Tweaking your consumption wasn’t easy, but it could be done. If you weren’t stupid about it. Changing your entire Comprehension? That was always stupid, so Josephson IV didn’t even try. He had pupated using psychic power, and that was still the bones of his spirit.
He had just… Added a little bit extra. Nothing to get worked up over, people did it all the time. Put some metal in your rock, some light in your fire. Easy. Mostly.
He wasn’t entirely sure where putting the self-eating cult on top of his existing power would take him, but he was definitely going somewhere. Junk Dog said that power was power, that the particulars weren’t important, and he was basically the strongest guy the clan had ever had. How could he be wrong?
And it was working, he could feel it. He was stronger than he had been before he tried it, stronger than just one type of energy could provide.
But there were downsides he hadn’t ironed out, yet. He got tired easy, needed to eat more, needed to sleep more. Sandyass, who was doing something almost the same but obviously worse, didn’t seem to have most of those problems. But that was fine! He’d figure it out. He just needed to work at it, keep eating and breaking down the energy to understand it.
But before he could do that, he needed to survive the day.
The prisoner’s fist made a whistling sound as it came towards his face, still wreathed in black vapour. Yeah, not taking that on the chin. Kinetics grabbed hold of his bones, flinging his body to the side even as the purified energy of Joeism bulked up his muscles. He circled around, giving the warrior a wide berth until he could aim his own punch at his unprotected back. “Too slow!”
Then his vision seemed to stutter, and suddenly the man was facing him, again, his fist way too close fuck-! The hit went across his jaw, and he could feel something pulling at him, something like gravity pulling all his meat in to the point where the attack had connected.
He pushed, hard, and the re-digested essence of his own spirit flooded his body. Whatever technique that had been continued to eat away at him, but he drowned it out with waves of energy, gritting his teeth. The warrior turned, obviously dismissing him as near death – and his teeth cracked from how hard he pushed. “RAAAGH!”
With a final whimper the gravity or whatever the fuck guttered out, and the man’s eyes widened as he looked back, using that stuttering technique to dodge a swing from Sand-Blasted Steel. He said something in his annoying foreign tongue, and IV could feel his focus narrow in. Ha, taking it seriously now, are you? Should’ve gone hard from the start.
His mouth was filled with jagged shards of enamel – and when the alien suddenly blurred forward, he was ready. My body is my temple. Destructive Sparks! The technique twisted under his Comprehension, expressing itself not from his hands, but instead imbedded in the spray of shrapnel he spat from his mouth.
A glowing shield sprang up the moment IV’s attack came close – but the destructive power in the shards of tooth burned through, and they shredded the man’s arms as raised them up to block. He blurred again, but Sandy was there, his fist already cocked back. The hit was good, satisfying, he could feel it even from across the room.
IV pulled more energy from his stomach, then more still. Time to finish this. The prisoner was caught up exchanging blows with his cult brother; while Sandy’s consumption was a twisted mess of kinetics, electrics, and some kind of esoteric Mechanicalism that barely fit together on a good day, he couldn’t say it wasn’t sturdy. Teleportation. I’m pretty sure. He couldn’t feel the man’s energy, but the effect was obviously something like that. Gotta hit him with something he can’t dodge. “Hold him!”
For an instant, the two warriors locked eyes. Sandy nodded, then went entirely offensive, attacking with twice the ferocity. He started taking stupid hits, prioritising keeping the enemy occupied instead of actually trying to beat him in a fistfight.
IV concentrated. His power built, a ball of destruction forming in his spirit – but then the kinetics joined in, flowing around the ball, sealing it tight. This wasn’t something he was comfortable calling a real technique – it was too crude, took too much will to bring it all together. He hadn’t even named it yet. But it’ll get the job done. It grew out from the pores of his hand, a ball of roiling purple glowing with internal light.
“GAAAH!”
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Bull was angry. At the two men he was fighting, at that smiling prick of a grandmaster, at this entire planet in general – but mainly, right at this moment, at himself. Should’ve confirmed the kill. The fourth realm version of Hell’s Monkey Snatches the Moon wasn’t nearly as strong as the one he had used to wound the swamp chieftain, but it was still the sort of art that you didn’t walk away from. I gambled most everything on that attack, and lost hard. He had rushed to Tiny, confident that Fatty would lose his head in mere moments – and now he was fighting sandwiched between the two, things having gone about as bad as they could.
