Ritsu emptied his pistol into the neck joint of the motorcycle turned robot mantis.
The distraction was just enough to give Lt. Morales the time to plant her boots on its narrow chest… er… thorax?
Was that right?
Ritsu wasn’t sure.
Or was the thorax the long, cylindrical-shaped ass end?
The lieutenant pushed herself right off those wicked sharp scythes.
A barrier popped up between them the robot mantis.
Warm yellow light suffused the dark tunnel, forcing him to switch vision modes back to default.
The robot seemed content to prod the barrier rather than attack it.
The lack of urgency in its actions made sense.
They were still on the same side as the masked rider and she was kicking their asses.
Thunder echoed through the tunnel as Reon turned her second face of the day into hamburger.
The front of Lt. Ogawa’s thick helmet resembled crumpled thin foil when she was done.
Didn’t seem fair that she was both faster than Ritsu and Maj. Nitta, while being stronger than Lt. Ogawa.
What was the point of all their sacrifices if a little girl could just level up and leave them so far behind?
She raised a boot and stomped once on Lt. Ogawa’s armored neck.
Ritsu couldn’t tell if the crunch was the armor or the neck.
He ignored the two code blacks in the squad’s channel.
It wasn’t real until… he’d deal with later, assuming there was a later.
“Here.”
Lt. Morales handed him his pistol.
She had reloaded for him without his notice.
The masked rider turned her attention back to the two of them.
She blurred.
They raised their pistols.
Too slow.
The colorful fist cracked—
Into a barrier.
She glanced over her shoulder only to find a third barrier.
The kekkaishi had sectioned off the tunnel into four.
One with the robot mantis. One with the two of them. One with Reon. One with Capt. Nakata, Pvt. Noguchi and said kekkaishi.
Reon punched that last barrier.
Cracks spider-webbed from the impact point.
Ritsu heard the kekkaishi’s cry of pain through Capt. Nakata’s and Pvt. Noguchi’s ears.
Brave girl. Strong girl. Much too young to die in an ugly fight in the dark, dank tunnels beneath the Imperial Palace.
“Get her out of here, captain. Mission’s fucked. Noguchi’ll cover you to his last bullet—”
“Thanks, asshole,” Pvt. Noguchi chuckled.
“Hey, no more complaining about the implants itching. I’ll trigger my fail-safe option. We can’t capture her, but she’s too dangerous to let escape. Bringing the tunnel down on her head should work. Hopefully, Lt. Morales can get enough distance and link up with you later.”
“I’m not running,” Lt. Morales said.
“How noble,” Reon scoffed. She tapped her helmet. “I’ve been listening in since the beginning. No running. You’re all too valuable for that. Even the girl.”
The masked rider punched the barrier again.
The girl kekkaishi whimpered.
The trickle of blood from her nostrils turned into a stream.
“Have her drop the middle barriers, now!”
Thankfully, the captain listened.
Lt. Morales threw herself on the much smaller Reon’s back. She grabbed a choke and emptied her pistol at point blank range into Reon’s back.
Reon flipped Lt. Morales over and hit her with a spinning back kick into the cracked barrier.
It vanished before it could shatter, saving the kekkaishi.
Another popped into place a second later.
Good!
They were listening to him.
Lt. Morales was now on the right side of the barrier.
Which left Ritsu alone in the middle with Reon.
“This fail-safe won’t make a difference. I’m so far ahead of you now,” Reon said.
“Yeah? How exactly did you managed that? From under Level 30 to what? Level 45? No? Higher? Your expression suggests higher… impossible…” he feigned horror. “You’re over 50?”
There was definitely some weird shit going on, but no way did one jump that many levels in a few months, which had been the last known sighting of Reon.
“Was it some kind of time chamber training exercise? Something like that needs to be shared.”
“It doesn’t matter because you can’t do anything about it. You’ll use your ultimate attack and fail. I kill you and them.” She gestured over her shoulder.
Lt. Morales disappeared around the corner.
“Quest completed successfully. Points and rewards picked. So… go head. Let’s get this over with. I’m bored now.”
