The first thing the seniors did was kill all remaining beasts.
Because Kali and Angel wanted to help Yasenia and the others quickly, they ignored the last three ninth-level Fusion Core beasts and a few other small ones that their armies didn't manage to finish off.
Valeria used extremely advanced footwork and instantly appeared before the three twenty-meter-tall creatures.
The three beasts looked down at the relatively small woman wearing an elegant and beautiful floral dress and lifted their giant legs, wanting to squash her.
Valeria's green eyes were calm, without any ripples, and she tapped the floor with the tip of her toe. The ground rippled as if she had tapped water instead of solid soil, and the three of them fell into a mud trap.
"RAH!"
"ROAH!?"
"GRAAA!!!"
Our resting girls saw the three beasts scream in pain and then cough blood, dying right after.
They were confused, so Tatyana explained. "Valeria has summoned roots in that mud pit. Thousands of roots have pierced their lower bodies, killing them instantly."
As if to prove her words, a single root sprouted from the ground wherever a beast remained alive, spearing their heads and killing them instantly.
A single breath was all it took to exterminate the remaining beasts.
Valeria smiled. "Very good. All the little things that bothered my cute master are dead."
Kali was still in her fox form, snuggling below Yasenia's left wing while emitting healing auras around herself to revitalize her lover. When she heard Valeria, she couldn't help but smile and chuckle.
Cecile was comfortably resting below Yasenia's other wing while using her healing white flames and harmonizing skill to help Yasenia regenerate. Of all of them, Yasenia was the one who took the most punishment since she tanked the giant serpent for many minutes.
Ebirah and Andrea were also injured, so Ebirah was surrounded by Kali's tails while resting at her side, making comfortable noises and leaning on the furry giant fox. Andrea was lying on Ebirah's back, relishing in the softly healing waves emitted by Kali.
Sierra was lying in front of Yasenia, and Angel and Evelyn were snuggling on Yasenia's giant dragon head.
Yasenia was leisurely wagging her tail, happy that her dears were surrounding her and giving her their warmth while looking at two spherical items, one the size of half a head and the other the size of one head, and inspecting them. They were the beast cores of the level one and level five Legendary Core beasts.
Yasenia's nostrils twitched. "The serpent's core smells nice, but the other doesn't look too appetizing."
Sierra lifted an eyebrow. "Really? You are quite picky, then. Both of them look quite delicious to me."
Cecile blinked and nuzzled with Yasenia, rubbing her giant phoenix head against Yasenia's dragon head. "I'm of the same opinion as you."
Ebirah moved her eyes and snapped her claws once. "I think the same as Sierra!"
The four beasts looked at Kali, curious. Kali gently approached her snout and sniffed them. "This one doesn't seem that bad, but I also don't find it a delicacy."
Yasenia chuckled. "So, something in the middle? Well, looking at our bloodline levels, it's just right."
Evelyn leaned over the edge of Yasenia's head to look down. "Can they be divided?"
Yasenia nodded. "Yes, but only up to tenths. Less than that, and the cores begin radiating energy outward."
Evelyn smirked. "Then, the low-level one should be divided between Sierra and Ebirah, while the bigger one should be divided into five. After all, you don't find it appetizing, right, love?"
Yasenia's scaly eyebrow raised, lifting Evelyn, who was leaning on them. "Cheeky, dear. But, sure. I don't mind."
Evelyn laughed and showed a thumbs up to Sierra, who chuckled and shook her head.
With extreme precision, the tip of her golden claws moved quickly, and the cores were divided. Then, using her energy, she threw the beast core slices toward the mouths of all of them.
Five beasts bit down, tasting the cores.
Yasenia felt the tiny slice melt after it touched her tongue, and a tsunami of energy gushed inside her. She felt a barrier loosening, and with an internal bang, her beast core broke through into the third level of the Fusion Core beasts.
A new stream of energy nourished her body, increasing her strength.
The other girls also broke through one level, allowing Cecile and Kali to break into the sixth Fusion Core level and Ebirah and Sierra into the eighth. This allowed them to know how powerful the serpent truly was since just a fifth of its core helped them break through.
Right then, the steps finally came close, and a few cultivators appeared through the entrances that hadn't collapsed during the battle.
Most of them were startled when they saw five giants of entirely different races leisurely lying together in the middle of a seemingly crumbling room.
The entire serpent and all the other creatures had long been kept in Yasenia's ring. Even if the serpent was more than three kilometers long, her ring could easily store it. After all, Yasenia's spatial ring was a treasure above the Transcendence Rank. The only true gift Tatyana gave her.
Tatyana, Valeria, and Mirrory leisurely floated before the beasts. Their forms were relaxed even when a few hundred cultivators stood before them.
Inside the group, there were a total of ten Epoch Core realm cultivators. One from the wolf clan, the one who faced Yasenia at the base of the mountain, stepped forward and asked. "What happened here?"
Valeria decided to speak because she knew that the other two would resort to slaughter very quickly. She wasn't against it, but as a Life Spirit, killing was not something she liked. Of course, if someone even dared to look at our girls crookedly, calling her Death Spirit might have been more accurate.
"We fought a beast, and we are now going to harvest the treasures in this room. I would advise all of you to leave."
The wolfkin snorted. "Don't act as if this place is yours. Do you really think you can monopolize this entire room?"
Valeria grabbed Tatyana's should, saving the life of the wolfkin, and smiled. "I do. My cute children have fought for this place, and now they deserve whatever rewards are here. I'm being gentle and understanding, giving all of you a chance before I let the two people by my side do their thing. By then, not even the heavens will be able to save you."
