“Well, this is certainly a curious development, if nothing else,” said Solana idly, observing the chaos with a meticulous gleam in her eyes, her voice carrying over the wind effortlessly despite the explosions in the air. “I have to admit, I did not foresee the girl having this much talent.”
“She hasn’t yet Rifted even once,” said Maude from behind her. “The time you spent training with her has definitely borne fruit.”
Solana shook her head. “You give me too much credit, Oni. Much of this is novel for myself.” The agility, the control over Frost, that composure, and the way she met the Warlord on an almost equal level despite the power difference was more peculiar than she expected. And there was only one reason that fitted the bill.
“I was right, though,” she mused, out loud. “The girl truly is a spectacular vessel. It seems the Glacier Queen’s remnants have truly merged with her, becoming one with her spiritual self. She might not be truly a Level-4, but with the Queen’s control of Everfrost, she might not need that much to bridge the gap. Not even Tsurara was this talented.”
Maude gave her a surprised look. “Then the training you gave her —”
“I could only help her get used to what she originally had, plus my observations about the Queen’s ability with the Haze. But all this, this is all her. I can only wonder what will happen if the Warlord decides to up the ante and demonstrate his fullest power against her.”
“Something tells me that the Outsider planned all this.”
“As much as I’d like to claim otherwise, I can’t,” admitted the skinwalker. “The Outsider is the sort to pull off miracles beneath everyone’s nose. I certainly did not expect him to pull off that last stunt, but there we are. If he had planned on Tanya being able to make a stand against the Warlord, either I had underestimated the girl’s ability, or she was hiding her true power all this time, in which case, I suppose I have to assume she has a better poker face than I imagined.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong, Leader.”
“Oh?”
“Lukas Aguilar… he has a far greater understanding of what transpired between the Queen’s soul and Tanya than either of us can fathom. I spent weeks analyzing Tanya’s constitution, and yet he was the first to suggest a potential spiritual resonance. What’s more, his words carried a strange finality, almost like…”
“He was speaking from experience?”
Maude pursed her lips, and nodded.
Solana’s lips curled. “Interesting. I suppose I shouldn’t even be surprised at this point. Perhaps the Legend is more than just a myth passed down by our ancestors. Especially with those words he said…”
“You think there’s more?”
Solana laughed. “I’m surprised you even have to ask this, Oni. When it comes to the Outsider, there is always more.”
Maude’s lips twisted, but then a shade of concern crossed her features. Solana followed her gaze, and momentarily froze at the sight before her. She had believed that the war would be on an indefinite hiatus until the Warlord himself was done with Tanya.
She had been dead wrong.
“Is that…?” She began, but words failed her.
….
They floated above the ground, but low enough that they could directly fight against those on the ground, yet retain their advantage of being in their element. Mujin Shimizu was a monstrously cruel creature, but that did not make him a fool. Quite the contrary, it made him more cunning. The first wave that was sent in had been nothing more than a scouting force. That explained why there were so few of them, and why it had been so lackluster. Even the pack that the Outsider’s friends had finished off numbered barely more than a hundred or so. And when the fighting turned against them, they had either retreated, trying to escape back if not already killed by the yokai force. And then, the warship had blown the territory apart, creating a divide, allowing them a hasty retreat.
The one that was approaching them now was the true vanguard.
The second wave.
Breastplates of Eternal Light-blessed metal covering their lithe frames, were rows of aeromancers. They were followed by terramancers, clad in bulky, dark metal mail. They looked far more menacing than their lesser equipped brethren, and it wasn’t just their armor that made them so. For amidst them were soldiers holding spears burning with Eternal Light in all its glory. Their powered exoskeletons provided them the tenacity to endure and the power to move, the ether crystals stacked inside them granting them prodigious strength when their faith failed to do so. A miracle of Asukan engineering striding forth in battle.
“That’s — the,” Olfric stammered, “The Cobalt Army.”
And indeed they were. Massive warhammers. Great, bludgeoning mauls. Garlands of fire and lightning dancing between their weapons. The best of Asukan technology empowered by Arcane spells, blessed by the Asukan divinity and granted for the use of their most faithful fanatics, those that would kill and butcher in their god’s name without a single word about right and wrong. On their other hands were strapped immense tower shields, solid barriers of blessed metal the height of a fully grown man, complete with sigils that combined the best of manacrafting and technology to create the best weapons for siege. Behind them were more support staff, Onmyōji, healers, and technicians. Repair men and just fodder to take an impossible attack.
This… this was not going to be an easy fight to win.
“EVERYONE,” Solana bellowed, her voice carrying through the loud commotion. “The enemy is upon us. Let the Queen fight the Warlord. We will protect the Outsider at all costs. All of you, CHARGE!”
And with that, the yokai army rushed to war.
----------------------------------------
81% of Omphalos Reserves drained.
