The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

Flanked by two of his guards, Edmund walked, ascending the long flight of stairs that spiraled up the height of his great tower. Nearing the top, he waved his guards to stand by, preferring the quietness of his soothing pastime. While he didn't need the guards since his powers far outstripped theirs, he hated dealing with unnecessary intrusions. The guards bowed and stepped aside as the door opened, not the slightest creak coming from the hinges. It seemed the execution of the previous laborer motivated the others to perform their work to his standards.

Edmund smiled, satisfied by the results of his discipline, and stepped inside, the door closing shut behind him without even a squeak. His eyes shone with longing, and his skin shivered from the concentration of Ein inside his private chamber, a pleasurable sensation washing over him. As a Marshal Exalt, he felt a strong connection to the pool of shimmering water. Chunks of ice floated on the surface, deep white and expelling cold steam. The waters shone as if the moon itself rested underneath it, a luminescent glow engraved in every ripple and wave.

For several years, he enjoyed the effects of the pool of elemental Ein. His efforts and payments were well worth it to purchase the icy shard and build a formation to compound its power into the wellspring it became now. Garbed in his robes, he bathed in the chilling pool, circulating his core to absorb the elemental Ein. Delight flushed his uplifted cheeks. Given a few more years, his powers would finally reach the Middle Marshal Exalt realm. Even more time and he might enter the Greater Marshal Exalt realm.

'My path to King Exalt is in my grasp. I only require the Imperial Jewel now. The world is still too dangerous for me to venture out. It's good that my base is far away from the others.' He recalled the fear that froze his heart colder than the bath he was in when he heard the leader of New Dawn had perished. Luckily, his post was far from the others, and his men were loyal to him, his disciplining and punishments training them to be his dogs. Sinking into the pool, he frowned, worried about when the New Dawn civil war would reach him.

'It's only a matter of time. I need to accumulate my power.' Edmund entered a trance, resting like a boulder, feeling the ebbs and flows of the icy Ein as they swirled around him. A sound pierced inside and landed in his ears. He opened his eyes and knit his brows, rubbing his bald head. Perhaps he had heard wrong, or the storm outside was picking up. Refocusing, he tried to enter the trance again, meditating in earnest. Shortly after, another sound entered his chamber, a muffled shout.

"You fools! What is going on outside?!" Edmund bellowed in rage, bursting from the icy pools, splattering the precious droplets of icy Ein onto his clean floor. He inhaled and sharpened his gaze, knowing this smell well, the stench of blood and death. Someone was here. Was it a member of one of the New Dawn factions? Two screams resounded behind the door before they were cut off, instantly silenced as if someone had cut their throats. Those voices belonged to his guards, who were two peak Greater Knight Exalts.

"I am Edmund, branch head of this outpost! Have you come to test me to join you, or are you here to kill me?!" He barked out, shredding his robes to reveal his scarred body of steely sinew, power gathered in each throbbing muscle. Wearing nothing but shorts, he stomped closer to the door, brandishing his favored weapon, a pair of sickles. Fast strokes carved several cuts into the door and wall. The entire section collapsed, but the figure behind was unharmed from his quick sickles. The bodies of his two guards, which had been intact earlier, split apart into bloody chunks.

"Useless trash. They couldn't even signal an enemy attack properly." Edmund spat in their direction and peered forward at the unharmed intruder, beads of cold sweat mingling with the lingering droplets of his bath. He spun the sickles around his hands, wary of the stranger. The thick blood-stench was nearly enough to choke out the air from his lungs. Not even the icy air inside could hide the ungodly stink of presumably countless kills. Yet, he spotted no drop of blood on the man.

The stranger's armor, worn and rusted, covered by a gray tabard, had damages from past battles but not any recent ones from what he could tell. The stranger had made it here without a scratch, a feat he thought impossible, considering he only felt the powers of the Lower Marshal Exalt. A large pelt of a great stag draped down like a cloak, its neck wrapped around like a scarf as the head rested on his right shoulder. The antlers stuck out like an unusual pauldron.

A gray hood covered his head, and underneath was a paladin's helmet, smooth and flat at the top, covering past his chin, leaving only a pair of cold, dark, dreadful eyes, the kind Edmund thought was unnatural, unfit to be on a human. He nearly lost himself in that abyss of a gaze and shouted, rousing himself from the pressure, noticing his knees quivering. Afraid. He was afraid. Gritting his teeth, he asked, "Who are you? What happened to the others?!"

"Dead. They're all dead." As the most chilling, emotionless voice spoke, the stranger swung his arm, and what he threw sent shivers down Edmund's spine. A hundred heads, clumped together by strings, rolled slowly on the icy floor, stopping at his feet. None of them seemed to be in anguish, only a few expressing the pain they felt at the last moment but not having the time to contort their faces to reflect the horrifying realization of death. All of them had been quickly killed, too fast for their minds and bodies to catch up.

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Fuming, Edmund growled, pointing a sickle at the stranger, his arms bulging with veins pushed out by his fury. "Do you understand the consequences of your little incursion? The New Dawn will never forget this!"

