A Simple Transaction I

Hunger went still as the beast lay dying around him, its floundering mass sinking slowly into the endless depths below. Out here in the deep ocean were the only waters vast enough to contain the "Armament" Fish, whose immense height from belly to topfin forced it to treat even ordinary seas as meagre shallows. It did not beach against the land; continental shelves beached against it. The grinding procession of its movement against such plates sent thunderous quakes through the earth, flesh mauling stone with world-turning force.

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What I'm reading is that Hunger is calmly watching all this loot sink into the depths of the Voyaging Sea without thinking of any countermeasures, but that can't possibly be right! How could Hunger just let all that wealth go without even thinking of ways to save it! Alas, if only we had some means to carry it along or extract other value from it. Would be nice to have the Heavenly Tomb or Talon right now, then we wouldn't have to waste the Fish's body and could salvage at least something beyond picks from this disaster.

Blood, cerulean and red, coursed endlessly from its quietly steaming corpse, congealing into thickets of wobbling goop the size of lakes and swamps, pock-marks of color against the wide, pale, pallid blue horizon that was its unmoving corpse. This was no isle but a continent, spanning full into the distance as far as the eye could see; every ridge a mountain range, every declination a shore.

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Blue blood? Ah, so it had been a noble, no wonder Hunger decided to cut it down mercilessly. He barely tolerates the Princesses in his own party, accepting a noble Fish is clearly more than he could tolerate.

You know, reading Rihaku's chapters sometimes takes me on the weirdest tangents. This time I started wondering about the reasons for the color of the Armament-Fish's blood. Of course one could simply handwave it as Blue magic and be done, and magic (plus Rank) probably does play some role in its impossible physiology, but I had to consider other solutions to this riddle. In the real world, the difference between red and blue blood comes from different proteins responsible for carrying oxygen through one's circulatory system.

For humans and most other mammals it's haemoglobin, using iron as a binding agent and causing the red color after oxygenation much like in rust, whereas in some living beings, like squids, spiders, snails, emperor scorpions or horseshoe crabs, hemocyanin is responsible for carrying oxygen along and so produces blue-colored blood, though the specific shade varies. Yet here we see a mix of these colors, which would be pretty weird in normal biology, though I read about some molluscs using both. Hemocyanin works better in cold and oxygen-poor environments, haemoglobin in relatively oxygen-rich ones. I have little idea what exactly it would mean for the Fish to have blood of both types, except once again chalking it up to magic and this particular Armament thinking that blue on red looks cool.

Would it rot away, Hunger wondered, leaving only calcified remnants, a land of barren bone too vast for the waves to engulf? Would some aspirant colonizer chance upon this land, a thousand years hence? Would they dredge the marrow out from its cavernous ribs, opening tunnels a kingdom's width in size, the white curve of bone overhead so huge and so high that it served an adequate substitute for the sky?

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We should write down our name on the corpse in case something like that actually happens. We don't want people to start coming up with weird conspiracy theories, do we? Just tell them that Hunger was here and that he killed this giant Fish. And if Gisena starts teasing us about bragging on such a scale, just tell her it's for the sake of our Rank!

Theoretically we could even bear witness to such an occurrence if our Geas task takes long enough, though I shudder to imagine what sorts of things Apocrypha would throw at us by that point. After all, we almost reached the known power ceiling of this universe in a month, just how far would we come in a thousand years? And what would she have to resort to in response to our advancement? She might have to start using some really wild crossovers at this rate, drawing ever more deeply from her multiversal bag of tricks.

For all its tempestuous rage, the beast had been surprisingly easy to slay, Hunger's plan proceeding smoothly apace. Using the same technique he'd employed against the Rotbeast, he'd crippled the monster in a brief initial exchange, then slowly dismantled it over the course of hours.

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The benefit of appropriate Praxis techniques and good rolls, though we probably could have escaped even if worst came to worst. It would have extended our stay here of course, and considering what exactly was happening in Nilfel on this day, that could have turned out very badly for our party.

