The Path of Ascension

When Matt finally got back to the fight, it was over.

Given the number of cultivators he’d had to fight on his way, and just how long it took him to get back on his feet, he wasn’t terribly surprised. It had been perhaps five minutes since he’d been thrown several blocks away from the fight’s epicenter, and fights of this level rarely lasted longer. The massive wave of Genesis Energy and Favor he’d gotten a minute or so ago was also something of a dead giveaway.

But back in the zone of destruction, he surveyed the aftermath of the fight. Crumbled and broken buildings, the aftermath of countless skills, and many half-reclaimed bodies all spoke to a truly lethal encounter. Still, all that mattered was his AI informing him that his team had all survived, though they weren’t unharmed.

Liz in particular looked rough. She was covered in blood, missing half her arm, and struggling to stand, even supported by her spear. Matt knelt by her, put one arm around her shoulder, and picked her up so she could at least stand on her own feet.

Liz glanced at him with a pale, blood-streaked face, but still managed a smile.

“Got the fucker.”

It came out as little more than a whisper, but then she looked guilty as she looked down at her missing arm.

“He also—” She paused to cough up a clot of blood before clearing her throat and finishing, “His attack also destroyed both my ring and glove. Sorry.”

Matt pulled her into a hug and used the opportunity to both reassure her and cast [Bandage] on her arm. There was no way he could heal her, and she wasn’t in any immediate danger.

“Hey, it’s okay. You did great.”. Once she was steady enough to not need his full attention, Matt cast his gaze for his other teammates. Susanne seemed to be intact, but was on her knees either hyperventilating or dry heaving. He couldn't quite tell.

Aster scampered over, whined how happy she was to see him, and promptly passed out. She’d been running on sheer willpower for at least half the fight, and not needing to do so anymore was clearly a relief for her.

And she was right. The fight was also over.

It seemed that with the fall of their General, the Fall cultivators decided retreat and escape was the better part of valor. Even the annoying archer who kept peppering them with shots during the fight had stopped their incessant attacks.

Matt scooped up Aster before dropping her into Liz’s good arm and moved to Susanne.

Patting her armored back, he asked, “What's the damage?”

Physically, she seemed uninjured, and his AI reported the same thing, but she was clearly not fine.

As she clenched her fist around a rock that burst under her strength, she croaked out, “I can’t summon my sword. My Concept is just… he broke it. Like swatting a fly. Fighting even after that did not help, and now I won’t even be able to think without a headache for a few days.”

Matt shuffled through his ring before finding a Tier 14 painkiller and handing it to her.

She shook her head, then joined Liz where she was sitting on the ground “Already took one. Kinda helps, but I don’t want to overdo it.” .

Matt stood up to see Bradley limping over, carrying a surprisingly still alive Dexter.

The man was little more than a head and part of a torso, but Matt could still see the life in his eyes, and slow pulses of his exposed heart. Like cockroaches, enemies always survived.

Bradley gestured with his head, “Can you cast [Bandage] on his ass?”

Matt really wanted to reject and let the asshole Feddy die, but the man had fought valiantly and until the end, not running away like so many others had. He would happily kill the man on the next floor, but it felt wrong to do so now.

Looking at Bradley, it seemed he had a similar thought process to Matt, as otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought him over after seeing him cast [Bandage].

It might be dumb, but Matt cast the spell the half dozen times it was needed to prevent the man from dying.

Seeing that, Bradley dropped Dexter and said, “You're lucky I was looking for your spatial ring to loot. Or you wouldn’t have made it.”

He then proved that false when he dropped a simple silver band onto the man's chest.

As Bradley walked away, he tossed out, “Don’t worry. I took my payment. That Deep Plum Ale you were bragging about will cover the cost. Worry not!”

Matt laughed as Dexter managed to go even paler. He paused for a moment, seeing if the man would actually croak, as he could then loot the man himself. But of course, the bastard didn’t, so Matt walked away.

