Firstly, if you have questions about Good Seeds and the like please read here. If that doesn't answer your question please ping me in thread, or on Discord.
If you write a new Good Seed, or write an omake, please update the spreadsheet if you have access.
If you do not have access, please ping a collaborator (Swordomatic, Alectai, Quest, TehChron, Insane-Not-Crazy, Humbaba, ReaderOfFate, Kaboomatic, no., BungieONI) letting them know what you want and they will update the spreadsheet here. To gain access, you will need a gmail account of some kind. Throwaway emails are fine (I'm using one for the spreadsheet), but to gain access it's as simple as sending me either your email via PM, via DM in Discord, or just in Discord's #spreadsheet-requests channel.
This is mandatory. If a Good Seed does not record their omake by pinging collabs (or just requesting access and editing things themselves - this is the preferred option), I won't give out awards. If a new Good Seed is not recorded here, they won't advance. By doing this it makes the whole thing manageable for me - it's gotten pretty unwieldy!
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Omake Writer Instructions:
There are four fields you need to fill out.
Omake Link, which is just a link to your first omake for the turn. This makes it easier for me to read them as I do the update - without this it's tough to know off the bat which omake were written this turn, and to properly
Requested Bonus, which is your requested bonus for your omake. You can leave it up to me if you like. You can see more info in the Good Seed infopost here.
Cultivation Aims. For those following unorthodox paths - higher than 9th Heavenstage or later than 7th Dao Pillar paths. Please put in what you are aiming for before you break through. I have left it as 'default'. If you do not edit it, I'll go with that.
Turn Notes - Do you want to do something specific? Enter a Secret Realm? Help the Clan out in some way? If you have something specific you want to accomplish on this turn, put it in turn notes so I can adjust your Fate around it.
All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.
He did say himself that he saw no merit in his Sect, alongside the Blood Path as a whole, which is why he'd be fine with them being killed off once his goal was done.
So, not unexpected really.
(Occi said that the guy only has a small circle of true confidants among his Sect who believe in his ideology. The rest don't matter to him, because they consume for no greater ideal of worth.)
He dies one way or another. Either he dies in the attack or Alter lord feeds him to one of his kin. That way he gets to kill him and still have a nascent soul to boss around.
We often talk about how the demonic path is inherently less able to cooperate then us of the righteous path. However this is not quite correct. In many cases the control that a leader of a blood sect can exercise over their disciples is in fact stronger than can be done by us of the righteous path. Often in the righteous path we are forced to choose between discipline and practicality. For example, consider the case where Lan Jew raided the Divine Tunist sect against the Elder Lan Mein wishes. Lan Jew was amazingly successful in his raid and stole enough resources to raise his cultivation all the way to the core realm. Now by the rules laid down by our beloved founder Elder Lan Mein should have killed Lan Jew for his gross violation of both treaty, order and propriety. However that would have denied the sect a core level cultivator when we desperately needed every one that we could possibly get our hands on and so instead Lan Jew merely received a slap on the wrist and continued to serve the sect.
If the same thing had happened in a demonic sect Lan Jew would have been immediately killed and consumed. Both as a matter of punishment and practicality. A blood sect would not have had to worry about the loss of strength this would cause for Lan Jew's strength would remain part of that hypothetical demonic sect.
It seems something of a shame that our own righteous sect would fall lower in our standard then a demonic one.
-Written by Kan Geu who was shortly killed thereafter for completely unrelated reasons.
Just an Omake idea I had. Does it still go in the Abel section? It has nothing to do with him.
Rina's alive, Kinslaughter and Scarletglyph(who was mentioned in a previous Alectai omake) are probably still alive, but that city is fucked because its not the battleground for two Nascent Souls and everyone in the area is trying to avoid getting squished by the Titans.
Since we're at the tail end of this turn, and next turn is the Trials, I figured it was time to put together another giant, Junior Saving, Star Studded omake collab. If you're interested, click the link below and put in your screenname (on here or on Discord is fine, but say which so I can find you!), and the name of your seed, and we'll start putting something together.
Xiao Yingzi 16
[Turn 9]
[The Beginning of a Long Partnership]
Xiao Yingzi was, in all technicality, a part of the 43rd Legion. It had a reputation for focus into the cultivation of the body especially the Blood of Bronze and an incredible focus on the clan's formations. Those focuses alongside the hands-on approach of its Legate ensured that anyone who wasn't already chosen by a legion was placed here.
Legate Alcaeus was famed for taking the most unruly of clansmen and turning them into exemplars of the clan. His focus on the body also included a mastery of cultivation in the level of qi condensation and his focus on formations required only what most of the clan already had - the blood of bronze. His study of nutrition and the knowledge of his healers on how to empower the body was nothing less than extraordinary.
Tempered by the trials, his Legion was filled with some of the most exemplary qi condensing juniors and those few who made it to centurion were extraordinary veterans who personified by best of the Optimatoi - the Best of the Best Men. And all of them were utterly loyal to their Legate who embodied all of these traits to their extreme.
However, Xiao Yingzi had only heard of these in rumors. The legion she joined was the one that remained after the demise of their much beloved Legate Alcaeus and the entire legion was like a body without a soul. Yes, the centurions still ensured that the entire legion still functioned as it should have and they ensured that their juniors were still organized but it lacked a certain 'spirit' that was even evident to the inexperienced Xiao Yingzi.
They were a grieving family simply going through the motions. The Elder's voice had a sense of weary recognition about it. Xiao Yingzi nodded in agreement as she walked into the new Physician's Office that was a part of the Legion. However, this doesn't quite look like what you described.
As he had said, the office was populated with Centurions and Legionnaires going about their business with an excitement that was a sharp contrast to the grim atmosphere that permeated the outside of the Office. These are the headquarters of the new Legate - the Physician Seneca. I worked with his students before if you recall?
To acquire the pills needed to maintain your cultivation while your meridians were damaged, yes. Elder Teleos replied though he had a note of curiosity in his voice. The man broke through? I wouldn't have placed him as someone very likely to.
He was one of the results of that one experiment from Elder Destacia. Xiao Yingzi replied. The one that produced nearly eight new Legates.
And nearly crippled their progress for the future. He replied with a grumble though she felt grudging respect hidden behind it. Then in a worried tone, he continued. And what of the rest of the legion? Did they take the man and his disciples coming in to take over well?
If Legate Alcaeus was a father to his men, Xiao Yingzi replied, considering her analogy carefully. Then Legate Seneca is the grandfather. All know the story of the Physician who healed their Legate when he was a mere First Pillar and the nutritionists were inspired by his example.
Interesting. The Legate replied, rifling through her thoughts to get the context of her words. That man is quite a survivor, living to the edge of his heaven-permitted lifespan before breaking through. Are we going to be meeting him then?
No. Xiao Yingzi took a moment to look through the letter that she had received inviting her here. The invitation is from a centurion in the sixth pillar. He expressed curiosity about my ability to wield heaven's lightning and how it may relate to some new epidemic they are dealing with.
Oh? That sounds intriguing. The Elder remarked to her agreement.
We will see what this is about. She answered. We are here.
The place they arrived at was a simple hall filled with beds holding a dozen golden devils some deep in slumber and others writhing in pain. They were all tied to the beds with straps and had strange plant-like growths coming from their bodies. A centurion and several legionnaires were strapping a new patient down.
A plant growth jumped from the patient's body to grasp at the centurion but a spark of lightning burst from his body and burnt it away. Oho, is that man a manipulator of lightning? Elder Teleos asked out of curiosity. I can certainly see why he was interested in your own abilities.
Yes. Xiao Yingzi replied in agreement as she watched the man strap the patient down before wiping sweat from his brow. Finally, he turned around and upon seeing, he froze. His eyes immediately went to the goggles he was wearing and he removed them, rubbing his eyes for a moment before he approached her.
"You must be Xiao Yingzi, I presume?" He called out, walking towards her excitedly. "Thank you for responding to my request so quickly."
"Yes and you are Centurion Victor?" She asked, glancing at the goggles still in his hands. "What was that about just now?"
"Ah, sorry." He replied, sheepishly. "Those are Dao-Seeking Glasses of my own design. They let me tease out things about a person's aura when I look at them but some people like yourself can cause it to malfunction."
Oh, quite impressive for someone with his cultivation. Elder Teleos remarked. Ask him what he saw. "What did you see in my aura?" Xiao Yingzi asked, affecting curiosity as she relayed the elder's question.
"It was mostly a bright light that didn't let me make out anything at all." He replied, shaking his head. "I definitely need to keep working on it." He took a breath and schooled his emotion. "Shall we talk about why I asked you here?"
Xiao Yingzi nodded. "Yes, please." As he began to walk towards the patients, Xiao Yingzi followed him. They stopped in one of the patients who had the same plant she saw before growing from his body. As it grew, the slumbering legionnaire's muscles twitched in response and his expression twisted in pain.
The Centurion's expression twisted to a grimace. "The Demon-Snaring Heavenly Vine is a plant of unknown origin. It exclusively targets those who have earned the ire of heaven and once a seed takes root in a victim's body, it grows from the inside and envelops their nervous system. The process is incredibly painful which is why we placed the patients into slumber."
"I presume the end result is not simply death?" Xiao Yingzi observed, looking down at the twitches in muscle. The way the twitches increase in complexity, it's almost as if the plant was learning…
He nodded in response. "As you have no doubt surmised, it does more than kill them. Upon their death, it forces their body to hunt for other victims in order to both propagate and punish. The plant reinforces the body and even stores energy to heal, which can become incredibly dangerous with the body of clansmen."
"I assume the only known cure is lightning?" Xiao Yingzi asked, recalling his own ability to burn away the plant.
Centurion Victor shakes his head. "No, the only known cure is tribulation lighting." He corrects her. "I have mastered mundane electricity. I certainly know how to store and exploit tribulation lightning but it is difficult to capture. This is why I reached out to you."
Xiao Yingzi frowned and summoned a spark between two fingers. "Would my lightning be sufficient?" It is only an imitation at this point, but it is certainly a skilled imitation. It could work.
To her surprise, the Centurion immediately reached for the spark before she could react. As his hands moved close to spark, it jumped from his hands to the bronzed gloves in his hands. "That certainly acts like heaven's lightning." Victor replied, holding the spark between his thumb and his index finger. "My gloves are forged from grave-bronze and designed to incite heaven's hate for our bloodline as a method for attracting tribulation lightning."