Running on Auxiliary Power.
72% Activation Complete
Auto-Shutdown commences at 94% Reserve Drain
This was getting difficult.
Lukas watched the massive Asukan army wade into the Desert, only to meet the yokai force in open combat. This second wave was far more ruthless and powerful than the former, and he couldn’t anticipate things to do well for the yokai side. He watched as Olfric used the power of his new kami to the zenith, the biotoxin he had procured for him from the Neothelid prototype used effectively against the Cobalt Army. They might be blessed against the yokai’s possession, and their armor might help defend against arcane sorcery and bursts of elemental mana, but it was far more difficult to halt the flow of water, especially if it had a mind of its own, and was employing the chaos all around to its advantage.
Doubly so, when it was poisoned with the deadliest toxin Lukas could think of. He was no expert, but he was sure that even a micron of it was enough to kill a man when ingested.
And Olfric wasn’t the only one doing the damage.
Lukas saw Zuken, using his new fractals to defend against the attacks that were escaping past their army, while Solana’s barriers were enough to halt entire rows of terramancers in their path. He saw some soldiers hesitate when Elena fell across her path, only for Maude to arrive out of nowhere, and paralyze them from behind.
Not that the Army had been idle in the exchange. Like a disturbed nest of hornets, they buzzed all around them, with several of them trying to attack Lukas twice. First from behind, and then, from above. Both times he had been saved by Zuken and Ryu respectively. But the Cobalt Army weren’t the foolhardy warriors that Zuken and company had faced earlier. They were veterans, well-versed in their craft, and knew perfectly well how to counter the spiritual parasites while maintaining a steady assault.
Prepared hunters cornering their prey.
And the toll began to tell.
Lukas needed to do something. But what? His own plan was backfiring at him. Terraformation, by all logic, shouldn’t be able to take this much amount of power. But he wasn’t just terraforming. He was also expanding his created ‘territory’ against the Will of the World around him, and that was taking its toll on his Reserves. And unlike the Shimizu fortress, there were no ley lines beneath the sandy terrain for him to immediately reach down and draw power. And he remembered what had happened the last time he had used Capacitance to draw power from ley lines, even if it was just enough to empower a Dranzithl for less than a minute.
Damn it. They were all going to die at this rate. He needed to do something. Anything. But expending power to kill the Army would only make things worse.
Gritting his teeth against the resulting migraine that threatened to overwhelm him, Lukas accelerated the process.
Overclocking Skill: Terraformation
Using 200% Omphalos power for Terraformation
Terraformation 83% Complete
No longer was it a dull, aching throb. Instead, stabs of agony lit up his conscience, bright lances of pain flashing through his mind. Consciousness flickered, brief lapses of darkness he wasn’t entirely sure lasted for how long. Nonetheless, the vertical column of crystal was forming at three times the rate than before, digging deep, deep into the heart of the desert.
A sizzling sound confirmed what he had already felt. Zuken fell limp at his side, a blade severing a tendon beneath his knee, before a hit from one of those tower-shields sent Zuken into peaceful oblivion. Elena was captured, her hands tied behind her wrists, and left fallen on the sand. The yurei were being mercilessly erased by the holy enchantments imbued in those weapons. Solana was surrounded by flanks of terramancers and aeromancers on both sides, as a circular wall of force closed in on her from all sides, ripping apart the sand beneath their feet, and exploding with sheer force. Solana had shattered the barrier, and sent several of them flying but the rest took the opportunity to fire blades of sharp wind at her, hacking into her pristine, flesh-mask. The skinwalker hissed, as black ichor-like tissue tried to reform itself while she threw up more barriers, only to be attacked by an even greater assault.
Please, thought Lukas. Just a little more. I’m almost done. I’m almost —
A massive blade fell.
And two pieces of Mizo, the reiki fell on the ground, the blessed enchantment in the blade burning her form from the point of injury. Lukas saw Olfric trying to escape a group of Cobalt Army soldiers, before he was jerked back and thrown into the air. Olfric slashed them with a massive tentacle of poisoned water, but became vulnerable to five slashes of razor-sharp wind that seared through his torso. A soldier slammed his injured body with his shield, and smashed him down into the sand, choking him in his own blood, as he lay next to the reiki.
And then a soldier slammed his broadsword right into Olfric’s chest.
NO, Lukas thought with growing horror. This couldn’t be happening. He glanced at Tanya, and found her completely engaged against the Warlord, who was raining down showers of wind blades at her, and throwing power the likes of which Tanya had never faced before. Both spiritists had taken absolutely massive winged forms — a winged canine for Mujin, against Ezzeron’s massive eight-winged avian form, and Mujin was winning. Solana too was trapped and on the verge of breaking, and none of the main fighters of their crowd were winning anytime soon. This desert, where the yokai thrived for this long, would serve as graves as the Cobalt Army meticulously brought them down despite the —
Lukas blinked.
