Chapter 91: Arc 5: Chapter 24

Bianca hadn’t remained still while Song Ming prepared. In fact, as the other cultists attacked, she responded at impressive speeds, seeming to anticipate each attack before they even started swinging.

As a fist infused with the light of terror flew at her, she blocked it and replied with a stab that instantly erupted with an overwhelming lance of energy, throwing the cultist back just in time for her to spin around and block another strike with her knife. Since her hands were occupied – one gripped the knife and the other supported it, compensating for her relatively low strength – she kicked that cultist away, then stomped her foot onto the roof to unleash a wave of crimson that repelled those that tried charging at her in the meantime.

There were almost certainly cleaner and more efficient ways to handle the situation, even from the limited understanding that Song Ming had of combat, so that only further convinced her that the Demon Queen wasn’t some other mind, perhaps from Bianca’s past, which did experience the acts that granted her the Demonic archetype to begin with.

However, she more than made up for her lacking skill with sheer speed and strength. Her physical might was also lacking in comparison to quite a few of the cultists, though looking at her fight certainly gave a different impression. In her current state, she managed to make it look like the opposite.

‘Damn, she is still so hot… Oh, shi-’ Song Ming quickly raised her sword to block an incoming strike that she’d nearly missed thanks to being way too horny over Bianca, ‘Um, right, I’ve got the Crusader’s Runes too, so…’

She jumped back and released her inner light, the scar on her arm igniting as marks lit up on the roof, several circles appearing underneath and around both of the cultists that had gone for her. They wobbled in an odd manner as they tried to evade, but as she pushed her energy towards the runes, she felt her whole body burn up in… an oddly pleasant way. The eerie glow from her scar seemed to spread throughout her body and make her whole form glow in the same dark teal that now filled her planar energy.

She wasn’t sure what exactly she felt, but as that power exploded out, she could tell that it was far stronger than she could’ve produced in the second realm. From each rune, her power burst out and, while one avoided it, the other was caught at the edge of one of the runes, the mighty light scorching their side and burning away their robes, exposing more of their already charred and glowing skin.

Since the other tried to make use of their ally’s failure, Song Ming quickly unleashed a different type of rune, placing it at her feet since she would remain unharmed and her clothes were replaceable anyway. It manifested into a square shape, centred at her own position and covering a good portion of the roof in the deadly light that poured out at a constant pace instead of erupting all at once. Her clothing burned slowly, exposing more and more of her soft skin, but to those that tried to intrude, like the cultist that she failed to injure, a single touch caused them to burn and recoil.

Taking the moment to breathe, Song Ming looked over to Bianca once more, and couldn’t help but smile at her Mistress doing such a fantastic job. Even under the constant assault of the cultists around her, she was just a storm of destruction, throwing out an attack or blocking one with every breath. Her energy was bound to be depleting, but by the looks of it, even though each flash of crimson sparks that burst out of her knife looked to be more powerful than any prior, she was only using as much planar energy as Bianca typically did on the weakest use of Dominion’s Light.

‘I’m glad I rescued my Mistress back then… though if this was what she was like back then, before she had lost her memories, then I couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of opponent she would’ve needed to face that could take her down and wipe her mind…’

“Song Ming! Runes!” Bianca suddenly called out, forcing her out of her daze while simultaneously performing a spin to repel several blades at once and then quickly raising a less concentrated version of the Abyssal Shield in order to cover herself and block the rest.

“Yes, Mistress!” Song Ming yelled back and disregarded the planar energy cost to throw out numerous round runes around Bianca, with just enough space for her to fit in between any pair of them.

Whether it was what her owner wanted, she couldn’t be certain, but as soon as the runes appeared, Bianca didn’t even need to look around to act – not an abnormal thing for a cultivator with powerful spiritual perception, though rather unusual for normal Bianca’s inexperience with it. As soon as she parried another blow from a cultist, she used Tormentor’s Strides to arrive in between two runes and next to a relatively isolated cultist, channelling a vast amount of power into the knife as she raised it and then, with all her might, slashed down.

Her blade unleashed more crimson light than ever before, arcs of lightning lashing out onto the cultist before the main wave reached him. And once it did, the energy erupted, spreading across the cultist’s body and exploding out, tearing to shreds anything that remained.

With a flash, an eruption of light seemingly greater than the might of the sun, their first foe was gone, and eleven – including the third realm cultist – remained.

‘Bianca, are you able to kill more of them?’ Song Ming threw out a strand of her mental energy across the gap between them, establishing a brief link via planar energy, ‘If you need me to, I’ll set up even more runes for-’

“No point!” Bianca shouted back, though she then grabbed the mental link and added, ‘The knife is too short and too weak to handle my energy. It was never meant for something like this, after all.’

