Memories of the Fall

And then there is the ‘Undrenmare’. In human society it is called this, because it is a giant series of underground seas and cavern systems that the Eternal City first delved, hence ‘Mare’ instead of the more colloquial ‘Sea’. Most assume that ‘Undren’ was by origin just a bad pun or humorous misspelling of ‘Under’ that stuck. It is not. The name itself actually originates from the fortress archipelago of Isla Dan’Autha, long before the Eternal City got involved, and means Undren Sea, or Sea of the Undren. Not because there is a sea down there, though there are several, but because of the beast tides of Undren Kin that swarm from the depths. When they periodically break upon the western depths beneath Isla Duan, Isla Van and Isla Krae or the eastern depths, across the great ocean below the Eternal City, they are every bit as as vast as that great sea themselves, and ten times as perilous.

Excerpt from ‘The Darkness Beneath.’

~By Horatio Drusus, ‘The Undren Breaker’, Master of Adventurers for the Eternal City.

~ Sana & Arai, Ruined Island City ~

It was around three hours later that the ‘nuance’ of the spears words to them in stating that the Undren would ‘…not enter physically’ into this part of the city.

The first few projectiles that exploded into dust mostly ‘missed’, or so she had naively thought. Crashing down at the gate and across a few of the outer buildings. It was only when several of this new kind landed within the plaza that she understood what they were, and what these fate accursed Undren were trying to do. Hem them in. The corrosive, qi dispersing cloud from each projectile hung in the damp air, turning the humid ocean mist a muddy yellow-orange, before dispersing to coat a surprisingly large area of the plaza in a thin layer of yellowish, silty mud.

On closer examination, she found it to be a potent combination of various species of mushroom spore and ground-up ore stones with intense earth yin corrosion attribute. The medium that made it scatter so effectively was, from what she could see, dust made of the qi repelling stone or a mineral with very similar properties.

Now, this barrage of projectiles containing the dust was also being interspersed once more with rocks that were actually exploding. Their landing points tightly clustered on the areas where the dust had settled to become mud, kicking it up and spreading it through the mist and scattering it across the rest of the plaza.

“This is really not good” Arai muttered rubbing a tiny bit of the yellowish mud between her fingers.

“No… not it is not,” she agreed, eyeing the sum of their efforts to neutralise the stuff.

Every part of the stuff, except somewhat ironically maybe the mushroom spores, was problematic. The qi dispersing aspect that came from some fibrous mineral would certainly cause problems if they were exposed to it for a long time. The mixture was both vexatiously flammable and didn’t break down once set on fire. It also smoked nastily. Lightning had a similar effect, setting things on fire and not really travelling at all through it. Using both of them to try to get rid of it, also just kicked it up, dispersing it further and helping its suspension in the mists by adding corrosive smoke to the mix. What corrosion they could muster from arrays did nothing much to the qi repelling dust, and actually helped the mushroom spores as well…

Furthermore, in this mist and damp, using some kind of wind art to gather it up somehow and sweep it out was next to impossible. It also refused to flow normally in water when they tried that. The medium of the mixture turning out to be slime sludge or something with similar properties.

Several more explosive rocks hissed down and briefly dried out a part of the plaza on the far side of them, scattering the mist in spherical shockwaves and sending another wave of yellow mud over much of that side. In short, it was a mixture designed to deny control of huge swathes of an area and was disgustingly hard to disperse by any means at their disposal.

“It also sticks to your skin and those fibres and the mushroom spores suspended with the mixture snag into you and can’t be removed with qi,” her sister hissed in pained disgust as she…

She winced as she watched Arai skin her own finger with the edge of the leaf in an effort to remove the dust.

Using her qi vision she was able to see within the bloody mess that her sister had just cast onto the ground, wickedly barbed mushroom spores and frayed strands of a glassy mineral.

“How in the fates did they even make this stuff?” she muttered as her sister finished her act of decisive self-mutilation with tears in the corner of her eyes.

As she watched, the wound healed almost immediately, which was expected, however…

“Those mushrooms are some soul setting variant!” Arai remarked distastefully, flexing her hand. “The pain lingers for quite a while after getting rid of the…” she trailed off with a shudder.

Her sister was still shaking her hand experimentally to try and shift whatever lingering sensation had come with removing the spores as the next wave of exploding rocks landed and scattered everything still further.

“I guess it’s some kind of alchemical process, they obviously have some means and are fairly sophisticated. They have hierarchy and can tame the fate thrashed spiders,” she grumbled, eyeing the ever-shrinking safe zone within the plaza.

Arai just sighed and squatted down to collect up the various bits and pieces that were scattered around. She could only agree as she helped collect up the various bits. They both then started to drag the chest a bit closer to the spear.

“The drums have started again…” she noted, pausing as they were almost done to stare off to the ‘south’.

She had a dim recollection within their exploration of there being another qi repelling rock complex and a significant series of underground halls there. They hadn’t poked around very much there though, being more than happy to stay above ground after their previous ordeals.

-Were they coming up from below?

Shortly after a few more of the ‘yellow dust’ delivering orbs dropped out of the sky and exploded across the south side of the large plaza. They were promptly followed by dozens of exploding rocks and a bunch of large spears with a strange green fire on them-

“Oh for fates sakes,” her sister groaned as the spears clattered down and half the plaza went on fire with a sizzling *whooooosh*.

Within a few heartbeats, everything on the south side was covered in a pall of flickering greenish-yellow flames. The mud burned, the water from the rain burned, the dust itself burned… even the mist burned. Even though it was clearly suppressed by the misty drizzle to a degree, it also smoked horribly, spreading a pall of cloying corrosive smoke across the courtyard.

She immediately took a bit of luss cloth and bound it across her nose and mouth. That at least seemed to be fine enough to resist the spores and the dust. Her sister followed suit a moment later, even as the cloud rolled outwards, filling almost a third of the plaza in billowing greenish-yellow smoke that rapidly fused with the mist to become a truly unpleasant miasma.

“I guess that settles it, we can’t just sit here and wait for them to fill the entire area up like this.” Arai grimaced, looking at the spear.

It was silent for a moment then spoke haltingly.

{Difficult, get stronger, Undren Cunning, always edge, Offense-Defence}

That was… what she had expected basically. The conclusion she was already arriving at almost as soon as the dust started dropping really. She gave the chest and the surroundings a last check, everything that was vaguely combustible or corrodible was now in it. Closing the lid, she shoved it right next to the spear for good measure.

“That’s about as good as that’s going to get I think,” her sister gave the top of the chest a pat and picked up her blade.

“We need to get stronger, fast, I think,” she agreed, tying her already plaited hair up with a rag bandana.

“Probably the only way that’s happening now is using the martial cultivation technique from the recording at this point.” her sister said with another sour look to the south.