Despite the curse.
The Desert’s Curse.
It resented all life in general, but yet, it allowed an anomaly to fester inside its own heart. It allowed an entire yokai contingent to thrive in its darkness.
And it absolutely abhorred and repelled the Eternal Light.
This… this he could work with.
But before he could do anything, something else happened, that left his jaw dropping in shock.
Olfric… gurgled.
Lukas blinked. No, he wasn’t seeing things. Lukas gurgled, and coughed out blood. He was supposed to be dead, but somehow, he wasn't. Instead, he was recovering his strength. His hand went up, and with a strength he did not have, pulled the massive broadsword out of his bleeding chest, the wound mending at a rate that was fast enough to make Lukas jealous. The rest of his body too was mending itself. In place of his hacked off arm, a new limb was growing, extending, and the aquamancer used it to push himself back up, wary and alert.
The soldiers stepped back, clearly discomforted by this impossibility. Knowing them, they were thinking he was turned into some kind of demon. And to be honest, they weren’t completely wrong either.
ONI
Chimeric Entity. Result of Spiritual Fusion of BREMETAN species with REIKI species.
Presence of symbiotic Bond with JAAN species.
Bipedal, lifeforce-producing organism. Capable of Metamancy and Aquamancy.
Mutated Soul Architecture.
Reiki. There was only one creature near him that fitted the bill. Lukas’s eyes scanned for the broken shapeshifting creature that lay fallen next to Olfric, only to see that it was no longer there. Which meant —
“Did you know,” said Olfric, or whoever the Oni now identified himself with. “I was an Onmyōji in training. A spellcaster. And after getting possessed by Mizo the first time, I realized that the Asukan way of channeling mana using yokai was inferior and inefficient. A perfect balance of the spectrum is required to unleash the power, but adding constraints only leads to explosion. Harmonization is the key.”
“What nonsense are you babbling?” claimed the soldier who had driven his sword into Olfric’s chest just moments earlier.
“Harmonization. Bremetan, physical being of lifeforce; yokai, spiritual being of mana. Harmonize them together, you get Oni — best of both worlds. Shattering the bonds of lifeforce —”
The ground shook, as a sudden, immense force spiraled around him. His body became larger, thicker, his muscles expanding powerfully, and with them came a strength that could crush nearly everything in its way.
“— Unleashing the limits of mana —”
Water materialized around him in great amounts. A massive cylindrical tube of water, spreading out in a serpentine fashion, with a large, draconic face, stood coiled around Olfric’s form. The oni took out a vial of biotoxin and dropped its contents into the water elemental around him.
“Harmonization, complete.”
The massive draconian serpent attacked, and Olfric followed it, the world around him exploding into a corona of water and death. His sheer power shattered through the shields, knocking the soldiers down, blowing them off their feet, while the serpent — a manifestation of his kami no doubt, slithered its way through the sand and the air, sweeping against the enemy, its mere touch dropping soldiers dead.
A tempest of battle surrounded him, and he was, in the middle, calm in the eye of the storm.
And things were about to get better. With the tide of the battle suddenly changed, Lukas had an option open to him. With nary but a thought, Blob slid away from him, and took form for what he had planned next.
Creating New Instance KHORKHOI
Adding Sand to implement physical configuration
Found Alien configuration : Desert’s Curse
Applying…
Spiritual Configuration Complete
A vast black, metallic shadow covered the sands with its hateful malevolence. An eerie, grating sound dragged across the sands, like metal on glass. Enormous canvasses of darkened, metal hide, reforged with sand crystals that threatened to block out the sun. It twisted and turned, scales of poisonous darkness rubbing together, languidly fusing and segmenting into one another. The more they contorted, the more they morphed into a kaleidoscope of spikes and protrusions, expanding in an endless spiral. Serrated spines ran from its enormous head all the way down to its tail.
The mouth came into full focus. The stomach-churning, nightmare-inducing mass bared its thousand-fanged mouth, releasing a gale of hot, putrid breath, the stench of a dead, decayed corpse, and anything that came into contact with its aura instantly dropped to their knees, coughing blood, their bodies paralyzed by the intrusion of an energy so corrosive that just to imbibe it was to brush with death.
It brushed away all opposition. The truck-sized monstrosity swam through the sands, and anyone that fell in its path were either crushed within its teeth, or flung away like ragdolls, hurled aside by its gargantuan strength. Whatever was left of the Army that was not already facing intense attack from Olfric and Solana and whatever remained of the yokai crew, had turned their firepower against this much more dangerous threat. Armor-piercing blades clanged and shattered against its thick hide. Every single one of their holy weapons lost their luster with a single contact with its aura.
And they weren’t the only ones to suffer the brunt of the curse.
