Rhaelar Talahan, high princess and master realm cultivator of Clan Talahan, stood firm as the ground beneath her shook violently. An enormous aberration of creation loomed above, blotting out the skies with its sheer size. It was an amalgamation of human design, its monstrous form obvious even to her trained eyes. More intriguingly, she noticed a human-like figure with green hair and luminous jade eyes, exuding a master realm aura.

  The being's wary glance betrayed its surprise at her presence. Undeterred, Rhaelar snapped her bow into its twin blade forms, her aura amplifying her voice. "Using the forbidden technique of the Thoren clan? Even you should know that’s a step too far," she declared.

  Above them, atop the creature's earth-encrusted skull, stood Haruka. The obviously injured master chuckled darkly, pointing a finger at the two masters below. A beam of earth Ethra, infused with aura and essence flame, shot towards her. Rhaelar parried with her blades, then launched herself into the air, deftly dodging another attack from the king.

  She landed atop the creature's head, each step promising essence flame-infused attacks skewering her from below. Summoning a shield of aura around herself, she wrested control of the very skies above them. Rhaelar was on Haruka like a predator, their blows exchanged at mind-boggling speed as the unknown master battled Haruka's summoned monstrosity.

  "He's an abomination, a relic from an ancient time," Haruka spat, referring to the other master. Two Highlord-level stone golems materialized beside her in an instant, a testament to Haruka’s sovereign dominion over their surroundings. Rhaelar burst into blade flames and lightning, reducing the golems to ash and sand with a single swing.

  Haruka parried with his soulbound weapon, a massive thighbone that slammed into her blades, forcing both combatants backward. The air crackled with energy as their auras clashed, the battle intensifying with every strike. The fate of the wasteland hung in the balance, and Rhaelar knew she had to prevail if she was to be in better standing with the clan.

  Varis’s mission, at least according to the clan, was complete. He had carved a sect within the wastelands and discovered himself to some extent. Rhaelar, on the other hand, was here to clean up the clan’s mess. "You can't honestly think I'd believe he isn’t one of yours," she said as a lance of black flame wreathed in lightning slammed into Haruka.

  His yellow aura shield flickered under the strength of the attack, a subtle gesture indicating his lack of mastery over his aura shielding. "He's no true beast or Corespawn," Haruka snarled as his weapon screamed toward Rhaelar’s skull. She twisted out of the way, allowing the weapon to pass, releasing a massive wave of force aura.

  "I would never betray one of my own!" he added as more stone Highlords materialized, swinging their weapons at her. Rhaelar took a deep breath, cocooning herself in an orb of black fire and lightning, then slammed her weapon into the creature's body, eliciting a shrieking wail.

  The darkened skies overhead stilled before a single, lethal beam of Blitzfire tempest slammed into the creature. A terrible explosion turned the very skies white, blinding everyone and everything until all that could be heard was a keen, high-pitched noise.

  When the light cleared, Rhaelar was falling through the air alongside giant pieces of rock torn from the creature’s body. She deftly controlled her descent, watching as the smoking form of Haruka managed to grab onto a rock before crashing into the ground with an explosion. A blast of jade Ethra drew her attention to where the other jade master creature snarled in anger, its eyes burning green.

  "Insolence!" he snarled at her as the creature bled and screamed into the heavens, another blast of power slamming into the master. She turned her attention away from the master, preoccupied by the abomination that exuded the power of a tier 6 creature. The forbidden technique of the Thoren clan, known only to the higher echelons of the clan, had been stolen. Haruka had killed their main heir and fled with their technique manuals.

  It had been a closely guarded secret, the Thoren clan unwilling to admit they had lost their most prized possession and child to a branch family member. It had seemed hilarious to Rhaelar then, especially the thought of what a child would do with the manual without formal training.

  Now, she saw how wrong she was and how fortunate they had been that the clan had taken an idle interest in the borderlands' happenings. She could almost thank the timely intervention of the revenant cult for drawing their attention to the wastelands. She could only imagine what would have happened if they hadn’t intervened and the Verdan clan had gone ahead with their plans, especially since she suspected the appearance of this new master realm being was tied to them as well.

  It would have escalated the conflict, possibly causing other smaller sects and clans to swear allegiance to the Verdan clan and pushing the empire into a prolonged battle of attrition. Now, though, she would cleanly excise this sore once and for all from the empire itself.

  Haruka emerged from the rubble, his skin torn but healing, thanks to his blood affinity. Despite the rapid regeneration, he was not healing as quickly as a master should. Rhaelar remained on guard, clashing with him, both swinging with imbued attacks. Sparks of aura flew between them, powerful enough to incinerate any lord realm cultivator in an instant. Ethras of blood, beast, strength, fire, and lightning collided, warping reality as their concepts battled for dominance.

