Sachihiro

Things get better quickly as my spirit oppression bellows silently against the creatures on their true bodies. They start dying rapidly under our onslaught and I send the signal for the last of our reserves to come in and its as though they were a flood held back by a large dam. They flow within our mists as enthusiastically as our opponents had come against us.

I slay/banish the last of my opponents and rush to the manor as quickly as I can but I divert my path as I feel it. Something dark and slimy and big and ugly and horrifyingly deadly. I don't know what that creature is but it slithers from the front of the manor from the person standing there shining brightly within my awareness.

I really don't know what that snake, worm, eel thing is but instinctively I know I am no match for it. I know no one in our party is a match for it thus I can only go for the summoner and not the summoned, and I have to go for him as quickly as possible.

I move in quickly but staying as far away from that thing as I possibly can whilst sheathing Razor and unsheathing my nodachi in an almost simultaneous smooth motion that surprises even me.

The sorcerer sees me coming and only smiles a slimy smile before the the now raggered and greatly depleted summoned creatures rush towards me as the very corporeal and much more physically present snake death thing rolls into their mists. I activate afterimage and bowl into the summons in my path with little resistance. My nodachi honed in spirit aura cutting through them without me slowing down and I'm within reach of my quarry a second later.

My blade clashes against a spirit shield I didnt even feel was in place that blooms a dark purple at the point of impact like an invisible water balloon exposed by being touched. The bastard doesn't even flinch and its very disconcerting that I didn't feel that shield, my dimensional awareness is deeply founded in spirit and vibrational sensitivity after all.

I slash a few more times to no noticeable effect as my comrades die fighting a creature from beyond this world that we aren't equipped to deal with. The thing completely obvious of my spirit oppression and the spirit summons all but depleted.

"You are a hundred years too young to think you could challenge me boy." The fat sorcerer says and I feel his spirit energy be sucked inwards, even his shield coming closer to his body allowing me to move close enough to kick the man if his spirit shield wasn't impenetrable.

I do realise that whatever he has planned isn't good so I stop fooling around and do another thing I haven't had a chance to do since sparing with Masashi years back. I activate soul presence and everything seems to go quiet as I feel the usually imperceptible energy of souls around me. The energy my nodachi has been stealing from our defeated dead for years in order to heal itself of the damage done to its half of our soul.

With soul presence is zanjutsu, a sword discipline where I become the zanpakutō and the zanpakutō becomes me. I thrust into the shield with my aura enhanced strength supplemented by the power of an afterimage ultimately doubling the force of any strike I make with part of my soul used to add to the hone and the entire shield lights up and vibrates very clearly to my also enhanced awareness now and to everyone that sees it.

At the back of my mind I know the loud impact made a loud dull ringing sound but sounds come slowly to me now as other senses take the limelight. I strike again and again even as I notice two interesting occurances. First my awareness in soul presence has greatly enhanced my awareness of souls in general but their energy specifically. Secondly there is a thin tendril of soul moving from a previously imperceptible thread from the shield leading to a small monkey on the other side of the manor.

I send that awareness to da even as I realise how ragged they are fighting against the other sorcerer. One that has a large number of unmoving tribesmen at her feet and is yet to take a direct injury as far as I can tell. No more tribesmen are falling though as a raggered bloody Om in tattered rags takes her attacks and somehow grounds them like a lightning rod grounds lightning.

My opponent finishes whatever he is doing even as Mira comes in out of seemingly no-where with a terrifying aura and just intercepts the brunt of the dark spirit rich, mana rich liquid in some kind of air balloon which she then swallows. She jumps back up with a bellow of cold wind covering a large distancr spinning her kurasigama above her head to give it momentum before releasing it honed in mana rich aura directly at the snake creature.

Unlike every other weapon formed against it this one actually pierces the skin and the thing hisses a long piss producing hiss. She comes back down controlled and with katana in hand and cutting cold air bellowing around her both in attack and defence.

