Something tickled the end of Tanya’s nose.

She crinkled her face, but the feeling didn’t disappear, so she cracked her eyes open to glare at it but regretted almost immediately, as bright light shone directly into her eyes, forcing her to shut them again, and grimace in pain.

This time prepared, she forced her eyes open and glared at the culprit. It was a clump of crystal, translucent yet reflecting light, making it hard to see what was within it. She squinted her eyes, and grabbed the crystal, using it as support to push herself up. It was easily twice as tall as her, studded into the rocky floor beneath that felt as cold as ice. Frowning, she leaned closer, peering at the form inside the crystal, an outline — not very clear, but she could determine the bremetan-like shape, only way taller, with two bulging pairs of arms, each of them ending with vicious sets of sharp claws, and its intense, crimson eyes were open, aware, and staring at her in naked, undisguised attention.

“Fucking hell!” she shouted, staggering back in pure, panicked reflex. “That’s a—”

Before she could even finish the rest of the sentence, Tanya froze again, her back thumping against something solid and uneven. She spun around and met another crystal outgrowth, within it a large, manta-ray-like creature, with four pairs of wings and levitating within the crystal. Then another, an avian with two pairs of wings, and a fourth — a serpent that was larger than any she had seen in her life.

She looked around, and found herself surrounded by those clumps. Easily a dozen and more surrounded her, sprouting out of the ground, as if they were trees. There were so many of them that the light kept reflecting against them over and over, making it truly difficult to look around without hissing in pain.

Tanya forced herself up on her feet, wobbled for a moment, before regaining her balance as she planted both feet firmly on the ground. Satisfied, she looked at the scenery around her and what she saw was….

… an endless maze of crystals.

They rose out of the ground like tombs of a grave, standing tall, holding a specimen inside it. Each creature within it was a monster or demon of some sort — some of them tiny, barely above the size of the average shrub, others gigantic and taller than hills, with equally humongous, reptilian creatures within them. Across the endless terrain they lay, stretching out in every direction towards the distant horizon and beyond, farther than her eyes could see.

A gentle breeze flew past her, blowing the bangs of her hair past her face. This entire place was akin to an infinite graveyard, and not even the ever-reflecting radiance could make her forget the chill in the air around her.

The mounds were stuck in a perpetual wait, as if waiting for someone to come shatter those crystals and let them be free. Before she could ponder more on the matter, Tanya was distracted by a discordant humm coming from above. She looked up, and found herself staring at the starless, night sky. A velvety layer of blackness that traveled infinitely in every direction. She wondered where the intense light reflecting across these crystal tombstones was coming from and kept looking until —

“By the Great Goddess!” Tanya almost lost her balance as she leaned her head back to look at it. “Who is THAT?”

Amidst the massive, inky blackness, rose a gargantuan figure, a titanic bremetan silhouette, larger than the eye could see. Sitting cross-legged, hands resting against his knees, palms open and head held high. An aura of impenetrable calmness oozed from the figure, as if immersed in a meditation deeper than the ocean.

Between the titanic silhouette, the endless dark sky, and the crystal mounds littering the landscape for as far as the eye could see, each of those mounds containing within it a bloodthirsty predator ready to devour her whole, she should’ve felt a feeling of foreboding uneasiness.

Instead she just felt peace.

Like she was standing inside a shrine. A sacrosanct territory, a site of worship or perhaps…

She eyed the mounds.

—Of mourning.

It was as though the mounds, and the monsters within them, and she was using the term ‘monster’ loosely, given that some of the clumps looked less like mounds and more like mountains — were all savoring the tranquil atmosphere.

It was… relaxing.

Her gaze slowly clouded over, and the feeling of rest, of sleep after long last, came to her. Why bother with the world, the pains, the sufferings that everyone wanted to inflict upon her, when she could just forget it all? When she could —

“What the,” came Olfric’s voice from her right, and Tanya almost jumped at the sound of his voice. There he was, standing alongside Elena and Zuken, but she could swear there was no one there a moment ago. “Since when can Aguilar do THIS?”

She wanted to ask the same. Lukas had kept her in the dark about this. She had always assumed that the ‘inner-world’ was a metaphor, and that the shard of his destroyed world had blessed him with strange powers that mimicked other worlds. He was still an individual, a man, a walking-breathing man. One she fell in love with, and made love to. He was not going to turn into sand or rock or have literal trees growing out of him.

But this… this was….

What was this?

“I….” She said at last. “I have no idea.”

