WIEDERGEBURT Act III: Chapter 55

Mother… lost?

Kari stared at the spot where her mother had fallen. Her breath was rising and falling, showing that she wasn’t dead yet, but she had still fallen and was now lying on the ground, unconscious alongside Sigrid and Herleif. All three of them had been beaten. Meanwhile, Grimm Kriger was already dead.

A quick glance at Catalyna and Marko confirmed their grief for her; tears poured down their faces as they held each other. Marko seemed to be doing a little better than Catalyna. Surprising since Catalyna always felt like the stronger person to her.

She looked back at her mother. The idea that a woman as strong as her mother, who had become the empress despite being a commoner, was unfathomable. Empress Hilda Astralia had always seemed like a figure who was larger than life. Her strength was unmatched and peerless. Not even the empress’s husbands could defeat her.

Yet her eyes couldn’t lie. Her mother had clearly been defeated.

Shifting her gaze from her mother to the one who defeated her, the chill that had run up Kari’s spine grew stronger. The person her mother had fought and lost to didn’t look human anymore. He had transformed into a writhing mass of darkness, which seemed to have a strangely vile sentience. She glanced at the ground where he walked. The very earth seemed to be slowly getting eaten away, leaving behind perfectly shaped footprints in the ground.

Mother lost. What should I do?

If her mother lost, there was very little chance that she and the others could win, but Kari didn’t want to be the kind of person who gave up hope, not again. She had once almost given up hope during the time when Grant Leucht had succeeded in forcing her to marry him. Kari would not do that a second time. However, in a situation like this, what could she do?

“Kari,” Valence suddenly said. He’d been standing with them since he couldn’t do any good in a battle of this caliber. “I want you and the others to travel back into Nevaria. I will cover your retreat.”

Kari didn’t even need a half-second to think about his suggestion before rejecting it.

“Absolutely not. Even if you did stay behind, you would not last long enough to actually cover our retreat.” Kari was certain of this. “All you would do is die a little bit before us.” And there was no way she would let that happen. “Geirolf, Earland, and Mykkel, I am going to provide a distraction with Fay and Lin. When we do that, I want you three to get Mom, Herleif, and Sigrid away. Take them to one of the water specialists and have them healed.”

Earland and Mykkel looked uncertain. The expression on their faces said they didn’t believe she could do anything when their own mother could not, but Geirolf, surprisingly, did not question her.

“We understand. Once you’ve engaged in battle with that… person, the three of us will get mother and the others to safety.”

While Earland and Mykkel gawked at their younger brother, they perhaps understood that now was not the time to argue. Neither of them contested her.

Kari turned to her two future sisters.

“Sorry for dragging you two into this. Would you mind helping me?”

“What are you talking about, Big Sister?” asked Lin. “This princess would have helped you even if you told her to run away.”

“We’re a family,” Fay agreed. “Family should stick together.”

“T-thank you,” Kari muttered.

The three of them stood up, weapons in hand, and prepared to rush forward. Just before they could, Valence placed a hand on Kari’s shoulder. The normally stern and unwavering look in his eyes was filled with concern for her, but there was also something else, an emotion she had never seen before that caused her chest to feel warm.

“I will help,” Valence said.

Kari shook her head. “Right now, you helping might actually be detrimental. The three of us have been training our teamwork, so fighting alongside a person we aren’t accustomed to might hurt that. Instead, please watch and wait. If an opportunity arises to attack, or if one of us are in danger, then step in.”

Valence’s eyes widened slightly, but he nodded. “I understand.”

There was no more time to talk. While only a few seconds had passed, those few seconds had given the man enough time to walk right up to Sigrid, Herleif, and Empress Hilda. The writhing mass of darkness had raised a hand, which suddenly turned into a scythe, and was preparing to bring it down.

Kari used the Flash Step.

She appeared right next to her mother just as the scythe was swung. Already swinging her ranseur, Kari summoned her Spiritual Power. The movement of her swing helped channel Spiritual Power into her blade, which she transformed into the light element, then thrust her weapon forward. It struck the scythe, which was knocked off course and stuck into the ground instead of her mother. This act seemed to surprise her enemy, for he was slow to react.

Kari used that moment to attack again.