She nodded in agreement, picking up the other sword, which she had carved from the last lumps of qi repelling stone from the warehouse by the docks. It was still pretty ‘meh’ compared to the quality of stone from below that Arai has originally used, but it was better than most of what was available around here. The leaf itself, she bound as tightly as she could to her own forearm, a stabbing weapon that hopefully wouldn’t stab her. The jade scrips were in the chest for safety at this point. It was a morbid consideration, but likely they would be safer here rather than with them. Either way, if they died, they died. But this way what was on them might not fall into other hands and someone else might find them eventually.

Shaking her head, to banish those morbid thoughts, she finished fixing her own hair and then tested the leaf, just to make sure it was going to work as she hoped.

“How close are you to… whatever this realm seemed to consider completion?” she asked Arai as she looked east then west considering the route they could take.

“Hard to say. I assume that the dantian will collapse to form a golden core or equivalent once it reaches critical density of the qi, but the clouds of purified qi in there are still condensing liquid droplets at a steady rate with no signs of stopping.” Her sister self-examined herself briefly.

“Hmmmmm,” she checked her own dantian again, which was basically the same as that. “That’s what it’s doing for me as well, meanwhile the qi that is just flowing through my body, unrefined is continually circulating and slowly reinforcing my blood, bones and flesh in some way.”

“Yeah...” Arai nodded. “It’s just continually circulating and not sitting still.”

She sighed again. She had assumed that the dantian formation was the critical aspect of this ‘realm’ and that they were in Qi Refinement, but actually, she was starting to suspect that wasn’t the case. It didn’t behave anything like what she knew of Qi Refinement in the strictest sense. Not that she knew much about it anyway.

“We should have asked the spear this, rather than those other dumb things,” she grimaced, regretting asking about the books now.

“Well, it might not have known anyway…” her sister noted, glancing at the spear, which remained silent.

“So… east or west do you reckon?” she looked east with a frown…

“Less rocks from the west so we go out that way and circle around?” her sister shrugged. “Depends how many there are I guess? The noise is pretty consistent from all directions really.”

“West it is then…” she nodded and they both started off towards that side of the plaza.

At the western periphery of the plaza, they passed through the wall gate and carefully looked into the misty street. The drizzle showed no signs of abating sadly. In the stormy half-light, nothing stood out, just scattered corpses of the Sar’katush, rotting where they had fallen.

They ran onwards down the street for a hundred metres before finally encountering Undren. A band of maybe forty minions, noticeably better armed ran across the intersection ahead of them. Ducking into an alleyway they watched as the group went past, not noticing them apparently in the mist. Most of the minions carried spears of bone and stone, with auxiliary bone clubs. The leader, a larger rat with lizard scaled arms and long claws on its limbs was otherwise unarmed. Under her qi enhanced vision, however, the claws had a faint greasy shimmer in the half-light that suggested qi poison of some kind. Beside it was a rat wearing a spider skull and carrying a banner that was basically a bunch of desiccated beast heads and skulls dangling from a cross. Behind that, at the head of the column came a bunch of smaller rats with markings daubed on them, also wearing skulls and banging randomly on crude drums of hide and bone.

They waited for the group to pass before swiftly crossing the road after them and ducking into the buildings.

“That’s far more organization than I’m happy with,” she signed.

“Too fate thrashed right,” Arai gestured back.

They moved between ruined buildings as stealthily as they could and encountered a second batch within a further hundred metres. This group was also about forty strong and was busily looting a crude square of ruined buildings and what had once been something approaching a market. The corpses of the lizardfolk had started to decay while they had been exploring as they accrued ambient qi as it returned to the wider city. The process had led to a faint miasma of yin death qi forming in many places. Not dangerous to them at this point but it made the ambience of exploration pretty horrific. The Undren seemed unconcerned with this as well and were happily dragging lizard corpses from everywhere into piles, grading them somehow then butchering many of them for meat.

Sana made a gesture and they both lobbed orbs of fire element infused qi, their compromise on the firebolt art, at the largest pile of corpses which combusted with a damp *Thup-Fsshwhup*.

The ambient qi coalescing around the corpse piles was mostly yin attuned wood-life rather than water, so it didn’t hinder the fire but instead fed it somewhat. Minions scattered, looking for the threat, chittering and howling. Her second bolt hit the drummer squarely in the head before he could get more than a single whack of his instrument off. The minions charged towards them, finally noticing their presence in the tumbled down ruin of their alley and Arai cut the first one down with a familiar sword strike.

She followed after, sundering a spear and decapitating another with a backhand blow from the leaf blade bound to her arm. Two more fell in rapid succession as she decapitated a second then took half the head off a third. Their spears scraped against her qi armour but did little more than draw a few red lines on her skin. A third then a fourth died in rapid succession. Using the martial form in actual combat required, as she had expected, quite a bit more focus. Before she had just been using the movements and the attacks, now she was actually moving her qi in the correct manner as well. Probably, she conceded, she should have done this before, but circumstances were what they were.

Pushing through a dozen more of the minion Undren kin, she did find it took a bit of work to efficiently use the leaf. It made an excellent guard, but most of the sword forms seemed to work better and flow more smoothly if she wielded the stone blade with two hands rather than one. Something about the latter made the harmony and balance between offence and defence within the movements harder to maintain.

Stepping through attacks and hitting weak points while constantly manoeuvring so nothing got properly behind her and she stayed within a few steps of her sister, she noted that the majority of the spear-wielding Undren kin were focusing on her. That was… unexpected, given she was the further back of the two of them. It also made a disturbing amount of strategic sense as they continued to slaughter the minions in the square. In overwhelming her, they could isolate Arai, who was slightly more used to fighting with the sword forms. She was also the one with the leaf blade currently.

After only a minute of combat, they had nearly gotten through half the rats in the square. Their use of the form was pretty bad she had to admit, although it was getting better with experience. Fortunately, the Undren Kin’s ‘thing’, beyond those strange bursts of cunning strategy appeared to largely be ‘if in doubt drown it with numbers’. So as long as they were up against pseudo-one-star combatants that could barely manifest their qi into their weapons let alone externalise it in any meaningful manner this was largely sustainable.

-At least until another spider rider or similar shows up, a part of her added unhelpfully.

Speaking of unhelpful things, she noted from the corner of her eye, that another Undren Kin had scrambled through the mess and recovered the drum. It got three whacks off on it before she managed to charge at it using her movement art. To her surprise though, the drummer immediately tried to flee, hammering on the drum and screaming loudly as it did so. It didn’t make much difference in the end, as while it was a touch faster than its compatriots, it was nowhere near fast enough.

She caught it with a sliding kick and bisected its corpse with an upward cut as she stood. Stomping on the drum, she destroyed it and then for good measure sliced the hide with the leaf blade. There was no point in half measures.