‘I can give you my-’

At that moment, something gleamed in the air, and just as the cultists were to attempt another attack, Bianca was covered in darkness and leapt up, exploiting the Tormentor’s Strides to soar into the air and grab onto the object.

A sword.

“Keep it for now, and take care of these first!” Han Rushu’s familiar voice reached Song Ming’s ears, making her gasp, though Bianca seemed entirely unphased by this.

Instead, as she fell to the ground, the knife in her hand was replaced with the sword, a long and thin blade with sharp edges on both sides. It was made of the same dark material that the blacksmith had used for her false star metal implements, but even then it was sturdier than the kitchen knife Bianca had been employing up until now.

“Lucky you were here… anyway, die, scum!” Bianca plunged down into the roof and stabbed the sword into it, somehow managing not to break straight through and hit the floor underneath.

Nevertheless, that strike unleashed all of the energy she had channelled into the sword, releasing it in a shockwave that knocked the cultists off their feet and sent them flying a short distance. Most landed safely, but a few were launched straight towards the runes just as Song Ming released the power within them, causing them to be placed within the epicentre of their power. In an instant, four screams filled the air, and four lives were gone with them.

“Rushu, we’re having a chat after this. Good sword, though,” Bianca said quickly, before focusing on those that remained.

Her stare alone forced them to back up, all save for the third realm abomination that had only participated minimally during the fight. It had great strength, but whenever it attacked it tended to put in minimal effort and only did more when Bianca tried to do greater damage to one of the weaker cultists, hence why her time with the knife was general unfruitful.

Even then, the Cult of Terror showcased an endurance that their previous foes did not. Bianca’s energy was able to utterly devastate her foes before simply by cutting them with her Dominion’s Light, but now the cuts remained and only sizzled a little, while the cultists seemed utterly unimpeded by her efforts.

Song Ming had half a thought to berate them for daring to resist her Mistress’ blade, but held back since it would be rather… inappropriate. And way too mocking towards the cultists.

“Do you know Terror, girl?” the third realm cultist suddenly spoke, eyes locking with Bianca’s, the tension between them seeming to manifest into a visible line, “Let me share it with you!”

The phantoms and spikes that coated the cultist blended into a flood of energy that burst out and surged towards Bianca, blazing at such a speed that even with her best efforts, she wasn’t able to do anything but be hit by it. All of the energy flooded into her body, and focused upon her eyes, where the crimson light attempted to burn away the ruby shade of her eyes.

 

Bleeding landscapes, darkened skies flooded with dark clouds that thundered with horrible lightning. They filled Bianca’s vision all of a sudden, and suddenly the confidence of the Demon Queen was distant, and her own fear threatened to take over.

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All around her, the monstrous shades that hid in the corners of her vision the last time she saw this place were now gathering in greater numbers, filling more and more of her sight, trying to overwhelm her. She felt her breathing speed up, her body shaking as she felt more and more… terror. Complete and abject fear of that which surrounded her, flooded into her mind.

“Oh come on, you’re better than this. You’re more terrifying than these things that only exist within the mind,” a familiar voice spoke to her, patting her on the shoulder as she stepped forward, “But if you insist, then I will take care of it for you.”

The pure white hair and pale skin, combined with the piercing ruby eyes, made it beyond obvious to her who she saw, although she couldn’t know for sure how. It might’ve been a mere figment of her imagination, or perhaps the manifestation of the Demonic Tyrant, or even her alternate personality, if she had one. It was all within a domain of the mind, after all, so anything was possible… though she hardly got the time to ponder it.

As soon as the image of the Demon Queen stepped past her, her thoughts shifted, and she no longer felt fear. The figures at the edges of her vision had stopped approaching, and once she glared at them for a second, they were forced to back away.

“These things are mere illusions. I, on the other hand, am more than capable of tearing you to shreds,” words that felt alien spilled from her lips, and her energy burst out, quickly flooding the bloodied landscape and overwriting any trace of the horrid land with her own power, the rate at which it flowed out growing with every passing breath.

Soon, it was enough not only to overwhelm the darkness, but to spread beyond, to light up the cloud-covered lands beyond, and then, erupt further than that.

 

Song Ming wasn’t sure what to expect, but she was praying on the inside that Bianca would endure and resist, even though she had no idea how such a thing would even happen. When Yu Juan was struck by something similar, it was effectively fatal, albeit with a very long delay.

And yet, just before Bianca’s eyes could get burned away, her energy flooded out, and the light of terror was torn apart and returned to little more than ambient planar energy. The shadows and other traces of the Cult of Terror’s light was blown away, causing Bianca’s ponytail and loose strands of her light brown hair to flutter in the wind that created.