Ritsu raised his middle finger.
Then pointed it.
The red laser lanced out boring ineffectively into her bug-eyed helmet.
Reon blurred.
He felt nothing.
Belatedly noticed that his middle finger was gone. Chomped to bits in her helmet’s mandibles.
“How does that even work? Can you eat—”
More lasers at point blank range.
Four from his remaining fingers and thumb.
One chomp.
No hand now.
The laser in his wrist was bigger, more powerful.
It left an actual scratch in the red lens of her right bug eye.
A violent wrench divested him of his arm at the elbow.
An even bigger laser cut across her helmet.
She recoiled with a shout.
He tried to keep his elbow laser on target, but she grabbed it and pushed it away, scouring a line several meters deep into the stone and earth.
“That’s right… it’s lasers all the way down.”
Reon’s eye glared balefully at him through the finger thick gash across her helmet’s bug eye as she grabbed him by the front of his chestplate to lift him up.
“Weak ultimate attack. You cut my helmet. Congratulations. It’ll be fine in a week. Just for that I’m going to feed you to my boy once I break through this barrier or maybe she’ll get too far away.”
“Are you stupid? That’s a robot. Everyone knows robots don’t eat.” He scoffed in her face.
“Um, actually, he’s not a robot. Mantis is like you, I guess. You’ll be nutritious. Even the metal parts. He can turn that into raw materials for, like, repairs and other stuff, like, bullets. You didn’t see because he didn’t need to use it but he can shoot spikes.”
“Horrifyingly interesting, but I think they’re far enough away for my actual ultimate attack.”
He had triggered his power sources to overload right after his final laser.
Ritsu let go of the metaphorical dead man’s switch in his head. He was gone in an instant.
He didn’t feel the explosion, nor the tons of rubble crushing the tunnel. Didn’t see Reon and her mantis motorcycle moving impossibly fast up the tunnel racing the collapsing stone and earth.
----------------------------------------
Time wasted.
The battles outside trended to mixed. Some good, some bad. He helped here and there, but people were dying. He couldn’t just take care of everything because that’d mean people would be too weak the next time and the next ad infinitum.
It was like having compounding debt that one only paid the minimum balance each month.
They would never pay it off.
Cal sped things up by grabbing the two boys and pulling them into the throne room none too gently.
Boys…
They looked it.
Teens to be pedantic about it.
“Kenji.” He pointed at the older of the two. The jujutsushi.
16 years old. Though he had been 14 just yesterday.
“Jayson.” The psychic mage’s physical appearance matched his mental one. 14 years old. Strong through levels, Skills and spells, but not through skill and technique.
A really good practitioner of the art could make themselves appear as whatever they wanted in thoughtspace.
They didn’t call it that on other worlds, but he was going to make it a thing.
Or was ‘mindspace’ better? Psychicspace? Astral was already a thing. The Astral Realm existed and he could venture through it using astral projection, which wasn’t the same thing as remote viewing. There were a bunch of other extra sensory powers that accomplished much the same thing. He was spoiled for choice.
The curse of having all the psionic abilities.
A complaint of the privileged.
“Like I just said to Reon and Erika, surrender and you will be treated justly. There will be punishment and an opportunity to atone.” He lied to the two Japanese boys.
The five’s crimes were all terrible, but not equally.
He believed that the others had a chance at rehabilitation into productive members of society. Much like Cooper and Holly, he could guide them down a better, if still violent and bloody path.
The two in front of him, however…
He experienced the evils they had perpetrated with the glee in their minds, bodies and souls.
Power to them was the ability to do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted.
Psychopaths.
They fit the clinical definition.
Granted he wasn’t an expert. He had merely read books and consulted with experts. It was important to get things right when lives were at stake.
Jayson’s face was screwed in concentration.
The boy had been shooting mind stuff from the moment he had been pulled into the room.
Mind Blast was the generic starter attack spell. Psychic Arrow was a more advanced one. Psychic Storm was the boy’s best.
All bounced harmlessly off Cal’s mental shield.
He flicked the boy with a telekinetic finger to the forehead.