Golden light glowed along the edge of her ranseur as she spun it around, cleaving straight through the pitch black arm. The Light Cutter technique was a simple but effective one that increased the cutting edge of any weapon. Against a person using the darkness element, it was particularly effective. No blood sprayed from the wound. However, her enemy jerked back as though he’d been severely injured.

That was when Fay attacked.

“HAAA!”

Appearing from within a Flash Step like Kari had done, Fay took a wide stance with her legs spread apart and arms tucked into her torso. Fire had ignited on her fists. The flames were pure blue. Heat waves emitted from them before she thrust them forward and fired multiple pinpoint strikes to their enemy’s vitals. Throat, head, lungs, kidney, liver. Every attack hit something that would have killed a normal human if they’d been struck there.

“Dorararararararararararararara!!!”

Perhaps he was too shocked by the sudden attack to actually do anything, but his body jerked around as though he was being electrocuted, constantly in motion as Fay struck him over and over again. The flames on her fists burned even more fiercely the longer she attacked. Even Kari could feel the heat from where she stood. However, her attack, Rotation Fire Fist: Rapid Fire, eventually came to an end.

Despite the ferocity of her punches, their enemy didn’t have a scratch on him.

Fay couldn’t keep the surprise off her face, which explained why she also couldn’t move when a tendril suddenly shot forward to pierce her chest. However, Kari had seen it and knocked Fay to the ground, spinning her glowing ranseur through the air to slice the tendril apart before it could stab her. This didn’t stop the attack. Now that he seemed to have recovered, their enemy was attacking with renewed zeal. Dozens of those strange tendrils shot toward her and Fay.

Gritting her teeth, Kari stood in front of Fay and began channeling massive quantities of Spiritual Power through her ranseur, so much power that her blade left golden streaks of light in the air. The tendrils were sliced apart. However, there were so many, and they were coming in so fast, that several slipped through her defenses. Kari gasped when her arms and legs became littered with small cuts. Blood leaked from the stinging wounds. Even so, she kept struggling to fend off the onslaught despite the pain.

And then all of the tendrils suddenly stopped attacking.

Because they had just slammed into a wall of darkness.

“This princess really doesn’t like you!”

Lin, who couldn’t use the Flash Step and thus took longer to arrive, swung her tail writhing black darkness and smacked the man away. Kari could only stare in shock as the man was sent flying. He crashed into the army of monsters behind him. Maybe it was because he was covered in the darkness element, but all the Demon Beasts and Sekbeists he slammed into disappeared like they had been erased. Even the ground appeared to simply disappear when he struck it.

“Hmph!” Lin crossed her arms. “Let this be a lesson to you. This princess will not tolerate anyone messing with her family.”

Kari had absolutely not idea how Lin had managed to strike that man, but when she saw the darkness covering the Lamia’s tail, she realized that Lin must have coated her tail with the darkness element to protect herself.

“Nice job, Lin,” she said as she stabbed her ranseur into the ground and leaned on it.

By this point in time, Earland, Geirolf, and Mykkel had already grabbed Sigrid, Herleif, and Empress Hilda and taken them away from the battlefield. Kari found the three unconscious Spiritualists lying on the ground as a water affinity Spiritualist healed their wounds and gave them Spiritual Recovery Pills.

“Heheh, this princess did good, right?” Lin puffed out her modest chest.

“Very good.” Kari smiled. “Fay, are you okay?”

“I am fine.” Fay stood up and tested her limbs to check for injuries. Once she had determined that she had none, she smiled at Kari. “Thank you. If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way, I would have been dead.”

Kari was about to tell Fay not to worry, that they were family, but those words died in her throat when a hand suddenly emerged from Lin’s shadow and latched onto her tail.

“Lin!”

Her scream did absolutely nothing. The hand picked up Lin by the tail and slammed her into the ground, which cracked around her body. Lin didn’t even have time to moan in pain before she was lifted up again, slammed into the ground again, and then the process repeated itself.

Getting over her shock, Kari rushed forward, ranseur glowing as she swung the weapon and cleaved into the arm. It wasn’t easy. For whatever reason, the darkness element seemed thicker and more condensed this time. She felt an incredible amount of resistance, but then she spun around and swung from the other side. The arm dissolved as she cut through it.

