Hikari leapt high into the air, leaned forward and stretched out her arms and legs. Using her telekinesis to compress the oncoming air below here, giving her the lift to glide through the air.
She travels at ten times the speed of a galloping horse, easily covering distances that takes a marching army days.
The scouts have picked up the cultist's trail. Convoys of wagons carrying steel cages of villagers laboriously dragging themselves along on poor roads weren't difficult to track.
She was now dozens of miles away from the estate.
Fully armed, her claymore on her back. Short sword and handcannon on her belt. Various throwing weapons, potions and contraptions strapped all over her giantic body.
At least until they disappear into the swamp.
Thick undergrowth, soggy ground, deadly swarm creatures lurking beneath the mud.
Hikari reached the Rendezvous point.
She landed in the center of a wrecked outpost.
There was a gapping hole in the wooden palisade.
Splinters, musket shot marks everywhere, the faint smell acrid of gun powder.
No corpses. Only the cannons remained in their positions atop the palisade.
"Hmm, they have a brute that smashed through the wall. Must be the flesh creatures that attacked us. Cannons and muskets don't do much against them. "
She glanced over the camp again, double checking for survivors.
No survivors.
Then, she noticed a lifeless grey plant wrapping itself around the leg of a watch tower. Its shrivelled bud drooping over. It was completely drained of mana to the point of almost crumbling to ashes.
Odd.
She has hunted in this part of the territory enough times to know that the strange plant does not grow naturally in this parts.
Moving on, she focused in and expanded her mana sense.
There. A faint mana marking, unmistakably a Razenheir flame, barely visible to even adept mages and could persist for days.
Hikari followed the trail in the direction the markings point.
Gradually, the ground below her began to soften, the trees around her became fatter, the vegetation became dense.
She was entering the territory of the swamp trolls.
She knelt down, a speck of mana had tingled her senses. A different kind, a cultist marking on the stone, covered under a blanket of undergrowth.
Her hypersensitivity to mana allows her to detect markings of other forms, even those which she has never come into contact with.
She has now picked up the cultists' trail.
But first, some rest before a possible battle. She hid in the undergrowth just off the main road, thick and tall enough to conceal trolls.
Once she proceeds beyond this point, the cultists are likely to sense her approach. There would then be no more opportunities for rest until the battle concludes.
Reaching into her satchel, she took out a sealed pouch and emptied its contents into her mouth. A bland, compressed mix of herbs and wheat and whatever the supply depot workers happen to get their hands on.
Standard rations, just on the edge of being edible and nutritious. It contained additives that slightly reduce sweating and makes partially up for a lack of sleep.
She waited in the undergrowth until the sun set.
Once it was utter darkness, she chiseled off some chunks of mud that stuck to her and used telekinesis to clean the smaller chunks as the mud might contain scent that is visible to certain creatures.
She marched along the main road, her eyes moving left to right, checking for traps and fortifications hidden in the undergrowth.
It was an innate ability of hers to see in pitch darkness even more clearly than during the day, giving her a considerable tactical advantage against most foes.
Unsheathing her twin galvies, sharp blades on a disk, custom made with an inner rotor with telekinesis enchantments.
She telekinetically spin them up and hurled them straight ahead, ripping through the dead falls and foliage to clear a path.
The ruckus she caused sends flocks of birds flying out of the trees.
The path she cleared allowed her to dash ahead, leaving a trail of deep bootprints along the path. It was easy for an enemy tracker to follow, she just had to move fast to make up for it.
Minutes later, she reached the first check point, dozens of cultists hiding in the wood works and the mud. Her glaive rips into a section of the blockade, an arm holding a musket was sent flying into the air.
The glaive returns, clearing a path of vines and branches.
Flashes of muzzle flare in the dark. Gun shots making a splintering sound as they landed on branches and trunks. A cannon shot burying itself into the trunk of a thick mangrove tree.
Then, it was dead silence.
The cultists nervously gripped their loaded muskets.
One of them took out a wendigoo and began chanting. The wendigoo ringed and spread its eerie energy, animating the flesh abominations buried just under the mud.
"There you are."
A thundering glaive suddenly appear from the flank and ripped through their line, cutting the shaman in pieces. The flesh abominations, having their awakening ritual interrupted, returned to the mud.
Hikari appeared, catching her returning glaive and walking casually towards the wendigoo, crushing a cultist's solider crawling on the ground with a severed leg beneath her boot.
The surviving cultists fired their muskets which bounced off the giantess's suit. Flying daggers the size of swords floated out of their straps on the giantess's body, impaling the cultists through the chests.
She pinched the wendigoo between her fingers and dropped it into her satchel on her back. Even low grade imbibed trinkets will provide her with several meals.
She spun up her glaives and continued down the main road.
The defenders have been alerted. The growls of flesh abominations could be heard from afar. Her glaives flew, clearing the path forward through the thick swamp growth for her to dash forward
She dashed into a horde of flesh abominations.
The flesh abominations were made from a myriad of body parts.
Grey vines growing out of their mouths, wrapping themselves around its body, acting as seemingly both its armour and its puppet strings.
Glowing pink flowers bloomed all over their bodies.
They are impervious to everything a common town guard could bring. Swords, spears, muskets. Even cannons and shrapnel struggle to kill them.
The hordes of mindless monsters emerged from the mud converge onto Hikari's position in all directions.
