Gaius Antonius 92 - Sinking, Part 2
Shatterstar Hill was the sort of place you talked about, looked at from a distance, or wrote books about, not the sort of place you actually visited. It was, after all, dangerous and volatile to any who did not have experience wrangling time-aspected qi. Thankfully, the two women who were present here today were more than familiar with it.
The location had garnered its name due to its bizarre appearance; thousands of years ago, a Nascent Soul's attack had shattered a small mountain and kicked up a huge cloud of debris. Much of it was dirt and dust, but large stones and even boulders had also been thrown high into the air. In the moments after, another Nascent Soul belonging to the Heavenly Time Shatter Sect had frozen that region in time. In the battle where this event had taken place, the Nascent and his opponent had mutually killed one another, leaving the technique still active, drawing the qi out of the earth to keep this moment frozen.
The result was a huge pillar of stone and dirt, frozen in mid-air, never to fall. It was extremely inefficient, depleting a significant amount of qi from the local leylines each year, but the local Cultivators lacked the strength to break the technique. Time Shatter disciples would sometimes be taken to this place, where only they were able to exist safely, in order to study the intricacies of time techniques.
Chen Jinhua, the head of Research and Development for the Counter-Devil Task Force, climbed a series of stones as if they were stairs, confidently ascending without even checking her feet. She had been to this place a few times before, and had learned to handle its eccentricities without much issue. She was dressed more plainly than normal, in simple pants and tunic of rough cloth with sturdy leather boots. It wouldn't do to wear something more fragile, which might be aged into tatters if the time qi around her did something funny. Combined with her thin figure and plain looks, this outfit gave her a somewhat masculine appearance that Chen Jinhua felt ambivalent about. She wasn't some jade beauty who fussed over her appearance, but she generally did want to look nice, and tried to comport herself with grace even when hard at work running an experiment or supporting her comrades on the battlefield.
The person with her was a lot less confident, climbing with her hands as well as her feet and constantly checking around to see where she was, even as she regulated the flow of her own qi perfectly and kept herself unaffected by the field. She was dressed fairly conservatively for her station, if not as plainly as Chen Jinhua, wearing robes of powder blue, nothing in the way of jewelry or adornment beyond her excessively long hair. Her face was rather pretty in the sort of way that spoke for itself and didn't need more than a little bit of makeup to be presentable at a party; the sort of classical, storybook-like beauty that befitted a Single Pillar King like her.
The really unusual thing, though, was the massive braid into which her hair was tied. It was over a foot thick, tied with immense complexity, and fell down to her mid-thighs. The sheer amount of hair on the King's head was incredible, and many wondered how exactly she took care of it. It was by far the most distinctive thing about her, and tended to make her the center of attention even when she didn't want to be.
Upon reaching a height which she decided was suitably dramatic for the day's lesson, Chen Jinhua came to a stop, balancing perfectly on a pebble no more than two inches across. Her hanger-on carefully made her way to a small, relatively flat boulder and sat down on that, looking to her teacher expectantly.
"I've brought you here today because I want to train your ability to multitask." Chen Jinhua began, putting on her best authoritative voice. "You will listen to my words while also maintaining the integrity of your qi to keep the dangerous qi field around you at bay. Do you understand."
"Yes Ma'am!" The student nervously responded, nodding her head several times.
"Alright, then to begin I would like to ask you a question: how exactly would one quantify Dao Magic?" Chen Jinhua asked, earning a frustrated look from her Junior. Unwilling to back down from the extremely open-ended question, she hopped up and took a seat on a piece of frozen rubble, crossing her legs.
"That's... not a question that's easy to answer, Senior." The other woman replied, crossing her arms and tilting her head, causing her weighty braid to fall to that side.
"Hu Huimin, for the rest of your days, asking and answering hard questions will be a big part of your life." Chen Jinhua tittered, pulling out a long smoking pipe and lighting it.
Frankly, it was shocking how much Chen Jinhua had come to enjoy teaching, when before she'd had no patience for Juniors who couldn't figure things out. Perhaps it was just because the one she was teaching today was the kind of person she'd spent quite a bit of her life studying; she was teaching, yes, but in a way she was experimenting at the same time. It was like adding sugar to a bitter black tea, in a way.
It also helped that the woman before her was someone who picked up things very quickly. She had to be, to have become a King at the age of one hundred. Yes, this person could legitimately be called a genius, a monster, a prodigy, in the same sort of way that Shi Jiang could. Chen Jinhua was not a monster, but she was, in her humble opinion, extremely fucking smart, so having someone who could keep up made the whole affair far less frustrating.