“Oh? So this display is new for you as well,” said Solana, who had miraculously appeared from the other side, with the kasha Ryu next to her. It was like they were all popping in randomly all around. Tanya noted that despite the usual restrained response on her part, not even Solana could hide the genuine astonishment in her voice. “Truly, that man will never stop pulling miracles out of nowhere.”

“Hahahaha!” laughed Ryu. “Controlling so many puppets that look like himself all at once, and channeling power through them? And now an illusion this concrete? Truly the Outsider has outdone himself.”

“No,” said Maude, correcting the kasha, her eyes filled with wonder. “Not puppets. They were real. As real as flesh and blood one. As real as this place.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” scoffed Ryu. “The real one is right….” He trailed off, looking around at the endless graveyard of crystals. “Uh.. where is he?”

“WHAT IS THIS… ILLUSION?” came a loud, booming voice from afar. The response to that came in a soft, yet perfectly audible voice, one that proudly identified the location as…

“My world.”

…

Lukas stared at them from above, floating in the sky, taking in the sight of his manifested world with the same appreciation and giddiness as a parent seeing his child take its first step without any support. His world wasn’t any close to being finished, far from it, but there was definitely more to it than the last time he had returned to it. Whatever had caused the rapid progression eluded him, but he could return to that puzzle later.

“Your… world?” asked Solana softly, warily. “The world you come from?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “Not that world. This is—”

He paused and frowned. Something was here that wasn’t supposed to be. Whatever it was, he couldn’t recognize it, at the same time, it felt like it belonged.

Another conundrum! He’d look for it later.

He turned towards the horizon. Right now, he had something to do. He shut his eyes and focussed, searching for everyone. Despite the outer boundary being only a quarter of a mile radius, the insides of his world were practically endless, and he knew it better than anyone or anything else. He knew where every single monster prototype lay, where his half-baked shelved experiments lay for future attempts, where Meynte’s memory prototype lay next to everything he had gathered about the Truth preserved within Inanna’s pendant. He could find them as easily as he knew where his fingers were.

Bringing the visitors had accidentally scattered them across the vast plain, an error Lukas had quickly corrected, vanishing the distance between them, while making sure they were far enough from Mujin’s bestial form.

He allowed himself an amused smile as he greeted them. “Welcome to the Plains of Forget.”

He was greeted by a wave of confusion filling faces, though he could see a flicker of comprehension dawning on Solana’s face, though it was Maude’s reaction that caught his attention the most. She didn’t look confused or surprised, just sad as she stared at him with… was that pity he saw in her eyes?

“...Lukas,” he turned to see Tanya looking up at him. She was looking around her as she did so, her eyes opened so wide that he could see the white of her eyes. She wasn’t the only one either. While the majority of the yokai or the bremetans couldn’t properly comprehend what was happening around them, that wasn’t the case with Solana, or Maude, and why was Elena staring at him with that wanton look in her eyes?

“Lukas…” repeated Tanya again. “Where are we? What is this… place?”

“I told you, this is —”

He paused, as right then, a considerable chunk of the terrain further right just… vanished.

It couldn’t be called an explosion, because there was no light, no sound, no shockwave. Just an outrushing wave of something that flickered out of existence as soon as it appeared. As if a claw the size of a citibus had reached down and smoothly tore it out of the earth, leaving only a gash in the land where crystal mounds lay, leaving the edges as smooth as shattered glass.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And just like that, all his excitement vanished, leaving behind a cold annoyance at the casual denigration and destruction of his world.

“LET ME OUT OF THIS ILLUSION!” screamed Mujin, and a thousand wind blades appeared all around his gigantic form. With a roar, the blades fell in hundreds and thousands, descending from the dark sky that had turned almost glassy from the reflecting light. Like meteors, they came down to obliterate everything in their path —

—Only to converge into a smaller focus and vanish, as if drawn and consumed into a black hole.

A black hole, or the gigantic maw of a demon that could be called a titanic ancestor to the khorkhoi as it leapt out of the terrain, swallowed the blades within its impenetrable depths and sank back again.

“Illusion?” asked a smiling Lukas Aguilar. “Trust me, Mujin, this is anything but.”

Before the warlord could do anything, his bestial paws were grabbed by hands just as massive as he was. He fought and screamed and flailed, but could not escape the grip of the giant pair holding him like a captive animal.

“You showed me your toys,” said Lukas, still smiling. “Here, let me show you some of mine. Tell me, what do you think of the Gigantomachia?”

