Oni Village looked far better than Somnia imagined it would given recent events. There was a considerable lack of people outside save for the Oni conjuring water to douse the few remaining fires around the Village. While the rounded, clay homes the Seekers had stayed in were completely destroyed, the more traditional straw homes that most of the population inhabited managed to survive Ibaraki’s attack with little to show for it save some exterior burns on the walls and the destruction of most – if not all – exterior decorations on the homes.
“God Queen Somnia!” General Denk shouted for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you! Please forgive me!”
She’d been sat on a bed inside an evacuated home with an identical interior to the one she’d been staying in before the Wild Men mission kicked off. She would’ve preferred to be with the other Seekers, but General Denk and his men insisted on following Somnia wherever she went – including this home. While her body continued to heal, she decided to oblige them and allow them to follow her – with the catch he had his men help the Oni defend and repair the village for the time being.
“You’re a Knowledge-Class Myth, General Denk. I’m not expecting you to fight with me.”
General Denk, who’d been standing on the table at the center of the room, shifted uncomfortably. “I know that, but… I don’t feel good letting myself get controlled by that Zelos prick! I wanted to evolve and show you what I’m capable of…!” To Somnia’s surprise, General Denk began to cry. His men who’d been crowding around him stared at him for a long while and suddenly started crying with him. Just like that, Somnia was in a tightly packed room with a sea of crying Wild Men. “Me and my men… we’ve never been fighters. We’re the protectors. The diplomats! Now look at us. What even are we?”
Ever since Zelos showed up and controlled the Wild Men, she’d been wondering whether she was in the wrong for deciding not to kill them. Was she helping to create something better by leaving them alive and allowing them to regrow, or was she being naive? It took more effort than Somnia would’ve liked to admit to cultivate the “Leader” persona that she so desperately wanted to obtain. To her, it was nothing more than a pipe dream. A lie she told herself as motivation to continue fighting. She knew she’d never be that “Leader”, but if she believed she would then she’d continue attempting to become her.
Now, though? Now that she was needed? Somnia had no choice but to bring her out. This time, however, it wasn’t an act. There was something different about it, something deeper. The Hovering Hand squeezed down on her heart harder than it ever had, except now it felt as though there was something more to it. It manipulated her body, guided her hands, and spoke through her mouth. Moreso than any other time it was active, Somnia had become a passenger in her own body.
“You are mine,” Somnia answered in response to General Denk’s question. The Wild Man’s eyes went wide as Somnia stood from her bed, ignoring the still-healing injuries to look him in the eye. “You, your subordinates, and every single living Wild Man. You belong to me. You have from the moment I stepped foot in Oni Prefecture and decided your Fate.”
They don’t belong to me…! Why did I say that?
“I… God Queen Somnia…”
“You will evolve, you will fight beside me, and then I will leave you. Prepare yourselves.”
He just said he can’t evolve! You can’t just… tell him to evolve anyway. What sense does that make?
“But… why? You can’t say we’re yours and then leave?”
“It is because you are mine that I will leave you.” Somnia glanced over every sniffling Wild Man in the room. “I have decided to keep you alive, and so you will honor me by showing me that my decision was the correct one.”
Holy Hell, I sound just like mom…
“It is no coincidence that I have chosen you all to live. It was Fate, do you understand? You have a purpose far greater than today, than this battle.” Somnia helped General Denk down from the table, placed a hand on his head, and smiled. “I will be leaving because I have other important matters to attend to. When I return, I want to see the society you have created, General Denk. Become stronger, become smarter, become perfect. I expect you to be on par with me as I am in this moment the next time I return to the Wild Man Colony, do you understand?”
General Denk stared up at Somnia for a long time, not saying a single word. Upon further inspection, Somnia noticed that all of the Wild Men were silently staring at her – even the sea of Wild Men who’d been standing outside of her tiny straw hut. She’d been expecting the silence to be broken by General Denk once again crying and acknowledging her words, and she’d been partially correct. General Denk did break the silence, but he hadn’t been alone. Every single Wild Man in Oni Prefecture let out a chorus of screams, howls, and shouts. It was so loud that it broke Somnia out of the Hovering Hand state, forcing her to cover her ears. Just as quickly, her vision was absorbed by white light, just like it had been when Shuten Douji used his Lightning technique.
