Gaius Antonius 87 - The Mega-Powers Collide
The burning sun scorched the slaves every day as they labored until their skin darkened enough to protect itself. That towering ziggurat, that monument to vanity, would never be complete; not in their lifetimes at least. The master's plans simply grew larger with time; more wings, more stories, more sub-basements.
If they had to tear down a wall they'd already toiled to build so they could expand further, they would do so. If they had to destroy their own meager homes and rebuild them elsewhere as the structure crept outward and crashed into the settlement around it, they would do so. There was nothing to say, nothing to argue or consider; just work or die.
If they ran, they died. If they fought back, they died. If they did not work fast enough, they died. The most primal and simple form of domination - this was what it meant to be weak.
Men of stone watched them at all hours of the day and night, never sleeping. If a slave was suspected of fleeing, their punishment was immediate. The only thing on the mind of the master and the servants she built was to keep the construction going, forever. For over sixty years, this was all they had known, and the people who remembered a life before they had been subjugated were outnumbered by far by those who did not.
This was New Olympia; or at least, the spot that one day would be.
——
It was foolish to run after all, thought Yingzi, as she gazed up at the stone soldier, towering above her and holding a sword and shield of similarly foreboding scale. She had hardly made it a hundred feet from the outer edges of New Olympia before she'd been spied and caught up to, and now she was going to die. Well, that wasn't so terrible, was it? Yingzi had already accepted the risk when she decided to make a break for it. With trembling hands, she brushed her long, dirty hair away from her face and tried to meet her killer in the eye.
Well, perhaps not the eye; the stone soldiers the master constructed in her ziggurat did not have human faces but heads carved in the shape of helmets. The half-circle crests on top of the helmets were painted in a variety of vivid colors, contrasting the beige sandstone that made up the rest of their bodies. The rest resembled the armor of Legionnaires, the soldiers Yingzi's grandfather had seen a few times in his youth, but bulkier. The weapons, she imagined, were the same way.
She detested these things so very much. All her life, they had wordlessly pushed her around, not even enjoying their work. They were totally brainless, and yet they were more important than the slaves of New Olympia, forcing them to work their bodies to the limit day after day. And now, another one of those accursed dummies was wordlessly raising its sword, about to bring it down and put an end to Yingzi's life. The young slave knew she would die at the hands of a stone man eventually, but at least for a moment, she had been able to dream.
Before the sword could come down, it was removed, destroyed by a bright, hot beam of light that lanced through the air with instantaneous speed. Half a dozen more followed, piercing through the artificial soldier until it fell to the ground, non-functional.
Letting out a high-pitched yelp and turning toward the source of that blinding barrage, Yingzi beheld a man in a big hat silhouette from behind by the sun, a light shining from the tip of his outstretched index finger. "Damnit, that was too many shots. Still gotta work on my aim." The man muttered, before looking down at the slave girl and offering her his hand.
Trembling with shock, Yingzi took the offered hand and was hauled to her feet. In a daze, she kept walking forward, not entirely convinced that any of this was real.
"Hey kid, don't you go nowhere!" The figure said, wagging a finger at her. "I've got some questions to ask, and it doesn't look like you'd be safe on your own."
Freezing in place, Yingzi turned back to the stranger who now controlled her fate. Though she dared not meet the man's eyes, she still took in his appearance. Green robes over a boiled leather vest, a big hat with a very wide brim, a sword at his hip - even if it weren't for that spell he cast before, there would be no doubt that this man was a Cultivator. He was tall too, but a bit too thin to cut a truly imposing silhouette.
"The name's Gaius, and first of all, I gotta ask, what are you fellas building all of…
this for?" He asked incredulously, making a sweeping gesture at the ziggurat.
"We're building it for the master, and…" The slave trailed off, looking down at her feet. She desperately wanted to find some kind of answer that wasn't 'because we were told to', even though that was the only reason.
She started in place as a weight settled on the top of her head; a moment later, she realized it was Gaius' hand. "Taking away people's free will for no good reason… that's something I can't abide." He sighed. "Alright, easier question: what's your name?"
"It is what it is." Yingzi muttered rotely. "That's what dad always says. And my name's Yingzi."
"Doesn't have to be, if you've got the will." Gaius scoffed. "But who, precisely, is this 'master', little lady?" He asked, planting his hands on his hips and continuing to gander at the ziggurat.
"H-her name is Thalia Cethegus…" she whispered, checking all around her out of reflex. "But the Master hates it when we call her by her name."
"So this really is where Thalia Cethegus is hiding? We'd all been wondering where that lady had gone." The man in the big hat sighed, shaking his head. "This is so disappointing…"
"Then you know of the master? Of where she came from?" The slave asked, enraptured. She wished to tug at the newcomer's robes and beg for help, but dared not; what if this man was the same vindictive sort as the woman who ruled her world?
"Not personally; can't say I've ever met Legate Cethegus." The newcomer replied, squinting into the bright sunlight to gaze at the work camp and the ziggurat which towered above it. "Heard of her though. A Legate - that's a military rank - who took a bad hit to the dome from a warhammer in the war against the Jingshen clan. Severe brain damage, they said."
He pulled out a little paper cylinder and snapped his fingers, setting the end alight. He put the other end into his mouth and sucked on it, breathing in the smoke lazily. "One day, she got up from her cot in the medical tent and ran off. There's been a bounty out on her ever since. Desertion, dead or alive."
Something warm started stirring in Yingzi's chest. It was a sensation with of she was entirely unfamiliar, something… painful? And yet pleasant. No, it was so pleasant that it was painful. "Do you mean… do you mean you're going to get rid of her?" She said, lips moving of their own accord before she could think whether or not to speak. "That you're going to free everyone?"
"Should probably get more men and come back." Gaius muttered to himself. Crossing his arms and tapping his foot as he considered the young girl's words. "But… gah, if it's this fucked up, then I can't wait one fuckin' minute longer! I want to get this done right now!"
Yingzi wasn't sure what to say at this point. Could this man even save them? The master was strong - incredibly strong. It was hard to imagine anyone more powerful than her could exist. Perhaps she was just acting delusional, now that she felt the slightest bit of hope.