Xiao Yingzi frowned. "You seem very learned in this." She replied, still taken aback by his sudden intervention.
He looked at her for a moment and then sighed. "Sorry, I just get really excited by this." He, even as he placed the spark in a thin test tube of glass containing an array of wires. She looked at that curiously before nodding in acceptance." If it really acts like heaven's lightning, it should quickly devolve into mundane energy when removed from its source. I've experimented with infusing qi into it with arrays to keep it alive but then while it does have some spiritual properties, it loses heaven's unique dao-shaking properties."
"Ah, and that is why you require my aid." She inquires and he nods. "How long have you managed to contain tribulation lightning?"
"A month maximum." He replied, shaking his head. "I'll have to run some tests but it might be possible to synthesize a cure if we work together. Would you help me, Centurion Xiao Yingzi?"
He held out his hand for her to shake and Xiao Yingzi considered everything for a moment. I vote yes. Elder Teleos added. He seems to be trying to harness Heaven's Lightning himself though in an entirely different way from us. His insights can be very useful for our own path.
"I will of course reimburse you for your part in this." The Centurion added, taking her silence for hesitation. She quickly grasped his hands with her own.
"I will be honored to work with you on this, Centurion Victor." She said, flashing him a smile to hopefully cover her lack of response. To her surprise, he smiled back.
"And I with you." He replied, smiling brilliantly. "I look forward to working with you, Centurion Yingzi."
Gaius Antonius Omake #36: Crucible in the Sky, Part One
The Spires of Reflection. A massive structure built around the entrance to the Qigai Secret Realm, it was difficult to define what this building even was. Some might call it a fortress, given it was built around a valuable asset, but the building's architecture(most notable for the distinct sillhouette of the hundreds of tall spires extending out of the main building and reaching high into the sky) leaned much more toward opulence than defense. In that sense, the Spires could perhaps be called a palace, if not for the fact that no ruler lived there, save during the week of The Opening. Furthermore, rather than exulting anyone in particular, the building's purpose was mainly to decorate the secret realm itself. A monument to itself, perhaps.
No, the correct term for the Spires was waiting room. A huge, sprawling waiting room with gold-plated roofs, hundreds of guest rooms(take a wild guess where the deluxe rooms were) and luxurious dining halls. Such ameneties were not afforded to Qi Condensation visitors, of course; they were intended for Core Formation visitors, though sometimes the lesser ones were opened to well-paying Foundation Establishment guests if there were enough vacancies. These young Juniors did not get to wait out the time until The Opening in luxury, instead trickling in over the course of the week before and camping out around the Spires' walls.
Such arrangements of course meant that sabotage was a frequent occurrence, and duels even broke out from time to time. The guards only intervened to prevent outright murder; even before they entered the realm, they were tested. As a Golden Devil, most of the danger to Gaius came from Saber Palace disciples, who he was careful to identify when he arrived, walking around the entire structure to determine which location would be ideal for keeping himself and his things safe. Luckily, they seemed to be thinking the same things as him, and so Golden Devil and Saber Palace tents ended up grouped together on opposite sides.
There was the usual heckling and dick-waving of course, which Gaius was not entirely above. 'How dare you dogs come to this sacred place' and 'A third-rate warrior like you will only find death in there' and 'Maybe I should put you out of your misery before the monsters do', plus a little bit of 'Your dying Clan should just accept their fate'. Gaius even managed to tease out that good old Righteous Sect canard 'You are courting death...' a few times, which he was glad to have finally witness in person. But besides throwing cutting remarks back and forth, nothing happened and there was no escalation. Most people were not foolish enough to waste their strength or risk injury before entering the infamously dangerous Qigai Secret Realm, after all.
Finally, the day arrived, and six hours before The Opening was set to begin, the hundred foot high outer doors to the central courtyard were slowly dragged open by six Foundation Establishment officers, easily identifiable by the colorful plumes on their helmets, much like a Centurion's. Gaius wondered if perhaps opening these doors was a right the experts competed fiercely over, or if this grand ceremony had become mundane and routine to the Qigai Clan's older members.
Every single year, Cultivators from all over the Virtuous Flipper Region streamed in to visit this legendary place in search of incredibe treasures. The majority of these Cultivators would die. That was simply the way of it; the Secret Realm was obscenely dangerous, even compared to other realms, and it was a common practice to get one's affairs in order before entering.
Of course, none of the people milling around in the huge courtyard which had been restructured into a waiting area believed they would be one of the dead ones. Demonic and Righteous, sword-wielders and spell-slingers, alone and in groups, all manner of Qi Condensation Cultivators could be found in this place, on the one day a year that the Qigai Secret Realm's doors swung open.
Near one corner of the courtyard stood a black-robed Saber Palace disciple, powerful, ox-like back muscles visible through his clothing. Near the center, a Jingshen Clansman in blue and purple chatted animatedly with several friends, both Jingshen and Qigai. Waiting much closer to the gate and tapping his fingers rhythmically on the wall near a kiosk, a Sorrowful Blacksmith disciple in striking maroon and gold neared the end of his patience. In several places, bitter enemies glared at each other, only keeping their tempers in check for fear of being kicked out and losing their shot.
"Meet me for drinks when we come out, Gaius! On my honor, I shall return!" The boisterous Tiberius announced with a hearty pat on the back, a crescent of pearly white teeth cutting through his thick blonde beard speckled with green. Tiberius was in the same boat as Gaius, though not as extreme. Having vowed to attain the Tenth Heavenstage but not being particularly talented in cultivation, the boisterous Devil would need potent assistance if he was to jump to that stage early enough to hope for a successful tribulation.
"We just drank last night, and you're thinking about it again already?" Gaius cut back playfully. "If your dantian were as strong as your liver, you'd be a Nascent Soul by now."
Tiberius took the jokes in stride, grasping Gaius' shoulder and shaking him a bit. "You're damn right! I'm a drunk, and proud of it, so keep this drunk company once we've both won glory!"
Gaius allowed the beefy braggart to sweep him along in the momentum. "Alright, but let's go someplace less seedy next time. We'll be drinking the kind of booze lesser men would sell their houses to taste!"
Many of the waiting Cultivators did as these two were doing, delivering promises to each other born of either enmity or brotherhood, issuing all manner of arrogant and challenges. Still others challenged each other to duels within the Secret Realm, where politics wouldn't get in the way. Many of the deaths in the coming year would be from each other, as a Secret Realm was the perfect place to get away with a murder that would otherwise jeopardize a diplomatic relationship or kick off a war. Gaius, who didn't know any of the non-Devils here, had no need to launch such provocations. Instead, he busied himself chatting with his fellow Devil, swapping advice, stories and small talk to pass the remaining hours.
Gaius lit a cigarette, a thin tendril of smoke travelling up to the sky; how many was he up to now? Far more than he usually had in one day, that was for sure. Maybe if he smoked enough he could make the heavens choke to death. This would have to be his last for the day; he would need to ration his tobacco to make it last the entire year. After all, The Ninth Prince had specifically said to not smoke anything he found in there, and he wasn't about to blow off the words of such a man among men. Five minutes to go. He tapped his foot, fixed his hair, watched the people around him(not much going on there, everyone else was also waiting with rapt attention), anything he could think of to pass those agonizingly long 300 seconds. Two minutes in and his cigarette was already down to a nub. Damn it all.
He could do this. He would conquer anything in his way and attain the tools he needed to excell. He absolutely could not allow himself to fall in the Centennial Trials, and that meant becoming invincible within his Great Realm. Finally, the moment came. A musclebound Body Cultivator swung a five hundred pound drumstick, hitting a gigantic gong and creating a massive boom that shook the ground and stirred the souls of all those present.
A voice rang out, loud, clear and crisp, from a set of arrays lining one in every fifty floor tiles. "ALL THOSE WHO WISH TO ENTER, FORM A LINE AT EACH KIOSK. FIGHTING OVER PLACEMENT IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. YOU WILL RECIEVE INSTRUCTIONS AND A NUMBER." The voice repeated this several times, until all of the Cutivators present, regardless of faction or ego, stood in rigid lines. Not one of them fidgeted, so intense was the compulsive power of that voice. A mental suggestion technique, perhaps?
Waiting in a line is always dull, no matter how important the occasion, and this was no exception. Okay, maybe one more cigarette was okay. The woman in front of Gaius seemed annoyed by the smoke, but was too bewitched by the order to behave to protest. And besides, she was Jingshen, so fuck her; Gaius made sure to blow more of the smoke at her feet, so it would rise up into her nostrils.
After another hour and a half of waiting, Gaius stepped up to the kiosk. An extremely bored looking Qigai Clan disciple recited a long diatribe that he had no doubt already given thousands of times over the past few years.
"As per the Green Table Treaty, you will submit everything you took out of the realm for inspection when you return, and one third of the value will be left with a broker, either from your own discoveries, for its value in spirit stones, or a negotiated combination of the two. As per the treaty, failure to comply with these guidelines will result in you being tried and punished under the Qigai Clan's jurisdiction." The woman's diction became a little bit sloppier and more quiet, making it clear that she was done conveying the important stuff and all that remained was obligatory red tape.
Gaius recieved a badge printed with the number '1322' and was transferred from the courtyard to a different room, a massive corridor stretching nearly half a mile(some spatial warping was probably being used, he surmised). Gaius couldn't see what lay at the end past the thousand or so people in front of him, but he had a pretty good idea - that was the gate to the secret realm.
All of this waiting, all of these lines, it was almost impossibly tedious. But it did serve a purpose in mitigating the chaos - and probably carnage - that would result from dumping everyone in there at once. By trickling them in like this, everything was kept nice and orderly, and there was little chance some horriffic incident would occur and disrupt the clan's primary source of income.
They didn't really care if murders happened in the secret realm, of course. Mainly because it was nearly impossible to prove, so they couldn't be held culpable. But letting multiple people enter at the same time? That was just asking for trouble. Better to have one enter every half-minute, so as to scatter them around a bit. Of course, if some of them decided to stick around near the entrance and wait for their fellow lackeys to show up, that wasn't the Qigai Clan's problem at all.
With no one behind him and no one before him, Gaius finally turned his gaze to the yawning tunnel before him, leading into another world. Between the stone gates stretched what looked like infinity. A tunnel of pure, churning void-stuff stretched out before him, so long that the end was a mere speck of light, like a distant star.