The ground were some of the liquid she didn't get spilt is dead. Even the soil on which the grass had been is a dark inactive void in my awareness as it has lost its vibrational frequency. It's silent to me and to the world and I know that nothing will ever grow there, nothing.

I keep the sorcerer focused on me attacking his shield, its now obvious the snake spirit creature I was so wary of is impervious to most physical attacks but susceptible to magic. I didn't even think of using my water element as I'm so used to being only a warrior but I don't think I will ever make such a mistake again.

I can see that the fat sorcerer is now frustrated but still not yet worried as we take the upper hand in the struggle. Then what I've been waiting for happens, da manages to kill the little monkey creature watching from the roof and my blade suddenly finds purchase in flesh.

The man is reeling from both the rebound of that creature dying and my blade continuously cutting into him over and over and over. This is zanjutsu so I'm wounding his soul directly, parting fat flesh, sinew and muscles with precision and power. He stumbles seemingly disoriented from the onslaught, bleeding from everywhere, his eyes changing colour but there is definitely something wrong here.

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The wounds on his soul are only scratches and flesh wounds, not the deep scares that are still evident in Victor's soul after our single exhibition. The wounds on his flesh are not as deep as they should be with the strength behind them even for a creature of his girt. I try to take his head with a slash cutting through veins, tendons, muscles, soft tissue, trachea, connective tissues and leave a scare on the bone to a gushing spray of blood that geysers around us.

But still there is a dark feeling within my gut and I take a step back as the creature Mira and the others have been focused on disappears, banished back whence it came. But the man is still standing even if still disoriented and extremely wounded.

"Oh unclean thing, fill me with your filth, liar, sloth, the rotten one I emplore you to grant me a piece of your power as I summon you within myself" the fat fucker says somehow with an open throat and the vilest most eye watering aura that has ever been present under Rigel is suddenly very thick around us.

"What have you done." I find myself saying as I watch the vile creature before me regenerate at an alarming rate and set those completely white eyes in me. I feel his eyes on my skin like just by looking at me I'm being touched by his fat slimy fingers.

"Shit."

"Run!" Someone shouts from a distance, Mira I think but I cannot run, to run in this situation doesn't even cross my mind as the aura of fear the thing is giving off in waves turns into the Rage within me.

"You martial warriors think because I am a summoner I cannot withstand an up close direct attack, it isn't the case at all." The thing in human skin says in an unclean voice, every time it utters a word the scent of a decaying corpse fills the air and spreads wide. I can almost see the vile odour permeate the air around me.

Then suddenly I can't breath as the thing steps towards me. "I am a 500 year old Grandmaster Sorcerer and you, a brat that feels less than 50 years old think you can defeat me? The insolence!"

And we clash, or at least the thing waves its hand and I clash against something hard but yielding that sizzles against my spirit directly having cut through my spirit shield like water disolving fine paper. I am thrown back or jump back I'm not sure which but I land on my feet smoothly. The pain on my spirit body screaming for attention and for me to roll around in the ground to quench the fire that is still burning my very spirit.

But there is nothing burning on my spirit body and this is just the risidual pain from whatever this thing did to me. Mira is suddenly flinging dark energy orbs at the thing and it takes the damage directly on its folds of fat that sizzle and burn before regenerating before our eyes.

It casually waves its arm at her and she screams a scream of agony throwing herself on the ground and rolling about. Mira has no berserker rage, she has nothing with which to filter the pain. Da is suddenly on the thing with a pondorous chop of his honed artifact axe and it cuts deep into the thing's back breaking it's spine with a loud snap.

The thing sighs and the odour in the air is suddenly actively chocking everyone, cutting off Mira's screams as we all struggle with something ringing our lungs from within. Da uses some ability get out of it, slashing low then high dodging a backhanded strike and sinking his axe deep into the thing's foot. Om's roar rings out from somewhere and another dark orb smashes into the thing's face.