"Tell ya what." Gaius said after thinking for a while, planting his foot on the head of the fallen golem. "If you've got the name Yingzi, then you have to live up to it. I've met the person you're named after, and if you're gonna be using the same name, you've gotta be brave. I'll teach you how."
—-
Yes, right now. That sounded absolutely perfect. Qi surged through Gaius' body, gathering in his third eye, then lanced out in a focused, powerful laser beam. He blasted it into one of the spires sticking up from that architectural monstrosity, cutting through it from one end to another as if he were sawing through a tree. Soon enough, the spire collapsed, a hundred tons of stone collapsing to the ground with a thunderous clamor.
"Get out here, criminal!" Gaius shouted, cupping his hand around his mouth and imbuing his Dao into his voice. "We know you're in here! Deserting your post is a serious crime; if you've got any honor left, it's time for you to fess up!"
There was no sound for a moment, and then Thalia emerged, stalking out of the darkness of her ziggurat like a wraith. She blinked several times as her eyes adjusted to the light, then turned to the source of the noise with a hateful glare.
The former Legate had certainly seen better days. Her hair was long and unkept, left deliberately unstyled so as to cover her head as much as possible, but even through the thick mane, a sizeable dent in the side of Thalia's skull was visible. She was festooned in all manner of colorful jewelry with no mind paid toward coordination, color theory or good taste, and her clothes were similarly over the top and eye-catching. The feathers of some massive bird stuck up from her collar, and Gaius had no idea where she'd gotten her hands on enough ultramarine dye, one of the rarest in the world, to color an entire set of robes. Upon her head was a towering golden crown from which great prongs stuck up into the air, adding nearly an entire foot to her height. She'd probably been beautiful, once, but whatever monstrousness had been brought out of her now surrounded her in an unsettling aura.
With jerky, furious motions, the renegade strode toward the invader of her town. "Who dares? Who vandalizes the palace of mighty Empress Cethegus? Who lays hands upon New Olympia?"
Yingzi yelped and clung to Gaius' leg, but he pushed her away, looking back at his target without fear. "Gaius Antonius, the Empty King. Sorry for the commotion, but I needed to flush you out."
Thalia's face twisted in surprise, and she furrowed her brow, struggling to think like a woman lost in a thick fog. "King? King of what? Or do you… ah, one of the Single Pillar Kings, that's right." With two fingers, she rubbed at the temple that hadn't been caved in. "You don't feel like a Core Formation Cultivator; that must be why."
"That's right, so you should understand that me coming here is a big deal." Gaius replied, gesturing for the deserter to approach him. "It's time to come home, Legatus."
Whatever momentary clarity Thalia had regained faded, as she sneered in indignation at Gaius' words. "Legatus? No, that's not right. I'm an empress, the empress of New Olympia!"
"You ain't an empress, Thalia. You're injured and confused." Gaius sighed. "You need to get that dome treated; just come along with me."
"You think to call me a mere general? A general does not construct such mighty works!" Thalia declared, gesturing back at her obscene sandstone palace. "Gaze upon it! Is it not beautiful?"
The ziggurat was, if nothing else, impressive in its size and complexity. This construction project had been ongoing for every day of the past sixty years, and the building had expanded every which way like the vines of some parasitic ivy. The central spire towered hundreds of feet into the air and was flanked by several smaller structures which stabbed upwards along with it, each a different shape than the last. The base was completely asymmetrical, having simply grown new wings like tumors in random spots. Balconies jutted out, some not even connected to rooms. A fountain haphazardly added to one corner sprayed water onto the side of a spire, and would no doubt cause said spire to degrade until it fell over within a few years.
Gaius rubbed his chin, looking from the ziggurat, then to the deserter, then back to the ziggurat, then back to her. Finally, he spoke up: "Yup, you've definitely lost it."
All fell silent. After a moment, the slave girl turned and ran at top speed, fleeing madly from certain death. Thalia didn't respond to that, or to anything else, for a moment, before Gaius' words seemed to fully sink in and her face twisted into an expression of rage. This served only to make her slightly mismatched eyes easier to see; one of them, presumably knocked askew by the same blow that left that dent in Thalia's head, pointed off to the side.
For all her rage though, the deserter's voice remained quiet for now. "Explain yourself, intruder. What do you mean I've 'lost it'?"
"You're completely delusional." Gaius said with a smirk, pointing at the side of his head and twirling his finger. "You need help; every Legate is valuable, so if you surrender now, we can help you recover. You'll probably have to serve out a sentence though."
"Serve out a sentence? Me!?" Thalia shouted indignantly, bits of froth in the corner of her mouth. "Who are you to punish the empress of New Olympia, who dwells in the greatest palace in the world?"
The Seeker sighed and threw up his hands. "Wouldn't be me, dipshit! It'd be the Dawn Fortress! Deserting during a war, enslaving a bunch of mortals for sixty years, making them do some bullshit public works project to inflate your ego…"
"I'll kill you…" Thalia muttered, grinding her teeth. "You come to my city, you humiliate me in front of my servants? The sentence is
death! I will wind your entrails around the central spire of my palace and let the vultures feat on your flesh!"
"I can feel it more clearly the madder you get!" Gaius declared dramatically, hoping his posturing would give the slave girl enough of a head start to escape. He'd be sure to go pick her up after all of this was over with. "The hit to the noggin that jacked up your brain? It threw you out of alignment with your own Dao. You're infected with a Heart Demon, a big one, and it's just about ready to eat you."
"I'm sorry to tell you, but he's right."
Both of them turned to see the source of the new voice, a man standing atop one of the ziggurat's lesser spires. Thalia, already sick of these irritating comments, summoned the sand below into her hand, where it stretched out and solidified into a spear of stone. With the force of a siege weapon, she flung the spear at the interloper, who dodged the projectile, then bounded across several rooftops with blistering speed.
