Author Notes: I wanted to get this chapter out sooner, but it turned out longer than I expected... Hope you enjoy.
/ --- /
Ren
"This feels weird," Ren said out loud as he touched the mask on his face.
He stopped trying to adjust it after a while, and it just sat strangely on his face. He couldn't fathom how the Fatui dealt with wearing these all the time.
But the agent who gave it to him had a point. If any noble got out alive and started pointing fingers, the last thing Ren needed was his face attached to a massacre at a private auction in the middle of nowhere.
The Fatui could handle that kind of heat. He couldn't.
Especially if it could affect his business, one of the few things he would never risk is the prosperity of the Shadow Courier. It was his baby.
He looked up at the mansion's outer wall. It was annoyingly smooth without anything to hold onto. Not that he needed them, but it was for the Fatui.
Ren submerged into the shadow's wall and surfaced at the top. He turned back to look at the Fatui waiting below.
Using a simple fusion of Rabbit Escape and Toad, he summoned two Toads that extended their tongues downwards. They grabbed the two nearest agents, who were unsure how to react.
"Is this—"
"Don't think about it."
One by one, the Toads carried them up the wall in batches. The prideful Fatui being defiled by the slobbery tongues of toads.
A few of the agents didn't want to look at him at all after being lifted, and a Cicin Mage looked like she was about to throw up after seeing the slobber on her clothes.
Once everyone was up, Ren dismissed the Toads, and they moved on.
They split into multiple groups, and the group Ren was in crept along the Roof's edge until they saw a large dome.
Seeing a small latch, they went in it one by one and crawled through the ceiling railings until they found what they were looking for.
They arrived at the top of a large room with chandeliers almost as large as a carriage. There was tiered seating arranged in a semicircle around a raised stage at the front.
There were hundreds of seats, with most of them occupied. At first glance, he could mistake it for an opera house.
If it weren't for what was happening on the stage.
Ren gritted his teeth when he saw the auction was already underway.
People in plain clothes wearing number tags were being walked out one by one for the audience to examine. Their eyes were empty, and the few that weren't looked terrified but knew crying would have made their fate worse.
He almost instinctively summoned Orochi to crush every slaver there.
'Not yet.'
He forced himself to focus. Killing everyone in the room right now wasn't the move, especially not with people on that stage.
He needed to know where the rest were being held and plan around that. Lest he risk the lives of the innocent.
"Where's your target?" he said quietly, not quite a question.
The agents around him were already scanning. A few other teams were visible in the upper railings across the hall, doing the same.
Then a Cicin Mage not too far to his left went very still.
"...Is that Solenne Roussel?!" She whispered sharply.
The name meant nothing to Ren, but the name gained surprised and fearful reactions from the other Fatui.
On a private box, elevated above the normal seats, was a man in expensive clothes who clearly hadn't done any exercise in years.
And beside him was a woman who looked still as a mannequin, but her eyes were sharp.
An agent leaned toward Ren and kept his voice low. "Solenne Roussel is a former Champion Duelist. She sort of disappeared after she retired, and no one knew where she ended up. People say she could give the current strongest Champion Duelist a good challenge."
'Now that's interesting.'
Ren extended his senses toward her.
His body tightened the moment he got a read.
No wonder he didn't sense anything from her until now. She was keeping her energy close to her body. And that kind of control was hard and required immense focus.
It was like she was protecting her body in a layer of Elemental Energy, kind of like Cursed Energy reinforcement. It was the same principle.
She was strong.
Not Shenhe-level, thankfully. But definitely above him by a good amount.
'If I'm not careful, I could actually die.'
He filed that away and kept watching her.
Below, the auction continued.
/ — /
Seeing as the Fatui had a lead on Auguste, Ren had one less thing to worry about.
He slipped into the shadows and moved toward the backstage area.
It was quieter back there. The sounds of the auction muffled through the walls. He surfaced near a stack of crates and analyzed the area.
