Counterattack

  Ryun looked over the battlefield beneath him. Erdania was cleaning up the last of the enemy forces; the battle was won, not that there was any doubt about it. They had spent the last couple of weeks pushing forward at an increased pace. Their countermeasures worked, and the enemy's intelligence gathering seemed to have been countered perfectly.

  They’ve started using Ryun’s territory as a command hub for big strategic meetings, and a couple of other Cultivators with their own territories had been assigned to serve as command nodes in their offensive. Whatever the Exalted Empire used to spy on them was unable to penetrate within a territory.

  There were still lapses, of course, some people couldn’t help but speak about their plans out of the Cultivator territories, and other orders couldn’t be passed on verbally. Sometimes sending a written missive was inevitable. But they’ve curtailed the enemy actions significantly.

  With that, they’ve begun a new offensive that’s been rolling over the Exalted Empire’s forces, taking more territories than they had taken in all the time since the start of the initial offensive.

  Some of that was also thanks to the other forces hitting the Exalted Empire at the same time. The Triumphant Hive had invaded from the north, and various other High Ranker factions in the south had responded in kind, if a bit more localized. Then there were also the rebellions that’ve been happening everywhere that the Sects arrived. Zach’s plan was working, and the Exalted Empire more often than not found itself under the attack from both the attackers and those that were supposed to be on their side.

  It was clear that by now the Exalted Empire knew what to expect, and the recent battles had seen them separate themselves from their vassal forces. Some places had already erupted in rebellion before the Sects arrived even.

  The Exalted Empire was losing ground fast. The Sects were pushing deeper and deeper into the Exalted Empire lands, and gaining momentum fast. The Empire wasn’t able to respond as they were being attacked from seemingly all sides.

  Ryun and Erdania didn’t fight with the bulk of their forces; instead, they were attacking strongholds ahead of their forces. They didn’t need any support from an army behind them, their power was such that there was little that their enemy could do to stop them. It was actually frustrating; Ryun had been looking forward to a challenge, and all he found was disappointment.

  Sure, there were weapons that the Empire possessed that could harm him, and did do so, but even with his reduced regeneration, he still recovered fast. And besides, his being was so vast that any damage might as well be just punching needle sized holes in a mountain.

  He turned his attention back to the battle, or rather the end of it. They were in an Exalted Empire occupied territory, which used to be the home of the Wardens. The Taken had killed or converted everyone, so once they were defeated there wasn’t really anyone left to come back. And the war had decimated both the city of Emaros and the Warden Citadel. In the aftermath of the War against the Dome monsters and the Taken, the great powers of the Core had ceded control of the territory to the Exalted Empire, after the Citadel and the city had been plundered and wealth divided amongst them, of course. Despite the Sects being the ones that had done the bulk of the work in retaking it, it just wasn’t feasible for them to keep it. It was too far beyond their borders and the Exalted Empire had brought a large army with them. No one wanted another fight back then.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Ryun wondered if he should’ve pushed for it. He had clashes with them often enough.

  Erdania had cleaned up the enemy, decimated their defenses, and scattered their troops. The Exalted Empire had turned the ruins of Emaros into a massive military base, one of their largest and most impressive in their colonies in the core. It even had an expanded industry, meaning that they could manufacture a lot of their military vessels here. The Citadel had been repaired and used as a command center for both their military and civil services, basically the heart of their colonies.

  The Citadel defenses had been impressive, but ultimately, they fell to Erdania’s attacks. She stood in front of its gates now, towering over it in her Evolved Form. A massive swarm of compressed Earth orbs enhanced by her Qi moved around her in synchronized orbits. Each of them was no larger than a small cart, but each had more weight than a thousand mountains put together. They were so dense that just by their existence they bent space around them.

  Any attack that the enemy sent her way was pulled off course and into one of the orbs, where it was promptly absorbed by it. When she sent one of them on the attack, the strikes vaporized everything in their path, crashing through any defense as if it wasn’t even there.

  Seeing as the remnants of the enemy had given up their resistance, were hiding, or in the process of running away, Erdania released her Evolved Form and pulled back her orbs, dissolving them back into Earth with her authority and letting them expand, then spreading the mass out around the territory in places where it wouldn’t fall and crush something underneath.

  Then, she flew over to Ryun, or rather his vessel. He had his being expanded somewhat over the territory, and had put only a small part of himself into the vessel, just enough that he had some physical presence that the enemy could see. He was sure that by now they could detect his authority and being, even if they probably didn’t understand what it was.

  He wanted them to see him there, just sitting in the sky and watching. He wanted them to know that even their most powerful defenses were nothing to them, that he didn’t even need to help Erdania at all. That any of them were enough on their own.

  He might’ve let a lot of his anger go, wasn’t as set on killing everything in his way, but he wanted to hammer in the point of how big of a mistake they’ve made by attacking him.

  “Good job,” Ryun said as Erdania came close enough to touch.

  She rolled her eyes. “Not much of a job at all,” she said. “No challenge.”

  “Hey now,” Ryun let the side of his mouth quirk upward. “Don’t jinx us.”

  “Earth really must’ve been such a backward place for you all to believe in such nonsense,” Erdania shook her head.

  Ryun raised an eyebrow. “Really? You haven’t learned by now not to tempt fate?”

  Erdania was about to answer when Ryun’s senses suddenly caught something.

  “What is it?” Erdania asked, immediately serious, her eyes looking around and her authority spreading out.

  “I… I don’t know,” Ryun said, there was no change anywhere around him that he could detect, yet he felt as if something had changed. Then, a moment later he realized that his distant connection with Selia felt… muffled. He pulled back his being, putting more of his weight into his vessel and expanded the range of his skill. Then, he hit a wall. It was as if something had cut off or rather trapped them inside the territory, at least his senses. He couldn’t perceive beyond that wall. It was a powerful block, enough that it had managed to somehow impact his bond with Selia, meaning that it worked on a deep enough level to catch most layers of reality.

  “We’re—” he never got to finish, pain lanced through him from above. Something burned through the part of his being that was expanded above him into the sky; it cut through him and then in a fraction of an instant reached him and Erdania, engulfing them both. His vessel was vaporized the same as the rest of his being that had been expanded into the world.

  Erdania was thrown straight down by the attack, hard enough that she smashed into the ground then through, far beneath it.

  The sky above them cracked open as Void mist was pushed out by the passage of massive ships coming through.

  It would appear that they had been ambushed.