"A New Dawn that lies fractured in ceaseless violence against each other? No one will help you here." The stranger spoke truly, the fact hitting Edmund like a brick.

"Who are you?" Edmund asked again. "Are you also a New Dawn member? You seem to know much about us."

"How tiresome. If you're trying to buy time for your outside forces to converge, it's futile." The stranger threw out another fifty heads. One was a familiar face, his right-hand man, another Lower Marshal Exalt. While his subordinate was weaker than him, he couldn't have died so easily without any fluctuations reaching him. The stranger clenched the hilt of his sheathed blade, the clear sound of sharp metal ringing in the large chamber.

The sword was incredibly white, clean as the purest snow. Light gleamed from the base, traveling along the edge until it glinted at the sharp tip. It was a long blade, longer than a claymore, with two sharp protrusions, parrying hooks, near the guard. The stranger held it solemnly, his two armored hands gripping it in a lowered stance, facing him directly. "Everyone here is dead…except for you. Your life is the last one I'll take."

Edmund laughed. The chamber quaked from his rising Ein, a vicious gleam replacing the fear that once occupied his mind. He had laid low for many years after the leader's death, keeping the routes locked down to avoid any intruders so he could swoop in at the last moment to take control of the organization. But his careful years of planning and trained men were brought down by this bastard. The Ein from the stranger revealed him to be a Grade Six Exolsia, nothing to be afraid of. The others were too weak or had been caught by surprise, as noted by the idiotic faces on the bodiless heads.

"You're nothing but an inferior being. Tell me what you know, and I'll make it quick." Edmund gathered his confidence, surging his might as a peak Lower Marshal Exalt. His sickle anima melded into his sickles, turning them into double-bladed sickles, a sickle on each end of the handle, four in total. Their steel had been replaced by a frosty ice that spewed cold air. The Reis core inside his chest pounded, tinging his body a slight red, a sprawl of veins wriggling and accenting themselves against his skin.

The stranger stayed still. A blue flame flared and coated his white blade, but unable to shroud the color, a strange sight of a blue flame with a white core. Edmund smiled fiercely and banged his sickles together, summoning an avalanche behind him that split apart into tendrils with sharp ice at its ends. Roaring, he charged ahead, unafraid since his powers of ice and snow lessened the burning fires around the stranger.

"Die!" He shouted.

The stranger suddenly changed stances, his blue-burning white sword already pointed at the end of a sideways slash as if it all happened in a split second that he failed to perceive. Rain fell and hissed into hot steam on the floor. Where did the rain come from? He wanted to look up, but he found himself peering lower by the second, glancing straight at the stranger's feet, having to blink upward to catch his face. He hit something hard, and his vision rolled around until he saw a headless body kneeling on the floor.

"Is that…my…body?" He stammered out. He wanted to scream out but found no air in his lungs to support the words forming on his lips. There were no lungs at all. He realized the hot rain was his spell melting instantly before the stranger's attack. When did he attack? The questions rumbled like thunder in his thoughts, dragging on as death drew near. His mouth gaped wide open, everlasting shock frozen on his face as the upper half of his chamber slid off, letting the snowstorm overflow into the exposed chamber.

'That one strike destroyed my spells, cut off my head, and cut my tower cleanly? Impossible, my powers are enhanced by Vis, so how? Is he a Volten?' Edmund shouted in agony, the burning pain in his neck torturing his brain. How unlucky was he? Only a few key executives knew of this location. How did this stranger know? His endless questions and regrets tortured him until the soothing numbness of death lulled him to close his eyes to eternal darkness.

…….

Demon walked to the pool and reached out his hand. In a forceful pull, his Ein dislodged the ice shard, a powerful elemental Ein threatening to freeze his hand. He scoffed and covered it in flames, sealing it in an encasement of solid fire. From above, Erden soared and dove down, carrying a sleeping woman on his back, a prisoner he freed from the dungeons below.

"How was it?" Erden asked.

"Weak. Far too weak. I expected more from a place Saul singled out in his maps." Demon sheathed his sword. From Saul's greater space pocket, he found notes on the New Dawn's activities and many maps of their various bases, the perfect tools for his revenge. Following that, for several years, he culled down as many New Dawn members as possible while avoiding the stronger bases marked by the presence of powerful Marshal Exalts. This place turned out to be a bust.

"This place is where Okeanes's presence is strongest. While he wanders the world, he must sometimes rest here." Ignyres interjected. "They must be observing him and scavenging for the scraps of his excess power. He's quite erratic, never finding a permanent place to rest. This location must be his recent one for the past thirty years."

"He's not here now. Would you like to talk to him?" Erden gathered all the cores from the headless bodies and munched on them, sending a wave of Ein to Demon.

"Hell no! I hate the bastard!" Ignyres flared.

"Enough. We've spent enough time here. Let's return and see how the others have accomplished their tasks." Demon mounted Erden and rode off. He sent a single slash onto the tower, disintegrating it in fire until nothing remained, the ashes buried under the downpour of snow. That was another New Dawn remnant destroyed, another step toward vengeance.

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