  Overhead, the darkened skies rumbled as the concept of Blitzfire Tempest wrested control from the king. Haruka felt it, and Rhaelar knew he sensed it, yet the self-proclaimed Wasteland King fought on with reckless abandon. Each swing he directed at her was imbued with not only his aura and Ethra but also his essence flame, and the unseen authority of his fledgling concept, as well as something odd in his blood. This mysterious power gave him strength that a newly advanced master, even with an affinity for strength, should not possess.

  Still, it was nothing compared to the concept of the ruler of half the Bloodfire continent. Their battle was a slow, terrible one, altering the wasteland's landscape forever. Large swaths of land were reduced to ash, broken and impassable, or simply wiped out, leaving gaping holes in the ground that the sand struggled to fill, transforming the once serene yet bland wastelands into something entirely different.

  Rhaelar twisted her blade, cutting into Haruka’s body. Each cut that bypassed his imbuement and waning strength saw her concept wreak havoc within him. His essence flame fought back, licking his body from the inside out as Haruka continued to fight.

  A flash of power signalled the disintegration of the creature the other master was battling, crashing to the ground behind them in a wave of dust. Haruka charged her, his aura and essence flame manifesting in the air. It towered above her, a visage of a man with golden eyes staring down at her, wielding a replica of his soulbound weapon.

  Rhaelar stared into the face of the Wasteland King, nodding as the skies opened up. A pillar of black flames and lightning engulfed her as she surrendered to the concept of the Talahan clan. Power and authority flowed through her, spreading her dominion as far as the eye could see. In a flash, her blades transformed into a bow, its string drawn taut.

  An arrow imbued with the concept of Blitzfire sat on the bow, brimming with power as the king’s attack almost connected. “Pierce,” Rhaelar whispered as the arrow left the bow. It was as if the sun died; pure darkness wrought with flames covered the skies, plunging everything into pitch-black darkness.

  The wastelands ceased to exist in an instant, consumed by a conflagration of black flames and lightning. The attack tore through space with a deafening boom. As quickly as it came, it was gone, the sun shining through once more. Rhaelar released a shuddering breath, suddenly weak as she stared at the column of burning flesh before her.

  Haruka, his hand raised as if to strike down a mortal, stood as a testament to his willpower. Despite surviving the initial attack, his core was shattered, pierced by the arrow she had summoned with her ultimate technique, Heavenly Flaming Descent. He tried to speak, but nothing remained of his lungs. All that was left was ash, his internal body obliterated by the concept of Blitzfire Tempest.

  Rhaelar nodded at him, watching as his raised hand turned to ash, floating away on the wind. His body began to break down. “Rest now, Haruka Talahan,” she whispered as his one good eye widened, his head cracking before shattering into ash. The Wasteland King was dead.

  ******************************

  The Jade Tyrant had lived a very long life—countless centuries, in fact. In his early years, he served others; later, he grew into his power. His race was gone now—the jade insects of the jade forests that once occupied what was now known as the wastelands. He came from a time of myths and legends when truly powerful beings walked the face of Adamath and the cults were just establishing their spheres of power across the world.

  But he had scarcely met a destructive concept like the one he had just witnessed, and he knew what it meant. Whoever that woman was, she belonged to a regent. The tyrant was a master, but during his long existence, he had learned to recognize when a concept truly resonated with reality. This one did. It touched on the laws of reality and convinced—no, controlled them to its bidding. It was the familiar arrogance and ego of regents shaped into authority that he had recognized centuries ago.

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  As he lay within the rubble of the creature’s demise, the tyrant cursed bitterly the human who had awoken him. Not the young child he had used to break the seals placed on him by the now-dead Solar Queen. No, the other human who somehow shared his affinity despite the tyrant being sure he had never sired any offspring with humans, if such a thing was even possible.

  Rowan Verdan, the Highlord human. Theirs had been a deal the human had reneged on, one of mutual understanding. The tyrant couldn’t help but wonder how the human had escaped the soul oath he had sworn to him. His mind went back to the boy, the child who bore a weapon he could sense but could never find, no matter how many times he had stayed close to him.

  It was as if the weapon refused to be found, which was ludicrous, as it would mean a mere lord was wielding a weapon of the Supreme Realm stage—an almost laughable thought. It wasn’t as laughable as the thought of the upstart human who had dubbed himself the Wasteland King using the authority of that long-forbidden race.

  A shudder went through him at the thought of that race returning. Those incarnations of destruction given form—the mere thought of their name made his blood race. No, it was impossible for them to come back. Not because they weren’t strong enough, but because the tyrant knew no one on the planet should have the strength to do so—or at least he prayed. The hegemons themselves, if they were still around and moving, knew better than to bring them back, along with all the other horrors that had walked the face of Adamath at one point in its history.