The new arrival, who came to a stop beside Gaius, was a shock of red against the sand around him. His changshan shirt and black slacks made him seem rather unremarkable at first glance, but one look at his finely polished red shoes would dissuade you of such a notion. The crimson tassel on the sword at his hip and the many decorative piercings on his face only furthered such a notion. This was a man who had a strong sense of personal style, but no desire to stand out; a strange combination. Or perhaps this man simply didn't want to wear his nice clothes in the middle of the desert, which Gaius supposed was also sensible.
His hair was cropped rather short and his face, while handsome, was not particularly noteworthy. Tall, but not too tall. Well-built, but not musclebound. If anything, this man's looks were the exact sort of above-average that made for wonderful spies, if you took out the piercings. What caught the King's eye more was the razor-sharp look in the strangers eyes, the deep scar running along the side of his face from temple to jaw, and the overwhelming, unconquerable confidence he gave off.
"My name is Shi Jiang, just a traveling Cultivator." The stranger answered, drumming his fingers on the scabbard of his sword. His voice was rougher than Gaius expected; the voice of a man always on guard and looking for danger, and thus a man who is always a little bit tired. "I was passing through when I found this awful place."
"Really? And what brings a fella like you to a place like this? Coincidence?" Gaius laughed. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?"
"How about justice?" Asked the man in red, unfazed by Gaius' taunting. "Does that ring a bell, Devil? If you can believe it, I really am here to take down someone who deserves it."
"I don't believe it for a second." Gaius declared, poking the other man in the chest. "…but I do find you interesting."
The stranger grabbed Gaius' wrist and wrenched his hand away, steely determination in his eyes. "If that's enough that you'll fight by my side, I'll take it."
"Disregarding me like this…" Thalia growled, the seemingly bottomless energy of a Golden Core pouring out of her body and into the world around her as she began shaping several techniques at once. "How dare you two look down on me, in my own kingdom!?"
In a great ride, dozens of stone soldiers leapt across the shanty town and landed with a great clamor around the two warriors. A moment later, dozens more arrived in a second wave, then a third. When golems finally stopped appearing, there were over a hundred of them - Thalia's entire force, most likely.
"All of these, just for the two of us?" Gaius chuckled, opening his third eye and drawing his sword. "What are you so worried about, Legatus?"
"Tear them apart!" Thalia commanded with a sweep of her hand.
The golems came upon the pair immediately. These man made constructs were faster and more energy-efficient than naturally formed Earth spirits, but of relatively simple minds. Their creator's own muddled thoughts served only to make them that much more crude in the ways of their cognition. Nevertheless, they were quite strong.
Each and every one of the large stone soldiers, hand-crafted by Thalia in the heart of her ziggurat, was in mid-Foundation Building, and there were well over a hundred. That commanding so many powerful golems was possible for the former Legste in her current state spoke volumes about the strength she must have possessed prior to her injury.
Three stone soldiers fell upon Shi Jiang, and they came apart in the blink of an eye. He slashed into them with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for the Second Great Realm, and even Gaius couldn't tell exactly how many times his sword had been swung. When two more came upon him and were cleaved apart as well, the second series of swings was even faster than the first.
Without even turning around, Gaius pivoted on the ball of his foot, narrowly dodging a thrusting spear, and sliced the offending golem's head off before impaling its core. Then, with a wave of his hand, he fired off a volley of golden laser beams, bringing down several charging golems at once.
Then, the horde reached the pair all at once, and individual actions gave way to the chaotic flow of open battle. Bits of stone flew every which way as the two warriors brought their strength to bear, slashing and smashing through one enemy after another.
Shi Jiang leapt into the air over a crowd of golems and swung his blade dozens of times, each slash bringing forth a crescent of energy which carved through limbs and bodies and left deep grooves in the ground below. Landing on the other side of the now destroyed constructs, he dashed forward to meet more of them.
Gaius let loose a cloud of golden stars, which clung to his surrounding enemies before solidifying into black powder which stuck fast to their bodies and seeped into their joints. Twirling away from the scything blade of a halberd, Gaius struck his sword against a rock, which produced a spark. The nearest golem came apart with a sharp
crack that shattered its body to pieces with minimal waste, and the resulting chain reaction took out a whole gaggle of them.
It was over in just a few minutes. Any clumsy, simplistic techniques the golems brought to bear were easily swatted aside or evaded entirely by the preternatural skills of the two champions. Though they may have been built by a Golden Devil. The constructs were seemingly too slow-witted to use the Clan's signature formations - perhaps the one thing that might have stood a chance.
If the racket before hadn't alerted the slaves that something was very wrong, then this massive brawl had certainly done so. With their overseers gone, many people abandoned their work stations to come and see what was going on. Some gawked out in the open, but most peered out from behind walls or through windows.
Thaila's jaw clenched until it seemed like she would shatter her own teeth. Veins popped up in her face and neck, making the dent in her skull look all the more grotesque. If the qi swirling in her body had been a hailstorm, before, it was a typhoon now. "You would really go this far? You would disrespect me this much?"
Damn, maybe Gaius had fucked up; Thalia had been in Late Core when she was wounded - hence her disappearance being such big news - and while she had slipped by at least one Small Realm after messing around in the middle of nowhere for sixty years, her qi was still incredibly dense. It was like looking into the ocean and trying to perceive the bottom.
Perhaps one more shot at diplomacy, then? "I don't mean to disrespect you, ma'am, but you're out of control. This is your last warning, so think long and hard on it." Gaius said calmly, sinking into a low, defensive stance and waiting for whatever came next.
"...you're dead." Thalia said, cold and quiet as the grave. The deserter's leg went up, and up, and up, before coming down in a mighty stomp that shook the earth around her and blasted sand into the air. With a shout of fury, she sprayed fire from her hands, turning the sand into a wide, indiscriminate blast of glass shards.
Gaius threw up the Aegis to block the attack, and even an unfocused, area-of-effect attack from a Core Formation Cultivator of this caliber nearly broke through it. Shi Jiang
changed. Gaius couldn't say exactly how he changed, but immediately, something around him seemed to shift, and he dodged the entire spray, body swaying and shifting so fast it was hard to follow.