Hu Huimin, the Remembrance King, had risen to prominence a forty years prior in battles against the Strength Purity Sect, appearing out of relative obscurity and defeating several Experts during her last decade as a Condensor. Shortly after, she had risen into the Thirteenth Heavenstage and promptly ascended to the position of Single Pillar King a few years later, at the age of exactly one-hundred. Her progress in that strange half-realm had been similarly brisk, and just eighteen years after ascending she had reached the Second Reinforcement. All in all, phenomenal growth.
Still, Cultivators who rose quickly lacked the experience of those who had taken longer to reach the same Great Realm, and so the counter-Devil task force had volunteered to aid in Hu Huimin's education, providing her with free lessons on a broad range of disciplines and tossing her bits of excess budget like a man throwing scraps of meat to a dog. Hu Huimin, ever-studious, had picked up on the lessons quite fast. Already she had grown proficient beyond her years at utilizing Dao Magic in a way that most Kings needed simple, raw experience to figure out. That was the least they could do for the second Time Shatter King, even if it was far less than what had been afforded to the last one. Shi Jiang, who was quite invested in her progress, would accept no less, and his influence was enormous for a mere Expert.
It had not really been a momentous occasion; someone had just decided to go for it, and then she had done it. Hu Huimin had become the second Single Pillar King to arise from the Heavenly Time Shatter Sect, after Wei An so many years ago. After Wei An's death, and as such the great waste of the resources that had been devoted to support him, the Sect as a whole had devoted less resources toward supporting unorthodox Cultivators, which meant far fewer had been willing to make the attempt.
She was strong, of course. No one reached the Thirteenth Heavenstage without accumulating a substantial amount of power along the way. This was actually a bit of a problem for the task force, as Kings universally being outliers in one was or another meant that there was no established baseline for how strong a King 'should' be. It didn't help that the sample size was so small; while the exact number of Single Pillar Kings in the region was unknown, it was generally estimated to be a number between twenty and twenty-five. Nearly a third of those, inexplicably, were Golden Devils, who were physically abnormal already, which made gathering data even more troublesome.
Their task force was built at least partially for that purpose, at least. Their primary goal was to study the unreadable fate of the Golden Devils in order to gain greater insight into both fate and the timeline at large. However, because the sheer number of Kings in the Golden Devils' ranks was such a massive outlier, especially given how much more difficult their tribulations were than anyone else's, studying the Kings was a huge part of that investigation. As such, their group in general, and the famous Shi Jiang in particular, were responsible for quite a big part of the Sect's knowledge of the Single Pillar Path.
Hu Huimin sighed, smoothing out the front of her robes as she composed her thoughts. "Alright. 'Dao Magic' is a term referring to any superhuman ability that is derived directly from an individual's Dao, rather than the manipulation of qi into discrete techniques. These abilities are always unique from one individual to another, with the exception of raw Emanations. The potency of a person's Dao Magic directly correlates with the density of the Dao Emanations that are expended to power its applications." She explained, flying through the definition with ease and certainty. She had memorized it, after all, just as perfectly as she memorized all other potentially useful information. "Those who have attained the Twelfth Heavenstage have a high resistance to Dao Magic, with the effects of Dao Magic on such a Cultivator being roughly equivalent to Emanations an order of magnitude less dense being used on a non-Twelfth Heavenstager."
Chen Jinhua said nothing, simply tilting her head slightly in a silent command to keep going.
Hu Huimin gulped, put off by her apparent lack of success. "Oh, right! The simplest form of Dao Magic is to release Dao Emanations directly, which have the ability to paralyze the body and soul of anyone in Qi Condensation and Foundation Building who has not attained the Twelfth Heavenstage. The difficulty a victim has with resisting this paralysis, like all other applications of Dao Magic, correlates with the density of the Emanations released. This application is known as the most primitive form of Dao Magic because any King is capable of performing it."
"That's pretty good, but you didn't answer the question: how can we quantify Dao Magic?" Chen Jinhua cut in, being sure to stress the question this time so that her charge would think more critically.
"Um... specialized equipment has been developed in recent years that can measure Emanation density, which is measured in Meta-Becquerels?" The King said nervously, knowing full well that just stating facts her teacher already knew wasn't what was being asked for. Hell, Chen Jinhua had helped
invent that equipment, so it wasn't like she had anything to gain from being told about it.
