“Fucking Clowns...Of course, it had to be Clowns,” grumbled Trefor. Glaring at the bright and dark carnival that was marching in the direction of him and his party. Beautiful and discordant circus music playing at a volume that would have deafened any mortal ears that heard it, and numbed the minds of most immortals that listened overlong.

Trefor swung a dark, blue and gold, staff that was scaled like a serpent. A staff that roared like a dragon as it fell towards the earth. The soil and stone shattered and exploded in a grand column of fire and light as the whole world seemed to ignite like it was made of gunpowder. Unbelievably, only a portion of the enemy that Trefor and his raid group faced were destroyed in the blast. The rest managed to survive relatively unharmed. The ones that strode through the skies simply rising above the flames, and the ones that stood in the blaze seeming to absorb the violent energy.

Miya and Zhou Weifen, dealt with the enemies in the air while carried aloof by wings of emerald shadow and crimson flame. Miya fired feathers of green-shadow into the flying acrobats and winged lions. Zhou Weifen used a spiritual energy projection that resembled the phoenix-feather sword that was now fused to her being, to slice through the performer’s rings that carried cannon ears and dark jugglers.

Crouched hidden in a cotton-like cloud of stormy gray spiritual energy, sat Yoshino Yuki. Using a projected rifle and his advanced senses and precognition to snipe those enemies that tried to reorient themselves so they could attack the two women from behind. Yin Quing was hidden in another drifting cloud, firing countless arrows into the air. The onslaught of the two powerful ranged fighters caused garishly costumed bodies to fall like raindrops.

Closer to the ground, Trefor was joined by Hong Soomin, Hong Mirae, and Trefor’s second-wife, and former-secretary, Wen Chen. Trefor and Wen Chen stood back to back and continued to batter the earth. Casting off their projected cores to directly become draconic beings of scale and claw and fang. Their limbs grew longer and bulkier, their palms grew wide enough to grasp and cover the sky. Their horns grew tall enough to dwarf mountains.

Hong Mirae and Hong Soomin stayed humanoid but they too had cast aside their humanity for the sake of the fight. Hong Soomin had become a dark-eyed imp, darting from place to place at a pace that caused the laws of causality to shiver and tremble. Moving so quickly and bending space so cavalierly that she was often in two or more positions at once. Sometimes teleporting directly inside her weaker prey to make them explode. Hong Mirae became an ogress. Using her massive, bony knuckles, and swollen muscles to ruthlessly tear apart the sainted strong-men, immortal sword-wielding, apemen, Dancing Ursine Archfiends, and the multi-headed, multi-trunked, world-tree elephants.

The battle was long and bloody, but eventually, it came to an end, and Trefor and his party each only had to be resurrected one time each, before the end of the fighting. With Trefor gaining a slight, and hopefully short-lived, fear of overly flexible women from one of the bright contortionists that literally strangled him to death by wrapping herself around him and squeezing him to death with ropey muscles and bones that were millions of times stronger than steel.

“Phew and that should hopefully be enough,” said Trefor. Panting softly as he stood high in the sky and looked down at the hundreds of miles filled heaps of slowly glowing, slowly fading, corpses. Shivering a little as he felt the energy that made up, and once animated, all those bodies flow into him.

“Yeah...I think so,” said Miya. Gently placing her arm on his shoulder.

Trefor and his friends had been ready to ascend for quite a while now, but they’d had one last thing they’d needed to do. Something that required that they visit all of the Eternal Realm’s key locations to finish the core side-quests and retrieve certain key items. It was kind of a chore to finish this final task, but the very fact that it was possible at all just drove home just very mad their friends were. The two insane young immortals that made this fantastical, supposedly “virtual”, world.

There were many people who could still remember the time that immortality was a lonely road that people were expected to “hazard” on their own. Now, never mind climbing past the limit of mortality with one’s sect, one could apparently make the climb with just a few good friends, and one’s family. In fact, if one jumped through a few extra hoops and put in a whole bunch extra effort one could make this climb with “all” of one’s family. Including those who were recently born, and soon to be born.

“Guys...I seriously owe you all big time. You've made our little girl's future. You've made it so we won't have to leave her behind,” said Trefor. A heat building behind his eyes as he looked at the items in his inventory and confirm that he had all the pieces he needed. Looking at the friends and juniors who’d been patient enough to accompany him on this long and difficult journey and bowing multiple times to each.

“From the bottom of my heart. This favor that you've done our little family won’t ever be forgotten...,” said Miya. Cupping her palm and gracefully bowing towards the group.

“What they said...We, Pradhans, will return our gratitude with even more zeal than that we use to return our grudges,” said Wen Chen. Also, bowing, because she was next in line to have a kid, and they’d prepared enough materials for her future bundle of joy to safely ascend as well.

“Heh, don’t mention it, big sisters. We all knew how important this was and we all love little Vayne. There’s no way we’d let you guys get separated,” said Hong Soomin. Hong Mirae grunting in agreement behind her.

“Besides, this was good exercise and we all got to firm our foundations a fair amount from all this,” said Yoshino Yuki. Allowing the rifle he’d been holding to fade into nothing.

Then the group said their goodbyes, all of them parting ways to finish up any last matters they had left in the Shattered World, before they headed to the Eternal Realm’s Valley of Ascendance.