His instinct was right. They kept the people backstage.
There were dozens of people here kept in cages. They shrank in them, flinching at any sudden noises, afraid that they were going to be called up next.
Ren felt his patience thinning the more he looked at the horrid sight. There weren't many guards back here. They must have thought the backstage area was secure enough not to warrant excessive protection.
One guard walked slowly back and forth between the rows of cages with a gun loose at his side. The fact that he looked bored out of his mind infuriated Ren to no end.
Ren moved through the shadow of the guard's own body and emerged directly behind him.
"Ack—" The guard's voice was drowned out in a gurgle as Ren slit his throat.
The people in the nearest cages flinched at the sudden movement, a few letting out startled sounds.
Ren immediately held up a hand to try to reassure them. "It's alright, I'm here to get you out."
He wasn't sure how many actually believed him, but it helped quiet most of them down. Ren quickly got to work freeing some as more Fatui Agents appeared to assist him.
Just as he was about to open the next cage, his body jolted when a shout cut through from the main stage.
His eyes narrowed as he looked through the gap in the curtains.
A slaver had grabbed a woman on stage by their hair, hauling them up as they thrashed and screamed.
The audience barely reacted, some looked annoyed, while some were pleased by the resistance.
Ren felt his world narrow to focus on what was happening on the stage. The slaver pulled the person up higher, said something that he couldn't hear, and then punched them in the face.
That was enough.
He appeared from the slaver's shadow and, in one motion, slashed off the arm that held the woman and grabbed her away.
The slaver let out a scream of pain that made the entire hall silent for a whole second.
Then everyone started screaming at once.
Ren used Toad to pull the people still on stage back behind him, putting himself between them and the audience as guards and Gardemeks came from every direction.
'Good. I don't know if I could've held back any longer'
He brought his hands together.
'Rabbit Escape.'
Hundreds of anemo rabbits exploded out of his shadow. He infused them with electro the moment they hit the air, and they crashed into the crowd in a wave of electro swirl reactions that tore through the front rows before any of them could even move.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
The hall erupted in chaos as mangled bodies and pieces of flesh were thrown throughout the entire hall.
Ren let out a shaky sigh as he saw the terrified looks on the nobles' faces. It helped calm him down just a little bit, kind of like a drug.
Almost like they were expecting this, the Fatui dropped in from the upper railings. But they didn't join to help Ren, they instead ran towards Auguste's already retreating position.
They knew better than to get in Ren's way.
And it was a good thing they didn't, as in the next second, Ren had pounced on a nearby noble.
The noble woman screamed, but he took the chance to put his hands in the noble's mouth and rip her jaw clean off. Throwing her body to the side to let her bleed out.
Around him, more nobles became frantic when they saw what Ren did and tried to run away.
"Don't go yet. We just started~" Ren said in a sickly sweet tone as Geo shards appeared around him.
With a motion from his fingers, the shards flew straight into the spines of the retreating nobles. They screamed in pain as their flesh was pierced by the shards of Geo.
Ren grinned and clenched his fist.
Their screaming intensified as they felt the Geo expand inside their bodies like sharp roots. Some immediately forced their way through their bodies and organs before it became too much and rendered them unable to move. Stuck in place like a gruesome Geo tree.
Finding his next victi—target. Ren submerged into the shadows and reappeared beneath another noble's guard.
He used a Geo extension to create a pillar that pierced the man like a skewer before ripping their hand off and shoving it down the noble's throat.
Ren kept submerging into the shadows every time a noble tried to sneak to the exit, forcing them back to the seats as they frantically searched for a way out.
"He's in the shadows!"
"What is he?!"
"DEMON—"
'Oh, I like that,' Ren thought with a smile, 'Keep calling me that.'
He summoned more Rabbit Escapes and let them loose again to repeat what he did at the compound. The screaming in that section of the hall was far more chaotic and desperate as rabbits gnawed through the flesh of dozens of nobles.
