A thousand sunblades converged against the Layer Guardian, each aimed at the same spot. The blades couldn’t pierce the reinforced bronze shell, and Yuriko thought it was definitely not mundane metal.

Was it an Ennoia? Or was it truly bronze reinforced by an Ennoia?

The latter was just as likely as the former, but if it was an Ennoia, then she could attempt to glean insights from it. If it was a powerful material, on the other hand, then it would make for a suitable harvest, assuming that Shangria doesn’t disintegrate the corpse to reclaim it. 

A thousand sunblades was well within her control now, considering her Anima reach was more than six hundred paces to a side. However, while enough quantity could overcome quality, it must be said that focusing that much power into a small point was difficult at best, impossible at worst. Attempting to have those thousand blades strike the same spot at the same time was plain impossible, though she could have merged the blades instead. She didn’t do so just yet, since she wanted to test things out, and well, play a bit. 

“Huh, Gwendith’s right…” she muttered. Perhaps she did need help, but who would she get it from? Nearly a year away from her family, grieving for her lost brother who she now suspected was still alive, just trapped? She let her Truth and natural instincts make her decisions for her instead of properly considering things. And more importantly, it was this battle lust that pervaded her mind. No, not battle lust, there were some nuances. She longed to be challenged, to grow from it. What was power for if she couldn’t even use it? She was already too strong to enjoy a fight against the Bresians and Ishodirians, much less the Draconians. 

But what could she do? She wasn’t keen on becoming weaker, and she was sure that Damien’s other shards and bearers would be after her, one way or another. To stagnate was to die, and worse, probably to lose everything along with her life. But then, according to the stuff she read over in Astoria, acknowledging a problem was the first step to solving it. 

Just like knowing what was possible was the first step to achieving it. She knew that the Truth of Swords wasn’t there at the start. She knew that somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone, or probably, lots of someones, gathered it all together and kludged it to work. She could do no less.

Damien was not a swordsman, not really. He was focused on Radiance and Conquest. She could do the same, but she would be coming up from behind. With the Empty Throne as the ultimate goal… 

She needed to unify Swords, and she needed to properly complement it to Radiance. Radiant Flying Swords was one way, but it was too limited. Powerful and versatile, but as her ongoing fight revealed, too limited. 

The bronze auroch threw its head back just in time to avoid the seven hundredth sunblade from piercing through the already weakened metal. The split-second respite was enough to get its processes running. The heat was pulled from the surface of its shell and repurposed deep within the bowels of its body. It converted heat into earth and dust, and from there, into metal and bronze. 

It reminded her of the Elemental Creation cycle that one of the Magi schools in Bresia espoused, come to think of it. Clearly, there was more to it than politics, considering the Four Elemental School of Thought; Niria Academy was fiercely opposed to Briarwin. She’d witnessed the same interactions when she added her Fifth Phase of the Sword, and perhaps it was time to add the Sixth? But having just six phases felt incomplete. Somehow, she either needed to add one more or another three phases, with the instinctive knowledge that the greater the number, the more complex and powerful the resulting Truth would be, but also the harder it would be to merge into a Unified Sword Truth. 

Was there a need to make things too complex? If she wasn’t anticipating a powerful enemy, then no. But then again, how long would it take her to actually get to that? With her current prowess, she was only lacking in Anima Reach before she could ascend to Manifestation. Her Will and Intent reserves were enough, especially considering she was now able to actively measure and train in it. Her Radiant Essence continued to accumulate, and her core was as ready as ever. Her Colligia of Radiance could just as easily promote to the Reperta of Radiance, but doing so without getting a better handle on the Unified Sword would make it harder to incorporate both without making the Sword completely subservient. 

Actually, considering everything, making the Sword subservient to Radiance…was it a bad thing? Or would making them equal make things harder? After all, the Empty Throne was Radiance, not the Sword. Something to consider in the future, but whatever she chose, she would need to merge her two Sword Ennoias into a better Colligia, and if her hunches were right, she needed a third Sword Ennoia to act as a glue to the practically opposite ones she currently had. 

And it looked like this creature might give her a clue on what it could be. She had initially thought to create an Ennoia of Elemental Sword, but perhaps a cyclical and transformative Ennoia of the Sword was better. 

No, she was sure it wa䁳 better considering the opposing nature of her current ones. Yes, that would do, and to glean as much insight as she could…she’d have to methodically tear this monster down to its constituent parts. 

The bull retaliated even as the damage to its forehead closed over. Yuriko withdrew her surviving sunshards, sighing at the fact that her flying swords weren’t as durable as she wished. The nature of using Radiance to empower her swords meant that they would be fragile, lest she allow them to consume matter or energy to propagate. And since she didn’t want to destroy the entirety of Shangria, she’d rather keep them limited and weaker instead. If she were in the Chaos Sea, then it wouldn’t have been an issue, considering ambient Chaos was more than enough to fuel the sunblades and Radiance without having a deadly cascade. 