Hikari spun up her glaives.
The glaives burned. The Razenheir flames that burn cold steel allows its wielders to create burning weapons without tar or oil.
Hikari released them, hovering them to either side of her for a moment.
After a brief pause, they start to rotate around her. Faster and faster with each spin.
As the hordes approach, the glaives fly in an outward spiral, its flaming blades cutting through their flesh like butter.
The entire area was lit ablaze in a sea of brilliant purple flame. The moist flesh and swamp mud kept the flesh abominations alive but could not douse the RazenHeir flames.
The glaives return to her. Hikari marched on, leaving the flames to consume the abominations. A squishy feeling under her boot as she trampled the burning flesh abominations beneath her.
But where is the cultist camp? The trail of their markings had gone cold, was this just nothing but a trap?
After making her way forward in the same direction as before, she found the abandoned cultist convoy. Rusted iron cages left ajar, mounted on carts half sunken into the mud.
The swamp had swallowed up whatever trail they might have left.
She focused in and expanded her senses again.
There. The trail of RazenHeir marks. The scouts must have snuck past the first two lines of defenses.
She kept her glaives and began trekking through the swamp.
Progress is slower but if she rips through the swamp now she could really kill them.
She using her short sword to cut through the swamp. The thick tree roots offered more reasonable footing than the mud.
If she does step in mud, her water proof wyvern skin boots keeps her from getting stuck and the wide boot area prevents her from sinking.
She reached the end of the trail.
A chilling sight greeted her. The lifeless husks of the RazenHeir scouts gathered around an extinguished campfire, constricted by a strange vine, glowing pink flowers growing out of their eyes and mouth.
"They thought the thick swamp would hide their campfire. They were careless."
Hikari thought. Getting on one knee, she pried their swords from their hands and kept it in her satchel.
Then she got up, raised her palm facing them, and incinerated.
"Something's looming ahead."
She unsheathed both glaives, spun them up, holding them in her hands.
She then tossed one of them forward.
After cutting through some vines and branches, it came back.
The glaives buzzed.
She tossed her glaive again. Again it returned, after shredding through more vegetation.
She advanced cautiously. Her instincts tell her that she was being watched.
The swamp was still. Not even the croaking of frogs nor the chirping of crickets.
The glaive flew again.
Hikari saw vines retreating into the mud on their own.
She advanced cautiously.
Up ahead, she could see the cultist holdout right up ahead through a slit through the swamp her glaives had cut through.
It was an abandoned stone structure claimed by the swamp A hint of campfire light on the underside of the leaves above the structure.
She stopped. She sensed an immense presence awaking from below the earth.
Vines shot out from the ground all around here. Her flaming glaive flew.
She stuttered stepped to dodge.
As the vines gushed from the ground, she pushed her spinning glaive into the thick vines, sawing and burning through the plant mass.
The vine mass stopped, and then split apart, diving towards Hikari in all directions.
Hikari darted back, her spinning glaive sawing through the oncoming vines.
Her other glaive returned to her, wreaking havoc on its return path.
There wasn't a moment to rest. A huge cluster of thick vines with giant glowing closed pink flowers emerged from the ground.
The flowers bloated and glowing.
Hikari dashed. Pressurized streams of acid erupted from the flowers, piercing through several trunks in their paths.
Her flaming glaives flew into the thick cluster of thick vines, sawing themselves in, igniting the cluster.
The flowers reloaded and released again, but their target had disappeared.
They fired in random directions.
Hikari was standing absolutely still, using a sound barrier to block in the sound of her own breathing and pounding heart.
The ground rumbled. A flesh golem emerged from the mud. Vines growing out of every one of its orifices. It lumbered around, using them as feelers to find its foe.
The vines on its back continued burning from the RazenHeir flame.
Hikari watched it lumbering around patiently for it does not appear to be able to find her in the pitch darkness.
Gently, she projected a trace amount of her mana into the glaive stuck in the vines on the golem's back.
She pulled one glaive out and flung it in the direction opposite her.
The enraged golem fired all of its vines and acid in its direction. It charged and smashed its arms into the spot where the glaive landed.
"The smiths are not going to be happy about that."
A fire ball hit it from behind, intensifying the flames on its back. The golem turned around, lumbering towards Hikari.
Then a flaming dagger flew at it from the left and stabbed it, disorientating it yet again.
Another fireball. Another dagger from the right. And one more from right above it.
It continued thrashing around, chasing an invisible foe. Soon, all of its vines had been burnt, leaving it completely blind. It was just a hulk of animated flesh now.
Hikari waited patiently as it burned.
The flesh golem eventually ran out of energy, laying still on the ground.
She walked over to his corpse and channeled for a moment, extinguishing the flames.
The glaive stuck in its back was still intact. She used it to saw through the golem's flesh, yanking out its core.
It was a decent prize that would probably fetch several months worth of meals for her.
A dim light appeared over the horizon.
Dawn, that's how long she had been wading through the mud.
The cultist holdout laid ahead.
Strange. She was well within their cannon range and yet they did not fire.
Cautiously, she approached, her glaive in one hand and short sword in the other.
As she stood before the gate, she heard the sound of rusted chains groaning, the heavy wooden gate creaking open.
An abbot appeared. He was in tattered brown robes. An inert cultist rune etched onto his shaven head.
He knelt down. "We surrender."