Seeing a Sect healer climb over a wall of rubble, he pointed at Dexter. “Might want to start on him first. He’s about a sneeze away from dying, and I don't think there are any Sect cultivators here for you to heal.”

Matt didn’t care to watch the woman and see if she healed the representative, as most of his attention was on the battle for the city.

Primus had entered the city from the front gate that was opened, and then proceeded to slaughter anyone he encountered, which at this point was just stubborn Fall lieutenants still fighting for their city.

Having just fought one of his kind, Matt knew that the power the Fae was showing wasn’t even a tenth of his actual abilities. It was a frightening thought.

Still, the battle was won, and the only thing that was left was the clean up.

And that was a job for someone else.

Matt and his team needed to rest.

They had earned it.

As he was helping Bradley find the few other survivors, they stopped for a second over Tiffany, the Guild representative's body.

She had not survived a [Mana Bolt] that landed on her chest. It had eaten her heart, leaving her with only a vacant expression.

Bradley covered her eyes with a strip of cloth and sighed. “Tiff, you did your best. Thank you.”

Having said that, he removed her spatial ring and put the woman's body inside.

Turning to Matt, he said, “I'm going to try and get this back to her family. She doesn’t deserve to be absorbed by the planet.” He worked his jaw before asking. “If I die, and you can get my body, can you do the same?”

Matt nodded slowly. “I doubt it will come to that, but yes.”

Bradley shrugged as he looked out to the dark city interspersed with flashes of spells. “You never know. We signed up for this, but it's disconcerting to see someone I was just talking with now dead. Just makes you think.”

Together, they just stood for a long minute before Jill came walking out of a shadow with a head in her hands.

The man's face looked terrified and angry, but her expression wasn’t any better.

“Got the fucker who liked to shoot arrows at us.” Her words surprised Matt. He had figured that the man had retreated once the battle turned, not that Jill had run the man down and decapitated him.

“Well fuck that guy.” They all turned to Liz as she stood up with an unconscious Aster in her remaining arm, with Susanne using the stump to steady herself.

Seeing them all look at her, she asked. “What? That guy was a dick.”

Jill shook her head, but Bradley laughed out. “No, I just figured we’d be finding your body next. Glad you’re enough of a beast to be up and walking already after that hit.”

Jill turned to Matt and asked, “I’m nearly as surprised to see you up and moving, White. That kick looked vicious.”

Matt shrugged. “Broke nearly every bone in my chest and shredded my lungs. I had to inhale a healing potion, which wasn’t pleasant. Plus I'm sure I’m well over my healing cooldown, and my ribs still need a professional healer. So I didn’t get off that lightly.”

Jill inspected him, but said nothing, just shaking her head.

Bradley ended up being the one to speak first. “Well, I got a Title, so that's nice. Lord of Fallen Trees has a certain ring to it.”

Jill turned to her husband and shook her head. “Later. We need to get out of the city and rest. Then we can look at our loot. For now, I just want to fall over. Let the clean up crew deal with the loot too. I'm not waiting around for it to get inspected we'll get the report tomorrow.”

As she turned away, Matt saw that she hadn’t come out of the battle unscathed. Her chest plate had a large rend in the back, showing that a portion of her flesh had melted away, leaving bone exposed.

Seeing it, he cast a [Bandage], which caused her to pause to look back at him and nod.

Saying nothing more, their teams trekked through the war zone that was the city.

They didn’t even need to leave the city to find a healer station. One had been set up inside the city walls, but after seeing they were overrun with critical cases, they moved on and tried to find a less busy healing station.

That failed, as they were in the middle of a battle, and no matter their status or accomplishments, they didn’t have a greater priority than those who were on death's door.

Matt’s spirit wasn't more strained than usual, so he was able to drop their house inside the Fae encampment without issue, where the four of them promptly fell asleep in the living room.

