Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS
Barely any time had passed, it felt like, and most of the rioters were already dead. Once the enforcers began to fire, they had quickly realized their situation, and most had come to their senses. However, this had arrived too late for the vast majority of the group. They were right below a battlefield featuring multiple individuals at the spirit refiner level. Mere untrained mortals stood little chance for survival in the crossfire. Not that Karie cared, of course. They were mortals, and more importantly, aliens. Each of them were either irrelevant or any enemy.
If she was in the core formation stage, facing an enforcer alone would have been a certain death sentence for Karie. The hulking mechs were perfect counters against a genesis practitioner’s fighting style. All too often, weaker genesis practitioners would find themselves acting as bullet sponges.
Luckily, the Hadal Clan had a technique that could counter this advantage.
Martial forces each had their own specialty, even within the miasma they primarily practiced. If they had existed for long enough, their practitioners would have tested, created techniques, and developed new understandings of their miasma. For the Hadal Clan, their expertise lay in the use of genesis miasma as a sink. Most forces that used it preferred to either store up and release all at once, or to push back and forth into the miasma with a sort of rebound effect. The Hadal Clan, rather, preferred to use the process of storage itself as the primary effect. This process was not exemplary at the lower levels, but at the level of a spirit refiner, it experienced a fundamental shift in scope.
A tide of bullets splashed towards her, but Karie stretched her hand out, emanating a thick green mist into the air around her. Every bullet that encroached upon her domain slowed as if it were caught in a mire, its velocity steadily sapped away to fuel Karie’s own motion. This was the lower core technique that the vast majority of the Hadal Clan’s talents chose. The ability to absorb the kinetic energy of objects around oneself- the Momentum Devouring Mist Domain.
It had the weakness that it could only extend to the limit of the practitioner’s ability to push out their miasma without losing control, but this could be extended by both development and practice. Regardless, Karie only needed a few meters of space to use the mist as an effective shield for herself and her soldiers.
Her meridians burned as she sapped the energy from yet another fusillade, fueling her muscles to even greater heights as her blades pounded like clubs into the armor of the enforcer before her. The enforcer’s three sword arms sliced back and forth towards her, but with Karie’s expert use of her mindsplitting technique, she was able to ambidextrously use her twin blades to parry away the oversized swords using her vastly enhanced strength. She felt the strain in her muscles, and knew she would have to retreat to give her body a break once more, but it was difficult to back away from an enforcer without becoming wounded. She had run drills and prepared to fight against them for years, and knew their capabilities well.
The enforcer took a powerful step forward, its guns continuing to fire at and past her to where the other martial artists resided, trying to give her backup. At such a close distance, her mist was less effective, and she had to dodge some of the bullets. Luckily, they were slowed enough by her technique for this to be possible. Another problem was the thick orange smoke billowing out from the interior of the huge machine. The more damage her sword caused to the enforcer, the more the smoke billowed out, the flickering miasma suppressing her genesis mist when they made contact with a dangerous sounding hiss. Two miasmas could not coexist, after all.
Karie continued to force the large blades aside as she ducked and wove her way around the enforcer, preventing it from pushing her back significantly or gaining enough distance to get a better target lock with its firearms. She also made certain to stay near enough that the other enforcers could not fire without hitting their ally as well.
One of the blades coursed in, but Karie smacked it away even stronger than before, causing the mech to shift slightly off balance for just a moment. This pilot was clearly inexperienced, a matter which Karie was happy to capitalize on. She shifted her weight, pushing up her other blade with all the force her miasma could give her. With her muscles burning in pain, Karie gouged a large wound in the chest of the enforcer. The machine’s pilot attempted to take a step backwards, to use its weapons to protect the weak point she had created, but there was nothing that could be done. Karie was able to continue her own relentless fusillade of blows, and the situation had shifted. Despite having an entire sword more than her, the enforcer was unable to prevent her from getting additional hits into the machine’s guts.
She had simply built up too much of an advantage by slowing its movements down and speeding herself up.
Sparks flew out of the wound in the enforcer’s chest, the flickering miasma flowing out so heavily that it almost seemed liquid, and the enforcer staggered backwards as she got one more powerful slash into it. The mech froze, seeming to have locked up, and the incredibly heavy weight of its mass slowly toppled backwards, prompting a cheer from where her own forces resided behind cover on her own side of the bridge.
An enforcer was down, and Karie was the one who had destroyed it.
She couldn't help but laugh joyously at the achievement. There were very few these days who could say they had defeated an enforcer in single combat. Karie’s eyes glanced down at her mangled weapons, and her laughs turned into quiet chuckles. They were fine weapons composed of expensive alloys, but it seemed they were unable to handle combat at the intersection between the mists of genesis and the smoke of flickering. It was good that she carried an extra pair, she thought.