A dozen more heavily armed Undren minions poured out of the street on the opposite side. She paused very briefly to plant a Fire Array in the ground in their path. Those symbols still took an appreciable chunk of her qi compared to anything else, but they made for excellent clearing formations. This one would convert the ambient qi in the world around its centre for several metres into pure fire qi guided by the intent she put within the array. Like the lightning and the corrosion, the grade of the fire was inexplicably profound as well. Dodging back, before the array could explode with her still in its radius, she crashed through two more of the smaller kin, flattening a club-wielding one and backhanding the other into a wall where it hung twitching and bleeding.

After that, everything descended into a melee of carnage and death that stretched on and on.

She lost count of how many she killed. The fire array detonated as she had hoped, creating a persistent barrier to block off the influx of attackers from that direction. As she fought on, the refinement rate of qi progressed much as she had hoped it would. Pausing for a heartbeat, she observed the entirety of the cycle. The mist in her dantian, originating from the ambient, unrefined qi she was absorbing, was slowly coalescing into drops of pure, silvery qi at a rate of about one tiny drop a minute. The droplets themselves glistened in her dantian like tiny orbs of dew, drifting gently within the nebulous clouds that filled it. As she fought on, they also began condensing in her meridians and flow towards her dantian.

She returned her focus properly to her surroundings to dodge a thrown explosive rock from above, then used her movement art to get onto the roof. Getting distracted by her cultivation would be a very stupid way to get injured. Scanning her surroundings it wasn’t hard to find the culprit, a larger Undren dressed in bone armour rather than chitin, and carrying a bone spear stuck with dozens of spider fangs. It was also, already holding another explosive rock in its paw, looking around for her. Snarling, it threw the rock at her with surprising vigour as she dashed towards it, dodging several minions that had exploded up some stairs to head her off.

Seeing her rapid approach, the rat grinned, threw one final rock and…rippled.

Its form flowed away from her like vanishing mist, reappearing on another rooftop about twenty metres distant. It offered another laugh and threw a further rock from the satchel at its side into the morass below aiming for Arai.

“Wonderful, truly nameless fates your eyes are upon us,” she swore behind her mask.

She had managed to find the one Undren with a movement art.

Below her, she saw two more bone armoured rats charge into the plaza. One smashed the ground splitting the fire that was blocking the way. It then waved an arm and a dozen lightly armoured minions with notably better weapons and more organisation ran past it towards Arai. The other, wearing spider chitin with extra bones and bearing a bunch of bone blades jumped onto another nearby roof and pointed at her, making what she could only term a very obscene gesture.

It hurled a blade at her and then… appeared holding the blade half a metre from her!

“Fates go molest yourselves!” she snarled, as much in shock as frustration.

This one’s strength felt almost on a par with her own. The purity of its qi was lacking, but its aura clearly felt like it should be Qi Refinement…

-Could you keep talking about these with star ratings at this point? She thought grimly.

She blocked the blade with the leaf, ruining it and dodging back even as it drew a second short blade. The edge of the blade rippled ominously and started to show obvious signs of qi infusion.

-Wonderful, these ones clearly had active Qi arts, she sighed.

It licked a blade mockingly then threw it past her, beyond her range to intercept and the ruined blade reformed itself before her eyes, drawing qi from the world around it to restore the half that was broken. Laughing, it attacked her again, forcing her to block with the sword this time. Swatting the blade away she struck only for it to vanish from beside her and appear by the other blade, already stabbing for her back. Her qi perception allowed her to see it surreptitiously throw two more blades. She spun and parried its attack, sending it rolling backwards. As expected it blurred and appeared beside another blade and charged at her again-

She threw herself to the side, as a second blade scythed through the air, aiming for her head. She nearly missed it in her qi perception because she was spread so thin, keeping an eye on the square below, on the Undren across the other side who was still throwing rocks, at her sister now, and this one that was becoming a serious handful.

Rolling up a second blade came, which she also parried.

-It has remote manifestation as well as teleportation between weapons… at Qi Refinement, what kind of insanity is this! she wailed in her own head.

True teleportation in its true sense required spatial comprehensions and was basically a thing that only Dao Seeking cultivators could achieve. Shorter, lesser forms were available to those at lower realms, but as far as movement arts went they were nonexistent below Soul Foundation as far as she was aware.

-Is it the weapons? she wondered, tracking her opponent as it circled her.

Both of them attacked simultaneously and she dodged forwards under a thrown blade with her movement art, feeling one scrape against her back drawing a tiny scratch as it changed direction. Poison that contained Yin Water Qi started to infiltrate her body but was instantly consumed by her own pure Qi.

They could even break her qi armour and were poisoned?

- Fate thrashed heavens go stiff yourselves!

The Undren kin skipped back easily and appeared above her, suddenly crashing down onto where she would have been had she not used her own movement art to dodge sideways.

A blade circled behind her and it was behind her, stabbing at her back even as she dodged again.

Then it was in front of her striking at an arm.

Then Behind her striking at a leg.

She kept dodging, wondering how long it could keep this up?

Two more came for her heart and head. She deflected the one coming for her head as hard as she could and cut the one coming for her heart with the leaf blade destroying the hilt. It gave a crack of destabilized Qi in the process and the Undren Kin staggered coughing up blood.

-Ah. So they are refined treasures, she thought with a relieved sigh.

That made things much easier. Although it still raised questions in her head as to how a Qi Refinement rat had soul bound treasures.

She went after the second short sword immediately, forcing her opponent onto the defensive for the first time. In response, it gave a strange echoing howl even as it retreated from her searching strikes. A small mob of minions flooded on to the rooftop, clearly intending to act as a distraction for the more elite rat… officer rat? They swarmed at her, stabbing with spears and swinging crude bone clubs. The conviction in their eyes was… disturbing. Their determination to take her down, even at the expense of their own lives was something she was glad that the mantra was capable of burying. If not she would have been demoralised long before now she was certain. Grimacing behind her cloth mask, she kicked one away and bisected two more, before just ramming the largest group with her movement art. In the same instant, three short swords shot down from above and behind her, travelling so fast that she struggled to keep track of them with her qi perception-

The rock thrower appeared right beside her in a ripple of mist, sweeping at her with its spider fang staff. Two of the blades hit her in the arm and shoulder, even as the blow sent her crashing backwards off the roof, down into the plaza. Bits of unfortunate Undren minion rained down around her, even the blades shot away, orbiting far above her.

Dozens of minions charged at her, clearly intent on swarming her under and stabbing her to death. Still wincing, the staff had ripped open a huge gash in her stomach, she slapped a hand to the ground and formed a fire array even as she scrambled away.

The heat sucked the air from her lungs and battered at her qi defences, draining them far faster than she would have liked as the expected explosive rock from the staff rat hit the ground where her head would have been. The explosion and fire wave swept nearly everything in the square off its feet. The shockwave left her near the far wall of a building on the edge of the plaza. Arai had rolled behind cover at the last minute as well, she was glad to see. The rest of the rats had not been so fortunate. Dozens ran in every direction, shrieking and flailing as their fur burned. Those close to the detonation point were either gone completely or disarticulated chunks of burning meat.

