Yuriko crossed the distance between the wall and the struggling barbarian woman in less than a blink of an eye. The wind of her passage blew the women’s hair all over the place, but they showed no more reaction to it than her presence, which was none at all. Except for the struggling woman anyway.

Her eyes widened in surprise and sudden hope. Her face contorted even more, but no words escaped her lips. Her eyes darted to the right, though it looked more like she was trying to look behind her. Yuriko thought she knew what the woman meant, or rather, upon closer inspection, the young woman who looked like she was well within her teen years.

Yuriko didn’t give in to her instinctive reaction, which was to rip the worm off the woman’s nape. Who knew what kind of damage it would leave the other? And more importantly, the fact that she was still expressive and alive meant that the condition wouldn’t deteriorate anytime soon. Er, hopefully.

Yuriko’s Anima perception focused on the worm, and because she was now infused with Radiant energy, the thing didn’t react favourably at all. Smoke rose from its skin as soon as the Radiant-infused Anima touched it. The full force of Yuriko’s regard contained enough energy to affect Chaos Lords and dwellers, after all.

She blinked in surprise, then hastily retracted her aura when the girl’s face twisted in suffering. But then, she cautiously shaped her Anima into a needlepoint, then stabbed it into the worm, right where its mouth touched the girl’s neck. She had enough of a glimpse in that brief instant to know that a thin proboscis was injected into the spine. The Anima needle followed and overlaid the proboscis, burning it out without touching the girl’s body. She retracted it as soon as the worm detached. It tumbled to the ground when she squished it with her boot. The girl collapsed.

Oh.

She’s dead.

Yuriko bent down, touching the barbarian girl’s neck, then her wrist to check the pulse. But there was nothing. The only thing that changed was that the girl’s expression had changed from suffering to relief. Yuriko gritted her teeth. Annoying.

She glared at the other victims and wondered if she should put them out of their misery or wait until later to attempt to rescue them.

Dead’s dead.

Well, except for certain annoyances that kept coming back.

Nevertheless, these people did not have the power to circumvent dying, so she was sure any action on her part would have permanent consequences.

“Ancestors…” she muttered before shaking her head.

Why was she here in the Chaos Fortress? Was it to rescue captives? Only if she found Kato and his girlfriend. Otherwise, she was here to destroy the Fortress. Perhaps doing so would save the captives, but she somewhat thought that the opposite would happen.

“Ah…I have to make sure Kato and Caera aren’t here first…”

The mission was more complicated than she first thought. Legate Brygos only said she should scout out the place, not invade it. She got hasty.

Well, done was done, and she didn’t know how to get back to Rumiga without wasting a week or more through the Tidelands. Well, considering she was in Eastern Rumiga, and the fact that there was a Tidelands directly north, she wouldn’t waste that much time. But she was already here, so she might as well clear the place.

That didn’t mean she should slaughter the prisoners. If they survive the Chaos Fortress’ destruction, then let that be their Fate. If they die, well, she would not mourn the death of barbarians.

Easily said, but a part of her still twinged in sympathy. Still, there was little she could do now, and with how that one barbarian woman died as a result of Yuriko’s actions, well, so be it.

Yuriko scanned the room and found another passageway to the left of her entry point, but before she decided to go, there was still a group of barbarian men on the opposite side. And those, she should kill.

She went back to her original tunnel and punched the wall opposite it. The stones cracked then exploded away from her, partly due to her punch, and mostly because of her Animakinesis. Her kinesis was stronger than her body now, she thought, and that wouldn’t do. She needed parity and balance.

She walked into the chamber. The barbarian men didn’t react to her presence. She expanded her full Anima, along with the infusion of Radiance. The worms at the napes of their necks burned, and when they turned to ashes, the men collapsed.

The door in this chamber was still to the left of her entry point, but it was on the opposite side compared to the women’s chamber. She didn’t know where to head first, so she plucked a silver penny from her satchel and flipped it.

“Sigil, barbarian chambers, numeral original path,” she muttered as she let the coin bounce on the floor. If she grabbed the coin it would taint the result since she would know exactly when to move to choose which side came up. The coin bounced and then settled on its edge.

“Burning Moon!” she muttered as she attempted the same thing, only to receive the same result. “Fine! I won’t go down the main tunnel then!” she grumbled, and since she was already on the male side chamber, she went through their tunnel entrance, too.

The door blocking the tunnel entrance was made out of a mishmash of wood and was quite crude. She tried the handle, found it locked, shrugged, and kicked it open. The door disintegrated into splinters, and the deadly missiles punctured the swarmlings within the tunnel. Shrieks of pain and anger, coupled with howls of rage greeted her as the swarmlings charged her, only to turn to ashes when she unleashed her Anima. They were only able to take half a step into her range, which she kept suppressed to about ten paces away. Her thinned perception aura ranged down the tunnel and through the sides but she consciously prevented it from having too strong an infusion.

