Chapter 579: Aki Joins Violence [Bonus - ]

Chapter 579: Aki Joins Violence [Bonus Chapter]

Leona didn’t hesitate for half a heartbeat.

SWOOSH!

Leona lunged over Gareth’s fallen body with her right boot snapping forward in a vicious sweeping kick that caught Isolde squarely on the shoulder, knocking the noblewoman three paces backward and clearing the space between them.

"Hey!"

Leona landed lightly on her toes with her trench-machete held high and her pulse racing with pure adrenaline.

"One down!" Leona grinned, wiping the blood from her brow with her sleeve. "Gareth is scrap, Isolde! You’re next!"

Isolde ground her teeth, her daggers flashing as she reset her stance—

PING!

The air above their heads suddenly turned a sickening violent electric violet!

PING! PING! PING!

Three massive condensed orbs of crackling psionic energy tore through the airspace between them, screaming with high-pitched sounds that made both women’s eardrums throb with instant piercing pain.

The psionic orbs slammed into the basalt shelf between them, detonating with concussive shockwaves that blew both Leona and Isolde ten paces in opposite directions!

SKID-CRASH!

Leona hit the dirt, shaking the agonizing high-frequency ringing from her ears with her vision swimming as she pushed herself up on one knee.

Beside her, Isolde was clutching her temples as her daggers held low in a defensive reflex.

Both women snapped their heads up toward the rocky outcrop overlooking the gully and standing on the high ledge, framed by the violet sky, was Ananya Rao.

The second representative of the Indus Sovereignty stood adorned in flowing crimson silks and delicate gold filigree armor, her long black hair braided with heavy gold coins that chimed softly in the wind.

In her right hand, she held an ornate gold-tipped lotus staff that was radiating dense pulsing waves of deep purple psionic mana.

Her dark almond-shaped eyes looked down at Leona and Isolde with haughty irritation.

"What the hell is your problem?!" Leona roared, shaking her fist at the ledge. "We were in the middle of a duel, you crazy bitch!"

"Do you have any concept of decorum?!" Isolde snapped simultaneously, wiping blood from her nose and glaring up at the Indus scion. "Interfering in a formal battle between cousins? Have they completely abandoned battlefield honor in the southern palaces?!"

Ananya did not look intimidated.

She slowly lowered her lotus staff, tapping the gold ferrule against the stone with a clear clink.

Her chin tilted upward, her expression settling into an intolerable self-righteous scowl.

"Your pathetic screeching squabble was generating turbulent wind-shear across the western ridge," Ananya said, her voice smooth, melodic, and entirely devoid of apology.

She turned her head slightly, her gaze drifting toward the far promontory where Devan Varma stood completely motionless, his arms crossed over his massive bronze chest and his eyes closed in deep undisturbed meditation.

"Devan is communing with the magma conduits of this realm," Ananya continued, her voice softening into a tone of reverence. "He is preparing to reveal his power to the World Council and the wind from your little blades was making his hair fly out of alignment... It was offensive to his presence."

Leona stared at her and Isolde stared at her.

For two full seconds, the desert canyon fell completely silent then Leona slowly blinked, her mouth opening in bewilderment.

"Are you serious?" Leona deadpanned. "You interrupted a death match... because of his hair?"

Isolde let out a sharp incredulous scoff, shaking her head in pure disgust.

"Good lord," Isolde sneered, looking up at Ananya with unmasked mockery. "I thought Indus bred conquerors but instead, they sent out a pathetic, drooling simp for a man who isn’t even that good-looking... He looks like an unwashed quarry worker who fell into a vat of turmeric."

SNAP!

The atmospheric mana around the ledge turned completely purple as Ananya’s face twisted in hysterical murderous outrage.

The golden beads in her hair rattled violently as her psionic aura detonated, sending gravity fluctuations rippling through the rock that cracked the basalt beneath her sandals.

"You dare...?" Ananya shrieked, her voice vibrating with mind-crushing force. "You dare speak of my lord with those filthy, common mouths?! He is the future sovereign of the world... He is a living deity... Take it back! TAKE IT BACK BEFORE I TEAR YOUR SOULS OUT OF YOUR SKULLS!"