It was beautiful.
The first two steps were hesitant, but the third was not. Gaius strode into the portal, and was pulled through that tunnel of space-time in an instant. Too fast to process, his body elongated infinitely and then snapped back into place on the other side.
This place looked... pretty normal. A lush savannah stretched on for miles ahead of Gaius, bordering thick, dense jungles to the west. Though certainly quite overgrown, none of the plants immediately around him seemed particularly hostile. It seemed the nexus was somewhere peaceful this year; already, his luck was good.
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'A palace in the sky'. An old-fashioned saying, this phrase was often used as a metaphor for an extremely fanficul dream, detached entirely from causality and plausibility. This was not a metaphor, but something real. A gigantic mountain, larger than any Gaius had ever seen besides Turtlebone Mountain itself, hung in the sky high above him and to the north. At the peak was a beautiful palace of a bizarre shape, glimmering with mysterious lights.
"Up. Have to go up..." Gaius muttered to himself, not paying any mind at all to any of the other fantastic locales he could no doubt more easily reach. "I need to fall up, where is the path?"
It was there; from his dreams, that beautiful sword, made for his hands. It was absolutely, definitely within that palace, he could feel it calling out to him. Yes, as long as Gaius held onto that feeling, that irresistable pull, he would find his way into the sky.
Gaius would like to say that it was through a combination of Qi-Reading Paper and his own instincts that he navigated a series of spatial distortions that led him into a region of inverted gravity. The truth was, it was a bit of that and a lot of luck. It would not be until he left the Qigai Secret Realm that he would learn the absurdity of what he accomplished. Indeed, perhaps not realizing it was impossible was the way he made it.
Ten steps, and he was fifty miles to the east. Then he turned around and took three hundred more steps in the opposite direction, sending him a hundred miles to the north. Gaius stopped and looked around at his bizarre surroundings. He stood atop a dark blue sand dune, the grains feeling unusually dense, most likely laden down with heavy metals.
To the east, an incredibly huge thunderclous poured sheets upon sheets of rain onto a bog, which overflowed into nearby floodplains. Ten miles to the west, his eyes caught the light of the sun glittering off the waves of an ocean. To the north, an impossibly huge sandworm rose out of the desert and slowly crested through the air. None of this interested him - The Seeker had decided to go up, so he would.
"The terrain is moving up. This is the right way..." He pondered, looking off at the mountain in the sky with wonder. It seemed far closer now. He stuck out his tongue, tasting the air, then took a few experimental breaths - the elevation was about two miles higher than when he'd entered, too. "Okay. Good start, good start. Now where is the next rift?"
As soon as I got Gaius' turn 9 fate, I pushed every other omake I was working on to the side to get one done about his time in the Qigai Realm. It ended up getting ridiculously long, to the point I would feel guilty for fucking up a page with all that text. So instead, I've ended up splitting it into six parts, because as it turns out, it has some very easy milestones at which to do said splitting.
As for this first part, I realized that despite all the trips to Qigai, very little has been written about the Clan itself, so I decided to come up with some more fluff related to them and their realm. When you think about it, the Qigai Secret Realm is sort of like the world's most dangerous Chuck E. Cheese... This also allowed me to put in some character stuff early on since, big shocker, most of this arc is just fight scenes.
For the past forty years I've been fighting Blood Cannibals, and while they varied in strength and one even almost killed me...they were pretty much the same. Super fast, super strong, extremely direct with very few variations in style at the qi condensation level. Once you figure them out there isn't much depth to plumb there.
I've heard stories about higher ranking Cannibals being clever and sly, and I suppose they'd have to be to avoid being eaten for materials by their superiors once they broke through to Foundation, but I never really experienced it myself. So it was the first time in a long time that I really had to think about the enemy I was facing.
The much abused earth shattered again underfoot as I dodged around the giant jade hand with all my might. The Reflected Purities Technique multiplied my considerable strength even more as the power of a 9th heavenstage practitioner was supplemented by the secrets of the Blood of Bronze, turning each step into a blur that ate up the distance between me and the Jingshen agent, and still I wasn't fast enough.
Claws formed from jade green treasure qi scraped over my stomach, turning bronze back to flesh and drawing lines of hot pain before I escaped. A redirecting step threw me towards my opponent faster than mortal eyes could follow but my fist once again slammed into the protectively curling Treasure Scroll instead of the agent's face. Still, the man flinched in remembered pain as he clutched his broken nose with one hand and another handful of spirit stones in the other. The scroll wobbled, but held on and kept the agent safe.
This guy wasn't an idiot, just kind of naive. I get the feeling that he's never been beaten up before and the way he's burning spirit stones, probably not hurting for cash either. Over the course of this fight he has blown through a sizable portion of my monthly stipend in spirit stones just powering this stupid hand and he was already reaching for more without hesitation.
"Give it up, Devil!" He shouted, crushing another stone in his grasp as he followed me with his eyes. "I'll admit your kind is impressive on the battlefield, with your formations and ludicrous bodies, but when it has been stripped away you are simply prizes for the taking!"
The jade hand rippled and grasped at the air as the new qi ran through it and immediately the unnatural pull returned, almost dragging me off the ground. The earth tore in long lines underneath me as I tried and failed to stand firm and I was forced to once again summon the Hoplite and sacrifice its shield to let me escape. The sound of falling coins echoed out as the hand closed around the shield and turned it from ruddy bronze to a milky white jade and I felt my connection to it fade before the shield was crushed and absorbed into the arm.
It ballooned upwards in size until it could barely fit in the warehouse before becoming indistinct. Treasure qi flexed and split evenly and in bare seconds there were two smaller arms instead of one massive one.
Crap.
The chase resumed with both arms working in sync. I dodged around one only for the second to grasp at the air and pull me towards it. I skidded across the earth and crouched to leap over the much smaller hand only for the previous arm to grasp at the air and pull me back. For a bare, agonizing moment I was stuck in one spot, being pulled from both directions and unable to move. Then the two hands slammed into me from opposite sides and closed around me.
"It's over!"
Immediately I felt qi being rapidly whisked away from me and my body flickered between the solid bronze of the Reflected Purities and the flesh of my cultivator body. I strained against the arms, marshaling every last bit of control I could to keep Reflected Purities growing while I concentrated on not being crushed. All the while, the agent gloated in the background.
"Can you feel it, Devil? The very life being drained out of you? Bought and sold like chattel?"
Massive jade fingers folded around each other and squeezed and the palms worked together to squash me like a bug. My arms burned as I held them back.
"In a few seconds everything you have will be mine. And your empty husk will become food for the dogs in the street."
There was no way I could hold Reflected Purities with the jade hands stripping the qi in the technique before it could take proper hold. The Hoplite was the fastest substitution I could manage, but I had already seen how useless, and worse a liability, it was against these arms. I needed the Reflected Purities if I wanted to get through this, but it needed more than I was giving it. So I pushed.
.
"In just a few seconds…"
My body snapped back to bronze just in time to stop my body from exploding as I pulled energy deep from my lower dantian and flooded meridians that were altogether unprepared to bear this capacity. The channels for my qi, as much physical as they were spiritual, burned inside me and within seconds the lines of glowing hot bronze could be seen with the naked eye leading to all corners of my body. I exhaled and clouds of steam filled the space as my body worked overtime to shed the excess heat. And I pushed.
"...Unreal. How are you generating this much-"
The hands redoubled their efforts to squash me, but with a body of solid spiritual bronze I could endure for a lifetime. Qi flooded into the hands just slower than I could replace it and my channels blazed with heat. My entire body quickly began to glow red and tongues of yellow flame licked over my flesh as the air ignited around me. If my technique failed now I would undoubtedly immediately die from spontaneous combustion. Turning back was no longer an option. So I pushed.
Qi thundered through my meridians in what was undoubtedly the stupidest cleanse a cultivator had ever done shortly before their ignoble death; If it wasn't for the claws draining the excess I'm sure even my enhanced body would have broken down before too long. As it was this was actually a beneficial, if insane, cultivation method. But I wasn't about to ask the Jingshen agent to help me break through or call down heavenly tribulation on this very spot, no, there was a method behind this madness. Qi filled the jade hands and they grew larger, stronger, almost enough to actually do the job and crush me, but then they did as I hoped and hit some kind of upper limit...and split. The jade hands wavered and grew insubstantial, the copious amounts of qi involved reworking themselves from two to four hands in just a handful of seconds,
And I pushed.
In their brief moment of weakness the hands couldn't resist me and I stole just enough breathing room to skip into the air a few meters above the already rapidly reforming hands. The four hands solidified as I reached the peak of my flight and I knew I wouldn't get away with that again. Already they turned to face me, fingers splayed and waiting for me to fall.
And I stepped on Bronze.
The third of the Clan's three 'Great Formations' was not as refined as the Hoplite, nor as powerful as the Kataphrakoti. In another clan or sect it might have been merely a 'useful' formation taught to inner members; a convenient tool for getting from one place to the other. In the hands of the Golden Devil Clan, however, the Two Headed Bronze Eagle was truly worthy of its title of great. For it was not a shadow of glories long past as the Hoplite and Kataphrakoti were, but a living promise of glories to come.
I couldn't drop Reflected Purities, so I didn't. My already abused channels protested as I forced them to run the two demanding techniques at once but if anything the Bronze of my flesh and spirit only helped manifest the Eagle. Light poured from my body and flowed together like a liquid, pooling beneath my feet and then flaking away to reveal the massive form of a Bronze Eagle large enough to carry me as if it had always been there hiding just out of sight. The Eagle turned one of its heads to regard me, visibly running its gaze across my body and spirit before seemingly judging me acceptable and turning its gaze forward. It flapped its massive wings once and screeched, loudly, from both heads, announcing its presence to the world.
Prideful bastard. Now all of Xin knows we're here.
"What..is that?"
The voice of the Jingshen agent brought my attention back to where he stood, gaping up at the suddenly appearing Two Headed Eagle made of solid spiritual bronze. The jade hands bobbed in the air around him like snakes doing a threat display, or maybe scorpions waiting to strike. I'm not good at analogies.
"Something your filthy money can't buy."
He scoffed, seeming to regain some of his confidence. "Nonsense. Even the heavens have a price!" The hands grasped as one and a massive suction pulled the Eagle from the sky, and it followed it gladly. Four hands of treasure jade wrapped around the eagle and squeezed, the jangling of falling coins filled the air...and nothing happened.
