Drecu snarled as he pushed his raiders onward, chasing after the humans deep into the night. At any other time, it would be foolish for him to do so. He felt the strength of the two who killed Kranesh and survived as they killed off some of the horde's strongest warriors. Goblins all stronger than him, but the horde leader's final act changed things.

He felt when Kranesh died. The strength that flowed into him from the link dried up like a spring creek facing the height of summer, while he slowly weakened, his strength siphoned away and leaving him hollow. Instinctively he fought against the drain, desperately clawing to hold onto his strength, but it was all he could do to hold onto his sanity, and that was when he realized that it wasn't just his strength being siphoned. He felt it in his soul as his honor began to drain away, the marks along his waist and wrists beginning to wither away. Despair took him when his marks of honor burst into black flame, but an alien presence made itself known to him, calming and reassuring him. His honor wasn't being taken away, it was fueling his ascension, guided by the ancestors to bring justice to the lesser beings that dared to banish the ancestors from the world.

Surrendering to the alien presence, he felt himself grow weaker still as the strength Kranesh gifted them was consumed, then like a dry mountainside bursting to life after a summer storm, his muscles grew taut with new strength, sending him even higher than before as he ascended, guided by the footsteps of the ancestors who traveled the Path before. Acting on ghostly guidance, his core shuddered as he let the touch of the ancestors into the very center of his being, his mana being consumed and replaced with the ancestors' energy.

Drecu wasn't sure when he closed his eyes, but as his ascension ended, he opened them and finally saw the world for the first time. Wisps of life beckoned to him from where the humans fled, and his stomach growled. The ancestors demanded their lives as sacrifice for their gifts, and he would give them what they demanded.

Ignoring the soot and ash staining his skin and clothes black where his pieces of honor used to hang, Drecu reached out to the link he shared with his people, strengthened by the ancestors' touch, and pulled. Around him, his people responded, turning to look at him. All were stained black where their marks of honor used to hang as they looked upon him, many of their eyes sunken as they lost themselves to the ancestors' guidance, but many still held the light of intelligence, found worthy and ascended like himself.

Raising his sword high, Drecu roared and pointed towards the beacons of life that even now sought to flee the grasp of their betters. He had no use for words as he sent his commands, the ancestors' commands, into their souls. Hunt. Kill. Consume.

Once they reached the Forest and its strange snowcapped canopy, the advisors set a rapid pace that ate up ground but left the students unable to speak as they gasped for breath. It wasn't sustainable.

Melody was the first to collapse, stumbling and nearly falling face first into a tree as her body finally gave out, strained by a day of heavy fighting, running, and healing heavy injuries. Brava darted forward and caught the girl, hefting her over his shoulder as he ran, but he didn't allow the students to stop. The advisors didn't explain what they were so afraid of, but Jun knew it had something to do with Shiori. Whatever was going on, her adoptive mother wanted them as far away from it as possible.

Incursions had a pattern to them. Usually created as part of a larger conflict, an incursion usually marked a delay in hostilities as something primal woke in every living thing around them, giving them a sense of what was coming. The sensible listened to their instincts and ran away. The bloodthirsty took advantage of their enemy's distraction to continue the slaughter. The foolhardy, greedy, and ambitious welcomed it, viewing it as an easy path to power. Fools. As those caught in the area succumbed to their instincts, fear, anger, and greed driving them, the incursion would stabilize, the void gaining a new foothold into this plane of existence.

Those who gave in would gain great power, but would steadily lose themselves in the process, becoming little more than pawns for the darker things that lurked beyond. No matter how many times they were banished from this plane.

Shiori flexed her fingers as she watched over a thousand goblins give into the incursion, welcoming the void energy into their bodies and becoming changed by it. One by one they gave in, becoming little more than mindless beasts as the void strengthened their bodies while it consumed their minds. forging weapons and tools to serve other powers. Ironic that the goblins, fanatically loyal to their own and dangerous for their cunning more so than for their strength, would give into the siren call of the void, believing its denizens their ancestors.

Shiori frowned as she remembered another time where she stood before a forming rift, though not alone. One face, skin a dark green from long days in the sun, covered in blood taking an attack not meant for them to save another. They would mourn how their people had fallen to the Void. Love. Grief. Regret. Anger. Shiori had long mastered her emotions, but she still allowed herself to acknowledge and feel them for a moment before she tucked them away, clearing her mind of the distant past to focus on the present.

A horde of a thousand void touched stood before the forming rift, but they weren't alone. As the rift began to stabilize, the first voidling crawled out. A truly weak one, no greater than an Iron, but it was just the first of many. Thousands followed the first, growing in size and power as the rift stabilized, their shapes chaotic and misshapen. Tentacles, claws, legs as few as none and as many as a hundred, the voidlings flooded out, their auras pulsing as they hunted for prey.

Shiori stood unmoving as she felt their perceptions washed past her as if she didn't exist and locked onto the few monsters and other living beings in the area. A frown creased her lips as she felt a powerful aura gather the voidlings' attention and direct it to the slowly moving group of students and the Golds with them. Such strong auras would be enough to draw their attention. Unless she gave them something else to focus on.

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A wave traveled through the fabric of reality, bouncing off her array and causing space to reverberate with power as the rift stabilized. Shiori's array fully activated then, beginning to stabilize reality and counteract the corruptive touch of the Void. She wouldn't be able to use anything that further harmed the fabric of reality, not without undoing her own work.

That meant doing things the hard way.

