Flying swords were controlled by scripts. When activated by a specific wielder’s madra, their script guided wind aura that allowed the weapon to fly.
You could never use a flying sword against its owner. It was keyed to their spirit. Throwing it back at them would only free up their weapon.
Unless, it seemed, you threw it with overwhelming strength.
The sword blasted straight through the center of the Elder, leaving a bloody hole in his middle and a crater in the earth behind him.
The man looked down at himself. His jade badge was gone.
He collapsed in a heap.
The Enforcer landed a hit, his two-handed hammer crashing into the side of Lindon’s head. It had slightly less effect than a spoon tapping the side of a teacup.
A white hand closed around the neck of the Heaven’s Glory Enforcer.
Gold walls were already going up around the rest of the area, and Kelsa knew from experience that, when broken, those panes of Forged madra burned like live coals.
Lindon gripped the Enforcer by the neck, then looked down the hill at the Forger who was raising her own defense.
He threw the full-grown Jade in his hand at the Forger in an overhand pitch.
The man blasted through three layers of Forged Heaven’s Glory madra, and his clothes were burning with natural fire when he collided with the other Elder.
“Collided” was actually too polite a word. Together, they smashed against the bottom of the hill with a sickening crunch.
White light swelled into a bubble next to Kelsa, and she dodged backwards. She didn’t sense Heaven’s Glory madra from the light, but she knew it had to be an attack of theirs. Kelsa immediately wove her madra into Foxfire. She was draining her spirit dry, but she extended her perception to find the one who had cast the technique.
In the center of the white light, a girl appeared.
Shorter than Kelsa, she was compact, with flowing black hair interrupted by a streak of blood-red. Six arms of metallic crimson metal extended from her back, their ends sharpened and hammered flat like sword blades.
Hurriedly, Kelsa redirected her Foxfire and hurled it into the newcomer.
One of those sword-arms flicked the Striker technique out of the air. The scarlet girl turned, steadily getting her ragged breathing under control.
She didn’t seem to move quickly, but before Kelsa knew what was happening, a hand grasped her by the throat.
Kelsa looked into red eyes and prepared to die.
“Hey, give me your name.”
Kelsa found she had no trouble speaking. The young woman’s grip was loose.
“You first,” Kelsa said.
A faint smile pulled up the corner of the new girl’s mouth. She let Kelsa go and turned to Orthos, taking in a sharp breath. “You look about five miles past dead.”
He rumbled agreement. “Something stranger has happened to you.”
“Can’t argue with that.” She placed a hand on Orthos’ head, though even standing close to him must have been agonizing in the heat. “Wish you’d been with us.”
She was Orthos’ friend?
That meant…she didn’t exactly match the description, but she must be Yerin. The girl who had taken Lindon away from Sacred Valley.
But Kelsa couldn’t think about that now. There was still a battle going on.
Before Kelsa even looked back down the hill, she knew it had gotten worse. The heat had grown stifling, red fire aura rising by the second. The Heaven’s Glory School must be gathering their Ruler techniques…
It took her a few seconds to put the scene together.
Lindon stood in the center of the burning wreckage that had once been the camp. Shattered Heaven’s Glory Forger techniques surrounded him, licking his feet with flames, but even his shoes weren’t burned.
Heaven’s Glory Enforcers crawled away from him. As she watched, he caught one of their Striker techniques. The beam of golden light sank into his Remnant hand, and after only an instant he sent it back. It was tinged slightly darker than before.
But most of the enemies were fleeing. Maybe a hundred, maybe more, including some she recognized as Jades.
They fled because the sky had turned dark.
Hundreds of feet over Lindon’s head, black and red aura swirled so intensely that they had become visible as a dense, spinning cloud of dark fire.
She spent several breaths fumbling with her new Jade senses, trying to unravel how Heaven’s Glory had used such a Ruler technique and how Lindon had gained control of it.
Finally, she came to the inevitable conclusion: he had generated this all by himself.
“You should stop him,” Orthos said. “He’ll regret this.”