Just feeling it caused Lukas’s pain. The hate exuding from those sands, the simmering wrath of the world against the atrocity committed by the one that called itself the Great Goddess was a power unlike anything he had ever felt. Even inside his own world, he could feel the curse take root, and corrupt it with its very presence, rendering it oppressive, annoyed, repulsive. Had this been a normal corruption, his organs and bodily functions would have shut down, and the Omphalos Regeneration would have kicked in.
Instead, it wasn’t.
It was merging with him. Adding to him. And for whatever reason that didn’t quite make sense to him, he didn’t get the feeling of being ‘connected’ to the World’s Awareness as the curse took root within him. No sense of a greater existence around him. No sense of trying to exist in a maelstrom of power and potential that was far, far more than he could even comprehend. Instead, the curse acted like it was a lingering remnant of something that was once part of the world, but the process of its creation made it into a completely independent manifestation.
It wasn’t an Anomaly, wasn’t a Truth, and wasn’t a Taboo.
It was a curse. A desire. Emotion given form. And Lukas, more than anyone, knew just how deep and devastating desire could be. The desire for freedom had changed a slave girl into becoming a butcher of gods and beasts. A desire for control, for power, to have everything under her feet transformed her into an Empress and eventually, into the Supreme Queen. Gods, Demons, Truths, Taboo, even Worlds — nothing was beyond Desire’s reach to conquer and crush.
And this curse exclusively and obsessively desired the rejection of Eternal Light. As if… as if Eternal Light was keeping from becoming something else.
But what? It made no sense. For within the Desert, Eternal Light could not penetrate. Not unless it had been brought in separately.
Then… What was it?
His thoughts vanished as he realized that victory was still far from reach. Olfric, as an Oni, was strong. But he was but one man fighting against an entire army. Tanya too, was failing to keep up against Mujin’s constant onslaught. And while the Cobalt Army was temporarily weakened by the Khorkhoi’s aura, their weapons regained their power the moment they stepped out of its reach.
His suspicions were right. The Army wasn’t empowered just by those weapons and suits. They were empowered by something else.
Like that floating fortress in the sky.
And it was time to address that nuisance for good.
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Terraformation Complete
Territory Creation Active and Set along established Boundary Length
Nature: Carquane Alloy
Remaining Omphalos Reserve: 8%
Lukas exhaled. Just 2% short of shutdown. Thanking whichever deity was responsible for that last ditch of luck, Lukas laid out his plan. Pushing himself slightly to the left, he grabbed the peak of the carquane crystal shaft, the same substance used in wardstones, a massive construction that went deep down into the very heart of the World, across hundreds and thousands of feet, establishing Lukas’s territory, and drawing raw, infinite energy through the substance to the very peak.
This. Lukas reminded himself. Is going to fucking hurt.
Capacitance Active
Reverse Shift Active
Power flooded into him. Unlimited power. He could feel the Omphalos Reserves jump up in sets of twos, then threes, then sevens and more. In less than ten seconds, he had already recovered fifty percent of his total reserves, and the rest came rushing in. And he knew exactly where he needed to send it.
He slowly turned his body to face the floating fortress bearing down on him. Even being a kilometer away, it was a monstrous existence that seemed to dwarf everything nearby. And the sheer quantity of power stored inside it was what was empowering both the Warlord’s suit, as well the soldiers that were fighting across the sandy plain.
Mujin requested to bring this thing, and the Earth King sent this titanic vessel to kill the yokai using Eternal Light in a place where it was barred from entering.
They asked for this, and they would be the one to accept the consequences.
It was time to show them exactly what they had won.
He gripped the length of the carquane shard that was above the ground. Terraforming substances wasn’t a big ordeal for him, but the cost of filling it up with energy was an entirely different matter entirely. And charging it directly through his Omphalos Reserves would not only be an incredibly slow process, but he would never be able to dish out enough energy to make a significant difference.
But if he could pull that energy outright from the World without any consequences then?
Creating Bombardment Units with reduced integrity limiters by forty-five percent
Reaching Critical Threshold for Energy Containment
Natural Energy was unstoppable and far more potent than mana. There was no chance of stopping it once unleashed. It was why the wards at the Peak could hold against endless Level-3 hits but got incinerated the moment Natural energy of the world rushed in through the wards.
Luckily, Lukas had no desire to trap it.
Set Trajectory
Lock Target
Fire.
The upper part of the carquane crystal outgrowth splintered, and dashed upwards, tearing through the air, ignoring anything and everything that fell into place. Unlike before, there was no hammering at the warship’s defenses. Instead it went and nuked directly into the massive vehicle, and for once, the mana generators inside were found lacking.