When her vision returned, the first thing she saw was… Zakaria. Then, a second Zakaria. Then a third, a fourth, a tenth, a twentieth, a fiftieth… Every single Wild Man that she could see had evolved. No longer did they look like short, stubby Goblins. Now, they had human proportions. It’d been easy to separate them from male and female, and they each had black and purple sinuous bodies with pale faces with three eyes and black lips. They’d also developed… other human parts, but their clothes had graciously grown to fit their bodies.
Does that mean their clothes are part of them…?
“God Queen Somnia!” General Denk shouted. His voice was a bit deeper now. Older, more mature. To Somnia’s surprise, his chant was echoed by every other Wild Man in the area.
***
”Ugh, can they keep it down?” Archie groaned.
He’d been mostly healed by now, save for some aching in his legs and hoarseness in his voice caused by a cracked neck. He laid in bed with a serpentine Lochness curled up on top of him who’d been hissing her agreement to his complaint. Archie watched as the Oni outside the room shifted uncomfortably at the sight of the chanting, evolved Wild Men.
“I don’t blame you guys. If they were our opponents this whole mission, I don’t think we would’ve won.”
Lochness looked over at Archie, tilting her head as she channeled confusion into Archie.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I mean, imagine we had to fight an evolved Clez? And they were all led by an even more evolved Zakaria? How do you think that would’ve turned out?” Archie’s Burnish accent came out as he considered his answer. “I’ll tell you: Somnia would’ve found a way to clean house, Rui probably would’ve Fallen Star’d his way into a victory, and Yugo… It’s bloody Yugo.”
Archie didn’t like when he got like this, but who could blame him? Throughout his entire childhood and adolescence, he’d been the strongest among his peers! Now, here he was on a team with an Unbound prodigy, some Curse User from the middle of nowhere, and someone who very well could be the strongest Myth User in Minashire! Compared to those three, Archie was… average. He hadn’t considered himself someone who cared about that kind of thing, but here he was.
“I chose this path. It was never gonna be a bloody cakewalk,” He clenched his fists. “I just wish I had something. Rui has his Curse, Somnia has that whole ‘Hovering Hand’ thing, and Yugo has his power. What do I–”
Lochness bit down on Archie’s forearm hard so hard it began to tense. If it hadn’t been for Ibaraki’s healing, she very well may have broken it.
“Goddamn it, girl! Stop! What are you doing?”
She didn’t budge. Lochness continued to bite down, even as Archie waved his arm around to try to get her to stop. Archie only stopped when she began to channel a wave of emotions into him.
Disappointment. Anger. Betrayal. Hurt.
Archie’s Contract with Lochness dictated that he must pursue ultimate power by any means, and that he must use Lochness to do it. She was who he had: The Loch Ness Monster. She’d been there with him from the beginning, and she’d be there at the end. So what if Rui was a Curse User? So what if Somnia had her own powerful buff? So what if Yugo was Level 1000? None of them had Lochness. He stopped fighting her and began to caress her scaly head with his free hand, allowing the few tears that’d formed in his eyes to fall freely.
“I’m sorry, girl. I shouldn’t have said that. We’ve been in a lot of tough fights lately and it made me a little self-conscious, is all.” He kissed her head. “We’re in this together, you and me. Even if we get surpassed, we’re still on the path to ultimate power. ‘Slow and steady wins the race’, right?”
Lochness finally released Archie from her grip and wrapped him in a hug… well, a coiling embrace. She was still a three-meter serpent.
“Alright, girl. It’s time to go. Let’s–”
LOCHNESS SMILES UPON YOU! ALL MYTH-RELATED ATTACKS WILL NOW DEAL 20% MORE DAMAGE!
YOUR BOND WITH THE LOCH NESS MONSTER HAS INCREASED! YOU ARE NOW “BLOOD BROTHERS”!
LOCHNESS SMILES UPON YOU! XP GAIN HAS BEEN INCREASED BY 15% FOR THE NEXT THIRTY MINUTES!
Archie gave Lochness a dirty look. She channeled defiance as if to say, “This is what you get for hurting my feelings.” He accepted that.
LOCHNESS SMILES UPON YOU! ALL INCOMING DAMAGE HAS BEEN HALVED FOR THE NEXT HOUR!
LOCHNESS SMILES UPON YOU! YOUR RATE OF NATURAL HEALING HAS BEEN–
***
I stood in the shallow pool of my Mindspace across from a crosslegged Fallen Star. He was chained in the cage at the center of this exaggerated version of the Fallen Star facility just like I left him. Every single eye on his humanoid, birdlike body stared at me while I stared up at the two on his face.
“JUST AS I PREDICTED: YOU HAVE COME HERE OF YOUR OWN VOLITION.”
