Absolute war.
It was the only way Lukas could barely describe the event he was taking part in. There was no mercy in any of the attacks fired off in the chamber, nor was there any victory when said attacks shattered by its other mere instants later. The process repeated itself hundreds if not thousands of times by now, shaking the entire chamber to its foundations, all while the two other members lay upon the floor, near the outer doors, paralyzed, Solana, because of Maude’s actions, and Maude, because of that shard of Everfrost impaled through her abdomen, constantly devouring the lifeforce from of her physical body.
He had seen a similar conflict happen months before, when Inanna had possessed his body and fought against Tanya’s Frost avatar. Back then, Inanna was the goddess with skills far, far superior to Lukas’s current form, and the Frost Avatar was little more than an animal. An animal with a god-killing power but an animal nonetheless. Now, their positions were reversed. Lukas was banking on his nature as an Anomaly, which included constantly shifting his consciousness to different monster prototypes, while Tanya’s body was controlled by an Empress with such knowledge, skill and experience that Lukas was little more than an irascible teenager before her.
Back then, he had been awestruck, watching two juggernauts clash. He hadn’t even been able to follow the battle, often getting lost in a blur of overlapping images, each one acting out its own chaotic dance and doing a dozen different things at once, while predicting the opponent and counter-adjusting their actions based on their perception.
And that was when Inanna was playing with Tanya.
He wondered what he’d think of that battle now.
His thoughts vanished as Meynte appeared to his right, and gripped his arm, only for dazzling white flames to erupt out of it. She cursed and side-stepped, this time coming from behind Lukas and slammed a thick frost sword into his back. Blob, now covering his entire body like a chain mail, extended out and met the blade midway, shattering it.
It didn’t stop her from sweeping her arm and clubbing Lukas in the head, only to vanish into thin air as Blob shot out like a heat-seeking missile in her direction.
Accessing Monster Prototype: Thoggua
Accessing Skill: Seismic Sensing
Accessing Skill: Shatterpoint Intuition
Accessing Monster Prototype: Bylestyr
Accessing Skill: Raw Lifeforce Manipulation
Accessing Monster Prototype: Svartalfar
Accessing Skill: Terraportation
Blob extended out of his arm, forming a copy of Inanna’s war-axe, while the raw strength and agility of a bylestyr flooded in his veins. His perceptions shifted too, switching to a simplistic, primal and yet wildly alien level of perception. Details were lost amidst a swirl of imagery. Solid information was washed over by a sea of blurred vibrations, while focussing on the world’s contours on a level beyond human comprehension.
Strings. Pressure. Vibrations.
From the slightest shift of his feet, to the sliding of dust, to the sudden impact of Meynte’s feet within his sensory range, a respectable fifteen feet, he could sense it all. Everything came down to two things — to sense their precise location, use Shatterpoint Intuition to guide his blows to that location, and the raw bylestyr strength to provide the much needed momentum behind the attack. Techniques got lost to muscle memory that were not his; to reflexes and reaction times that were strained far beyond the mortal breaking point. The surroundings became an afterthought, the environment, a lazy blur.
And then, Meynte attacked.
Lukas parried blows from the left, aimed for his abdomen, before deflecting an Everfrost dagger coming at him from the front. He spun around and terraported exactly three-fourths of a foot to the right, just in time to avoid a row of five jagged frost blades raining from above. Projectiles showered him from every direction, and craters were blasted upon the ground while torrents of glacial white narrowly missed him. Instinctively he knew what they were, what caused them, and how they’d affect them if they made contact, but his mind was too dimmed to care.
“UGH!” He heard Meynte scream in frustration. “I’ve wielded a power that exterminates Pantheons. I’ve faced the might of Amaterasu and her ilk and nearly ended her. I’ve taken a Taboo to Ascension and risen as an Empress. Why is this fool giving me so much trouble?”
Meynte’s cool demeanor had slowly given way to frustration from her lack of progress. Ever since Lukas’s second wind kicked in, the battle had become a complete stalemate between her power to summon endless frost and her vanishing moves, and Lukas’s ability to sense where she was to absolute precision.