Brown eyes rolled back as the boy toppled backward.
He caught and laid him gently on the floor before the boy could crack the back of his skull on the hard wood.
Two years of unprecedented growth thanks to unprecedented magical artifacts had made them overconfident.
How else could one explain the stupidity of not wearing a helmet into battle when one didn’t have abilities that provided superior protection?
Granted, he was a hypocrite about this… at times… most of the time, but he was trying to change that.
Hence, wearing his full power armor.
Kenji glanced at Jayson. “Useless!” he snarled.
Cal shrugged.
“He rejected the offer. What about you? I know what you’re thinking. Got a juicy Quest, right? Just have to take me out. Kill me for the full reward. How many points am I worth now?”
“More than enough.”
“Listen… that number should tell you everything you know about your chances. Just surrender. The longer this goes on. The more people die. You’ve got family out there, right?”
“I don’t care about them! They’ve never given a fuck about me!”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“You’re punishing the world for the actions of a few.”
“Shut up!” Kenji took a deep breath. “Do you think I became so strong because I didn’t take chances? You don’t level with challenge. Without risk. And how many levels will I gain from turning you into a shitting corpse?”
The boy was just about ready to spring his brilliant and unexpected trap.
“We knew one of you was coming?”
Cal shrugged.
It had been obvious despite the blank spaces in their memories.
Their plan had been simple.
Unleash hell on Tokyo and slip away in the chaos.
They had never intended on truly fighting him or Eron.
The sudden Quest to slay their personal boss monster dangled so many rewards that it gave them pause.
Greed set in.
Why not take a shot at it?
“We made a simple plan.” Kenji sneered. “Let them fight.”
He triggered it.
The invisible Kanji and arcane symbols on the walls, floor and ceiling came to life. Dried blood turned dark brown by the passage of time suddenly glowed red, slick and glistening.
Domain: Endless Room.
Cal saw it take shape in Kenji’s thoughts.
He placed a tiny addendum in the boy’s intent and waited for the spell to complete.
Five seconds.
Quick, but an eternity in high-level combat.
Disorientation always accompanied spacial dislocation.
He cleared it instantaneously.
He stood in a white room.
Cube-shaped.
Featureless except for the bloody cursed writings on every surface.
His armor’s sensors didn’t like the place.
The readings went crazy, so he put it in silent mode and allowed it to continue collecting data.
Past experience told him that the data would be mostly useless. Still, it was important. One never knew when a breakthrough could come. More information increased the odds.
“What—” Kenji’s eyes were wide and his mouth worked like a fish’s outside of water.
“That’s right. I’m not trapped here with you. You’re trapped here with me. Oh… and him too.” He gestured at Jayson, who was about 30 seconds away from waking up.
Indeed, the artifact hidden in the teen’s forehead was working overtime to hasten the process.
“Alright, this is a two part trap, so why not get on with it.”
“How—”
“Meant to be on the outside of your domain, did you? Meh, I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. These things happen. Performance anxiety is a real thing. The stakes are so high for you. Ultimate power so close you can just about tickle it with your finger tips. And all you had to do was ruin your souls and murder countless people.”
Kenji scowled.
“I don’t know how you did it, but it won’t matter anyways. I’m stronger in my domain.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he waved the boy on with a gesture. “Less talking. Do your back up plan already. Release him to fight me in the hopes that’ll keep me too busy for you to exit without your teammate… dick move, by the way. Leaving a boon companion to my mercy and radiation poisoning.” He shook his head ruefully.
Kenji’s fingers wiggled magically as he moved his hands and arms in tight patterns in front of his chest.
“Oh my god!” Cal groaned theatrically. “You’re soooo slow.”
The fist-sized mana gem embedded in Kenji’s back grew bright and scorching in Cal’s many senses.
It was pumping out an epic amount of mana.
Interestingly, the gem was molded around one of the boy’s vertebrae.
It was a lot more efficient than Deon’s.
Kenji’s entire body and spirit was suffused with mana.
He couldn’t be certain, but the boy would die if the gem was removed. His body had adapted to a mana-rich environment. Rather, it had become that environment.
