“Empress, I am glad the Paladin Thread Project has just exited its prototype phase!” My head researcher said while kneeling.
My hand reached out and grabbed the offered glass jar. The black threads wiggled and shuffled themselves to be closer to my flesh. A small pulse of Qi and the Paladin Threads went into my most secure Soul Storage and gently plopped down next to my family’s portraits and registrars.
“How soon can the Threads be reproduced? And how long after that until I can outfit at least a Special Forces Unit with them?” I asked, returning my hand to the armrest.
“We are working on the mass production incubator tomorrow and in a month, respectively,” my researcher explained.
I nodded and formed an Empress-Grade Qi Stone into his hand, another one in the opposite for exceeding my scheduling expectations.
“Go get something nice for you and your family. You have the rest of the week off.” I dismissed him.
The man bowed and hurried out of my sight. With the press of a button on my armrest, I brought up my schedule and management screens. I tapped on the holograms, shuffling resources out of the development quarter and into the production quarter. I made a note to my future self to double everyone’s pay, primarily to hide the researchers involved with the Paladin Threads, but also because they have earned it. Next up was today’s war me-
The second loudest sound I ever heard, only surpassed by the sound of planets colliding, rippled across my capital and threw me ungraciously into and through a few walls. Qi surged from me, healing the subjects I could see and doubling as a detection measure. Thankfully, I had avoided the unpleasantness of smashing through my subjects and feeling their sinews wrap around me. The warning sirens howled to all the heavens above and hells below, only contested by the shrieking of the Star Spawn invading my capital.
“Sying!” I snarled.
I modulated my Qi as my twelve secondary hearts awoke, my ten arrays of Golden Cores spun up, and the weight of my empire solidified around me as armor and armaments. I jumped through my roof, phasing through the matter, to meet the sickly purple aura of my sole equal. It was only through our complete mastery of all three Domains of Cultivation that each other’s combat radiance didn’t blind us. But she had never had this purple aura before. What has she been researching?
Through the metaphysical aura, whose strength was so great that it manifested in the narrow band of light that non-cultivators used to see, I saw Sying’s physical body unchanged from our last battle. Long silver streaked blonde hair fell to her hips, her seven pairs of eyes each tracking a different target with the compound eyes at the center of her face visibly doing nothing, but I knew they could see Qi. Twelve arms each held a Qi Artifact of some sort. Her left hands held a halberd, sword, bow, and Morningstar. Her right hands held a tower shield, book, bowl, orb, and mirror.
Sying’s mouth was filled with various teeth from animals and monsters alike. The outermost layer was a fusion between a lamprey's needles and a Vortex Shark's serrated edges. Behind them were strong Dragon teeth of various elements, which, unfortunately, still provided a meager version of the iconic breath attacks. Even without Sying using the various lungs and Qi spells that the Dragons used to escalated their weapons from annoyances to disasters.
A multicolor glow, primarily silver and red, lay at the back of her throat. It was a vestige of how she was able to command her kin to such lethal efficiency and served as a handy Qi-free backup weapon.
Her iridescent silver-pink butterfly wings slowly flapped, not providing any lift but spreading Qi-laced powders of various sorts. Both to strengthen her spawn and to weaken my troops. At least until my second array of Golden Cores pulsed and purged the nearby area, finally, at the very bottom of her current 5-meter height, her human-like legs dissolved into tentacles below her knees, betraying her origins of an alien ocean from the crashed planet.
Sying was the inspiration for the Paladin Threads, after all.
“Jiang!” Sying’s aura pulsed, pushing me halfway to the ground before I stopped myself. “Today your empire, tomorrow humanity.”
That was my last coherent memory before I found myself outside this house, wheat fields and other mundane crops growing outside. However, further details were irrelevant as I ensured my physical and metaphysical internal organs stayed inside. My pathetic shambling closer to the farmhouse tripped the filmiest of store-bought wards and triggered bells from within the house. Though strangely enough, I could sense no electricity, or far more concerning any Appartum, let alone Machina, anywhere within the premises.
“No,” I muttered to myself and shook my head. “Maybe the owner is a Technophobe.”
I shuffled down next to the backdoor and slid down the wall, sitting on the patio. I closed my eyes and breathed in, focusing on my metaphysical lungs, trying to get the history of this place-
The footsteps picked up their pace as I vomited, and my physical lungs tried to vacate my body.
“Alright, I don’t know who or what you are, but mimicking someone's death throes is a new low, even for Star’s Spawn.” the owner shouted as he kicked open the door with a spear in hand.