*KlOnnG, kLAng KLaNg KluUng*

She looked up to see the staff rat hitting the base of its staff haft the edge of the roof. The disturbing sound came from a bunch of crude bells made of a dull blue-grey metal that she hadn’t really noticed, tied to its cross hilt. Seconds later, a huge swarm of the rats rolled into the square.

-Time to try something new, she thought, still shaking her head to clear the ringing from the explosion.

Learning the arts from the tome was hard, but this one had seemed useful enough that she made the effort after they got the knack for the fireball. That she hadn’t used it before now was because they had been trying to avoid undue attention. That seemed kind of moot now though. This art also had a critical advantage here as well. It didn’t require any gestures to make the qi flow properly. Just intent and an understanding of how qi flowed through her body. It didn’t really matter what you yelled either, as long as it had intent behind it. The activation only required visualisation of the art's symbol and a suitable syllable or word to associate with it.

{Thunderclap}

“DIE!”

A qi shockwave tore through every minion still alive within some twenty metres flattening them and killing most of them instantly. Those further away were badly injured, bleeding from their heads and stumbling drunkenly.

The short sword wielding Undren Kin appeared beside her and stabbed at her head. She evaded the strike as best she could and grabbed at its arm. Sadly, it vanished again in almost the same instant, so her backhanded strike with the leaf blade only drew a bit of blood. Her qi perception also rippled, warning her of another incoming rock. Tolling away she skipped up onto the roof, looking around for the odious thing.

Frustratingly, and entirely predictably, Staff wielding Undren was already on the other side of the plaza. A short sword whistled towards her at huge speed. This time she dodged into its direction, rather than away from it, abusing its forward momentum to evade it for a few seconds longer than might have otherwise been possible.

{Thunderclap}

“Fate Thrashed Bastard!”

It was a curious quirk of the art that you could chain multiple words together to amplify the impact of the shout. It took significantly more qi with each syllable, but it still amounted to a lot less than even a single symbol array. Her qi reserves, now she had had some time to actually accumulate some, were also close to a Golden Core Cultivator with a low grade, grade eight or nine core and still in pretty good shape. The symbol and her mantra were just about keeping pace with the drain of her focusing on constantly visualising the martial form while using it.

The sword wobbled she noted and she darted towards a side street. Sending several fireballs lobbing across the square below to add to the chaos as she chased after the sneaky rat bastard.

~ Arai, fighting in the courtyard square ~

The response to their initial engagement was, Arai found herself considering as she danced through the mess of combat, somewhat more robust than she might have liked. Especially in regards to the larger Undren that had come with this new band. She had especially been hoping they might have gone a little while longer without attracting something like the spear-wielding, rock-throwing menace that was circling the courtyard.

In any event, they were basically in this for the long haul now. There were really no good choices in any case. Fight out here, stay in the courtyard, or try to take cover in the buildings on its perimeter. At least this way they could try to leverage as much potential as possible from the Martial Form. If the fates had eyes, hopefully, they wouldn’t run into another Spider Mother. The qi from it would be welcome, but everything else would be a downright nuisance at best. It would be best if that had been some special Undren who was leading this bunch. Neither of them was sure if the rider was even dead in any case. Sana had been separated from it and then they had focused on killing the mother.

She eviscerated an attacking spear Undren with an upward strike before lopping off the head of the following one. After the turbulence of the new wave arriving and Sana’s use of the Thunder Art they had endeavoured to grasp as fast as possible during those three hours, the running battle was starting to settle down again. She was fighting here, chasing these rat bastards around and her sister was playing tag around the edge of the square. Facing off against a sword throwing, teleporting Undren Kin and that fate accursed rock lobber she had also been dodging.

Killing two more as she tracked another of the elites, wielding a brownstone blade like her current one, she consciously stepped back from the rhythm she had been slipping into again, recalling some of their father’s warnings about fighting with martial forms. While strikes flowed together, especially ones that relied on forms and footwork for training, it was possible to fall into predictable patterns. Predictability got you killed, simply put. Even monsters had eyes, and many had better senses for space and pattern recognition than people did.

She did a 180-degree turn, killing several more carelessly swarming minions in the process as a rock sailed past her exploding against the wall. Apparently, her sister wasn’t able to keep it occupied completely… or it had run out of rocks and had to go get more. She killed two more and slapped an array against the wall, sending a hissing wave of lightning through the minions around her. No more rocks came as she finished off the survivors and turned looking for the next mob. Maybe the staff wielder was just being more sparing with them.

In any event, it gave her a moment to appraise her progress. It hadn’t been that long since they started, but the number of droplets that had condensed was already… considerable. Their number had increased by maybe fifty to sixty, just from fighting here for… ten to fifteen minutes? They had been forming before of course since their breakthrough down below, courtesy of the Spider Queen’s core, but between everything else going on she hadn’t paid it much mind. Living was more important than whatever her qi cycles were doing of their own accord. Her mind told her she already had thousands drifting in her dantian, and that suggested that she might need… a rather scary number of droplets actually.

On the other hand, they were starting to coalesce more regularly as time went by, especially in her meridians. She had been looking for a cycle, but there wasn’t really one that she could see. Her body pulled in qi, passed it through her meridians continuously and circulated much of it into her dantian where it accumulated as mist. From that mist, droplets of qi condensed everywhere and flowed with the mists, ending up drifting in her dantian.

Some of the larger drops were starting to congregate together in the mists as they collected by random chance, or were brought together by the swirling currents of qi that the Martial Form stirred up and focused. Sometimes singular ones merged, other times a dozen at a go, forming slivery little cloud puddles that drifted and swirled on their own. Those puddles dragged more mist to them and seemed to increase the strength of her qi flow bit by bit, but she couldn’t otherwise influence them in any significant way. The overall impression though, was that eventually, they would coalesce into a single, unified droplet that would eventually fill her whole dantian? Maybe even her meridians? If that was the case though, they were going to be running for a long time. Even assuming the rate of droplets condensing kept rising at the current rate it would take weeks of solid fighting… maybe months to get anywhere close to filling her dantian.

Shaking her head at that somewhat depressing thought that had been circling for a while, she fed it to her mantra and started towards the next group of Undren that had made it into the square.

The obvious answer was refining their opponent’s cultivations. It would have been easier if these rats had beast cores, but clearly, they were not Qi beasts and possessed a means of building a foundation much closer to spiritual cultivation, albeit with the heart as the focus rather than the dantian.

The problem, she reflected as she cut down the first minion and sidestepped a spear, was that most of these rats were barely in Qi Condensation, and ripping out hearts and refining them in continuous melee combat wasn’t as easy as it sounded in her head.