None of them wanted to be alone, and they were all too tired to do anything like shower and change clothes.

***

Matt woke up hours later as a beam of sun moved across his face.

He was sore and hurt all over.

And the weight on his still mostly broken ribs didn’t help.

Seeing it was Aster, he sighed.

Everyone else was still asleep, so he got up and slipped into the shower after transferring the fox to Susanne.

He felt gross and was in a considerable amount of pain, but as much as he hurt, he wanted to be clean more than anything else.

It took him nearly ten minutes of scrubbing, but he finally felt good enough to exit, where he found Susanne waiting for her own turn.

Swapping places, he let her shower and took the time as he changed to feed the house's reserves.

They had left the shields on all night, and that left their mana central stone considerably drained.

By the time Susanne was finished, Liz had woken up, which finally roused Aster. So, while Matt helped Liz strip and shower, Susanne ran a cold bath for the fox in the kitchen sink.

When they came out, Aster was a mass of floating fur with just her nose sticking out of the water.

No one said a word despite there being so many things to say. Too many.

That was the issue, or at least what Matt thought was going on. At least, he didn’t know how to broach the topics they needed to talk about.

That trend continued, even after a hearty meal.

Matt was slightly disappointed with his cooking, but the others didn't even seem to notice the slightly undercooked parts of the bacon and the rubbery edges of the eggs.

In silence, they finished eating and silently left the house to find a healing station for Liz and Matt.

There was a minor bit of excitement when a small group of Federation Winter cultivators tried to ambush them en route, shouting fanatically and with skills blazing, but a half-dozen [Cracked Mana Spear] pulses took care of them.

Matt was in no mood to mess around.

Thankfully as they were attacked first there was no loss of Favor so it ended up being little more than an interruption on their journey.

Susanne and Aster’s wounds, other than a few lightly broken bones, were mostly from repeated spiritual suppression and broken Concepts, which was both better and worse than more traditional harm.

Back when he’d first learned about how Concepts worked and met Aunt Helen, he thought that breaking his Concept would be a death sentence. In truth, it was far rarer for a broken Concept to be fatal. In normal fights, breaking the opponent’s Concept was just like inflicting any other wound, and could relatively easily recovered from. It resulted in headaches, bloodshot eyes, difficulty concentrating, and made it dramatically harder to use the broken Concept for anything. Eleven repeated breaks, like what Aster and Susanne went through, only worsened both the symptoms and the recovery time.

By contrast, a shattered Concept, like what Aunt Helen had gone through when her definition of family had been destroyed, was nearly impossible to recover from. It meant that the person had their understanding of the universe fundamentally broken, and the general advice for how to proceed was to just restart with a different Concept.

Fortunately it was nearly impossible to have a concept shattered by an offensive force. Someone with a Concept like ‘I am Invincible’ might be rather prone to it, but otherwise, it took a truly staggering amount of power. The General shouldn’t have been that powerful, but Matt didn’t know the details behind Susanne’s “A Sword is Reliable” Concept. It was theoretically possible that not having it on-hand could be doing less recoverable damage to her Domain, but Matt trusted that Susanne had it under control, since she wasn’t worried.

Matt stopped distracting himself as they arrived at the healing station.

Things were not ideal.

The official healers had badges or armbands denoting such, and even though they differed in the exact form between Great Powers, they were close enough to be recognizable, but that wasn’t what caught his attention.

No, it was the healers themselves.

They looked awful. Haggard and dispirited were the kindest things Matt could describe them as.

Frankly, they looked like they had been fighting a war themselves.

And it was clear why.

The line at the healers tent was thirty people deep, and only growing.

Matt watched as a man with a missing leg floating on a flying sword wrote down a few people's issues before floating back towards the healing tent.

When it was their turn, they finally understood.

“What’s wrong, and can it wait?” He was tired and curt, but Matt didn’t take it personally.