He couldn’t even manage a healing spell for his arms, his qi was so depleted.
His opponent roared, and a cage of lightning formed around them. He grimaced. “Setting up for your buddy, huh?” The other guy had been standing still for a while now, five seconds at least, and Bull had an increasingly bad feeling about it.
So when the attack finally came, rushing towards his back, he wasn’t surprised. Some kind of nasty purple thing, distorted into an egg shape by its own speed, closed in from an angle he couldn’t possibly see. Good tactics, no way I’d be able to dodge that as a mortal – unfortunately for you, I still have a spiritual sense. So, block or dodge?
Dodge; with the way the last attack shredded his shield, it would just be a waste of qi. He cast the Stuttering Step, his grimace deepening as the wide-set net of lightning burned him; there simply wasn’t enough room for his body to fit, so he could only grit his teeth and pick a spot with as few dancing tines as possible. Then the next moment, he was through. He Stepped again, clearing the cage entirely, and started internally debating between fighting it out or just running for it. I can’t absorb any qi in here. They can’t either, but I’m betting they have a lot more to work with than I do. The qi circuit’s main feature was its incredible ability to restore its reserves, but in this situation that wasn’t helpful; he was getting nothing but dregs, whatever energy the locals were putting off.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He turned to Fatty, his mind made up. The man was grinning, his muscles tensing in preparation to close the distance. Yeah, time to go. I might be able to beat them, but the odds aren’t good. He waited till the last possible moment, when the man committed fully to attacking, before letting loose two Light Rays. The beams of light, one from each index finger, speared into the man’s eyes. Let’s hope that puts him down for a few seconds; Lu's report mentioned a weakness to light. Other guy’s still in the cage – though he was doing something to the lightning Bull couldn’t understand, not at a glance – way’s as open as it’s going to get. He Stepped one final time as Fatty bent, screaming, flinging himself towards the exit – only for something to appear directly in his path.
The orb had turned to track him, slowing down not at all. He attempted to slip past it with another movement art, but the attack was moving faster than his mind. He could only thrust his hand out, and take it.
The explosion smashed him back into Fatty, his elbow colliding with the man’s nose, and through the haze of pain he managed to spring off the wall of meat. His legs propelled him through the inky black curtain, and he came out the other side with a jagged stump pumping lifeblood out into the air.
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Movement. The moment something stirred inside the void, Fireblessed immediately went on guard. After the escape attempt he had ran through his ‘fight’ against the prisoner, and come to some conclusions.
He had lost because he had been caught by surprise. Despite his entire job being to watch the entrance, he had hesitated – that wouldn’t happen a second time. From that moment onward, every time something began emerging he began to spin up a thick barrier.
When the prisoner staggered into view, bleeding profusely from a missing limb, he felt deep satisfaction.
[P-]
His telepathic transmission was cut off when a beam of light struck him in the eye, breaking his concentration.
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Not the worst injury I’ve ever suffered. That was… Probably true. He had taken a lot of punishment over the years. Never lost an arm, though. Not a good situation. Gotta do better, be faster, more decisive. He wasn’t handling the decrease in his mental abilities as well as he was the physical; he should have had plenty of time to cast the ridiculously simple one-form spell. Should have, but didn’t.
The ugly truth was that he just didn’t have a lot of practise with the art. He preferred to rely on his body, something that seemed to be biting him in the ass; he had been beating Tiny hand-to-hand, but the moment their techniques came into play he had been put against the ropes. Moral of the story: kill ‘em before they can cast. Just like fighting other cultivators. Simple, in theory.
He came out of the black space with a Light Ray ready to go – the only combat art he could muster with the dregs of his circuit – and fired it at the first thing he saw. It passed through a shimmer – doesn’t block light? Good to know – and hit a vaguely familiar man in the eye.
Another barrier. Don’t have enough for a Hell’s Monkey… Not for at least another twenty seconds, now that he was filling up his circuit, more if he spent some qi to stop bleeding out. How wide is it?