Gaius and Shi Jiang approached simultaneously. He'd never fought with this strange fellow before, but basic group fighting tactics were something every Devil understood. How to not hit your squadmates, how to best utilize superior numbers, how to overwhelm the senses of a more powerful enemy by attacking in tandem; that was second nature to a Devil.
Shi Jiang sliced at the air as he rushed in, assailing his enemy with crescent-shaped bursts of sword qi. Thalia Drew forth another sandstone spear from the earth and deflected them all without much difficulty, but the momentary distraction was enough to cover Shi Jiang's attack. The two exchanged a series of blows, and Thalia was shocked to find that a foe from a lower Great Realm was keeping pace with her attacks. She was the clear superior in strength, however, and Shi Jiang's close range attacks could do little more than stall for time.
"Out of the way!" Gaius shouted, and Shi Jiang fell back a few steps without asking why. A powerful, focused laser beam blasted out from Gaius' third eye, striking the deserter in the chest with the sound of sizzling flesh. She took a single step back, and Gaius seized that opportunity to attack. He couldn't go at the same insane pace as Shi Jiang, but with his foresight, he could lead his opponent into patterns, striking in ways that influenced her into making moves he could deal with.
That still wasn't enough. Deflecting Gaius' assault, Thalia struck back with dozens of blows that would have landed had he not already foreseen them. Soon enough though, one made it through - a straight punch which crashed into a hastily-raised forearm, causing Gaius' bones to creak and throwing him backwards.
Shi Jiang returned to the fray and sped up even more, zooming past Thalia in straight lines several times while she was distracted, landing shallow cuts which bled sluggishly if they bled at all. Thalia whirled around with another sandstone spear to meet his next charge, which he narrowly avoided, bending his body backwards to slide under her sweeping blow. The low kick which followed it knocked Shi Jiang's feet out from under him, sending him bouncing along the ground as he lost control of his own momentum momentarily.
Having created some distance from her two attackers, Thalia gathered a typhoon of qi into her foot and raised it high. "Hurry up and die already!" She shouted, stomping her foot and unleashing a shockwave which tore through the ground in front of her.
Leaping over the wave of force simultaneously, the two warriors landed on a pair of ramshackle roofs next to one another. Shi Jiang channeled a stream of qi into his sword, which began to glow with a vibrant violet light, and turned to Gaius. "The enemy is in Core Formation; not a weak Core either. Do you have anything that'll stand up to her?"
Gaius scoffed, summoning a disk of golden light beneath his feet. "I'll be just fine; worry about yourself, hotshot."
Shi Jiang scowled down at their mutual opponent, thinking. "We can't take her individually. We need a plan."
"Hard to make a plan when we don't know what she can do yet!" Gaius laughed. "Gotta see all of her best moves before we make a plan."
"Indeed." Shi Jiang nodded. "Let's err on the side of caution for now."
That moment of respite had not only aided them, but also gave Thalia time to prepare several more techniques. Exhaling a mighty breath, she blew into the sand beneath her feet, kicking it up all around her in a radius over fifty feet and making a beige cloud far too thick to see through. As Gaius flew around the cloud on his disk looking for an angle to attack from, and Shi Jiang ran around it doing the same, another torrent of qi, the largest yet, was easily felt.
A bright red glow lit up deep within the cloud, and even from outside, both men could feet the temperature skyrocketing. They retreated, but not fast enough, as a gigantic explosion of flame blasted the cloud of sand in every direction, flinging countless tiny, superheated glass shards in all directions. Gaius threw up Aegis shields; dozens of thin, ablative laters to fend off this massive barrage. Shi Jiang, on the other hand, simply sped up even more. Sprinting, rolling, deflecting, he did everything he could to endure the attack, but nonetheless was cut over and over. Each hit was superficial, but in aggregate they left the ground below him stained as crimson as his shoes.
While Gaius was busy defending from one direction, his opponent was already attacking from the other, stabbing at his back with another spear. In the instant before the impact, his superlative senses realized what was happening and told him what to do. This meant that, rather than being outright impaled, he merely had a chunk of flesh gouged from his back as he dodged at the last possible instant. But even though he saw the next move coming - a left handed straight punch - there was no course of action that would let him prevent the hit and fend off the glass at the same time while still turning around.
Thalia's iron-hard fist crashed into Gaius' solar plexus like a meteor, making him crash into his own shield, which broke. The last few projectiles of Thalia's previous technique stabbed into his back, pitching him forward into the spear. Reacting immediately to Tabula Rasa's suggestions, Gaius opened his mouth and
bit down on the stone as hard as he could, momentarily halting the attack long enough to raise his hand. The one with the summoning ring.
A five hundred pound fish moving at about two hundred miles per hour teleported into existence right in Thalia's face, slamming into the renegade and smashing her into the wall of the ziggurat. Without skipping a beat, Gaius spat out the sandstone spear, turned it around and flung it before diving into the ground. Thalia pummeled Scylla's side with crushing blows until she relented her grip on the renegade, then caught the spear before it could hit her.
As the Rainbow Carp fell to the ground hacking up blood, Shi Jiang used her body as a springboard, launching a flurry of blows that was hastily blocked. Before Thalia could turn the tables on Shi Jiang, Gaius emerged from below, attacking with a spear, then a hammer, then a sword, changing the form of the Dream Sword with every swing.
Slowly, shots began slipping through, landing glancing blows against the ex-Legate. Finally, Shi Jiang ducked under a sloppy counterattack, parried a second, and spun, slamming his heel into his opponent's face and cracking her head against the wall she was pinned to, causing it to finally cave in. Thalia gave ground, slowly backing into a room that, judging by the decor, was some bizarre combination of a wine cellar and a guest bedroom.
But Thalia was utterly unrelenting; her blows came nearly as often as her two opponents' combined, and she could keep this up for a lot longer. Stomping her foot, she called forth a wall of sand, then lit her hands on fire and struck the wall with her palms, creating a spray of burning glass which assailed the pair. Leaping above them before her first attack had even subsided, she threw another sandstone spear that detonated on impact. Too busy avoiding and batting aside the first attack, they were left vulnerable to the second, which blew them away and kicked up another cloud of sand.