  Despite the power coursing through him, he was still a master, just like the Wasteland King. His concept, despite its centuries of existence, was simply that—a concept of a master. Perhaps, had he survived the battle centuries ago intact, without the runes placed on him by the Solar Queen, he himself might have risen to the heights of the vaunted regents.

  But now, he lay in the rubble, weakened and bound by the seals of a long-dead queen. His mind raced with thoughts of revenge, survival, and the ever-looming threat of ancient powers returning. The wastelands were changing, and with them, the balance of power across Adamath. The Jade Tyrant knew he had to act—soon, decisively, and with all the cunning he had amassed over centuries of existence, just as soon as he survived the situation he was in of course.

  His true name had been stolen as well, leaving him only with his title: the Jade Tyrant. In time, he would have survived and grown, but here he was, hiding from a mere hatchling of a regent. It was enough to shame him. Still, it was nothing compared to the riches and glory he would obtain once he had the time to cycle and regain his lost strength, taming the power within him.

  “Why do you hide like a child?” The soft yet powerful voice of the female master echoed, almost as if she knew where he was. That was impossible—he was veiled, his core brought as low, and as shamefully, he might add, as that of a mere adept. She was merely bluffing, trying to confirm if he was alive.

  “I can see you, you know, whatever you are,” she continued, and the Tyrant felt his blood rage. He was an Ethralite, a grand Ethralite, one of the strongest of his race before he had been blessed by Adamath in a crucible, his very body remolded with raw jade Ethra. To be spoken to like that left a bad taste in his mouth, almost causing him to remove the veil.

  No, he was wiser and soon to be stronger than that. He wouldn’t let some taunt by a mere child get to—

  The attack slammed into him with jarring shock, and the Tyrant immediately tore the veil off, shooting into the air while cradling his destroyed arm. One of the blessings of being an Ethralite was that he could repair his body by simply cultivating and allowing the sleeping Ethra in the air to heal him. The bad part was that if the Ethra in his surroundings had been taken by another, particularly a dangerous Ethra like the one of fire and lightning he now faced, he risked poisoning himself.

  The Tyrant floated in the air, eyes wide as he stared at the female cultivator who still burned with her concept. To tap so forcefully and powerfully into the concept of a regent unless you were of their bloodline was suicidal—it meant shaving countless decades, if not centuries, from your lifespan. To a master, even a paragon, this might mean nothing in the short run, but even they knew better than to use it recklessly, descendant or not.

  “I have no quarrel with you,” the Tyrant said, his mind already running through different scenarios. Tearing open a rift to escape was next to impossible—his authority hadn’t settled, and the mere act of doing it would drain him so strongly that should he fail to escape completely, an attack on him would cause almost irreparable damage to his body.

  Besides, it wasn’t like Adamath would simply let him go so easily. He wasn’t a regent to bend the laws of reality to his whims, and moving from one place to another required a serious amount of authority in exchange—authority he wouldn’t get back anytime soon. “Oh?” the lady said, a quirk of her lips. “Are you saying if I hadn’t stopped you, or Haruka for that matter, you wouldn’t have turned the first settlement you found to dust?” she asked.

  “Not if it belonged to your regent,” he replied. That was, of course, a lie. He would have left a trail of dead, crystallized bodies that would herald his advancement to the realm of paragon. No regent would risk a paragon fighting on their territory, not without the existence of a rift to take the fight to. If masters were disasters, then paragons were walking catastrophes of nature, and the Tyrant couldn’t help but wonder how many still walked the surface of the planet.

  The lady nodded as the Tyrant watched her warily. “Probably, see, except this very area is the territory of the Talahan clan,” she replied.

  “The Talahan clan?” the Tyrant thought. He had no idea who or what that was—probably a product of the long war and its aftermath. No doubt, many other powers had risen at the end of the war; such was the cycle of power on the planet.

  “Then I beg your forgiveness,” he said, bowing stiffly. Shame and rage clouded his features as he schooled it with force. He would beg if it meant he survived. “And you almost killed an acolyte of mine,” she said with a purr, and his eyes widened. The child—many pieces began coming together in his mind as he realized the mistake he had made.

  He should have disposed of the child when he had the chance. Understanding how the child had brought down the Highlord realm guardians that protected the seals dawned on him as he flashed towards her with his one good arm. He was a blaze of jade Ethra and crystalline armor that glinted, painting the skies green with his concept and authority.

  A surprise attack, yes, that was the one way he could catch her off guard. The Tyrant knew she would be weakened from her fight with the King, weakened as she couldn’t draw more heavily from the authority and concept of her regent.