The air behind Lukas suddenly split with a howl of frozen wind, and a circle of pure frost, easily four feet in diameter opened up behind him, from which a beam of pure frost slammed into his back. Blob expanded out from behind him like a cape, and took it all upon itself, while Lukas crashed the axe upon the white opening, slashing it with dazzling white flames and destabilizing it.
Basic Instance Deleted
New Instance Installed
Accessory Heteromorph Active
And Blob was back to fully functional status.
Meynte’s cadaverous eyes glared at Lukas, and suddenly he was being crushed to the ground by the weight of the universe itself. It was similar to the power he had felt when the Ifrit King had manifested, only far more diluted. He gnashed his teeth and decided to give back something in return.
Accessing Monster Prototype DRANZITHL
Initiating Consciousness Shift
He still remembered the absolute nauseating experience when he had first analyzed the Dranzithl. The absolute wrongness exuding out a monster so horribly antithetical to life that merely being in its proximity triggered extreme nausea. That was what he sent back at Meynte.
Empress or not, she was possessing a very much mortal body, and thus, restrained by mortal limitations. The Empress fell down to one knee, clutching her own head and crying out in despair. Canceling the Consciousness Shift, Lukas instantly leaped at her with the aim to punch her unconscious. Meynte dodged at the last moment, but it nearly dislocated her jaw.
“You won’t let me kill you, but you won’t kill me even if you have the chance?” Meynte laughed, blood oozing out of her lips. “You will never win at this rate.
Another rain of blades fell.
Lukas shrugged.
Accessing Monster Prototype: Kirin
Accessing Skill: Sprint
Accessing Skill: Electricity Generation
And vanished, only to reappear a short distance away from her to defend against another buckshot, followed by eight more of such buckshots, all fired in extremely rapid succession to generate a borderline literal wall of frost that would have otherwise drained the life out of anybody. The moment he appeared behind her, she sent another blast, but this time, he slipped downward, grabbing her legs and burying her all the way till her neck into the ground, before coming up ten feet away.
“Well,” he said, completely ignoring her glares. “At the moment, I’m just trying to see what happens if I push you to your utmost limits. I mean, you’re using Tanya’s body so the more skills you demonstrate, the more she’ll have for herself. Sounds like a deal in exchange for renting her body for a while, right?”
Meynte narrowed her eyes. “You really shouldn’t get attached to things, Soulcrafter. What happens if you die before that happens?”
He shrugged. “Then you win, of course. And you get to suffer from Tanya’s Frosty Avatar for the rest of your life, cause you’d have nothing to return to.”
“Wait, what do you—”
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Lukas raised his left hand and a fork of lightning erupted out of it, smashing against the throne like the hammer of God. Meynte’s cry was lost in the noise of detonation that followed. It was so intense that Lukas staggered and fell, dropping to a knee. When the blinding light dissipated, the throne was still there, though a spiderweb of fractures ran all across it.
Damn it. Just what was it made of?
“Back at you,” Lukas grinned, ignoring his half-charred flesh as the Dranzithl’s regeneration set in. “You weren’t too attached to that Throne, were you?”
Meynte let out a banshee wail of pure, terrifying scorn and sent a bolt of pure glacial white at him. Lukas instantly terraported and appeared a dozen feet out of the blast radius, and then again, and again and again.
“WHY WON’T YOU DIE ALREADY?” Meynte roared. Beams of pure Everfrost rained down at him no matter how quickly he terraported, forcing him to resort to raising stone walls and escaping using the Kirin’s speed. Each of those beams had Death trapped within them, just a single sliver would annihilate his soul. No amount of divinity would undo that.
“Woah!” said Lukas, “That wasn’t even your skill. That was just raw power. Seriously, how much mana do you have?”
“Stand still and I’ll show you.”