One technique continued to flow into another. With smooth, circular motions, Thalia spun the sand in the air into a whirling, miniature sandstorm, with which she scooped up her opponents and slammed them into the ground. Forming two more sandstone spears, the renegade leapt after her opponents, preparing the final blow for both of them at once.
Unfortunately for her, Gaius had many tricks remaining up his sleeve. In that moment, a pair of huge jaws snapped shut around the renegade Devil, whipping her around before flinging her through several houses. The transformed Scylla, several times larger and positively radiant in her monstrous majesty, bellowed out a roar of challenge before flying after her opponent, spewing liquid fire.
For a few precious seconds, the two men lay there, breathing heavily and silently commiserating in the pain of their wounds, before quickly pulling themselves together.
"That should buy us a minute or two." Gaius sighed, sitting up and plucking a tooth out of his mouth. "Don't wanna leave my sister alone for too long though; she may be a Sacred Beast, but she ain't a real Core."
"I suppose it's time to stop playing, yes." Shi Jiang replied, resetting a broken finger with a grimace and wiggling it experimentally.
"Playing, you say?" Gaius asked, raising an eyebrow
"Yeah; there's playing and then there's making war." Shi Jiang explained, one hand raising up to his ear. "As long as that boundary isn't crossed, you can call it all off and say it was just an exchange of pointers - no point holding a grudge."
"Oh? So you're saying Miss Thalia's crossed the line now, not before?" Gaius chuckled.
Shi Jiang nodded curtly, not getting the joke. "Negotiation was a possibility before, but against this much lethal force, I have to neutralize her for my own safety. I don't have ways of non-lethally defeating a Core."
Gaius grinned savagely, the Dao Emanations around him thickening by an order of magnitude. "You get more interesting by the minute. Show me."
"You show me yours, I'll show you mine."
"Deal."
"Eye contact is burning, eye consciousness is burning. Spring Forth, Dao Vestment!"
A cream-colored, metallic substance bubbled up from Gaius' pores, spreading across his skin in a thin layer of solid, spiritual armor. With a flex of his will, Gaius destroyed most of his clothing, leaving him exposed above the waist and below the knees. The skin of his back bulged grotesquely, then ruptured as a pair of huge, eight-foot wings burst forth. Additional bright blue eyes emerged out from the middle of his chest and back, and in rows across the tops of his wings.
"Code Red. Emergency Protocol 777 Engaged. Wake up, Eternal Raiment."
Shi Jiang flicked one of his earrings, which rung out in a sharp, clear note like a bell. One part at a time, the very world itself unraveled around Shi Jiang's body, before coming back together and leaving him clad in armor of gleaming silver. It encased him completely, covering his mouth in an oddly shaped mask with vents on either side, and his eyes with a pair of oblong lenses. The armor glowed from within, red light seeping out from between the seams.
As Gaius had predicted, his companion was not holding up well in a one on one fight. Though Scylla's huge size and various advantages were affording her some success against Thalia, this was not some amateur Early Core she was dealing with, but a true veteran on the verge of Late. Even with her faculties addled by her mental impairment, Thalia was not an opponent she could overcome head to head.
Nimbly dodging beams of light, a spray of Dragonfire and a tail-whip that turned a pair of ramshackle homes into nothing but splinters, Thalia stabbed her massive opponent with a sandstone spear, then detonated it, blowing out a chunk of the colossal fish's flank. When Scylla whipped around and tried to bite her, the renegade jumped over Scylla's head and threw another spear, this time destroying one of her fins. Scylla again tried to tail-whip Thalia, but the renegade caught the False Dragonfish's tail, the momentum pushing her nearly ten feet before she came to a stop. With all the strength she could muster, Thalia spun Scylla around, slamming her into one of the ziggurat's spires and collapsing it on top of her.
However, before she could continue the attack, Thalia found herself assailed by a spray of hundreds of diamond needles, which she blew away with a mighty breath. She was less successful against the waves of Sword Qi, which bit into her arms and chest, staining her gaudy blue robes with blood and turning them the color of wine. Immediately after came the laser beams, far more numerous than before; too numerous to defend against. They burnt her flesh, individually doing negligible damage but very painful when added up.
Simultaneously, Gaius and Shi Jiang came upon Thalia. Shi Jiang's blows were faster and more powerful than Gaius', that strange silver armor making his previous blistering physicality look like nothing. Gaius' attacks, however, came from every possible angle; he flew around the enemy in circles, dive-bombing her at unpredictable angles or attacking from out of her melee range by transforming his Dream Sword into a twenty foot long pike. The chaotic, clamorous melee proved much harder for Thalia to deal with than before, and she rapidly gave ground, battered by blow after blow and accumulating more small wounds.
With a cry of frustration and rage, Thalia stomped the ground again, harder than she ever had before, and unleashed a shockwave which blew all three of her enemies back. They skidded to a stop a few hundred feet from the ex-Legate, bringing the battle to a momentary halt.
"What the hell are you two!?", the former Legate called out, a mix of vitriol and apprehension in her voice.
"Stick around, Senior. Maybe you'll learn something." Gaius sneered, cracking his neck and stretching out his wings. New sensory information, over an order of magnitude more than before, resonated through his body and shot into his brain like a typhoon of data.
The surface of his skin picked up sonic vibrations with the sensitivity of an eardrum. He could taste the minute fluctuations in the qi in the air as it brushed up against his tongue. He smelled the telltale scent of ozone from the electrical signals sparking through the brains of every person nearby. It was enough to drive a man mad.
"Let's get this over with." Shi Jiang declared, drawing symbols in the air with his finger and leaving behind a trail of light that soon formed an array. He finished it off with a circle, then reached in and drew forth a weapon.
Cylindrical, with a thick, study handle designed for two-handed firring, with a barrel that grew wider as it went from the handle to the end.The amount of contained power within the barrel of the weapon was staggering - Gaius wasn't quite sure how much was loaded in there, or how it had been packed in so tight. It resembled a small qi cannon, nearly six feet in length and weighing at least forty pounds. A weapon miniaturized to the greatest possible extent, yet still awkward and unwieldy. Shi Jiang slung the cannon diagonally across his back, where it stuck fast to the silver.