One moment the carquane crystal had ripped through the barriers and buried itself deep into the warship. The next moment, half of the flying fortress vanished in a sea of flames. Just like with the castle before, the force of the explosion was simply so massive that every single person on the ground and in the air was hurled away. Even Lukas had to raise a motion barrier just to keep the shockwaves from outright killing him and damaging the carquane crystal outgrowth.
And he was far from being done.
Asserting and Aligning projectiles
Setting locked targets
Launch
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! went the missiles. The first pair slammed into the warship’s left, which was still somewhat untouched by the two attacks. The next one hit it in the dead center, detonating the entire warship into splintered shards that flung away for miles in each direction. The very sky itself had turned into a massive explosion of white from the detonation.
“Well?” said Lukas, finally standing up, and feeling his own Reserves now back to a comfortable ninety percent. “Wasn’t that something?”
Far away, the Warlord’s rage exploded with the force of a bomb. Tanya was kicked aside, flinging her by several hundred feet and burying her into the desert, Mujin conjured a massive implosion missile and sent it hurling at Lukas at sonic speeds.
Even with his power, Lukas knew he couldn’t shield against such an attack. Not only would the sheer momentum shatter through any shield he could conjure, the resulting collision would detonate in his face, damaging the carquane crystal, and if that happened, the entire desert would probably blow up to ashes, leaving nothing but dust and a giant crater spanning over hundreds of miles.
Perhaps if he was faster with opening a rift into the Haze, he could have channeled the raw power into the endless world of energy that was the Haze. It would be like adding a dozen trucks of water into an ocean. Regardless of its quantity, it was still insignificant.
He could always try to redirect it. Energy redirection was the very first kinetomancy technique he had mastered. And he had already negated the motion of a Level-4 attack earlier, stopping it in its tracks, and altered its course to the warship. And unlike before, he did not need to save his power for anything, given how just touching the carquane crystal would flood him with unlimited energy.
It would be easy too.
But truthfully, Lukas just didn’t care.
A grin that was almost maniacal graced his lips. If Mujin wanted to compare testosterone size so badly, who was he to say no? The warlord, despite his fearsome power, had brought in an entire tank-load of Eternal Light to constantly empower himself and those under his command. So far, that had given them the edge.
He supposed it was his chance to even the odds a bit.
Asserting and Aligning projectiles
Setting locked targets
And with an indefinite number of carquane missiles at his command, if he didn’t show off now…
Removing limiters
Then when?
“Fire.”
The topmost portion of the carquane shaft was expelled outward with immense force. Kinetomancy empowered it. Shatterpoint Intuition directed it. The immense power of the World primed it to cause rampant destruction.
BOOOM!
In an instant, the desert was on fire.
Not that Lukas bothered to wait.
Accessing Scan level-3
Overclock!
Identifying Spiritual signatures
LOCK!
Deploy!
It was time to give the Warlord a taste of his own medicine.
Locked on Mujin’s spiritual signature, the next missile rushed at him, a shark after its prey. From his vantage point, Lukas watched as the Warlord shot towards the sky, only for the missile to follow him, locked at predetermined velocity. The second, third and fourth missiles rushed after him, hunting him across the open skies like a pack of hunting dogs after a fox. Their cobalt streaks danced across the sky, never failing, never clashing, never interrupting each other’s path. Only when Mujin paused for a moment to raise a force-shield, did one of them smash into his barrier with an intense explosion.
“Impressive!” said Tanya, appearing next to him, her voice nodded with approval.
“I cheated,” he said. “I used the properties of ebb and flow of water to set the missiles to a predetermined target, his spiritual signature, and then powered them with kinetomancy. Basic stuff really.”
He blinked a few times to get his eyes and head to stop throbbing. Scanning the bulk of the Desert like that to capture Mujin’s spiritual signature from afar, even for a few seconds, had not been pleasant.
“Basic for you. I wouldn’t know the first thing to get that working.”
“Well, you always were a bit dim.”
She put her tongue out. “Stop being mean to me.”
Lukas laughed. “I see you’re still you. I thought Frost would’ve taken over by now.”
“I thought so too,” said Tanya with a smile. “But she didn’t. I don’t know, somehow, it just feels so much easier. Using Everfrost, that is. I thought it was Frost helping me, guiding me into working with Everfrost in ways I never had before, but then I realized that she was me. She couldn’t know any new moves unless I knew them too.”
Lukas gave her a knowing smile but said nothing.
“It’s Meynte, isn’t it?” asked Tanya, looking at him with something like reverence. “You said something about her memories causing a spiritual resonance because both of us share a lot of things.”
His smile widened.
“You knew this would happen, didn’t you, Lukas?”
“I might have had a couple of guesses, yes.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes and mock-glared at him accusingly.
“There’s a reason why I suggested Spiritual Resonance back then. I’ve been the recipient of that several times in the past to know what it is like, what might trigger it, and how it can be unconsciously activated. Back in the borderland, faced by the Ifrit King, I somehow triggered a stimulus eerily similar to Inanna’s own, and that helped me manifest her within my body.”
