Forty minutes was not enough time to prepare for a siege, but it was enough for predators to set an ambush.
The Glimmerdawn Depths, already a disorienting maze of light, shadow, and emotional echoes, became a weaponized labyrinth. Lyra, fueled by her Prismatic Flame breakthrough, worked with a frantic, focused creativity. She didn't just hide things; she twisted perception. A patch of harmless glowing moss became, to the senses, a seething pit of venomous snakes. The sound of the breeze through crystalline leaves became the whispered lies of trusted friends. She wove 'Confusion,' 'Paranoia,' and 'Dread' into the very air of the main approach.
Brom inscribed his new Runes of 'Heaviness' on the ground at chokepoints, and 'Brittleness' on overhanging crystal formations. Sylvia, having fallen back, was now a ghost in the trees, her spatial chain-sickle treated with a paralytic toxin she'd brewed from local fungi. She was the silent, removing piece.
Damien and Kiran stood at the edge of the clearing, the planned killing ground. They were the bait and the blade.
"They will send scouts first," Damien said, his new Cosmic Lens eyes scanning the forest. He could see the faint, rigid patterns of 'Order' and the sickly purple stains of 'Corrosion' disrupting the Depths' natural chaotic mana flow. The Vexis signature. "We eliminate the scouts silently. Then we draw the main force into the clearing."
Kiran cracked his neck, his Sovereign Void energy a barely contained pressure. "Let them come. I have a new concept I'd like to erase. 'Certainty.'"
The first Purifiers appeared ten minutes later. A pair, moving in sync, one with metal affinity (skin gleaming like steel), the other with toxic green poison mana swirling around their hands. They were cautious, their eyes scanning Lyra's illusions with professional skepticism.
[Target Analysis: Vexis Purifier (Metal). Cultivation: 4th Order, 6th Rank. High Physical Defense. Low Spiritual Resistance.]
[Target Analysis: Vexis Purifier (Toxin). Cultivation: 4th Order, 5th Rank. Area Denial Specialist. Agile.]
They didn't see Sylvia. Her chain-sickle whipped out from a canopy of ghost-fungus, not at the warriors, but at the space between them. The spatial distortion in the chain's wake created a momentary ripple. The Metal Purifier, reacting to the attack, stepped forward into Brom's 'Heaviness' rune. His foot slammed down as if made of lead, unbalancing him.
The Toxin Purifier spun, unleashing a cloud of virulent gas. But Kiran was already there. He didn't dodge. He pointed a finger and whispered, "Erase: Diffusion."
The concept of the gas cloud spreading was locally deleted. The virulent cloud collapsed into a dense, harmless pellet that fell to the forest floor. The Purifier's eyes widened in shock.
In that moment of stunned disbelief, Damien Rime-Slipped behind the off-balance Metal Purifier. He didn't use his daggers. He placed a hand on the man's back and activated his new Concept Devourer.
"Devour: Cohesion."
For one second, the metaphysical 'glue' holding the man's steely skin together vanished. His enhanced body didn't break; it sloughed, the metal becoming like loose sand. He collapsed with a wet, crunching sigh.
The Toxin Purifier turned to run, to warn the others. A prismatic foxfire illusion of a dead-end wall appeared before her. She hesitated for a fatal half-second. Sylvia's chain wrapped around her throat from above and yanked her into the shadows. A sharp crack, then silence.
Two scouts, eliminated in under fifteen seconds. No alarms raised.
But the leader, Inquisitor Garron, was no fool. When his scouts didn't report, he changed tactics.
"He knows we're here," Damien murmured, seeing the 'Order' signature consolidate and push forward aggressively, bulldozing through Lyra's illusions with sheer, corrosive will. "He's coming as a group. Direct assault."
"Let him," Brom rumbled, hefting his hammer, the runes on his arm glowing.
The forest at the clearing's edge erupted. The four remaining Purifiers burst through the tree line, followed by Inquisitor Garron.
Garron was a mountain of a man in black lacquered armor etched with the consuming-vine symbol. His face was hidden behind a helm with a single, glowing green slit. In one hand he held a massive, cruel-looking glaive, its blade dripping with the same corrosive Order/Abyss energy that was his affinity. The air around him warped and sizzled.
[Primary Threat: Inquisitor Garron. Cultivation: 5th Order, 1st Rank (Earth-Shaker).]
[Analysis: 'Corrosive Command' Aura – weakens enemy techniques and strengthens allied ones within range. Primary Attack: 'Oblivion Glaive' – attacks erase matter and inflict spiritual decay.]
[Threat Level: MAXIMUM.]
The Purifiers fanned out—a fire-user, an ice-user, a beast-kin with razor claws, and a spearman wielding lightning.
"Purge the others!" Garron's voice was a distorted grind, amplified by his helm. "Leave the Karyon scion alive for extraction. Kill the rest."
The battle was joined.
The Fire Purifier unleashed a wave of black flame. Lyra met it with a wall of Prismatic Flame woven with 'Reflection.' The black fire hit and rebounded, scattering the Purifiers. The Ice Purifier tried to freeze Brom, but his Rune-Forged Granite body simply shed the ice. Brom's hammer came down, and the Ice Purifier barely dodged, the shockwave cracking the ground.