Ren looked around and noticed that most of the lights had gone out after the attack started.
He got an idea.
He shot almost all of the light sources using his Geo extension, leaving one last chandelier that the remaining nobles huddled underneath, as if it was going to protect them at all.
People were funny like that.
He took his time. Standing deep in the shadows where they couldn't see him and using Toad's extension to drag the nobles one by one away from the light and into the darkness.
Ren made sure to throw in some body parts near the light source. It kept them on their toes.
Once he had his fun, he summoned a Geo cage that encased the entire group of almost 50 nobles and slavers.
He made it deliberately small to keep them close together and claustrophobic. Keeping one opening so he could see their faces, Ren finally stepped out of the shadows.
They begged immediately. Names, money, connections, anything they thought might matter.
He didn't say anything.
He just watched them until they ran out of things to say, until the begging exhausted itself and collapsed into silence.
Then the cage started shrinking.
The screaming started again, but Ren didn't pay it any mind. He kept his eyes on them the whole time, watching the cage get smaller and smaller as they pushed against the walls.
When it was small enough, he clenched his fist.
CRUNCH.
Blood splattered out of the openings and onto him. But he didn't mind at all.
The stage area was quiet now.
Somewhere on the other side of the mansion, he could still hear fighting. Shouts and the sounds of a firearm going off.
More people he needed to reach.
Ren stepped over what was left of the cage and walked toward the door.
/ — /
Volkov
"Where the hell is Auguste?" Volkov grumbled as he swiped his daggers to clean them of the blood.
He had killed so many guards and Gardemeks that he had lost count, and he was starting to get tired.
The trafficked people had all been secured and were being escorted out of the mansion. 'At least that part of the operation went smoothly,'
Now all that remained was locating Auguste and capturing him. The problem was that stinking retired Champion Duelist he had as a bodyguard.
He couldn't believe someone like Solenne Roussel would willingly work for Auguste.
Volkov had been tracking them ever since they left the auction hall. But instead of finding them, he found the bodies of dozens of his comrades.
It looked like they were killed quickly, like they didn't even have a chance to retaliate before being cut down.
Solenne was definitely above him in strength, but he wouldn't back down from his mission even if it cost his life.
Suddenly, three Gardemeks walked around the corner ahead of him.
He blinked out of visibility and let his fiery phantoms take the lead. The two heat signatures from his delusion made the Mech's targeting systems confused as the real Volkov took care of the first two quickly.
The third was faster, and nearly landed a hit with an electro-infused mace, but he dodged just in time before he drove his twin daggers into its head, making it stop moving.
'I'm so tired.' Volkov panted, 'I need to find Auguste before—'
"Hey there, Volkov."
"СУКА БЛЯТЬ—!"
He spun around with his blade up and found Ren Roman leaning against the wall behind him. Completely covered in blood that dripped onto the expensive carpet.
"Don't do that," Volkov said, once he trusted his voice again.
"Do what?"
"Never mind."
Ren looked at him like he didn't know what the problem was.
Before Volkov could elaborate, they heard footsteps approaching them. Two guards with firearms burst through a door alongside three Gardemeks, and the time for conversation ended.
Ren and Volkov moved without exchanging a word.
Volkov blinked invisible and circled wide while Ren sent geo shards straight at the guards, taking the ranged threats first.
Two Gardemeks rushed at Ren from opposite sides. Just as one was about to stab Ren with a lance, Volkov appeared and kicked it hard enough to send it stumbling into the wall, and Ren caught the other's strike on his blade.
"Thanks!"
"Don't mention it."
Ren pushed the clashing Gardemek back and ducked under its follow-up strike, slicing its torso clean apart on the way back up. At the same time, Volkov had reappeared behind the one he'd kicked, breaking its weapon arm and both support joints before going for the head.
The last Gardemek turned toward Ren.
He summoned a single Geo pillar from the ground and sent it flying straight through the mansion's wall. They both listened to it disappear before hearing a loud crash outside.
