“Okay…” Allan coughed out as he put a hand over his knee. “What just happened?”

Kaelith exhaled through her nose and waved her hand down, lowering the dome of flames around them. “He’s never going to learn,” she muttered as the sight beyond her defense gradually revealed itself to them.

“For the love of…” Higure’s expression twitched as she beheld the aftermath of Rakna’s move. The terrain all around them, for hundreds of meters, was nothing more than a crater. The place they were standing on barely holding on. And if it wasn’t for Kaelith paying attention to redirecting the damage even below them, the ground would have given out under them during the explosion.

Pronos stretched his necks, observing the excavated land, and huffed through his nostrils to blow away the fog in the air composed of nothing but miniature fragments of sugar. The Hydra let out a low rumble as three of his heads pointed at something.

Flavia carefully walked to the edge of the pillar they were standing on and looked down. She saw a figure standing at the very center of the crater where Pronos was pointing at. “Rakna?” She called out hesitatingly and then used her telekinesis to fly to him.

The others looked at each other and followed after her. Kaelith groaned and rubbed her temples in clear frustration. She was the last one to move, but she also was the first one to arrive. Her body turned into embers and zoomed toward the figure.

When everyone got there, they couldn’t help but gawk. The werewolf in front of them was standing five meters tall, silently; a hole in his chest with cracks all around it like splintering stone. His fur was entirely gray and his eyes void, as if nothing was in there.

But the most terrifying, or perhaps awing thing, was the unbreakable grin flashing rows of sharp fangs to the onlookers. Kaelith made a grimace. She didn’t like seeing such a scene. “He’s dead…”

Her words made the group falter, but they quickly reassured themselves, remembering that she meant the clone. The nine-tailed fox sighed and looked up at the grinning lifeless wolf.

“No matter how many times we tell him, he’ll never understand the words ‘warn us’, will he?” She muttered and grumbled. “Tch, I don’t like this feeling. It’s the same thing every time I see a Tailed Clone from my clan die in combat; it’s not exactly real, but it’s such a horrible feeling… Especially him… That little bastard, I’ll get him for this…”

Kaelith didn’t even try lowering her voice and the others fell silent until a System window popped up in their view, jolting them.

❮ ◈ ❯

3… 2… 1…

Reboot Complete.

Calculating Damages…

Trial Zone Destroyed.

Calculating Resources to Rebuild…

Result: Inefficient.

Relocating Trial Until Next Reset…

---

Your party leader has completed the Battle Trial! The party has been analyzed; skipping rights met for all members. Rakna Xiorra will be selecting a Plateau after the System resolves the latency caused by the damages.

Please wait for the transfer, or leave the party.

❮ ◈ ❯

“Haha, so in the end, he did it,” Higure said with a lopsided smirk. “He even busted the Trial so bad that the System doesn’t want to repair it,” she laughed and a few showed a smile.

“He’s going to select the Plateau?” Nyx commented afterward. “Does that mean the original Rakna will receive the System prompt?”

“Yes,” Kaelith nodded. “Tail Clones don’t get to choose for their originals. For example, they can’t accept Quests; though they can complete them.”

“Do you girls think that Rak knows about, um… his clone going kaboom?” Allan asked.

“Probably not,” the heiress said and crossed her arms. “Tail clones are certainly deeply linked to their originals but they’re essentially just projections carrying one tail as an anchor. Clone and original can sense each other but when they’re too far apart, they’re as good as different people. That’s why a Tail Clone’s body must be returned to the original when they die; because they’re not metaphysically connected. They do share a mana pool but that is because the tail acts as the bridge to the original’s soul. That’s it.”

“Speaking of,” Evelyn raised her voice and glanced at the immobile body of the clone. “How did he even do it? This kind of explosion… just from the pressure alone, there’s no way that Rakna could cause it alone, even if he was at full strength.”

“He used his Nirvana Skill… The Harvester on himself, right?” Marie said. “But I don’t understand how he ended up like that from it,” she added whilst pointing at the werewolf. “To be honest, this state reminds me of my petrification.”

“Really? How so?” Higure inquired curiously and the lamia hummed.

“Well, when I petrify a target until death, it generally means the body has fully turned into stone, down to the very bones. But there is even a worse petrified state after that. We Gorgons can petrify a target by looking at them and having them look at us, but there’s one more thing. If we meet eyes for a certain amount of time, even the soul gets petrified. This means that their mana has nowhere to stay in and thus escapes rather violently by breaking apart the physical body.”

“It does have its similarities,” Nyx nodded. “But it seems the ‘escape’ in this case is far more violent than you make it out to be.”

“Aah, I get it,” Higure exclaimed as she tapped her head with her tail. “Right, girl, your petrification of the soul does exactly what it sounds like. And that is the difference. The only thing that goes out of control is the mana. As for Rakna? His ability affects both soul and body in every sense. I would know; I’ve had a first-hand experience of it.”

