Depthless Hunger

Because both sides of the Manticore tribe had so many scouts and spies, a true surprise attack on the army was impossible. Kai had still wanted them to attack early for several reasons: it let them choose the general site of the battle, it forced their opponents to mobilize desperately, and it distracted from Omilaena's mission.

Instead of attacking head on, where the fighting would be ugly for both sides, they traveled to the east. Slightly further, but from there they could attack the Quill faction first while the others mobilized to confront them. If all went well, they'd have eliminated enough of the enemy leadership that the opponent's morale would begin to fail.

When the armies came within sight of one another, Kai saw that they had mobilized more than predicted. He spotted the intended targets... but there were six Earth Souls rising up on flying swords, ahead of the weaker cultivators.

They gathered together in a circular formation with all of them facing forward, then the circle began to rotate. All of the participants linked their qi and raised their hands in the same symbol as they began a combined technique. Power surged within the center of the circle, pulsing so brightly that it lit up the battlefield in lurid green, then the mass began to change shape.

After twisting and throbbing, the qi transformed into a giant manticore shape. The technique broke away from the six Earth Souls who had created it, seeming to take on a life of its own, and surged toward the army.

Kai met it head-on in midair.

Just before they collided, he unleashed the strongest Baleful Breath he could. The manticore wasn't swept away instantly, powered by the qi of six Earth Souls, and it tried to push through the dark clouds. But Kai kept blowing, exhaling longer than he ever had, painting the sky black with hellish clouds, until finally the manticore qi was smothered.

All six Earth Souls coughed up blood as their formation was broken, some of them falling off their flying swords while others just sagged to the ground. A cry of horror went up from their tribe, while Kai's factions waited expectantly.

He raised his fist and let out a roar, harsher and more ragged than he'd planned. The tribe roared back and charged into battle, unleashing their techniques one after another. Some of the enemy cultivators stuck to their defensive positions, but others fled and some of their shields began to crumble.

Still hovering in midair, Kai hoped being a symbol of their victory was enough. His throat was sore because he'd never drawn so deep on Baleful Breath before. He could crush any individual Earth Soul, but the combined power of six was no joke. If they had a more effective formation that could actually have added all their power together, they would have had a larger total than him. Fortunately, according to Zae Zin Nim, combined technique formations always involved some loss.

So far there was no sign of his wife below, hidden somewhere within the army. She wasn't yet showing her full strength, just like Kai wasn't hurling techniques into the enemy army. He could have slaughtered dozens, but their goal was to dominate, not eradicate. Hopefully wiping out the symbol of their tribe while in his full regalia had gone a long way toward convincing them.

A burst of qi shot toward him and Kai knocked it aside with a backhand. Some of the surviving Earth Souls were beginning to release techniques toward him from the ground, keeping their distance. It would have been easier to dodge, but Kai deflected them instead, drawing all the attacks that otherwise would have devastated weaker cultivators.

"Northern Iron, forward!"

The call was raised and a new group of cultivators burst out of the enemy army, riding their own flying swords close to the ground. Given their slate gray robes and shaved heads, he presumed they were the foreign sect. That was the first obstacle they'd planned for, and it proved a problem almost immediately.

Though the Tail and Claw tribesmen hurled poison techniques, they mostly splashed off the Northern Iron cultivators. A few of them fell, their bodies tumbling behind, but the majority swept past the enemy lines and then plunged into his army. Kai raised his hand, ready to act if things turned bad...

Before he needed to, the Manticore Guard moved forward. They all wore heavy cloaks modeled on his, and more importantly, they bore weapons tipped with manticore spines. At first they took some losses as the Northern Iron cultivators hurled qi on arrival, but when their weapons reached the enemy, they began falling left and right. Whatever defensive techniques the foreign sect used, they were no protection against manticore venom.

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Seeing the Northern Iron sect fail sent a new wave of panic through the enemy. Kai stepped off the side of the sword and plummeted to the ground, casting Void Gaze over the line between the sides. His own side froze in place while the enemy collapsed, some spitting up blood. Everyone out of range began to flee and his own side let out bloodthirsty roars, but Kai raised his arm.

"Ignore them!" he called. "Take down the Quill faction!"