"So how's everything going?" Ren asked.
"We lost Auguste," Volkov said with irritation. "Solenne must have gotten him out of the main hall when everything started. We've had eyes on every exit, and nobody's seen them. Or left alive to tell anyone else where they were."
Ren hummed. "Bodyguard had a Hydro Vision, right?"
"Yes."
Ren closed his eyes.
Volkov knew what Ren was doing. He was extending his senses to try to find the location of Solenne.
It still made the hair on Volkov's arms stand up slightly, but he'd gotten better at not showing it.
"They're a few floors below us," Ren said after a moment. "They're trying to reach the exit!"
He didn't wait for a response.
Ren reinforced his arm with CE and drove his fist through the floor.
The hole opened up into the level below, stone and tile collapsing inward, and Ren dropped through it without a second thought.
Volkov stared at the hole.
"I hate that courier," he said to no one, and jumped down.
/ — /
Solenne
"Quickly, Sir," Solenne said as she casually cut off the head of a Cicin Mage that tried to stop them.
The head hit the floor, and they walked off before the headless body fell to the ground.
Auguste was struggling to keep pace behind her, his breathing already labored from what was barely a jog by any reasonable standard. "To think the Fatui would interfere! How did they even find out about this?"
She didn't answer. Her silence making Auguste grunt in annoyance.
They continued down the stairs toward the main entrance. The sounds of fighting from above had been escalating for the last few minutes, and that meant time was running short.
They were almost at the bottom when a loud crash shook the ceiling above them.
"Stand back, Sir."
Auguste stumbled to a halt without argument for once, and Solenne put herself in front of him and brought her blade up.
CRASH.
The ceiling before them caved in.
Two figures dropped through the new hole in a cloud of stone dust, blocking the path to the exit.
Her instincts honed in the moment the people in front of her walked out of the dust. Something in her was telling her body that one of the people there was dangerous.
But it wasn't because they were stronger. It was their mere presence that made the hair on her arms rise.
She had fought Vision wielders, soldiers, and duelists across her entire career, and she had never felt anything like whatever was coming off the person in front of her.
She swiped her blade to clear the blood on it and brought it into a defensive position.
In front of her stood a Fatui agent holding a firearm. And beside him was a young man she had never seen before, covered head to toe in blood, with pieces of flesh stuck to his clothes.
He wore a Fatui mask that did not fit the man's attire at all.
Ren Roman stared at the former Champion Duelist with narrowed eyes. He'd run into plenty of powerful people in Teyvat. Xiao. Shenhe. And that thing at the bottom of the Chasm. He was confident in identifying what or who could actually kill him.
This woman was one such individual.
In that instant, the same thought flowed through both fighters' heads.
'He's Dangerous.'
'She's Dangerous.'
Neither of them moved.
Solenne reached back without breaking eye contact and pressed her hand flat against Auguste's chest.
"Stay behind me, Sir."
/ — /
Ren
"Last chance to surrender, Auguste." Volkov stepped forward just enough to be heard. "We need something from you. Surrender now, and you will not be harmed."
As firm as Volkov's voice was, it lacked conviction. It seemed like he already knew how this was going to go.
The person in question didn't even look at him.
Volkov sighed, turning slightly toward Ren, and lowered his voice. "If I get up close, I'll only get in the way." He raised his gun. "Keep her busy."
Ren nodded.
Volkov disappeared.
Not even a second later, both sides moved.
CLANG.
Ren's blade met Solenne's, and the force of the clash rattled the chandeliers above them. They glared at each other as their weapons pushed against one another.
But Ren was losing.
She was slowly pushing him back. Her strength wasn't the overwhelming kind, but it was hellishly refined.
In terms of skill and overall physical ability, Ren could barely compare.
'This bitch is strong!'
He jumped back and threw a hand sign.
"Rabbit Escape!"