Lin landed on the ground with a wet thud. Her body was covered in blood and bruises. It looked like her nose had been broken. Her eyes were wide open but staring at nothing. She had been knocked completely unconscious.

“Fay! Get Lin to safety! I’ll cover you!”

Realizing the danger they were in, Kari quickly snapped off an order to Fay, who nodded and lifted Lin off the ground and over her shoulder. The redhead used the Flash Step to get away. She was just in time to avoid being impaled by several dozen stakes made of dark energy that shot from the ground. Kari snarled as she swung the ranseur through the stakes coming for her, constantly spinning the weapon around her body to defend against the numerous attacks coming in from every conceivable angle.

Despite the wounds littering her body, she did her best to block the attacks. All the while she tried to figure out where her opponent was. She couldn’t find him, however. It was like he had disappeared.

Or maybe he merged with the shadows…

Kari knew about the Shadow Walking technique that Skygge had been using. It was quite possible this man could use the same technique—no, given that he had at least reached the Third State of Spiritualism, he could probably use an improved version of that technique. If that was the case, then he was hiding somewhere within these shadows and attacking from a place she couldn’t reach.

This is… not good…

Kari knew she would need a miracle if she wanted to survive. She also knew that a miracle wouldn’t come if she didn’t create one herself. That was why she pulled on her Spiritual Power, completely draining her reserves dry, and pushed as much of it through her body as she could. She willed her body to move faster, willed her Spiritual Power to flow stronger. She couldn’t give up here. Her family was counting on her to protect them right now.

A moment of absolute stillness seemed to come over Kari, or rather, over the world around her. Everything became silent. Everyone stopped moving. In this peaceful quiet, Kari could hear her own heartbeat quite clearly, a slow and gentle rhythm.

The moment soon passed and Kari felt something rush inside of her. It felt a lot like Spiritual Power, but it was ten or maybe even twenty times stronger than anything she’d felt before. Along with this power came understand. Comprehension.

Light is more than just a source of illumination. It is actually a wave of electricity and magnetism of a particle wavelength. In some ways, light is like an electric field entwined with a magnetic field, flying through space. Kari thought of them as a pair of dance partners wrapped in an eternal embrace.

Stars emitted light. The sun high above their heads was one such source. While the sun was just a massive ball of flames, the light it emitted was actually this electromagnetic wave, which traveled at close to 300,000,000 meters per second to reach their planet and shower them with illumination.

As this understanding came to her, Kari realized that her body felt far lighter than it ever had before. She realized, belatedly and with some shock, that her arms, hands, and even her ranseur had been transformed into light. She had become a being of light.

Kari had reached the Third State of Spiritualism.

Hope swelled within her breast. She did not delude herself into thinking she could win against this being, who not even her mother, Sigrid, Herleif, and Grimm—four people who had reached the Third State of Spiritualism—could defeat. This man was beyond even that. However, if she could just hold out, just stall him for a little while longer, then maybe the others could heal and join her.

That was her hope. It was a long shot, but it was all she had.

With renewed ferocity, Kari shored up her defenses, spinning her ranseur in an even tighter formation around her body than before. Tendrils of darkness emerged from every direction. However, she cut them down, shearing through them with ease. She was completely and utterly focused on defending the people behind her from this incredible onslaught.

Her opponent must have gotten impatient over not being able to kill her. He emerged from a shadow several feet away. The ground exploded as he stomped his foot down, blasting off like a bolt fired from a crossbow. His body had turned into a black streak that Kari could only see because she had reached the Third State of Spiritualism and transformed into this being of light.

She met her opponent head on, swinging her ranseur as he swung his scythe-shaped hand. A shock wave exploded between them. Kari almost lost her footing as the ground beneath their feet shattered like fragile glass. The very earth seemed to be shaking. Several cracks spread from their battle zone and traveled up the mountain cliffs on either side, shaking the rocks loose and causing them to crash into the ground.

Kari took two steps back and thrust her ranseur forward, but it was caught by that strange scythe-hand, which her enemy twisted to try and disarm her. She spun around on the balls of her feet to avoid such a fate. After spinning, she thrust out her blade one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two times in rapid succession.

