It was funny to watch, how the weight on his back disappeared as the beast atop him leapt back like a skittish animal away from what was headed towards them.
Not that I blame her, he thought as he gingerly clambered to his feet, wincing at the sparks that emitted from his suit as he did. I’d be a little worried if I saw that coming towards me.
Turning, he couldn’t help but smile at the sight that greeted him. Like some bastard mixture of a snake and a bullet train, a mass of black shimmering goop tore up the ground between the mine entrance and where Jack was standing.
"What is that!?" Yin hissed, bouncing from foot to foot.
He ignored her, as he stepped towards the mass.
It looked like his nanomachine cloud. Felt like it too - in that part of his hippocampus where the implants he used to control pretty much all his tech was located. Which made sense. The stuff was using the same control software his nanomachines used – albeit, with a few significant alterations.
Because these weren’t nanomachines.
Nanomachines wouldn’t be giving him a splitting headache just from him controlling them. The kind of headache that suggested he was definitely in danger of having an aneurysm if he kept this up. Still, if that was the price he had to pay, it was worth it.
Because the moment he’d ended up in this insane world, he’d known his nanomachines were limited. And he’d spent a long time worrying about that.
Or at least, a few hours. Which was kind of a long time for him.
His problem was that his nanomachines were too valuable and complicated to use. So he needed something simpler. Something easily replaced.
Turning his mind back to the present, he looked down, gripping part of the black mass before him between his thumb and forefinger, and with but a thought a piece came away.
It was basically just an octagon with a magnet on each face. Not nano by any means.
It was micro.
He dropped the piece, smirking as it was once more absorbed by the mass, the whole structure rippling out as the mass reconfigured itself to accept the new piece.
“Answer me!” He ignored the monster behind him: she was still too wary of his own ‘monster’ to move.
His new toy was weaker in every way when compared to a nanoswarm. The microbots had no innate propulsion. No manufacturing ability. No welding ability. And he was pretty sure he was getting a nosebleed from trying to use the janky ass operating system he’d developed for it.
Every single piece of it was expendable though. Cheap to build and cheap to replace. Which ironically made it a hundred times more useful than his nanomachines could ever be.
Not unlike my peasant army, he thought. After all, quantity has a quality all to its own.
“You want to know what this is?” he asked as he finally turned around to face his opponent. “They’re microbots, son.”
For just a second, nothing happened.
Is the release valve not working? Am I going to have to manually pry-
The compartment in his chest emitted a shower of sparks and with a particularly worrying whirring sound, his suit opened up.
And for the first time in… ever, he stepped out into the brisk open air, only his black under suit to protect him from all this crazy world had to offer.
It was an uncomfortable sensation. He could fully admit that. He’d grown accustomed to the security that came with having a few inches of space age alloy and machinery between him and whatever this crazy world had to throw at him.
It needed to happen though. His latest toy was a bit of a bandwidth hog. The end result of most of the code being designed for another system and then adapted by a machine-learning AI.
It was worth it though.
Oh so worth it, he thought as he raised a hand and the black mass imitated him, massive tentacles shooting out of the mass with a million resounding clicks.
“What are you-”
Then they shot towards Yin, the monster emitting a small yelp as she dodged backward away from the grasping black hands of his new toy. They chased her though, the mass sweeping him up as it moved after her, more black tentacles forming out of the mass to surge unerringly towards the monster.
“What madness have you summoned, male!?” She roared as she dodged swipes from the mass that left deep gouges in the earth.
Jack chuckled, a little blood escaping from his lips, as he emerged from the top of the blob, footholds forming in the mass to hold him upright as the black mass charged like a freight train after his opponent. Personally, he’d have preferred to stay within the security of the ball, but that had a non-negligible chance of him getting blended by the constantly moving interior.
His control method was only ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent complete after all – and some of those clicks were a result of control surfaces grinding against each other. The blob was a whirring symphony of moving parts, and a system like that could not tolerate imperfections.
And reality was full of imperfections. In the form of dirt getting underfoot. Dust marring control surfaces. Friction from the many parts of his new toy mashing against one another. He could feel it all in the form of a splitting headache, one that burrowed into his skull as the control system constantly tried to reconcile what should have been with what was.
Plus, he needed to be able to see to direct them. None of the parts had cameras.
Which was why he quite literally had a front row seat as Yin’s pride finally got the better of her and she leapt at him. Him specifically, not the swarm. Claws outstretched, she was grace in motion as she sailed through the air toward him.
In his suit, he would have struggled to intercept her. It was, after all, a piece of industrial equipment. Basically just a shovel by any other name. And as a result, the command and control interface that linked him with it suffered an almost infinitesimal amount of lag as synth muscle designed for strength not speed slowly engaged.