Little else lived out here, all slain by the kinetic force of the Fish's thrashings, the apocalyptic storm of its death-throes. Hunger could sympathize with its desperation, the unflinching grasp on life which resolved to weather any eventuality, so long as it could survive. Without such a mindset he would have fallen to the Tyrant many times.

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The strangest things evoke Hunger's sympathy sometimes, though it makes sense from his point of view. He felt sorry for the Azure Ring and empathized with the Armament-Fish here, but humans don't always get the same privilege. Not to say that he isn't heroic, and he does his best to save people when he can, but it feels like there is a kind of disconnect between him and humanity at times. Leftover influence of his adventure in the previous world perhaps, and gaining power at this incredible rate hadn't helped his keep perspective of what normal life is like either.

He blinked. It had been a while since he'd thought of the Tyrant, or that man's depredations. A consequence of his discarded memories, or was he himself moving past the shadow of that enemy, a year departed and a lifetime away? And if so, was that something he even desired?

Of course it was foolishness to allow oneself to be defined by one's foes, yet the campaign against the Tyrant had forged so much of who he was... in many ways it was the foundation upon which all his further developments had been made, and perhaps it ought not surprise him that a foundation steadily built-over would become more difficult to perceive.

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Power-wise he has moved on after OaF if not earlier already, though healing the psychological scars is a far more difficult endeavor. Having lost most of his memories including some rather important stuff from Earth means that the war against the Tyrant comprises a major part of his personality's foundation, as he says. Huh, that's a thought, what had Hunger been like before he burned his self on the pyre of victory? I somehow doubt that losing half his memories it would have had no influence on his sense of identity, even if the core character traits had been preserved.

Hunger was worried that Catherine and the rest of his dead friends wouldn't recognize the person he would become when he got around to resurrecting them, but he doesn't - can't - take into account the changes wrought upon him by his sacrifice, so he might have become something of a stranger to those that had known him already. And while he insists that he had held onto the memories most dear to him, like his friends and the times he shared with them, it's also a fact that the choice of what to sacrifice wasn't entirely up to him. He could have forgotten something or someone very important and just not know it anymore.

You know, it's awfully convenient how his actions resulted in a patchwork memory that can have variable backgrounds. It's one of those things I sense the hand of the Hidden Ones in, a way for them to hide more obvious instances of their involvement in his life should he go over his past with a finer comb later. Perhaps too paranoid, given that he was slated to die, but perhaps they hadn't planned to abandon him after all and still had some use for their Hero. At the end he was in a pretty vulnerable position and would have accepted any bargain if they promised him revenge and/or his wife and child back.

Time enough later to dwell. He stepped forth and strode across the waves, speed of his forward progress crafting a carrier-pocket of pure velocity that skimmed the waters without plunging beneath. What sparse islands dotted this part of the Realm were long buried beneath the Armament-Fish's movements, and it was many long seconds before he finally reached the landmass where Gisena awaited him.

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Always good to have more fodder for brooding sessions when you're in the illustrious company of Princesses and Heroes! Letrizia and Verschlengorge are the only ones who shares Hunger's propensity for EDGE, and even that is oftentimes overwhelmed by the pilot's cuteness. To maintain balance, Hunger must dig deep into his reserves of anti-heroism and brood twice as hard.

And I still don't know if Hunger can run on air! Running on water had been possible for a while already, as he shows here, so air shouldn't pose any great difficulties at his speeds. Not sure how the weird interactions between his stats and Rank would influence things, and I guess he can just use Edeldross for platforms if it isn't possible for some reason, but it would be somewhat disappointing for a continent-buster to be bound by ordinary gravity and need dedicated powers for flight.

Huh. Just occurred to me, but does Rank have any relations with Internal Alchemy? They're quite different in their effects, with IA conveying physical stats and mental speed where Rank focuses on spiritual might and broad-scale reality manipulation, but at higher proficiency IA increasingly divorces its practitioners from the laws of reality, allowing them to ignore some attacks and fly without causing sonic booms. The last is why I made the connection, though I suppose it could be just superficial similarities in some aspects.

She had moved safely inland, reclining upon a mountain peak whose grasses were stippled with snow, above which a rainbow aurora fluxed and blazed as if in rivalry to the sun.

