Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

Rita's transformation was preceded with her body burning up in purple flames after which her skin turned purple and she unleashed demonic wings as well as a tapered tail which she stabbed at the Empress with.

Harlyn looked surprised at the transformation as she avoided getting stabbed by the tail but she quickly noted that it was not totally unexpected.

All veils had been cast away and the nefarious nature of the ladies of the Sapphirine Cult was not exactly going to be a fresh thought anymore. It should be expected.

Harlyn just continued the motion she had been making with her fists for yet another blow to Rita's face but the demonic woman was not having it.

With her physical stats boosted by her demonic transformation, she was able to intercept the blow and stop it in place before making an arrow of lust flames and shooting it at the Empress.

Harlyn let out a blast of her cultivation in a manner that would have surely shattered the lounge had it not been for the space-warped coat of protection that was still very active.

The blast of the Empress' cultivation pressure was enough to combat the flames. It did not matter that the flames were not physical but emotional in effect, they were not allowed to get close enough to the Empress to cause damage.

The blast of cultivation pressure pushed Rita away which had been the point but then space warped and Rita was gone only to arrive barely a few inches away from the Empress... In striking distance for the delivery of a blow that packed both the strength of her own cultivation as well as the strength of her Demonic Bloodline.

As her bloodline was gotten from Hal, Rita received increased strength in her lust demon bloodline to the point where, in her demonic form, she could battle with forces so much greater than her own... The Empress found that out firsthand.

When Rita warped space to get closer to her, Harlyn planned to blast her back with her pressure again and was surprised to see Rita react faster than her pressure could spread and strike her much harder than she had expected.

*BAM!*

*BANG!*

The contact she made with the ground following the blow had the Empress groan with both pain and realization. The pain only lasted a second or less but the realization had a lot of implications,

"I've underestimated you to my detriment," she said as Rita drew back the string of the Essence Stealer bow she had summoned.

When the violet-eyed purple-skinned demon let loose the flaming arrow that had formed, she manipulated the Empress' destiny to do what she had done a few times previously.

Harlyn could have struck away the attack but it would involve the use of her ordinance and she still did not believe Rita enough to force her to use her Ordinance, the Empress did nothing and time rewrote itself to accommodate her rewritten past just so that she could get struck by the arrow in a timeline she could not react to.

Of course, while Harlyn did not act preemptively to stop the arrow, she had her body reinforced for anything Rita could possibly have to offer. She floated up into the air only to be met with a punch from Rita which she blocked and reacted with her own.

They both had a small exchange of blows before the flames finally acted... Unlike the physical and easily quenched attack she had been expecting, the flames elicited emotions within the Empress.

She was shaking and experiencing an increase in horniness, for want of a better word.

It had a crippling effect on her... It went further than just being a need that required fulfillment... It went further than an itch that needed to be scratched. The feelings were debilitating and that was the point.

"Embrace it," Rita said, having closed in on her with a hand on her cheek and the other trailing down her chest to the valley between her breasts.

Harlyn appeared to be struggling to resist what the flames were doing to her.

Rita put her face closer while grinning in victory and preparing to take advantage of the Empress' prone form then she felt a hit on the mental defense erected around her mind.

Harlyn opened her eyes... Any expression or indication of struggle was gone because all that Rita had done to her was mental... It was just a mental induction of lust that became physical in body shivers and moistening thighs.

It was in the mental aspect of things that the Empress excelled.

The moment the lust flames began igniting lust within her while crippling her in the process, Harlyn had fought them back with mental fortitude and had won as easily as it was to blink.

The rest was all an act just to be able to exploit the very smallest of openings into Rita's mind. The protection Rita had was passive and was not hers to control but she could give Harlyn a way in and she just did.

The Empress grabbed and held Rita down with her cultivation pressure and with a focused attack, she broke through the defense Rita had over her mind.

The shattering of the defense sounded almost physical to Rita whose perception was turned internally to see the Empress's attack strike her mind or the very embodiment of her consciousness.

The attack struck Rita and whatever defense she might have thought to put up did not engage quickly enough to stop the Empress.

The things of the mind are not as directly represented in the way physical things are, at least not when there was no direct attempt to make them appear the same as things would be outside the mental space.

To interpret what the Empress had done in a physical sense would be to say she knocked Rita out mentally. As soon as she did, Harlyn could feel that she was being watched.

There was a powerful presence overseeing Rita's wellbeing and there was only so much Harlyn would be allowed to do before that being interfered but she was not afraid. In fact, Harlyn wanted to make contact with that being and so she prepared to strike Rita's consciousness once again.

And that was when Destiny warped... Things that had happened previously were rewritten so that Rita had never been punched.

Her destiny changed from being mentally knocked out and at the Empress' mercy to being very much awake and preparing a sneak attack which she delivered only to push the Empress out of her head,

"Get OUT!" she yelled and while her attack could not hurt Harlyn in any way, it did push her out and back into physical comprehension where she saw Rita wobble in the air before falling to the ground.

The manipulation of destiny Rita had done had been put in place before she was attacked in preparation for any attack she was too weak to avoid or defend against.

A failsafe of sorts.

While Rita had put it in place before getting attacked and made it so that it would kick in when she was not able to make decisions for herself, she had no control over what events would be rewritten which made it dangerous.

Every attempt to manipulate destiny came at the price of either physical energy or Cosmic energy and in the worst-case scenario, it happened at the cost of lifeforce... The greater the event that is rewritten, the greater the toll it takes.

If the attack she was rewriting to make it so that it never happened had been done by someone mightily stronger than her, Rita could very well lose her life.

For example, at the fifth star of the Cosmic Saint Realm, if Rita had been critically injured by the strength and pressure of a powerful Demi-god and her failsafe kicked in, she would heal from the injury as though she had never gotten hit but she would die from the energy she expended.

Or another example, if someone else had been killed by a powerful Demi-god and a healthy Rita attempted to rewrite it, she would succeed but would use all her lifespan and die in the process.

This applied to all ordinances and especially Abstract Ordinances which were more about rewriting natural orders.

It was why Ordinance use loses effectiveness, the stronger the opponent is.

The event Rita rewrote was done by an opponent stronger than her in cultivation and mental fortitude. Despite the boost, her Demon form gave her, Rita was still not at the level where she could genuinely harm the Empress who still had more in her arsenal she had not yet used.

"Impressive, but I- Hmmph-" the Empress' words were interrupted when someone slammed into her and knocked her out of the air and into the ground.

The one who slammed into her was the blue-eyed Witch, Svetlana Doxon whose blue eyes were bright with anger at the grey-eyed Emily Antonov who was chuckling in mid-air and swinging her large war hammer leisurely.

The battle between Svetlana and Emily had been very heated but the two ladies quickly found that they were quite equal as far as cultivation and Ordinances went.

Svetlana had already managed to use her Artifact to do as the Grimoire once predicted which was to gain insight into the Abstract Ordinance of Time which surely surprised Emily who expected she would still be reliant on the Artifact.

While the two ladies were sporting injured as well as torn clothes that revealed more of their sexy bodies, Emily took mighty advantage of a chance she got to hit Svetlana with her War hammer as though she were hitting a baseball which is what resulted in the Duchess' impactful contact with the now irate Empress.