Creatures of the Greek and Roman myths, the Gigantomachia were impossibly massive beings that could make even a tyrannosaurus flee at sight. Said to be born of Gaia, they were terramancers of the apex degree, and capable of solidifying anything within their four-armed grips.

Even air.

Lukas had been both exhilarated and downright floored upon realizing the true significance of what it was he had been handed upon when Blob had unlocked the monster prototypes of Lostbelt Earth during his fight with Meynte and Solana. Even discounting the Earth’s later status as a planet devoid of lifeforce and mana, there had always been a history of mythologies and mythical beings that existed on the planet, at least if the scriptures and ancient engravings could be believed.

And if Earth could house a pendant within which was housed a reflection of an Akkadian goddess, then the idea that mythological races of monsters existing on the lostbelt was hardly unbelievable.

That alone was half the reason Lukas had spent that long loitering through the Haze, cataloging, studying and experimenting on the collection of prototypes he had gotten from his home world.

And what a collection it was!

Gigantomachia, Titanomachia, monsters of the deep sea bed, legendary races that ruled the skies, centaurs that ran across the terrain, mermen and sirens of the ocean, creatures with powers so wondrous that they appeared downright magical. The problem was that manifesting them in the real world was like reverse osmosis — the ‘data’ was there, borrowed from the Omphalos within him, only to be filtered by his own understanding of the prototype. The more skilled he was in elemental manipulation, the more he understood a prototype, the easier the process was. The more alien the mindset was, the more strain it put upon him, when he summoned it using Puppeteer protocol. Cutting corners made the process easier, but it could heavily degrade the final product.

And honestly, more than half of what he had found sitting in the collection were downright beyond him at the moment. Maybe after he had become a full-fledged Warlord or reached close to King-status, he could probably manifest them outside using Blob for a couple of minutes without frying his brain in the process.

But here, inside the Plains of Forget, now that was an entirely different ball game.

“I told you, Mujin,” he said softly. “I am a tyrant. A thief. I stole your authority, your place of power, your soldiers and your position as the Sacred Eight. And now, I am going to steal your might.”

He thrust his hand out, and tendrils of aqāru — each as thick as palm tree trunks, erupted out of the ground, impaling the solidified airy form. The beast screeched and screeched and screeched, but the tendrils would not let go. The Warlord threw his head back and howled in unspeakable agony, as the tendrils tore his beastly kami — a Level-4 monstrosity out of his very soul, ripping past the bindings of Eternal Light like it meant nothing. Aqāru was lethal to spiritual entities, and it devoured the kami, extracting it out despite the layers and layers of psionic defenses that Mujin tried to put with growing desperation.

Defenses. Traps. Mental pathways. Constraints put on his very soul to keep his kami from escaping.

All of that was blown away like cobwebs in a hurricane.

And then it was over, as the Screen popped in front of Lukas.

Soul Siphon Success!

Absorbed Monster Prototype JAAN: BYAKKO

Spiritual Parasite. Energy Core constitutes mana forge for Wind and Ether.

APTITUDE

LEVEL

SOUL CAPACITY REQUIRED

Possession

3

5000

Wind Creation

4

50000

Wind Manipulation

4

50000

Pressure Modulation

4

50000

Translocation

4

50000

Conjuration

3

5000

Lukas grinned. He remembered the first time he had absorbed a kami, only to be surprised by the curve ball that was Aptitude. Kami were ridiculously powerful creatures, but they suffered from crippling limitations at the same time, the most important being their inability to generate more soul capacity aside from what they were naturally born with. It was why they were parasites, possessing other beings to utilize their soul capacity for their own growth — a trait that Asukans took advantage of, and turned the elemental parasites into mana-forging machines, and gained the ability to manacraft in the process.

And once a kami was separated from its host, all its elevated skills went dormant, saved as Aptitudes, something that could only be unlocked upon getting another host boasting enough soul capacity.

Back when he had gained his first kami — Olfric’s marid, he had lacked the soul capacity to convert its Aptitudes and Skills. But now, with his infinite soul capacity?

Transferring required soul capacity to prototype JAAN: BYAKKO

Requisition of Aptitude into Skills Complete

It was child’s play.

“I am content,” said Lukas, closing his eyes. When he opened them, his expression had changed. Gone was the face of the tyrant, the ruler, the absolute God of this domain. Instead, the face of a tired, relaxed man that was near the end of his life stared back at Mujin. A satisfied life coming to an end and relief that the future was in safe hands.

Not happiness, merely content. He was done, and the only thing left would not happen by his hand.