The man was a prime example of my Vebrition realm-borne men. He was of medium height and had tanned skin from working outside daily, though a lighter shade than the norm from using tractors and other Post-Industrial machines. His brown hair was cut short to keep sweat from sticking around. He had black eyes that were scanning his wheat fields.
Deeper in the house and around some corners, I saw well-maintained guns. I didn’t understand why he would pass up guns, the ingenuity of generations, especially a railgun that could harm a Starspawn, for a spear. I couldn’t sense any Qi of the Three Domains from him, so he didn’t have any Spear Spells. Nor would he have relied upon the cheapest store-bought wards if that were the case.
Either way, I still couldn’t sense any Appartum or Machina from the spear and guns, respectively. I couldn’t even feel the minute amounts from the door hinges and handle.
“It shouldn’t matter that it’s an untrained mortal. My researchers are paid enough to compensate for the lackluster subject.” Taking a risk, I removed the Paladin Threads from my Soul Storage.
The lilac light show brought the man’s attention to my prone form, causing him to adopt a confused expression at my state and the glass jar.
“You are forgiven for not showing me the proper respect.” I wheezed through my collapsed physical lung.
I removed the jar’s stopper. “Sorry for the unwanted modifications.” I held up the jar to the mentally paralyzed man. “I, God Empress of Phyrexian Chimera Empire Olivia Jiabeng-Xun, hereby dub you the First Paladin.”
The man understood the hint and stuck his hand in the jar, “I, Kenny Dixon, hereby accept this duty bestowed upon me.”
The Threads flooded Kenny’s hand, wiggling into his pores and entering his bloodstream. In just 3 seconds, Kenny was a shivering mass of Paladin Threads, but he returned to his original form after a 5-second wait, and his human instincts melded with his new ones. The man blinked and opened his mouth to say something irrelevant.
Meanwhile, I dissolved into Qi vapors, flowed into his left lung, formed a tiny pinprick of Qi, and poked an equally small hole in his soul. I then rushed in and stitched his soul back the way it was, hiding the fact that he wasn’t a mundane human anymore and the fact that I was still alive inside of him.
“As payment for your services as a farmer-” I tickled the inner walls of his soul, granting him the basic knowledge needed to jumpstart his Cultivation and granted a few spells. “-And an upfront reward for your service as the First Paladin.” I gave him a flash-forged sword, shield, and javelin triad with a breastplate and helmet, all made of copper, which was the essential equipment for my Militiamen, which, unfortunately, was the most I could create from my Qi currently.
“All of my stronger gear has been destroyed. I should be healed enough to give you my basic equipment kit in a month. This can be sped up by eating any Monster Cores or really anything with Qi in them.” I breathed out, vastly increasing Kenny’s soul durability before slipping away into a healing slumber
This was not how Kenny imagined his day would go. This was not how he thought the week would go.
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4th day of the Jubilation Month, 13th Millenia, 8th Century, 22nd year of Jiang’s Reign.
Day 1 The Collapse of the Empire and The Birth of Sying’s Reign.
Two days before Kenny and The Empress’ Meeting.
A loud boom shook the world, then another, and another, to the point that everyone knew doomsday for Humanity or Starspawn had come.
“Why must it be so loud? They weren’t this loud in their previous clashes!” Shouted Kenny as he tumbled out of bed.
Kenny stumbled to his security room, trying to balance with a world that wobbled independently of him. The back wall had the main weapon racks of the house. On the racks were guns, primarily rifles for hunting beasts and Qi Monsters. At the center of the gun case was a silver railgun for Starspawn. On the left wall were his security monitors. Thankfully, nothing has tried to invade his land during this chaos.
Kenny stumbled down the stairs and poured himself a bowl of cinnamon-flavored cereal. He then took the carton of coconut milk from the fridge and held it above and across from the bowl. He was forced to pour out the milk diagonally in a half-futile attempt to get it to actually land in the bowl.
CLANG-BOOM!
The world tilted so much that the ground rose and shattered Kenny’s bowl and nose.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
“Ah!” Kenny screamed as he clutched his nose.
He pulled himself upright into a chair, unwilling to clean up the mess before he stilled. The air conditioning shut off, the coffee machine, fridge, and freezer went silent, the hum of his security system vanished, but most damning of all…
Kenny pulled his legs into the chair and placed his head between his knees.
…was that he could even hear these comparatively quiet things in the first place.