Each time she thrust her ranseur, a beam of light shot from the tip. Her enemy avoided her attacks, but Kari focused her will on those beams and forced them to curve around, changing their trajectory so they were coming back toward her enemy. He didn’t seem to notice what she was doing. Several holes suddenly appeared all over her opponent’s body as her light beams pierced him. Unfortunately, those holes didn’t remain for long. They closed up within seconds.

As if retaliating against her, several dark spikes shot out from a shadow cast by a rock on the ground, puncturing through her thigh. The pain was indescribable. Kari would have cried if her body was human right now. It felt like someone had shoved a needle in lava, then jabbed it into her flesh.

Shunting aside the pain, Kari channeled more Spiritual Power through her body, destroying the shadow and closing the hole. She counterattacked by launching blades of pure golden light at her enemy. However, he matched her attack by swinging his hand and launching blades of his own. The black and gold blades met in the center, exploding with a destructive force that pushed them both back.

Kari landed several meters away. The moment she did, all the Spiritual Power she had gathered fled her body like water through cracks in a vase. Her body reverted back to normal as she collapsed to the ground. Splaying her fingers as she placed her hands on the ground, Kari took several deep, heaving breaths. Sweat broke out on her skin as she tried to regain control over her breathing. She was exhausted. It was no wonder the Third State of Spiritualism could not be maintained for very long. The amount of Spiritual Power it consumed was unbelievable. However, that just made the man she was fighting all the more frightening. He had outlasted her mother, Sigrid, Herleif, Grimm, and now her.

She looked up as the dust from the explosion disappeared, hoping that maybe her attack had done their enemy in.

Her hopes were dashed when she saw the man still standing there. Not only was he not dead, but he was still in the Third State of Spiritualism. The black, human-shaped mass seemed to be writhing even more than before, as if agitated by something. If Kari didn’t know any better, she would have said he was growing stronger.

The man took a step forward. The ground around him seemed to disappear. Kari, still breathing as she remained on her hands and knees, could only watch as this creature came to try and kill her.

***

Siv had watched the battle taking place between Kari and the man, whom she recognized as the one who killed her father and placed that enslavement collar on her. She did not know his name. She’d never learned it. All she knew was that he had been the one who killed her father, a drakvar who had reached the pinnacle of her kind’s power—or so he often told her.

Like the others, she had felt shock at seeing Kari transform. She recognized what the girl had done. Siv could do the same thing, though she had been born with that power.

For a little while, she had believed that Kari could win, had prayed that the girl who treated her so kindly would emerge victorious.

But it was not to be.

Her foe was not someone who could be overcome after just breaking through and gaining a new understanding of her element. Kari had only just reached this level of power, while the person she was fighting had ascended to a level even above that. As the battle wore on, Siv realized this. Kari was losing Spiritual Power. Meanwhile, the man fighting her was getting more powerful as he absorbed the power of darkness from their surroundings. Shadows merged with his. This was the reason for his seemingly invincible strength. He would absorb the shadows, the sun would recast the shadows, and then he would absorb them again. It was a never ending cycle in which he was constantly replenishing his own reserves.

It was inevitable that Kari would run out of power long before he did.

Siv stared as the man walked toward Kari. He could have killed her from a distance, but he seemed to take a twisted pleasure in killing people up close. She bit her lip and struggled with her own fear.

Siv wanted to help.

She wanted to protect the girl who had been nice to her.

She wanted to save the girl who meant so much to Eryk.

She wanted to be useful to Eryk by protecting the people he loved in his absence.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t move. Her body was refusing to budge. She was so scared. She hated violence. She didn’t want to fight.

However, while she was wallowing in indecision and self-loathing, Fay and Lin suddenly appeared right in front of Kari. Fay, her fists covered in bright blue flames, launched several punches that caught the man unaware. Meanwhile, Lin tried to take control over the shadows the man was controlling. When that didn’t work, she slammed her tail into the ground, which caused a massive pillar of earth to burst out and crash into the man.

Kari, who had been on the verge of collapse, looked up in shock.