The Eagle screeched and began pushing back against the jade hands, fed by my qi and its own bottomless will. It slowly yet surely began to push the hands back. The Jingshen agent pulled another handful of spirit stones from his sleeves and held them aloft.
"Impossible! Money is no object!" he shouted, gritting his teeth in anger. The hands rippled and immediately began shrinking, shoving their qi violently into the Eagle beneath me at the cost of their stability. Lines of white jade began snaking across the Eagle at a snail's pace, at this rate he would perhaps manage to buy it after a hundred years of effort. I could see he couldn't believe his eyes, so I threw him a bone.
"The Two Headed Eagle is a prideful beast. Out of all the formations in the clan, the Eagle will never serve a master without the Blood of Bronze."
He glared at me in confusion...and then terror as the blood drained from his face. "No...you mean... Sapient Formation?"
The Eagle answered itself with a prideful screech. It flapped its bronze wings and the weakened jade hands shattered having failed to do much more than colour a few feathers and even that was slipping away at a visible rate. It dove with claws outstretched and glowing with fell intent at the agent and was blocked by the scroll hovering around him. But while it was blocking the Eagle, it couldn't block me.
I leapt and a red hot fist of solid bronze struck the agent before he could blink sending him to la la land.
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"Stupid stupid stupid dammed prideful motherfu-" I cursed up a storm as I flew into the empty Jingshen safehouse. Even as quickly as I could move after rifling through the agent's storage ring, it turns out that a giant bronze eagle screeching its defiance at the heaven's that wronged it every two seconds was enough to give the Jingshen a hint that maybe something had gone wrong with the smuggling job. I was sure that for the next few days I wouldn't find a single Jingshen agent outside of their rented villas or approved and observed markets.
Even if I forced my way in with their buddy's insensate form as evidence of wrongdoing I'd bet three month's stipend that I wouldn't find a single thing wrong and I'd hear complaints coming up the line about Golden Devils punching out juniors who were just out for a walk in an unknown city and had gotten turned around or some crap.
"And all because YOU couldn't keep your beak sealed for one tiny little fight."
The Two Headed Eagle regarded me impassively and immediately screeched to the heavens again before dismissing itself in a shower of light and bronze. Great, now I'd have to walk back too. Still it wasn't all a wash, I'd gotten more than the locations of a few safehouses from the agent's ring but what I had didn't match the list of known Jingshen 'traders' in the Xin Kingdom or anywhere else in Golden Devil territory.
There's no way around it. I'm going to the Jingshen Lands
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Word Count: 2144
I...really struggled to finish this one and I feel like the next one will probably be just as difficult. Just one of those things I guess. Not much to say.
Edit: I forgot, this was probably one of the first showings of Paulus's 'increased stamina' Good Seed bonus in action. I had originally planned to explain that in story but I couldn't find a good way to put it in.
Since this is technically my first omake for turn 10, I request a Life Saving Treasure. @Mochinator@no.
Sorry, this is one of those confusing interactions where Scarletglyph is a Strength Purity Nascent Soul who's come up briefly in previous chapters but mainly in Rina Callista's story.
This links directly to Rina's Fate - Alectai will be writing the other part of this combat. For clarity's sake I might make it a main threadmark once he does.
After her meeting with Victor, Xiao Yingzi went to meditate. She knew she was close to understanding her First Pillar, she could feel it and she felt like that knowledge would be crucial if she had to understand her lightning. As was always the case when she contemplated her Pillar, she could feel Elder Teleos retreat from her mind.
With a sigh, she headed up to the gymnasiums of the Legion. Besides areas dedicated to body training and sparring, they had private meditation chambers that could with the activation of an array be flooded with qi. For Xiao Yingzi and indeed most other members of the clan, the qi itself was useless and far more easily consumed as raw spirit stone but it added to the ambiance and allowed her to more easily retreat into her own mind.
When Xiao Yingzi closed her physical eyes and opened the eyes of her mind, she found herself in her Dao Palace. It was a term she had found referencing the phenomenon that she was currently experiencing. It was something some Foundation Building Experts experienced, a mental representation of their pillars where they could almost literally construct their Cores. The etymology was obvious, with Dao Pillars constructing a Dao Palace but her mind didn't have anything so regal.
In her tribulation, she had experienced the same mental representation that she experienced now. Or at least, that is what obviously followed. She imagined that before her tribulation, it could have been a replica of the Organ Meat Desert. That made sense, it was the only aspect of the world that she had truly experienced. Perhaps there could have been a little replica of Pleuron or something else that showed her history.
But she never had the chance to see any of that. When she had first seen it, the entire mental landscape was being torn apart by a sandstorm. The very lightning she now wielded had enraged some part of her and it had ripped the very earth of her mind apart in order to create a powerful hurricane that sought the heavens in defiance for that. It was a very striking image and coming back to it would have made sense, but it wasn't actually what she came back to.
Whenever she attempted to visualise a pillar, she did come back to the desert in her mind. But instead of sand or even lightning, the mental landscape had been transformed into endless plains of black, scorched glass. Beneath her feet, she could feel small sharp pieces that weren't a part of the earth's glassy surface bite into her feet as she walked towards her pillar. It caused her pain, or perhaps it reminded her of the possibility of pain? It was hard to define.
Finally, she came upon her dao pillar. In truth, that name only came to mind because she knew that's what it was. But if she had seen it without any preconceptions, she knew that her mind wouldn't have labeled that thing a pillar. Or perhaps she would have. It was hard to find a word that fit exactly. It was the storm of sand she had walked upon - writhing, twisting, roiling, grasping for the sky in defiance of the heavens.
She had ripped her mind apart in the act and as a consequence, the heavens had burnt her mind and scoured it apart as a monument to her folly. Nothing remained save the very lightning that had once burnt her. It reached so tall that she couldn't tell where it ended. Did it truly reach the heavens? She couldn't really be sure.
She tried climbing it again, spending an entire month in closed door cultivation. Finally, she had lost her grip and fallen. Rather than fall the entire way she had climbed, she instantly felt the ground at her back as if she had simply tripped and never made the climb at all. It was wide as well, so much that she couldn't see its edge. She had tried walking around it once but she had given that up quickly.
There was no way to tell even if she did make the round trip. It was entirely the same from every angle. The only reason she knew that it was round was that there seemed to be a concept of 'away' and 'close' in this mental space. From the starting place from where she had to walk to the pillar, she could see a slight curvature to it even if she couldn't see the edges.
The feature that dominated her mind now however was the color. The pillar was entirely clear. Though refracted entirely beyond recognition, there were a few spots that she was certain could see the other side. It was just sky again of course, but it wasn't the sky behind her. She knew that, because if that was a reflection, the pillar would have reflected her as well. Why was that?
It shouldn't really matter, as this was her mind. But because she noticed it, it mattered. Was this a clue left behind by herself… for herself? Then a follow up question came to her mind. Why was the ground not clear? Or… she suddenly considered, was it? She moved her feet once more and there was that hint of a sensation of pain.
Her thoughts jumped to word associations as she began to contemplate what lay beneath her feet. Sensations… like a phantom limb. Phantom… like a shadow. Like a shadow. Like a metaphorical bolt from the sky, the revelation struck her until it grew enough to fill her thoughts. Her shadow wasn't gone, she knew that. She had even summoned it once by giving it a boost of power.
It was hidden just beneath her feet in the foolish guise of a scorched plain. But it was indeed a foolish guise. She mused to herself. It took me some time to realise it, but even I did so eventually. Why would I even need to hide it? Who else would I need to hide this from?
Though she didn't look up, her attention went immediately to the sky above her head. The heavens themselves. That was the only logical conclusion. She wasn't preparing to resist heaven or be tempered by it. She was preparing to deceive it. But what exactly am I hiding from even myself?
The Fortified First Pillar. Reach that level of power and I shall explain everything to you. We shall work as equals as soon as you are able.
The pain at her feet surged for a moment at the thought of Teleos and she touched the ground beneath her with a smile. "You don't like him, do you?" She asked herself, kneeling to touch the glassy earth. That was what she was hiding. Her Emotions. Her Shadow. Her Self. Another Self, hidden even from the parts that she showed to heaven
"I can see why," She continued, knowing that there would be no answer. How can one answer themselves, after all? "He said he'd reveal everything. That he'd treat me as an equal and he has, or perhaps he will. But it won't be this me. It'll be the other me. My Shadow Self. How can you reveal your entire plan to the side you show your enemy?"
She took a deep breath. There was a reason the glass was clear and the deception was so weak. It wasn't a hint to herself, not really. It was because a part of her, the part that faced heavenwards hadn't entirely agreed to it. She felt the pain at her feet intensify at the thought of merely being the magnum opus of Teleos…. Of someone else.
But her emotional half still agreed to it. Because like her logical half, she still loved the clan. And the clan hated heaven. Everything that could be done to spite heaven was worth it. Even the deception of her deepest self. Not that it was much effort for her. She had been doing it since before she could remember.
Now all it required to truly fortify her pillar was her conscious agreement. She closed her eyes and made a conscious effort to reach into the ground. She hadn't been able to change this world. Not before now. But that was before her whole self was in agreement. Now, she could reach into the glass beneath her feet and part it as if it wasn't there.
It would be easy to reach into the darkness and pull herself out. Even see what the darkness truly was. But she didn't. Not today. But someday. It was a thought, a promise that reverberated throughout her being. A promise to herself from herself. She would not lose herself in this deception nor would she fail in her endeavour.
Rather than reach into the depths of the earth, she stopped a few inches from the ground. There she conjured an image of metal. Something reflective. Silver would work best perhaps, but her mind chose bronze. She didn't know how to make bronze as reflective as she needed though she was certain some members of the clan must have done so given their history and obsession.
But this was her mind and she didn't need to worry about details such as that. With a thought bronze spread below her feet, hidden in a reflection of the sky. It heartened her to know that the bronze was here, even if ideally it shouldn't be. Though there is no bronze in my blood, it remains in my heart. Literally and metaphorically. That idea really appealed to her.
Then Xiao Yingzi opened her eyes and saw her own image being reflected back at her. Her own image… and that of the heavens. It required something so simple to fortify her mind but…. Xiao Yingzi reached for it and realised that the memory wasn't entirely there. She knew that she had done it and she knew that it was easy.
But that was all.
