

The Federation soldier was forced to wrestle control of the winds away from Aster, flooding the area with fire as he did so. Susanne parried the explosion with one sword and struck with her second, forcing a split defense. Then, her Domain clones lunged at the opening that had been opened.

Saziel summoned a wall of force to block one of the clones and a bullet smashed into the other clone, dispersing it, but the sword didn’t vanish and carved a deep furrow down Saziel’s arm. A blast of telekinesis pushed everything nearby back, and Aster responded in kind.

Susanne held strong, and Allie teleported into what had to have felt like a vice squeezing in around them. Susanne’s still-intact clone blocked the telekinesis with a manifested shield while Allie’s shadow rose up from around her, teleported to the other side of Saziel, and began to attack. Colton recovered and attempted to interfere, but Aster dedicated her doppelganger to engaging with him, leaving Saziel on a four-on-one that he really stood no chance on.

Susanne’s clone lopped off half his hand, Allie’s shadow stabbed him in the back, Susanne cut off his leg, and then Allie closed her two daggers in an inescapable scissor that phased straight through his armor and severed his head. Blackwater washed up, trying to drag him back to the ship, but Aster had seen it and was ready.

While she may have preferred to take prisoners, that wasn’t a hard requirement.

[Brittle Cold] was the first step, weakening and ‘solidifying’ the enchantment before it could activate. [Dampening Snowfall], [Frost], [Cross Wind], even a basic [Counterspell] kept up the fight, and while the best enchantments three Great Powers could make fought her, she didn’t need to win for long, just long enough. With no healer to reattach his severed spine, he was a dead man floating.

But he wasn’t dead yet. Magic pulsed under his skin, keeping his biology running and his spirit intact. Just because Aster was fighting his armor didn’t mean her teammates had stopped, as Susanne and Allie continued slicing into the armored man. Their attacks didn’t seem to be doing anything, though, because he just kept fighting.

With no warning, the magic Aster could sense in Saziel turned chaotic, then suddenly stopped. Essence washed out as the soldier ran out of mana and died, with chaotic space embracing the spilled essence and turning it into a physical wave that pushed Susanne back. Allie had already teleported away, off to tangle with Eliana.

Aster frowned as Ari Kai reappeared by driving a blade through the back of her doppelganger’s head. She adjusted the illusion accordingly, making it seem like he’d scored a hit strong enough that [Deathly Cold] had been needed, but while she may have truthfully been unharmed, she felt her rage boil.

She’d stopped dealing with him for two minutes and he thought that she was the weakest link. He always attacked her, and Aster was sick of it.

Her doppelganger rushed forward with [Astral Path], and Aster slipped into the multicolored wake and blasted the stealth specialist with [Glacial Spear]. A moment after, she was gone as her doppelganger turned around and blasted the man with another bolt of ice.

The last she saw of Ari Kai was the look of shock on his face before Aster lost track of him. Whether he’d avoided the attack, tanked it, been forced to use his lifeline, or died and still had his Talent make her forget him, she didn’t know. It also didn’t matter much, as Arthur was downed by one of Colton’s bullets. His lifeline triggered and pulled him back to the ship successfully, but that left the group he was reinforcing suddenly down a healer.

Aster relocated to the group in question, blasted Colton and Lorlael with icy wind, dispelled a few debuffs clinging to Morgan and Ai’la, then sheltered the group in a [Cracked Ice Canopy] to get a moment to recover. Allie popped in with a Liz, who gave a brief wave of healing to the group, before leaving again to fight off the Corporation mercenaries attacking the supply ships.

Bullets and spells slammed into the icy shield, to no apparent effect. Even though it was about to collapse, Aster had long since learned to weave subtle illusions into all of her skills, making it look like the shield was tanking the attacks with no problem. More often than not ,that caused enough hesitation in the enemy to give her an opportunity for reprisal. By the time the shield actually fell, Ai’la had deployed a new weapon’s platform, whipping them out of range, and Aster was already moving on. Her doppelganger had grabbed Matt and was dragging him back to the center of the fight, where his Concept spread out to refill everyone’s mana.

While he was in the area, he’d managed to sneak a spell past Gan Le’s interception, and Eliana lost half an arm from an unexpected [Crescent Sweep], giving Awe a chance to bite down hard on the mechanical woman. The summon crunched through metal like it was wood and sand began to work its way into the exposed joints. A teleport began, but while Aster came down hard on the anticipated blackwater escape, Eliana instead vanished with a crack of thunder.

While Matt was unarmed, Long Zhiyuan closed in on the fight, impotently striking Matt- and tearing off a massive section of his armor’s back? That wasn’t normal, and while she couldn’t hear Matt’s response, she knew her bond was roaring as he punched the Sect fighter with a lightning-wreathed hand.

Blue lightning crashed against the fighter ineffectively as Gan Le protected the man, of course. But Aster brought a massive blast of wind to pull Long Zhiyuan away from Matt, and therefore Gan Le, while also pushing the duo away from the battlefield before Gan Le’s presence could help protect more of his teammates.