“Fay… Lin…”

“I’m sorry we weren’t able to help until now,” Fay said with an apologetic smile. “We thought we’d get in your way after you reached the Third State of Spiritualism.”

“Here.” Lin pressed a pill into Kari’s hand. “Take this pill and recover your Spiritual Power. Leave the rest to us.”

“Us?”

Kari looked confused for a moment, but then the three people who had fought against the man before stepped in front of her. Siv couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but she remembered Herleif and Hilda. Eryk had introduced her to them before. It looked like they had recovered.

“You did a great job,” Hilda said. “Please let us handle this now.”

The three Spiritualists transformed into their respective elements. The woman became a flame, Herleif turned into wind, and Hilda transformed into a being of pure light.

Just as they transformed into their elements, the earth pillar that Lin had slammed into the man broke apart as numerous black tendrils exploded from beneath it. These tendrils rushed toward where the group had gathered. However, Hilda held up her hand and a bright light exploded from her body. Most of the tendrils were outright annihilated. Of course, she couldn’t get rid of them all, but Sigrid used the powers of her flames to fly around and cut through all the remaining ones.

This did not stop the mass of darkness. While the tendrils stopped coming, a massive black sphere appeared above the heads of everyone present. Shadows along the ground danced and twisted before they were sucked into the sphere, which grew in size until it was easily three times larger than a person. Once it had reached that size, the sphere began descending.

“Everyone! Attack that sphere! Destroy it before it falls to the ground!”

As Hilda shouted this, she channeled Spiritual Power into her hand and released a beam of pure golden light. The light struck the descending ball. However, it didn’t do anything. The ball of darkness continued to fall at a steady rate. Then Sigrid and Herleif also released their respective elements as beams of pure elemental energy, which slammed into the ball as well. The massive sphere slowed, but it did not stop descending.

The other Spiritualists tried their best to help. However, none of them had reached the unique state where they could transform into their element, which meant their attacks were limited to ones that relied on dance-like movements to properly channel their Spiritual Power. Their help didn’t amount to much.

“You turned tail and fled the moment the Basilisk appeared, didn’t you? Aren’t you a Dragon?! This princess has always heard stories of the legendary Dragons and how powerful they are! You should be strong enough to save Big Sister’s dad! You have more than enough power! So why didn’t you save him?! Why did you run away?!”

Lin’s words rang in her ears. She was a Dragon, wasn’t she? A powerful creature that stood above humanity. Why was she just… standing there in fear while everyone else risked their lives?

Siv didn’t want to be afraid anymore.

She wanted to be strong.

A feeling hardened itself inside of her gut, like a tiny sphere of determination; it centralized within her chest and remained there.

She stood up and transformed. Her body grew larger, her arms turned into legs, her neck grew longer, and scales sprouted from the ones grafted into her skin and spread to cover her entire body. Her green hair turned into sharp horns that flowed backward along her neck and back. She dug her claws into the ground and found purchase as she opened her mouth filled with sharp fangs.

Siv channeled her Spiritual Power into her mouth, gathering it and condensing it. The wind swirled around her and began tearing chunks out of the ground. She continued gathering the wind and watching carefully as the black ball continued to descend despite the best efforts of the others. Only after she had channeled so much wind that her body literally felt like it might be torn apart did she released it.

Right at the black sphere.

The wind sphere fired from her mouth with an explosion of hurricane-like energy, slammed into the black sphere, and punched a hole clean through it. Continuing on until it traveled to the very center of the dark sphere, the wind sphere suddenly exploded inside of it.

A massive detonation of wind and dark energy went up. This power slammed into the people down below, but Siv rushed toward them and used her own body to block the attack. She groaned as the dark energy struck her hard scales and tried to erase them. Surging Spiritual Power through her body, she fought off the incredibly vile energy, though doing so took its toll. Once the displaced power dispersed, Siv had no choice but to return to her human form.

Her clothes were gone. Unlike people who could enter the Third State of Spiritualism, Siv’s clothing didn’t transform with her when she became a drakvar. Her body was fortunately unharmed. The scales had protected her from receiving an injury. However, she was still naked.

Someone suddenly draped a cloak over her. Siv glanced behind her to see Kari looking at her with a kind smile.

“Thank you. You saved us.”