"The point I'm trying to make here, Junior, is that Dao Magic is a system which rigorously defies scientific classification." Chen Jinhua stated. "You told me so much about Emanations themselves, and how they interact with Twelfth Heavenstagers, but said almost nothing about all other forms of Dao Magic. All you said was that they're unique, and that they don't involve qi."
Flushing with embarrassment, Hu Huimin bowed as low as she could without standing up. "I'm sorry Senior, I'm not really sure how to answer the question more than that. I could tell you about the observed pattern of improvement at each Reinforcement stage, I suppose?"
"There's no need, I've made my point: there are so many aspects of Dao Magic that aren't well-understood." Chen Jinhua sighed. "For instance, the seemingly arbitrary limitations of it. Hu Huimin, Can you let out some Emanations for me, and direct them straight up without letting them touch anything around you?"
"Um... no, I can't do that yet." Hu Huimin answered bashfully.
"And why not?" Chen Jinhua asked with a smirk. "Why is it easy to use Emanations one way and hard to use them another way? Why is this beyond you at the Second Reinforcement, when you'd be able to do it rather easily in the Third?"
"I don't know how to answer that, Senior. It just feels that way." Hu Huimin replied.
"If you can't even explain yourself, then do you really have an excuse? Just do it." Chen Jinhua shot back, enjoying getting a rise out of the young King.
"I'm telling you, that's not something I can do!" Hu Huimin insisted, crossing her arms. "I haven't been doing this for long; I can radiate Dao Emanations at different strengths, but I can't send them in only one direction."
Chen Jinhua continued her lecture, barely listening to her charge's complaints. "What is Dao Magic, and how does it work? In contrast to the use of qi, which is well-understood from a scientific standpoint, the manipulation of reality through the power of the Great Dao is far more difficult to study. Besides working through the medium of Emanations, Dao Magic is always different from person to person, and that goes double for the Single Pillar Kings."
"It is... hard to explain, I'm sorry." Hu Huimin sighed, fidgeting in place. "My Magic comes to me pretty intuitively, and I mostly just command it to work. It has rules, and I know what they are without having ever been told."
"And that's why, as opposed to the
techniques employed with qi, the application of the Dao is called Dao
Magic." Chen Jinhua nodded gravely, stopping to take a puff from her pipe. "Even after all these years of study, there's so much we don't understand, though I would bet you we're ahead of any nation in the region in that department."
From the pocket of her pants, Chen Jinhua retrieved a flat box, which she opened to reveal a ring about six inches across. It was made from onyx, mostly flat but with rounded edges, and inscribed with dense arrays. There was no decoration whatsoever; all form and no function. She used telekinesis to float it down to Hu Huimin, who hesitantly took it.
"Put it on. and slide it up to your bicep. It will adjust to fit." Chen Jinhua commanded.
"And what does it do, exactly?" The King asked, curiously turning the armlet over this way and that. "I'm not familiar with this sort of array configuration."
"In theory, it's a Dao Magic amplifier." Chen Jinhua explained. "Or rather, it's a thought amplifier, which in a roundabout sense makes it a Dao Magic Amplifier. Try it on."
Hu Huimin diligently followed, sliding the treasure up her arm underneath the loose sleeve of her robe. As Chan Jinhua had said, the armlet automatically adjusted its width, going on with no discomfort and fitting perfectly. Immediately, the King's eyes went wide and darted around as she attempted to adjust to what from her perspective must have seemed like the world slowing down a bit. In reality, it was only her own thoughts speeding up.
"Can you do it now?" Chen Jinhua asked, leaning forward propping her arm up on her knee and resting her head on her hand. "Focus your Emanations toward the sky, I mean."
Slowly, Hu Huimin looked up, pointing her hand straight up as well. With a surge of will, she released the power of her Emanations, invisible but unmistakable. At first they flew out in all directions, which would no doubt leave most Condensors and Experts in the area feeling very uncomfortable, were they not by themselves. Little by little though, Chen Jinhua felt that pressure lessen, as fewer Emanations spilled out randomly and they began to focus into a cone pointed toward the sky. She had done it.