“Now isn’t the time for ‘I told you so’s’,” I gloured. “We have a problem that we need to solve before we get back onto that battlefield.”
Fallen Star tilted his head as he cracked a sinister smile. “We? ‘We’ do not have a problem, Rui Payne. You have a problem, and you already know how to solve it.”
Fallen Star, as usual, was right. That didn’t make it any easier to acknowledge. Still, these were desperate times. I was weaker than Shuten Douji, and unlike the battle with Futakuchi-Onna, I wasn’t going to be healed every other minute by him. Besides, he wasn’t the only opponent I had to worry about.
Zelos, the Horseman of the Apocalypse, the very Zelos that forced me to kill my mother so many years ago, was here. Close by. Within reach, and I wasn’t strong enough to capitalize on that. It hadn’t even been a full year since I left the Fallen Star Cult. So what if I was over Level 100 now? The Horsemen were far stronger! That fact bothered me more than any other.
They could find me, capture me, and force me back into their fold, and there would be nothing I could do about it.
“I refuse to let them take me back,” I said to no one in particular.
“AND WHAT WILL YOU DO?”
I looked up at Fallen Star. My options were limited. “[ELEMENTAL MANIPULATION] is my strongest aura-based technique, but it isn’t enough. The [WRAITH STRIKE] is my strongest physical technique, but it isn’t enough. If I combined the two…”
“YOU WOULD HAVE A TECHNIQUE MOST FEARSOME.”
[SACRIFICE] was a difficult Skill. Its true value came from recognizing what I couldn’t live without, and deciding what value I could gain from removing those vital parts of my life. Giving up a finger or two on his left hand for a quick little pick-me-up during battle wasn’t the same as permanently losing two fingers on his dominant hand. One inconvenienced me while the other made it physically impossible to wield a sword – something I’d been doing my entire life. What I’m saying is that there is no such thing as an easy, quick decision when it comes to how to use [SACRIFICE]. Sure, there are obvious answers like removing a limb or a vital organ – because of course those derive value – but if I gave up the wrong thing that’d make it impossible for me to fight.
So when I decided to permanently [SACRIFICE] the remaining fingers on my left hand, I had assumed it would’ve worked. I was right-handed, and being forced to use learn to write, fight, and wield weapons in my left would’ve appeased Fallen Star enough to go through with the transaction. But of course, it was “INSUFFICIENT.”
“YOU HAVE LEARNED HOW TO FIGHT WITHOUT THE USE OF WEAPONS, AND YOU HAVE YET TO TRULY ADOPT THE [WRAITH STRIKE] INTO YOUR REPERTOIRE IN THE SAME WAY ARCHIE HAS. MORE THAN THAT, THE COMBINATION OF TWO POWERFUL SKILLS REQUIRES AN IMMENSE CONCENTRATION OF AURA TO A SINGLE POINT, AND THAT CONCENTRATION CAN OCCUR ANYWHERE IN THE BODY – NOT JUST THE HAND.”
I recalled my failed attempt to naturally add Elemental Attunements to my [WRAITH STRIKES] in my battle with Futakuchi-Onna. It hadn’t worked at all, merely leaving me with a stinging pain and an instant dip in my aura reserves. I took that all into consideration, pairing that with memories of every battle I’ve been in up to this point. I’d kicked Archie with a [WRAITH STRIKE] once. General Viard had a plethora of aura, but intentionally gathered them in his legs and feet rather than his arms and hands. Hell, when Lochness fought, she didn’t have hands to use at all. When she fought, she used her mouth to blast opponents with Water-Attuned Aura techniques.
Why do I limit myself to my hands?
Battles weren’t always going to be hand-to-hand. My current options for ranged techniques were sorely lacking, and while I was confident in my ability to fight in close range, the way I battled in close range didn’t have to be so rigid.
The moment I understood that, it became clear what I needed to [SACRIFICE] to Fallen Star. It’d certainly be a painful loss, but it would be a necessary one. This battle didn’t end with Shuten Douji. It didn’t even start with him. It started with Zelos, then Limos, then Thanatos, and finally Ares.
“I want to [SACRIFICE] my left arm.”
“IN EXCHANGE FOR WHAT?”
“The ability to add Elemental-Attunements to my [WRAITH STRIKES].”
I won’t have a lot left to [SACRIFICE] after this… I gritted my teeth as Fallen Star smiled. But it’ll be worth it in the end.
“SUFFICIENT.”