“My theory is that by eating his heart, he yanked out his internal energy, his mana, his soul, his mind, the Eion inside his body, his divinity, etcetera. All of it came out and then rushed back inside an empty husk. Everything mixed together and that is where the explosion came from,” she said and squinted her eyes in distaste. “Indeed… the best suicide attack you can have…”

“But didn’t Kaelith say that he was just a projection?” Flavia frowned. “It’s not as if the clone used Rakna’s actual soul to fuel the blast.”

“Yeah, and he probably only used the maximum amount of mana his limited intelligence attribute allowed him to,” the lioness agreed with the Chaos Witch and then sent her a grave look. “That’s exactly why; didn’t you hear what I said? The best suicide attack you can have. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if the original Rakna had used this technique.”

“So, you’re saying this,” Allan waved his arm at the wasteland surrounding them. “Is a weakened version of the actual thing?”

“Weakened is too weak of a word,” Higure retorted with a snort. “It’s a shadow of it.”

❮ ◈ ❯

Latency Has Been Resolved.

Forwarding Selection Request to Rakna Xiorra…

Selection Over.

Sending Party to the 60th Plateau, Dunes of Skadi.

You will be transferred within thirty seconds.

❮ ◈ ❯

“Ah, well, it seems the chat’s over,” the lioness said whilst licking her paw and brushing it over her ear. “We should get in contact with Rakna as soon as we get there. We can’t leave his clone in this state. It’s perhaps an empty husk now, but the tail which it was created with must be returned.”

“I won’t be able to follow you,” Kaelith said and the group looked at her. “So, when you meet Rakna later, be sure to tell him that I can’t protect you all if he decides to be reckless again.”

“Hahaha, true. He probably went through that thing because you were here to shield us,” Higure laughed. “Or else, we would have been vaporized by my devourer’s little experiment.”

“He wouldn’t be reckless enough to forget we are nearby…” Evelyn said with a wry smile and sent a questioning look to the others. “Right…?” Allan and Nyx shrugged at her while Flavia was making a pitying expression in her direction. Pronos was also giving her a grand total of nine stares.

“Eh? No, really! He wouldn’t, right?!”

Higure laughed at the alarm in the poor girl’s voice and they were transported out of the newest crater on the map of the 50th Plateau.

Kaelith let out a tired sigh as she watched them get swallowed by the System’s light. The unmoving clone was also transported with them; most likely still considered a member of the party.

The vixen shook her head and turned her eyes to the side. Her irises flared with fire and she spoke up, “Show yourself. Do you think I haven’t noticed you snooping around?”

“Hah, as expected of the one known as the Nine Heavenly Flames,” an unknown voice was carried by the wind, as a tear in space opened. A man with purplish skin walked out of it. His eyes were of a deep black. His sclera, his iris, his pupils; there was none of that. All of it was pitch black. But the reflection of the sunlight made it look less empty than it was.

He also had dark long hair that looked like elongated thorns and the grin he sported made it easy to see two pairs of uncannily long and curved fangs amidst his teeth. His clothes constituted of a sort of purple and black robe but the most conspicuous feature was the tails behind him.

Nine of them. Each was covered by some thin carapace and they all ended in reddish darts. There was no doubt as to what this man was.

“What’s a Nine-Tailed Scorpion doing here?” Kaelith asked with some edge in her tone.

“Woah, jumping to conclusions much, eh?” The man waved his hands in surrender. “I was passing by, that’s it. I felt the disturbance and I came to take a lo--”

“Stop lying. You started following us when we were on our way to the Trial.”

“Ah,” the scorpion lowered his hands with a scowl. “Well, it was worth a try. But if you sensed me from the start, why didn’t you do anything until now?” He asked but then paused. “Ah, I see… That was a stupid question. My bad. You did it to protect those newbies, didn’t you?”

“…”

“Of course, you know that I could kill them by just being in their presence after all,” he cackled and his empty unicolor eyes flashed red for a second. “By the way… how are you dealing with it?”

“You mean this pathetic thing?” Kaelith sneered and one of her tails was shrouded with a yellow flame. She waved it, and a purple miasma made itself visible as the flames erupted and consumed it. “I’m aware of your Clan’s little games. You spread poison in the air with your breath. I’m simply filtering what I inhale by burning your toxins.”

“Ah, yes, Amaterasu’s Flames,” the scorpion remarked, non-plussed by the fact his poison wasn’t working. “Those yellow flames; from the intel I have on you, it’s the third one you wield. It burns whatever you want it to burn whilst leaving everything else unaffected.”

“You did your homework, foul bug. Should I praise you?”

“Sheesh, do you have a mystic flame for your mouth too?” He chortled.

Kaelith furrowed her eyebrows. Her blue flames left the place for crimson ones as they wrapped her body. “I don’t have the patience to deal with you. Answer. Why were you following us?”

“Isn’t that obvious? That little mutt you seem to be attached to; the new Emperor. Our Clan has given out the order to all the members who encounter him to gather informati--!” The man’s words were cut short as he kicked the ground, uplifting tons of terrain into the air, to dodge a blast of crimson flames.

The concentrated beam of fire tore a trench several kilometers long and when it was gone, more flames erupted from it and exploded, nearly dwarfing the damage caused by Rakna’s last attack in an instant.