Chen Jinhua clapped her hands, snapping Hu Huimin out of her focus. The Emanations died off as the King focused her attention back on her Senior. "Dao Emanations have no limit in their supply, but do in their rate of output. This output can be roughly calculated as 'comprehension multiplied by will'." Chen Jinhua explained, pointing at her charge's arm. "In that sense, by amplifying will, we can amplify the output of Dao Emanations, allowing a King to temporarily boost their Dao Magic to the level of a King one Reinforcement higher. As a bonus, speeding up your thoughts also improves your reaction time. Tap it twice with three fingers to turn it off."
Chen Jinhua did so, freezing for a moment as her thoughts suddenly returned to normal. "So what you're saying is, the way comprehension works is different than with qi techniques? With qi, you just need to have enough comprehension to use the technique, and more doesn't help, but with Dao, having comprehension creates more power, and so does will."
"Pretty much. The fact that that thing works more or less proves that the power is all from a mental source." Chen Jinhua answered, smiling at the armlet's success with a sort of grim satisfaction that was probably the most positive emotion Hu Huimin had seen from the scholar in quite a while. "My personal hypothesis is that qi and Dao are... counterparts, I suppose. The halves of some true omnipotent force."
The King tilted her head quizzically. "Halves? But they don't really fit together, do they?"
Flipping her pipe around, Chen Jinhua began to draw on thin air, leaving behind glowing lines where the pipe passed through. "Qi is infinite in its applications, but limited in its supply. You have a certain amount and you use it up to change the world around you, within the limits of your comprehension and training." She drew one half of the yin and yang symbol, then began work on the other. "Dao is infinite in its supply, but limited in its applications. A Cultivator with a manifested Dao endlessly creates Emanations, with the output growing as they get older, advance their cultivation or increase their Dao comprehension. But each person can only do certain things with their Dao Magic, and there's nothing that can be done to grow that besides using it creatively."
Chen Jinhua finished her drawing of the yin and yang symbol, her point clearly made. "If one combined the endless versatility of qi and the perpetual generation of Dao Emanations, they would have an omnipotent force that never depletes and can accomplish anything. That, to me, is what the Great Dao must be." With a wave of her hand, Chen Jinhua caused the drawing she had made to fade away and took another drag from her pipe. But something like that is beyond human ability."
"Fascinating..." Hu Huimin mused, no doubt thinking of her own Dao Magic. Hers was, if anything, the opposite of that theoretical Dao; it was fairly specific in what it did, albeit very powerful within that niche. "So an ultimate being would be one with an endlessly versatile Dao. One that could be applied to anything, is always active, and never runs out."
"Something like that."
----
"It's me."
There was salt water in his eyes, in his mouth, in his nose. The sharpness of the salt, laced with the metallic taste of his own blood, was overwhelming. Beyond that, Gaius was aware of very little; he certainly wasn't aware of where he was or what was going on. The sun was so very bright; he couldn't see anything at all, so great was that blinding radiance.
Unbidden by any conscious effort, the Aegis sprung up around Gaius in a spherical bubble, then began to lift him into the air. His mind, sunk to the lowest depth yet, was preoccupied by only a single thought; nay, a certainty. Impaled by his own blade, his will eroded, the pieces of a puzzle Gaius had solved long ago without even realizing it fell into place.
Ten ring synchronization was impossible. Ten was the number of perfection, and so only an absolutely perfect match would allow one to form a ten ring synchronization with a Gravebronze tool; in other words, a tool made from their own body. Someone with the same soul but a different body, or the same body but a different soul, would only get nine rings at once.
The baseline material of the Dream Sword... was Gaius' own body. A product made from his own body had fallen into the hands of the Quintia of the distant past, then been passed down through their line and put into the family's treasure vault. Why? So that it would fall into Gaius' hands, returning to the true self.
"I am the Dream Sword. I am the path. I write the story."
Bloodflame poured unbidden from Gaius' veins. Every drop of blood he had was drained away and turned into fire. His body locked up in response to Varun's curse, but he couldn't move anyway. Gaius' soul and flesh alike began to melt from the heat, running like an egg yolk as he began to turn into a meaty slurry. The Dream Sword, oh so malleable, was affected too, melting into liquid metal and mixing with the soup Gaius was becoming until the two were indistinct.
Obviously, this should have killed Gaius, and yet his consciousness persisted, preserved without a brain within his own Emanations. The King's awareness was no longer trapped fully within his own body, so he could see how, from the outside, the inside of the Aegis bubble was impossible to perceive. The brightness of the ultra-concentrated Bloodflame, made by burning up all of Gaius' bloodstream at once, caused it to turn nearly white, casting a crimson glow all around and letting out heat that could be felt even through the barrier. Perhaps wary of a self-destruction, ray of heat, or some other sudden and dangerous attack, Varun stayed back and held his ground, waiting to see what would happen and maintaining a defensive posture to protect himself from it.