With a sigh, Xiao Yingzi closed her mental eyes and opened her physical ones.
Elder Teleos, She called out to her spear, I have fortified my pillar. Now as you had promised, you have to explain everything to me.
She felt his mind rise from the spear and examine her for a moment. Why, Xiao Yingzi. He said, with a terrible impression of surprise. Didn't I just do so?
Xiao Yingzi paused and then nodded. Of course, silly me. I must have forgotten.
She felt a grin in her Elder's voice when he replied. Silly you, yes. Now, enough dilly-dallying. Don't we have work to do?
Yes, of course. Xiao Yingzi replied, forcing herself to move. Let us proceed, Elder.
We have a lot of work to do. You have a lot of work to do.
Xiao Yingzi wasn't certain why her Elder was repeating the obvious, but it likely had something to do with his sense of drama so she simply let it go. She did have a lot of work to do after all.
| | | | | | | | | | First Pillar: Pillar of Heaven's Shadow
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A/N: You see this right above? Go down at the bottom of this post and try again, if you didn't notice the first time.
Carvos barely deflected another half-hearted strike from Hera who gracefully dodged another ham-fisted punch. Hera could not help but marvel at the battle-hungry moron's progress after several beatings that she enjoyed way too much than she would admit. And tying him up so she could give him a stern talking to. After she had given him the ultimatum of reaching the 7th heaven stage or being stuck in the back lines. Hera was surprised when he agreed to her demands.
But had raised an eyebrow that they fight against each other at full strength. Hera had pointed out that he would die in a single strike if she did that and instead said that she would have to handicap herself. Corvus did not like the idea of holding back seeing it as boring but finally relented after a week-long argument after Hera told him she could fight as if she was three stages above him.
With that Carvos had trained furiously Hera had been caught off guard at the sheer focus of the crazy man. No longer was the moron distracted by the mere opportunity for a fight with the wildlife. Every morning he had gotten up at sunrise before Hera and waited patiently for her then they would practice until sundown or until Carvos passed out and was dragged home. And the process would repeat again until in a few scant years had passed and he had rocketed into the 7th heavenstage.
In those years Hera had learnt that Carvos was very goal-oriented, meaning the promise of battle when he had reached the target of the 7th heavenstage sharpened his focus amazingly. Hera had learned two other things, Anything that was remotely cute would stop him in his tracks and he would really lose it if said cute was threatened that had given her ideas for the future in getting him to defend places or stay put.
He was also capable of meditating but not by normal means instead if the brute fought for long enough and if the opponent was strong enough he would enter a trance and he would get better at fighting.
The sheer obviousness of it all made Hera despair at the thought of all that time anger and stress when she should have just fought him instead of trying to make him sit still. Since his dramatic rise in power, he could fight more things that were as intelligent as they were deadly with a chance of winning.
No longer was he swinging his axe in wild abandon, he was now swinging it with an aggressive technique that had developed over years of battle. The technique he had developed had many ways of breaking his foe's guard or smashing and hacking his foe's armour
The Technique had very little in the way of defence indeed Carvos merely took his opponents blows. He would take any opportunity of the openings that his enemies attacked. While any blow he survived was either deflected or absorbed.
But Hera had insisted that he practice his defence as at the moment his fighting style left him open to so many types of attacks such as poisoned weapons. And it was her duty to her charge. He may not be a genius compared to some others but he had the chance to become one of the strongest fighters in the clan. Now the challenge was to get it through the idiot's skull not to challenge opponents much stronger than him like that cannibal 9th advantage.
Hera snapped out of her thoughts as Carvos overextended again and she punished him by sending him rocketing into the wall of the training grounds. He still had a way to go currently Hera was limiting her power to that of a 9th heaven stage practitioner and was mopping the floor with the dumb ape.
She was enjoying every minute of it and so was Carvos who rose from the rained wall grinning ready for another round. Hera huffed in amusement as he charged wildly at her axe at the ready; he still had much to learn and was going to have to beat the wisdom of not fighting stronger opponents into him. Every.. single.. day...
The war waged on, the tides of the Noble Devil Alliance crashing against the Three City Cordon and being turned aside--one after the other. Gambits identified, intercepted, and turned around to the cause of the defenders.
In that regard, Rina Callista could say that things seemed to be going well. Things certainly got more than a little spicy when a number of Cores from the Demonic Altar Sect took the field, diverting Azurebolt and his reserves from city to city--leaving He Jian itself relatively underprotected, trusting in its reinforced arrays to allow the elites defending it a chance to throw them back. What nobody was quite expecting was the trio bearing a powerful treasure that allowed them to bypass the outer walls and their defenses. All the better to tear through the defenders.
She winced in memory of the event--she and most of the other Chosen among the defenders sallied out to stand against them--she drove down the [Weight of the World] and pushed her body and skills to the limit, barely holding against two of the Cores while Xu Zhen of the Strength Purity Sect (Plenty of people were calling him Bladebinder all of a sudden too, which was both kind of funny but also fairly appropriate?) and Fang Tai of the Seven Divine Saber Palace joined hands to block the third. It was never a good thing to be on the receiving end of an Elder's fury--half arsed Blood Path demon or not--and if she didn't have enough of her Centurions present to form a good Hoplite and a hefty reserve of power from the internal Arrays keeping her fighting strength replenished--she likely wouldn't have lasted until their Cores started to crack.
In the end, the attack was ultimately repelled--but the writing was on the wall--several core characters in the city's defensive array were damaged, and while the 502's attached engineers were making what field repairs were possible under Scarletglyph's instructions, the city was already in the middle of being evacuated.
One, maybe two more pushes could be thrown out--and then it would be lights out for the Three City Cordon, and the front lines pushed back to the Fearless Line itself--the final location in which a stand could be made until the Strength Purity Sect's core territories. It was good that the evacuation was proceeding at a respectable pace, and the defenders were still strong--but the war just continued to be a series of mitigated defeats and steady withdrawal despite the courage of the defenders.
Because? As it so happened? When you could get virtually all of the Demonic Powers to cooperate--even in the rudimentary mummer's fashion that the Noble Devil Alliance represented? Things could get really ugly in a hurry.
Rina almost considered it to be frustrating, how despite heroism and skill at all sides--despite claiming victory in most of the major engagements--that the Coalition Forces were Still losing, were the resources of the enemy truly bottomless? Or were the Coalition Force merely biding their time, seeking to make the enemy complacent in their victory before executing a great reversal?
She didn't know--or all of her talent, Rina was just one Chosen among many--one with a rare and potentially vital talent, but far from priceless. She didn't have a seat at the table of policy yet--which is why she was here, in the middle of town, infusing the formation character underpinning a new Array that Lady Scarletglyph had devised. "I could do it myself..." She had mused at the time, using the beast-skin parchment that described Rina's part as a makeshift fan. "But... Mmm, call it a hunch, but I think they'll get the wrong idea at this moment. Besides, I've made a few interesting tweaks to the normal design here, and I'm curious as to how your own Dao might alter the function. It's only a one shot anyway, so it can't hurt to try, can it?"
Rina stifled the smile, covering it with her free hand just in case anyone witnessed and got the wrong idea. Her other hand hovered over the newly inscribed array, emitting a strange pulse of jade-green light. Her Pillar of Law had been showing signs of changing again in the great battles of the campaign, and exerting more discrete effects beyond her Emanation was growing easier--though still not what she'd call reliable outside of safe, controlled circumstances like this. Running her power through her own body helped give the focus--even if she had to keep the flow down to avoid overstraining her Meridians.
Yes, this was really just the same work she thought she'd be doing way back in the day--when she was still a young and innocent girl who had no idea she was going to be forwarded to the elites. There was probably a lesson to be hard there--returning back to your origins every so often to remind yourself of how far you've come. Was that why so many stories had experts going off and pretending to be ordinary people? Drifting around in the secular world to learn from it?
It could very well be! It worked out for her after all, after her defeat by that bandit fellow! There was still the Trials to worry about--but those were problems for future Rina, and future Rina would be stronger than today's Rina, and so it all worked out, didn't it?
Controlling her expression down to a wry grin, she gave one further pulse of Essence, filtered through the Dao contained within her Pillar, and stepped back, admiring her work. The rune flickered with a jade-green light--somewhat different from the bright azure of the traditional interpretation of Water--but no less flowing for it. She was curious as to what Scarletglyph intended with the altered Array--probably a bomb or something, her own Water was somewhat more aggressive than the traditional inter-
*The serpent bore its fangs, coils upon coils, ever hungering, ever devouring. Nostrils flared as it drew in the light of the world, and in its exhale sailed oblivion*
The defensive arrays Melted, sturdy steel reduced to glass and fading to molten sand before evaporating in the attack's wake. A sound of screams brutally stifled as the ripple of Nascent Power tore through the defensive arrays, the merest embers of the blow snuffing out hundreds of lives.
Rina's eyes widened, and she rose to her feet--Muqin Guo began to shudder from her place hooked to her belt. "Ohnono I can't block that..." The tiny cauldron sputtered through the mental link--by the time Rina had her shield out--she saw little more than a single figure landing with barely a noise, bloodstained robes and a disdainful expression on his face.
"You. Scion of Callista. Know that you have walked a path you are unworthy for. You tread the path of my Lord, and yet disdain his Truth. For this, the penalty is death."
Kinslaughterer, Nascent Soul of the Demonic Altar Sect--had come for her head.
Rina raised her shield--steeling body, mind, and soul for what would come next.
"Your Single Pillar is a thing of great potential." Archgetes Konstantinos told her, on that shining day after her breakthrough--a private conversation with the first Golden Devil to touch that mythical power. "You have grasped an ability that is ordinarily barred to those beneath Nascent Soul--a Dao that can alter the nature of the world as we understand it. Taken to the extreme, it can be used to wield powerful magic--to pluck secrets from the minds of the unwary, or to drive even the most foul villains to flight, cowering under the weight of their own deeds." Old Gold smiled wistfully there, perhaps recalling something from his past.
"But there are many who will attempt to take that from you, for we have always been rejected by the Heavens. This will not change simply because you have the right to disagree with them. And for all of your potential, until it is realized--it is nothing."
His eyes flickered--and Rina's [Halo of the World-Lord] shuddered and shrunk, smothered by a shroud of darkness as the Dao-Projection receded back within her--the attack ceasing as Rina's own pressure collapsed.