Two years.
The information might get Deon to change his mind about removing his gem. Or the young man could lay in his cell and slowly waste away due to a lack of mana.
The domain was strong, yet filled with an eerie silence.
He had been in a sensory deprivation tank once long ago.
It was quieter than that.
“Not much to your special domain, is there?”
The main feature was spacial distortion.
It was simultaneously as small as a single bedroom, as large as infinity and every millimeter in between.
He could reach out to Kenji.
Kenji was not visible in the distance.
“Plain white? Sure, the writing in blood is appropriately creepy and disgusting, but where’s the blood red moon and writhing bloody shadows?”
It would’ve been very disorienting for anyone without the right counters. Even if they had counters their levels would’ve needed to be close enough to Kenji’s.
Kenji chanted something in Japanese.
It was rare for the auto translation system to not kick in.
“… Release.”
He came out of the ceiling.
Within reach.
In the distance.
Impossible to see.
The man was wrapped in glowing chains.
A powerful magical relic from another world.
Threatening because Cal understood that they would’ve restrained even him for a time.
Likewise the thin circlet of woven bone around the man’s head.
The tiny, delicate ivory links were stained with blood from ages past and from more recent days. Small and thin. Perhaps from birds or other tiny animals or baby animals.
Humans were animals too.
“That was part of the rituals you guys did here. To break his mind. That much is obvious. What I want to know is what else did you do?”
“You’ll never know,” Kenji grinned with eyes alight. The boy was drunk on his own power.
Cal didn’t wait for the chained man to complete his slow descent to the floor.
As always, he wasn’t above cheating.
He was at the man’s side in an instant, grasping the bone circlet. He pointed his other fist at Kenji, deploying the force cannon from the top of his gauntlet with a cybernetic thought.
Thoom!
Missed!
Kenji either moved really fast or he hadn’t been standing where the auto-target system had determined.
Regardless, he kept firing.
The tiny bones were slick with blood, which made it hard to grab with his gloved fingers.
He changed tack and tried with telekinesis.
The circlet was embedded in the man’s skin and if what he was feeling was right then it was actually merged with his skull. Less of a worn thing and more an added growth.
The relic chains suddenly went slack.
“Sh—”
An arm cracked Cal in the side, sending him flying.
It felt like a long trip.
A short one.
Every distance in between.
The man was Japanese.
His black hair hung long and lank over his eyes.
A thick, scraggly beard was a matted tangle caked with the detritus of blood, bile, vomit and old meals.
He remained on his knees for what seemed like an eternity.
Haruo Tezuka or rather Tezuka Haruo in this part of the world. Powers. No class. 50 years old, looked half that on a better day. Which was yesterday.
Now?
Now he looked closer to his chronological age.
The two years he had spent trapped behind the barrier had obviously not been kind to him.
His emaciated body was covered in Kanji and symbols carved directly into the flesh.
Magic bullshit.
The man’s skin should’ve been practically invulnerable especially when he started to really ramp up.
Cal couldn’t find the details on how the five kids had managed to do this to him.
Blank spots in all of their memories.
As the strongest person in Japan, Haruo guarded the emperor when he wasn’t needed to fight the worst, most powerful monsters. His presence was one of the main deterrents to the Phoenix Dynasty crossing the Sea of Japan.
The radiation scanner Cal had added to his armor for this mission wasn’t picking up any build up.
That wasn’t going to last.
Structural integrity readings in his HUD were all green. The impact had been properly dissipated and absorbed by the Threnium. He hadn’t even needed to use the forcefield.
That too wasn’t going to last.
Shoulder launchers deployed, firing micromissiles.
Bright red clouds of powder erupted around Haruo’s chest and head.
Pepper spray using the hottest mundane pepper in the world.
He encased Haruo’s upper half in a telekinetic shield to concentrate the powder, even forcing it into the man’s mouth, nose and eyes.
No reaction.
In fact, Haruo took a deep breath, sucking in the entire cloud.
“Your weak toys are nothing!” Kenji laughed.