However, even through that inexpressive helmet, the Hunter was clearly shocked when the orb shrank. All of a sudden, it compressed from more than two meters in size to a diameter about the width of a coin. That space could no longer physically contain Gaius' body without instantly crushing him into pulp, and yet, impossibly, it did, as it did not dissipate as it would have had he died.
The quality of the Dao Emanations coming from within the orb changed massively. Not only did the sheer density of them become several times higher, but it was as if they had an edge. They seemed to rip at everything around them with destructive intent, and even Gaius, as abstract of a being as he was in that moment, felt a stinging pain from his own barely-controlled power. Quickly, everything became clear; he remembered what his plan had been, and felt the satisfaction of knowing it had succeeded.
The heat of his Bloodflame grew even more, until it began to soften the ground around the sphere which contained his consciousness, slowly turning it into semi-solid, low-temperature magma. He spoke. the sound didn't come from anywhere in particular, but was carried by his Emanations.
"Looks like it worked. You tried to drown my mind, but where the psychotic drowns, the mystic swims free. You've furthered my evolution."
"What is this!? What the hell are you!?" Varun shouted, holding up one arm to shield his face from the heat.
"Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am The Seeker. Fall upon me, Maou Vestment!"
In response to Gaius' declaration, the bubble suddenly grew to its previous size, then dissipated along with the Bloodflame. A sphere of smooth bronze, three meters across, loudly fell to the ground, making a small crater. Water sprayed all over from the impact, creating a beautiful sight that made that moment seem to last far longer than it did.
What emerged from that sphere didn't move like a human being, or look that much like one. Rather than a living organism, it seemed more like something that had been sculpted but not given detail; the suggestion of a creature. He had a head but no face, a groin but no genitals, knuckles but no wrinkles. The armored membrane over his skin, which had been thin before, was far thicker, enough to make him resemble a solid piece of white gold in the shape of a person.
That was not the only change, though. His tall frame had been exaggerated to a staggering seven feet, a pair of sturdy bull horns stretched out from either side of his head, and a long whip-cord tail extended from the base of his spine, swaying back and forth restlessly. From his back, a large pair of wings emerged as they had in his Dao Vestment form, currently folded up tightly. These wings, however, had no feathers; they were unsightly things of membranous skin and talon-tipped bone.
In his mind's eye, Gaius saw a familiar face. Broad in the forehead, in the jaw, in the cheekbones - broad everywhere, really. A face so masculine it almost entered the realm of parody, but stopped just short. Extremely handsome, with large, bright gold eyes beneath a heavy brow. His hair was thick, lustrous and curly. It was the sort of face that was so beautiful it was ugly, and so heroic it pissed you off. It was a face Gaius had seen once before.
"JOVI CALLISTA! YOU SON OF A BITCH, WAS THIS YOUR DOING!?" Gaius bellowed, laughing like a madman, throwing his head back and reveling in the incredible sensation of being alive in a body formed entirely from his own Dao Magic. "I haven't even shaken your hand yet, but I guess you'll be my ally someday! Well, I'll be damned, you
really came through!"
Two thirds of the way down his blank face, it split open along an unseen seam, the featureless flesh shaping into something more concrete. A jaw formed, followed by lips, a long and slender tongue, and sharp fanged teeth. The King opened this new mouth wide and roared wordlessly, proclaiming his triumph and aggression to the world. In the center of his forehead, the skull split open to reveal a single vertical eye, not that he really needed eyes anymore.
"You indulge in so much worthless
shit!" Varun called out, running at Gaius full-tilt now that he obviously wasn't about to self-destruct. "Transformation, precognition, matter control, 'sure-kill' techniques, it's all so trite - just fight me head-on!"
"Head on? You think you deserve that!?" Gaius yelled, sinking into a powerful, offensive stance: leaning forward, legs bent one hundred degrees, one foot far in front of the other and hands up by his face. His warped physiology only served to make this position even more aggressive, like an animal the instant before it pounced.
Varun struck first with the butt of his mace, which Gaius lowered one hand to block, then with a kick, which was knocked askew by his other hand. He smoothly transitioned, spinning and launching a back kick with his other leg. Rather than defend, though, Gaius acted preemptively, stepping in and seizing his opponent's leg. He wrapped one arm around Varun's thigh and another around his calf, then spun in a half-circle and flung the Hunter.
