The Vordors hurtled like meteors through the air, so pitch-black they looked like nine massive holes torn into the sky.

All around Dorian hunters sprung into action, firming into squadrons and dashing to the front to intercept the threat. Three dozen cultivation bases unleashed at once.

Just as the Vordors split up.

Four scythed for the hunter squadrons, their screeches rising to a fever pitch.

Another four, the strongest of them, dove for the Chief and the Head Hunter, no doubt to try to finish them off fast.

But the remaining Vordor concerned Dorian most. It headed for the civilians. Toward him.

The tribesmen devolved into a scattering mess in an instant. Dorian was almost knocked flat by a fleeing, screeching woman, then was righted again by a couple ducking for cover next to him.

He scanned all around him as fast as he could, taking stock of the hiding-spots—dunes, cacti, behind nearby tents; in the end, it’d amount to little more than buying a little time. With what a molten sphere of qi still weighing him like a bomb in his stomach, though, time was of the essence.

He cycled like a madman. It was futile. Nothing he did in the next few minutes would shift the tide of the battle; already screams were erupting from the hunter squadrons to his left as tufts of noxious gas and spittle flatlined them from above.

Still. Despite it all, if he died, he’d go out swinging.

As he took his first step to dive for cover, though, a flash of qi caught his eye.

It was a shockwave given visible form, branching like the first rays of an early morning sunrise.

The Vordor, mere feet from clawing a civilian, was blinded and knocked off course. Still screeching, off-balance, it swerved around to try for another dive. Its feathers smoldered—unhurt, unbroken, but still ruffled.

[Wrath of the Dawn]: one of the most complex, qi-intensive techniques of the [Fist of the Rising Sun].

The girl who had performed it stood square in the Center, shielding a swathe of civilians. She wobbled on shaky legs, but her face showed no sign of strain, or fear, or doubt. There was only cold determination.

“Chosen!” roared Kaya. “To me!”

Five men answered her call, teens all; they charged up, screaming battle cries. One of them was Kuruk, who panted like a raging bull, his hands brimming for qi and primed for battle. If he was scared he was too angry to show it.

But only a third of the Chosen, if that, answered the call. Most had taken to hiding, nowhere to be found. Kaya cursed loudly. Dorian followed her gaze to a far end of camp, where Hento Rust shivered amid a cluster of tribesmen like an animal in a trap. He looked one loud noise away from flight.

With one last look of disgust Kaya turned back to her fellow Chosen and started barking orders; there was no time to waste. To Dorian’s left, the hunters had just barely driven off the first wave of Vordor dive-bombs—they’d flown off before they took anything more than glancing damage. Their ranks were broken. A third of the men lay writhing, the skin melting off their bodies into smoke. It hissed sickeningly.

Hento had the right idea, Dorian decided. Out here he was too exposed. There were too many variables to consider. Better to lose himself amid a crowd.

Or… was it? He allowed himself a fraught few seconds to weigh his options.

If he ran he delayed the inevitable. The Vordors would make quick work of the hunters, then rally to aid their fellow Vordors in dispatching the rest of the resistance. Then they’d pick him and the rest of the survivors off. He was certain enough of it to stake his life on it. Literally.

If he stayed, perhaps he could help fight back. Perhaps he could use that glut of qi in his gut for one supercharged shot. Perhaps he could change the tide of the battle.

Perhaps he could also stop his wishful thinking. He was Origin Realm Level One, for hells’ sake! He growled. His weakness was getting on his nerves. At this stage his resistance would amount to little more than a minor irritation, if that. Even now he gauged the battlefield, his enemies, how far the Shaman was from him, trying to discern a way out, even an inkling of a plan. He found none. He would work best as a support option—but what was there to support? The hunters were almost down to half. To his right two Chosen fell to the claws of the Vordor; the only damage it bore was minor burns.

Then an unexpected force put its finger on the scale, and Dorian’s balance tipped in an instant.

He felt it before he saw it. Chief Rust’s cold aura, was distinctive, unmistakable; somehow, he and the Head Hunter had held off their own four-Vordor onslaught up until this point.

But now something shifted.

A new layer of aura burst out from Rust like a mighty river crashing through a dam. It was Rust’s pressure but amplified tenfold, so heavy and viscous it was given tangible form. Rust’s [Vigor] Realm powers took a new order of chill. In that instant Rust became a blizzard unto himself. He exuded a sheer cold which drove to the bone. The Vordors were battered back, shrieking.

The instant he felt that chill, Dorian knew.

This was a power beyond the realm of the human. This was a power not borrowed but taken from something higher.

Bloodline!

Now that Rust fully activated it, Dorian felt its full extent. Thick; not a pure bloodline, but shocking for this Realm. It strained credulity. With this Realm’s refining methods, Chief would’ve needed at least half of the entire skeleton of a high-Tier Spirit Beast to achieve this effect. And where had he gotten such a beast? Fully unleashed, Dorian felt the majesty in the bloodline, a sheer, distilled power—to Dorian it felt nearly identical to a Frost Python’s.