“You still here? I thought you’d have tried to run away by now.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“And that is the second dumbest thought you’ve had in the last year.”
“You, slave!” Kenji sneered at Haruo. “Kill that man. The one in the blue and gold power armor. Use your full power.”
“Careful with the wording. Mind control spells can be tricky. Although, you’d know more than me… probably.”
Haruo burst out of the telekinetic bubble.
“Ouch.”
The man said nothing, stared at nothing with vacant eyes, yet he leapt across the space between them like a tiger.
Spatial distortion was a pain, so Cal focused until it went away.
Easy enough to trick Kenji’s brain into looping him into the ‘don’t affect’ group.
He shot Haruo in the chest with the force cannon on its highest setting. The punch through steel one.
Haruo went flying through the air like a ball.
That would help him start the ramping up process.
A second barrage of micromissiles covered Haruo in a white cloud. This time the gas was a powerful soporific. Strong enough to knock out a 2 ton monster in less than 30 seconds.
The man staggered out of it.
He looked bigger. Less emaciated, more wiry strong. He started to take on a dark green-ish hue as his human skin slowly turned into something else.
Cal took to the air.
The ceiling was as far away as he needed it to be.
From the look on Kenji’s face the boy was confused that he hadn’t slammed into it.
Haruo leapt after him, but it wasn’t hard to avoid the newly-formed claws.
That was when psychic lances tickled his mental shields.
“I know you’re awake.”
Jayson was still on his back with his eyes closed. The image of a sleeping boy. Aside from the third eye on his forehead peeking through lidded gaze.
It looked gross, but only because he could see it.
One without the right abilities wouldn’t even notice it.
“Fine.” He pointed the force cannon down to the boy. “Thoom!”
Jayson rolled.
Cal fired for real into the boy’s back at a lower setting. The bruising, knock the wind out of one’s lungs kind of shot.
He searched Jayson’s memories. Two years worth in a fraction of a second. Steeped himself in more horrors just in case he had missed something earlier.
“Nope.”
Nothing on how the bone circlet worked. Just the same blank spots.
He saw an image of a bloodied and battered Haruo in chains through Jayson’s eyes. The circlet in Jayson’s hands. Blank. Then Haruo with a vacant expression and the circlet around his head. A lot of time had passed judging by hair and beard growth.
He tried to reach Haruo’s thoughts.
The way was slippery. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to even try to break or peel back.
He had to be careful with his powers.
He couldn’t be certain that other eyes weren’t watching.
It’s what he would’ve done if he was facing himself.
Set up sacrificial pawns to draw out heretofore concealed abilities.
“Witness! My mastery of gravity!” He lifted Haruo off the floor before the man could leap again. He lined Haruo’s entire body in a telekinetic forcefield flush against the dark green scaly skin. He moved it with the man’s movements. Building-toppling strength was useless without any leverage. “Bit anticlimactic—”
Kenji shot an angry beam of curse magic that went just a bit wide.
The boy’s forehead furrowed.
He had no idea that he was working against himself.
The other boy was on his hands and knees, wheezing.
They deserved no mercy from Cal, but that’s what made them different and he believed that mattered in the long run. He was potentially going to live a very long time and he wanted to avoid falling down that dark abyss people gazed into. Or turning into the monsters he fought. Or becoming the hardest man to deal with the hardest problems cause… something, something wolves, dogs and sheep… something, something… dark side.
Thus did he show mercy.
Jayson’s over Level 40 mind shield passive was like unto wet toilet paper as Cal poked right through to put him to sleep for real this time.
Kenji… well, the boy could continue to watch all his attacks keep going wide.
Level 50?
Cal aimed to teach the boy a lesson. That power gained at any cost wasn’t worth it. Because at the end of the day the world was like an ocean. The boy turned himself into a shark by inflicting suffering and death to hundreds of people, but there was always that billionaire asshole hunter with a laser gun and a fully-tricked out skyship.
The only real problem was—
“Ow.”
Pain accompanied the shattering of his telekinetic forcefield.
Haruo had skipped a few steps of his transformation.