"Any interesting magics?" He asked as he slowed, arriving at a modest pace so as not to blast away the mountainside. He had still not fully exerted control over his portion of the Forebear's might.

"Nothing that would interest Lord Hunger, the great and powerful," Gisena said perkily, springing to her feet. "It's an interesting supernatural phenomenon, but nothing we can use."

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There are vanishingly few magics that Hunger would deign to learn at this point. The Sword Praxis serves well as a weapon, Edeldross and Blood magic are there for his healing needs, and whatever utility holes the other magics have, we can patch those through Empyrean Signs. There aren't many niches that new magic systems could occupy, and we aren't going to chance upon particularly powerful ones in any random place. Even Edeldross itself is lagging behind somewhat, though it has some potential from the Elixir advancement. Maybe we'll find some really neat magic systems in the Walls of Myth after the whole Nilfel debacle is over, but I won't hold my breath for it.

Maybe we could use this place as a picnic spot later if the view is truly good? Much later, when we aren't as busy with our various obligations and Geas task. We pass so much by due to how fast the pace we've set for ourselves is, but sometimes it's nice to stop and smell the roses - or watch the rainbow auroras when we chance upon them.

"That's King Hunger to you," he said sternly, turning to survey the lands beneath. He'd done what he could to alleviate the collateral damage, but the devastation was still immense. Large swathes of former shoreline had been all-but erased, dragged beneath the waves with silt streaming like tears. Entire ecologies lay broken or transformed even in the receding wake of the tide. Rivers had ruptured their banks, become impromptu estuaries, while wide hills and mountains now served as tiny islets in a sea of debris. Entire forests had been ripped free of the soil, trees like spilled matchsticks strewn across the sea-poisoned earth.

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No real way to avoid collateral damage from the fight unless we were significantly more powerful, but not only would that mean having to choose some other Decimator target, which would have come with its own share of problems, the Fish would also be allowed to rampage in the interim, thus causing more damage overall. In the end Hunger did the best he could in his circumstances, going above and beyond what was possible in the short month he had been in the Voyaging Realm.

Barring unrealistic expectations like superior talent with Progression or hunting down the Fish even earlier - a death sentence back then, as has become exceedingly obvious from this fight, there isn't really much he could have done to prevent these losses. Sometimes bad things just happen and one has to live with the consequences.

"It's bad," Gisena said lightly, tugging on his arm, "But the Fish caused much worse than this every day! Don't go moping that you 'have to get stronger' after all your recent power-ups!"

"I do have to get stronger," Hunger replied unambiguously. "The Apocryphal Curse never truly relents. Besides, weren't you just saying that you'll have to work harder than ever to keep up?"

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Nice of Gisena to try and cheer hunger up, but Hunger is so obsessed with training that he is going to wish into existence a private Realm that generates worthy opponents once he realizes that the challenges in this world have dried up. Can't fault him for it, his Curses and especially Apocrypha constantly demand the best of him. Well, mostly Apocrypha, since the others would have been much easier to deal with if it wasn't for her presence. Hell, sometimes I suspect the Accursed gave us this Crowning Curse to make things somewhat fair, because without her intervention we wouldn't have to worry about Geas task completion after becoming near Armament-tier in a month. We could have taken some time to relax and go on interesting - in the good sense - adventures.

"It's hardly fair!" Gisena smiled. "You've got your power of Progression and all that. Cheating isn't something to be encouraged."

"So being a genius doesn't count as enough of a cheat. Has the mighty Princess Allria finally met her match?"

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At last the day has come when Gisena couldn't hold her complaints about our Progression in anymore! Now we can finally unleash all the taunts about her purported genius we've saved up while ignoring the hypocrisy inherent in that! Though discouraging cheating while secretly researching ways to acquire some manner of Progression herself, she is quite the hypocrite too. As expected of a noble Princess?

"Hmm, is that a challenge? You just might end up ruing the day, mister Hero." Affectionately she poked him in the cheek.

"Hmph. You couldn't even kill the Hero of your world, what makes you think you're qualified to take on mine?"