He eyeballed it. On the other side the enemy was gathering himself, tears streaming down his face. No blood. I remember why I stopped using that spell, it does shit damage. Efficient, though. But you know what’s more efficient? Physical combat.
He lined up the forms in his mind as his circuit greedily filled itself. He hadn’t remembered the exact sequence for this spell during his previous escape attempt, but there had been plenty of time to rack his brain while he waited for the ideal moment.
Stuttering Step, third realm!
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Fireblessed was in agony. Having his bones broken didn’t even come close; it was like a red-hot coal had been inserted into his brain. He was certain his eye was gone – but when he raised his hand to wipe his face, he found he was whole.
He looked up, fury in his gaze. The prisoner had his remaining arm held against the barrier, and their eyes met for an instant. [P-]
Then the prisoner was less than a step away. Right in front of him. [!!!]
The signal he sent was wordless, just the emotion of alarm; hopefully that would be enough, because he didn’t think he would get the chance to send a proper one. Even one-armed, the man attacked like a wild beast; he smashed through Fireblessed’s hastily raised shields, breaking them with pure strength. He tried to push him back with kinetics, but the man teleported to break away before rushing back in.
In desperation, all he could do was shred an area around himself to force the man off.
[Fireblessed, I heard that. What is happening?] Tanglebud’s voice sounded in his head, and relief flooded him.
[!!!]
[I understand. Reinforcements inbound. Twenty seconds.]
We’ll see if I make it that long. He crushed a blade of air, but then another bright light stabbed into him. Can’t hold back. Use everything.
Again, he wrenched everything around his body in chaotic directions, shredding the walls and floor of the tunnel. The man danced back, and through the tears in his eyes he could see a slight smirk on his face. He was pale, blood still streaming from his stump, but Fireblessed hadn’t managed to injure him at all.
And then the blood stopped, seeming to reverse direction. Bone, then muscles, then skin seemed to coalesce from the air, and in the time it took to draw breath the man had two arms. He flexed the new limb, and any hope Fireblessed had of just bleeding him out died. Really use everything! His jaw set, and he squeezed his stomach for every bit of power it had.
Consumption of the soul was unpopular. Its attacks scaled up poorly, and its defenses were only useful against attacks of the same type – which, again, were nothing special anyway. They got less effective as warriors became stronger, their bodies no longer needing a spiritual crutch to guide their regeneration. Past a certain point, they were no more than annoying. A niche comprehension, one that rarely tipped the scales of battle.
But it was a niche that he filled, for better or worse; his was the consumption of soul, and so he attacked with everything his spirit had to offer. Needles of invisible energy speared out from his body, dozens of thin slivers that would cut through his enemy and damage his stomach. It might kill him. We don’t know how strong he is, not truly.
The man’s eyes widened. Did he see them, somehow? No matter. As the needles closed in, he projected his own shield; a glowing buckler moved to block them – but they passed through without touching it, sinking into the prisoner’s body. Soul attacks were mediocre, but their one good point was that they didn’t interact with most defenses.
He went still, and Fireblessed did as well. Fall. Fall!
The prisoner blinked, then his smile, which had been extinguished for a moment, returned. He spoke, and because of the needles still pierced into his body Fireblessed understood. “If I still had my cultivation, that would have been bad. I guess being mortal has its advantages, huh?”
Then he broke Fireblessed’s jaw a second time.
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Bull was unsteady on his feet. He only knew the most basic healing arts, so he was still running on a blood deficit, and his arm would be about as durable as a paper lantern for a while. Should probably work on that, when I get home. Ugh, but healing spells were so complicated, there was a reason it was a specialist position.
The third guard was on the ground. He hadn’t put up nearly the fight that Tiny and Fatty had. Right, them. Gotta get going before they show up. It had been maybe fifteen seconds from when he had double-Ray'd Fatty – of had it been Tiny? – in the face. Kill him, keep moving.
He crushed the guard’s neck under his heel, then started dashing down the tunnel. Behind him he heard roaring as his previous adversaries exited the closed space. Let’s hope they aren't fast. No way these muscleheads would know any movement arts, right?