The man barely resembled a man now.
He was a huge, muscled thing covered in dark green scales. Diamond shaped plates ran from the top of his head all the way down to near the end of his thick tail, which tapered to a sharp point surrounded by knife-like spines.
He was hunched over in an aggressive posture with long, muscular arms ending in long fingers topped by curved claws carving furrows into the white floor. The changes to his leg anatomy were greater. They had gone from plantigrade to digitigrade. His clawed toes clicked against the floor. Eerie in the still silence.
His face was a blend of man and reptile. A snub muzzle instead of a mouth. His front teeth were sharp and pointed, made to cut, while the rear were sharp and conical, meant to pierce and hold.
The HUD read 7 meters from floor to the top of his head.
One more than what was in the records.
“You’re fucked now!” Kenji crowed.
“But I didn’t really attack him hard enough,” he said flatly. “How could he grow to his full power?”
“Because he was a pussy scared of his own gift. If I had what he had—” Kenji shook his head. “It was always in there, but the little bitch hid it cause he was scared.”
“With good reason. You don know, but he’s already putting out dangerous levels of radiation.”
“What do you care. You’re in armor. Probably got all kinds of fancy systems to keep bad shit out. I’m going to have fun trying them out after we pull your corpse out of there.”
“Are you stupid? There’s going to be no armor left after Mr. Tezuka gets through with it.”
“Then maybe you should surrender,” Kenji sneered. “Do it. Swear a magically binding oath to serve me and I’ll let you live.”
A transparent lie. One that didn’t need powers or truth gems to reveal.
“Oh, you mean just like those people… the ones you tortured into breaking. Didn’t they swear? But then you tortured them again anyways.”
“They were weak. I’m strong. It’s how the world works. They didn’t have to die. I was going to let them serve me. Do you think I wanted to waste all these strong people? They should’ve been my elite. The rest of the sheep out there were the ones— stop talking!”
Kenji pulled a handful of paper slips from the inside of his enchanted jacket.
More Kanji and arcane symbols, though in regular ink rather than blood.
He hurled them into the air, muttering words of power.
They lit up, stiffened and began to orbit the boy.
“Oh, one more thing. In case you didn’t notice.” Kenji smirked.
Cal did.
“I don’t need to give him orders. My will is his will.”
Yes… through the disgusting little organ you implanted in your chest. Where it’s slowly inching its way to your heart.
Whether Kenji knew that was an open question. Once again thanks to those blank spots.
Cal would bet that the boy didn’t know the full truth.
None of the children did.
At first he had thought that the eidolons were responsible for this travesty.
After all, the mana gem in Deon’s back was the same kind as the one in all of them except for Masked Rider Reon.
But then, Kerkestis had only given one gift each and while more powerful than what was available on Earth, none of the artifacts seemed truly dangerous to the user.
These children received multiple artifacts. A few of which were on yet a higher level of power, like the bone circlet and the chains or the biomechanical-like organs implanted in Reon and her motorcycle.
Erika’s soul repository was obviously more dangerous than a jug of endless blood if one simply exercised a modicum of critical thinking.
“Listen, kid—”
“I’m not a kid!” Kenji snapped.
“Is what a kid would say,” Cal wagged a finger. “Listen, kid. You obviously don’t care about irradiating miles of Tokyo. Thousands of people will be affected. Those that don’t get poisoned will have to move from their safe homes and reliable stores. What do you think is going to happen? It’s the Bountiful Decade. If people can’t keep clearing the monster zones…” he shook his head. “You want to be in charge? There’d be no one and nothing left to lord your power over.”
“It’s a big world. You’re proof of that. I was going to go east. Teach those phoenixes their proper place. But now— you’re Philippines, right? You look it… maybe I’ll start there. I’ll make your home my bitch.”
The morbid versus battle nerds back home would’ve loved to watch what was about to happen.
He wondered if Eron wouldn’t mind stepping away from family time for a bit.
His brother was on the newest skyship. His first opportunity to ride on one thanks to an always busy schedule.
Haruo roared.
Kenji laughed.
Cal sighed.