Down below, Leona looked at Isolde and Isolde looked at Leona.

Between the two cousins, through fifteen years of familial estrangement and bitter political rivalry, a single silent understanding passed in the blink of an eye.

’We jump her...’

’Immediately...’

"Temporary truce?" Leona muttered under her breath, tightening her grip on her machete.

"Until this screeching harpy is choking on her own teeth," Isolde answered coldly.

BOOM!

Both women moved in perfect unison as they charged straight up the rocky slope together with their boots tearing up the shale at high speeds.

Ananya grinned wildly from the ledge, her eyes glowing with psychotic psionic light.

"Die, insects!" Ananya screamed, thrusting her lotus staff forward. Thousand-Needle Lotus!"

BOOOOOOM!

A massive barrage of hundreds of razor-sharp psionic needles erupted from the head of her staff, screaming down the narrow rocky path like a purple machine-gun volley.

"My lead!" Isolde barked!

Isolde surged half a pace ahead of Leona, crossing both of her silver parrying daggers in front of her face.

Her Second Stage Core flared with dense mana.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

Isolde didn’t dodge any of the attacks, she moved her daggers in a geometric web of micro-parries, deflecting twenty psionic needles in a tenth of a second, while letting the remaining needles strike her reinforced leather cuirass, tanking the mental backlash through stubborn will.

"NOW!" Isolde shouted through clamped teeth with blood leaking from her ears as she held the breach open.

SWOOSH!

From beneath Isolde’s shadow, Leona slipped through.

’Just like the old days...’

Leona dropped low to the stone, sliding across the gravel like an eel as she completely bypassed the psionic fire.

’I won’t tell her thank you though.’

She reached the ledge in the blink of an eye, rising like a striking sea serpent with her trench-machete flashing in an upward brutal thrust.

SHLICK.

The heavy steel blade punched clean through the golden filigree armor on the right side of Ananya’s chest, carving four inches into the meat.

"GAH!" Ananya screamed, her eyes bulging in shock.

Leona grabbed the collar of Ananya’s crimson silk with her left hand, pulling the woman down until their noses almost touched, her hazel eyes burning with savage ferocity.

"Don’t you dare try to run away from this, pretty girl," Leona snarled into her face.

Ananya’s face contorted with panic.

"YOU FOO—"

She released her staff with one hand with her fingers clawing frantically toward Leona’s eyes, channeling a point-blank burst of psionic fire...

WHOOSH!

Leona detonated a burst of emerald wind-mana beneath her own armpit.

The pressurized wind threw her body backward five feet, slipping out of Ananya’s reach just as the purple psionic blast screamed through the empty air where her skull had been half a heartbeat earlier.

"Augh... You fools..."

Ananya staggered forward, clutching her bleeding chest with her mind reeling from the sudden displacement...

WHOOSH!

From the high-left flank, a shadow eclipsed the sun as Isolde descended from the sky like a falling hawk.

She had vaulted off the rock, twisting her body horizontally in mid-air, bringing her right combat boot around in a vicious three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotational heel-drop aimed dead center at the side of Ananya’s skull.

"Hold on~," Isolde purred, her melodic voice full of sadistic mockery.

BOOOOOOOM!

The kick landed with the concussive force of an executioner’s axe and the violence of Isolde’s steel-reinforced boot slammed into Ananya’s temple.

The force drove Ananya’s head violently downward.

CRACK-SMASH!

Ananya’s skull struck the solid basalt ledge with the stone fracturing into a three-foot spiderweb crater beneath her forehead.

Her face bounced upward off the shattered stone and a fountain of blood and broken gold beads sprayed across the ledge as a raw, blood-curdling shriek tore from her shattered jaw.

"AAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Ananya collapsed onto her side, twitching violently in the dirt with her lotus staff clattering down the rocky slope into the canyon below.

Isolde landed lightly on the ledge beside her, flicking a drop of blood from the heel of her boot, looking down at the twitching Indus scion with a cold immaculate smile.