Sending her mana into spell, Shiori conjured a simple barrier beneath her feet, one strong enough to resist her strength as she leaped with full force. More mana channeled into another spell ensured the air parted before her as she moved faster than sound itself, her passing not even disturbing the snow she had been standing on. In the space of a blink, Shiori planted herself between the horde and the direction her kitten had gone.

Eyeing the horde of void touched and voidlings, Shiori smiled wide as she unveiled her aura, filling it with a simple message. She was here, and this territory was hers. The horde froze as she drowned out all other signs of life with her own, seizing their attention in full. Thousands of void touched goblins and voidlings roared and shrieked as they charged her, hungry for her mana. She would give them their fill.

A void touched goblin standing in front of her was the first to react to her presence, a mindless hulk of void-fueled muscle that mindlessly hurled itself at her as soon as it realized she was there. Instinctively, she flexed the muscles in her paws as she moved to swat it out of the air, only to blink as the goblin exploded from the force of her blow instead of being shredded by her claws. Looking at her blood coated hand, she sighed. Human form. No claws without magic.

Twisting her mana into shape, she sent thousands of tendrils into the ground around her as she wove a spell she learned from a friend. Earth had never been her favorite aspect. Too inflexible and unyielding. Too set in its ways. A perfect aspect for Saladin to focus on, but just a passing fancy for her. Still, there were times it was useful, like now. Responding to her spell, the ground rumbled and buckled as it shifted and changed, massive spears erupting at an angle in a ring around the rift, sealing the horde in with her and impaling those closest to the edge.

The horde recoiled away from her spell as the spears grew inward, pushing the horde closer together as Shiori created an arena. This would be a fight to the death, and only she would leave it alive. "Your lives are forfeit, corrupted ones," she announced with a vicious smile.

A dozen of the stronger voidlings leapt for her as she began to channel more mana, but they were too slow. Before they could do more than take a single step forward, a series of barriers appeared around Shiori, glowing with a dangerous black light. With a flick of her tails, a dozen barriers the size of a small building shot out into the horde, crushing dozens every second in the tightly packed ring around the rift, ripping off limbs and sending broken bodies flying. Moving along behind her barriers, Shiori tore through the horde with explosive force, the strength of her body carving a line of death directly towards the rift.

The small hairs on Shiori's neck stood up as she approached the rift and the ghost of the horde leader holding it open. The void touched spirit pulsed with the strength of a Diamond ranked entity as it absorbed more energy from the other side. It was already a nation killing threat. If she left it alone much longer, it would grow truly dangerous, threatening her kitten. She wouldn't allow that to happen.

As an image of her kitten fighting against the void came to mind, Shiori had an idea. She needed to end this threat, but it was also an opportunity. Splitting her mind, Shiori channeled her mana, weaving a new spellform directly with her mana tendrils. Her kitten surprised her with her snare technique, taking the simple snare spell in a surprising direction. Her kitten's [Sapping Snare] was a simple spell by her standards, but Jun had still filled it with a shallow understanding of a concept. To Drain. A weaker concept, but still dangerous with the right knowledge and skill. With her knowledge, harnessing that potential was simple. Strengthen the structure. Condense the strands down. A false core to hold the stolen strength. New aspects. Purify. Control. Devour.

[Devouring Grasp]. Shiori grinned as she felt the System acknowledge her effort, though it didn't want to. It feared what could harm it after all. Shiori's hair seemed to grow rapidly as thousands of thin strands of mana shot out from her head and scythed out. Though the strands were thin, they were strong, slicing through limbs and bodies as she killed the void touched goblins and voidlings. Every entity her hair touched disintegrated as her strands cut through them, a mere touch enough for her spell to rip away everything that kept them alive. Mana. Aura. Void energy. Karma.

Everything of value they had left she took. All but their souls. That she let their souls exist to return to the cycle was all the mercy she would have.

As the disparate energies of the horde flowed into her spell's false core, Shiori purified the void energy, causing the orb of light to take on a golden hue.

Grabbing the void touched spirit by the neck, Shiori sunk her fingernails into the entity's spirit-flesh, sinking tendrils of her aura into it, rending its connections to the mortal plane and its hoarded strength. The spirit screamed and writhed in her hand, fighting the intrusion as it desperately fought to keep itself intact.

Shiori felt a surge of strength as it drew even deeper on the rift, lashing out with aura and void energy. Blasts of ominous energy erupted in a sphere around the spirit, rotting away the remains of the wooden platform beneath Shiori's feet, but she remained untouched, barriers of mana reinforced with her aura easily deflecting the blasts away from her.

Void touched and voidlings alike screeched in pain as the spirit's blasts destroyed their mortal forms, only for Shiori's spell to seize their fleeing souls and extract her price for mercy. The golden orb behind her grew brighter still as she funneled the stolen energy into it, shining brighter than the sun. The void recoiled as the light illuminated the abyss beyond the rift, massive shapes fleeing away from the opening and further into the darkness beyond.

As the void entities fled the rift, cutting off reinforcements, the spirit in Shiori's grasp continued its struggles, screaming out for the void as it stretched its clawed hands out to the rift. "You lost." Shiori said, clenching her hands around the spirit's metaphysical spine and ripping it out. With one last piercing scream, the void touched spirit dissipated, its spirit-flesh crumbling into ash as it reentered the cycle.

With the spirit taken care of, Shiori dropped the faintly glowing spine to the ground as it coalesced a physical form and concentrated on the rift, stitching the shorn edges of reality together. The golden light of purified mana dimmed as Shiori used it up, the threads of mana shifting from gold to purple as she supplied the rest of the energy needed to repair reality.

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