“And Meynte faced the Great Goddess here in this very desert,” concluded Tanya. “And I was fighting a Warlord, empowered by the Eternal Light.”
“Two similar situations, similar settings, and similar stimuli. I had hoped it might trigger something. That was why I chose this desert as our battlefield.”
That was half-true. He had chosen it because Amaterasu’s All-Seeing Eye was blinded within the Desert. That meant that he could get away with nearly almost anything without fear of being spotted.
He looked up at the sky, where the once nigh-indomitable Warlord was having a tough time escaping the projectiles, especially with his Eternal Light fuel now limited if not already depleted, no thanks to Lukas annihilating his Warship earlier.
It probably didn’t help that he was constantly unleashing more of his makeshift missiles every ten seconds.
“Meynte’s skill can’t help me against him,” said Tanya, frowning. “Not if he does what I think he is about to.”
“Oh, and what is that?”
Tanya gestured towards the sky, where Mujin had halted, crafting an intense pressure orb around himself, with the missiles crashing against it with ruthless precision and prejudice, but none of them being powerful enough to cause any lasting damage upon the powerful defense.
“He is about to unleash his kami. And if that happens, none of us will stand a chance.”
Lukas knew that.
“That’s a Level-4 kami. Unleashed, it can end the entire battle within a split second.”
Lukas knew that too.
“Even if I unleash Ezzeron, he’s still below Mujin’s in power. Not when he is like that.”
As she spoke those words, four pairs of crimson red wings were forming around Mujin, larger and brighter than ever. And around him, a misty red form was beginning to manifest, the silhouette of some great beast.
The roar that followed shook the world, and yet was paradoxically silent.
The air did not move; it was within, echoing and reverberating off every single thing in the vast desert as it built into a crescendo that split the skies, sending a massively powerful wave, instantly without warning or ceremony, before it suddenly collapsed, crushing itself down into a single, crimson point. It was so sudden and moved so quickly that between the tremendous wave of power that exploded a moment ago, and its sudden motion, almost no one had the time to notice one tiny fact until it was far too late.
It was a Level-4, a Warlord-class kami. Not a bremetan.
This was obvious to anyone of course, but it did not quite bring the point across. The Beast was not bremetan, it had never been bremetan, and it would never be bremetan. Its true origins belonged to the Wind element — motion, momentum, destruction and chaos. The commands fed into it by Mujin Shimizu, reinforced by the power of Eternal Light, and sharing the emotions of a bloodthirsty Warlord while growing into higher and higher levels had made into a beast that arose from the evil within mujin, an amoral ravening monstrosity that could never gain true comprehension of bremetan, because it could only see and act upon the worst and most destructive aspects of bremetan beliefs. Anything beautiful, anything positive, was beyond it. To the Beast, everything around it was prey, weak, to be devoured, would-be corpses that just didn’t know that they were quite dead.
It was a true monster, and when it took an ethereal shape amidst the winds in the Desert, the sheer hatred arising out of the very sands for everything alive only reinforced that particular feature of its existence.
“Ah,” said Lukas. “So he lost his one ace, and already he’s running for the big guns? Like grandfather, like grandson.”
“There’s nothing to joke about, Lukas,” scoffed Tanya, clenching her fists. “At least with his kami restrained, I had a chance. Now? Even if I unleash Ezzeron, that thing will absolutely decimate us.”
“Hey,” said Lukas, touching her cheek. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of it. Trust me.”
Tanya just stared at him.
He took his hand away. “I’ve got to go now. Still have one surprise to pull off. But I need to trap that beast first.”But Tanya wouldn't let him leave. “You don’t understand. With his kami unleashed like that, Mujin is no longer in control. His kami is.”
“An angry opponent is a sloppy opponent.”
“Not in this case, it isn’t,” Tanya snapped. “As he is, he has no restraint over himself. He won’t think twice before annihilating the entire area for miles on end, if he thinks it will destroy you. Destroy us all. It’s devastation incarnate.”
“It’s foolish for most to chain a lion,” he said, his wide eyes swiveling at her. “Yet chains can be forged, and lions can be caged.”
He could see her running through the possibilities. Finally, she let go of him, crossed her arms and sighed. “I suppose I dug my own grave when I decided to fall in love with you.”
Lukas snorted, and glanced at the impossible beast. A demon as crimson as blood, leonine, with four pairs of wings spread out, with its long fangs and trunk-sized limbs, one that would have fit right in place with the beasts of Greek mythology. And floating somewhere in the center, close to its heart, protected within an orb of wind, was Mujin himself, his expression filled with an alien, malevolent rage.