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Day 1, 1 and a half hours later.
After panicking and stress eating for an hour and a half straight, Kenny slapped himself and got to work checking what didn’t work.
“First off,” Kenny said while pulling his fridge-freezer combo unit out from its space by the countertops. “Do I need to replug you or check the fluids?”
The cords were all in place, and when Kenny carefully handled the freezing liquid tubes, they were still full. Kenny took a chance and unplugged the unit, then waited 5 minutes and replugged it, to no avail.
“Okay, maybe I have been disconnected from the grid?” Kenny asked himself as he went to the light switch.
Off and On made no difference, the only sources of light were the sun and the cinnamon-scented candles Kenny liked.
“Fff,” Kenny groaned as he picked up a lit candle and walked down to his basement.
It was hard to see, but in the basement were a few different generators, mostly because he couldn’t afford any brand of multi-fuel generator that wouldn’t break in a year. There was also the manual bicycle generator he built himself. Kenny approached the biofuel generator and hooked it to his house’s internal power grid. After double-checking that everything was properly grounded, Kenny checked the fuel tank and saw that it was full. He then turned on the generator.
Kenny waited a beat before placing his face on the table and screaming.
Kenny wasted the next 30 minutes testing all the other generators and even the manual bike; not a single Volt was generated.
“Okay, okay, let’s see if my farm is the only one having these problems,” Kenny said while walking outside with his cell phone.
Which wouldn’t wake up.
“Please, I need you to work.” Kenny pleaded. “I don’t want to jog my way into town. If all of you don’t work, my railgun cannot work.”
Kenny breathed in and shoved his former cell phone into his pocket as he raced towards his security room. Taking a candle from the hallway, Kenny entered his security room and found that even his security grid was down. He cursed to himself as he opened his armory and strapped on a rifle, shotgun, and pistol. Kenny took his railgun off its hanger and checked its internal battery.
-The railgun’s status screen was pure black.
“FF,” Kenny pressed his face against the armory wall and screamed again.
Kenny hauled his load of guns to his living room on the first floor and placed the railgun on the dining table. Then he walked outside, gazed over his field, aimed his rifle at a scarecrow, and pulled the trigger.
No bang, no bullet traveling three times faster than sound, nothing.
Kenny wordlessly screamed as he threw his rifle on the ground.
-half an hour of screaming for 15 minutes and the rest of walking later-
Kenny walked into town, which was utterly jam-packed with all the other farmers, though there were no cars, helicopters, or other personnel transportation. Everyone that Kenny could see was on foot like him. The next strangest thing was that no building had its lights on, and those lit used candles or sunlight.
“Everyone, please remain calm!” Shouted the mayor from her podium in the central square. “I will have any volunteer Lightning-Element Cultivators around the various farms in 3 days maximum! They will most definitely fix this issue of ours!”
Nobody heard Kenny’s hum through the general discontent of those surrounding him.
“Three days max to figure out why Metal doesn’t even accept Lightning Qi and implement a fix for all the farms. This girl is foolish.” Whispered a woman in a lilac robe next to Kenny.
“It’s not just my farm that had the electricity problems then.” Kenny whispered, “Is internal combustion working for anyone else, like furnaces or guns?”
The woman turned her gray eyes towards Kenny. Her light lilac hair was tied into a bun except for two bangs to frame her face, and she inspected him from head to toe. Her eyes lingered on the now useless rifle on his back and pistol on his waist. Her left hand went into her right sleeve and pulled out a miniature spear with a tag around its spearhead. Then, she made sure Kenny’s eyes followed her hand as she placed it into Kenny’s right pocket, opposite the pistol.
“Take off the tag once you have space; the spear will regrow to its normal size,” the woman said. “As for your question, no. Thankfully, for my great granddaughter’s sake, that does not extend to Fire Element Qi.”
Her right hand retreated into her left sleeve and withdrew a coupon for the Cultivation General Store.
“Go before even the weakest of wards are gone!” The woman said before pushing Kenny out of the crowd.
Kenny would have stumbled from her shove, but the one positive thing about this morning was that his legs were improving at balancing. Kenny hurried past the unlit buildings until three minutes later and stood outside the CGS.
The storefront had marble pillars holding up the birch and limestone roofing. The glass sliding doors were jammed into the open positions, visibly another victim of the anti-electricity phenomenon. A steady stream of customers came out of the store with various candles. Lanterns were sparse, as one unfortunate woman accidentally closed her lantern, and the fire went out. Kenny walked past her and her friends, trying to reignite the lantern.