"In the end, Power will always win out over even the most pleasant ideals--and the power of a Nascent Soul stands beyond any lesser Cultivator, understand this, internalize this--and know that your only duty in the face of a Nascent Soul seeking your death is to Survive. There is no glory in a wasted death, no victory to be found in spitting in a god's eye. Until you stand among our numbers, you cannot hope to turn us aside."
The shadows drew back, and once again was the elderly fellow that had guided the Golden Devils through history since Rina's own birth. He gave a rictus smile there--which would be intimidating if she didn't sense the warmth in his voice.
"So, know this--if you are to survive a Nascent Soul that seeks your death, you must understand that the ordinary rules of survival do not apply. You cannot reverse their attack, you cannot bind them, you cannot outrun them. Any defensive measure constructed to save your life will be futile--even if they permit you to use it, they will shatter it the moment it is no longer convenient. However, you are not entirely without recourse."
He raises a single finger. "A Nascent Soul will not lower themselves to striking a junior with their fullest strength on the first blow. For to do so would be to acknowledge that junior as a Threat. Delve deeply into that Dao of yours, and seek a mechanism that can endure such an assault. Their emanation will crush any defense formed solely of Qi, but against another Emanation, it should be sufficient to save your life."
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Rina's Meridians swelled, dumping power directly from her Pillar into them--blood veins burst throughout her body, blood spilling from her eyes, ears, and mouth as she grasped the legacy of her ancestors with both hands--offering it up to the enlightenment she had attained.
Void--ever watchful, the guardian that stands against the horrors of the cosmos!
Centered upon her shield came a ripple, barely visible as it poured outward. The [Halo of the World-Lord] manifested behind her--spinning wildly and sparking as it was forced to manifest before her Pillar was ready.
But it held--and the fifth character blazed to life for the first time.
Kinslaughterer's Emanation struck the Astral Voidguard, parting around it, and reducing streets and buildings at either side to chewed up rock and rubble.
Law Evocation--the third power of the Single Pillar Path--the ability to wield the magic arts normally reserved to Nascent Souls.
Her Cultivation hadn't advanced to the point of doing this on her own--and she felt the progress she had already made towards it crumble as a backlash--her meridians red hot and cracked throughout from their labors picking up the difference.
But it was just enough to cast a single Evocation, before Rina fell to her knees, a small patch of undamaged ground around a cataclysm of destruction.
She was smiling though, keeping her head up even as she saw Kinslaughter's brow furrow--he raised his hand again, and this time Rina felt the Nascent Power gathering in his hand.
Rookie mistake.
"The second recourse is this--a Nascent Soul does not have the privilege to act as they wish. Should one make a move recklessly, they will find themselves countered in short order. Therein lays your chance for survival"
A ripple of force was met and matched, and clattering of heels and a throaty giggle echoed across the battlespace.
"Naughty, Naughty"
Clad in a black dress, slit to the waist, etched in a floral pattern. Cherry red hair tied in a short ponytail, using a garland of flowers to hold it up. A yellow fan held in one had as she took several steps forward--leather heels still clicking even as she rose in the air, carried by nothing more than her supernal will, a languid smile on her face.
Kinslaughterer snarled. "Scarletglyph. Leave the girl. Flee. For this I will spare you. She must die."
Scarletglyph's smile didn't waver though, she merely tilted her head ever so quizzically.
And then her fist was driven into his chin from below, sending him rocketing up into the sky.
"Leave this to me dearies!" Scarletglyph waved below. "Just prepare the evacuation like we drilled!" She closed her fan shut, as it vanished into her Immortal Aperture, and she rocketed up to give chase.
Rina shook her head, grimacing as she pulled herself back up to her feet. She'd be fine, probably--just a little bed rest after falling back.
It was an odd tradition--one part practicality and one part habit--for battles between Nascent Souls to be held high in the air. In a battle between those standing at the peak of the Virtuous Flipper Region, even a single stray blow could slay thousands on either side--and even a Nascent Soul needed their disciples to accomplish much of anything, for all of their power.
It was just too much of a hassle to fight otherwise! Even in a place as rich with ambient Qi as the Great Battlefield was!
Kinslaughterer rubbed his jaw, infuriated gaze set upon Scarletglyph as she rose to meet him. He spat to the side. "You were warned."
"Well, yes, but I've never been good at listening to garbage talk." Scarletglyph quipped, smile unabated as she cracks her knuckles. "I have to say, we had something of a bet as to who the first to lose their patience and start murdering Juniors would be! You made me a great deal of money today Kinslaughterer!"
"Juniors?" Kinslaughterer sneered. "I'm merely cleansing the realm of heretics, you should be thanking me!" He gestured widely. "Each of those creatures represents a pretender to the Great Lord's legacy! Do you not claim to be the so-called bringers of Justice?" He barked out, his power rippling outward--the cultivation base of a Mid Nascent Soul unfurled for the first time. "And now you simply come here to die at my hands, what a tragic ending to the legend of Scarletglyph!"
"Mmm, that's the thing you know, the thing we have that you Demonic trash lack." Scarletglyph mused, her own Cultivation Base rising to the challenge--the light of the moon standing against the radiance of a fell sun. "We have standards, and we have the right to decide our own fate." She stretches out a hand in challenge, settling into a martial stance, flicking her fingers towards herself. "After all, we didn't give up on our humanity like you pieces of garbage do so eagerly."
"And what of it?!" Kinslaughterer snapped. "To be little more than cattle? Milling about in our own filth, praying we are not noticed by the uncaring Heavens? If that's humanity, than good riddance to it! The freedom to take what I desire and consume that which pleases me is the only virtue in this benighted world!"
Kinslaughterer burst into motion, a projection of hissing serpents following his fist strike--Scarletglyph gave ground, raising one hand in a circular motion and deflecting much of the force, letting the remainder sail off into the skies behind her. Her remaining hand struck out in a palm strike, only to be caught by Kinslaughterer's knee--which he chambered into a twisting roundhouse kick.
Scarletglyph was forced backwards, heels giving off sparks as she Willed the sky to firm beneath her, dispersing the force of the attack as she steadied herself--crossing her hands to parry both of Kinslaughterer's follow-up sword-hands. "Oh my..." She laughs, arms shaking under the force of holding the attack up. "I suppose it was a little arrogant of me to try and pick a fight with you like this, was it?"
"It's far too late to have regrets!" Kinslaughterer sneered, as he doubled the strength behind his attack. The sky shattered, and the solidified-sky gave way, driving Scarletglyph down towards the ground, clouds forced aside as the two Nascent Souls built up speed, descending back down to the city below. "Let the two of us lay this petty city to ruin! If you would stand against me, then know the price of your folly with the ghosts of your followers!"
Scarletglyph's amusement remained unshaken. "Well, yes, power and all that." Planes of force formed beneath the two, but shattered as the two divine bodies descended, their advance left unrestricted. "See, here's the thing about power..."
The descent halted--and Kinslaughterer's eyes widened as Scarletglyph's arms steadied--a different plane now visible beneath her--inscribed with something different.
"Power can come in a lot of forms." She muses to herself, face to face with Kinslaughterer. "Cultivation Base, Charisma, Wealth, Martial Skill, Inherited Treasures..." She added. "Knowledge--but I'm sure your Sect knows that as well as I do, don't they?"
"You... How! When!?" Kinslaughterer realized--his eyes taking in the shining points of the city below, and how they matched with the design extruded beneath Scarletglyph's feet.
"From the very instant you sent three Cores to this city" Scarletglyph explained--blue eyes flaring with light as the five shining points on the city below extended rays of light into the diagram beneath her. Across her body flashed designs of brilliant azure.
"I practiced the Dao of the Dilettante in my youth." Scarletglyph's fingers started to dig into divine flesh. "To know a little bit about everything--not the best in any one field I'll admit--but I could always pull out a little trick from time to time to turn the tides." She pulled the Demonic Nascent down then, and drove her knee into his gut, doubling him over with pain as she clasped her hands together into a maul, starting high and swinging into a full arc, clashing with his face and driving him off into the distance. Trails of light--in white, sparkling jade, green, red, and gold--followed her from the city below as she gave chase, diagrams upon her body flashing as her cultivation base surged--eclipsing the dark sun with a greater light. "I was an indecisive girl you know! But there were just so many mysteries in this place!" She flickered as Kinslaughterer recovered and sought to counterattack--only to fade back into view with an upwards ax-kick sending him sailing back into the sky. "How could I possibly commit to any one idea when the Truth was veiled from juniors!"
"Such a Dao would be powerless!" Kinslaughterer retorted, regaining his balance and catching Scarletglyph's follow up kick between them. He grunted with exertion and a small mountain off in the distance shuddered from the force passing through him--but such a blow was trivial to his divine body. "You lie!"
"Oh yeah, I was super weak for a while." Scarletglyph agreed, pivoting and delivering a storm of kick-strikes to Kinslaughterer's defenses. "Just poking and tailoring and drifting whenever the mood took me. Sure I was good at solving problems, and sure I was good at teaching kids the basics--but when it came to direct combat? Psh, I was a joke." She rolled her eyes and shrugged, backing off for a moment. "But, there's a thing I started to notice--how every discipline was linked together in some sense. Strength of the body leading to strength of arm, magnifying the effect of skill which permitted greater precision of hand and eye." She crossed her arms, letting her attack cease for a minute--and grinning. "But see, here's the thing? Everyone knows that... But I took a trip into Qiguai towards the end of my time in Foundation Establishment, and I stumbled upon a most curious little document there."
Kinslaughterer lowered his fists, and crouched into a low stance. "Who cares about your life story!" He burst into motion, flickering images and projections filling the air as he circled around her--a predator looking for an opening. "You've made a valiant effort, but this power of yours cannot last! And when it fades, I'll sink my teeth into your whore throat!"
"Ruuuude~~" Scarletglyph teased. "It was written in odd characters--but I had spent some time translating old documents of the Sea Conquering Army in the past, and understood their text. It was a document called the Codex Trismegistus--I suppose if I were to translate the title, it would be the 'Book of the Thrice-Greatest.' It speculated that all cultivator disciplines could be broken down into three categories. Power of the Body." Her arm lashed out into a clothesline, shuddering as Kinslaughterer crashed into it, flipping head over foot before he could recover his footing. "Power of the Mind" The markings across her flared--and Scarletglyph was surrounded in radiant azure flame, accelerating threefold as the draws from the city below flew open, her fists driving deep into Kinslaughterer's body, spittle flying as he was left seriously bruised by the onslaught. "And most importantly of all... Power of Discipline."