Dozens of rabbits burst from his shadow and charged. Ren moved inside the swarm right behind them, using the chaos as cover.
Solenne's surprise lasted a fraction of a second.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
She cut straight through the swarm. Her blade slashed the rabbits one by one, making them blow up with each swing.
Infusing concentrated Hydro into her attacks, she used it to nullify the anemo explosions that would otherwise compromise her balance.
In a literal second, almost half the swarm was decimated, and she had already run past them, her eyes narrowing on Ren's position.
'Fast,'
Her attacks were so fast that Ren had to use all of his focus to dodge them. Weaving away from some and using Anemo extensions to throw off her flow.
But she was relentless.
Every time there was an opening, she closed it almost instantly. Leaving Ren in a defensive position.
So he decided to change tactics.
'Extension Technique, Orochi.'
Geo burst from the ground like waves, forcing Solenne to retreat and give him some space.
'Extension Technique, Nue.'
Electro burst from his hand, but she ran faster than he could track. Closing the distance between them until he was in her attack range.
Her blade slashed directly at his neck—
CLANG.
At the last second, Ren summoned a Geo construct that caught her blade. He extended the Geo to cover the blade, forcing Solenne to let go of her weapon.
'Gotcha.' He dropped into the shadows and came up behind her with his blade already swinging at her neck.
At the last second, she leaned back, dodging his strike with a backflip. A completely unnecessary manoeuvre that only irritated him more with how clean it was.
Ren tried to destroy her stuck weapon, but the quality was immaculate. Even when he put force into it, it wouldn't snap.
'At least I disarmed her. So I should have the advantage now.' He watched her standing there, unarmed but completely composed. '...So why does she still look like that?'
An uneasy feeling settled in his gut.
'Can't waste this chance.'
He summoned Geo shards and wrapped them in an anemo swirl, the rotation making them whine as they spun faster and faster. He drove his foot into the tile hard enough to shatter it and launched forward.
'Seriously?!' His eyes widened as she launched forward as well. Her fists clenched to fight him unarmed.
The Geo shards honed in and flew. Solenne ducked, slid, and weaved through the barrage without slowing once, the explosions going off behind her as she closed the distance.
Ren sliced at her torso.
She twisted to the side and drove a kick straight into his liver.
"Ugh—!"
He staggered, and she immediately took advantage of the opening.
Time slowed as Ren saw her fist going straight at his face, forcing him to move away—
But Solenne fainted, punching the ground and pushing off it to land a kick to his face.
CRACK.
The blow sent him sliding back hard.
Just as she was about to follow up, a large maw erupted from the shadow beneath her.
'Orochi!'
The Great Serpent opened its maw to swallow its prey whole. But Solenne twisted in the air and landed a Hydro-infused punch clean on Orochi's face and sent the shikigami crashing away.
Before she even landed, Ren already had his hand extended at her.
'Extension Technique: Nue!'
Solenne's eyes widened.
BOOM.
The electro hit clean and sent her flying into the marble wall hard enough to crack it straight up to the ceiling.
Ren didn't wait. He stomped the ground and sent a volley of Geo spikes erupting toward her from every direction.
Dozens of them. Her form disappeared under the impact and the thick cloud of dust and rubble it kicked up.
He didn't wait for the smoke to clear to check if she was dead. He made sure to double-tap.
'Rabbit Escape—'
BOOM.
The Geo holding her exploded before he could finish his thought, and a dense white erupted from where she was, swallowing the entire room.
By pure reflex, he jumped back and landed on the stairs above. His eyes frantically searched for any indication of her form in the mist, finding nothing.
'I can't sense her.' The realization made his heart stop for a fraction of a second. 'The mist is hiding her presence!'
Something jumped from the mist and blurred from his right. The instant it was out of the mist, he was able to sense it.
Ren swung and caught a blade on his own, except—
"What the fuck?!"
Instead of Solenne, it was a water recreation of her that pushed against him with nearly the same strength as the original.
'She can make water clones?!'
His instincts screamed from behind.
'Hunt. Hold. Crush—'
The shadows rippled beneath him.
'Come forth, Ganki!'
The fusion exploded out of the dark and slammed into the second clone that had been closing from behind.
'She has two?!'
"Ganki!"
The shikigami understood immediately. Geo erupted from the ground and hit both clones hard in the abdomen, sending them flying back.
Ren took the short moment to catch his breath.
'This is bad.'
She was stronger, faster, and more refined in every measurable way. And now she was somewhere in the mist he couldn't locate, directing two near-full-strength clones while his CE was draining quickly.
'Why is she fighting avoidantly?' The thought surfaced through the noise. 'She's stronger than me, so why didn't she just fight me straight on?'
'...Unless.'
She was able to notice his abilities' immense energy drain. Either from his limited use of shikigami or his reliance on his extensions. She knew he was draining energy fast and that it was easier for her to tire him out.
The irony wasn't lost on Ren. This was the exact tactic he used against stronger opponents, being used on him, and he almost didn't notice at all.
The mist thinned slightly.
Solenne stood across the room from him, sword back in her hand, her form mostly intact beyond a few shallow cuts and some torn fabric.
"You're not bad." She said. There was some acknowledgment in her voice, if it could even be called that.
"You have strange summons. But it won't be enough."
/ — /
Solenne didn't even let Ren respond. The moment the last word left her mouth, the mist thickened around the entire area, and she burst forward.
She was done analyzing him, and now she knew what she had to do.
Her target was not Ren, but instead Ganki.
At the same time, both clones shot at Ren, forcing him to fight one-on-two while Solenne kept the fusion occupied.
Even if Ganki was made to conserve CE, it still drained a lot of CE. Especially if it had to constantly defend and use elemental abilities.
The drain was worse because Ren himself had to use extensions to defend against the clones.
'Where the fuck is Volkov?!' Ren thought as he clashed against one clone and ducked under a strike from the second. 'I need to think of a plan. I can still hold out for a while, but if this keeps up, I'll lose.'
Both clones were pressing him, cutting off the angles he'd normally use to create space. He managed them with Rabbit Escape to flood the area between him and the clones with anemo rabbits, disrupting their movement enough to buy fractions of seconds.
He infused Nue's electro into the rabbits as they made contact with the clones, the electro swirl reactions degrading the constructs and making their strikes sloppier.
The thing about elemental constructs was that they depended a lot on the concentration of elemental energy. If something of equal or more potency came into the mix, it could disrupt and destroy the clones.
Sadly, Ren couldn't get enough time to create the concentration needed as the clones were relentless.
Meanwhile, Ganki was barely holding on.
Solenne didn't give the shikigami any room to fight back. Using her Vision to create water constructs that messed with the shikigami's footing while being fast and strong enough to destroy its Geo arms about twice now.
She dodged against a strike from Ganki and shifted her sword into a thrusting position.
Ganki's eyes widened at it, using all four arms to block the strike. The sheer force sent both fighters flying as it tried desperately to stop the sword inching closer to its chest.
'Should I summon Yǔnjié?'
The thought surfaced and he pushed it away immediately.
Apart from Orochi being used in Ganki's fusion, summoning Yǔnjié meant that he'd need to desummon Ganki and risk fighting three people at once.
It didn't help that he needed to chant to create a fusion.
Yǔnjié was his strongest trump card, but it cost a shit ton of CE. He couldn't guarantee that even if he was able to summon it, it could take care of all three fighters before they killed him.
The enclosed space also risked friendly fire with the Fatui. Yǔnjié was meant for destruction. Summoning it now would only be detrimental to the battle.
'I think I've got it.'
He desummoned Rabbit Escape. The moment the rabbits vanished, the clones surged at him without the interference, and Ren stepped back to give himself just enough space.
"Nue!"
The shikigami burst from his shadow and released a wave of concentrated electro that hit both clones before they could close the gap. They scattered back, their forms disrupting under the current.
Ren immediately felt the CE drain from the shikigami's use of elemental energy. It was far stronger than his extensions, but it drained him a lot.
Across the room, Solenne clocked Nue's appearance. Her eyes moved from the new shikigami to Ren's face.
She saw his face full of sweat and laboured breathing.
He was exhausted.
She prompted herself to finish Ganki first.
The moment she looked back at the fusion, Ren submerged into the shadows.
He moved through the dark and surfaced inside the mist itself, deep enough that the density swallowed him completely.
Nue should keep the clones busy for a while, and he needed the extra time for this.
'Extension Technique: Rabbit Escape.'
He gathered the anemo into a single concentrated mass between his hands, channeling CE into it. The ball started to glow a bright green color as the Anemo became more concentrated.
'A little more!' Ren gritted his teeth as he forced more CE into the extension.
'That's enough.'
"Hah!" He drove the concentrated anemo ball into the floor with everything he had.
The shockwave went outward in all directions.
It was like a bomb had gone off inside the room, instantly dispersing the mist and shattering every window simultaneously.
And in its wake, the entire room was completely saturated with anemo energy.
Solenne's eyes went wide as she understood what he was planning.
"Nue!"
The shikigami didn't need to be told twice. It climbed as high as it could get and released its strongest electro discharge into the anemo-saturated air around them.
The two elements met.
BOOM.
The Electro-Swirl explosion that followed engulfed the entire room in a single white instant. Ren had already recalled Ganki and thrown up a Geo wall to shield himself from the explosion.
'Fuck!' The wind didn't relent for a long time, the force of the blast slowly chipped away at the Geo wall, no matter how much he reinforced it.
When everything calmed down, the room was completely destroyed. The floor was stripped bare, and most of the outer walls had holes punched clean through them. It was a wonder how the room had not collapsed in on itself.
Ren stepped out from behind his Geo wall and looked across the wreckage.
He spotted Solenne crouching, using her sword planted into the floor to help herself stay upright. Her breathing was haggard now, and there was a chunk of Geo that was embedded in her right thigh.
She tried to push herself up and was eventually able to after obvious pain. She coughed out blood and ripped the chunk out of her thigh with her bare hands and looked up at Ren with fury in her eyes.
All the while, Ren stared back with a wide smirk.
The playing field had been leveled.
There was no sign of the clones anywhere. So either the explosion had destroyed them from the force or elemental energy concentration, and there was a cooldown before Solenne could summon them again, or she simply didn't have enough left in her to create more.
Either way, he liked his odds.
"Hahaha!" He couldn't help it. "Come on!"
He rushed at her.
She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and charged back.
The two of them crashed together, and the exchange that followed lacked any flair the previous round had.
They fought like rabid, exhausted animals.
Ren used Geo extensions to create walls and platforms, using them to attack from odd angles while disrupting her movement.
Solenne wasn't a slouch, though. She countered with compressed hydro blasts that were too fast for him to dodge. Forcing him to block with Geo constructs.
Sparks flew as their weapons clashed over and over.
In the split second after Solenne countered his strike, he saw an opening right at her torso and immediately took it.
She saw where he was heading and sent a Hydro blast straight at his face.
But Ren wasn't going to stop. He just moved his head slightly, letting the blast take a chunk of flesh off his left shoulder.
He closed the gap and slashed upwards at her torso with the last of his momentum.
Solenne tried to dodge, but she wasn't fast enough.
The blade opened a shallow cut from her lower stomach to her chest.
"You little shit—!"
A wave of Hydro erupted from her and swept everything, sending Ren flying back through the debris-covered floor before he managed to dig in and stop himself.
They both stayed still for a moment. Taking a moment to recover.
Staring at Solenne's injured and enraged form, Ren could see victory in sight.
It was so long that he'd fought a battle against an opponent that he could have a proper fight with. A fight that's so… exhilarating!