Half the light came from the windows inside the store, and the other half came from persistent Fire Spells, such as hovering Fire Orbs or even a flock of small Firebirds flying to the checkouts and back up the aisles.
The staff was visibly frazzled, so Kenny waited for the Firebirds to pass by the Aisle Signs to navigate. It only took a minute of waiting and walking past the aisles until he found the Ward Aisle.
…shelves upon shelves were empty; not even dust remained.
“Chirp.” went the Ward Aisle’ Firebird.
Once the Firebird saw Kenny’s attention, it flew down the aisle and hovered in front of the last shelf with merchandise.
“Thank you,” Kenny said, patting his pockets for a treat. “Ah, sorry. I’m out.”
The Firebird tilted its head before it nodded and turned around to resume its previous flight pattern. Kenny took the dismissal as it was and backtracked to the ends of the aisle. He joined the steady stream of customers heading to the checkouts. The flow of the crowd pushed Kenny into one of the checkout lanes before he could decide which one to go in by himself. All items chosen to manipulate impulse buying, such as bags of chips and candy, were gone.
“We have ones that feel so weak?” The cashier said as she flipped through a big book of items.
The flame orb above her flickered, so she turned her head upwards and breathed out a small stream of flame. The stream of flame orbited around the flickering Spell, the tip falling into the orb, and was consumed to reset the Spell’s clock. Then, she went back to finding the correct item.
“The Guardian Ward is five bucks.” The Cashier said after confirming the price.
Kenny pushed his lips together. “Oh, this is the single-use plastic of wards.”
The cashier did not attempt to hide her sad smile.
Kenny pulled out his wallet and placed a five-dollar bill in the cashier’s hand.
“Thank you for your business.” The cashier said. “Hopefully, we’ll get a restock in a week or so.”
Kenny nodded as he returned his wallet to his pocket and joined the crowd, leaving the store. As his body went with the flow, Kenny turned his attention to the manual, and the cover was nothing flashy; it was just the wardstone’s inscription. Unfortunately for him, the manual writers assumed a .. more extensive knowledge base than Kenny. Kenny only figured out that the ward protected a small building. His house was barely scraping the inside of the area for a mere 100 Perikya worth of energy.
Which was ten of the basic Combat Spell, Qi Pulse.
“This is more of a scent blocker than actual protection,” Kenny muttered, his left hand rubbing his temples and shielding himself from the sun’s glare. “I am saving that coupon for actual protection.”
A purple wave rippled across the sky and blocked the sun for five seconds.
“What was that?” Kenny asked himself as the others around him asked similar questions.
That’s when the howling started.
Kenny’s eyes darted around and spotted ripples in the shadows cast by the structures around him. Patches of unnatural blackness bloomed and erupted into chickens; if chickens’ wings had blades for feathers, their eyes shone like cats, a large pale green talon arcing over their head, tall enough to disembowel a woman even if the chicken ran between her feet. Oh, and they were all an obnoxiously bright shade of red, save for the aforementioned talon.
Kenny and the other civilians around him froze briefly before scattering to the four winds. Kenny heard some Cultivators fighting back against these new monsters. Though all the shadows were spawning the monsters, this new breed of Starspawn—for what else could they be?
Above the central square shone a silver light. Small golfball-sized orbs detached themselves from the miniature silver sun, and the smaller orbs launched themselves at the new Star Spawn, each of them smashing through where their targets’ brainstems should be.
Thankfully, the Star Spawn hadn’t mutated so far from their lookalikes that their brainstems would be elsewhere.
Everyone barely had the time to breathe in before a new set of howling echoed through the town.
Kenny glanced at the miniature spear and ripped off the shrinking tag without hesitation. A sliver outline of the full-sized spear blossomed into existence; a second later, the spear resumed its normal size. Kenny suddenly knew how to perform basic jabs and block with the spear as it grew.
Kenny saw more silver orbs impact the new Starspawn, killing them instantly. Kenny frowned as the shadows pushed away the corpses only to spew forth more bodies, either the ones that died were instantly revived. In this case, these Starspawn had the potential to learn across infinite lives. Or brand new bodies and minds were being mass-produced on an unbelievable scale within his town. Either way, the bodies were piling up, and someone would need to depose the bodies, or else plagues, natural and unnatural, would blossom like kudzu.
“Civilians! To the Central Square! To my subordinates, plan A113!” bellowed the silver sun.