Which was a God-tier Spirit Beast. A beast that shouldn’t exist on this plane.

He stared, incredulous. What else is this plane hiding?

In that instant, many things happened.

Up high, the Vordor the Shaman rode suddenly retreated another hundred yards, even farther out of reach. Its Vordor abandoned its steady rhythm for a quick series of wing-flaps. Panic?

Dorian whirled around. His mind fired ten thoughts a second. Every veteran of battle could feel the flow of a fight. As Dorian breathed in, his gaze flitting about, he felt there had been a turn.

The Shaman felt it too. She responded with prejudice. Two of the Vordors raising hell on the hunters broke away and lunged for the Chief; bellowing, the Head Hunter leapt to intercept one, battering it with molten potshots, but the other still raced for Rust. At the same time, the Vordors that Rust had just driven back regrouped, primed for a second assault. The streaks of shadow merged in an inky whirlwind, descending in a haze of acid and smoke and death.

Then Chief Rust took a deep breath, and struck back.

Icy shards of qi crackled into existence, sharp as a python’s fangs. They brimmed with pent-up qi, bucking and roiling furiously in the air. Then they shot out, matching the Vordors’ screeches in high, piercing whistles, as though the air itself was crying out in pain.

It looked like a hailstorm falling upward, scaled up tenfold. The shards shredded into the Vordors’ wings, throwing them off-course; where they struck the feathers and skin froze over, crystallized. As two Vordors got through, unleashing their diseased breaths, Chief Rust hopped nimbly away. The motion sent him yards away—well outside the strike zone.

And all around, even mid-combat or mid-flee, the tribesmen of Rust gasped as one.

Then Rust gathered himself, pivoted, and a new set of shards filled the air about him. The Vordors swooped again; this time they dove in formation, trying to swerve around the shards—to no avail. The ice swerved around, streaking pale blue, and nailed its targets once more.

The gasps turned to scattered cheers. The Chosen, barely fending off their own Vordor, seemed reinvigorated; the hunters loosed a cry. In the sound hid a note of something thad been missing from Rust all fight.

Hope.

This changes everything. Dorian breathed out, fists clenching, and cracked a smile. For the first time, he gave the Chief grudging acknowledgement. Stuck-up prick as he was, the man had a measure of skill. For this realm, that was.

The man also bought Dorian some precious, precious time, and something even more valuable: half a chance. He ran up a nearby dune, keeping well clear of the battle. Then he scoped out the battlefield again, fully alert, soaking in everything.

A few basic facts stood out to him. First: the Chief was turning the tide against his six Vordor foes. It was attritional work—pelting them as they kept up their strafes. Effective.

Second: tide-turning as it was, it was too slow to win by itself.

By the time he drove back his own attackers, the Vordors sicc’ed on his tribe would leave him no home to return to. And that was assuming he could handle the full force of Vordors at once.

Now that they only dealt with two Vordors, hunters were having more luck—but with their force half-gone, depleted and demoralized, even just two were proving hellish to handle. And though Kaya led a brave resistance, her Chosen, too, were flagging. A claw-strike had left a jagged, bloody furrow down her side; nearby lay two dead Chosen, and a host more writhing from acid attacks.

Third: Something was off about how these Vordors moved.

He’d noticed it when he first saw them: wings all flapping in the same rhythm, in sync. A very human heuristic to conserve mental control.

Mental strength was crucial to all cultivators, but beast tamers in particular needed huge natural gifts and training for it. Shamans usually had decades of training in visualization and mental manipulation; hence why the age of the Shaman usually bespoke their strength. The one before them, a peak [Vigor] realm cultivator, seemed ancient.

Her reserves were great, no doubt. But not endless. Manipulating three cohorts of Vordors in simple, repeatable attack patterns was a straining task, but easily doable for a veteran beast tamer.

Micro-managing each individual Vordor to navigate a minefield of shards, however? That took some serious effort.

It showed in how the other Vordors flew. Before they dove in precise patterns, but now they flew in automatic arcs, loosing acid almost at random—lobbing at the crowds. There was a clear reallocation of mental resources toward the assault on Rust, away from everything else. The Chosen and the hunters now had a little space to breathe.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but as he glanced to the Shaman, she seemed hunched, smaller. Like she was under duress.

Hitting her directly was out of the question; she was far, far out of reach. But now, he deduced, it was like she was performing a juggling act on stilts that were also on a tightrope. Despite the Tribe’s best efforts, though, she was somehow holding.

Well. Not if Dorian had any say in it.

What this needed, he sensed, was a flashbang lobbed right at the center of the act.

He grinned. As it happened, just such a thing was burning a hole in his gut…

Time Elapsed: 21 hours.