Gisena pouted. "How cruel! I'll just have to see that you get your just desserts."

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Is it a day of low blows? Hunger needles her about her trauma from her past world, and in response she threatens him with her food, how did the banter turn so vicious all of a sudden?!

Tapping the Forebear's reserves and assimilating the Opalescent Tower had finally left him mightier than even his prior self, and not just by a modest sum. He and the Tyrant had vied for the fate of just one world, a single planet warred-over for a decade. Now he had slain a living continent in the span of an afternoon. And the beast had been no unresisting slab, but a monstrosity whose force and speed served to propel its immensity at truly threatening speeds. Why it had housed the Blue Swordsman was something of an enigma, but Hunger had been too heavily occupied to investigate the matter before the man was slain.

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I think Hunger can guess that Ber's presence was due to Apocrypha, it's too much of a coincidence otherwise. I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about her at the moment. On the one hand, her plans for Hunger just don't seem to work out all that well due to his ridiculous scaling, sometimes failing in hilarious ways like this time with Ber. On the other hand, I'm sure she is gearing up to hit us where it really hurts this very moment, so feeling sorry for her is a bit pointless.

Still, that was one thing fewer to worry about in the grand scheme.

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Just a thousand more to go! We do seem to accumulate burdens at a steady pace, even without Apocrypha's input. There's our Geas task, dealing with Decimator targets, making sure we don't proc Tyrant on someone important, protecting our companions from whatever insane adventures we drag them into, ensuring that our conquered kingdoms don't fall to pieces while we aren't looking... it's a wonder we find the time to train our sword with all the responsibilities we've piled up on Hunger's shoulders.

Good thing we can delegate ruling to Gisena and Adorie now! Now to find ways to foist off the rest of our problems onto other people...

He pondered the likely shape of the future. They ought depart for the Human Sphere soon - the ostensible purpose of their journey had been to gather strength in preparation for Ber, and now that the man had been (somewhat underwhelmingly) dealt with, there was no true reason to stay. As soon as the Lord Protector was destroyed and Nilfel stabilized, they would go.

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I'm sure Apocrypha will put in her own two cents, but yes, hopefully we'll leave behind the Voyaging Realm soon. However fun this theme park has been, it feels like it's time to move on to greener pastures and get a taste of those sci-fi themes we've been teased with. Letrizia's Duchy awaits! And her sick dad, but I won't get my hopes up for getting to him in time.

It will be interesting to see how the Human Sphere will react to our presence and involvement. We'll likely side with the Empire, ironic as that is considering Hunger's political views, which is going to incline the balance in its favor given he is practically a human-shaped Armament who is also a memetic super-hazard. Huh, between his Rank, Blood magic, Charisma, and ADS (and SitS when we get it), Hunger is actually even more dangerous when acting on a large scale than he is in personal combat. Have we unwittingly acquired capabilities suited for accomplishing our Geas task?

...we totally planned this and hadn't randomly stumbled into this combination of powers, don't let Apocrypha tell you otherwise.

They spent the remainder of the time performing what humanitarian rescues they could - few had survived in the tidal zone, but farther inland the damage was merely catastrophic, and there were a few opportunities to heal or extract the wounded. He could not yet turn the enormity of his full Rank towards such a purpose, but even the sliver he did release was more than sufficient for most purposes. In the end they could save only a meagre fraction of those the Fish had claimed, but he contended himself with the knowledge that its rampage had been halted indefinitely.

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It feels good to know that we saved countless people from the Fish's future rampages, but witnessing the aftermath isn't as nice. Logically speaking it's obvious that we had done the best we could in this situation, but on the emotional level the question of whether we could have done something better remains. I might worry about Apocrypha using this place as a seedbed for creating some avengers against Hunger for 'causing' this catastrophe, but we Progress too quickly for them to matter.

Night came, and they departed back to Nilfel. Again wielding the power of the Cloak, the trip was a simple one, swift and uncomplicated.