The gigantomachia dispersed into nothingness.

“Tanya,” he said, slowly levitating himself and Mujin down to the ground. “I leave the rest to you.”

“No wait,” cried Mujin. “Don’t kill me! Do you not see what that vile wench has become? Do you not see the wrongness in her? That power — Everfrost — needs to be controlled by an iron will. That power will destroy the world if we let it. You think — you think you’re being a hero? You think you’re saving her?”

Lukas said nothing.

Mujin kept yelling, frothing at his lips. “You — you’ll fail! The Pantheon has felt the stirrings, noticed the tremors. The Great Goddess herself knows that the ancient power that once sought her in combat, the power of the yokai Empress is again at large. You think that this — that killing me will solve your problem? Fool! I was given the task of finding out about Everfrost and its bearer. If I die, then the Earth King shall know that I was slain inside this very Desert. It took you everything just to fight me and destroy one warship. What happens when the Earth King arrives with his immense army? You, the girl, the yokai — none shall survive. The Earth King shall utterly destroy everything, until neither a speck of you, nor that accursed metal of yours remains. He will crush the girl, he will enslave her, and he will drag her kicking and screaming. He will subdue her and make her into his slave.”

Lukas still said nothing.

Mujin drew a breath. Maybe he was thinking he could turn the tables to his favor.

“You see now, don’t you? Yes, I’m evil. Yes, I’ve committed atrocities in the name of my clan. Yes, I captured Tanya and imprisoned her. You can blame me for all that. But I’m also your best chance in this matter. You’ve already defeated me. Taken my kami! You can easily kill me. But what good will that go? The Empire, and the Earth King will come for you. If you think Tanya had a hard life all this while, she will never know a moment of peace after this. Everywhere she goes, the Cobalt Army shall come for her, and they’ll keep coming until she’s either captured or dead.”

This time Lukas did say something.

“And… what do you propose?”

Mujin drew himself to his tallest. “A middle ground. I know, I — I have known this for a long while, that it was a mistake. What I did to Tanya, I mean. She was a perfect success, the miracle that marked the end of two centuries of constant experiments. A Shimizu in whose veins flows the Wind King’s bloodline. One who was chosen by Ezzeron to be its next wielder, and someone in whose soul hides the power that can end the world. Everfrost. She — she was my perfect successor, but I — in my hubris, imprisoned her, tortured her, tried to extract that power out of her. I — I was wrong. I was — I was foolish. And I’m willing to make amends.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Empire has forsaken me,” admitted Mujin. “They took away our Sacred Eight status. Obviously, you know that. But I told it back then, in front of the Emperor no less, that Tanya lives. That she wields my father’s kami, Ezzeron, the Wrath of the Wind King himself. If Tanya rejoins my side, if she becomes the Shimizu heiress, then she can breathe fresh life into my Clan’s name. We can become the Sacred Eight again.”

“Really?” Lukas asked, cocking his head. “You would do that for her?”

“I — I’ll even swear by an Eztli contract, never to reveal anything about you, or the yokai, or whatever happened here,” blabbered Mujin. “Isn’t that what you want? For Tanya to get another chance at a normal life?” He gazed at his granddaughter, expecting a reaction. “I’m giving you that chance. Don’t you want it? Don’t you want this — YRKKH!”

He staggered back and looked down at his own chest, his brows furrowed in confusion. Slowly, he raised one hand and looked at the sharp, jagged icicle jammed into his chest, puncturing through his heart.

At first he seemed bemused by the sight, as if he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing, the sight so outside the realm of possibility that his brain needed a few seconds to actually comprehend it. Then his eyes steadily began to widen as it finally dawned on him that, yes, it was Everfrost piercing his heart, and that growing numbness was his lifeforce being sucked dry by the accursed ice.

“It’s a waste of time for the killer to speak with the one she’s about to kill,” said Tanya in a cold voice. “You taught me that, grandfather.”

And then Mujin died.

Another notification popped up, and with it, another crystal cluster.

Soul Siphon Success!

Absorbed Monster Prototype BREMETAN

And that wasn’t all..

Found 61 BREMETAN prototypes

Agglomerate prototypes to create a Standard Bremetan Prototype?

Yes.

He looked at Tanya. She looked at him with a satisfied smile. Beyond them, the dark starless sky shone, with the titanic figure overhead, and countless mounds of crystal spread far into the horizon.

Peace had returned to this place.

The war was over. They were done.

Everything was just…. done.

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