Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

A distant explosion illuminated the sky.

Beams of energy were splitting the darkness, with loud booms and earthquakes. The mounted cannons and turrets on the fortress were firing continuously for many minutes until they finally stopped.

The bombardment on our position ended as well, so we could freely move again.

“Looks like your golem didn’t make it too far, eh?” One of the guys nudged me with his elbow and laughed.

We had all seen how it got blasted multiple times and then disappeared in a cloud of smoke. That fact was impossible to argue with.

Still, I didn’t bother gracing the man with a reply and instead quickly flew towards the bastion. The barrier outside was still standing, but the structure itself was not in such good shape anymore.

I grinned. As the smoke cleared and the true scale of the destruction was revealed, so did the one responsible for it. Tiny, in all his metal glory, was revealed among the ruins. The outside layer of the Arcane Ferrite Wardplate was scratched and dusty, but other than that it was just fine. It appeared like all the upgrades were well worth it. A single construct taking out a fortress of armed Spirit Realm Cultivators was mighty impressive.

I reached out to the barrier and placed a hand against it. In just a moment I analyzed its structure and then pulsed the exact opposite frequency, forcing the structure of Qi to destabilize and dissolve. All energy constructs could be amplified and strengthened with resonance, but they could be similarly destroyed if you just knew how.

Usually, such a thing would take hours or days to analyze, but it just so happened that I had thousands of years worth of experience with all kinds of energy barriers, so such a thing was beyond simple.

A circular ripple formed in the barrier around me, and I stepped through without resistance, after which the opening reformed behind me without a sound. The core was clearly still in perfect working order.

Before the others came, I quickly scanned the ruins and found many broken or charred corpses, and collected any valuables they might have had on them. I found many broken weapons and exhausted relics as well, and I took them all as just the raw metals were more than valuable enough.

While I searched I even took a shattered blade of a guard and slowly chewed on it, grinding the Spirit Metal between my teeth like hard candy.

Every few weeks I would take a few bites of a sword to sate my hunger, slowly increasing the purity of my blood. By the time I reached the Sky Realm, my body would be in great part made of Qi, and my blood should be molten Spirit Metal in its entirety.

I was also already starting to run much hotter than normal, though my skin still felt only warm to the touch. Inside my chest, however, I was like a furnace, the heat strong enough to already almost melt iron.

I did not know if Dragons were similarly hot or not, but the beasts literally breathed fire and had metal running through their veins, so maybe? Not to mention the bloodline of a Phoenix, which was basically a bird made out of flames.

“What happened here?!” I heard the Elder exclaim as they reached the barrier and finally noticed the state of their former fortress.

I coincidentally also just found the core controlling the barrier, a massive crystal orb with lines and wires running through the ground and connecting to it, and I simply severed them all. The barrier instantly fell apart with the energy sustaining it gone.

Unfortunately, that seemed like it was the wrong decision, as every other still-working inscription and Formation also turned off at once. The towers and walls that barely just held on with the help of magic reinforcement immediately collapsed, turning the broken fortress into a field of ruins. The entire building was leveled to the ground in a short few seconds.

[Whoops.]

The ceiling and massive stones collapsed on top of me, burying me in the underground chamber.

Of course, that wasn’t a problem. The massive blocks of stone felt no different from empty cardboard boxes, and I easily flicked them out of the way with minimal effort.

“What-?! Our bastion!”

“It’s all… gone!”

I heard shouts and climbed out of the hole I was buried in. Of course, I didn’t forget to pocket the giant crystal core, together with any precious metal scraps I could find. I had acquired a few extra storage rings over the years, and they were depressingly devoid of loot.

[Oh hey, you guys finally made it. Looks like the people here are all dead.] I said after showing myself. Tiny was still standing in the middle of that destruction, waiting for new orders.

“Dead? Really? All of them?”

[Yep. I checked it myself.]

The Elder slowly walked over the ruins while looking around, then kicked a stone over and sighed.

“Well, it’s good that they are taken care of, but we really should at least try to capture one of them. We still have no idea what the Drow are planning.”

“Couldn’t we just grab one of the others? We still have plenty to check, right?” A guy spoke.

“I’m afraid not.” The Elder shook his head. “They aren’t bound to their bodies, you know? They can just leave at any time, which is what makes this so difficult. Not to mention that they probably know we are hunting them. These guys were ready for us.” He kicked over a lone bloody arm in frustration.