Thalia had all three of them significantly outmatched in toughness and endurance. Gaius wasn't sure how much damage that fancy armor of Shi Jiang's could take, but the man inside was still in Foundation Building, and no armor stopped 100% of all damage. She could also prepare multiple techniques simultaneously and launch them in rapid succession with no delay in between; a benefit of a true Golden Core. That was an advantage that no amount of raw power could overcome, and made the gap between the second and third Great Realm harder to cross than the one between the first and second.
She was more hurt than them, but they were firing on all cylinders to press her like this. Given enough time, they would exhaust themselves, while she would still have half her reserves remaining. Even discounting that, her queueing up of techniques meant she could capitalize on their mistakes in a way they couldn't on hers. A war of attrition would kill them, and a blitzkrieg might do the same.
'Might' was a hell of a lot better than 'would'.
"We have to keep it up. Gotta throw everything we've got while we got it." Gaius muttered, coughing as he got back to his feet and wincing as he discovered another of his ribs had cracked. That made four so far.
"Right. A simultaneous attack with overwhelming force." Shi Jiang's voice was distorted, magnified so it could be heard but still warped from bouncing around the inside of his helmet. Gaius also noted with some jealousy that the dust and sand didn't seem to be affecting Shi Jiang the way it was him. "How nostalgic."
"Hm? What do you mean?" Gaius asked, stretching his wings and preparing to take flight again.
"Doesn't matter." Shi Jiang said coldly, face unreadable behind his helmet.
"Man, can't you be a little more friendly?" Scoffed Gaius.
As if in defiance of that comment Shi Jiang punched Gaius in the arm a little bit too hard to be called friendly. "We're fighting for our lives here, can't you take this seriously?"
"Who the hell is this guy?" Scylla cut in, interrupting the pair's bickering, and Gaius realized that at some point, she had reverted back to her usual form. The two turned to her simultaneously, making her back up a bit.
"I, uh, could really use some context. You just said 'get out here and kick some ass!' and I did that."
"He's uh…" Gaius began, glancing around as he considered what to say, before spying several large projectiles arcing toward them. "Ah shit."
Normally, he would throw up a large dome here, but as the oversized sandstone spears splintered mid-flight into hundreds of pieces of shrapnel, he saw exactly the path each one would take. With both hands, he flung fistfuls of stars, each one becoming a tiny shield which blocked a single piece of shrapnel without wasting any energy at all.
Then Thalia was there, and then Shi Jiang was there, and then they weren't. By the time Gaius reacted and turned to the commotion, his ally of convenience had already blocked an attack meant for him and been tackled off into the distance. With a mighty flap of his wings, Gaius followed after the two.
"Damn they're fast! How is an Expert moving that quick!?" Scylla asked, flying alongside Gaius and summoning a dozen Flying Swords made of fire, which began to orbit around her body.
"Dunno!" Gaius called out, changing the Dream Sword into a lance and routing qi into the eyes atop his wings. "He's Twelfth Heavenstage, I can't feel him that well! More importantly, kill that bitch!"
"Aye aye, brother!" Scylla cried out joyfully, charging into the fray despite her wounds.
Shi Jiang and Thalia zoomed this way and that, moving fast enough that they were nearly a blur, but Gaius could see the trajectory of their movement just fine. Dozens of phantom images split off from them, each one moving a few seconds ahead of their real counterparts and representing a way they could move. Before Scylla reached them, he narrowed it down to the most likely possibility.
The instant Shi Jiang, reeling from a direct blow to the head, backpedaled, he fired, unleashing a dozen laser beams at once from his wings and several more in quick succession from his off hand. Thalia saw the glinting right before the beams fired off and pre-emptively dodged, but several more still struck her. The sharp pain made the deserter falter and stop charging, and in that moment Scylla's blades of fire fell upon her. The projectiles were deflected, but then came Scylla herself, turning sideways to chomp down on Thalia's entire body.
As expected, not even that attack landed cleanly. Thalia's arms came up, stopping the Rainbow Carp's bite before it could snatch her up entirely. The fangs bit deep into her arms, but she held fast, forcing Scylla's mouth open and slamming her into the ground. Then came Shi Jiang again, sword flashing like lightning. Thalia batted the strike aside, but before the melee could begin again, she stomped on Shi Jiang's foot, causing the sand below to become sandstone shackles and hold his feet together.
With his footing disrupted, Shi Jiang's next strike went wide, and Thalia jumped taking that moment not to strike her vulnerable enemy, but to throw a sandstone spear at Gaius, just as he was about to shoot his laser beams again. Gaius had seen this coming - in fact, he had charged a shot just to make Thalia preemptively attack him. He threw up the strongest shield he could, which took both the spear and the bone-rattling explosion that followed soon afterwards, but was unable to stop himself from being flung away by the momentum.
As that occurred, Shi Jiang broke the shackles on his ankles and attacked again, this time joined by Scylla, whose blasts of fire created openings for the silver-clad warrior's blade to bite into his opponent over and over.
Once more, they fell into an absolutely exhausting rhythm. Thalia did her best to separate the group, to stop them from launching simultaneous attacks, to make them waste their strength on ineffective attacks. Her opponents, in turn, changed their tactics with every exchange, slamming Thalia over and over with all the force they could muster. Every fighter involved racked up wounds one after another; cuts, bruises, cracked or fractured bones. More houses were torn up, more spires upon the ziggurat fell like trees, and all the while, the cannon on Shi Jiang's back sat untouched.
Eventually, the balance began to shift, as the comparatively meager endurance of the three invaders started to flag. Gaius attempted to relieve Shi Jiang once more, but his wings did not beat with the strength they had previously, causing his altitude to dip and his laser beams to miss. Shi Jiang, his relentless attacks finally starting to slow down, fell prey to a feint from Thalia, who made him raise his guard before slamming a spear into his midsection and detonating it. Shi Jiang became an armor-coated missile, slamming into Gaius and knocking the wind out of them both. The pair slammed into the ziggurat's main spire, which rumbled dangerously but did not quite topple, then fell.
