On the distant elite beast’s corpse, Haiyin’s small cross-spear danced like a sewing needle through hide, stripping the surface muscle like wet bark. The inner power crystals cracked like thin ice under her rough dismantling, yet her gaze held no hint of surrender, steady as a mountain ridge—until the spear kissed something hard and rang like porcelain.
Ding—
Joy flooded her fingers first, then her face lit like sunrise on snow; her sense hadn’t lied. This elite beast was different, a vein of crystals running thick inside its flesh, proof it stood above most of its kind like a lone peak above a forest.
Why did it skulk within the elite herd and rush the Valkyrie Sanctum like a stormbird? Maybe it came to plunder the Sanctum’s riches, or maybe rage blew its mind to ash and it fell under the fire-support Valkyries’ iron rain, dead past dead; the crystal would tell the truth once she had it in hand, gleaming like a lantern in fog.
Haiyin raised the cross-spear; the side blades locked like petals, then sprung into a crown of curved razors. The steel sang as she carved through more of the carcass, intent on peeling the ring of muscle like rind and hauling the unknown crystal back whole, a heart torn from stone.
In the blink she didn’t watch, a sharp shadow pounced like a knife thrown from a sleeve; the ploy finally bared its blade. Her focus sat on speed, not guard; most of her power drove the dissection, a river channeled, not dammed.
A gust rasped her cheek like a cold snake. She flinched and swung the cross-spear on instinct, but the wind was a feint, a curtain. The true strike slid in from her flank, killing intent taut as wire and a wind blade keen enough to shear her armor; her mind whirred like gears under flood.
Damn it—when did it get here!
Her world slowed to a dripping beat; not time sorcery, but thought burning hot. Minutes splintered into seconds, and seconds into bright shards, each instant held up like a blade to the eye.
Out of the corner of her vision, she caught it: a twisted insect, its shell sharp as stacked knives, slick with meat and blood flecks. It had nested in the elite carcass, waiting for a single perfect kill, or her cutting had woken it like a thorn pressed too deep.
Her senses flared like a lamp thrown open, and understanding bit. This thing carried a force aimed at Valkyries, a needle for their throat; this wasn’t chance but a baited pit, a snare set for her sisters—and she had stepped right into its jaws.
This shouldn’t be happening. Even elite beasts with heads on their shoulders wouldn’t use a comrade’s corpse as bait; they shouldn’t know to mask in flesh. Then what—another turn in their evolution, a new fang cut under the skin?
Damn it, I got careless!
Because the beast had fallen, she hadn’t bathed the corpse in Aether and checked; because elites usually showed so little cunning, she hadn’t counted this chance, her guard lowered like a blade sheathed too soon.
She tried to wrench her spear free, but the haft stuck like a nail in bone. The meat that moved like mud hardened like diamond, nowhere for strength to bite, and her hands couldn’t pull the weapon loose from the elite beast’s body.
The insect closed like a thrown bolt; she ground her teeth, mind racing again. Then it hit a wall she couldn’t see, and the speed snapped; the bug that crawled in her eyes now flashed like lightning and stabbed. With no time left to think, she drove a punch straight at it.
She couldn’t muster her full Aether; the fist flew anyway. Instinct stabbed her skull like a hot needle; she almost saw her right ribs lift, pierced from below by the blade-bug. Death’s shadow stood at arm’s length, and she had nothing else to throw.
“Quit resigning yourself to fate, Haiyin—move!”
The voice came like a rope in a flood, not from her side but thinned through her Aether armor’s comms. It was her partner, her sister—Lori. Her shout carried a tremble, and the familiar plink of a shell ejecting chimed through the Aether channel.
A hard force scraped past her hip like a wave’s shove. She rode it on reflex, diving aside, slipping past most of the cutting wind the shot whipped up. The cursed insect didn’t share her luck; a cold steel, cross-headed round speared its body and drilled through the elite carcass, power like a blacksmith’s hammer nailing it to the earth, leaving it no room to writhe.
A sealing round!
Haiyin knew it at once. Any other function round would’ve hit “harder,” packed with a Valkyrie’s Aether, crushing the target outright. This one didn’t destroy; it crippled and pulled the strike off line, mercy with chains.
“Lo—Lori, that was gorgeous!”
She whooped, high on the sight. Through the big hole punched in the carcass, she saw the insect pinned and “glued” by molten iron from the sealing round, the metal crawling like syrup until bug and steel fused into one dead lump.
Coincidence piled on coincidence. Never mind how Lori had gotten her hands on a support Valkyrie’s Sacred Lance; her snap judgment and ballistic math deserved a medal. She pierced Aether mists at that range, read the interference, missed Haiyin by a hair, and pinned a dagger-sized freak to the dirt.
Pulling that off without the Aether Eye—Lori, you’re a born genius.
Haiyin wanted to sweep Lori into a hug and kiss, but urgency bit first. She wrenched herself free of the carcass, power roaring down her arms like a flood. She gripped the trapped spear and hacked in rapid strokes; when she could pour her full strength, even an elite beast’s body couldn’t hold her, not for a breath.
She’d planned to keep the carcass intact for study, but now she carved it to shreds without a blink. Aether surged like stormfire with every blow; the elite’s flesh turned to pulp in a heartbeat, and the thing that had jammed her spear finally showed its face.
“Aesir Rune! Hah—good work, Aesir. You finally set your sights on the Valkyries!”
Her anger smiled like a blade. The Aesir had dodged helping in the beast tide, then hid foul tricks in an elite corpse; it was sickening, like rot under perfume. Did they think calling themselves a god-race meant they weren’t human anymore?
She cut clean, separating the strip of flesh carrying the Aesir Rune, and tucked it into her storage ring. Her Aether sealed the Rune away from the world like glass around flame; whoever was riding it from afar was probably writhing now, bitten by their own snake.
That thought tugged a smile from her. She hopped to the iron-lumped bug, scooped it up, and was about to stow it—when the thinning Aether mists finally blew off like morning fog.
At the same moment, three swift shapes tore through the clearing, claws out like hooked moons, fangs lunging for her throat like white knives. They came to kill in a blink, and strange power crawled over their hides like oil. Haiyin saw and only snorted; her spear tip kissed the ground, and she slid the weapon behind her back like a shadow’s tail.
These elite beasts were puppets on someone’s strings, their rage borrowed—and those hands didn’t think the Valkyries were worth fearing at all.
