The training hall echoed with the staccato bark of machine guns. A hail of glowing yellow-gold bullets streaked through the air, only to be stopped dead in their flight. Dropping from down to the ground as their moment was abruptly stolen from them by a tyrannical wall of aura and pressure.
Billy stood in the center of the training. Both feet planted in a small green circle that he’d painted onto the wooden floor.
“Nh...Come.”
The girls came at him. Elena, releasing a feral roar that could very well put many a demonbeast to shame. Launching herself at him, straightforward as always heading directly for his position at a pace that filled the room with the sounds of a single thunderous sonic boom and her heavy footsteps.
At the last moment she showed a bit of guile. Leading with a barehanded, dagger-like, strike that tested the man’s reaction before fading to nothing. Transforming itself into a spring like motion that sent her flipping into the air, so she could rebound from a platform created by her own aura and coming back down with an earth shattering axe kick. Her heel opening a deep ravine in the floor.
The boy still stood, seemingly untouched. Seemingly unfazed. Her strike seeming to have missed by just a hair. His expression, impassive as was the norm. She darted away and as she did, from behind her came a beam of force and light and nothingness.
Edna’s AWs fired at Billy’s figure, using everything from bullets, to bombs, to energy beams to flame. All of it simply made futile by his aura. All damage either absorbed, negated, or shed onto the room. With Billy simply standing there, hands behind his back. Looking like her efforts were a mere passing interest. Like she was conversing with him after just happening to see him on the street rather than trying to inflict mortal injury.
Frustration led her to use the one attack she’d been holding back. Realizing a beam of blinding light, bright dark and glowing gray nothingness. that ate away at the air and the space it travelled through. Billy’s brow furrowing slightly as he reinforced the wall of aether that surrounded him and deflected the beam away from him and into the ceiling.
Edna ground her teeth as she put away the auxiliary AWs and just ran at him, with the pistols she had in hand. Elena and her met up at his position both of them pair off against him. Releasing a flurry of kicks and punches and that were semi-cooperative in nature. Each movement of their limbs sharp and accurate.
Purposely placed as they fought the man together, while simultaneously fighting him on their own. Using the pressure of their double assault to try and make him react in a way that wasn’t so very frustrating nonplussed.
All of Edna’s bullets going astray despite her firing her pistols at the man from point blank range. All of Elena’s kicks, knife strikes, elbow drops and punches hitting nothing. Whiffing the air with enough force to cause small storms, and making it look she was merely doing a very violent dance.
“Nh...Here it comes.” said Billy.
Both girls stiffened preparing for the moment Billy took his hands from behind his back. Getting their guards up and trying to duck, juke and jive out of the way. All of for naught. As very next instant saw them both planted into wall on the opposite end of the training hall. Lying meter deep craters. Vomiting bile and blood.
“Nh...I think that’s it, yeah?” said Billy. Staring at the two, his expression brightening with the hints of a satisfied smile. One surprisingly innocent, free of any sardonicism despite what just took place. He snapped his finger and quickcast a spell of healing the repaired both the hall and the girls. Refreshing them, and restoring their energy and stamina, with the boy breaking a mild sweat after using such a high-tiered spell of recovery.
“You did a pretty good job girls.” said Billy.
“Mhm...I seriously doubtly that.” said Edna. Struggling to pull herself out of the crater.
“We hardly touched you...I still don’t get that. Nine months of intense training and we still can only just barely touch you.” said Elena.
Billy shrugged.
“Nh...Let’s just put it down to experience.” said Billy.
Edna and Elena just frowned at him, unsatisfied by his answer. Either he was gloating, patronizing them by hiding the real reason for why he was so much better when he’d lowered his cultivation to something roughly around their level.
Or he was telling the truth, they really could put it down to experience. Which meant that this was all down to ‘that’ the parts of his past that he didn’t really go into.
The details of what happened between the time of his kidnapping and his return home. He didn’t seem willing to talk about it, so they didn’t push, but the amount of skill he’d shown and taught them was enough that they couldn’t help wondering about. Especially Edna, the most curious of the three.
In truth his answer was both true and untrue. Yes, he had trillions of years of experience with different weapons and fighting styles, but the real edge was the return of his processing ability. It was easier to express immortal level skill when one possessed a central nervous system and neuromusculature, that had completely transcended mortal bounds.