Thalia was beneath them right away, frothing with rage and bloodlust. She stomped the ground, solidifying the sand beneath the falling duo into a field of long, sharp spikes, then drawing forth another spear for good measure. But before she could execute Gaius and Shi Jiang, Scylla swooped in, spraying a wide cone of Dragonfire(mixed with a not insignificant amount of blood) down at the deserter and making her dodge away. A bit of it still caught Thalia on the shoulder, roasting her flesh and setting fire to her hair, which only made her angrier.
The Rainbow Carp caught the pair, narrowly dodging one spear before another blew off her left fin. Roaring in pain, she spiraled out of the sky, but caught herself right before she would have hit the ground. Gaius and Shi Jiang unsteadily got off her back, no longer stunned from the previous blow.
Thalia had halted the attack for a moment, summoning forth waves of sand to smother the persistent, clinging flames of Dragonfire. She screamed in frustration, lobbing curses and insults at the pair. Where once she had seemed like a regal, if utterly insane, presence, now she was little more than a vicious wounded animal.
Frankly, the other three combatants didn't look much better. Gaius would need three, maybe four hands to count the number of broken bones he had, and maintaining his Dao Vestment for so long made his head throb with intense, stabbing pain. Shi Jiang's injuries were harder to assess, but his qi supply was running even lower than Gaius', and his once pristine armor was cracked, dented and warped all over the place. In his midsection, blood was seeping through the silver plates, where a blow had finally penetrated all the way through. Scylla was doing the worst of all. Impaled in several places, missing two fins and half a dozen teeth, and no doubt suffering many internal injuries as well, her body served as a marvelous demonstration of the incredible resilience of a Sacred Beast.
"That was my last shot." Scylla stated, quite matter-of-factly given the circumstances.
"I don't think I've ever totally run out of juice before."
"I've got about a minute to go before I can't keep the armor on anymore." Shi Jiang admitted.
"I don't think I can keep this form up much longer either." Gaius replied, rolling his neck. "Not fighting at this speed. Gotta let up soon."
"Thankfully, I think we've done enough." Shi Jiang noted, finally unslinging the cannon from his back. "She's weakened enough by all those injuries that I think I can get a shot off."
"Then let's get this shit over with." Scylla declared with utmost finality.
Jumping onto the Rainbow Carp's back, Gaius and Shi Jiang rode her as she charged back into the fray, the three clustering together so they couldn't be separated. Thalia stomped the ground, unleashing a shockwave which forced Scylla to fly higher into the air. She continued her advance, dipping back down and dive-bombing the deserter and roaring as she went. Thalia summoned a sandstorm, but Scylla countered it with her own conjured storm before pushing through. Thalia threw large exploding spears one after another, peppering the trio with shrapnel, but Gaius warded all of it away.
Gaius kicked off of Scylla and attacked Thalia head on, up close. The dream sword flashed between one shape in another, blows falling like rain, but nothing connected. Too exhausted to fight with his usual razor-sharp focus, Gaius faltered before the sheer difference in physical performance, and was pushed back on the defensive by a spear stabbing into his wrist and making him drop his weapon. That was fine though, a few moments were all they needed.
As Gaius fell back, Shi Jiang brought the gun up, but it was knocked aside by a spear as Thalia closed the distance. Sweeping Shi Jiang's legs, Thalia spiked his head against the ground with a throw, then kicked him in the chest as he rebounded, knocking him across the shantytown. Then, with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick, the ex-Legate spun and struck the charging Scylla in the side of the head, sending the fish through a nearby house.
Seeing his chance, Gaius capitalized. In a huge expenditure of power, the King summoned forth a construct of light, a massive armored arm which reached out at Thalia. The moment the hand closed around her body, pinning her in place, Gaius sent for a second wave of qi, turning the light into solid steel and holding the former Legate fast.
Roaring in defiance, Thalia burst into white hot flames, so hot they were nearly plasma, softening the metal in seconds. With a mighty flex, she burst out of her weakened bonds, half-molten metal flying every which way, and turned to Gaius, ready to go on the attack. However, those few seconds in which Thalia had stopped moving were all that was needed.
Zooming in at a speed more intense than any Gaius had seen from him before, the silver-armored figure of Shi Jiang collided with Thalia the moment she broke out, pressing the barrel of his cannon to her chest.
It was the sort of sound that's so loud it's silent. The air shattered with incredible force at the end of the gun's barrel, drowning out not just noise, but thought as well. The flash was bright too, of course - not a coherent beam so much as a massive explosion focused in a wide cone, an incredibly wasteful use of power. Thalia came apart; how could she not?
Shi Jiang was flung away by the recoil of his own weapon, slamming into the side of the central spire and making a sizable crater in the stone. The renegade's torso simply was not there anymore, and her limbs, head and smaller bits of flesh rained down all over the square.
Contrary to popular belief, the death of a hated tyrant does not immediately provoke an explosion of cheers. There were a few right away, to be clear, but a vast majority of the slaves were still in hiding, either in their homes or in the ziggurat, and would not come out for some time without prompting. Mostly, it was just silence, the only thing Gaius heard being the roaring of his own blood behind his ears, slowly winding down after the climax of the battle. His Vestment sloughed off like dirt in a bath, leaving his senses blissfully.
"And that's that." Shi Jiang muttered, extricating himself from the crater he'd made with his back and falling before landing on his feet with a clank.
"Eternal Raiment, Release." He commanded, prompting his armor to warp away in the same odd manner it had appeared. Unburdened, he summoned his sword, sheathed it, and walked away from the square.
"That's one scary gun you've got there, metal face." Gaius chuckled as his ally of convenience reached him, reaching out to run his fingers across the weapon. Shi Jiang jerked away immediately, pulling his weapon away and raising his other hand. With another series of hand signs, he immediately banished the weapon back to wherever he pulled it from before.
It wasn't until the deed was done that Shi Jiang allowed himself to speak again. "It's not bad, I suppose." The Expert said quietly, expression guarded. "Gets the job done when nothing else will."
The Empty King looked Shi Jiang up and down, trying to get something else out of the man in red. He might be able to glean more if he were in his Dao Vestment, but if Gaius used that form any more today, his head might literally explode.
