Outworld Liberators-Chapter 141: Making Name for Cairnlight Barterhold

Radeon looked through his Myridion Seersight. He could see the pockets of spacetime where the living Vision Crystal slipped through.

His hands was in the trigger. Then as he felt the bullet going. He could shoot the bullet of misfortune in advance.

As he watched, he pondered the other heaven’s children he needed to take in, if he meant to make a difference in this realm.

He knew they were not staying in Goldkeep Crownmarkets forever. The ghosts could not come with him either.

They had no proper realm to exist in, like a monitor lizard dragged out of its wet home.

They could live on land, sure, but it would never be a chance for them to improve there.

So he made his choices early. Cairnlight Barterhold was a great stronghold. Something they could go back when all else failed.

With that plan in mind, Radeon then beckoned Calyx closer.

"Can take that Aberrant?" Radeon asked.

Calyx did not posture. He measured his capabilities and answered without bloating his result.

"I can beat it with certainty. One on one, it may need a month."

Radeon tapped his ring finger against his palm, once, twice, as if he were counting coins.

"How about making a name, something big enough to be a deterrence."

Understanding settled behind Calyx’s eyes. He started to think too hard, so Radeon cut the thought short.

"I can send you arts as long as you can take them. You still need to digest the inheritance left for you."

There was no need to say more.

Calyx turned and went, a long stake in his hands, shaped like a staff and heavy enough to make the air feel it.

Radeon brushed a thread of fortune into him, a small tilt of the world, then nodded once.

Above, Silent Severance teams answered the chaos in Spendworth Hills.

Cultivators scattered into rough lines and started guerilla work, killing what turned and sealing what could be sealed.

At one gate of Cairnlight Barterhold, a single figure stepped out.

A white robe. Snow white skin. Eyes slit so narrow they nearly hid the pupils.

It was too clean an image for the scries, almost theatrical, and they had sent only one man.

"Who is that?"

"What can one man do?"

"Should we also send in help as well?"

Calyx vanished from sign as he moved. His power rose and matched what he hunted.

Half step Ethereal Integration. The same height as the new eldritch.

Petrus, the Aberrant wearing Petrus, saw him.

Too slow. Calyx was already there. His stake snapped forward and struck the head.

The skull caved in. Bone sank down toward chest like wet clay pressed by a thumb.

Radeon had given him only one tip. Do not let it become smart.

For Calyx, it was simple. Hit the head. Hit the brain. Hit it again.

The Aberrant shuddered, then found its creator’s memory like a knife in the dark.

Four tentacles sprouted from its back, carapaced and hard, and it began to move like an eldritch again, not like a confused king.

Calyx answered without flinching. Four golden hands flared behind him, holy looking and heavy with force.

They met tentacle with golden arms, clashing like hammers in a forge.

With his two free hands, he drove the flat end of the stake into the creature’s chest.

For an instant, body, mind, spirit, soul, all split apart like threads tugged in four directions.

Calyx swept low, aiming for the legs.

The Aberrant was too robust. It only slid, boots of flesh scraping stone.

While it slid, it forced the crushed head back out of its torso and set it upright, then mimicked the same martial cadence Calyx had used. It learned each skill by watching.

A staff formed in its grip, conjured from nothing. It pummeled with unimaginable strength.

The blow caught Calyx under the chin and hurled him up into cloud. The world’s images flashed past around him.

Wind tore at his robe. For a heartbeat, he hung there like a thrown spear.

As Calyx flew, his attention stayed on one thing, the tribulation in the sky. So far, he had only probed the Aberrant.

The alien creature grinned and leapt after him.

Its gaze flicked past Calyx toward the peaks. It was not only trying to win. It was trying to spread. It set its stance like a bat and swung.

The barrier shattered at first contact. Calyx slammed into a small eastern town, barely more than a knot of roofs.

He plowed through hundreds of stalls, wood and cloth and pottery exploding into dust, because no one had believed the fight could reach them.

With a blink, the Aberrant was there. It raised its staff high. Half the city collapsed with that blow.

It grabbed Calyx by the head, ragged him across the pavement, then threw him toward the place where the sealing spear waited.

Petrus’s mind ran the numbers. Seal the man in front of him, then swallow his power and make it his own.

Another kick folded Calyx like a shrimp, driving him where Petrus wanted him.

Calyx stood eight feet tall, but he looked suddenly small beneath the over twenty meter throne that still anchored the spear’s working.

The Aberrant did not delay. It pulled the javelin and drove it into Calyx’s heart.

Calyx went limp. His head drooped as if dead.

Jekyll cursed under his mask. If that man was assimilated, the creature would truly reach Ethereal Integration.

Heavenly energy locked down the sky for miles, thickening the air until even breath felt watched.

The Aberrant lifted its face and roared at the clouds like it wanted a fight with the world itself. Its eyes dropped to Calyx again, greedy, calculating.

Calyx’s cultivation began to plummet. Half-step Ethereal Integration slid down to Spirit Transfiguration.

Peak stage. Late stage. Middle stage. Early stage.

It threatened to drop to Nascent Embryo, but then it settled. Petrus thought that was enough.

The Aberrant opened its mouth for the bite. Then it heard a murmur, low and precise.

"Karmic Consumption. Energy Swap."

The Aberrant’s stage was siphoned in almost an instant. The pressure overhead loosened. Clouds thinned. The tribulation dispersed as if it had lost interest.

The creature tried to pull heaven and earth energy again, desperate to rebuild what had been stolen.

But it had already sucked too much of that power on its earlier escapade.

The energy needed time to refill.