She gestured--and a sheathed sword emerged from her Immortal Aperture--clutched in one hand as she slowly drew it--a wave-pattern of Brightsteel catching in the light of the sun, revealing the countless micro-engravings and etched arrays covering every square micron of the weapon. "The willingness to devote all manner of time and effort--no matter how tedious--to achieve your goals."
"That sword..." Kinslaughterer stared for a moment--and his eyes widened. "How many arrays does it contain?" A scythe of bone emerged from his own Aperture--crackling with Nascent Power. "That's absurd! It won't survive even a single battle!"
"Well, of course it won't." Scarletglyph smiled--as the sword began to light up, the blue glow from the symbols pouring into the sword. "It doesn't need to, it just needs to be capable of being wielded by a refined body, fueled by the full Qi of millions of Spirit Stones channeled into a series of nested arrays transmitting enough power into me to fight at the Middle Nascent stage, and be capable of unleashing its power for at least three hours before breaking down." A dimming of the light--and a shadow of a dozen others briefly emerging from her. "And if that isn't enough, I've got a dozen more lying around in here, each with a new and interesting set of spells to ruin your day!"
She grins widely, teeth bright as her drawn sword lights up into a catastrophe of five elements, weaving and feeding upon each other in sequence. "I got some really good data on how to maintain a Five Element Augmentation cycle off of a little investment I made a while back, after that, it was just three thousand hours of effort per sword--easily done while I cultivate! It's a meditative strategy even!"
"You wasted that much time on a toy?!?" Kinslaughterer roared, his Nascent Power filling the air and filling his weapon--eyes upon it opening up and gazing upon the land, gathering Blood Qi from all of the fallen. "You... How can you possibly be so wasteful!"
"I dunno, one Mid Nascent Soul for three thousand hours of tedious work from an Early Nascent Soul?" Scarletglyph settled her weapon upon her shoulder, unharmed by its emissions. "I'd call that a fair trade--I think just about anyone would! It's just a matter of having the patience and discipline to do the boring grunt work... And the Codex's conclusion was that the effect of mastery in any one field was enough to create an expert... But unifying all three? The effects are exponentially greater."
Her posture shifted, lowering herself almost as if to pounce, both hands clutching the hilt of her sword. "Let me demonstrate to you, the fruits of my labor."
"Y.." Kinslaughterer begins to spit, gritting his teeth and focusing on his power. "No, I won't let you drive me to foolishness. Just die! Hungering Void Slaughter Arc!"
Blood Qi filled the air, and the bone-scythe lashed out.
"Set: Five-Star Calamity Sword" Scarletglyph muttered, fueling her aura into the weapon--and extending the blade to a length of five hundred miles--enough to scorch the earth if aimed that way. "Novaburst!"
The sword projection met the scythe-projection--and the explosion rocked the front line--the looming Demonic Siege Tower in the distance caught a fragment of the broken sword-projection.
The rest was tearing through the bone-scythe of Kinslaughterer, and gouging a red line from shoulder to hip through his body.
Blood sprayed out, and Kinslaughterer slunk back. Scarletglyph's sword gathering power for a follow-up attack. He glanced up at her, gaze flickering back down to the city below, and with a howl of rage--he vanished into a spatial rift, his aura fading.
Scarletglyph remained in her fighting stance for a moment afterwards, eyes taking in the landscape--a moment later, her Five-Star Calamity Sword shattered to dust, and the symbols upon her skin faded away. She exhaled softly, and tossing the hilt of the ruined blade aside.
"What a bloody monster..." She mumbled. "All that work, all that expense, and the best I could do was a shallow wound." She fixed her dress, and strove to make herself presentable again from her vantage point. "Smile though, smile! As long as everyone thinks I just spanked his ass, that'll buy a few more days. They don't need to know I had maybe thirty seconds of combat time left and only one more Spellsword, nosiree."
Still! Narrow and by the wire as it was, a win was a win!
And the Righteous Path Really did need a few things to start going right now, a glorious victory like this? It'd be just fine.
Still, she wondered what kind of price Kinslaughterer was going to have to pay for attacking on his own like that... It'd be too much to hope for that he'd be executed, but maybe lost a hand? A leg? Given a horrible pain creating curse that drives him insane with rage and hate, a vengeful suicide soldier that could be surrounded and destroyed?
Her lips purse and she looks briefly like she had sucked on a lemon. No, that last one was a bad thing, that had better not happen.
She gestured--and a sheathed sword emerged from her Immortal Aperture--clutched in one hand as she slowly drew it--a wave-pattern of Brightsteel catching in the light of the sun, revealing the countless micro-engravings and etched arrays covering every square micron of the weapon. "The willingness to devote all manner of time and effort--no matter how tedious--to achieve your goals."
She grins widely, teeth bright as her drawn sword lights up into a catastrophe of five elements, weaving and feeding upon each other in sequence. "I got some really good data on how to maintain a Five Element Augmentation cycle off of a little investment I made a while back
"What a bloody monster..." She mumbled. "All that work, all that expense, and the best I could do was a shallow wound." She fixed her dress, and strove to make herself presentable again from her vantage point. "Smile though, smile! As long as everyone thinks I just spanked his ass, that'll buy a few more days. They don't need to know I had maybe thirty seconds of combat time left and only one more Spellsword, nosiree."
Gaius Antonius Omake #37: Crucible in the Sky, Part 2
The sun was... above him? Below him?
That was the first thought to cross Gaius' mind, as he slowly adjusted to what he had managed to do. Indeed, the mountain had become the ground, and the world had become the sky, with the sun in between. Madness.
There was only one thing to be done, of course: climb to the top of this mountain. It was massive; once he had that sword, he would carefully search for a rift to safely bring him back down. Gaius jogged at an easily sustainable pace, packs bouncing slightly as he went. From where he'd landed, his prospects were excellent; he'd be inside that palace in a few days.
Every now and then, something strange would get in Gaius' way. A carnivorous plant here, a huge snake there, and similar small fry like that. It really was impressive, the way the qigai realm was so heavily segregated. As for as he could tell, despite the many dangers, nothing above Qi Condensation lived in the dimension he had been sent to. In that sense, this mountain was both more and less dangerous than a similar place might be back home.
Still, Qi Condensation was a broad category; the monsters barring The Seeker's path became more dangerous as he climbed higher, perhaps warning him away from his goal. all sorts of monsters, some familiar species and some bizarre and alien, all fell upon his sword. When it was time to eat, he ate his rations and took his hydration pills. When it came time to sleep, he pitched his tent and set up a perimiter of alarm arrays. Rather than risk sleeping a full four hours, he permitted himself a pair of two-hour naps each day, so as to avoid staying in one place for too long. No serious dangers blocked Gaius' way for the first two days.
This, of course, was not to last. Shortly after dawn on the third day of Gaius' ascent, he happened upon a stretch of very rocky ground bordering a roaring river. A heavy layer of mist blanketed the area, and the ground was extremely slick. The scent of rain in the air made it clear that the river had flooded over the night before.
To Gaius' significant annoyance, yet another interloper arrived to block his path. From the surging river, a massive green arm, bloated with thick musculature, burst from the water and onto the rocks. It was soon followed by an equally large monster, some kind of humanoid frog.
The beast was colossal, standing nine feet and holding an appropriately huge broadaxe. Beneath its thick, smooth skin, muscles somewhere between a human's and a frog's bulged dangerously; its legs were especially brawny, ending in a pair of big, broad webbed feet. The frog-man(or at least, Gaius assumed this had to be a man) glared at him dispassionately with round, dark little eyes above a big toothless mouth. Water dripped down its hide, making the light reflect off the contours of its body in a dazzling fashion; a fearsome sight, to be sure.
"To be holding such a finely-crafted weapon, you must be a civilized man, right?" Gaius inquired, buying time to get his bearings. How the hell had something so huge snuck up on him without him sensing it? Even with this fog clouding his senses, he should have heard it coming.
The amphibian, for its part, did not respond, Simply holding its weapon at the ready, secondary eyelids blinking as its dark, beady orbs searched him for openings. That was probably to be expected; it wasn't wearing any clothes, after all, and for all that its axe was masterfully forged, it showed clear signs of wear and lack of maintenence.
"I take that to mean you aren't civilized, then? Someone put you up to this? That makes sense; demi-humans hardly ever get so strong." Gaius bent his knees deeper, loosening his sword-grip ever so slightly. "This is your last chance; prove you're not a monster or I'll have to treat you like one."
Sensing the sudden shift in hostility, the frog-man lunged with unbelievable speed. Gaius' blade rose to meet it, and he found himself knocked off balance by an incredibly powerful strike. That was not the end; several more came, each faster and more vicious than the last, and only by a close margin did Gaius dodge or block them all.
He half-stumbled, half-jumped back, hoping to gain some distance, but the beast followed with a prodigous leap, striking twice from above in a single breath, then landing behind to chop at his midsection. The first two attacks served to batter Gaius' guard to shambles, and the third to bisect him. It was Gaius' anticipation of this maneuver that saved him, as he switched his sword to a reverse grip in the moment the frog-man leapt, allowing him to stop all three attacks.
But even if death had been averted for a moment longer, his opponent had still gotten behind him, and before Gaius could even turn around, a massive fist crashed into his side. An unsettling warmth crept up his flank as he felt his ribs creak, and one crack.
Blackness came, then immediately left. Gaius rolled to the side, and the huge blade of the frog-man's axe chopped deep into the stone where he had just lain. Gaius hacked at his opponent's leg as it struggled for a split-second to free its weapon, dealing a shallow wound and backing away to dodge its retaliatory backhand.
Two and a half seconds; that was how long Gaius had to analyze the beast before it was on him again. He pushed his every sense to the limit, piercing through the fog and the rain to see his enemy in truth.
Cultivation: When it first attacked he had suspected Early Foundation Establishment, but that was wrong; it wasn't fast enough for that. This beast was in the Twelfth Heavenstage. Gaius hadn't the faintest idea how or why an animal would accomplish such a thing. Perhaps artificially induced, so that it could still be brought into this part of the realm.
Physicality: Stronger, tougher and faster than a human of the same level, but with poorer agility. Like a normal frog, this was an organism specialized in linear movement. Its webbed feet hugged the wet stones perfectly - this environment was a detriment only to Gaius.