He took a few steps closer to this enigma, hoping to get a rise out of him. "So, how was that 'justice', Shi Jiang? Did you enjoy enacting it? Or are you going to tell me the truth?" He asked sarcastically from a mere eight inches away.
Shi Jiang scoffed and walked away, not rising to Gaius' provocations. "It wasn't a lie; I really did want to do that for it's own sake. I'm glad you led me here."
Gaius snorted, crossing his arms. "So you
were following me then. Can I expect to see you again, Jiang?"
Shi Jiang's eyebrow twitched, and Gaius could faintly hear his teeth grinding. "We are not on given name terms, Antonius."
"Aww, don't call me that! I know a guy whose first name is Antonius, it's gonna get confusing!" In a flash of movement, Gaius pinched one of the studs above Shi Jiang's eyebrow and pulled him closer, only to receive a lightning-fast blow to the chin.
The Empty King stumbled back a step as his brain rattled around, then sunk into a defensive stance. "Oh? We doin' an encore, you little bitch? Wanna exchange some pointers?"
"You're annoying, really annoying." Shi Jiang scowled, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning around. As he walked away, the stranger spoke a few more words over his shoulder. "And yes, you will be seeing more of me in the future. For now though, we're good."
It was probably for the best. Gaius knew that once the adrenaline of a life or death battle faded, he would be too tired to do much more than walk. Both men were breathing heavily, drenched in sweat and blood.
Casually throwing his sword, the heavily-pierced man tapped his foot impatiently for a few moments as it went off on some errand. He tapped his foot impatiently for a few moments of awkward silence, then held his hand up high and summoned the weapon back. The flying sword returned, this time with a satchel hanging by the strings from the sword's hilt.
As Shi Jiang took his bag and walked away, another person approached Gaius - the young girl from before. He was surprised that Yingzi had come back, rather than just continuing to run. Had she had that much faith in their victory?
And yet, she didn't seem that happy, even though the criminal who had enslaved her was dead. Tears poured from the young girl's eyes, and she fell to her knees at his feet. "I wasn't brave, even after you told me to be." Yingzi sobbed, unable to meet Gaius' eyes. "I ran as soon as she got mad."
"Nah, but you were braver than you were yesterday." Gaius said with a shrug. "That means more than you think."
"I won't get another chance. That was my once chance to impress you." Yingzi shook her head, scattering her tears into the sand beneath her. "I'm just a slave. I'm not worth looking at at all."
"Maybe not…" Gaius said, more to himself than to the girl kneeling at his feet. Yes, it was definitely there, more clearly visible now that it wasn't being smothered by proximity to a Core Formation aura. "Go to your house, if it's still standing. Grab anything that's important to you."
That certainly broke the young girl out of her moping, at least momentarily. She looked around in confusion, as if Gaius had been talking to someone else. "Eh? U-uh… yes Sir?" She stammered, and when the King said no more, she scampered off.
And this was why slavery was never worth it; mountains of human potential would be buried underneath the institution, never to see the light of day. That girl definitely possessed the capability to cultivate; in fact, she was rather talented. He'd have to stop by the Dawn Fortress and get her registered.
At some point in all of this, Scylla had dragged her sorry self out of that rubble she was buried in, looking quite unhappy with the entire ordeal. She sulked quietly, loitering around to make sure she wouldn't be needed for anything before she left to find the nearest river.
"You seem quiet today." Gaius noted, glancing up at his companion beast, who floated in place and kept her eyes locked on the shrinking silhouette of Shi Jiang. "Tell me what's on your mind."
"You're too friendly with your enemies." Scylla muttered, eyes narrowed.
"That man, he clearly came here to see you fight. We could have handled this without him."
"Eh, if he wants to watch he can watch." Gaius shrugged. "I can't be expected to keep my abilities a secret forever."
"He's as strong as you!" Scylla snapped, circling around the King like a shark.
"You're so reckless, and why? Because you think you're going to die soon?"
"Sometimes I just gotta feel something." Gaius sighed, turning back to the pyramid. "Now let's get those people out of there. I'm done talking about this."
——
It is embarrassing how long it took me to actually introduce Shi Jiang to Gaius. I have been planning this guy for literally four turns, but every time I write what would have been his first interaction with Gaius, I feel like it's just not right. Well, this one works well enough and sets up future events between these two.
Shi Jiang is one of those characters who doesn't really know how to fully turn it down. The sort of smoldering, troubled young man that's popular as a love interest in romance novels. He has both personal and professional reasons to be looking into both Gaius and other Kings, and he's incredibly strong.
That gun of his is a qi cannon designed for killing Cores by simply outputting enough brute force to blast them apart. The giant energy cost is supplemented by the fast that it can break down just about any energy source into qi to load itself. His sword manipulates gravity to raise or lower the weight of things it hits, in addition to being made of core-quality materials and able to alter its own mass and impart these properties onto any qi put into it. He can cast multiple powerful time-altering techniques simultaneously, usually defaulting to speed himself up and slow the enemy down at the same time. And his armor? There's a lot of secrets there, but it's a big stat boost and incredibly tough on top of its more esoteric properties. This is the kind of stupid shit a character needs to have to keep up with Gaius and other top tier Good Seeds. Now consider that Gaius isn't even close to the top-tier non-Core Formation Good Seed: that's Wei Feng.
I also wanted to write actual Core-level combat, and this served as a good excuse to do that. The Core Formation's biggest benefit is described as coming from its endurance, so I made sure to display how that manifests. A constant stream of powerful techniques, one after another with no reprieve, like performing supernatural feats is as easy as breathing. If you're in Foundation or Single Pillar and have the misfortune of fighting someone in Core Formation, your only real shot at victory is to destroy them quickly, because they will definitely outlast you. Thus, 'Core-killing' weapons and techniques are ones that prioritize doing a massive amount of damage all at once
There are many little things in here that I'm not 100% happy with, but I have to settle down and just post the damn thing. If I keep picking at it forever then I'll end up scrapping it yet again, searching futilely for the absolutely perfect Shi Jiang introduction.