  He was mistaken.

  He had often heard of how certain masters gained mastery of their concepts even before reaching the realm of Paragon—intimate knowledge of their concepts that took them a stage higher, outside of the usual advancement stages of cultivation. This time, he didn’t see the arrow pierce his chest, only feeling the remnants of its power spread through him.

  He crackled with lightning as the Tyrant barely held himself together, suddenly remembering something he should have. He had a way out—he had always had a way out—and yet, in his fear, he had totally forgotten about it. The blade he had given the child—yes, the blade, how could he have been so foolish as to forget?

  He extended his consciousness to the weapon, seizing it as he activated its latent runes, feeling its power come to life as he latched onto it and triggered its ability. Aside from being a master-grade weapon, the blade also served as a source of transportation, able to pull him across great distances in the blink of an eye.

  He felt the Ethra stored by the child within it begin to burn rapidly. It would barely be enough, but it would do. He slammed his body into the female master, driving them into the ground below with a thunderous crash as he summoned all his wealth into a single crystal. Countless centuries of hoarding, all stored within that one crystal, as he willed the weapon to transport him. It obeyed.

  It obeyed—and declined again.

  Confusion, shock, and raw rage passed through him before terror suffused his form as he realized what was happening a few seconds later. Something, someone, was siphoning his Ethra through the link he had with the weapon. Someone powerful, probably another master, but how? It was next to impossible, and even as the female master got up, the Tyrant found himself fighting a two-pronged losing battle.

  He wondered if this was what the King had felt as he faced the master. It was not a matter of skill—he had that, even more than her from what he realized. No, he could feel his authority being drained as well, something with a bottomless, fathomless hunger draining it along with his essence flame.

  Desperation set in. He had to find a way out, a way to survive. But his options were dwindling, and the odds were stacked against him. The female master advanced, her eyes glowing with determination, her aura burning with the concept of Blitzfire. The Tyrant’s heart pounded in his chest as he realized that this might be the end.

  It felt as if he were facing some higher-tiered monster—a Paragon, maybe? But that was impossible. He would have sensed the presence of such a lofty being. As his form began to grow translucent, his crystal vanishing in the blink of an eye, the Tyrant laughed, madness returning to his gaze as he threw everything he had left at her.

  Projectile techniques tore through the air, his dominion—the realm of crystals—jutting all around him, only for her to shatter them with ease. His techniques had lost their potency. He felt himself reverting to his true form, losing the authority to maintain a human guise. His insectoid form, clad in jade Ethra crystals, emerged.

  “Ah, a grand Ethralite,” she said, as a spear of burning fire and lightning slammed into him. He groaned in rage, his aura manifesting into the glorious form of his insect nature, what remained of his essence flame burning with fury as he gathered a final working of authority, the power swelling in the air around him.

  “I am a legacy of the Insect Empire, I who fought the masters of the Sun King to a standstill, I, destroyer of the Six Cities of the Solar Queen, I will not go down so easily!” he roared. The attack grew in power and strength, the skies burned green, and for an instant, it wrestled with the power and concept of the female master, dragging its position with the concept of a regent.

  The Tyrant smiled. Perhaps he had come back to a world where there was no space for him. Once, he had been one of the strongest masters of his time. Now, he couldn’t even defeat one. The female cultivator stared at his attack and blanched. His smile stretched across his face. “Yes,” he thought, “witness the true might of the Jade Tyrant.”

  As the attack descended and the very sands began to crystallize, he watched her open her void ring and draw a blade that caused reality to scream around her. The Tyrant laughed with glee as she swung the weapon, and he was immolated in a blaze of fire and shattering lightning.

  At least he was killed by a Paragon-class weapon.

  **********************************

  Rhaelar snarled in shame and embarrassment. She had panicked in the face of nothing and had drawn a clan heirloom to slay a fangless enemy. Sending the weapon back into her void ring, she stared at the changed surroundings. One part ash, another frozen in crystals that continued to spread, a residue of the jade master's technique.

  One thing was certain, though: the wastelands wouldn't be the same again, not after the sort of battle that had taken place. She shrugged as she took to the air. It was none of her business; what became of it would be left to the sect in charge. Rhaelar Talahan made her way toward Black Rock.

  As she flew, her thoughts churned. The landscape below was marred, a testament to the fierce clashes of power that had raged there. She knew that the aftermath of such a battle would have long-lasting effects on the region. The sect responsible for overseeing the wastelands would have their work cut out for them.

  Black Rock loomed in the distance, its dark silhouette a stark contrast against the vibrant sky. Rhaelar's mind shifted to her next objective.