Intelligence: Low. Its technical still was rough and unrefined, the sort of movements brought on from battle experience rather than formal instruction. It seemingly couldn't understand Gaius' speech at all; there would be no tricking this beast with honeyed words.
In short: really fucking bad. Time was up, the frog-man was on the move again. It leapt up the slope, landed sideways on an outcropping, then pushed off the stone with enough force to break it off, careening toward Gaius. He stepped aside its lightning-quick chop and slashed at its flank as it passed by. To Gaius' frustration, the wound didn't go very deep; it seemed only the strongest of head-on attacks would do serious damage here.
The monster screeched in pain and anger, chopping furiously at The Seeker, who gave ground and furiously weaved his upper body to avoid the attacks. Finally, the beast pulled its arm far back, chambering a massive overhead chop. Gaius summoned an Aegis in the way, stopping the attack and sending his foe careeining back from the repelling force. He rushed in to mount and kill it before it could recover, only to pull back when he saw it doing something strange.
The frog-man's throat inflated as it sucked air into a pocket in its gullet, spreading and planting its feet. Leaning forward, it opened its mouth and screamed. The sound was incredibly disorienting, of course, but this was not a mere sound attack. the vibrations shook the rocks, cracking them, and a wave of air slammed into Gaius. Gaius gritted his teeth as he slid backward; he could have endured the shockwave if not for the rain, but this was no longer under his control; there wasn't enough friction on the ground.
Gaius hit a large rock and tumbled over it. In that instant, a specter of death appeared before The Seeker's eyes, screamed in his ears - this was an instant of extreme danger. His hands lashed out above his head and found the ground. Without knowing where he was going, he pushed off. The frog-man's broadaxe cleaved the stone in two horizontally a moment later, passing right through the air where Gaius had been.
Shit, he realy was going to die if he made a single mistake, wasn't he? What a pain. He landed, only to immediately find himself fending off more of those relentless attacks. The beast was completely relentless and seemingly tireless, as expected of a creature with purified qi.
Gaius' boots were well-crafted and practical, good for gripping loose sand and rough stone alike, but the rocks were just too slippery; eventually something had to give. His foot slipped sideways on the slick ground, sending him into a near-split and sending a dreadful twinge of pain up his leg when some delicate part was bent too far. Worse still, it left him totally out of position to guard himself. In desperation, The Seeker dropped his sword and summoned the Aegis with both hands to stop that terrifying axe.
Only this time, the frog-man had grown accustomed to the repelling force, and adjusted its stance and grip so at to not be thrown back. Over and over, the beast hammered away at Gaius shield. He regained his footing and fell back, only for his enemy to kick his shield with tremendous force, flinging him back into a large rock. With a hideous wet pop, Gaius' shoulder was dislocated, and another two of his ribs cracked. Not finished, the beast threw its axe with both hands - the weapon was clearly not balanced for throwing, but with enough brute strength anything is a viable thrown weapon - and sending it crashing into the battered and cracked Aegis, which finally shattered.
Seemingly at once, the frog-man was there. Two meaty palms slammed into Gaius' head, one on either side. The impact was unbearable, enough to kill him or knock him out if he didn't have the Blood of Bronze. Even with that, it made a sky's worth of stars explode before his eyes. Gaius was overcome with an immediate feeling of dizziness and nausea, as well as a dull pain which rapidly grew harsher. The frog-man's eyes narrowed, and its mighty pectorals flexed harder. It clearly had experience in slaughtering smaller opponents of a comparable level; rather than throw, slam or pummel him, it simply intended to crush him to death.
Needless to say, that was bad. He had to get out right now. The Seeker drew a knife and slashed at the monster's thick, leathery skin over and over, but he couldn't cut deep enough, not with a blade that size. Body, face, neck, none of it phased the beast much, even as more and more blood oozed forth to trickle down its sleek white belly. It squeezed even harder and began to inflate its throat-sac again. With a deep breath, Gaius dropped the knife, spread his feet wider and seized proper balance with sheer force of will. He let out a mighty cry, and struck, with the full combined strength of his core, lower body and arm.
With an intense crash, the sound of flesh striking flesh at obscene velocities, the frogman doubled over, eyes bulging. As his enemy stumbled back in a daze, Gaius withdrew his fist and regained his bearings.
Zhan Zhuang stance. Middle punch. A movement his body knew all on its own, a strike etched into his very soul.
Gaius spat out a mouthful of blood, gritted his teeth and rammed his shoulder against a rain-slick rock, popping it back into place. He was a Golden Devil, a sophisticated and civilized warrior; he was through being bullied by this brute. In the animal kingdom, power alone wins battles, but this is not so among humankind.
His arms moved in fluid, circular motions, until all of his joints aligned properly and he took a new stance, one intended for counterattacks. That is correct, Gaius thought. Humans have martial arts; that beautiful and terrible thing, heaven's gift to the weak. Through the mastery of martial arts, gaps in strength can be closed and even surpassed; he would demonstrate such here and now.
The frog-man vomited a glob of blood and bile out of its toothless mouth, glowering fiercely. It had almost certainly been instructed to wait here, as Gaius speculated. A predator on the hunt would have left rather than risk further injury. Trudging over to its fallen axe, the beast wrenched the brutal weapon from the ground once more and prepared to attack.
"Don't be afraid." Gaius insisted to himself. "Remember the basics. Remember where you came from. This is what you reinforce the foundation for." The stomping footsteps of the towering beast were like explosions to Gaius' keen ears. His eyes saw everything, every muscle fiber, every tendon and ligament, every tiny imperfection and old injury in the monster's body. The cold mist settled on The Seeker's body, condensing into water which dripped down his neck and made him shiver. Higher. Higher. Higher still he pushed his focus.
The Aegis stopped another chop, and he retaliated with a slash that raked across its bicep. Rather than give into his fear and step back, Gaius advanced against the goliath, cutting it across the chest in a beautiful arc of ichor. The frog-man gave ground, blocking Gaius' follow-up swing with the haft of its axe and throwing a haphazard kick, which Gaius blocked with both forearms. He was knocked away, but having adjusted to the beast's strength and the slippery surface of the rocks, he landed smoothly and with no damage.
"I've got you figured out, you bastard!" Gaius yelled, throwing his sword and running behind the projectile. His foe deflected the sword before it could be impaled, and Gaius seized upon the opening, pouncing like a leopard with knife in hand and driving the blade into its throat as hard as he could. This time, with the momentum of his charge, he stabbed deep enough to do some serious damage. The beast choked on blood, and The Seeker's muscles strained against its flesh.
Before he could slash the frog-man's throat out entirely, a huge webbed hand closed around his arm, pulling him off and flinging him to the ground. Gaius coughed up blood as his back slammed into the hard stone, aggravating his ribs further and knocking the wind from his lungs.
As relentless and simple as the frog-man was, it was far from mindless. The primordial bloodlust, the glee of a successful kill, flashed in its eyes; it really did think it had won. How presumptuous, thought Gaius as he spiritually reached out to his fallen sword and pulled.
With a snicker-snack, Gaius' sword returned to his hand, cleaving through the beast's trunk-like wrist on the way there and making it drop the axe. It was a simple weapon-retrieval technique, and not even a subtle one. Usable by the Fifth Heavenstage, and even talented Fourth Heavenstage Cultivators could sometimes pull it off. The thread of qi Gaius had tugged on was visible to anyone who bothered to look closely, but to a dimwitted animal like this it might as well have been a miracle.
The frog-man, enraged, inflated its sac again in preparation to blast The Seeker. But this time, he advanced. The frog-man aimed downward at the last second before it fired, but it was too late - the shockwave sailed over Gaius' head, and a sword was buried deep in its prominent belly.
Close proximity to the blast was of course not good for Gaius. Even if he shut off his hearing, the vibrations still sunk through his skull and into his brain. His head swam, blood dripped from his nose and ears, and for a moment it seemed he would lose his sword-grip and slip into unconsciousness.
No. Not yet. Gaius' grip tighetened again, and his eyes flashed with determination. With a twist and a slash, Gaius sliced open the monster's belly, spraying its cold blood on the rocks, but this would not be enough. No chances could be taken against an enemy so strong. The Seeker held his sword with both hands, blade straight up, and with a furious war cry and a huge burst of qi, brought it down on the monster's head, straight down the meridian line.
"CHEEESTOOOOOO!"
The blade cleaved through the frog-man's entire skull and down into its neck, before the sheer force of Gaius' strike and the sheer sturdiness of the monster's flesh pushed the battered weapon past its breaking point. The sword broke in two, half of the blade lodged in the frog-man and the other continuing downward in a picture-perfect vertical slash.
Seemingly in slow-motion, the monster tipped backwards, crashing onto its back. Spurred on by the rain, its blood flowed down the mountain, the grooves in the rocks like new veins. Gaius dropped his ruined weapon and fell to his knees, exhausted. The intense stink of the half-digested contents of the amphibian's guts wafted upward, somehow made worse by the humidity. Were Gaius a less experienced killer, he may have thrown up; the digestion of animals that ate their prey whole was always a horiffic thing.
This beast needed to be harvested, but that could wait a few minutes. Just long enough for his ears to stop ringing and his stomach to settle, but not long enough for the pain to fully set in.
And there's the second part, featuring the first part of Gaius' epic Qigai boss rush. In hindsight, I wonder if I perhaps should have assigned the frog-man a nickname - describing it as 'beast', 'monster', 'frog-man', etc got old after a while.
And yes, I know 'chesto' is Japanese, but it's really cool so I wanted to throw it in.
As sickening as it started to get after a while to write about so many different injuries Gaius sustains in such detail, there's also a weirdly fun aspect to it. It's sort of a game between me and my own character - how far can I push his body before he can't keep going anymore?
Not really but unlikely. As spread out as the Righteous Forces are we were useful but not wholly critical. We padded the margin of error but they had some give themselves
Not really but unlikely. As spread out as the Righteous Forces are we were useful but not wholly critical. We padded the margin of error but they had some give themselves
Mostly because straight up professional armies are usually a sucker bet compared to force concentration. We just make it work because of our Array/Formation specialty.
Scarletglyph seems really cool, is the Trismegistus thing something from actual history? I've seen the term thrice-great before and I was wondering where it came from.
This also allowed me to put in some character stuff early on since, big shocker, most of this arc is just fight scenes. 