That was the signal for humans yelling to clash with the howling. Numerous Cultivators streaked across the sky, landing near the hotspots of monsters spawning. The nearest shadow broiled as it tried to spawn more monsters, only for the rapidly forming heads to explode into chunks as a Cultivator landed nearby. The blur that was slicing the monsters was connected to the Cultivator by a thin thread of pure blue Qi.
Kenny glanced at the Cultivator as he turned away, only catching sight of a lilac cloak around their shoulder.
Kenny sprinted for the central square. About halfway there, he merged with a blob of other civilians watched over by a trio of Cultivators.
“Well, whatever that wave was obviously can’t affect everything,” the man next to Kenny said to his friend, running behind him. “Otherwise, these weird monsters would be crawling out of our shadows, not just the buildings.”
“Nor did bioelectricity disappear. Ah, if only Lightning Qi could stay in metals.” Kenny said as the safe zone approached.
As the civilians reached the area, swords, spears, arrows, and Qi projectiles flowed from the safe zone. Kenny felt his hair stand up as he passed the chalk line, denoting the safe zone; out of the corner of his eye, Kenny saw that the very air rippled above the chalk line as more civilians entered the safe zone.
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An: I wanted to continue, but the characters said no. We have reached a natural ending point!
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Things the Author wants to introduce in the story but currently can’t think of an organic way to do so:
#1: The God Empress of Humanity takes on new names for every territory she claimed back when she was a global conqueror. Thus, she uses one of the many names stylized after it when she is in that region. (I don’t want to butcher more Chinese names than I have to). I have not decided her original name, but Kenny hasn’t earned the right to hear it.
#2: Veritbrion is a mixture of primarily British and United States, thus the English names. While guns were invented in an Asia-esque realm I haven’t named yet, Veritbrion is where the Railguns were made.
#3: The Asia analog was crushed when Sying’s planet crashed into the Earth analog. Yes, I do mean that literally. Sying and Olivia are the only survivors from those sides of the planets. The other half of Syning’s planet had survived and taken the place of Not!Asia. Unfortunately for humanity, that place is expanding and mutating the environment to the point where humans can’t survive. The capital was in the continental Europe analog.
#4: This is not a LitRPG story. It is immersion-breaking that a magic-using kingdom older than a few centuries never makes/discovers the magic equivalent of calories or atoms.
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Characters that appeared in this chapter list:
The God Empress of Humanity:
Born sometime in the age of bronze and numerous city-states as humanity pulled itself from its nomadic roots and established long-lived agriculture. She was the greatest hunter in her village until the age of 8 when a local Sect surveyed its lands, where her strange affinity for Qi was discovered. Despite her young age and complete lack of teaching, she mastered the basics of Qi Refining to the point where the three Great Domains were all featured in her Qi.
She took over the Sect and the region at age 9, thus forming the core of her empire.
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Sying, the God Empress of Starspawn:
Born in an alien ocean under an alien star, Sying has experienced far greater and stranger things than anyone else. Save for her fellow God Empress. Though the Goddess of many names hasn’t had the pleasure and pain of protecting her world from her sun going supernova. Thus, Sying provided heat and light for the now-rogue planet for millennia until it inevitably crashed into humanity’s cradleworld. Sying seeks to convert humanity’s cradle world into a new home.
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Researchers and other folk of the capital: Dead or wish they were dead.
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Matriarch Serenity “Liliac Lightning” Jones:
The head of the Lilac Syndicate Sect has made sure that her children, biological and otherwise, want for nothing and is wise enough to gain positions in the rear. She is producing supplies for the war effort and protecting the supply lines in general. While she stays in Seven Jewel-Crop Haven, her commercial-focused Sect has reached all over the Veritbrion Realm. …at least until the very darkness of night and storehouses started to spawn monsters.
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Young Mistress Alexandra Jones:
Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she is adept with Lightning-Element Qi and Artifact usage and is excellent at using her Artifacts at long range. Though she is far enough down the line of succession, she has no hope of attaining anything besides a small branch of the Sect and a stud to match. She plans to form an everlasting warband of her clones and artifacts. But to do so, she needs to turn the theoretical cloning into reality and then figure out how to give them combat ability that isn’t scouting nor message courier service.
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Kenny Dixon:
Our protagonist is way over his head. Before the story starts, his only experience with non-mundanity was the rare Qi Beast that snuck past Serenity’s wards around the town. Then, one of the Syndicates would come and kill it.