"Much better," Isolde murmured. "Now her hair can fly however it likes."

High above the battlefield, suspended in the upper airspace... Aki was still caught in the rising currents.

The emerald wind-mana venting from her combat gloves kept her body suspended in a slow controlled rotation with her dark blue hair billowing around her pale focused face.

Her azure eyes, enhanced by the compressed water-mana humming from Silas’s Star-Iron necklace, took in the entire panorama of Sector Forty-Four.

It was an unadorned slaughterhouse.

To the south, the massive craters from Seraphina’s battle were still smoking with white fire.

To the west, the basin was torn apart by Maya’s tectonic strikes, with Gareth broken in the dirt and Maya lying unconscious beside the stone.

Below her, Leona and Isolde were standing over the broken body of Ananya Rao, while Devan Varma’s volcanic aura began to pulse with dangerous heat.

’It’s just destruction everywhere,’ Aki thought, her chest tightening as she gripped the star-iron limbs of her composite bow.

She had never asked for this to happen...

’It’s not like I wanted to join them,’ she thought, watching the plumes of red smoke drift across the wasteland. ’But do I really have a choice?’

"SCREEEE!"

A sharp piercing cry tore through the airspace directly behind her head.

WHOOSH!

An airborne Spirit Beast which was a nine-foot-wide razor-winged Obsidian Sand-Falcon summoned by Kira Bennett’s power dove out of the sun, its razor-sharp talons outstretched to sever Aki’s neck.

"I’m not scared of you."

She twisted her torso in mid-air, sliding a slender, curved star-iron dagger from the sheath at her thigh.

SHLICK!

With a single blinding horizontal slash, Aki cut the beast’s throat clean open.

The Obsidian Falcon didn’t even get to screech as it dissolved instantly into a spray of yellow sand and dying spiritual particles that dissipated against the wind.

"Now who attacked me...?"

Aki landed lightly on the crest of a high narrow sandstone pillar overlooking the eastern dunes as she lowered her dagger with her sharp azure eyes scanning the vast yellow expanse below.

A mile out, tearing across the sand dunes like a frightened desert hare, was Kira Bennett.

The Australis scion was using the loose silt as cover, slipping between the hollows of the dunes, frantically running away after realizing her traps had been dismantled and her Spirits were down.

Aki looked at the fleeing woman as she slowly clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

WHOOSH!

The glove on her right hand began to glow with pressurized emerald light as the wind-channels roared with high-speed torque.

She gripped her bow with her boots pressing into the stone as she leaned forward into the boots.

’I might as well contribute to the destruction,’ Aki thought, a sharp resolve settling behind her eyes.

BOOM!

She shot off the pillar like a falling star, plunging down toward the dunes to hunt.

"Fuck... Fuck... Fuck...!"

Kira Bennett’s breath came in ragged desperate hitches.

Her bare sun-darkened shoulders were slick with a mixture of sweat and fine sand that clung to the spiraling ink of her predator tattoos.

With every stride, her worn combat leathers groaned, her boots plunging six inches into the loose crests of the dunes and wrenching free with wet suctioning thuds.

Half a mile to the northwest, past the jagged ribs of an sandstone escarpment, a silhouette was limping across the cracked flats.

Jax.

’He’s on his feet,’ Kira thought, her throat burning like she had swallowed hot lye. ’The bastard actually dragged himself out of the Safe Zone...’

A flicker of relief sparked against her ribs, but it died before she could draw another lungful of dry air.

WHOOSH!

The atmospheric pressure above her head plummeted as the loose grains of sand along the knife-edge of the dune suddenly stopped tumbling, caught in a rising emerald-tinted wind that curled like a vortex of transparent green water.

"Stand down."

The voice was soft and terrifyingly steady.

Kira dug her heels into the reverse slope of the dune, violently arresting her forward momentum.

A spray of hot shale hissed against her calves as she threw her head back, her eyes narrowing into venomous slit-like pupils.

Hovering twenty feet above her in the purple sky, drifting weightlessly against a wind of her own making, was First Princess Aki.