[I bet they are just going to leave now. We probably spooked them too much.]

“Could be. Still, we need to check all the other places.” The Elder nodded and placed a small cylindrical metal container on the ground. “I’ll leave a beacon here for the other team who will come to… salvage this place.”

He sighed again, but it wasn’t all bad.

The cannons were still in one piece, mostly, though some of them were quite banged up. I was sure they could be worth something, but I didn’t want to be too greedy by taking them and then getting into trouble. Surely nobody was going to miss a beachball-sized power core. Those tended to blow up often during a crisis. On the other hand, the cannons seemed like interesting military pieces and I figured the upper brass might want them back.

We checked the ruins a few more times, confirming the guards there were really all dead. We found some records that showed the place stopped tracking information a good two weeks prior, so that basically confirmed they were all replaced at that time. No point in keeping records if you know you are going to be there for just a short while. Also, they were the enemy, so…

Sidenote, I noticed that the bodies were decaying incredibly fast. A Cultivator’s flesh should stay intact for months or even years after his death, but being possessed by a Drow’s Soul seemed to break them. After checking I noticed the body was also cursed beyond repair. Even I didn’t want to eat it as it would probably give me indigestion or something.

Somehow they squeezed all they could out of a dead guy at the cost of longevity. Not that they cared if they burned all the accumulated Essence anyway. It wasn’t their body after all.

Just before we left, another group came, taking over, and began salvaging whatever remained of the ruined fortress. Meanwhile, we went back on the road, following our leader to our next destination. The guard outposts were quite spread out, and being cloaked, it was not easy to detect them from a distance. We had to get relatively close to be able to see them with our senses.

The first two smaller ones we visited still had the enemy inside them and we were met with fierce resistance, but the guys quickly took care of them. The rest of them though, were completely abandoned by the time we arrived, emptied of their valuables, and with with a handful of rotting corpses left on the ground.

I didn’t have the opportunity to use Tiny anymore even when there was a fight. The rest of the group became understandably frustrated after they couldn’t get a single hit in at the fortress, so they threatened me to let them fight next, which I obliged. It was just five guards in total, going against about fifty frustrated Cultivators. It ended as you might expect.

The enemy got crushed.

After we returned back to the outpost days later, I finally learned the name of the place. It was called the Emberfall Outpost. Apparently, it gained that name years back, when the two forces clashed, and a grand Fire Mystic Art was triggered, turning the entire land to embers. It had recovered greatly since then and the border was expanded significantly, but the name remained.

The outpost was still growing, already almost turning into a city.

With our task done so quickly, we had nothing to do but wait for our next orders. I wondered if there would actually be any battling to do any time soon. The reception was nice, thrown in the midst of battle as we were, but after that, everything became… boring.

I Cultivated the Path of Combat, so it was understandable that I craved violence, I just hoped it wouldn’t take too long for my desires to be sated. The Drow we met were surprisingly underwhelming.

Sure, they had strong curses, but that was a coward’s way to fight. Not to mention that they didn’t work on me. What should have crippled me instead barely resulted in a momentary discomfort.

Well, I just hoped they would step up their game, or they would soon be going extinct.

In the main headquarters of the Drow, things weren’t going well. More and more people were waking up from their stasis chambers, the Souls having returned to their original bodies after a fatal incident. Heck, some even returned of their own volition, not willing to suffer at the hands of the enemy.

It didn’t matter if they were simply possessing a body, they still felt the pain. Not to mention the experience of death being traumatic no matter if it was real or not. And to be fair, for the proud Drow, a loss stung more than anything, so some simply decided to end it on their own terms.

“Useless! They are all useless!”

The High Priest was fuming in his chambers, having just received the terrible news. So many capable warriors returned from their mission, having achieved not even 10% of what was expected of them. It was as if they once again became useless juniors not even a century old.

But they were not! They were seasoned warriors with plenty of success and even more experience under their belt. Yet all of them failed. A perfect plan somehow went awry.

“No matter. One setback means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It is quite annoying though.” The High Priest murmured to himself. He was in charge of this operation, making sure the humans did not advance. Their Masters ordered it, so he would make it so.

They would gather intelligence, make new plans, and crush the spirits of those who oppose them, once and for all!

“Go, gather my vassals and get the servants ready.” He ordered the butler. “We have some animals to crush. Meheh. Mwahahahaha!”

The butler bowed and ran through the door, not daring to remain while his master laughed.