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Glancing up at the hulk, Karie felt an instinct, she wished to stand triumphantly atop the toppled form of the enforcer, but she held back the thought. The bullets whizzing past atop the wreckage provided sufficient reason to avoid such foolish grandstanding. Paying close attention to her other senses, as she dared not stick her head within line of sight of the enemy, Karie bided her time and then sprinted back down the bridge, fueling her legs with every scrap of energy she could. She moved in a random pattern, trying to throw off the Celan targeting systems.
By the time she arrived at the other end of the bridge where there was cover in the form of the spacedock, Karie had found that she was lucky today. Only one of the bullets had made contact with her, and it was only a small graze to her side. She tightened the belt of her uniform, and then moved through the defenses to find where Pakas was standing.
“Good job, Commander,” he said as she arrived.
She gave him a nod.
“I finally took it down. Any changes to the situation?”
Pakas winced.
“Our scouts have spotted further reinforcements arriving. One more enforcer which should replace the one you destroyed.”
Karie growled in annoyance. It had taken her quite a while just to destroy that one, and she would need a break for some time before she could return. Did she really need to send her troops at them as a cannon fire approach?
“I suggest we retreat,” said Pakas, ending the momentary pause.
She glared at him, but he rapidly explained himself.
We’re at the top level of the stack. It’s mostly empty, ideal for firearm superiority. If we want to have the advantage, we need to fight them somewhere else. Moreover, if we can delay further, another expert will certainly arrive to lighten your burden. Then we will be able to stage a stronger attack.”
Karie frowned, but had to admit that her advisor had a point. He certainly was an experienced tactician, she thought. More than suitable as her subordinate.
She gritted her teeth as she succumbed to reason. This wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what she was searching for, but she would have to back out. His logic was sound, and there was nothing more she could do with her strength alone. Not when the situation was such that she was outnumbered and unable to gain proper use out of the power of her subordinates.
“Fine, then,” she said, her tone audibly resigned.
She glanced back around the wall, seeing the remaining enforcers still standing there, their reinforcements soon arriving, while her own were too far away. Disappointed, she moved to command a retreat, but paused again as she sensed something at the far edge of her senses. She snapped her head around, gazing down the bridge to the stack further into Hadal territory.
A portly man was moving at speeds far faster than one would expect, each step flinging himself across the ground towards their location. He was a sei, and his flabby face was a perfect fit for his rotund physique. Even at a distance, Karie recognized his identity on sight. He was one of the few spirit refiners in the clan, Chief Apothecary Sulno Hadal.
“Hold that,” she ordered, and Pakas paused in his fiddling with the handheld device, looking up questioningly, before following her gaze until he saw what had changed her mind.
Despite his unassuming appearance, Karie knew that one had to take the Chief Apothecary seriously in combat. His appearance was the result of his body being affected by one of his core techniques. Though Karie felt she was almost certain to defeat him if they were to fight in one on one combat, what was truly scary about the man’s abilities was the strength he displayed in group combat.. As likely the only manifest spirit refiner in Tseludia, Sulno’s medicine path was unique and something few knew how to deal with. He had been studying advanced alien studies on biology, and could be considered a near unparalleled expert in medicine among Seiyal, at least in Tseludia.
Having recognized him, Karie breathed out a sigh of relief, her feelings rapidly upsurging. As Sulno arrived at their group, she took a step forward to greet him while the martial artists around her bowed.
“Greetings to the Chief Apothecary,” Karie said excitedly.
“Greetings, Chief Apothecary Sulno,” said Pakas, barely a beat behind her.
The man laughed boisterously, the sound at odds with the setting. Gunfire still resounded around them as the enforcers attempted to break down the wall between them.
“Greetings to the Young Mistress and her first advisor,” he replied. “Once I heard the fighting started, I came as fast as I could. Congratulations on your advancement, by the way.”
“Thank you,” she said, knowing his words were empty. “We could use your assistance.”
Despite how happy she was to see him at the moment, the two of them did not actually have the best relationship. Sulno Hadal was one of the most important supporters of her eldest cousin Juen, first in line to succeed her mother’s position. Karie was over a decade younger than him. Though she felt that she had more martial talent than him, she simply could not compete with him in the field of politics. Interpersonal relations had never been her strong suit.
Once she finally managed to earn herself a true reputation, she would let her strength speak for her.
Sulno laughed again, but his eyes were steely, as if the emotion on his face was but a mask. But just a moment later, the twinkle returned to his eye as if Karie had spotted nothing amiss at all.
“It’s a good thing I made it in time,” he said. “Now that I’m here, you need not worry.”
Karie wondered about that.
Inheritance in the Hadal Clan: [As a clan, the Hadal family places a great deal of importance on bloodline. Only those of the main line are able to inherit the position of the clan leader, but any youths within the line are capable of competing for the position, not just the children of the current head. This position has remained empty since the current Matriarch took up her position after her predecessor’s death. Recently, pressure from the branch families for a successor to be selected has grown, though by tradition this can only be decided when one of the candidates forces all of their opponents to forfeit their right to inherit or if every other member of the Elder Council agrees on the matter.]