Liz wiggled her missing arm, which hardly seemed to draw the man's attention.

Matt instead answered. “Missing arm, a few broken bones, shattered ribs, torn lungs that were healed with a healing potion, and a general checkup for repeated Concept breaking.”

The man wrote that down as he said, “I’ll report it to the healer but expect to be sent back after they make sure there is nothing wrong with your lungs. If you are healed enough not to die, we have more important things to deal with.” He looked up and narrowed his eyes at them and then at the missing stump of Liz’s arm. “Wait, were those wounds taken from the General?”

At Matt's nod, he shouted, “Code Greed! Code Greed! Code Greed!”

Hearing the repeated shout, a team of healers rushed out of the healing tent with a stretcher and rushed over towards them.

As the healing team reached them, the man pointed at Liz. “Lost arm! Check the entire team.”

Despite Liz’s protesting, she was laid down on the stretcher, and the rest of them led inside, bypassing the line behind her.

Matt asked the healer in the back, who seemed unable to get to Liz and help. “What’s wrong?”

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder but still answered, “The General’s attacks were filled with Decay mana. We learned that after that Federation representative guy relapsed three times and we couldn't figure out why. Eventually, we learned the mana infects the cells and then starts to spread after it eats enough of the body to have regained its strength. We need to decontaminate your friend and then check all of you.”

She turned, and Matt was forced to stop walking or run her down. She looked at him with misty eyes. “Broken ribs?” At his nod, she asked, “How?”

“He kicked me halfway across the city.”

She touched his chest, and Matt felt a spell slip into his body and start feeling around.

After a second, she nodded. “No signs of infection, and the healing took surprisingly well. You said your lungs were punctured?”

“[Lesser Regeneration] and I inhaled a Tier 14 healing potion.”

That earned him a wide eyed stare and a nod of approval. After that, the woman turned to Susanne and Aster and, after inspecting them as well, gave them the all clear.

Liz took longer, but eventually, they determined that she was fine. She had managed to rid herself of the Decay mana thoroughly enough that they didn’t actually need to worry or do any extra healing.

While they were there, the healers took the time to regrow Liz’s arm and finish healing Matt’s ribs, which he was grateful for, as it relieved most of the pain he was feeling.

Before they left, they donated their mana to the collection spot.

Part of Matt wanted to fill it up to remove the suffering of everyone around him, but that would’ve been beyond stupid. Instead, he gave only as much as a normal melee fighter had.

When they left, they returned to their silence, and it only grew as they returned to the house.

Liz’s arm was less than perfect, but it at least worked, despite its waxy appearance and less than stellar motor control. That was less a hit on the healer and rather proof of their skill. Liz had been perilously close to the healing cooldown limit before seeing the healer, and the ability to regrow an arm before her body began to reject the limb was impressive.

Fortunately, Liz had a number of stacking effects that aided her regeneration, so he didn’t expect her to fully be out of action for all that long. She likely would have regrown her arm completely without a healer’s help before they had to move on from the floor. The new blood she had gotten from the vampire ruin would have seen to that. But that was a liability that no one had been willing to stomach. The psychological effects, though, couldn’t be so easily dealt with.

Seeing that no one was going to say what needed to be said, Matt started them out.

“We need to discuss Tiering up to Tier 12. That fight proved that we’re in danger, and can be killed at any time.”

Aster let out a whine. “I don’t want to. We beat the stupid decaying tree, didn’t we? I really want that flexible Innate skill slot.”

Liz rubbed the fox, who draped herself over all three of their laps.

Susanne was the next to speak, though. “It's something we still need to think about. I’d love to say that we won't deal with something like that again, but we still need to take down Summer, and they will surely have a General as well.”

Liz continued as Susanne paused. “We should have another General by that time, right? Winter should have been able to make four by now, but she’s just pumping her lower ranks. We’re due for another general by now. That should make the fight much easier.”