Maven crashed into the fight with Light as a half-turtle, half-elephant monster, and Aster rushed to relocate so she could assist. The woman hadn’t done much yet, seemingly conserving her strength, but Aster expected her to unleash overwhelming power the moment she got close to Light or herself.

Before she could arrive, Long Zhiyuan lunged for where her spirit was centered, and she was forced to use [Floating Snow] to dodge a mana wreathed claw. She pelted the Sect fighter with her best debuffs, trying to strip him of his magic, but he they were immediately ripped apart the moment they landed on him.

Long Zhiyuan threw a projectile of hungering shadows, which she effortlessly dodged, only for it to keep flying, curving like a drunk phoenix, until it hit Sebastian. It ate through a half-dozen Hatred wolves and tore into the summoner’s arm before Aster managed to deflect it. She had tried to dispel it, but the spell was far stronger than it looked. Light, thankfully, darted over to seize control over the spell. He actually succeeded, only for it to detonate the moment he took control, blasting him back.

Off in the distance, Aster saw Joy and a squad of Lizzes engaging with rune soldiers, Lorlael, and Colton, trying to keep their attacks, along with the ones from the mercenaries, from landing on the supply ships. Things did not look like they were going well with the supply ships already littered with holes.

Susanne swept in, heading three Domain clones, and began to attack Long Zhiyuan. Unlike previous matches, the Sect man seemed to effortlessly sidestep every sword stroke. He didn’t even have his eyes open as he gracefully danced around Susanne’s every attack while using any openings to lash out at both Susanne and Bolt, who was peppering the man from range.

An explosion from where Light was fighting Maven caught Aster's attention for a moment. Maven had been blown back by a series of spells and was working with Lorlael to try and coral Light, but they were failing surely enough.

Aster conjured a [Polar Beam] elemental, siccing the oversized mosquito on the Sect man, but when it came within arm’s reach, he reached out without ever opening his eyes, grabbed its proboscis, and threw it at Susanne, usurping Asters control over the monster as he did so. It sank its spearlike mouth into Susanne’s arm, and while a clone sliced it in half a moment later, it left her slightly, but noticeably, slower.

The fur on Aster’s tail stood up on end in anger, and she redoubled her efforts to try and get one of her debuffs to stick on the Sect man. She mustered her strength and prepared to bring down every spell she could afford on him in one go, only to be interrupted by a hail of bullets from the sniper.

Aster was only able to slightly deflect a single one of the bullets, one that ended up being firmly blocked by a Queen clone instinctively raising its sword to protect her. One of the other bullets had passed through her spirit in a way that forced her to try and steady her [Winter Spirit] as to avoid being jettisoned back into fully corporeal space.

Long Zhiyuan took the opening to lunge between two of Susanne’s clones, form his hand into a blade, and cut Susanne deeply enough that her spine was visible. Susanne gritted her teeth and prepared to fight on, only for a massive explosion off in the distance to rock the battlefield, breaking her concentration and whisking her back to Drifter's ship just as Matt closed in, dragging Gan Le behind himself.

Aster relocated to get a better idea as to what happened, and bared her teeth as she saw that Ari Kai had delivered bombs to each of the supply ships, then detonated them all in one go. She had hoped she had killed him as well as Saziel, but apparently not. Around them, the Harmony Accords quickly disengaged and fell back, their mission done.

Aster wanted to chase them, keep the pressure up after having killed one of their elites, but Darrow sent out a command to return to the ship and she followed.

Aster manifested herself and Susanne back in the bay of Drifter’s ship as she slowed down to pick them up. A slight breeze brought her up to the observation deck, where her eyes fixed upon the billowing waves of energy the massive ship left in its wake. Off to the side, Arthur was putting Susanne back together while Darrow was cross-referencing the tactics used in the battle, so they could be better informed for the next battle.

They had failed to save the supply convoy, but they had secured a kill at the cost of mostly physical damage that Melinda could heal, but having her prey run was setting off primal instincts in Aster.

She wanted to chase them down and rip into their fleshy bits, but she controlled herself.

This was a war, not a mere hunt. And this last battle had been quite interesting. Darrow’s voice was in the background, querying the others as to the nature of Long Zhiyuan’s latest buff. Between his sudden surge in strength and Maven apparently holding back, Darrow seemed to think that whatever empowerment had been focused on the Dao Child had been redirected.

It was curious, but Aster didn’t care much about it. Moving the buff was interesting, but didn’t upset anything about the overall strength of their enemies. That still meant wearing them down one nip at a time until their enemies collapsed from their own blood loss was perfectly viable.

But first, they needed to return to the rift so Melinda could heal them up in preparation for the next battle.

Aster couldn't guarantee much, but she would bet everything she owned that their healing thanks to Melinda, was better than whatever the Harmony Accords had.