A heavy halberd slashed towards Vari, seemingly intent on tearing apart the world around it. Though she had her barriers, she wasn’t confident in blocking such an attack. She might try against one of the lesser cultivators for comparison, but for the moment she had to avoid it. Even as she stepped back, it seemed to pull her in along with the surroundings, tearing apart the stone structure of the hallways. Only through great effort was she able to tear herself away from the attack, leaping to the side of the hallway. The attack seemed quite worthy of the sect’s name, the Black Hole Blades.

Spikes had a different response to the second Integration cultivator with a halberd. The man thrust his halberd so that the elongated spear point moved towards her, twisting the world around it, but instead of pulling back Spikes leaned into the attack. Yet instead of running into the spear point, the weapon pulled away from her to the side as the ground shifted. Spike’s advancement to an Integration equivalent had improved her mastery over the ground to be second nature. It was more difficult to control stone or dirt embedded with formations, but not impossible. Here, the most powerful formations were sealing the great doors and statues beyond.

The lesser cultivators were not yet able to come to bear, being both further back and slower. The halberds they carried didn’t truly fit in the hallways, though if their leaders were any example it would be the hallways that gave out before their attacks. It would be important not to get buried in rubble, not because a few tons of stone could kill anyone at their level but because it would simply be enough of a hindrance to sway the battle in one side’s favor.

All of the sword cultivators, their weapons similarly oversized though not as ridiculously lengthy as the halberds, had taken to attacking Chikere down the right corridor. That included two Integration cultivators and at least a dozen lesser enemies- though some were in Essence Collection and could be little more than distractions, that could be sufficient to provide an opening for someone more powerful.

If one were to consider quantity of blades, however, Chikere was winning by several factors all on her own. Swords danced around, slashing and stabbing. The cultivators were saved not by their nimbleness or skill, but by the way their weapons drew in her attacks, ‘blocking’ her regardless of what they did. Yet she never let her weapons be entrapped and broken, nor could they strike her. Despite the great size of the weapons they were swung with speed and drew her towards them, but Chikere dodged the weapons by the same razor thin margin she always did. Whether it was because it was more efficient or because she was staying one step ahead of death was difficult to tell. Perhaps it was simply both.

Vari was quite pleased with the narrowness of the corridors. Even as she saw several Black Hole Blades slice through the walls and ceiling with their halberds, chopping towards her, she could tell they were slightly restricted by them. More importantly, the cultivators were directly interfering with each other. Just because they could chop through some fortified stone didn’t mean they could do as they pleased- if they could cut through each other’s weapons, they would prefer not to.

As the blades pulled her towards them, promising a combination of crushing and being severed in two, she ended up using barriers not to block attacks but to stop her unintended movements. Even as she did so, she drew upon the devotion of the Harmonious Citadel. Her step into Integration drew upon their belief in the saints oath to protect those beneath them- regardless of whether that was actually implemented. As such, she was able to access some of the power meant for the saints herself on a planet that had a sizable population of the Harmonious Citadel. There was some risk of discovery, but she needed the power.

Spikes found it difficult to resist the pull of the blades, but rearranging the corridors around herself and her opponents was proving fruitful. She had to take several strikes from lesser cultivators, resulting in broken bones and gashes on her body. The weapons were sizable enough that the wounds weren’t small enough to be ignored, though the attacks didn’t extend beyond the blades themselves. At least Spikes had a hide tough enough to prevent them from cutting deep into her.

She wouldn’t have had to deal with those attacks if she weren’t also keeping back the remaining cultivators, fortifying her work down the central corridor. Even as she did so, she managed to snag the haft of a halberd in her teeth, biting down on it. It was made of strong metal intended to withstand the strain of the swing of axe heads nearly the size of a person, but after being yanked out of a cultivator’s hands, it couldn’t withstand her jaws lacking upper energy augmenting it.

A sword stabbed into the hand of one of the heavy blade cultivators, orbiting the pull of gravity the man intended to negate its momentum. Chikere grinned, starting to get the flow of the attacks. She dove forward, inviting a half dozen attacks from all sides. She chose to be exactly between the two Integration cultivators so their pulls would balance out- the others were less of a concern. Her body twisted as she ducked under one blade and rolled under the other, the swords around her finding targets- the weaker cultivators for the most part, but she slashed at the hamstrings of the Integration cultivators.

Their armor and upper energy defended them, but the fact that they were open to the attack kept them off guard. Chikere couldn’t help but grin. There were two swords around her of exceptional quality. She would have them. Starting with… that one.

Her next move vaulted her into the air, only to push off the ceiling a moment later. Gravity had little time to take hold during her quick movements, and despite the man she targeted wielding his heavy grade with astounding speed, it was still just a bit slower than it needed to be. It did take six swords to slow it down so it didn’t cut through her left shoulder as Number One chopped at the man’s wrists, but speed and sharpness triumphed. She didn’t manage to sever the man’s hands as intended, but she slightly weakened his grip. Her hands dropped from number one to grab the handle of the new weapon, twisting as she did so.

