Lindon extended his perception, searching for Yerin, but he found his senses choked off. He felt as though he were adrift in the center of an endless ocean with no surface, and it was only him and these eerie, malicious spirits.
He began cycling for the Hollow Domain, but Dross stopped him.
[This environment is already filled with madra denser than your own. The most you could do is weaken it for a moment, and then your Domain would collapse.]
Then I’ll have to try something else.
Surrounded by water, Lindon switched to his Blackflame core.
It wasn’t ideal, of course, but the Path of Black Flame was destruction as much as it was heat. And he had more Blackflame madra left than pure.
Lindon controlled finger-thin beams of dragon’s breath, fully aware that Yerin might be nearby. He sliced both spirits in half.
They re-formed instantly, still grinning. Four hands extended to embrace his head, and he felt an overwhelming sense of peace. Foreign will pressed in against him, urging him to relax and allow them in. Strangely enough, the technique reminded him about Bai Rou, although the Skysworn’s techniques had always felt repulsive.
But such a vague temptation had no sway over Lindon. The spirits were close, now; closer than they would have gotten if he had kept cycling pure madra.
So they had fallen for his trap.
Blackflame retreated, replaced by pure madra, and his eyes turned blue.
They turned to swim away, but it was too late. An Empty Palm caught one, then the Soul Cloak propelled him after the second. He dispersed that spirit too.
And in the instant he projected the Hollow Domain, it lifted the veil the water kept over his senses. He felt Yerin.
He swam in that direction and encountered her in seconds.
She was surrounded by spirits, slicing them apart as quickly as they regenerated, but they had no physical bodies. A huge spirit—obviously the leader of the white shadows—loomed over her. Lindon had seen many strange Remnants, but this one resembled something like a soft centipede with human hands instead of legs.
He hated it on sight. Especially as it curled around Yerin and tried to entrap her.
Her eyes fluttered under the psychic attack, and her movements became more sluggish. Lindon didn’t know how she’d held out so long.
But she didn’t have to last much longer.
The centipede’s head swirled around, and Lindon saw it too was disturbingly human. It grinned a black grin.
Then Lindon put his remaining soulfire into an Empty Palm and blasted the head off its shoulders.
Water poured everywhere as the entire technique popped like a bubble. Half of it dissolved to essence, but the ground was flooded with real water as well. Half of it had been actual liquid controlled by aura.
Lindon caught Yerin one-handed as they both fell, and he landed with her in his arm. She coughed and sputtered, taking a deep breath.
“Thought…Heralds…couldn’t drown,” she choked out.
Lindon wanted to respond, but his attention was drawn to the battle still raging in the center of the room.
Eithan and the Monarch had taken it to another level.
Hollow Spears flashed in a flurry as stars rained from the ceiling. A gold portal opened and released another beam of concentrated red dragon’s breath like the one that had targeted Ziel, but it broke on the Hollow King’s Armor. An orange slash missed Eithan and broke the stone of the labyrinth as a stab from enlarged scissors did the same to the floor.
It was so fast that it was hard to follow, even for Lindon, though he was sure Yerin wouldn’t have a problem. But there was a dimension to the battle that only he could appreciate.
Every move from each of them was a clash of will so profound as to bend reality. While Reigan Shen used no verbal commands, each of his techniques carried enough authority to kill Eithan outright.
And with sheer willpower, Eithan matched and stopped them.
An image appeared over Eithan, a connection to powers beyond this world. An Icon.
Eithan canceled it half-formed.
He peeled aside chains that Reigan Shen summoned, and another Icon began to form. Eithan denied it again.
Lindon asked Dross, Apologies, but am I seeing wrong?
[No, I agree with your assessment. It appears he is denying an advancement to Sage.]
Why?
Did Eithan know what he was doing? Maybe he was feeling a foreign influence and cutting himself off for it out of instinct.
But no, this was Eithan. The king of theory that even rival Monarchs respected. He would know what he was doing.
In which case, this must be part of his plan. Advancing to Sage had to hurt him somehow, even if that advancement would bring him advantages.
But Lindon could tell how this fight would end, if it continued as it was. Eithan may have deep madra reserves, but he was facing a Monarch.
Lindon needed to balance the playing field.
His head was pounding, and he found it hard to concentrate. He had pushed himself to the brink already in this fight.
He had enough experience now to understand something about how weaponizing willpower worked. He didn’t have a finite amount, like madra or soulfire. Rather, it was more like physical strength, in that by using it he exhausted himself.
And he had already used as much of his will as he ever had.
But that didn’t mean he was out.
He focused on Reigan Shen and waited for the right chance. If he wanted to have the most impact, he had to maximize his timing and the connection to his Icon. Meaning he needed to leverage his Void authority to maximum effect.
Lindon’s gaze was naturally drawn to the golden portal forming behind Reigan Shen.
“Close,” Lindon commanded.
The portal made from the Path of the King’s Key led onto a void space, so it was the perfect thing for Lindon to affect with his authority. But at the same time, it was Reigan Shen’s personal property, and perhaps might even count as a part of his power. He had authority over it by default.
But Shen was focused on Eithan.
While the Monarch was distracted, his portal closed.
A Hollow Spear caught him through the gut.
He roared in pain as his spirit was scored, and Lindon felt the impact the spiritual damage had on his madra. Reigan Shen’s eyes flashed gold, and he tore open another portal behind him.
Lindon knew immediately that he had no chance of stopping this one from opening, but he had expected as much.
So he did the opposite, and pushed it wider. “Open.”
The portal opened easily this time, without the resistance that Shen had pushed through every other time inside the labyrinth. “Greetings from Tiberian,” the Monarch said.
Multi-colored lightning thundered out of the portal.
It carried such destructive pressure that Lindon knew it wasn’t the end, but Eithan used everything he had to defend. The stars from the Hollow King’s Crown flew down to resist the lightning, Hollow Spears crashed against it, and he poured soulfire into everything.
The many-colored thunderbolt crashed through one star, then another. It broke a bundle of spears, pushed through a river of pure madra, and struck against the Hollow Armor.
Eithan gritted his teeth and pushed. His scissors split the storm madra as the attack peeled pieces of his Hollow Armor away one chunk at a time.
Finally, Eithan wavered unsteadily on his feet. Blue-white essence faded upward as his broken armor faded, but he had survived the attack.
Then a hand emerged from the portal, followed by another. The hands were made from Forged madra of the same aspect as the lightning before; storm madra of many lesser aspects woven together. This multicolored lightning was so dense as to be tangible, and it even reminded Lindon of the Ninecloud Court’s royal madra.