Valeria's green eyes glowed, and a monstrous wave of Life intent burst from her, swallowing everyone in a storm. "If you want to fight for this place, I don't mind adding one hundred extra corpses to the fifteen thousand that have perished here."
Her voice was gentle, but a menacing undertone gave everyone chills.
Tatyana and Mirrory squinted, and even though they were tiny compared to the giant beasts behind them, all cultivators observing felt as if they were parents protecting their cubs.
Rather than the enormous Dragon, Phoenix, Fox, Lobster, and Wolf, the sight of the three women gave much worse vibes, to the point that the weaker people were shivering.
The protectiveness and strength radiating from them made all the people below Epoch Core gulp and take a few steps back.
Mirrory spoke, her voice cold and indifferent. "You have thirty breaths of time before we attack. Leave this place."
The Devil Smashing Ape race seniors had come here out of curiosity, but as before, they didn't want to mess with the Astral Sky Clan, so they were the first to retreat, not saying a word.
Three of the remaining eight Epoch Cores were from the wolf clan, and the other four were rogue cultivators.
The wolf clan elder clenched his teeth, but he couldn't hold back the instinctive trembling of his body. With gritted teeth, he ordered. "Retreat."
After twenty breaths of time, only sixty people remained, most of them rogue cultivators. One of the remaining four Epoch Cores frowned and protested. "You are a newly established first-ranked power, but you are acting too arrogantly. I have connections with the Nine sects and high-ranking elders of the Jade Thunderbirds. Are you sure that you want to go against me?"
Tatyana, Valeria, and Mirrory looked at him with bored expressions, not even bothering to react. Now that they were in the high levels of the Unification Realm, the only ones left able to face them were High-level Epoch Cores and above. And even those would only be able to make them retreat.
The remaining sixty cultivators stood their ground, thinking that those words might have worked, but when thirty breaths of time passed, Tatyana spoke. "Since you've decided to stay, stay here forever. [Spatial Locking Formation]."
A titanic black and green formation ring spread and space solidified enough that spatial treasures stopped working.
The five Epoch Core saw them preparing to attack, and their auras exploded from them, together with the tens of peak-level Ethereal Soul cultivators.
Tatyana, Valeria, and Mirrory stepped forward with milliseconds of delay in between. The reason?
Three of the Epoch Core blinked at different times, and after that, they saw the three people who were supposed to be a few hundred meters away standing right in front of their faces.
Catastrophic energies gathered in the seniors' fists, and they punched forward.
"[Death Intent Level Nine]."
"[Life intent Level Nine]."
"[Truth Intent Level Nine]."
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Three fists landed in the middle of the stomachs of those three Epoch Cores.
Death, Life, and Truth energies exploded like a giant bomb, and the bodies of the three Epoch Cores bent like bows before becoming streaks of light that slammed against the walls behind them, killing every single cultivator in their way with just their momentum.
When the three Epoch Cores struck the rock, deafening explosions occurred while their bodies burst into gore, dying instantly.
Three punches killed a total of twelve people, being collateral damage.
One of the Epoch Core almost pissed himself and pleaded. "W-Wait, seniors! We can speak-."
Tatyana made a rising slicing motion with her hand. "Too late. [Death Strike]."
It was one of the simplest skills, one of the skills outer sect disciples learned in the Rising Talent Academy. However, in Tatyana's hand, it became extremely deadly.
A massive arc of death energies sliced everything in its way, killing even the matter in the air and leaving behind a stale smell of non-circulated air. The attack had even "killed" air.
The Epoch Core was powerless and was sliced in half, right down the middle, and his body then rotted away as Death Energies consumed his flesh and bones.
The last Epoch Core was a tiger woman who tried to flee with all her might.
However, after taking five steps, an extraordinarily beautiful red-haired woman stood in her way with her hands behind her back.
Mirrory just looked at her and muttered. "[Divine Truth: Death]."
The woman's body lost strength, and she fell forward, rolling like a ragdoll on the ground because of her inertia while the world turned dark forever.
Back where Yasenia was, Angel groaned. "Mirrory, take a bit less energy. That sucked away half of what I had recovered."
Mirrory blinked and smiled. "Sorry, little Angel."
Meanwhile, the low-level people had already fallen onto the ground, making anxious sounds while many pleaded for their lives.
Valeria sighed, and her gentle aura engulfed the surroundings in a soft embrace. "I can only send you peacefully. Sleep, children. [Nature Spirit Queen's Ethereal Lullaby]."
Even if Valeria didn't open her mouth, an enchanting but gentle voice echoed in the area.
The soft, soothing sound was so tender that all of them closed their eyes and relaxed.
This attack was a soul attack that didn't damage souls but made them so peaceful that they detached from their bodies, effectively killing them from comfort.
All the souls of the fifty remaining people unbounded and sizzled in the air, entering the reincarnation cycle.
They were all middle-level, Ethereal Soul cultivators and below, so this kind of attack was possible.
What this attack left behind were "living bodies" that cooled down quickly because of the lack of soul.
Tatyana waved her hand, and a curtain of death energy enveloped all those fifty corpses, creating a spark of unlife within them.
All intact corpses stood up, their skin, muscles, and organs falling, leaving behind just skeletons. Then, Tatyana sent another wave of death energy, swallowing all of them into her undead realm.
Their auras finally spread around, and all the storage rings flew from the corpses, even the three that were slammed far away, and fell onto Tatyana's hand.
The seniors then returned calmly to our girls' sides, not even a single hair out of place.
The girls were stunned and gulped. Even at the same level, the gap in strength felt like a bottomless chasm.
After a few seconds, five low-level Epoch Core and dozens of Ethereal Soul cultivators died, only to be resurrected as undead the next instant.