It just keeps rejuvenating and is killing us all somehow just with it's breath. I rush in and strike fast and hard, the strain of maintaining afterimage so long already making itself known at the back of my mind as my chakra pools get dangerously low. I cut with all I am in the Rage state and I don't let up. Da and I fighting the thing together for all we are worth as it swings its ponderous arms around and we keep well away from those but its body seems very very resilient and just keeps regenerating.

Mira falls on the floor and starts having convulsions several meters away, the pain and the breathlessness finally having gotten to her. I redouble my efforts as best I can as I scream my own scream giving my all to stopping this thing.

Suddenly Ava is running into the fray in a raggered bloody state. Stubborn, brave, stupid Ava is running in as fast as she can, the Rage upon her and her furry beautiful to see. But I wish I could disengage and stop her for she has no chance against this thing and I know no words could diswayed her.

She comes in high and releases a chakra skill with a word.

"phthartic!" She says with a the chop of her new artifact polearm into the things shoulder nearly severing it's arm off, it doesn't regenerate.

"phthartic!" She shouts again curving in aiming for the neck but she doesn't get there. Da and I are faster than the thing as Awakened that have tempered their bodies with mana. We are superior to the normal human limits and are faster than a creature than has Awakened primarily in sorcery even one of this level of power and age.

Not so Ava, who is very fast and deadly as a mundane enhanced in well developed aura and chakra. But she is still a mundane.

As her body is thrown away from the blast. Her mangled body going on one side the remains of her arm still clasping her weapon the other something happens to me/us then.

Something primal and cold and hot and fierce. An implosion of spiritual energy happens somewhere in the universe as an explosion of it happens inside me.

‎ My chakra points are roaring with free flowing chakra but the greatest change isn't happening there.

‎ The insubstantial incomprehensible thing known as spiritual energy is flooding into me in never before imagined amounts and I know I'm ready to take the next step in my zanjutsu, I know I'm ready to release my zanpakutō's true form.

"....Meiyo...."

I say calling my monsters true name for the first time since we've been forged together. Her true name being part of my true name and she responds happily and eagerly to my summons of her into being.

All that spiritual energy condenses rapidly then leaves me feeling almost empty of spirit energy and drained. It rushes into my sword, my nodachi, my monster, my honour, my soul and I'm flooded with knowledge as my zanpakutō Awakens for the first time. Released from it's sword form into my soul's weapon, the war axe.

I sink her into the thing's chest with a wet squilsh then I release/banish her into the spirit place. There is resistance, great resistance that leaves me disoriented with blood flowing like water from all my orifices. But the sorcerer has made the mistake of summoning something to encampus his flesh, something of the spirit. And though flesh cannot got into whatever place my Honour goes when its summoned before it appears in my hands, spirits easily can.

And just like I banished that 'Lilithian Daarksider' creature in the dungeon by banishing my own weapon as it pierced it's spirit. So the thing before me disappears with a loud tearing sound like the skies being ripped open.

* * *

I am in mourning and just feel so tired after losing so many people in that stupid fight. Stupid with how wholly unprepared we were to face a sorcerer and the many loses and incurable injuries we took. At least we managed to kill that fat excuse of a person, I guess I should say banish though as I am as yet unsure what happens to things I banish.

The fat pervert could be alive somewhere and come back to claim his revenge against me. I know the dungeon creature I banished at the Alderman dungeon is still alive somewhere somehow in the spiritual realm or whatever.

The other one we took alive but she is kept well and constantly sedated. Da has loudly claimed all the assets and property of the Sorcerers for the Tundra sending the soldiers and spies away to give their reports. I'm not sure how the Sandie's will react but we have sent messages to Paradisum as well requesting assistance.

None of us attacked by that thing are hale, none. And I am by Mira's side taking care lf my girl as she shivers with some sort of fever. Our potions don't work and no one trusts a Sandersonian mage if they have any form of choice. And so we wait for word to reach the Tundra, while other runners go to our other group still going further south. I think we will to wait a bit longer before any more traveling.