The weight of the sword took all of her focus to control, the rest of her blades falling to the ground as she twisted behind her, chopping vertically. The blade itself was not the source of the Black Hole Blade’s techniques, it simply augmented it. Even so, Chikere had seen the technique enough to replicate it. Her blade cut through the ceiling, pulling the walls in all the way down the corridor, the majority of her remaining opponents crashing together as a sudden gravity clumped them along a single line.

Chikere breathed out slowly. All that effort, and not a one was dead. She certainly wouldn’t be adding that technique to her arsenal. Not without some adjustments. Still, it did nicely place them for a follow up attack. Her weapon was embedded in the floor, but the embedded position only served as a counterforce to her swing for a moment before it suddenly tore apart. Her weapon went from stationary to the finished point of its arc in an instant, replicating a quick draw technique. A slashing cut extended down the corridor, tearing apart space like Rahayu’s technique- and the method Chikere had replicated for her own ascension.

The sword in her hands crumbled to dust. A shame. Ah well, it was only worthy to be number four or five at best. She turned to the remaining swordsman, surprised he hadn’t tried to stab her in the back with number one. There had been a thousand openings, perhaps more. Instead, the weapon still lay on the ground where Chikere dropped it, and the burly man simply stared at Chikere. Number one found no difficulty in simply killing him without Chikere touching it, rising up and stabbing through his torso from beneath, then slicing outward in both directions at once- one with the proper blade structure and one with a phantom copy rotating the other direction.

Chikere would retrieve the other heavy blade at some point, but she found it too exhausting to do anything much with them. She’d need to dig through a small mountain of rubble to find it, but that would be simple after the battle was over. First there was the remaining Integration sword wielder, now just chopping through the stone Spikes was constantly reinforcing.

Vari found an opening after Chikere’s sudden attack. She had already been surprised plenty of times by the swordswoman, this one was nothing much. Killing a dozen people with a single slash- effectively two, actually- was impressive, but not as much as killing a hundred with a hundred separate slashes at the same time. That she had seen. Though technically some had been thrusts.

Either way, the sudden trembling of the corridor put her main opponent a quarter step off, enough for Vari to pull a similar move. The only thing was she was always unarmed, so catching the halberd just under the head was done with two hands. Vari was smashed knee deep into the stone floor, but the blade didn’t touch her and the full force of the attack was mitigated by the poor leverage of the wielder. It made some sense to have the massive reach of the weapons, but even the widest spread of hands from its user could only control the back quarter of the weapon.

Massive strength let the hefty woman maneuver the weapon regardless, and the Black Hole Blades’ gravity manipulation handled the rest… but after Vari got her hold she anchored herself in position with a few angled barriers. The halberd twisted horizontally, intending to sweep her into the walls, but it stayed taut. And then… Vari let it go. She had no arrogance to believe she could fully disarm or wield such a massive weapon, but she didn’t mind letting her opponent chop through the handful of his allies on one side- barely avoiding the other Integration cultivator.

Spikes took the opportunity of a step forward by him to chomp towards his head, the haft of his weapon slamming into her neck. Her muscles and spine strained, but her jaws closed tight. Then the heavy weapon dropped to the side without a wielder. Her claws took out the lesser cultivators around her.

Then her walls were broken through, the final opponents freed. Two more Integration cultivators and dozens of others. Vari hadn’t finished off her Integration cultivator yet, and with the rest of them fatigued it appeared it would be a difficult fight. Spikes charged towards Vari to help her finish that one off.

Two Integration cultivators fell. The halberd wielding woman… and the final sword cultivator who had just entered the battle. Chikere had had enough it seemed. The closer she was pushed to her limits, the more vicious she got- and it seemed she’d gained what knowledge she wanted from her previous fight. Ultimately, the man was too slow and his gravity technique not powerful enough to stop her. After that, Chikere started on the remaining weaker cultivators- those with swords and halberds alike.

Spikes and Vari found it relatively simple to finish off a single Integration cultivator even in their states, and finally the battle ended. There were sounds of heavy breathing from two humans and a great stone wolf. Then all of the corridors collapsed.

-----

Half an hour later, after digging themselves and all of the enemy cultivators who might have decent loot on them out, the three found their way over to the only sturdy section of the area, by the statues. Above the door was a label previously uninspected, which Vari read out loud. “Only those of purity and saintly demeanor may enter.” She sighed, “What does that even mean?” she complained to the statues, both of the same woman- Silvija. The reason they had come in the first place.

She grumbled and plopped herself down with her back against the door. She leaned on it for support, thinking through the Harmonious Citadel’s teachings. Then she fell backwards as the doors creaked open, the same moment she realized that the woman who was now on her right was not actually Silvija. Instead, it was a face she’d seen only in distant memory and a lost painting.