“Tch, not very tolerant, are you?” The scorpion grunted out as he crouched in the air, his nine tails already dripping venom to fight. Just a drop of those was causing meter-wide holes in the ground that went as deep as ten meters. “What is he for you to be so worked up? Your lover boy?”

“Clap it down.” The man’s grin faded instantly as a voice sounded from behind him. “Be content to die.” He shivered and fanned out his tails, channeling mana through each of them, and conjured a spatial void around him.

A split of a second after, a tsunami of silver flames overtook the sky and assaulted him from every direction. His spatial shield that should have stopped them cracked instantly.

“The Arcane Flames!? Are you seriously trying to kill me?!” He yelled in a slight panic and activated his aura. His black eyes gained a red dot in the center and right before his defense shattered, he released a powerful discharge of purple-black energy.

It clashed with the silver flames and the ground below rapidly gave out. An eruption of flames and miasma occurred in the sky and spread for miles. The two colors clashed; the quantity of aura and mana in the atmosphere constantly increasing and borderline disintegrating the land of the 50th Plateau with the pressure.

After a short half a minute that felt like hours, the two clashing forces dispersed, releasing with it an overwhelming shockwave that enlarged the crater below even further, the destruction already being more than five times worse than what Rakna had caused.

From the heart of the clash, a giant silhouette emerged and fell to the ground at speeds surpassing sound. The crash produced a momentary earthquake and a comet of crimson fire followed right after; striking and raising a colossal pillar of flames.

A hundred meters away, Kaelith huffed as she landed on the ground, the tips of her hair ablaze and her clothes undulating like fire. After a moment and the pillar was gone, a giant leg came out of the hole and pulled the rest of the body up.

An ebony scorpion about ten meters tall and thirty meters long surfaced from the destruction with one of its legs gone and a pincer severed in half. The creature let out a high-pitched cry and the missing body parts grew back in the blink of an eye.

“Tenacious,” Kaelith scoffed and opened her palm, ready to summon her weapon.

“Wait!” The scorpion stopped her and promptly returned to its humanoid form. The man panted after the transformation and put one knee down. “You’ll actually kill me on the next one!”

“I fail to understand how that is my concern.”

“Are you fucking serious?!” He shouted. “How are you going to explain to the Clan why you killed me, huh?! Do you want a war between our branches?!”

“I don’t care,” she retorted with eyes full of silent fury. “If you plan to harm Rakna, I’ll personally raid your branch’s headquarters to slaughter your kind.”

The nine-tailed scorpion opened his mouth wide. “Are you kidding…? I was joking earlier… Forget lover boy, looks like you’re fucking obsessed with the kid,” he muttered and the fox heiress raised her aura’s intensity.

“Stop! Shit! All right, I won’t touch him. I never even intended to. The only order I had was to gather information. Nothing else. We even have an additional directive to not engage at all costs. None of us are willing to test our mettle against the Throne of Glory or the damn Basilica of Eternal Night that backs him up. Not to mention that Obsidian guy…”

Kaelith powered down her aura but didn’t relax her stance. “I could still kill you. I don’t think there will be much trouble for me if I bring up the case of a certain wolf cub going missing a few weeks ago. You don’t need to be a genius to tell you were the ones behind it.”

“Heh,” he let out a humorless chuckle and slowly stood up. If he was surprised at the fact that she mentioned the incident about Fen being kidnapped, he didn’t show it. “Where’s the proof?”

“…”

“None, eh? Then that’s groundless and the Clan won’t accept it.”

“What are you planning?” Kaelith shot back with a frown. “What are you scorpions scheming? Are you trying to take over the Clan?”

He grinned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he uttered and grasped an empty spot next to him and ripped it apart to reveal a tear in space. He placed a foot in it and eyed her, “While what I said is true and that the kid’s not a target… he might be in the future.”

Kaelith’s slit pupils glowed. “Watch your step. It’s not because you have a foot in your spatial tear that I can’t get to you in time.”

“Hehehe… I’m just stating a fact. You think I didn’t see it?” He cackled. “A tailed werewolf, eh?”

Kaelith clenched her fists, re-evaluating if she should kill him to protect Rakna or not.

“How exciting. And worrying too. What level is he? 100? And he’s already that strong? Even I got goosebumps when he went ahead and blew himself up. A clone doing that? That’s crazy. And you might be interested in knowing that he also sensed me.”

The vixen raised an eyebrow in surprise at that.

“Freaky, eh?” He grinned. “But he only noticed me after he started his Trial unlike you. Those cross pupils of his located me instantly after he activated them. All of this to say; he’s going to become a pivotal figure. He’s already a Council Member, it’s a matter of time before he’s targeted. And I don’t just mean us. I’m sure he’ll make waves… and us scorpions will ride on those if need be,” he added before entering the spatial tear for good.

Kaelith clicked her tongue and lashed out in annoyance with her arm. That simple action caused a wheel of crimson fire to carve the ground for tens of meters where the portal had been before it soared and exploded in the sky. When the noise died down, Kaelith was already gone.