She kept her distance from the bull and continued to harry it with quickly created sunblades. Her Radiant reserves were practically infinite, and her control of energy within her Anima was absolute. While the sunblades shattered after they spent their Radiance, the underlying structure could be salvaged. Infinite Flying Swords. 

She varied her attack targets, spreading the heat and piercing strikes across the bronze auroch’s back. The momentary flashes of red were tracked by her strands of consciousness. She watched how the creature appropriated and made use of the energy. 

The hints of the cycle were clear, and she cross-referenced them to what she already knew. The creation cycle was fire to earth, earth to metal, metal to water, water to wood, and finally, wood to fire. She could see the first and second processes, and she could see how the energy transformed. The more intriguing part was that the transformed energy was also magnified, rather than diminished. 

Her initial experience with transforming Animus to Radiance, as well as the reverse, had suffered from depletion, at least until she figured out the proper tricks and ratios. What was being used to transform the Elemental energies? She had an inkling that it was Intent, or Will, possibly both, needed or were interchangeable. Since such reserves were invisible and undetectable by anyone other than the owner, she couldn’t see them. But more importantly, if her guess was true, then the Layer Guardian wasn’t a mindless monster as every other foe was presented to be, but rather, it was alive, in a sense. One that possessed an Anima, even if it was likely unawakened or locked within the shell. It was why she couldn’t just press her Anima perception into the body and see directly. Oh well. 

She added Invisible Edges to her sunblades and systematically broke the thing down. It was too big and slow to hit her, even if its attacks possessed enough agility to be a bother. She was a Transformation Stage Ancient with a Primordial Truth central to her being. It was honestly no match for her full might, and the only reason it was still standing was because of her curiosity. Unfortunately for it, her battle lust had cooled down, and her attention was basically on research and insight. And given the fact that the Layer Guardian would eventually be reborn, killing it was not permanent and she need not feel guilty for the abuse she was doing now. 

Or so she told herself, anyway. A slippery slope, and a part of her sighed at the realisation. Playing in battle was fine, but actively torturing an enemy. Alright, fine! She’ll stop. She probably gleaned whatever it was she needed anyway. 

She pulled back half a longstride from the bronze auroch. For a moment, its countenance, as much as could be expressed by a metal head, looked confused. Her lovers had basically mopped up the calves, and the auroch had been too busy surviving her to send more. The truck convoy had stopped and retreated, though they were out of her perception range. 

“Done playing?” Gwendith asked, while Heron smirked at her. Both their bodies and emotions indicated excitement and arousal, and somehow, that made her decision not to torture/experiment with the auroch in favour of ending things quickly more palatable. 

“Yeah.” 

A thousand sunblades flow around in a mandala behind and around her. Death by a thousand cuts wasn’t working, so the only other option was execution by brute force. 

She conjured more sunblades. Five thousand and change was her current maximum, and she could only hold on to them for a minute or so. But that was more than enough.

“Fuse.” 

Each sunblade’s structure destabilised, and the Animus and Radiant energy combined into a sword five hundred paces long and nearly thirty wide. Then she infused it with Swordlight. With a casual flick of her hand, the sword sliced the bronze auroch in half. 

As the blade sliced the metal, heat and miniature sunblades broke off from the main blade and pulverized the thing’s innards, and the Radiance consumed the perpetuating cycle that would have kept the monster alive. A blink of an eye later, and all that was left of the Layer Guardian was a cloud of dust and several shards the size of her head. Yuriko retrieved them, noting that they were now at least several hundred thousand credits richer. 

She flew down towards her lovers and landed softly on the road. “Think we can reach our quota if we extend our stay?” 

Gwendith shrugged. “I guess we shouldn’t retread old ground unnecessarily.” 

Heron looked at the convoy and at their companions who were easily making their way down the slope. The trucks had stopped and looked like they were settling down to recuperate. None of them looked like they wanted to talk or anything like that, but he asked, “Think they’d want a share?” 

Yuriko shrugged, “They only fought the minions, and more to save themselves than anything else.”

“Yeah, they don’t deserve a share. I don’t think they’re that shameless or suicidal anyway.” He said with a leer. “Should we move on?” 

The portal had reappeared with the Layer Guardian’s destruction. Nothing was stopping them from moving to the next layer. 

There were nine shards of varying sizes, though none were smaller than her head, and the biggest one was at least several inches wider. They all fit in the travel bags easily; however, she distributed them to the other two. The others took several minutes to reach them, and the look of awe on Carina’s face was gratifying. 

“So…was that the strongest thing in Shangria?” Yuriko asked, not hiding the disappointment in her tone. 

Carina shook her head. “As far as I know, yes. But probably only until the fifth layer. Nobody talks about the dangers there.” 

“I see. Well, I hope something more dangerous comes along.” She clapped Carina’s shoulder, “And you, my friend, are the ticket to that.” 

Carina sighed and muttered, “Let’s just go.” 

And so they did.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep