Kazue hated that she had to effectively ignore Mordecai when she ran past, but they needed to force Dimitri away before he could try to finish Mordecai off, nor could they afford to lose the advantage that he'd bought for them so dearly.

Originally, she had intended to break off and go back to him once the others had Dimitri cornered or on the run, but then the bastard had teleported. It had been fast and not a proper spell, so all Kazue had been able to do was track him and immediately direct an attack at him, but the nearly instantaneous teleport had her worried he'd be able to keep doing that, and she was the only one who could track the teleports as they happened.

She had been right.

Then her core whispered over the earring, "Fuyuko says that Amrydor is taking care of Mordecai's avatar."

Amrydor? The boy had no healing magic. Wha— No, she cut that thought off. She just needed to trust her allies to know what they were doing and focus on hunting Dimitri. For this hunt, she was playing the part of the hound, because no one else could track him the way she could.

The first few times that he teleported, Kazue had called out his direction or location, but she swiftly figured out something easier and faster. For one thing, Carnelian Flame was responding to Kazue's knowledge instantly and darting off to lead the hunt toward Dimitri. She'd never appreciated the familiar bond so much as she did right now.

That was great for helping to focus everyone in the right direction, both to defend themselves from spells or to chase after him, depending on how far he was teleporting, but that still left a moment for Dimitri to throw spells at people before they were ready, and his spells really hurt. Kazue had been clipped by a lightning bolt that had thrown her against the opposite wall of the corridor and charred her arm down to the bone as well as blasting off the end of a wing.

For a moment, the pain had literally blinded her before Moriko had arrived, quickly chanting a healing prayer that eased her injuries down to a dull ache as it repaired the worst of them. Kazue gave her wife a quick kiss of thanks before summoning a healing potion from her ring to help finish the job. Normally, the scent of cooked meat stimulated her hunger, but in this case, it turned her stomach instead. Kazue did not want to become cooked meat — She needed to react faster and in a way that could protect herself and the others.

Her solution started with no longer attacking Dimitri once others were focused on him. Instead, the moment he was preoccupied, she started preparing her next spell and holding it ready to cast the moment she knew the destination of his next teleport.

This was one of the spells she'd been working on since the inspiration of seeing Hajime's magic. While she certainly couldn't lay claim to the same tier of reality-bending power, it worked nicely with her blend of dream and faerie magic. It created a large, swirling swarm of multi-hued darts whose colors flickered and changed as they flew toward their target.

Each dart's effects were completely random and weren't even determined when the spell was cast. For the brief moment that the darts existed, each dart contained all the possible effects, and the reality was only resolved once they struck. All the basic elemental attacks were present, of course, with a very small chance of resolving into one of the rarer or more exotic elements, but the darts could also inflict a variety of mental and sensory effects, even if they only lasted for a couple of seconds, plus they would sometimes attempt to disrupt any magic that they interacted with.

Hallucinations, random intrusive thoughts, vivid recalls of memories, losing all ability to figure out directions of any sort, even up and down, and more oddities were included in the mental afflictions. Blindness, deafness, and loss of other senses were the most common of the sensory afflictions, but the darts could also cause senses to combine into weird things like being able to 'hear' light. Rarer, and much worse in Kazue's opinion, was the chance that two senses would swap, so that the target might experience tasting sounds and hearing flavors without being able to hear sounds at all.

Kazue rather liked the chaotic potential of the spell; it was hard to defend against completely, and she could cast so many darts because half of them would do nothing at all when they struck, but neither her nor the target would know which were which until after they hit.

Even if a target was fully affected by the swarm of darts, they wouldn't be hurt too much, but the combinations of different effects were incredibly disorienting — even Mordecai had taken several seconds to recover when he'd volunteered to be a target and not resist the magic, and even after that initial recovery, he'd looked sick and reported that he felt unsettled for a while after that experience. So they were disruptive enough that no one was going to just let them all hit, which forced Dimitri to act defensively after his teleports.

She'd rather disrupt the teleport itself, but unlike the dragon-moose, Dimitri was not teleporting a long distance nor just using a spell; he had glyphs inscribed in hidden places, often just out of sight by being beneath the surface of the floor, ceiling, or walls. Each of them was linked specifically to him, and all he had to do was channel a bit of mana toward a selected glyph, and it instantly did the rest of the work for him.

Not only did this deny her the time to react despite the combined enhancements of her liminal and battle spirits, Kazue was also pretty certain that she couldn't block his teleports anyway; his spells were just too strong. She wasn't certain that he was technically as powerful overall as the big boss moose, but spellcasting was his specialty — trying to interfere with his casts the same way was far too difficult for her current power and skill.

At least they were slowly destroying his glyphs. They couldn't always quickly spot a nearby glyph, but if one of them noticed a spot that looked like it might be hiding a glyph, Moriko or Bellona would smash that spot. They weren't always right, but they were right often enough that Dimitri's options were slowly being reduced.

Which wasn't nearly as fast as Kazue would have liked. Fuyuko was being incredibly aggressive, and the risks she was taking terrified Kazue. The girl was constantly moving, both physically and through the shadows, to keep up a nearly continuous flow of attacks. Including those blasted arrows that Mordecai had gotten for her.

Kazue had counted three of the five having been used so far; the violence of the implosions was impossible to miss. It would be less terrifying if Fuyuko wasn't firing those arrows from just outside the range of the implosion. However, Fuyuko was also using them exactly the way Mordecai had said they should be used: only when she had a perfect shot.

And every shot had triggered one of Dimitri's contingencies.

One of the contingencies had created a small blast wave as it formed a shell that protected him perfectly, though it had also left him completely immobile for those couple of seconds of complete protection. Another one had been tied to a duplicate of Dimitri and reactively swapped them right before Dimitri got hurt, leaving a nearly naked corpse on the ground with a large semi-circle taken out of it. And the third one had been a sort of rapid regeneration, but it was closer to 'undoing', because it also repaired Dimitri's clothing at the same time it repaired his flesh, and for those few moments of restoration, Dimitri had been perfectly functional, as if he was healthy and whole.

After that third one, Dimitri's teleports had become either short enough that he was too close to others for Fuyuko to safely use her arrows, or far enough away that by the time she could find him and shadow jump, he either had a counter of some sort ready or was teleporting again after downing a potion. Those longer jumps also put him out of range of Kazue's swarm of darts.

Kazue wanted to mentally complain about how many potions the man had, but she was pretty certain that her group had even more. They'd nearly bought out the entire stock Moriko's parents had been able to either produce or procure, and the nexus's alchemists had sent them with the best brews they could presently make, though they still had a long way to go to match Kaoru and Jhaeros's skill.

Kazue ordered Fuyuko to stop chasing Dimitri's longer teleports after Moriko had to rescue Fuyuko from a spell trap, or rather, she wasn't allowed to rush ahead of everyone else.

It had slowly become clear that combined, they had a slight edge over Dimitri, despite his terrain advantages, and that was without Mordecai. They had no reason to rush; they just needed to wear him down.

"My avatar is awake," Mordecai's core reported, and Kazue sighed with relief. The good news accumulated as more updates of Mordecai's avatar came in; then Dimitri made a long teleport.

Kazue's eyes widened when she realized where he had gone. "He's after Mordecai!" she shouted as she desperately flew after the mage. Mordecai was strong, but he was still injured and only had two people supporting him.

Moriko managed to dash ahead even faster than Kazue could fly, but all of them were suddenly tossed around by Svetlana's convulsions as she strained against the bonds holding her. Kazue had been concentrating so hard on tracking Dimitri she had completely forgotten about Mordecai's plan with the glyphs. By the time they recovered and finished rushing to Mordecai, Dimitri was gone, and Mordecai was holding a single finger.

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He made a face as he removed a bit of glove, and then the ring underneath. A quick flash of fire made sure the ring was cleaned of any residue from Dimitri, then Mordecai pinched the edge of the ring, with the tip of his index finger inside the hoop. "Svetlana, Kazue will be helping you out in a moment. Until then, I would appreciate it if you could sweep up all of Dimitri's items and equipment and put them in storage. Oh, and if you could please destroy his glyphs and any traps or such that he has created, thank you. Feel free to otherwise harass him, but please don't kill him; I have a soul stone waiting to ensure the job is finished."

Everyone had walked up to him while he was talking to the now mostly freed nexus. When he was done, he handed the ring to Kazue and gave her a quick, comforting hug. "You can do this," he said. Then he turned to everyone else. "I want you all to follow Kazue and keep her and Svetlana safe. Don't worry, I'm not going alone, I have a hunting partner available." He grinned and waved them off. "Go on, it's going to take her a bit to wake up." Then he reached out like he was grabbing a rope and yanked on it.

A woman's form appeared on the ground next to him, skidding briefly. "Nikita Bolvyarink," Kazue's core whispered, reminding her of Deidre's briefing about her final zone boss, before these last two zones had been added. Kazue wanted to see what was going to unfold, but she had a job to do.

Unfortunately, helping Svetlana out meant putting on that ring. Knowing what it was and what it did made Kazue's stomach knot up. "Alright," she said softly, "we're going to fix the worst of what's been done, then we can finish freeing you. I'm pretty certain that you don't want to blow up." Then she made herself put on the ring.

"Hi Svetlana, I hope we can just talk for a while really soon, but there are things to do that must be done quickly. If you could lead us straight to your core, please? Moriko and I will need direct contact to help with part of this. In the meantime, you should re-imagine this zone as growing into a sphere centered on your core, then all of your other zones as concentric spheres centered on this one. It should form layers, sort of like an onion. Calculate how much territory you will need to claim, and then when you are ready, grab it all at once. Um, you will probably have to break some wards on the way out, be prepared to eat a lot of mana all of a sudden, too."

Corridors and walls shifted, forming a direct path to the depths of the nexus.

"Um," Svetlana's voice said directly into Kazue's mind, through the ring, "I— I didn't know I could claim more territory for an already existing zone like that." Her voice held that same mix of pain and frustration that Kazue had heard from Deidre several times.

"This is part of why we need to hold on to the ring for just a little bit; we're going to be helping and teaching you."

There was a moment of silence that felt like hesitation, then Svetlana said, "I just let myself pay enough attention to decode your messages. I'm going to try to trust you, but it's going to be hard."

"I understand," Kazue said with an encouraging smile, "but you'll see how we're helping very soon."

Svetlana was still calculating the growth of her zones when they reached her core. It was a soft, ice-blue color, though that appearance was marred by the bands of rune-etched metal wrapped around it. Kazue wrinkled her nose at the sight. "We'll get those ugly things off of your pretty core as soon as we can."

The core was also partially embedded into an array of crystals that formed the back wall of the chamber. "Everyone, avoid that crystal wall. That's where all her excess mana is being stored." Feeling the pulses of mana flowing through that array was mildly terrifying. If anything destabilized it, Kazue didn't think even Satsuki would be able to contain the resulting explosion if she were here.

She and Moriko carefully made their way to the core to lay their hands on it, doing their best to avoid the metal bands. The core matrix of their rings and earrings became part of a larger network of communication, along with Moriko's soul bond, and the spiritual link from Kazue's avatar to her core.

"Ah? What are you two doing?" Svetlana asked nervously.

"Don't worry, this is just so we can get some information to you faster. I'm going to be directing things, but we wanted to be able to send more detailed instructions that would be difficult for an avatar to communicate." With the different connections to Svetlana's core from each ring, Kazue could almost see everything with the same detail that Svetlana could, though she had to shut her eyes to not get dizzy from the double vision.

Kazue chose to ignore what Mordecai was doing; she really didn't want to watch this 'hunt'. Instead, she focused all of her attention on what Svetlana needed to do. "Oh, I see you have already converted two zones into spheres. Are you ready to try breaking out of the mana ward and convert the rest of them yet?" Svetlana's awareness of the ward was a given; it would be impossible for a nexus to not feel the change and restriction of the mana flow around them.

"Yes. Mordecai's core just shared some tips on how to shape my mana for the attack."

Kazue smiled and nodded. "Go ahead then. We need to get that done first." Of course, breaking out of the ward wouldn't be needed if they had told Trionea what their plan was for the excess mana, but they were pretty certain that the military would not like the idea of rapidly growing the unknown nexus.

Svetlana's mana surged outward in every direction, the ribbons of energy briefly becoming visible as they streamed out of the room. The leading edges elongated into sharp spikes of mana, with some striking the shield before the others. That initial strike drew energy toward those impact points, making it more difficult to respond to the rapidly increasing number of strikes, with every strike being backed by continuous pressure as the nexus strained to grow out of these bounds. Kazue did not envy the coven for the backlash they were about to experience when their ward broke, but it would keep them from being able to counter Svetlana's growth.

All it took was one crack to set off a cascade of failures, then Svetlana's zones surged outward until the nexus was a perfect sphere. The mana that had been stored in the ward was swept along in the wave, and was captured and used to the claiming of territory, but Svetlana was still holding on to far too much mana.

"Grow a full new zone, make it as large of a sphere as you can. Don't worry about theming or shaping anything yet; we just want territory." This was hypothetically dangerous as it made Svetlana even stronger, but Kazue wasn't certain that she'd have been able to contain the nexus anyway, if she'd been struggling to break her bonds.

Svetlana gleefully complied.

"Nice. Now, let's grab unattended equipment and such, but ignore personal items. You can disassemble the inner walls from the top down, but leave the outer wall and support structure alone. We are going to avoid killing anyone, alright?" Kazue's mind entirely sank into the process of guiding Svetlana through the process of clearing her territory out as best as she could, in preparation for undoing most of the damage that the Puritasi had done.

"Now, map out a series of branching tunnels from your current corridors to the surface, designed to make it easy for the flow of soldiers to spill outward. Build them from the surface down, and then watch for opportunities to finish connecting them, when there are gaps in the auras of the evacuating soldiers. Keep doing that, we don't want any of the panicking ones to get themselves or others killed." She was not going to have any more unnecessary deaths if she could help it.

"Great, now disable all the mindless constructs and stuff, we want to free up that capacity for something better. Let's sort through your animalistic inhabitants next. Keep the ones that are not badly traumatized or too prone toward violence. For the rest, do you have that template from my core? Great. Use that design for their new bodies, and at the next reset, manifest them at your outermost borders and break the bond."

The design in question was basically that of a thirty pound rabbit, but upgraded in speed, durability, longevity, cuteness, and fluffiness, along with having a powerful empathic ability that should help keep them out of trouble. They also had an innate ability to make themselves someone's familiar. Kazue had designed them to be able to easily enjoy a life without violence, and to find bonds with people if they became so inclined. It was not the best possible solution, but there was too much to do for them to be able to give proper attention to each animal.

"Alright, let's go through your sapient inhabitants. If they are sane enough and not inclined toward violence, they can choose to leave. We have some choices for new bodies as well, let them pick their preferences. We can even give them some clothing and money, thanks to raiding the encampment. Plus, I think we can offer them a bit of created rewards. Also, we have some places some of them might be interested in going to, such as the kobold clan near Azeria, for anyone who picks a nicer kobold form for their new body." Again, they had limited options for dealing with so many people. The best they could offer was material goods and options for where they might want to go, assuming that they did not try to integrate into Trionean society.

Kazue doubted many of them wanted to do that.

"If they choose to stay, and you want them to stay, we can work on their forms and some therapy later. For the rest, we're going to have to give them less dangerous bodies and have them manifest in sort of luxury cells. They'll be prisoners, but only until they are safe enough to release."

She hated keeping people prisoners who were themselves innocent victims, but releasing violently insane people into any society was unacceptable.

"This should give us enough room for some new inhabitants." Kazue grinned at her understatement. "We want to try something that we think should work fine, but Mordecai's never had a reason to try before. There are a lot of pixies and some other tiny inhabitants of ours who are willing to join you and help protect their friend Deidre. So, if you are willing to trust your other self's judgment, you can try just accepting all of your avatar's choices as new inhabitants."

Trying to claim inhabitants remotely was a strange concept in some ways, but the avatar was an extension of the core. It also worked perfectly, with the exception of Kazue's core complaining that, despite knowing it was going to happen, having so many connections break at the same time stung.

"Great. Now for the hard stuff." She wasn't looking forward to this, but Svetlana almost certainly needed some surgery. "Show me the mana patterns of your boons, and describe what you know of what each boon does."

More than half the boons proved to be vile in some way, and Kazue told Svetlana to follow the instructions Mordecai's core sent through Moriko on how to cut those out. Then there was a lot more discussion on which of the other boons Svetlana did and did not want to keep, examining what boons were now available for her to choose and how to select them herself, along with carefully removing every lingering order that affected Svetlana after examining it to see if the order was supporting something that Svetlana normally couldn't do, and going through some options on how to clean up her territory and recreate zones to her liking.

The massive purge and the removal of so many boons seemed to make Svetlana's older zones 'softer' and more malleable than older zones normally would be. Kazue wondered how much of an older zone's resistance to change was tied to its inhabitants and how many boons were affecting the zone.

Svetlana suddenly interrupted Kazue while they were discussing all the minutiae of how Svetlana might want to change things, and her voice was panicked. "Something is wrong with Moriko."

What? Kazue's thoughts scattered as she pulled her awareness out of the connection to Svetlana's core and focused on the physical world. "Moriko? What's wrong— Moriko!" her panicked shout grabbed everyone's attention as Moriko started to fall over, trails of blood coming from her nose, eyes, and ears.

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