The beast-kin and spearman charged Kiran and Damien. Kiran grinned. "Erase: Friction." The beast-kin's charge became an uncontrollable slide, carrying him past Kiran and right into the path of the Lightning Spearman's thrust. The spearman tried to pull his strike, skewering his ally instead. Kiran finished the spearman with a void-dagger to the spine.
But Garron was the true danger. He ignored the chaos; his gaze locked on Damien. He raised his glaive and brought it down in a terrible arc. Damien teleported with his Rime-Slipped technique. The spot where he'd been standing didn't explode; it was replaced by a smoking, glassy pit of nothingness.
"Your tricks are meaningless, Boy," Garron intoned, his Corrosive Command aura pressing down, making Damien's frost feel sluggish, his spatial slips shorter. "You make a foolish mistake by making yourself high-profiled, boy."
Damien didn't answer. He was already getting annoyed with this bastard calling him boy. He fought, his Frozen Eclipse Dagger Art a blur against the slower but utterly devastating sweeps of the Oblivion Glaive. Each near miss stole a fragment of his spiritual energy, decaying his defenses.
On the periphery, Lyra and Brom had finished the Fire and Ice Purifiers through combined effort—Lyra blinding with illusion, Brom crushing with force. But they were being worn down by Garron's aura.
Kiran tried to flank Garron, to erase his 'Awareness.' Garron backhanded him without even looking, a wave of corrosive energy that ate through Kiran's void-shield and sent him crashing into a crystal tree, smoking.
It was a losing fight. Garron was too strong, his 5th Order cultivation a qualitative leap.
Damien took a glancing blow from the glaive on his crossed daggers. The Twilight Rends screamed, their edges corroding. The spiritual decay shot up his arms. He stumbled back, his grey eyes meeting Garron's green slit.
"See?" Garron said, advancing. "You are nothing. A blind boy playing with powers that will consume him. The Consortium should have scrapped you properly."
The words, the casual cruelty, ignited something colder than frost in Damien. Not rage. A profound, absolute rejection.
He stopped retreating. He sheathed his damaged daggers. He reached out, not to the System, not to his techniques, but to the bond he felt with this place, with his friends, with the very chaos the Vexis sought to 'cleanse.'
The Conductor's Focus, hovering nearby, flew to his hand.
"You speak of flaws," Damien said, his voice echoing strangely in the clearing. "You see chaos as a mistake. I see it as potential. You see my bonds as weakness. I see them as my score."
He raised the Focus. It wasn't just his will he poured into it. It was Lyra's creativity, Kiran's defiance, Brom's endurance, even Sylvia's ruthless practicality from the shadows. He poured in the Depths' echoing memories, the Chromatic Flux's warning visions, the Fell-Wyrm's challenge, the Heart's duet.
He composed.
"Harmony: Stillness."
The Conductor's Focus blazed. A wave of pure, resonant order erupted from it—but not Garron's corrosive, rigid Order. This was the still point in the storm, the moment of perfect balance in a symphony. It was Harmony.
Garron's Corrosive Command aura shattered like glass. His advancing step froze. The Oblivion Glaive in his hand trembled, its erasure effect canceled. For three seconds, absolute, perfect stillness reigned in the clearing. No sound, no movement, no energy flow.
In that stillness, Damien spoke a single word to his team, a command woven into the harmony.
"Now."
Lyra's Prismatic Flame became a lance of solidified 'Conclusion.' Kiran, pushing off the tree, erased the 'Distance' between himself and Garron. Brom, with a roar, inscribed a 'Sundering' rune in the air with his hammer and slammed it forward. Sylvia's chain-sickle, from the shadows, aimed not to cut, but to displace, using spatial energy to try and teleport Garron's head a foot to the left.
The combined attack, launched from absolute stillness, hit the immobilized Inquisitor.
The Harmony broke.
Light, sound, and violence returned in a deafening cacophony.
When it cleared, Inquisitor Garron was on his knees. His helm was cracked, the green light fading. His glaive lay broken. His black armor was scorched, frozen, rune-shattered, and spatial-twisted. He was alive, but broken, his cultivation base in ruins.
He looked up at Damien, disbelief in his visible eye. "Impossible… a flawed convergence…"
Damien walked forward, the Conductor's Focus dimming in his hand. He looked down at the agent of the clan that had poisoned him, sold him, and hunted him.
"Tell your masters," Damien said, his grey eyes holding the fading green one. "I'm coming for them. And I am bringing my orchestra."
He nodded to Kiran. Kiran stepped forward, placed a hand on Garron's forehead, and whispered, "Erase: Memory of this Place. Erase: Memory of our New Powers."
A faint silvery light flowed from Garron into Kiran, then was voided. Garron's eyes went blank. He would remember nothing but defeat and a warning.
"Let him crawl back to them," Damien said. "A message is more powerful than a corpse."
They stood amidst the wreckage, battered, bleeding, but victorious against a 5th Order expert. The cost had been high—their energy reserves were spent, Kiran was badly burned by the corrosive energy, Lyra was mana-dry, Brom's new runes were cracked.
But they had won. Together.
Sylvia emerged from the trees, wiping her blade. "Well. That was a thing. Do we get to loot the scary glaive-man?"
Damien looked at his team, at the trust in their eyes even through the pain. He looked at the System's new update.
"Loot everything," Damien said, a faint, tired smile touching his lips for the first time in memory. "Then we feast. We have earned it."
The path of conquest had taken a new turn. They were no longer just fugitives. And they had just declared war on a corporate empire masquerading as a clan.