Shoulder charging another into a pile of rubble she took the opportunity to grab one, ripping it out of the creature's chest as two more stabbed at her furiously and the rats swarming back attacked the one she had just crippled. The heart gave her a pulse of qi akin to a grade one core, however, her gains were diffuse and impure. That wasn’t due to their quality, but rather her own lack of understanding she was sure. She couldn’t really grasp their cultivation method at all.

Parrying a spear, she bisected its wielder and hissed in annoyance as small rats immediately tore its corpse down and started devouring it before she could even think about refining some of its qi.

As a denial strategy, it was exceptional. The little rats, unlike before, didn’t really go after them, unless she went rolling on the ground. They just hindered her movement occasionally and tore apart any dead Undren that fell, focusing on the heart and vital organs. Currently, they were roiling all over the courtyard, working hard at denying her any chance of claiming anything from her sister’s demolition of the start of the first response wave.

A curved bone throwing weapon thudded into the wall beside her, barely missing her nose by a fraction as she leant out of the way.

Another large armoured rat and a cadre of a dozen or so better armed minions had made their presence known. Two more curved bone blades arced at her. She snared one out of the air and infused some qi into it, sending it flying back. It left a ruined swathe through the onrushing Undren as its original owner desperately avoided being ruined by its own weapon before it hit a distant wall and exploded into bone shards.

The big ones were annoying. That was the only way to describe them. One on one she could probably kill any of them in a few moves, but they never engaged for that long. They screened her with minions, struck when she was distracted and retreated as soon as there was any hint of being disadvantaged. If she chased after one, the rock thrower tended to start intervening… but it had been awfully quiet the last few minutes.

There was another thunderclap of cursing from the rooftops to her left. The distortion in the air made even her waver slightly, although the symbol easily cancelled out the worst of it. That was the one downside of that art, beyond the noise. It’s capacity for ‘friendly fire’ was almost unavoidable unless she blocked her ears. That was out of the question, hearing was the best way to keep herself alert for thrown projectiles. Furthermore, denying herself senses seemed to impact the overall efficiency of her Qi Perception field, and she needed every shred of benefit it was giving already.

With a sigh, she settled back into the mind-set of just letting her qi cycle, and focused on the martial form and killing more Undren. There was another thunderclap a few seconds later that sent weaker Undren staggering. Taking advantage of the opportunity she skipped ahead of the armoured one and its posse, making no effort to engage them and tore through the staggering minions in that general direction.

To her dark amusement, another armoured group rushed out of a nearby building and set up to block her path.

“Really your capacity to self-organise is the worst,” she muttered under her breath as another skull wearing Undren behind the group started to bang on a drum,

“No you don’t!” she sneered.

Using her movement art, she tore through the line, leaving a bloody swathe of bisected bodies and ruined limbs in her wake. The brownstone blade was holding up reasonably well, but it was on its way out sadly. She was still on the lookout for a useful replacement given Sana was using the only serviceable blade they had eked from the remaining qi repelling stone that was of sufficient size.

“Fate thrashed-”

She was forced to dodge away at the last minute, as the drummer wavered into mist and a spider fang staff shot out of the warping space where it had been, stabbing straight at her heart.

-So you can do that, can you? She thought, narrowing her eyes.

The drumming continued from up above as she blocked the strike with her blade. The spider fangs scored a nasty line down the blade, making her already sour mood darken even more. The staff wielder appeared beside her, already sweeping at her legs with its own foot. At the last moment, it’s speed and force rapidly-

She vaulted backwards as the leg hissed past her. Had it connected she was sure her leg might have been fractured.

The staff wielder swept at her legs with the staff as she found her footing again. This time she was prepared and used a move from the martial form to step over the strike-

The borderline crippling strike to the inside of the thigh was much, much faster than anything it had previously done, sending her sprawling.

She cut defensively as it leapt through the air, legs already bent, staff sweeping down and it was gone-

Her qi perception twisted and she rolled into the distortion rather than away. Her intuition probably saved her learning what it felt like to be stabbed through the stomach as its strike hammered down where she had just been.

-Except I already know what that feels like you nameless molested rat, she snarled in her head.

Slashing out again she found it was already gone like mist, into the mists. The large armoured from before appeared on top of her almost instantly, trying to shoulder charge her while sweeping up with its big blade. She used her movement art and winced as her leg meridian screamed at her.

-So that is what you were after!

She scowled as the staff rat's qi managed to effect a minor injury to her leg meridian.

-Time to be a little less predictable.

As if the weather understood her frustrations, it abruptly started to rain. Fat drops of water arriving in a curtain as the weather from the north side of the island finally arrived, unbidden at their location.

Her attacker charged forward holding its blade low again, ready to sweep up or across depending on which way she dodged. She went backwards and pulled it onto her, inviting it in with the intention of making it expose a flank even as she made an opening.

A dozen spears, javelins and thrown bone blades hissed at her location, trying to close off her retreat.

Most missed even as the rat slammed the blade down, aiming to break both her weapon and her. One spear did hit her in the shoulder though, and she mimicked stumbling to one side as if thrown off balance. Fortunately, as she had intended, it marginally overestimated the distance and the blade missed her body by a hands width.

Snarling, it stamped on her, clearly intending to hold her in place for another stab. She hit it weakly in the leg twice, grasping for the brown blade with her other hand. It leered down at her, ominously lining the end of the blade up with her neck…

She transmuted its leg, watching its limb and side explode in slow motion almost as its suddenly purified Qi ran out of control.

Even as it screamed and collapsed to the side, small rats swarmed all over it, only to be cast away or consumed by the detonation of its qi.

Low to the ground as she was, she avoided the worst and grasped its arm-

The other, staff-wielding Undren appeared in the mist and rain above her, stabbing down at her heart. Changing her plan she put the strongest lightning array she could muster down on the ground beside her.

In the wet and the ruin of the street, lightning consumed everything for ten metres in every direction in a flickering sheet of blue-white death. The staff rat, right in the epicentre couldn’t escape quite fast enough, lightning catching it and casting it away even as it devoured everything else, arcing from rat to rat, leaving smoking corpses and exploded limbs in its wake.

It hit the far wall, even as she pushed off the smoking Undren. Sadly it recovered itself enough to vanish in a swirl of mist through the hole in the wall. Scowling, she looked around in the rain and put a corrosive array down on the ground. It cost a lot of qi, but hopefully, she would make it back in a second. Grabbing the fallen rat’s blade she stabbed it in the back, grimacing as its own weapon struggled to part its flesh. This one was definitely not Qi Refinement.

Two heartbeats later the corrosive symbol exploded all around her and her acquired resistance to it from the Undergrove paid off as the swarms of small rats charging in literally dissolved while her skin merely blistered.

Kneeling down she shoved her hand into the wound, fishing around for its heart and was rewarded when her fingers found the pearly crystal-like accretion beside it. It was smooth and round in her hand, maybe four centimetres across. A proper core.