The malevolence that arose out of the beast was a physical thing. It raised its wings — each the size of a small jet, the enormous canvasses of darkened crimson threatened to block out the sun, casting a shadow on the sandy terrain. The body, if it could even be called as such, was lined with jagged protrusions, each of which were openings through which the great beast was launching impossibly powerful bursts of raw power that could decimate the size of a small building to zero within a split second. The head was a monstrous skull-like thing, with a bestial wrath and intelligence, with Mujin Shimizu floating in an orb in its center.
Such a thing could unleash devastation on the entire desert and wreck it apart within seconds.
And it was glaring at him.
Even if he managed to break the connection between Mujin and his kami, something of that size, potential and power was impossible to be siphoned. Not even by him. Or by Blob. Not as it was right now. Just its consciousness was enough to absolutely annihilate anything that Blob could present.
No, if he needed to tame this beast, he needed materials of similar proportions.
Luckily, he had entire truck-loads of ‘Blob’ saved up in the heart of the dead anomaly, beneath the Desert, kept in reserve for this exact purpose.
And now it was time to bring them up.
‘I take it you won’t surrender then?” asked Lukas.
Established Connection with all available Accessory mediums
Establishing parity between all Accessories
Installing selected Functions
Enacting…
Dozens of missiles streaked through the air towards the beast.
“THOSE MUNITIONS DESTROYED THE WARSHIP BUT AGAINST ME, THEY ARE USELESS!”
As if to emphasize its point, it sent a wave of pure power outward, hitting radially like a tsunami hitting the shore. The shockwave alone should’ve flung Lukas by several dozen feet at the very least, but despite its display of near apocalyptic power —
— it failed to move Lukas by an inch.
And then he vanished further away into the Desert.
Growling, and having failed to obliterate its prey at first strike, the creature regained its form and stood on four legs, standing easily thirty feet tall, with each limb thicker than a banyan tree trunk, the outline of thick, crimson energy coating its every inch, a leonine mane and lupine muzzle indistinctly outlined by a pair of gleaming black eyes that looked like black holes devouring everything that fell within their grasp. It was a hunter, born not out of nature but of nightmares, created out of the worst aspects of Wind and of the visceral darkness of Mujin’s soul.
And then with terrible smoothness, it moved.
The beast growled, and loped on all fours, its size belying its terrible speed, its entire focus shifted to Lukas and Lukas alone. The yokai did not matter, the khorkhoi did not matter, and neither did Mujin, or Tanya, or the Cobalt Army. All of them were identical before its perception, all of them nothing, except for Lukas, who it had decided needed to be destroyed. Every single leap sent shockwaves through the air for miles on end, as it dashed towards its prey.
And then three pairs of carquane missiles that smashed into its body, and dissolved the world into crimson flame.
Idly, he mused how comical it must have looked, a massive titan being smashed into the ground again and again because of tiny missiles fired by an equally tiny human.
Didn’t make it any less true. And in the meantime, gave Lukas the time he needed to make adjustments to his plan.
His strategy was simple, practical and distressingly fiendish. Now that he had crafted the carquane shaft, and had left a small portion of Blob connected to it, he could very well control it and maintain suppressive fire through carquane missiles, using Shatterpoint Intuition and Kinetomancy to perfectly predict all of the beast’s movements and striking with impossible accuracy. His own speed was a perfect way of avoiding the beast’s attacks, and he focussed not on killing blows but on explosive attacks that cost a ton of mana to defend against. And being constantly hit by low-powered carquane crystals, their power adjusted to minor Level-4 hits in exchange for greater stability was perfect for it. That made them harder to block, and the potent World Energy was far difficult to deflect, leaving Mujin and his beast no choice but to face it and expend more energy against them, which exacerbated the mana-poisoning.
That, beneath everything else, had been the bedrock of Lukas’s insane plan.
Mana-poisoning was a rather simple, well-known fact that every spiritist worth their salt had to face at least once in their lifetime. No matter how skilled you were, or how many Levels you had, the truth was that bremetans were bremetans — creatures of lifeforce that weren’t supposed to use mana. Yet, through the Shikigami Ritual — a symbiosis pact between bremetan and kami, the process got twisted into Controller and Controlled — Man and Machine, through the injection of Eternal Light.
But like all things that went against the Natural Order, the Shikigami Ritual was not perfect. Far from it, in fact. If a bremetan used too much mana by using the kami’s mana forge, they ran the risk of disbalancing their emotional spectrum, which could physically debilitate them. Too much mana usage all at once led to spiritists slowly losing their sanity, their rationality, and eventuality giving into the basal instincts of the kami they ruled over.
And once this process exacerbated further, it could eventually lead to the unshackling of the kami, leading to temporary or permanent possession of the host, transforming them into a berserker ruled by the instincts of the kami.
The Controller became the Controlled.