Matt saw they were getting off-topic and returned to them Tiering up. “If we decide to do it, we should do so now. Not later.”

Liz looked at him and said, “I don’t know about that. It’s dangerous, yes, but every floor we push through as Tier 11s means we get better rewards for cheaper, and that can close the gap between us and the other delvers. Not needing to hunt around for Genesis Energy to pay for the rewards also saves us from a lot of fighting, which isn’t a small benefit. Also, we don’t all need to tier up at once. I, for one, would probably just keep [Blood Manipulation] in my innate skill slot, and while I won’t literally double my combat prowess like Matt would, I could get us through a number of the more difficult floors with a lot less issue. ”

She wasn’t angry or disappointed, but questioning. Trying to see where he was and where his inclinations lay.

Matt bobbed his head back and forth a little. “I don't want to, but I won't risk us getting killed for the rewards. Even Luna doesn’t expect us to come out as Tier 11’s. We need to honestly reflect and see if it's something we need to do.”

That made them all pause for a while, and while Matt had more that he wanted to say, it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss in front of Susanne. But at the same time, he wasn't willing to grab Aster and Liz to escape into their own room to talk about Liz nearly dying like he wanted to.

Susanne was a friend, and he was both unwilling to abandon her when she also needed help, and unwilling to designate her as an outsider. That action would show more than anything he could say.

Even thinking that, he still found it hard to open his mouth and get the words out.

“Liz, you almost died. You ripped out every drop of blood from your body, lost your arm, and both of your combat growth items. You can’t teleport until we regrow your ring from mine, and the glove is gone until we can get some replacement, if we even can. Neither is coming back while we’re in Minkalla. That’s a serious hit to your combat capabilities. Not to mention your armor is fucked six ways from Sunday, and I don’t know if I can repair it. So that drops you to your backup armor… None of this is ideal.”

Liz nodded. Susanne was staring off into the distance, slightly wide-eyed, seemingly in deep thought.

Aster, meanwhile, spoke up. “As much as I hate to think about it, we also have the problem of everyone else. This floor bottled us up tight, and now, when we get to the next floor, we won't have a lead over them.”

Nobody particularly wanted to carry on with that train of thought, and Liz spared them all by clapping her hands together and shifting them to a brighter topic. “At least we got good rewards for it. You may now address me as the Lady of Red Snow, peasants. Herald, announce my presence.”

“Be mindful how you speak to your Princess,” Aster shot back. “Herald, announce my presence. I am superior to a mere Lady.”

“Well excuse me Princess, but you shouldn’t belabor our poor Herald with such requests. He has better things to do with his time.” Susanne defended Matt, then promptly backstabbed him. “Like announcing the presence of the Duchess of Days Cut Short.”

“What if I just want to announce my own presence? I still have more Favor than any of you.”

That set off a small round of bickering that eventually settled into quiet self-reflection.

After about ten minutes of contemplation, Susanne broke the silence. “I got my Concept clone cut in half. That’s the closest I’ve been to dying in… at least twenty years, and the first time it wasn’t me messing up somehow. I was cutting it pretty close for the rest of the fight too, and I saw plenty of people die because they were a hair too slow. To see someone exactly equivalent to you get cut through like so much firewood? To realize that the only reason you’re still walking is that you never warranted his full attention, and a single bad roll of the dice could have sent you to the healer’s table with half your limbs gone? It’s not a small thing.” She extended her hand, and while it was steady, Matt could see she was concentrating on making it so.

Liz nodded, staring off into the distance. “I know what you mean. I nearly died back there, or at least I came close enough that my bloodline tried to resurrect me. It couldn’t, though I’d hoped it would. Normally, it’s Tier 15 before bloodline resurrection really kicks in, but some people have pulled that down a few Tiers if their Concept helps out. Mine… didn’t. It did help me get back up after I almost died, and I think the closer to death I get, the stronger the Concept triggers. But it was… well, it was scary. I’m not actually ready to die, not really. All of my preparations, it was just nothing. I got overconfident, pushed too far, and paid the price. It’s… well it’s terrifying.”

