Puren Ning watches as the foreman flies away into the distance. A subjugation force would be here soon, and it was likely that if this was to be the battleground, no one would survive. Once a cultivator advanced to Rank Six, their control over their element becomes effortless. Pillars of fire blasting through the sky, jets of water slicing through mountains, the removed part of the mountain crashing down on the target, all without any exertion on the part of the cultivator. To combat a humanized beast, the subjugators would have at least one member of that caliber, to defend the members of the team wearing it down. She glances at the ribbon of Heavenly Energy she had been doing her utmost to affect one last time before exiting through the hole to negotiate with the beast that absorbed the center of it as he flew through, leaving broken threads to wave about behind him.
As she approaches, the creature speaks in his own language. In front of her eyes, words appear on a black box floating in front of the humanized beast in yellow.
“The term is humanoid, for your information. I doubt humanize is even proper language,” it reads. Without even moving to greet her, or acknowledge the fact he had simply absorbed the full brunt of the foreman’s attack for minutes, he made to correct what he saw as a failing on her part. Hopefully that means he had no intention to obliterate the engine village for the insolence of mounting a resistance against them. To be safe, she drops down to her knees and kowtows before him.
Beasts typically would have less focus on elemental powers during their growth. Monsterized versions often bucked the trend, gaining powerful attacks for no reason, but a non-monster beast would rely upon it's powerful body to smash through anything that stood in its way.
“Whatever is fascinating at my feet?”
He spoke again, the writing placing itself in her vision in the same location, relative to her field of view. Unable to help herself, she speaks with a voice completely saturated with sarcasm.
“Clearly it’s the feet I’m obsessed with, for having the privilege of being attached to your esteemed self. But no, that’s arrogant to hope to even see them. Rather, I would adore the ground the feet tread upon, as it had to honor of supporting a beast that has obtained all three dantians.”
Aaaah why did she have to run her mouth like that. Perhaps she was lucky and the beast didn’t understand the tone she was using. It was reasonable, considering how he had no knowledge of the language as of a day ago, and had to have a device shoved in his head to understand her at all.
Then again, he had a device shoved in his head to understand her.
“What was that? I don't think I caught it.”
Puren Ning digs her head deeper into the ground. It doesn’t feel like anything, the helmet doing an admirable job of protecting her from damage, but the intention should be clear. That was a rebuke, if a gentle one. An admonishment to not repeat that kind of insolence to her betters, just like all the other ones she had received. Her parents had always told her that if she didn’t hold her tongue she would end up insulting someone Blessed by the Heavens and used as a stepping stone for their growth. Anyone could have had some sort of fortuitous event that gave them awesome power after all. This could be hers if she stopped messing it up.
“The master commands stop looking down.”
Raising her head, Puren Ning feels her eyes start to tear up. This was it, the part where her insolence is answered for good. At least with the helmet on anyone who managed to survive the oncoming purge would be able to tell who she was by the intact head. No, never mind. Once she was dead, the beast would just take his equipment back.
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“That human. What was his purpose? Didn’t even monologue.”
Shocked by her good fortune at still being considered ‘of use’, Puren Ning does her best to seem like an authority about the comings and goings of the local forces.
“He is the field supervisor sent to oversee this village area by the Chaotic Demon Sect, and he has returned to them in order to marshal a subjugation squad to deal with a beast ranked too highly for him to destroy himself.”
Looking pensive, the beast thinks for a moment. How exactly he managed to communicate basic emotions through body language was a mystery, but clearly it was a trait shared by the majority of the animal kingdom. Without a formal language of their own, before humanization, or humanoiding she guessed, they would have to rely on nonverbal communication to make their intentions known. Pets and bonded beasts were good examples of how humans could understand without words, after all.
“How did he gain the comprehension that it was beyond his means to do any kind of meaningful damage to me?”
“After I scanned him, I noticed he was almost out of stamina while you weren't even bothering to block, and I reminded him that a beast had to be Rank Six to take on a human form.”
Was that a mistake? Now that she thought of it, it was unusual for the foreman to not realize that he was hitting something above his rank. Even a rank five human would feel like hitting a block of stone to someone using physical force, unless they were specifically not using their defenses. To do so as a beast...
She had spoiled his trap, and let his prey see that it was working itself into a weakened, easy to kill state.
“When would you estimate the scrubs are going to get here?”
“Probably by midday.”
And judging from the horizon, the sun would reach the mountain in about twenty minutes. That was assuming that the foreman moved quickly, but the sect headquarters wasn’t very far away. Ideally, she could subtly indicate to the beast that it would be best to proceed with haste, lest the village become a battleground that leaves no survivors.
“The master commands, send a signal and display the response of armor locations, save to lower visual array. A slave obeys the command to escort me to the nearest one of those dots.”
Well that was half of what she want-
A cacophony of noise goes off in her head, six different directions blaring a tone, very slightly offset from each other. A square appears in the bottom right of her vision, with six dots at random points and an x mark in the center. So the command was to the helmet. That made her the slave huh? Angrily, she spits out a rejection.
“With my lack of strength, I’m afraid that this one would only slow you down in your quest.”
The beast could jump off a cliff. He’d survive, but at least that would put distance between herself and destruction. Rather than being dragged along to be a luggage slave, followed by death, she’d rather take the helmet off and just send the beast on his way. At the least, she had gotten a better understanding of Heavenly Energy from her brief interaction.
“The master commands scan me.”
Experiment 31
HP -3786/7 INT 18 STR 4 DEX 7
WARNING: STATISTICS HAVE BEEN RESET TO BASE VALUES. SEEK 45 ATTENTION.
Now that was garbage. An immortal, weakened in some twist of fate to beneath even her level of strength. Now she was going to have to follow along.