She pulled it out, even as she registered several fist-sized projectiles drop out of the sky around her-

Crouching in cover, she grimaced as the shockwaves rolled over her, dispersing rubble across the street and dispersing the worst of the corrosive mist. It made her spit blood and damaged her organs a little but she ignored it and pushed her qi into the Core. The symbol devoured the qi within it in seconds. Hundreds of droplets condensing out of the mist as it flowed into her Dantian.

She couldn’t help but smile, pleased that her hunch had been correct. Increasing the density of the misty qi would generate droplets from the existing mist quicker.

Grabbing a smaller chitin armoured Undren that was flopping weakly nearby, she stabbed the blade through it and under the cover of the ruin from the explosion refined its heart, which didn’t have a crystal core next to it. Draining the qi in it increased the mist of qi in her body a touch but nowhere near what the Golden Core had given her.

Thinking about it, she rapidly did some calculations regarding the economy of scale and efficiency of what was worth targeting and what wasn’t. While it was true that using the sword and the form was efficient in one way, it was also providing the rat tide a means to consume almost anything she killed because it was almost impossible for her to absorb qi through her blade in that manner. She had tried and while it would do it, it was barely a case of getting back what she expended for the most part.

Reaching a decision she now felt a bit foolish for not considering earlier really she tore some of the bone armour off the rat and swiftly tied it around its looted blade, slinging it over her back in a crude scabbard.

Eyeing the rest of the armour, she tore it off as well and slung it on. The brownstone blade and even the rats own blade had had trouble cutting it, so most of the other weapons would likely falter as well.

With a half-smile, she stared through the rain at the Undren that were already massing again in the street, led by an armoured Undren in bone armour and carrying a club made of the long bone of some giant creature.

It would do for now anyway.

With a blur, she charged for a nearby smaller Undren kin that was rolling on the ground and thrashing its last in the corrosive mist and punched her hand into its chest crushing its heart and using the symbol to draw in its qi.

What followed was a hazy maelstrom of carnage. She totally eschewed any effort to chase after the staff Undren, who was still teleporting around, throwing exploding rocks hither and thither, and instead focused on ripping minions apart and refining their qi condensation mini-cores that were fused into their hearts. The process did cost her qi, but to her surprise, the martial form worked almost as well without using a sword. The flowing, incisive intent at its core, the striking at critical points and the footwork were just as valid, except now her hands were the sword rather than the sword itself. To her right, she was aware of Sana tearing through another band of minions as she continued her duel with the blade throwing rat.

All around them Undren raged now, charging at her from every direction with an unshakable ferocity. It felt almost alien to her, they gave no quarter, expected none and kept coming in spite of her inflicting losses that would have made a mortal army break and flee long ago. Did they even have a concept of morale? Or feel fear?

-Then again, she thought. They had been wavering a bit in the courtyard before the second wave and these proper elites arrived.

So they were probably responsible for their renewed dedication to trying to tear them down and she was refining their compatriots’ cultivations in front of them to make herself stronger so... Part of her did feel… odd doing this, but she politely invited it to go talk to the mantra, and it conceded that on the balance, the rats had probably got it coming. Not to mention they had attacked first and made no effort to engage in anything other than outright slaughter…

In any case, the melee was a terrifying spiral of violence and intent. Even with the mantra ghosting along within her, keeping her mind in equilibrium, as she ripped through rat after rat, she felt drawn to the ferocity. The Martial Form also fed it, her strikes ruining limbs, tearing off heads, shattering skulls scattering broken furry bodies behind her in a hypnotic facsimile of the rain that was hammering down from above. It washed the blood from her body almost as it splattered, turning the street around her red with gore as she smashed furry bodies into the ground, walls, rocks, rubble and each other. She took wounds, but less than she had expected, given she was almost purely on the offence now. The armour actually helped, a lot in that regard, she had to acknowledge. She even looted a few more bits, two arm guards made of durable bone were especially helpful and helped cut down on the incidental cuts from the rats she was destroying.

A few bone spears inflicted unplesant wounds but they were nothing that her mantra couldn't heal almost as fast as they were dealt.

Another crash of sound echoed from the buildings across the way so that combat was still going strong, then a building across the street recoiled and erupted outwards and her sister stood in the street ahead of her, carrying the ruined torso of the blade wielder. It was missing its lower body, an arm, and its neck was bent at a very lethal angle. Three of its blades were stuck in her body, including one through her heart. Her sister contemptuously pulled that out and tossed the corpse away, refining the golden core in a few seconds.

“You look like shit,” Sana remarked, looking her over

“You look like a pincushion,” she chuckled darkly, wiping the water and blood off her own face.

“Uggh, that fate thrashed blade thrower,” Sana kicked the body viciously as she plucked another of the blades out of her side and considered it.

“They are falling back?” she wondered because they had been standing here for a good ten seconds now and hadn’t come under any kind of attack.

*thudududuum du dum* Thudududum du Dum*

A ferocious drum beat roared in the middle distance all of a sudden. Followed by a rising roar of Undren…voices?

“Aooooo! Huwaaaoo! Chikaaaaa! Aooooo! Aeoooo!”

*THUDUDUDUUM du Dum* THUDUDUDUM du Dum*

The drumbeat rolled out again, and this time she felt the faint pricking and numbing sensation that she was starting associate with soul strength. It blurred her thoughts a bit but the symbol dispersed the attack without any difficulty even as it traveled to her. She jumped onto a rooftop, and Sana followed after her, looking in the distance the sound came from.

*THUDUM du Dum DUM DUM*

*THUDUDUDUM du Dum DUN DUN*

The beat changed and she saw, with her qi enhanced vision a giant rat thing. It was big enough that it was visible in profile even through the haze of the rain. It was like the one from the depths below, but if anything it was larger.

*Kluoooong*

*Kluang*

*KLUUUUUUNG*

The bell came from the other direction, every bit as loud as the drums. It felt like claws and teeth gnawing at the edge of her mind, scrabbling in the darkness, trying to drag her down into despair.

In the rain, some four hundred metres distant on the higher areas towards the docks she could see thousands and thousands of Undren arrayed. Minions covered every rooftop and between them were whole bands of heavily armed and armoured larger Undren, all with the familiar lizard mutations. Hundreds of them. All of them likely Golden Core.

Above them, standing on the head of the giant rat, beside two other hunched rats was the staff wielder, now holding its staff with the blue bells aloft, waving it in the air. Behind them, on the back of the huge rat, was a platform that held a dozen great drums. Stretched hides across frames of bone, each sporting a strange rune that pulsed disturbingly and made her vision swim to look upon it.

*Du Dum Dun Dun DUH Dun Duh….*

*Du Duuuun Du Duuuun… Dun THUDUM*

*Thuuuudum…*

Crashed out and the hoard howled and danced on the rooftops becoming more frenzied, waving their banners and hammering spears, clubs and other weapons off shields, off the walls, roofs and even each other.