Susanne agreed. “That General having an Intent, or whatever it had of one, and being so strong was more than a little disconcerting. Then I think about how we are going to need to fight at least one more—”

She paused, and they all gave her the time to gather her thoughts. “Part of me is terrified, but a larger part is excited. I want to see how it goes. I learned a lot during that fight. But—” She grimaced. “Tiering up will be the safe and easy move. With the rest of the power of Tier 11, actualizing that fight would have been much easier. With the essence stones, we picked up along the way, we can up our next Tier easily. I think at peak Tier 12—”

Susanne paused as she grinned a little. “I was going to say at peak Tier 12, the fight would have been easy, but that's bullshit, and even I know it. But the fight would have been a lot easier. Death was right there in a way like it never has been before. My skills and abilities have always been enough to pull me through before. I’d rather lose out on the best rewards than die.”

Liz reached over and squeezed Susanne's hand, and Matt leaned over her to pat her leg while Aster claimed the swordswoman’s lap.

She brought up good points, and he felt a lot of the same things.

Aster slowly asked, “We all already have Titles, and we have all earned more than enough Genesis Energy to take our boons out and get the floor reward. Why don't we just hang back in the next fight? There isn’t any reason we need to throw ourselves into a battle with a General. Call it conceited, but I don't think there are any teams of ascenders who can beat us. As long as we avoid the big guys, we can stay safe. So I think Tiering up now is premature. Let's wait until we see how the siege goes before we do anything we can't undo.”

Matt nodded and ruffled her fur.

“I think that's a good idea. I’ll also cut off my mana supply, which should slow down the production of troops and give us a little extra time before we start the siege of Summer. Then, we rush through floor five and hopefully put a bit of room between us and whoever comes after us.”

He forced out a fake smile. “Hopefully, Summer will put up a good fight and give us enough time to completely remove our healing cooldown as well.”

***

“So we are surrendering then? Everyone agrees?”

Long Zhiyuan nodded.

Surrender wasn’t the honorable or proper move, but it was the smart one.

Even Young Mistress Meteor Fall didn’t object, which was all that mattered to Long Zhiyuan.

He might also be a Young Master, but she was the Young Mistress of a Tier 39 Sect that was as old as time itself.

She was not only powerful, but held an exalted position amongst the Sect cultivators in Summer. He thought he had a better than even chance of defeating her, but her background could crush him without hesitation. Not that they would do so until after he failed to keep up with a Young Master’s expectations, but the second he failed, he would find himself having an accident if he needlessly challenged her.

He had been afraid that he would need to before the last reports came in, but seeing her agree, he knew that the situation was salvaged. She had been obstinate in fighting it out with Winter before this, despite the situation turning for the worse day by day.

For the honor of the Sects, she said. But really, she liked the boon Summer had given her and wanted to take it with her as she left the floor.

All of them had. But facing down Winter was an impossibility.

What had prompted this change was the report that had just come in from their scouts, he was sure.

Even a Daughter of the Heavens, who never needed to treat anyone as her equal couldn’t deny reality when it smacked them in the face.

Winter had somehow managed to take over Spring in a surprise attack, which shocked everyone, but no one expected them to immediately turn and take down Fall less than two weeks later.

At that point, everyone thought they were an arrow at the end of its flight, and would be easy to roll over, but Long Zhiyuan thought differently.

The reports of Spring and Fall’s defeats said that their General had yet to take action in any meaningful way yet. After the reports, he wasn’t sure that even with their prodigious lineup of Young Master equivalents that they could handle the General named Primus.

Everyone else seemed to miss the fact that the Fae grew stronger. They saw them all as faceless monsters, only to be used as sacrificial pawns, but Long Zhiyuan had seen them grow.