Something pricked under his skin.
His eyes sharpened on her. A strange sensation was building from somewhere deep in his core. Like he could feel the Cursed Energy that flowed through his body, becoming one with it.
He could feel it.
His next attack would bring him something new.
Solenne felt it too somehow. She straightened up, Hydro swirling around her blade, and pointed it directly at him.
"Come at me!"
"With pleasure—!"
"Hold it!"
Both of them stopped.
Volkov stood at the far end of the room with a dagger pressed against Auguste's throat. Around him, more Fatui personnel had appeared from the corridors, surrounding Solenne from every angle.
'Oh. So that's what he was doing.'
/ — /
"Surrender, or else." Volkov pressed the dagger closer to Auguste's throat.
Auguste didn't even say anything. He was shivering so badly that Ren was pretty sure the man might piss himself.
"You won't." Solenne's voice was flat, but it was clear that she was rattled. "You need him."
"That may be." Volkov replied coldly, "But I never said I needed him intact."
He pressed the blade until it nicked the skin of Auguste's neck, making blood trickle out.
Solenne's jaw tightened. Her eyes moved from Volkov to the Fatui personnel surrounding her from every angle, then back to Volkov.
Slowly, she lowered her sword. Dropping it to the ground before putting her hands up in surrender.
"Huh, seriously?!"
Solenne jolted as every head in the room turned toward Ren.
He was staring at Solenne with genuine indignation, looking personally offended that she actually went through with the surrender. "Things were just getting good!"
The Fatui personnel exchanged hesitant glances.
"We got the target, Roman," Volkov said out loud to Ren. But it was clear from the slight shaking in his voice and hands that he was actually afraid that Ren was angry that they stopped the fight. "S-Stand down."
Ren narrowed his eyes at him, and the rest of the Fatui tensed.
Even so, they really didn't want to go against Ren. They'd seen what Ren was capable of in the last hour. None of them wanted to suffer the same fate as the slavers. Especially if he decided to use the rabbits.
A tense silence remained for a few seconds.
Then Ren sighed. "Eh, fine." He waved a hand dismissively and lowered his sword.
Everyone in the room practically exhaled at the same time.
"This completely killed my whole flow," Ren muttered, rolling his wounded shoulder and wincing slightly. He looked up at Volkov. "Are there any slavers left?"
"W-Well, yes, but I don't think you need to—"
"Why?"
"Because—"
BOOM.
The explosion shook the entire mansion. Except this one was much stronger than his Electro-Swirl explosion from before.
The force was strong enough that it made the mansion walls groan and make the ground shake for a few seconds before it stopped.
What came next was the total silence.
Ren couldn't hear any fighting anymore from inside the mansion. No gunshots or shouts from slavers. Like something, or someone, killed them all with a single attack.
'What the hell is that?'
Something with an enormous amount of energy was approaching. A foul concentration of negative energy that radiated killing intent.
The sheer amount of it made Ren's every cell scream. He was pretty sure this person was equal to or even stronger than Xiao.
Solenne seemed to sense it as well, her entire body going rigid. She took a step back from the front door, eyes wide in fear.
That told Ren everything he needed to know.
He reinforced his grip on his sword. Geo began forming around his feet, and Nue's electro crawled up his blade.
Volkov was shouting something at him, but Ren had muted him out. His entire focus narrowed to the door in front of him.
Then the sounds of unhurried footsteps grew louder as they approached the door.
With an ominous creak, the door opened to reveal a woman.
Her heels clicked as she stepped through, a large scythe resting in one hand like it weighed nothing. She walked past the destroyed entrance without giving it a second look, like it wasn't worth acknowledging at all.
Her gaze landed on Ren, who immediately tensed up.
His eyes landed on hers, and he saw a pair of red, X-shaped pupils.
***
Author Notes: Here's an image of Ren at the compound raid.
Don't worry, I didn't forget the "other image" I'll reveal at the end of the arc.