Multiple notifications kept ringing in the corner of my mind ever since I started killing the phantoms. I dismissed all of them for now and focused on the new summon standing in front of me.
She looked human at first glance, but small details made it clear she was anything but. Faint sparks flickered inside her eyes like tiny lightning arcs. Every few seconds, thin blue veins glowed under her fair skin before fading again. Her presence felt calm, steady... almost soothing, which was strange considering she had been a phantom only moments ago.
While I studied her, she suddenly spoke.
"Thank you."
Her voice was soft, smooth, and carried a quiet warmth, almost like a patient teacher explaining something to a confused student. It caught me off guard.
"Thank you?" I asked, confused.
"Yes. Thank you for freeing me from the claws of the Eternals," she said with a tone that sounded completely sincere.
I blinked. That wasn’t something I expected to hear. If she said "claws," it meant she was aware she had been corrupted, aware she had become a phantom.
"You remember?" I asked slowly.
She shook her head.
"No. I don’t remember my identity or who I was. But I know I was a transcendent when I died... and I remember pieces. Blurry moments. Feelings." She paused, then added, "But seeing myself like this, I can tell I’m no longer a slave to the Eternals. Instead... I belong to you."
She said it so calmly it almost stunned me.
"I can feel the connection," she continued. "I can feel that I can’t disobey you. But you are not an Eternal. And I watched you slaughter the other phantoms without hesitation. So... this is better."
I stared at her, unsure whether to laugh or sigh. Better?
From her perspective, she had simply traded one master for another. But she spoke with such certainty and peace that I couldn’t even argue.
"So you don’t remember your past at all? Not your name, not your world, nothing?" I asked.
Again, she shook her head.
"No. Only that I was an elemental. And strangely... I don’t feel curious about my past." Her eyes softened as she stepped closer. "But I am curious about you. Your essence feels different. I don’t recognize your race. Where are you from?"
I smiled faintly.
"You’ll learn everything in time. But before that, you need a name. Any preference?"
She raised a finger, tapping it against her chin as she closed her eyes. Her brows tugged together slightly as she thought about it, and the expression somehow made her look even more beautiful.
I quickly looked elsewhere and waited.
After a few seconds, her eyes opened.
"I think... I want to be called Aurora."
"Aurora," I repeated. "Good. It fits you."
I pointed toward the fortress.
"Alright, Aurora. I’ll deal with the abominations. You go inside and capture all the people working there. Don’t kill them unless you have to."
She nodded once, a small smile appearing on her lips.
"Happily."
A faint spark flickered around her body and, in the next instant, Aurora vanished, leaving only a thin streak of blue light behind.
I chuckled under my breath.
"Ohh... Knight’s spot as the fastest in the group is about to be challenged."
While she headed inside the fortress, I stepped forward once and shifted my position, appearing high above the asteroid’s dark void-like sky. From here, the entire landscape unfolded beneath me.
A sea of abominations, almost a million of them, crowded the surface like swarm of insects. Their movements twitched and jittered, deathmist leaking from their mouths as they wandered aimlessly without orders from the phantoms.
I decided to bring North and Steve here. It was time for them to farm some levels too.
So I flashed back to the teleportation gate, entered the coordinates for Armus into the runic panel, and stepped inside. The world twisted in streaks of color, and a few breaths later I was hovering above the skies of Horus again.
I went straight to the duo, explained where we were going, and moments later we were all back on the asteroid.
"Damn... this is crazy," Steve muttered, staring at the endless swarm of abominations crawling over the rock like insects.
North’s eyes lit up. "This is good. I’m ready. When do we start?"
"You can start now," I said, smiling.
She didn’t waste a second, her body shot forward like an arrow, diving straight into the swarm.
Steve grinned, sparks dancing across his skin. "Yeah, I’m going too. See you in a bit."
And with a crackling burst of black and blue lightning, he vanished—dropping into the heart of the abominations like a falling star.
*****
Two hours passed as the duo finally collapsed from exhaustion. Each of them put a sizable dent in the population of the abomination on the asteroid. I decided to finish the rest of them and so I arrived in the center above the fort once again.
They were weak individually, nothing compared to the phantoms I had faced, but there were so many of them that the cumulative rewards would be... satisfying. And besides, one of the system’s quest objectives was very clear:
Kill Abominations.
The fortress remained far below me, its obsidian walls untouched. I didn’t want it damaged. The teleportation gate inside was my only direct path back to Armus.
I brought my palms together and let my perception expand outward. My senses shot across the asteroid like a shockwave. Every crack in the stone, every ridge, crater, and shadowed valley appeared in my mind with perfect clarity. The entire floating rock lay open before me.
I tapped into my Major Law of Elemental Convergence and whispered my will.
Fire gathered first, roaring silently in the void, forming a perfect circular ring beneath my feet. Lightning followed weaving itself into a second ring above the first.
I pushed Essence into both.
The two rings trembled... then merged.
Where fire and lightning met, a third ring formed, huge, violent, and glowing with destructive power. Bolts writhed across its surface. Flames twisted in spirals. The energy hummed like a suppressed roar waiting for permission to explode.
I spread my hands apart.
The ring responded.
It expanded slowly at first... resisting... groaning... then—
It detonated outward.
A thunderous boom shook the asteroid as the ring surged away from me like a massive shockwave of fused flame and lightning. The fortress beneath me remained untouched but everything else was swallowed.
The wave rolled across the surface, a blazing circle of annihilation racing outward.
Abominations didn’t even have time to scream.
The moment the expanding wall of fire-lightning touched them, their bodies burst into blood and deathmist that evaporated instantly. Whole groups vanished in an instant. Tens of thousands erased in seconds. The shockwave continued widening, carving through the army like a divine blade.
Valleys glowed white-hot. Ridges melted into smooth glass. Shadows burned away. The entire surface blazed like the birth of a miniature sun.
The ring kept going—faster... stronger... growing brighter with each passing heartbeat until, at the farthest edges of the asteroid, the wave finally struck the outer rock and erupted upward like a rising wall of flame.
Then silence.
The fire-lightning ring flickered once... then dissolved into sparks.
And the entire asteroid surface lay empty.
Not a single abomination remained.
Multiple system notifications slammed into my mind at once, flooding my thoughts with ringing chimes.
I exhaled slowly.
"That was beautiful." I heard Aurora whisper as she appeared behind me.