Lukas grinned, and sprinted three-feet to his left, avoiding another buckshot. He staggered again, the remaining fractal on his arm glowing red with heat. He had been pushing them to strength since the beginning of this fight, and given how much mana he could naturally produce, that was saying something.
Pity Meynte had destroyed the fractal on his right. It would’ve made the management easier.
And then, without the slightest change in expression, he attacked.
The effort was not to kill her, but to immobilize her by any means necessary. Which… he wasn’t sure he could manage. He unleashed a torrent of hot flames at her, which accomplished absolutely nothing. Meynte moved with the same speed and impossible force as ever, hurling freaking shafts of Everfrost, each of them the size of tree trunks, tearing through his defenses like so much garbage. But that was fine, he wasn’t even attacking to crush her in the first place.
Rather, they were chosen to keep her busy. A series of distractions while he did his real thing. And what better to keep her distracted than running his mouth?
“You could be nicer, you know. I’m putting a lot of thought and effort into what I use against you and when, while you just keep blasting everything up. I installed five different prototypes into Blob but you just keep breaking it. It takes effort, you barbarian! Honestly, you’re impressive in a primal sort of way, but who’d ever, ever want to be at your side?”
“I rescind my offer,” Meynte said calmly. “You’re nothing but a pest to be exterminated! And since I’m breaking things anyway, maybe I should operate on a grander scale.”
“...wait, wha—”
Meynte raised her arms, and hoarfrost began to spread across the entire chamber, emtombing it into ice.
Lukas smiled, and held his axe tighter, as Blob cloaked him from all sides. “Okay, I’m starting to see why they voted you Empress.”
“DIE!”
Blades of Frost fell upon him from every direction, leaving a crater in their wake. Lukas safely rose out of the ground several dozen feet away, panting. “Damn. This isn’t really as much fun if you get angry.”
“Give Up!” Meynte warned him. “You cannot win! Your tricks will not help your friend. The more power I draw from Fimbulwinter, the stronger the Avatar becomes. Even if by some miracle, you shut me out, you cannot stop Fimbulwinter forever. It has now infected this body, and will fester until it grows and grows and turns this body into a Vessel of the End.”
Lukas cocked his head. “Bullshit. If that was true, then you’d just kill that body and return to your throne. Obviously there is a way to control it.”
Meynte threw her head back and laughed. “Control it? Control Fimbulwinter? Don’t make me laugh. The only way to escape that fate is to accomplish what I missed the last time. Ascend with the complete Taboo, not just Everfrost. I, Empress Meynte, have been there once. With this body, with your help, I can do that again.”
“Or,” Lukas pointed out. “You shut up and return to your throne, and I help Tanya ascend in your place.”
“FOOL! You think a child can trespass into Niflheim’s defenses? I was a King, and I barely survived. This girl would fall before the might of Fimbulwinter, and your petty tricks wouldn’t save you. Your arrogance will bring the world to its doom!”
Lukas considered this. “You’re boring me now.”
“Levity will not help you escape your fate.”
“Believe me,” Lukas chuckled. “There is a method to my madness. Not a good one, but…” He chuckled again, trying to pretend his vision wasn’t blurring from constant mana overuse. “I suppose it’s time we end this.”
Meynte cocked her head and said, “Let’s.”
And she sidestepped and vanished, only to appear right in front of Lukas who stepped back, only to find Meynte sweeping her arm out at his sin height, catching his leg and pulling him down, crashing him into the ground. She spun in mid-air, frost daggers forming in her palms and came for his heart.
‘Caught you!” Lukas grinned, his hand shooting out like a snake, pulling her neck with the hold of a viper’s maw and yanking her downward. The daggers crashed against the floor as she fell right over him. Meynte snarled and twisted her body, and kneed him in the stomach, impaling him with frost.
“AHK! KA!” Lukas folded in half. Air rushed out of his lungs first, but it was soon followed by stomach acid and what felt like half the organs in his body.