The difference between the present Billy and his past self was the difference between the work of a master artist armed with waxy, overlarge preschool crayons and a master artist armed with a set of fine paints and pastels. A master was still a master no matter what tools were available but the materials would affect the work.
“Okay, that doesn’t change the fact that we still lost.” said a frustrated Elena. She’d always been extremely competitive and while she’d been aware that Billy’s cultivation was far above her own she’d assumed he’d eaten something or had a chance encounter.
She’d assumed that she’d still been the one with the greatest skill in the group. The past few months had been….illuminating and educative and extremely frustrating. She’d learned much, but she was never the sort who liked to lose.
“No...look.” said Billy pointing down to the circle where he’d been standing.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
He was no longer standing on it now, their barrage of attacks forcing him to take ten steps back. When they’d started the number of steps he’d had to take was zero.
“I know you’re trying to make us feel better but making you retreat ten feet doesn’t mean much,.” said Edna.
Billy shook his head. Smiling.
“No, really...Hold on if you don’t believe me. How about this…?”
He shadow expanded, becoming a rippling pool of nothingness, as dark as ink, and deep as the sea. They were pulled into it, and suddenly they were in a field. A field of gray green that expanded outwards, for as far as the eye could see. On the outskirts their were things. Things that danced and watched and played. The shades.
“We’re in your world.” said Edna.
Billy had brought them here when he first began training them. Explaining a few more things about himself and their connection to him. Explaining why he’d been gone so long. Using the power of his demesne to allow himself to more freely and more safely make the necessary changes to their physiques and base attributes before pushing them to the next realm.
“You guys don’t seem to believe me when I say you’ve really gotten stronger in the past few months. Not just because of the augmentations either. You’re skills have really gotten sharp and most of your progress.... A solid eighty percent of it, at least...is all down to your hard work. So here…”
Billy snapped his fingers and with a flash of light, a being appeared. It’s aura baleful. It’s height imposing. Taller than your average building. It was an ape-like demonbeast with three eyes and three arms and a serpent headed tail that spat poison and fire.
“This is Gorirath. Lord of the forest on the outside. He and I ran into each other and had a... disagreement.” said Billy.
Elena stared up the monster as it glared down at all three of the humans with the dignity and arrogance a king. Edna just gaped. Forest Lords and their like were royalty amongst the demonbeasts. Similar to the dragon emperor, they were all either rivals to the gods or considered minor deity by their own right.
Billy turned to the beast.
“Well here they are...As per our bargain. Beat them and you get to go free with our grudges and the little bit of naughtiness you were up to... forgiven.” said Billy. His tone more light and slightly playful than it would have been before. Bits of the persona he’d developed had over the eons emerging as his brain's capability continued to expand. More smoothly melding his old and new selves.
The demon gorilla just snorted, sparks and dark, aether rich, smoke puffing from out of its nostrils.
Billy turned to the girls.
“Well...here you go. That thing we did in the training hall was just the warm up. If you really want to see how strong you’ve gotten, let’s see you beat this thing, huh?” said Billy.
Edna wanted to argue, but Elena just smiled. Her hand outstretched. The long handle of a pole-arm rising from her shadow. This halberd was made from Billy’s old tail and an alchemically created living metal. A weapon Billy made for her so she could finally have a weapon that could not only survive but augment her great strength.
Seeing that, Edna could only bitterly smile, aware that her second favorite cousin was going to pull her into trouble again, aware that she was getting slightly excited despite herself. Aware that even ‘she’ was a little anxious to see if she could beat the creature in front of her. Her flock of new and improved AWs rising from her shadow and hanging behind her as mantle of artillery.
*****
Hours later the girls sat in a steam room. Edna was covered up in a towel. Elena simply sat on ‘her’ towel, feeling no need to be shy around someone she’d known since she was child. Using a second towel to cover up her head, because her natural curls tended to frizz when surrounded by too much humidity. Both their skins gleaming, glistening with sweat.
“Hey…” said Edna.
“Is this really alright? I mean. In just nine months we’ve reached and then passed a place that takes most hundreds if not thousands of years to reach. Is that really okay?” said Edna. Staring up at the fresco of a scene that was slightly disturbing even though the figures in it were too alien for her to be able to say why.
Elena opened her eyes, looking flush and slightly dreamy.
“Ed...I love you, but that’s dumb.”
“Huh? You think, so?” said Edna.