They obeyed, and as he released Void Gaze, they charged into the fray. The enemy defenses had broken, but they still needed to take out their most hated enemies to sate their bloodlust. Kai saw that many of the Quill faction were fleeing, despite their leader shouting at them.

"Cowards!" the middle-aged woman called, from her safe position with an Earth Soul bodyguard. "Stand and fight!"

Kai leapt over the heads of the army, ignoring the slow attacks aimed at him, and landed beside the Quill faction leader. He headbutted her guard into the ground, then grabbed her neck and held her aloft. All around him, the Manticore tribe roared in despair or victory.

.

..

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Omilaena could feel the slaughter beginning to the east, but that had nothing to do with her. She'd already spent enough time giving the tribe trash pills and random weapons, so they would have to handle the rest on their own. Her only interest was assassinating the enemy, and potentially finding a rematch.

In the west, the enemy Manticore factions were still marshaling their resources, getting cultivators onto flying swords to join the battle. Omilaena ignored them, slipping through their ranks with a cloak and shroud to hide her. Her only target was one of their main targets, a member of the Ahn family who had gathered together the Manticore Head faction. The others thought that if he was eliminated, it would go a long way toward securing their victory.

She discovered the target in the center of camp, matching his description: tall man with a paunch, just a Body Refinement cultivator with no special skills and a weak tattoo. Apparently he had a talent for politics instead, leading the other Ahn family members to hate his success. Well, he was as good as dead now.

As she crept closer, Omilaena checked all sides for traps or counter-attackers, but she saw nothing but relatively weak Manticore tribesmen. Her growth might not have been as explosive as Zin Nim or Kai, but she had been growing steadily stronger ever since her arrival on Cloudspire. The guards had no chance of stopping her, didn't even notice as she flickered past them.

Her first needle went through the man's neck, flooding his system with so much poison that it was just a matter of time. She held his thrashing body upright as everyone around her began to panic. On second thought, she put a second needle through his eye, both to make sure he died and to mark her kill.

Some of the enemy guards fled, which was the sane decision, but others charged at her. Omilaena exhaled a cloud of weak poison, intending to knock them out so the tribal factions could decide their fate later. Judging from how many began bleeding from their eyes and mouths, it might not have been weak enough.

Then, without warning, a figure burst from her poison, slamming a club into the ground where she had been standing a moment ago. Omilaena leapt back to a safe distance and turned her head toward the enemy she'd known was coming.

"You're slippery." Jackal Thirteen floated above the Manticore cultivators, who fled in the opposite direction hoping his presence would defend them. It actually would, since he was the only one Omilaena cared about.

"Did you let me kill him?" she asked, spinning needles into both hands.

"Not at all. It would have been in my best interest to keep the Ahn patriarch alive, so this is a bit disappointing." The mercenary smiled thinly and gestured, sending threads wafting across the field. "I'm going to have to kill you, regardless. You'll make a good puppet."

Before she could answer, two figures lunged at her. She recognized the dead Manticore patriarch, who she was technically supposed to recover for burial if possible, not that she much cared about that. But the other figure was Ahn Xi Feida, reanimated with the chalky skin of the other puppets.

All three of them attacking pushed Omilaena to her limit, forcing her to retreat step by step. As she did, she analyzed the enemy puppets: their cultivation had degraded while their tattoos' power seemed largely intact. Might that have been the reason why Jackal Thirteen had specifically come here?

Eventually she was too slow and Jackal Thirteen caught her right arm with some of his threads. Omilaena intentionally responded too slowly, letting him wrap more around it, binding her in place. When he began preparing one of his razor threads, Omilaena finally revealed what she'd been holding back.

Swirling blue lines on her left arm lit up as the ice qi there was unleashed and traveled to her fingers. When she created a knife there, it burned with frozen qi. She swung it through the threads cleanly, severing them in a single sweep, then she flicked her wrist and hurled the weapon at her opponent.

He instinctively reacted by arcing threads in the way, but her ice knife sliced through them. The mercenary just barely twisted aside and the edge cut a line of blood across his shoulder.

"That's clever." Jackal Thirteen grunted as he held the wound, then grinned. "That will make you useful."

Omilaena didn't respond, just created two needles, one of poison and one of ice.