The command and control interface for his nanomachines was much more fine-tuned.
And given that his new toy’s operating system was basically just a cut down copy of that, it was just as fast and just as precise. Which was why it took less than a second for a black glittering wall to form between him and the monster, bending but not breaking as she impacted it, her fist bleeding momentum as it sunk into the wall.
Then that wall grew teeth.
He felt as much as heard Yin shriek as the black mass bit down on her. He also felt as she yanked frantically back in an attempt to free herself, tearing loose both pieces of his blob – and herself.
More contaminants in the mass, Jack thought with a wince as he instructed the blob to disperse the wall and move those microbots with bits of fur, blood or skin on their control surfaces to the bottom of the pile, where they might hopefully be scraped clean on the floor below as the mass moved.
“Monster!” Yin shrieked as she back peddled, clutching her injured limb.
“Perhaps.” He shrugged and launched more prehensile tentacles at her. He wasn’t too surprised when a few of those swiping tentacles were met with hooves or fists, shattering them and scattering the component parts to the winds.
It was a negligible loss to the overall mass.
He’d have liked to summon a few things to add to his arsenal of tentacle horrors, but alas, the component responsible for that capability was back in his suit.
“Aggh!” Yin shrieked as a blow finally slipped through her defenses. Like a garden snake, one of his tentacles had slithered out through the grass and stabbed up from a blind spot and into her side.
She shattered the black mass with an elbow, but not before another tentacle stung at her. And another. And another.
Yeah, this is the end game, Jack thought as tentacles wrapped around the struggling creature’s legs, quickly forming into a single solid mass.
“You can’t kill me!” She howled at him, spittle flying from her lips as one of her arms sank into the mass, the other waving wildly. “I am chosen! Endowed with the truth! Supreme Mistress of the Marble Cloud Sect! Destined for glory!”
“I don’t believe in destiny. Only the strength of my arm.” Jack just raised a hand and squeezed.
A little dramatic perhaps, but neural control interfaces often benefited from sympathetic actions on the part of the user.
He could feel the black mass strain, squeezing against supernaturally tough flesh and bone as the magnetic links between his microbots threatened to come loose. It didn’t matter if they did though.
There were more where they came from. As many as he needed.
“You- you can’t. You can’t!”
It was funny, the moment she realized he was serious. “I think you’ll find I very much can.”
“Wait, I surrender. I surrender.”
Layer after layer of the clicking black mass formed over the struggling cocoon that had slowly formed around Yin, only her face peaked out.
He sighed. “Mercy is the privilege of the strong. And I’m sorry to say, I’m just not that strong. Not here. Not now.” He glanced back toward the wall. “You’ve proven that to me.”
“Wait!”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
He squeezed, and as he did, he recalled a time when he and a few other lads at one of his first jobs – one of the few legitimate ones – threw a watermelon into the yard’s trash compactor on a lark.
What happened to Yin was a lot like that.
Then it was done.
And he was alone but for the dead. Victorious and exhausted.
----------
It took days to get things back in order.
Save the wounded. Repair the walls. See off opportunistic animals. Round up those members of the Marble Cloud Sect peasantry that had fled for the hills, Jack ticked off the list of things on one hand. Because just leaving the poor bastards to die left an equally foul taste in my mouth.
He’d received some push back on that last action. Which, while something he’d come to expect from the likes of Ren and An, it had surprised him to hear such vitriol coming from Gao and Lin. He would have thought his ‘cultural advisor’ and new militia captain would have been more sympathetic to their fellow peasants.
I suppose that just goes to show how cheap life is around here, Jack thought as he tightened the fastenings on his new overcoat, admiring it in his bedroom mirror.
It was made from wolf fur – specifically, the very first spirit beast he’d encountered on this world. Apparently, garments made from powerful creatures made for quite a statement in cultivator circles, and given his plans to make his way to Ten Huo sometime in the coming weeks, he needed to make the best impression he could.
Ren had been most insistent on that. Both that he needed to go and that he needed to make a good impression. The Magistrate and the Empire at large had to be informed of Yin’s ‘heresy’ and the rot festering within the halls of the Marble Cloud Sect.
Oh, and he technically needed to swear vassalage to the Empire while he was there, given that he was technically a squatter right now. Or a foreign invader if you looked at it another way. Sure, he’d managed to see off the Marble Cloud Sect, but all that had done was kick the issue up the totem pole.
And given recent events, he’d realized just how insane his plan to be ‘mostly’ independent was. Still, coming to the table as ‘near peer’ would give him a hell of a lot more leeway than if he’d headed in that direction prior to his confrontation with Yin.
So it wasn’t like this whole thing had been for nothing.