It hurt. By god did it hurt. Several of his ribs had snapped despite all the reinforcement he had put on himself. In the back of his mind, he genuinely wondered if he had actually been split in half, as the pain unanimously seemed to cut right through him from front to back.
His mind didn’t seem to process the sight of Meynte spinning around and slamming her other leg down, aiming to crush his skull apart, but thankfully his eyes and reflexes made up for that. He terraported into the floor just in time to avoid the hit, leaving a crater at the site of impact.
Lukas appeared on the opposite corner of the now destroyed chamber, grabbed the frost blade impaled in his stomach, and pulled it out. Blood and tissue fell out with it, and he felt regeneration kick in instantly. He coughed out a wad of blood and forced his lungs to breathe, shifting his mind away from the pain. He needed air more than the warning that he had been hurt.
“For a mortal with Level-3 skills at best, you’re surprisingly harder to kill,” Meynte observed. “Give up while you still can. Your last attempt must have been proof enough that you cannot fight me.”
“Was that what I was doing?”
“Wha—” Meynte began, before her eyes widened in sudden dismay and understanding of the true consequences of his past actions. Pity that it was several seconds too late to do anything.
It was a deceivingly harmless looking thing. A swath of metallic purple, banded and seamless, wrapped around her wait.
Blob.
Of all his resources, Blob was arguably his most versatile weapon. An existence that while lacking a proper sapience, could install whatever spiritual constitution he wanted and forge a body to reflect the installed soul prototype. And when not performing that act, it served as an accessory to his own body.
One he could control.
One he could communicate with.
And most importantly, one he could exert his Anomaly powers through.
Meynte tried to pull Blob off, but it didn’t work. Her arms flexed to grab on to a set of frost blades….
And clenched, empty.
At first she was bemused by the sight, as if she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing, the sight so outside the realm of what she believed to be possible that her brain needed a few seconds to comprehend it. Then her eyes steadily began to widen as it finally dawned on her tha, yes, it was really happening.
Frost wasn’t answering to her.
Or lifeforce.
Or mana, whatever form it might take.
Blood drained from her face. She glared at him, the primordial rage in her eyes now sharing space with a growing horror as she whispered. “What did you do?”
Lukas smiled. “Living Anomaly. A function that ignores all Rules — Truth or Taboo, that are alien to my home world. Territory Creation. An ability to create a reality bubble where only the Rules of my world exist, and nothing else. A boundary layer shipping on the real world outside. A world where light and shadow are counterparts of each other, instead of this fraud Eternal Light. And at the same time, a world with no lifeforce, no mana, no rifts between overlapping worlds and… no Taboo.”
"You…" Meynte snarled.
There was no need to maintain his guard or fear an ambush. It was over.
He took a lazy pace towards her.
"You raised some very interesting questions. Made me think. About this world. About Fimbulwinter. About this war between Asukans and Yokai. But tell me, oh Empress, did you wonder how I am a Soulcrafter?"
Meynte could do nothing but watch.
"I come from a different world. A world where we call ourselves Humans. A world without lifeforce, without mana. Without gods and anomalies and Kings and Empresses. A world where we humans rose to the peak through sheer ingenuity.”
He took another step.
“I carry a bit of that world in me. After it was destroyed, this is all that’s left. It is what makes me what I am. It is what gives me the powers I use. Just like you wield the End of Potential, I shelter within me, the Source of Potential.”
“An… Omphalos.” Meynte murmured.
Lukas smiled. “That’s right. I retain a memory of my world dying. A terrible thing.
Just experiencing it was enough to annihilate the consciousness of the Anomaly growing for centuries beneath this very desert. I wonder what it would do to a mortal mind like yours.”
Another step.
“Back when we started this, you gave me two options. Condemn Tanya, or condemn the world. The first would save the world, and get me a place by your side. The second would mean my death. In the interests of fairness, I’ll grant you two options as well.”
“Would you like a first-hand experience of what Death feels like?”
Then he smiled. It was a beautiful thing, free of malice, a promise of salvation.
“Or would you rather return to your Throne and try another day?”