“Ah.” Siv’s throat closed for a moment, but she swallowed and tried speaking again. “You are welcome.”

“Hmph. It took you long enough to actually do something.” Lin crossed her arms and looked dissatisfied. Siv winced, but then the Lamia girl sighed and scratched her head. “But you did save us. This princess thanks you and… she was wrong. You are strong.”

The words made Siv’s lips tremble a little. She wanted to cry from happiness. Being acknowledged like this made her feel good.

However, before she could celebrate being accepted by Lin, Fay looked at the three of them with a stern frown.

“It isn’t over yet. We managed to block that attack, but our opponent is still out there.”

At those words, everyone turned back to observe the battlefield, which had now been completely decimated. The ground with littered with craters and large cracks. Corpses were strewn all over the blood-soaked ground. Several parts of the mountain cliffs on either side had been destroyed and lay in piles of rubble. Sadly, the enemy army that had come to invade Nevaria was still present. They had moved to a safer location further back, perhaps understanding that a battle like this was too dangerous for them to get involved in.

Their enemy didn’t appear at first, but then the shadow around a small rock suddenly writhed and grew. From within this shadow emerged the man they had been fighting. Like the last time, he didn’t appear injured in the least. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on his body, but he had reverted back to his original form and was no longer a being of darkness. Did that mean he was out of power? Siv didn’t believe so since he could just absorb the shadows around them to regain what he lost.

“What should we do?” Sigrid asked Hilda. “Attack him all together?”

“Even if we did that, I am not sure we would win,” Hilda admitted.

“We have to do something,” Herleif said.

Siv wished she could offer them some helpful advice, but she really didn’t know what they could do. This person had defeated her father. She still remembered his power. Mountains had been destroyed, forests had been ravaged, but despite all the power her father had wielded, he was still no match for this person. Could these humans defeat him when her father could not?

The man took a step forward. It looked like he was about to renew hostilities. Before he could take more than that single step, however, a massive wave of water suddenly crashed into the army he had been leading. Everyone looked at this water as it swept over the enemy forces, sweeping the Sekbeists and smaller Demon Beast away. Once the water covered the entire area, a massive bolt of lightning slammed into the water and fried many of the Demon Beasts, killing them in an instant.

Even the Acromantula that had been skittering around near the front were not immune to this attack. The lightning coruscated off their bodies and caused them to shake uncontrollably as though they were having muscle seizures.

“What is that?” asked Sigrid, pointing to something in the distance.

Siv, with her dragon’s vision, looked closely at what Sigrid had pointed at. It looked like the pieces of a sword that had suddenly separated and attacked the group of Demon Beasts and Sekbeists. These sword segments were held together by a chain of lightning that kept them from moving out of place. The way they curved around and cut into the creatures before it were reminiscent to a dragon’s tail swatting away enemies.

“That’s… the Dragon’s Tail Ruler!” Kari shouted suddenly.

“That means Eryk is here!” Fay said.

“Darling is here? Where?” Lin began looking around.

Behind the lines of the army appeared a single man who was cutting his way through the enemies. He wielded water and lightning. Small spheres of condensed water and lightning appeared above his head and flew toward his enemies, punching holes through their bodies like they were made of parchment. He swung the Dragon’s Tail Ruler with powerful attacks that rent the air and sent numerous Demon Beasts and Sekbeists flying.

“Look at that!” Marko shouted.

“Our reinforcements have arrived!” Catalyna said.

Indeed, marching behind Eryk was a large army of human Spiritualists that extended so far Siv couldn’t even see the end of them.

Hope seemed to surge in the hearts of the Spiritualists who’d been fighting for so long.

“We can win this now that Eryk’s here!”

“He brought the army with him! Now this battle is in the bag!”

Eryk’s and the Nevarian Spiritualists’s presence bolstered the people who’d been exhausted from fighting, renewing their determination and causing them to shout hopeful words. Siv was impressed by how Eryk’s very presence could do such a thing. However, she understood exactly how they felt, for she also felt like everything would be okay now that he was here.

She moved to stand beside Kari, Fay, and Lin. Siv still hated fighting. It still frightened her. However, she was still going to give this battle everything she had.

She also wanted to protect the people she had met here.