Once a private killed five other Fae privates, he was promoted to sergeant. Everyone knew that. The same applied to sergeants, and he supposed lieutenants too, despite not seeing it for himself yet.

Everyone else seemed to think the jumps in power were reflective of their kills.

Long Zhiyuan believed differently. He had used his [Heavenly All Seeing Eye] to fight those Fae who defeated other Fae, and he could see the differences in their martial prowess even before they gained a new rank. They grew stronger with each kill, and their promotion was a reflection of that increase, rather than how they got the increase. The better equipment and new skills just obfuscated the power change. And General Primus had already won two sieges and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of cultivators.

Long Zhiyuan wanted nothing less than to have to fight the monster that an experienced Fae General would become.

Young Mistress Meteor Fall had been pushing for them to directly attack the army as it was recovering from its taking of Fall, and she had a number of supporters from all eight Great Powers before this. At least, she did amongst the strongest of cultivators, and it wasn’t like the weaker ones' opinions mattered for matters of grand strategy.

But the latest scouting report changed all of that.

Whatever oddities were going on with Winter that allowed them to take the initial lead had only magnified in the recent month. And now, outside Winter’s capital city, there was a second army. It was even larger than the initial one, and was led by another General.

And it wasn’t even the second General. No, it was the third.

Winter had apparently created a General, but kept it to defend her city walls rather than immediately send them to the front.

Now they would have to contend with two armies, and two Generals, with only one of their own.

In theory, Summer should have been at a strict advantage. Nearly all of the strongest delvers had found that the boon it offered improved power with Light and Fire. And that was to speak nothing of the defensive advantages it offered as well. Certainly, the boons were a tempting prize. Their reports indicated that each of the seasons had perhaps a dozen, maybe even two dozen truly top-caliber warriors within their ranks.

Summer claimed at least three hundred, and more joined them with every passing day.

Yet whatever strange twist of fortune Winter had experienced completely upended that advantage. Each person within this room could take down a hundred, perhaps even a thousand of the weakest Fae with ease. But the armies of Winter would still press them to their limits in numbers alone, discounting the generals, their powerful magics, or any other tricks they may have held by simple virtue of not needing to have shown them yet.

They could almost certainly protect their city. Two generals attacking it was a daunting proposition, yet perhaps not insurmountable. But to win? That was folly. Winter’s forces grew at a rate truly incomparable to any of the other seasons. It was entirely possible they would be physically incapable of killing the Fae faster than they were born.

Winter had come, and fighting it was fruitless. Many of those who mattered had already collected sufficient Genesis Energy to undertake the theme’s Tribulation by attacking and taking their neighboring seasons' forts, and with no hope of victory, there was no benefit in Favor.

Anyone who disagreed or possessed insufficient Genesis Energy for either the Tribulation or exit prize could happily sit back and fight Winter after they left, but the strongest weren't going to struggle needlessly.

Once everyone accepted the fact that they would, indeed, be retreating, they broke the news to the weaker cultivators, which didn’t go over well. Mostly because they made it clear that they expected them to vacate the city, and not interfere with Winter taking it until they were able to leave.

If they weren't able to leave because of their actions, Long Zhiyuan didn’t mind killing them if they slowed his progress.

This alliance was a farce, and would be dispensed with as soon as they left this floor, so what did it matter if he lost his little Favor? He couldn’t take it with him anyway.

So, after gathering everything, they exited the city, and those who wanted to leave started marching through the last vestiges of Summer, and into the swirling winter lands that had taken over most of the floor.

At the intersection point between the four seasonal cities, there lay four pillars that reached towards the untouchable sky.

Their exit.

Three of the four pillars were frozen over, but the last one of Summer stood strong and green.

So Long Zhiyuan and the others settled in to wait.

It shouldn't be long now, and once Summer fell, they could be the first people to leave.

Deeper into Minkalla.

Where the real prizes lay.