At least until she saw that most of the tunnel was filled with Wyldlings. Then she unleashed her Anima, burning the whole lot into Chaos dust and shards. Then, she used her Animakinesis to scoop up the loot. She wasn’t sure where to keep the Chaos dust, but then, she felt Fri’Avgi hunger for it, so she fed the dust, and admittedly most of the Chaos shards, to her artefact.

The tunnel turned right after fifty paces, and when Yuriko sent her perceptive aura that way, she easily detected the swarmlings there. She noticed a couple of Wanderers who practically filled the entire tunnel with their girth, and she was about to burn them to pieces when she stopped.

“Need to practice,” she muttered. Even if it was against weaker foes, what she learned from fighting the Chaos swordsman could be honed here. She conjured a dozen sunblade pairs and sent them towards the tunnel. With her perceptive aura, she could keep track easily enough, and it was just as easy to fight with the mindset of imagining that she was the one holding each sunblade.

And while the swarmlings and the occasional Wanderer were nowhere near a challenge, fighting this way still helped her get used to it. Soon, she was using eighteen sunblade pairs and was thinking of upping that to twenty soonish.

The tunnels were monotonous, to say the least, and the swarmlings never diminished in number. Almost as soon as she cleared a tunnel and moved to the next, another set came from the opposite direction and occupied the empty place. And as long as she wasn’t within sight, they didn’t try to follow or attack her.

She had conjured twenty-four sunblade pairs by now, effectively controlling twelve of herself at the same time, when she came up against another door. This one wasn’t as ramshackle as the first, and it actively repelled her Anima perception. She came up to it and pushed it open, revealing a grand chamber that was occupied by something other than Wyldlings. Chaos Lords, actually, and two rather familiar figures.

“Can’t you leave me alone?!” The Weaver of the Warp and Weft of the World screeched as soon as she entered. His companion, the bearded and stout Oathsworn Cleaver of Dreams sprayed a mouthful of ale. Both men jumped from their tables and the entire place opened up to Yuriko’s perception. The two weren’t the only Chaos Lords, there was a plethora of them, though most looked to be Chaos barons.

The tavern, for it could not be anything else considered the wooden floors, the mugs of ale and cups of wine, as well as a stage where another Chaos Lord strummed a lute, practically froze at her entrance, and when her infused Anima covered the place, Radiant energy began to burn.

Yuriko grinned. Those two annoying Chaos viscounts were here and without access to their support nameless. While the Weaver would likely survive, since he had an incarnation away, she could finish the other one now.

Sunblade pairs shot forward while she rested Fri’Avgi’s blade over her shoulder. The first sunblade pair stabbed one of the Chaos barons in between her and the two viscounts. The poor creature barely had enough time to scream before she minced it to pieces. Then, she flicked those pieces towards her position and pressed them against Fri’Avgi, who disintegrated them and absorbed the resulting Chaos mix.

She sent the other pairs at the rest of the barons and focused her Animakinesis on those farther away, knocking them back into the middle of the chamber. Her glare was enough to ignite their Protective Fields with the Radiant energy, and they slowly burnt to bits.

Three sets of sunblade pairs went for the Weaver, who tried to shift his body away. However, the potent grip of Yuriko’s Anima, which easily covered the fifty-pace wide tavern, was more than enough to block his movement. The Oathsworn cursed loudly and brandished his dual axes, parrying the sunblades at the same time. However, he only had two weapons.

Four blades struck simultaneously from front, back, left, and right. The front blade was blocked by his prodigious beard, the hair sizzling as it tried to neutralise the Radiant energy held by the construct. The ones striking from either side carved into his armour, while the one at the back slipped into a gap. A moment later, the poor bearded viscount was lifted into the air, split on three sides and screaming in fear and pain.

“You’ve escaped death once, you won’t do so again,” Yuriko said grimly as she strode forward.

“No…no!” he yelled as she stabbed Fri’Avgi into his gut. His beard tried to protect him, but it parted easily against the orichalcum artefact. Reddish lights, golden glows, and green Chaos flared around the greatsword and the Oathsworn shrivelled to a husk of himself. A moment later, what was left of him plopped down on the stone floor.

Swish! Ptang!

Weaver’s attack was deflected by a sunblade protecting Yuriko from behind. Without even looking back, a pair struck back, easily overpowering the weaker viscount’s defences, and a moment later, the Weaver had lost both arms, both legs and soon enough, his head. Radiant energy consumed his body, and Fri’Avgi suctioned up what she could, but it was far below what a viscount would have given both of them.

The rest of the barons died quickly after, and her artefact was glut with distilled Chaos. Hopefully, Oathsworn was permanently dead, but if he did manage to survive, she could only continue destroying his corpus and his Anima.

The tunnel across the tavern beckoned, but she took a moment to check what was behind the pub. Barrels of wine and ale, and with Federation markings on the side. There was little doubt of the alliance between the courts and the city-states, but it looked like the merchants would make their coins wherever they would…

She was a bit thirsty though. So she grabbed a clean mug from behind the bar and opened the spout, half-filling it with foamy brew. A sip was all it took to convince her that ale, no matter where it came from, wasn’t really her thing. So she just wet her lips, left most of the tankard on the table and moved on to the next tunnel.