The only way out of this situation was to constantly feed more and more Eternal Light into the equation, to keep the kami weakened, limited, and most importantly, completely under the control of its bremetan host. But there in the Desert, where Eternal Light could not penetrate, Mujin and his army had needed external reservoirs of Eternal Light to keep them going on.
Reservoirs that were stored in the impossibly well-defended warship that Lukas had obliterated.
And his current plan was to keep pushing Mujin further, to use more and more power to defend against considerably weaker, but a high number of carquane missiles, thus exacerbating his spiritual retrogression into the instincts of his kami. He, who had boasted of an entire army of mind-controlled soldiers and monsters to follow his every whim; he who had mercilessly ordered the attack on Zuken’s mansion and the svartalfars; he who was responsible for all of Tanya’s sufferings —
That Mujin Shimizu was now turning into a berserker himself. Bereft of sanity. Bereft of his own control.
A tool possessed by a kami that had been his tool all his life. Mujin had lost his castle, his seat of power, his grandson, his Sacred Eight status, and now, he would lose himself.
It was a vicious and merciless action on Lukas’s part to think this way, one that he knew for certain a certain goddess would have approved.
Deprivation at its finest.
Maybe he was imagining things, he felt a foreign amusement emanate out of his very being from the thought.
His body tapped into the well of power that was his Omphalos Reserves. It was just shy of 99% capacity.
Lukas wanted to laugh. He had learned the hard way that he really was helpless against greater powers. So, it was a bad idea to try to confront such cataclysmic powers by himself.
“Activate Protocol: Dead Man’s Trigger.”
Thirty-three doppelgangers — crafted purely out of aqāru, erupted out of the ground. Thirty-three copies of himself, in a titanic circle that encompassed around a quarter mile radius, including every single entity within the battlefield.
Thirty-three Lukas Aguilars that would think, force, and enact skills in the exact same way as himself.
He had attempted something similar back inside the tunnels of the dead anomaly beneath the Desert. Channeling all five mana forms simultaneously had hit him hard back then.
“Numbers will not help you.” The beast roared. “YOU CANNOT CATCH THE WIND!”
Lukas didn’t react to its grandiose claims. Mujin was right to an extent. He couldn’t fight the beast out in a direct fight. Even with the aqāru, he was too frail to take on something of that size and power and win.
“You seem to misunderstand something. I don’t want to catch the wind. I want to trap it. Seal it.” His emotionless voice clinically corrected his opponent. A thin grin tore through his lips, and his eyes shone a deep emerald green.
All their eyes shone a deep emerald green.
The beast raised its maw to coalesce power within its fangs —
“...WHA— WHAT IS THIS?”
“Oh?” Lukas rasped out with a hint of amusement at the beast’s surprise. “You finally noticed.”
The beast was frozen completely, as if the very air that encompassed its being was frozen solid.
Lukas smirked, and instead focussed on a massive tendril of carquane that erupted from the crystal pillar, piercing through every single of his metallic doppelgangers, forming a perfect circle. More tendrils shot out of them, criss crossing each other, forming a majestic pentacle across the surface of the accursed Desert. Through their shared senses, he could see the looks of apprehension and awe on everyone’s faces.
“YOU….” Mujin’s untamed rage had been provoked almost instantly, and Lukas felt a fierce attack against his motion negation. For all of Kinetomancy’s flexibility, sometimes a sledgehammer to the head was a sledgehammer to the head.
“I’m an usurper, a thief that steals from this very world.”
The Screen went into a frenzy.
Boundary Radius Established
Territory Creation Set
Augmenting Connective ley-line network for maximum output…
The last time, he had utilized his own reserves to produce all five forms of mana together. This time, he was going for the singular.
Anomalous Energy.
Drawn out from the ley line beneath, conducted through the carquane and passed through the metallic versions of himself.
Maximize inner-world sympathization. Alter Reality Foundation within Boundary Limit.
Just like before, the world around him was rattling violently, as if an earthquake was taking place. Furious gales blew all around, but none of them even touched the innards of the massive ritual circle. And with that came a discordant hum that came from everywhere and nowhere and slowly increased in volume, as if it were the herald of a terrible something.
The last time, it had destroyed him entirely.
Establishing Living Anomaly
This time though… Power danced, forming strange and almost erratic patterns, Kinetomancy manipulating the elements, as rules of a world that was so similar yet so very different began to slide in, substituting Reality itself within the established ritual circle. A world that was the remains of a Lostbelt, one that had perished and yet reborn within himself.
Everything around him was disappearing, and a sea of purplish mist was enveloping the entire radius. There was no light, no life, no conflict, no nothing….
Just erected crystal mounds on an endless terrain, with everything within it lying in patient, eternal wait.
Forgotten.
His lips widened into a half-formed smile, and he took a small breath.
The world around him vanished, engulfed into the endless purple mist.
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