“Yeah...Like really, really, fucking dumb. I get what you’re saying. If this was anyone but Billy, I’d have some doubts too. But even then...there’s no such thing as being too strong. It’d be one thing if we couldn’t control it. Or if we didn’t know how to use it. But even then the strength wouldn’t be the problem.”
Edna nodded, resting the back of her head on the warm tile wall.
“I guess...but….I don’t know. It feels like it was too easy. Like it’s unbalanced somehow, like we’ve gotten too strong, too quickly. I mean do you realize what we done here. From the first realm, the particle realm, to the second realm, the Gas Realm. In barely anytime at all. It’s almost like we’re cheating or something.”
Elena just closed her eyes, a strange scrunched expression on her face. With a sigh, she pulled the towel off of her head and draping it across her lap. Revealing the crystal horn on her brow, that grown more prominent since her break through to the second realm.
Her skin growing more yellow-green as the aether picked and empathized the best parts of her genetics and the augmentations that she had had put in place A tail similar to the one Billy had had slinking out and grabbing her a can of iced juice.
With Edna’s hair similarly growing a brighter, paler yellow. Her irises taking a pale gold coloring, like that of a falcon. A pair of diminutive white wings sprouting on her back as part of her progressing fusion with the AWs.
“Ed...There’s no such thing as ‘balance’, maybe for books it exists, for kids stories? For games, definitely. But in real life, in the real world, everything that lives is trying to gain a complete and total competitive edge over everything else. The very nature of evolution is an endless process of trying to game the system. An infinite number of life forms, all of them trying to one up each other by countering everyone else's best cards.
Once upon a time, humans, people,... were the most prominent, most dominant lifeforms in this world. One could call ‘that’ being OP. There were trillions of us. Spreading out across the stars. We built worlds, Ed. Whole worlds, not just planets, realities. We built universes, how’s that for Overly Powerful? Do you know what really killed the empire? Balance. Things got ‘fair’, the difficulty got bumped and we got our asses kicked. And do you know what? It was all inevitable, eventually we were going to touch something we shouldn’t or run into someone we couldn’t fight, because there’s always someone stronger than you. So no...I don’t think we got too strong too quick. Do you want to know why? Because right now, Billy is upstairs, still training. Still working. Still pushing.
He’s gone even farther than us and he’s still cultivating like a madman. I’ve seen him. When he finishes training us, he trains himself. Constantly. Why? Because he knows that if you go around thinking you’re overpowered it just means you haven’t run into something stronger than you yet and trust me Ed, there’s always, always something stronger. He knows it, I know it and I think at the back of your head you know it too. Hell that’s the whole reason that we did this.
Not so we could crush all our opponents and just dominate or whatever. It’s so we could survive. Think about that, all this hard work and it’s just so we can stay alive long enough to not be instantly wiped-out, when the real fun starts. So there’s no need to think of useless things just because we’ve reached a new realm. ‘We’ still have a ways to go.”
Edna thought on her cousin’s words, slightly taken aback by Elena’s severe tone. It was rare for Elena to be the one scolding instead of being scolded.
“....I suppose you’re right, but still. It’s just...”
“I get what you mean. I was in a sect, remember? For most martial pupils, the next realm is a pipe dream…Something you aspire for, knowing it’d never happen” said Elena.
“Shit!” said Elena, bolting up right, after a brief moment of reflection.
“What?” said Edna. Startled by Ellena’s exclamation.
“I just realized that I’ve surpassed all my teachers and reached my sect master’s level without even noticing it. Do you think it’d be bad form to gloat? Or rather, who cares if it’s bad form or not. When do you think I should go over and gloat? Not today definitely and we’ve got to go back to work next week, but soon right?” said Elena.
Edna just shook her head and rolled her eyes, her look of unease fading, replaced by a wry smile.
“Goofball.”
“Besides, what do you mean this was too easy? We worked our asses off. Got our shit wrecked countless times. Our adorable cousin is like some drillmaster from hell. It had been a while since I’d had to run so much I puked.
All in all, the dilated time in the training halls amounted to over three hundred years. Which is still short for breaking through a realm, but also fairly fucking long to be doing anything, in sane person time. How the hell is that taking the easy route?” said Elena. Chuckling as she returned to her nap.
“Mhm? Since when were ‘we’ sane, Ell?” said Edna. Answering Elena’s question with a dry chuckle and a question of her own.