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I'll miss this unrestricted teleportation capability once we get to the Human Sphere. Well, we'll still be capable of instant movement on a planet, but those are so comparatively small that our speed would make Nightmare Flight mostly redundant. We could still use it for ward-breaking, but then Cut Through serves the same purposes even better... we should really look into ways of extending the teleportation through outer space, though I doubt Rihaku will give us such a capability easily, too much potential for exploitation.

They arrived to a camp in chaos, soldiers routing in confusion as columns of spellfire hammered the Legion from the sky. Around them the land was scarred and despoiled, the corpse-ridden earth drenched with blood, soil a sickly green. Above wheeled horrid shrieking monsters, their feathered wings rippling the Astral currents, disgorging plumes of white-violet flame as they wheeled and strafed and dove. The air was thick with ash and the stink of viscera; the blood-wine sunset lent a murderous pallor to the battle. It was clear they were losing badly.

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Ah, and things had been going so well! So much for 'we can hold out for a day or two', truly we can always trust the Royalists to find new ways of disappointing us. Seriously, losing that badly even after all the buffs we've placed on them and the support of our companions, have they no shame? No wonder they had been losing so badly before our involvement, the Lord Protector had probably been treating them with kiddy gloves. Things are different now that a distinct threat to the Tyrant's rule in the form of Hunger has appeared, all the potential of his magic unleashed on the Royalist legions. Well, it was a good try, but now Hunger has returned, and he isn't inclined to hold back!

Hunger unfurled his Pressure immediately, repelling the brunt of that aggression, and Aeira rushed quickly to his side, accompanied by a contingent of shieldbearers surrounding Adorie. As his Rank was fully asserted the battle around them stilled, a rapidly-expanding bubble of quiet which smothered all opposition. The beasts above croaked and plummeted, blood boiling from their veins, as the barrage of spellfire struck his aura and was repulsed. What embers of resistance still remained soon guttered, flattened beneath the leaden wall of his Pressure.

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Rank is the solution to all things if it's high enough. Hunger didn't even need to use most of his other capabilities, just his Pressure was enough to smash all opposition and smother her magic. So we're in the clear when it comes to military power, and if that's all we had to worry about, we would have had it in the bag fairly quickly. We're up against a wizard though, and a smart one at that. The Tyrant seems to know how to best exploit every opportunity and strike at every weak point. Ah, if only we could just scry & die them...

"What's going on?" He shouted, as Gisena fired a lance of Nullity upwards to intercept an errant attack-spell.

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Did Hunger leave that one just so that Gisena would feel useful? Not that it would have really hurt us through our Ruin armor and Protection, of course. Wait, lance of Nullity? Wasn't that one of the advancements that she had been offered way back then? Looks like someone has been improving while we weren't looking!

"The Lord Protector has declared our actions to be high treason," Adorie said hurriedly, her face pale and pinched. "We had expected as much, but didn't think he would marshal his forces with such speed! Many of the lords would have been our supporters have been cut down by assassins or forcibly detained. The others are besieged in their own estates. He's used some form of spatial rift to gate in the Expeditionary Legions from abroad, his most loyal core of support. And your friend-"

"Verschlengorge was kidnapped!" Aeira blurted. "Letrizia is all right, harmed but not terribly. Aobaru is with her. It was all my responsibility, my cloak was not good enough..."

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I'm sure I would have cared about the Lord Protector's wildly successful military rolls and incredible preparations, but I was blown away by the idea that Verschlengorge of all people could get kidnapped. Letrizia, Aobaru, Aeira, Adorie, I could imagine it happening to anyone else, even if I hoped that they would be spared thanks to our preparations. But our Armament?! There are limits even to our forbearance, and the bastard has just crossed them by taking our best bud hostage.

Time for V E N G E A N C E.

"Nonsense," Hunger said. "You've been growing in skill at a superlative rate. No one could expect more. Now tell me what needs to die."

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Yeah, much as I wasn't very enthused about Aeira and all the Arete we had invested in her, she has grown on me in time. Like a mold? I wouldn't expect her to somehow protect Verschlengorge from the Lord Protector's magic bullshit with just her stealth powers though, she still has a ways to go till she'll be capable of that. Maybe the Trenody Sorceress could learn such a capability? But who knows how long that will take, given all the other Arete expenditures we have planned. There are all the EFBs we want to acquire (Pillars, RR, SJUC, Fisher King, RW, Elixir, Aurelia's mysterious EFB...), Honing, Iridescence, probably a number of FBs that will come up... no idea when we'll have the Arete to spare for our teenage followers. Maybe they'll learn on their own? If only.

