One of the refugees in the room began to scream. She wore a stained bandage around one arm, and the blood had begun to writhe under the wrappings.

From beneath the red moon, there came the searing cry of a great phoenix.

16

Northstrider drove his boot down on a skull bigger than he was. With the slightest flex of blood and force aura, the power carried throughout the creature’s body.

Every bone in the dreadbeast shattered at once. Its heart burst.

The twisted, corrupted lizard—the size of a large house—had only been a Lord-level beast. But you never knew what abominations would crawl out of a Dreadgod’s wake. It was always best to wipe pests out when you had the chance.

The important thing was that he stay where he was.

He stood in the center of a wide swath of devastation that the Wandering Titan had cut across the landscape as it marched eastward from Sky’s Edge. It had ruined many of the squat towers that Abyssal Palace had left for it, but the cult wouldn’t mind. The towers were meant to be destroyed.

The towers would collect the Dreadgod’s power and store it in scripts in the foundation, waiting to be harvested by Abyssal Palace members later. It was one of the many ways in which the cultists benefited from the destruction the Dreadgod brought.

At least, they would benefit from it. If Northstrider weren’t standing in their way.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be able to block an entire Dreadgod cult like this. Abyssal Palace had enough experts, and enough high-grade weapons made from the Titan’s madra, that they could be a threat even to him.

But the floating pyramid that was their headquarters, rolling on a cloud of hovering boulders, now listed to one side. A jagged hole had been torn into the Palace itself, and their Herald was recovering within.

They might have been able to push Northstrider aside…except they had just spent their resources on another Monarch. Akura Fury had cost the cults more than they ever expected to spend.

They had survived, though the other three fled. Northstrider knew from experience that it was hard to fully destroy such an ancient organization, even if they didn’t have a Monarch backing them. Which they did.

But at the same time, unless one of them was carrying Reigan Shen in their pocket, there was nothing they could do to push past Northstrider.

So he had stayed here for days in a stalemate as they waited for him to leave. That was their miscalculation. He didn’t hold many lands, as the other Monarchs did, so he had few vulnerabilities that could be exploited in his absence.

His research could be completed here almost as well as anywhere.

With a thought and a quick twist of aura, he drew streams of blood from the hundreds of dreadbeast corpses surrounding him. The liquid separated themselves into vials, which returned to his void key. At the same time, their hunger bindings ripped themselves free of flesh and separated into cases.

He had no use for such worthless power personally, but all dreadbeasts experienced changes in the presence of the Dreadgods. He understood the nature of hunger madra better than anyone else alive, but it was still valuable to study its effects on flesh, which could hopefully one day be controlled. Since he would never risk the inside of the labyrinth again, the wild dreadbeasts were the best source of information and materials.

This was just a side project for him, but side projects could sometimes lead to unexpected benefits.

At the same time, he kept his spiritual perception on the Titan. The main reason he had personally intervened with the Dreadgods this time was their strange behavior the past few years, starting with the early awakening of the Phoenix. Now, the Titan had fixated on one particular labyrinth entrance.

Were they learning?

It hardly took any concentration to feel the Titan. It was only a few hundred miles away, and Dreadgods were spiritually…loud.

It was impossible to miss one, but precisely because of that, they tended to deafen you to anything else happening around them.

The Bleeding Phoenix, for instance, had been scattered over miles of wilderness for two years, so it was a constant noise. It had been stirring all day, most likely in response to the proximity of its sibling.

He kept his attention primarily focused on the Titan, sparing only a thought for the Phoenix. Malice was steering her opponent away from the labyrinth entrance without fully engaging it, which was perfect. Northstrider stood in reserve, but he would prefer not to engage the Dreadgods himself. It was best to let them rampage for a while, tire themselves out, and then return to their rest.

His oracle codex shouted into his mind: [Warning! Threat approaching!]

It redirected his attention north, to the Phoenix.

Northstrider clenched his fists tight, and before he realized it, he was drifting upward. Abyssal Palace engaged its propulsion constructs and began to flee, but he had no attention to spare for them.

The Phoenix was moving. Fast.

It was heading for the Titan.

With a tight focus of will, Northstrider pushed through the Way. He was swallowed up in blue flows for a moment, taking him to his destination, but he had them spit him back into reality a few miles from his destination.

He needed to be close, but not too close. The Dreadgods had powerful wills, and he would be vulnerable coming out of the portal.

When he emerged again, he was hovering in the clouds over a mountain whose peak had been broken off long ago. It was covered in streams, one in particular forming a river that stretched down into a valley.

He looked to the east, where he heard a searing cry. The Phoenix swooped in, spraying condensed blood madra over the ground. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if it was striking at a target or just expressing its wrath, but its deadly breath scorched the ground for miles.

If the beam of red light had been any aspect other than blood, it would have left the terrain devastated, but blood madra disproportionately affected flesh. Any animal in the path of that Striker technique was now dead.

And Malice was on the other side of the valley.

His codex sped up his thoughts, so it seemed time slowed down. Malice, with her armor the size of the Titan itself, was on the west side of the suppression field. The Titan had just emerged from the field itself, and it too was distracted by the arrival of its brother.

On the east side, the Phoenix was turning toward the valley. Refugees fled beneath it, but they were so weak as to be invisible to the Dreadgod. That didn’t make them safe—on the contrary, they would be torn apart by the bloodspawn, not to mention the collateral damage from the Phoenix itself—but no one down there could attract the attention of a hungry Dreadgod.

Until his oracle codex drew his attention to his own spiritual perception, and he realized who he was feeling down there.

Then his irritation flared into true anger.

The most valuable young sacred artists on the continent were all down there, clustered together. With Dross, a powerful tool deserving of further study. They had deliberately placed themselves in the path of a Dreadgod.

And Malice had allowed this…idiocy.

Including a pseudo-Herald who had merged with her Blood Shadow. The power of the Phoenix itself.

The Dreadgod’s scarlet eye swiveled to focus on a particular cloudship down there, and Northstrider unleashed his spirit.

Malice was going to owe him for this.

Ziel and the Kazan clan reached the base of Mount Samara, and the huge river of people pushing to get out.