“This is going to be trouble…” her sister muttered, sounding as horrified as she felt.

“That might be an understatement…” she said weakly as she watched two huge Undren, each almost two metres tall stalk forward onto a lower rooftop.

A group of smaller Undren dressed in bone armour and a banner adorned with… mushrooms… came forward, carrying two head-sized golden coloured glassy orbs

“Oh fates go…” her sister cursed as they watched in shock and horror.

Each of the huge Undren took up a sling and put an orb reverently into it.

*Dum du Dum Du Dum Dum Dun Dun Thud…*

“UhmmMMMmmmm”

*Du Dum Du Dunnn*

The drumbeats reached a crescendo and the two rats both spun their slingshots and released the orbs high into the air in their general direction while the distant Undren howled and hammered their weapons against each other. A movement to her left caught her eye as she saw Undren suddenly scattering away from a rooftop…

Focusing on it, she saw a wizened, four-armed Undren raise a staff looked like it had a lizard skull on top-

They both flinched as five creepy purple-green lightning sizzled out from the Sar’katush skulls eye sockets and struck the two orbs as they reached the height of their trajectory, exploding them like New Year’s fireworks. Each orb rained down dozens of smaller golden orbs in the sky above them. The lightning arced down after them smashing into the smaller orbs before they landed and combusting them into waves of cloying greenish-purple fire and smoke that swirled in the rain and seemed to make the whole world steam faintly.

The four-armed rat suddenly looked directly at her.

She felt something brutally punch into her mind, even as the space between them seemed to fall away and she got a proper look at it through the storm-lit rain. Above them thunder rolled as the lightning bolt from the staff vanished into the clouds above, scattered in every direction. The soul attack was swept away by the symbol, but it still made her limbs chill and her mind go sluggish for a second. In that regard, it felt comparable to the spider mother they had fought earlier, at the very least.

Without needing any communication they both abandoned the rooftop. A Nascent Soul qi beast was one thing... a Nascent Soul rat, with no obvious suppression? That was all kinds of nope!

“Back to the spear?” her sister asked looking shaken.

She looked up at the swirling green-yellow clouds that were settling in every direction.

“If they do that over the square we are totally fate cursed.” She muttered.

“But that’s a Nascent Soul rat…” her sister pointed out. “If it sends its soul form….?”

“Yeah... Out here we are going to get swatted something horrifying.” She grimaced.

“It would fate thrashed dumb to die because we overestimated our chances,” Sana said simply. “Even if it scatters that dust in the square, we survived the moon mushroom spores, that stuff can’t be worse than that.”

“It was agonising,” she pointed out, having already had first-hand experience of testing it.

“Everything out here has been fate thrashed agonising,” her sister scowled. “I haven’t not been in agony one way or another ever since ended up in this horrific place.”

“Well we have to fall back to the buildings clad in qi disrupting stone at any rate,” Sana added.

“Yeah, that seems like a good idea…” she said with a sigh, starting to run back up the street towards the inner city. “We can probably last a long time. Longer than they can.”

“Nice armour by the way,” her sister said with an appraising snicker, poking at the bone armour she had thrown on.

“It was surprisingly sturdy…” she said with an eye roll.

“It also looks…” Sana snickered and mimed a few rather crude gestures.

Looking down at it, it really did accent more than it hid in some weird ways. Mostly because it had hung in front of the Undren and her shoulders were nowhere near as broad. It protected her back more than her front. In fact, the upper arm pieces were more annoying than useful she had come to realise, as its arms had been as thick as thighs.

“Meh.” She shrugged. “It’s hardly likely to last long anyway if we have to fight like that all the time.” She wiped some of the rat blood off her face as rain washed it out of her hair.

As they ran, she borrowed the leaf from Sana and took off the arms and cut them up to make a proper belt to hold it in place below her breasts. As it was, the majority of the armour was for the rat’s upper torso and shoulders anyway, and being much narrower she had to bind it in several places to stop it slipping uncomfortably. The rest she used to better secure the ad hoc scabbard for her looted blade. Turning a corner she did a random forward tumble and nodded to herself, it was so much easier to move in, without sacrificing much. The blade also sat properly on her back without shifting sideways periodically.

They both made their way through the streets using their movement arts and the cover afforded by the buildings to get as little of the green smoke on them as possible. In the distance, there was a rumble of drums to a different distant beat. The smoke pall, carried down by the rain was settling like a scar across what had to be a third of this district of the city. Parts of it were being set on fire now as well, flames falling onto rooftops and taking light amid the stonework. The smoke from those smouldering blazes, apparently unaffected by the rain and water now flowing through the streets, made the storm lit, rain-drenched city even more bleakly oppressive. Red water glistening in the streets as they splashed through them. Smoke from the smouldering blazes rolling down streets behind them making the stormy half-light even gloomier

Ahead of them, another warband was diverting across a plaza that held a ruined sacrificial pit towards them. The stench of rotting corpses was tangible even at this distance, even with her filtering it out as best she could. They ignored that group and kept running for the inner city, there was no point in fighting it out now. Their goal was simple, get to the inner area, hide on the edges of the aura from the spear and do as much damage as they could without getting caught by the nascent soul rat or the smoke pall.

“It occurs to me,” she noted as they ran on. “That the other lot were really into spiders… but these guys are big on bones and have giant rats?”

“You think there are different groups in the city?” her sister mused, as they ducked through a ruined alley, ignoring another bunch of Undren that had just spotted them and also given pursuit.

“Hard to say, but it wouldn’t hurt to check if they will fight each other as readily as they fight us?” she suggested.

“If they do, that would make us not dying a lot easier,” her sister conceded looking nervously up at the sky as another pal of smoke swept across.

She grimaced and they ducked through a building to put walls between them and the billowing smoke. It…

“Is it just my imagination or is the smoke actually following us subtly?” she asked as she scrambled out the other side and the smoke rolled over the roof of the building behind them.

Sana glanced back and grimaced as well. “Nope, it’s definitely being manipulated I’d say… the Nascent Soul old rat seems the likely culprit?”

In her head she had to agree, it was the likely culprit. It was obvious now she looked at it, as the clouds rolled in wings behind them, swirling forward and eating up street after street, becoming less and less hindered by the torrential rain that was pouring down from the clouds above.

Sana hurdled over the wall ahead of here and there was a shocked half yell from an Undren as she deceased it simply by pushing it before her into the wall across the street not even pausing as she ran on, refining its heart. She leapt after Sana and they raced across another street, finally getting within sight of the edge of the inner city. They had come quite a long way in their rampage earlier. Certainly further than she had realised.

They crossed the next street and tore straight into a column of Undren that were all carrying spears. The column fragmented and she killed indiscriminately. The Undren turned to deal with the surprise incursion right into the middle of their column. She tore one in two, grabbing the core and refining it as she ducked down the alley, Sana following her throwing another corpse away. The leader of the column charged through the next alley along.