“Nice try, bitches. Now, I’ll definitely not let you get away,” Bianca grinned, raising her sword once more and her energy igniting with more fervour than before.

For a moment, a single brief breath, it almost looked like the light was turning into liquid, akin to the energy of the third realm, but it was a mere illusion. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of energy was certain to both obliterate any foe in her path and rather quickly expend what remained of her planar energy pool.

That did not stop her from dashing forth, cutting straight through the cultists in her way before crashing into the remaining one, whose strength was visibly reduced by the phantoms inhabiting their body disappearing. When Bianca’s blade hit her, it cut up to the bone of the cultist’s raised arm, only for her to force it out of the charred flesh and then slash again and again and again, her blade crackling with more and more crimson light as it supressed any aura that the third realm cultist had previously exuded.

However, for all her cuts, she could not get to any vital points, at least until she glanced at Song Ming for the briefest of moments. She didn’t even use their mental link, which had been burned away at some point during the mental attack the cultist had attempted, but the meaning came across still.

She raised her hand confidently to place another rune, but the exhausting struck her suddenly, and thus Song Ming had to force herself to consume the few drops of energy that remained within her body to please her Mistress. The sickly teal glow of her mutated Crusader’s Runes flowed out of her body and filled a circle at Bianca’s feet, something she had meant to position differently, but her planar exhaustion muddled her senses.

Still, as she let it stabilise, Bianca spotted and didn’t seem particularly perturbed, so she chose to trust in her Demon Queen and drop to the floor (or roof, in this case) and recover her energy to whatever extent she could manage.

At first, she didn’t move out of the rune, even pushing the cultist back out of it with her forceful strikes, but as the light of it grew in intensity, reaching a dangerous brink, Bianca finally used Tormentor’s Strides and appeared beside the third realm cultist, using her empty hand to punch with as much force as possible, lightning erupting as the cultist was forced forward, just in time for the rune to ignite.

The eruption consumed her foe, and what remained was a husk, one that Bianca quickly split apart just on the off chance that it was still alive. Her final slash even seemed to split apart the anchor that lay within the cultist’s body, judging by the eruption of pure violet that spilled from the core of the cultist’s body.

Her Mistress hadn’t showed a single sign of exhaustion throughout the fight, but judging by the speed at which she withdrew her energy from her sword and then stabbed it into the roof to help her remain standing. Her body was also covered in sweat, her light hair and clothing clinging to her skin, droplets sliding down her exposed skin and making her… well, look absolutely delightful. Something about seeing Bianca after all the hard work she put into fighting, and imagining what she’d be like up close, pinning her down, using her however she wished-

“So… this roof is fucked anyway, so we might as well talk however we wish. How very convenient that you were here, Han Rushu,” Bianca said, glaring at the blacksmith.

Han Rushu chuckled, “You’re different than I remember… but the reason I’m here is actually Yan Taijun. She detected the presence of the Cult of Terror around you and I happened to visit for other reasons, so she suggested we meet up… Why are you so different today, what’s-”

“You just happened to have your sword with you?”

“I’m not sure what I’ve done to warrant the suspicion. I have no idea who that lot were, but I planned to leave this place before even more threats came our way,” the blacksmith sighed, “The upcoming conflict will bring the Exarch’s forces here, and thus I’ll be in danger as a blacksmith with draconic blood and all that.”

“… Right. You want to leave with us.”

“Yep.”

“And Yan Taijun knew that this would happen, so she gets some of the blame. If I had been unable to handle the Terror crap, I might’ve been yet another one on the list of… hm.”

“What is it, Mistress?” Song Ming asked, ignoring the blacksmith’s eyebrow slightly rising up at the form of address.

“Terror and Dream archetypes aren’t so far off. I think that Terror is an offshoot of Dream, since their skills match far, far too well for some not to have been simple modifications of the other. In other words, Dream likely started first, being the more general and less malicious of the two, and then something or someone prompted the creation of Terror.”

“… Who are you again? I thought you were Bianca, but that doesn’t sound like-”

“If I pay attention and care enough, I can deduce plenty of things. Does that answer your question, lizard?”

“Ooh, because I’m a dragon? Heh, I’ll accept it,” Han Rushu shrugged, unphased, “Anyway, if you would have me, I’d accompany you outside of the Dancer’s Abode once you depart, and maybe teach you a few skills if you want. I know you’re fond of scent-related things, so-”

“Can’t learn anything but what I’ve got… though I would if I could,” Bianca responded, “Let’s get down from here, then discuss things properly… though after I do a certain something.”

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