He fingered the wiry fur of his coat. He knew he could have made an even more powerful statement with his wardrobe choice for that meeting, but he’d flatly refused any suggestions by his council to make Yin into a fur coat.
He shuddered at the very idea.
He’d killed the woman. That was enough. Her corpse would be brought to the authorities in Ten Huo intact.
Or as intact as he’d left it.
Still, that was a problem for tomorrow, and today it was nice to be out and about in something other than a giant metal suit. Sure, he was going to have to get used to not having an inch of steel between him and the rest of the world, but that was a small price to pay for actually being able to feel sunlight on his skin.
Not that there’s a lot of that going around at the moment, he thought as he stepped out of his home, Lin trailing behind, and surveyed the overcast skies.
As if the world itself was taking note of the sentiment of the day, it looked like it might rain at any moment.
Perfect for a funeral really.
He turned his gaze to where Ren and An were waiting for him – and he didn’t miss the smoky looks from either of the cultivators.
Unfortunately, given the flesh under his coat was more bandaged than not, the hopes of both women for a victory celebration of the carnal kind would remain unanswered for the immediate future.
Though I do have some ideas for some less… dangerous fun on that front, he thought, noting the way Ren was eying him. Just need to get creative about it.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought for now. It didn’t feel right to be thinking about things like that today. Any other day, it would be fine. But for today, and just today, he’d be decent. Inside and out.
“Come on, let’s get this over with,” he muttered.
---------------------
The funeral was held just out of town, on the South side. Gao didn’t know when, but at some point a small stone wall had been constructed around the area.
It was a curious thing. So short that a man could easily step over it, yet dotted with an intricate silver filigree in a language he couldn’t even begin to understand. One did not need to be an inquisitor to see the hand of the hidden master in this.
Men and women of the militia had died before. In beast attacks, both mundane and spiritual. It had not been uncommon in the early days of the militia, when a man had only the wall beneath him, the spear in his hand, and the allies at his side.
Still, never before had so many died at once. Not even prior to Lady An’s arrival in the town.
In the same vein, never before had such a large ritual been concocted. Music played, though from where, he knew not. It was a quiet somber tone, using instruments he had never heard before. Not even in Ten Huo.
It was a funeral for all that had died in defense of Jiangshi.
It was a strange thing for a mortal to have.
Usually they were just… buried. Far from the town. Often times family members would place stones over the body to keep the local animals from the corpse, but it didn’t always work. Perhaps the family might have a small service prior in good months, but in winter there was little time for that. Not when there were more immediate concerns. Like the next day’s meal. Or if they might be the next to freeze in the night.
He’d like to say that Ten Huo was better in that regard, but in many ways it was worse.
By that standard, Kang was doing better than most.
“Not a bad send off eh, Old man?” Gao murmured quietly to himself. “I’m pretty sure not even junior sect members get such a fancy showing.”
His words earned him a chuckle from those around him, fellow sergeants and former guards who had come with him from Ten Huo. Cripples one and all who had been remade in the hidden master’s service.
And now my subordinates, Gao thought quietly to himself.
Part of him still didn’t quite believe it. Yet the old man had named him in a letter in his desk, to be opened upon his death, as the new leader of the militia. And the Overseer had confirmed it. Even patted him on the shoulder when he did, with a few words of commiseration, though Gao could scarcely remember what those words were.
What a strange world he lived in, where a cultivator would try to comfort a peasant. Stranger still, when a cultivator would organize a funeral and build a final resting place for them.
Of course, Kang’s part in the ceremony was long over. The Overseer seemed to want to make a point of reading out the name of every man and woman that had fallen in the battle. Glancing over, he watched as another coffin – made of solid metal – was lowered into the perfectly square grave, a headstone cut out and placed just above it.
‘Fang Ah,’ he read.
Gao vaguely recalled the name and face, but little more. He had after all been just another recruit. One of hundreds. So it was no surprise that he didn’t know that the man had a wife and two children, stood over the grave. The older one looked to be around six and… while the younger one, well, he’d never been good at guessing those young ages. Little more than a babe was as good a descriptor as he could give.
Under different circumstances, he knew the weeping family would be finished now. At least as a unit. The widow might still find a new man to live with, but what man would also take in the two kids as well?
But the Overlord was as good as his word. Gao had been instructed to organize a detail of men to see that a final compensation for all the fallen was paid out. Five gold pieces. Enough for a family to live in for nearly a year if they were careful. Not that they’d need to. The walls of the Apart Ment were still open to them. They would not be cast out into the snow. Likewise, a small stipend to buy both food and clothing would be provided each month. It was not much, but it was enough for a family to live on.
It was a princely act of generosity and a firm reminder as to why those men like Kang and those men and women who stood with him did what they did.
It was rather ironic, that after so being dealt their first big blow, morale amongst those that had survived was higher than ever.