Adorie pointed outwards, to the west. "The Lord Protector has set up a forward base protected by the Fifth, Tenth and Thirteenth Legions... Um, it may be too much to ask, but could you spare the lives of the soldiers as much as possible? They are not truly corrupted, only misled, and they are my subjects still!"

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Of course they're only 'misunderstood', how could we think otherwise? All the millions/billions killed through conquest are just statistics anyway, and we know what they say about statistics. Though I suppose we have enough military superiority that we can allow ourselves to spare our enemies. I'm incensed at the Lord Protector's audacity to steal our Armament, but we shouldn't take it out on the Legions. Of course if killing them is necessary to save Versch, that's another question altogether...

"We'll see," Hunger said noncommittally. "What's the situation with Versch?"

"The Lord Protector stole him," Adorie said. "We believe it was sorcery operating off of a twisted principle of equivalent exchange, enhanced by the power of his Patron Spirit. Because you absorbed the Tower, he was able to somehow lay claim. Letrizia was left behind when his magics abducted it. She fell but her Pressure mostly protected her. She's recuperating in the field hospital now."

"To separate an Armament from its pilot through the defenses of totality, even if diminished..." Gisena mused. "That's very formidable magic."

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Mythical magic, you could say. Is the Lord Protector an alchemist, to abuse equivalent exchange so easily? Heh, maybe the Tyrant has a Philosopher's Stone in his possession. Kind of ridiculous that us taking the Tower - that actually belonged to Adorie in the first place! - allowed the Lord Protector to take Versch in return, but the recent chapter shed some light on why that might be legit. Still cheating of the highest order, but at least Adorie's claim to the Tower isn't unchallenged.

"Are they using Versch against us?" Hunger could still feel his bond with the Armament, though it was stifled and weak.

Adorie shook her head. "Not that we can tell. But we don't know his location, either. If the Lord Protector attempts to use him as a hostage, we have little recourse."

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Having to fight Versch would have been even worse, so thank the dice gods for small mercies. Thankfully the Lord Protector's magic isn't bullshit enough to separate our Curse-related connection with Versch, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that they've likely trapped wherever they're holding the Armament to hell and back. We should just Panoply Verschlengorge so that such to prevent a repeat of such annoying attempts to steal our buddy in the future. The other Armaments might start ridiculing him behind his back if he gets kidnapped too often!

An Armament, even injured, wasn't easy to kill, but if the Protector was capable of abducting one right out from under its pilot, Hunger couldn't rule out the possibility. He frowned. His power was superior, at least in a direct contest, but which target to prioritize first? Rescuing Verschlengorge was critical, but the Lord Protector had already demonstrated how dangerous he could be, if given time.

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I would hope that Versch would go out in a blaze of glory if the Lord Protector tries sacrificing him to get a further advantage, but I suppose lacking a pilot might really disable a lot of his usual methods. Don't know if I should be mad at the Foremost for not making their Armaments autonomous enough or glad that they didn't give the murderbots too much freedom. Right now I sort of wish Versch could deal with the problem himself.

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The winner was [X] Fisher King by a slim margin! Omake power very nearly carried the day, if not for a last minute surge in votes for King...

Man, the Lord Protector keeps rolling hot! And unfortunately Adorie's forces rolled very poorly indeed. One of the risks of concentrating so much power into a single vessel. Still, now that Hunger is here he can salvage the situation, right? I wonder what Hunger should do now...

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What we really need is a luck power to improve our dice rolls! Oh wait, we have that in Rank. And we even have a Luck stat with some +s already added to it. What the hell, Lord Protector, just where did you get all those loaded dice?! I would call out for the referee, but that might just draw Apocrypha's attention, so I'll stay quiet and hope that our luck turns for the better now that we're present and ready to get personally involved in this fight.