The trees were thickly pressed together, the life aura almost choking in its strength. Without warning, a massive yellow-furred monkey came shrieking down from a tree, carrying wooden spears in both hands and emitting the spiritual pressure of an Underlord.

Mercy hurled arrows of black madra without hesitation, but the monkey slapped them aside, his weapons a blur. He was going to land straight on Pride, his feet extended like hands. He didn't have time to move, and Lindon held his technique. He wanted to see what Pride could do.

At the last instant, the short Underlord leaped and drove a punch into the monkey’s gut.

Black and gray madra flashed from the point of impact, accompanied by a sound like a great flag snapping in the breeze. The monkey blasted backward, crashing into a tree hard enough that he left a crater that sent splinters flying.

By the time Pride landed, Lindon finally decided to release his Striker technique. Black-and-red madra struck the creature…

Several people locked their perception onto Lindon, and his spirit shivered. Their location construct was difficult to detect except by someone with the corresponding detection construct…but his dragon’s breath was not so subtle.

“We have to move,” he said, and even Pride didn’t argue. The three of them darted into the underbrush.

~~~

The crocodile-creature had some hardy skin. It withstood Yerin's first strike.

Just not the next seven.

She left it in bloody pieces on the jungle floor. Naru Saeya lowered herself from the treetops, cradling a wounded left arm; she hadn't even cleared the trees, trying to get a look around, before a monkey had sliced her arm with a sharpened branch.

It hadn't penetrated the flesh far, but it was enough that the Emperor's sister had to use some healing salve. She winced as her flesh knitted together.

“Got to assume everything's out to kill you,” Yerin said casually, wiping the crocodile's blood on the surrounding leaves. At least these monsters didn't leave Remnants, which meant they weren't sacred beasts. Not real ones, anyway. Maybe they were dreadbeasts.

Saeya ground her teeth against the pain as she flexed her arm. “My fault. I was careless.”

Yerin had been expecting a nice verbal fight. Not getting one left her wrong-footed; it was like trying to insult Lindon and having him apologize. “...could happen to anyone. Just keep an eye up.”

Saeya only nodded, taking no offense, extending her spiritual perception out into the distance.

“Liked her better when she had a temper,” Yerin muttered. Saeya had a warrior’s soul, and she had been placed in the sixties after the first round. Now, she was all business, determined to distinguish herself in the second round.

Eithan dropped from the branch where he had been hiding during the fight. Not a single speck of dirt or blood tarnished his fine white-and-gold robes. “She only has a temper to her enemies! To her allies, she is the gentlest—”

The tip of Saeya’s rainbow sword found its way between his teeth.

Saeya wasn't even looking at him. The peacock-feather fan over her ear caught the air as she turned from one direction to the other, scanning the distance still holding her weapon in Eithan's mouth.

“Someone's using water madra nearby,” she said. “I think the Tidewalker sect is in a battle. We have to pass through to make it to Lindon, so I say we pick off the winner on our way.”

Saeya looked to Yerin, and the two traded nods. Saeya pulled her sword away from Eithan's lips and set off with Yerin.

Behind them, Eithan made a spitting noise. “Disgusting. It tastes like dust and flower petals.”

They crept through the trees, getting closer until even Yerin could feel the water madra. Two water artists stood apart from three that used sword madra and...something else. Something strange. Dreams, she guessed, or shadow. Perhaps both.

She ducked and started to crawl forward, but two hands caught her by the sword-arms, holding her back.

Eithan looked uncharacteristically serious, which sobered her up in an instant. Saeya matched him, her eyes flicking into the distance as though she watched something Yerin couldn't see.

“Something's wrong,” Saeya whispered. “They're not fighting. They're—”

She ducked in an emerald blur, and a serpentine dragon of water punched through the leaves behind her. A pulse of pure madra from Eithan dispersed the Ruler technique, leaving natural water to spray onto the ground.

In an instant, all three of them dropped veils and cycled their madra.

“It seems they were waiting,” Eithan said at normal volume.

Through the jungle, the pair of water artists flanked them. From the glimpses Yerin caught, they had leathery blue-gray skin, gills working at the sides of their necks, and shark teeth; sacred beasts advanced enough to take on human form. Some kind of fish. If that wasn’t the Tidewalker Sect, she’d eat her shoes.

The three others, two men and a woman, were the strange sword artists she'd already sensed. They wore gray robes and painted their faces with streaks of black. Each of them wore a crude one-handed saber strapped to their back and a greenish spirit that floated around their head. Their Goldsign.

“Tidewalkers and Ghost-Blades,” Naru Saeya observed, hefting her colored glass sword. She showed no uncertainty, only determination and a little anger. Yerin liked her more with every passing second. “You're not even from the same corner of the world. What are you doing together?”

One of the fish-men hissed out a laugh. “Sink to the depths with your questions unanswered, little bird.”

Eithan held a hand to his temple as though receiving a voice transmission. “They were…bribed to work against us. My mysterious, mystical senses tell me that…the gold dragons were responsible.”

A ghostly sword bigger than a horse sheared through the trees around him. The Forger technique turned from gray to green as it passed through the plants, and each of them withered and died at its touch.

Naru Saeya dodged high, Yerin went low, and Eithan stood still. The technique moved over Yerin's head, below Saeya's feet, and shattered on the layer of pure madra coating Eithan's skin.

Eithan gave them all a friendly smile. “I'm afraid I've struck a nerve.”

All five enemies attacked at once.

~~~

A brown-skinned man with short-cropped hair faced Lindon, holding an intricate orb that looked like it had been forged from copper. Brass, copper, and steel piping wrapped his chest, connecting to a metal tank on his back. It whistled loudly and gave off spiritual pressure like he had an entire Underlord Remnant trapped inside.

Lindon and Pride stood shoulder-to-shoulder, neither moving. Mercy was above and behind them somewhere, covering them, but they were not anxious to start a fight. Not only had none of the crowns appeared yet, but there were far more enemies than this one close by. A fight would draw them like flies.

[He's from Dreadnought City,] Dross said, for some reason whispering as though his mental voice might be enough to break the stalemate. [Everwood continent, fighting for Emriss Silentborn. They do strange things with Remnants over there.]

The man said something with an accent so heavy Lindon couldn't understand it. Though perhaps it was another language—he had heard of other languages, he had just never heard one spoken.

His brown eyes glanced from one of them to the other. Sweat ran down his face—he was as nervous as they were. When he saw no comprehension in their faces, he tried again, speaking slowly.