And why wouldn’t it be? They’d defeated a sect in open battle. Mortal men and women had struck down cultivators as easily as one would tip over a hand. Hell, none of them would have died if it weren’t for the Marble Cloud Sect’s defection to the Great Enemy.
Gao shuddered as he remembered it. Not just the creature itself, but the monster the Hidden Master had summoned to defeat the traitors.
Almost against his will, his eyes turned to where the man stood in his fur coat – bereft of the armor he usually wore – but he was far from unguarded. Ignoring the sight of An and Ren at his side and the man’s own prodigious talents, the strange black clicking creature waited in his shadow. Like a snake, it writhed around his feet, clicking constantly as it twisted to and fro.
Gao shuddered again and looked away from the creature, turning his attention to the man controlling it.
“-a reminder that only by pulling together can we triumph. That only by rising above our own petty self interest can we truly prosper. Those before you have done that. Made the ultimate sacrifice in doing so. And in turn, we shall do right by them.”
It was the end of the man’s speech and with his last bit said, the coffins all began to descend as one. Once upon a time that might have prompted surprised murmurs, but all those present were members of the militia or their immediate family members. They’d had the most exposure to the strange technique of Master Johansen.
Prior to the service, Gao had made sure that each grave had an equal number of men standing by it. He’d been confused by the order when the hidden master had given it, but now he found he appreciated the strange custom. For each man was prompted to scoop up a piece of dirt with his hands and slowly sprinkle them atop the coffin nearest.
Many wept as they did so. Most kept a stony face. They were after all, men and women of the Empire one and all.
Sacrifice and loss was a constant companion.
Still it was… nice to say this final goodbye.
“So long, old man,” Gao murmured to himself as the last of the soil slipped through his fingers. “I hope I’ll see you in the next life.”
------------
“Master,” An said quietly as they trekked back to his home. None of them had been particularly inclined to stay for the entire funeral. Perhaps the other two were simply bored of watching the peasants weep, but Jack himself had been suffering from a rather uncharacteristic sense of guilt.
It was one thing to be a power hungry tyrant in the making, it was quite another to have to see the consequences of that hunger written in the faces of your underlings’ weeping families.
He wished he could say that the scene had made him want to change his ways. They hadn’t. He just didn’t want to wallow in it.
“Why did you do that?” An finished slowly.
“You don’t think it was appropriate?” he asked.
“No,” the cat-woman said after a moment. “I mean, I think it was. I just… I don’t know how to say it, but I’ve never heard of mortals being given such extravagant funerals.”
Ha, he wanted to laugh. It wasn’t extravagant. The graveyard had been the product of less than a day’s work. And he’d needed something to do that wasn’t… the norm.
It had been a good opportunity to think.
“It fosters loyalty.” He said flatly. “A man that knows his family will be cared for will be more willing to fight to the end for me and mine.”
“That makes sense,” Ren said, her own pensive expression lightening. “Given that the relative value of a mortal has increased with your new weaponry, it makes sense to expend more effort in keeping them happy.”
Jack nodded, even as he tried to suppress a frown. Even if all Ren had done was repeat exactly what he’d just said.
That was the logic after all.
Beside him, An didn’t attempt to hide her dismay as she sent a mild glare the blonde’s way. Which sapped some of the strength from his grim look. He could well understand why An might feel that way. After all, when he’d met her, An had been fully willing to die to defend a bunch of random peasants she’d never met before. Hidden pretty close to the surface, just underneath all that cultivator arrogance, was a girl with a deep abiding respect for those willing to fight for what was ‘right’.
Be they mortal or peasant.
Which would have put her roughly on the same level as a violent vegan eco-terrorist in this world if she voiced those thoughts aloud.
The only reason he could get away with it was because he was strong… and because, as Ren had said, he had proven that with his tools, the relative value of the peasantry had increased.
Of course, this funeral was just the start for him. The whole reason he’d stuck around this tiny Podunk village was to mine the single resource he couldn’t create with his own two hands.
People.
And now that he’d proven that his little army could stand against cultivators and win, he needed to kick them into high gear. Flags. Military parades. Better uniforms. More ranks. More guns. Different guns. Grenades. Artillery.
The list went on and on.
You couldn’t just build an army overnight. You couldn’t just give people guns and expect them to be a decent fighting force. He’d seen it often enough with freshly formed gangs. If you tried to make them do too much too fast they’d fall apart.
So he’d started with spears and beasts. Then he’d moved onto guns and spirit beasts. Before finally moving onto better guns and cultivators. And each time his little force had grown in competence and confidence.
Now though? Now he was confident that he could really put them to work.
They’d survived their baptism through fire.
Now it was time for him to finally make himself known to the world.