Behind them, the drum beats got louder, presumably because the other horde of Undren had started to move in their direction.

The column leader, who wore a grey skin loincloth, wielded a spear and had lizard-like spines on his back arrived in their new street a few paces slower than them, snarling and gesticulating at them.

Without any preamble she twisted to the side, blocking the spear strike with the arm guards of her new armour while Sana flanked it from the other side. It dodged away and made up space between them in a strangely obscure manner.

“Great, does everything have movement arts now?” her sister snarked as she tackled it directly.

Lizard and girl collapsed in a rolling heap that she followed after. Using her own movement art she caught up and stomped on its face as hard as she could, stunning it. In that opening, her sister eviscerated it with the leaf and scrambled up, already refining its core and leaving it twitching on the ground.

Its column charged from both sides trying to interrupt them. The Qi condensation Undren screaming with a berserk fury and stabbing with their spears. If anything the organisation of this group was among the best yet, they advanced in a line with spears and shields, blocking off much of the street from both sides, holding some kind of approximate formation in the process. Unfortunately for them, their spears were not really long enough to make the second and third rows dangerous, so she just vaulted over the first row directly.

Crashing into the second row, knees first, she flattened one unfortunate, wincing as a stray spear opened up a nasty gash on her arm. Refining its heart, she tackled under the line of spears for the next row, taking two with her, shredding their bodies with qi infused punches. Behind her, Sana crashed down into the line as well.

“DIE ALREADY!”

Her sister’s roar rocked the whole street, stunning everything except for a few particularly sturdy armoured Undren who had been working their way forward. Even they were dazed slightly. Was that a side effect of them having good hearing? At any rate, the effect was… decisive. They cleaned up half a dozen as they made their way out leaving mass panic and disorganisation behind them.

They cut right at the next intersection and then dodged down an alley at the sound of lots of Undren approaching. A second column appeared again mostly carrying bone spears and wearing the grey skin tunics. The column broke off and charged towards their alley so they ran around the block and caught it by surprise as it piled in after them.

A band charged from across the way directly at them, which was almost too much of a gift as they tore back through the side of the original column. The two groups met in a crunch of disorganisation, greatly exacerbated by her sister stunning everything a moment later.

Seeing the leader of the group working its way towards them, she let her qi go a bit chaotic and staggered. It took the bait and blurred towards them, striking at her back with its spear. At the last minute, she reacted and grimaced as it sped up its strike by almost fourfold. Fortunately, her sister was already closing on it, cutting for its spear with the leaf. The spear, which caught her in the side, still went halfway through her before it was cut, throwing her into the wall of the building with the inertia of the impact.

Pulling it out of her side she made a face as her body fought the qi that was trying to worm out of it into her. The rat, in a grey robe, ducked under her sister’s follow up strike, slamming the butt of its ruined spear into her stomach and sending her sprawling into a mob of spear-wielding minions who got a few stabs off before the entire street vanished in a sheet of lightning.

She grit her teeth and fought the numbing energy that ran over her body. The friendly fire from the arrays was a bit problem unless they shared qi. Even with her body adapting to the damage slowly, lightning was brutal.

“NAMELESS CURSED RAT!”

Her sister's howl made the entire street recoil and even pushed away, for a little, the sheeting rain and swirling clouds of green-purple fog that were descending on them.

Recovering, she used her movement art, ignoring the complaints from her meridians and crashed into the back of the grey-robed rat. Even stunned as it was, it still somehow managed to evade her grasp at the very last second. Chasing after it she barely managed to clip a stray rat, turning it into a rat shaped stain on the far wall. Shaking her head she put down a corrosion array and turned the entire street into rippling field of corrosive fog. The grey-robed rat screamed and stumbled, its flesh bubbling and she finally tackled it into the wall of a building. Her inertia and the qi in her limbs turned it into a broken mess. Unslinging the blade from her back she stabbed it in the chest and levered sideways. It took a few seconds longer than she would have liked with her sister still stunned in the street, but she got the core and refined it.

Suddenly everything grew dim around them, space seemed to turn viscous and the Undren still able to react all started to flee or cry out pathetically.

A shadowy clawed hand crashed down from above, demolishing everything within a block and carving open the ground around them like it was mud.

Screaming, she fell downwards, feeling as if her body was about to explode as brutal intent spiked into her body, attempting to force the qi out of her and disperse her cultivation foundation completely. The symbol and her mantra strained against it, deflecting and repelling the pressure even as she crashed down into liquid… water… corrosive enough to burn her skin.

The pressure vanished after a few more moments as she flailed in the water, swimming arbitrarily left and praying she would find a wall. All around her, she got the faint sense of threat, and the symbol had also slipped back into her mind’s eye subtly. That was a sure sign that something unwanted lurked in here. To her relief, she did find a wall, and rose to the surface, which was only a metre or so above her in the end. About ten metres away in the gloom she saw Sana hauling herself out of the water. The water seemed normal, relative to its location, but with this ominous vibe hanging over everything she had no intention of lingering in it, and rapidly swam over to where her sister was and scrambled out.

“Great, more fate thrashed sewers!” her sister hissed, patting herself down.

“You still have the leaf?” she asked, as that was basically the most vital thing they had on them.

“Oh…yeah,” her sister held up her arm where it was bound.

She sighed in relief, looking back at the reservoir. It was filled with rotting corpses, mostly Undren, but there were spiders some rats and even a few Sar’katush in there. Up above, light filtered down through the vast hole in the ceiling that the nascent soul rat had carved.

There were only two exits from the room, one on this platform, and one halfway around that was accessible from their location by a remarkably treacherous looking walkway of slabs set into the reservoir wall.

“This one I think,” she muttered, moving towards the exit on their platform.

Sana nodded and followed after her, not casting a look backwards. The bad vibe from it was starting to subtly intensify. They had just made it to the exit when a second ghostly clawed hand descended into the reservoir. The world constricted around them both and she felt a vast and vile qi grasp the space around her, trying to drag them both back up to the surface.

The symbol resolutely resisted the pull on what she was almost certain at this point must be some aspect of her soul. She was stuck there for several agonizing seconds as the two forces inexplicably warred around them before the grasping sensation collapsed once again.

Gasping she stumbled forward and grabbed Sana who was similarly disorientated by the arm. They both scrambled into the corridor beyond, which was depressingly familiar. A moment later a flicker from the corner of her eye and a barely heard rustle alerted her to the leap of a familiar ambush predator. Catching the spider out of the air, she squashed cat-sized thing into the wall and refined it’s one-star core without even looking at it as they hurried on. A moment later her sister caught another one as it leapt from the ceiling and crushed it in her hands, discarding the corpse with a barely heard curse.

“These Undren are soooo getting added to the list!” she spat.