Varun caught himself on one knee before he could fall, already beginning to rise, but Gaius was already there, his knee crashing into Varun's armored face. "You deserve to die in agony, and that's what you're gonna get!" The King shouted, hammering his foe with blows from above his guard. Varun scrambled back, trying to create distance, but Gaius was too aggressive.
Thinking fast, Varun balanced on his hands and kicked out with both legs, only for Gaius to swiftly dodge to the side, grab the Hunter's ankles and swing him over his head, slamming him into the ground. Once more, Varun hastily tucked a forearm behind the back of his head just in time, protecting his token.
Realizing the vulnerability of his position, Varun blasted his opponent with another shockwave, only for Gaius to raise his hand, a large Aegis already forming, and block the blow. At the moment of impact, the shield deformed, inverted, and became a bubble several feet across, which then compressed to only a few inches in diameter. "You kill doctors and scholars who've never touched a sword! You kill First Heavenstage
children!" The King roared, jumping into the air and throwing his opponent's attack back at him at the same time.
The impromptu bomb struck Varun at point blank, kicking up a cloud of mist and dust and pushing Gaius farther into the air. He extended his wings, letting them catch the updraft, and landed on a pillar. "This ain't a sporting event, this is an execution!" He yelled into the cloud, where he could faintly make out Varun getting back to his feet, shaken but still in one piece. Damn, that armor really was something else. "It's just a shame I got a pretender and not the
real strongest!"
The rush of newfound power was truly unreal. The boost in performance about the Dao Vestment was similar in scope to how far that Dao Vestment was above his base form. No, more than that, he had magnified his already magnified specs; in absolute terms, the second jump was actually bigger than the first. But it wasn't just that;
his tank was refilling. New qi was being funneled into his body from some unknown source, replenishing his reserves over time, same as his will. His Emanations, too, were exploding out in a nearly uncontrollable fashion, as though the nozzle through which they passed had grown several times wider.
This was real Dao Magic: a transformation which magnified absolutely everything, a state far beyond the scope of a normal Dao Vestment. Gaius' version of the Dao Vestment incarnated him into Gaius Antonius, the idealized, perfected self that The Seeker must forever chase. However, a Dao that was perfect from the start could never be fully manifested by the Magic of a mere Fourth Reinforcement King. He could grow closer, but he could never reach that absolute state. So, it reasoned, that if he could shorten the distance once, he could shorten it again; enhance a form that was already, itself, enhanced.
That had been the theory behind the Maou Vestment, a limit-breaking form only achievable in a moment of supreme enlightenment. Gaius' plan had been to face a superior foe who would dominate the fight and push him into a corner, forcing him to grow in order to survive. Instead, he had found himself against an opponent who didn't have enough strength to do that, but whose signature weapon was perfectly suited to inducing such a state anyways.
It couldn't possibly be a coincidence. For some reason, Varun Vasistha had been perfectly placed on Gaius' path, the same way a blade forged from his own Celestial Bronze had been. This was not the time to contemplate such mysteries, however; this was the time to figure out what he could do now.
"How about you get a taste of this!?" the King exclaimed, before opening his mouth wide. Perhaps a bit theatrically, Gaius exhaled a huge cloud of golden motes which spread out in a narrow cone. When those motes got near Varun(and more importantly, far enough away from Gaius), they began to change, becoming a sickly pale yellow gas which spread through the area and blanketed the Fifth Sea Warrior.
"I really did it." Gaius remarked, feeling a rush of excitement flow through him. "I made mustard gas, even though I don't know its chemical structure. With my expanded comprehension, just knowing what something looks like and what it does is enough to make it with Stars of Gold now!"
"It doesn't matter! Don't get too cocky, demon!" Varun scoffed, emerging from the thick toxic cloud with a confident stride, none the worse for wear. "My helmet filters toxins. Did you think I wouldn't be prepared for the most obvious way around my armor?" He spread out his arms, holding his heavy mace one-handed with casual ease.
"This doesn't work, that doesn't work, this other thing doesn't work!" Gaius growled. "You sure are a tough nut to crack, ain'tcha?"
"You said it yourself: this isn't a sporting event." Varun rested his hammer on his shoulder and gestured in his direction with his free hand, wordlessly telling the King to come at him. "I'll use everything at my disposal. For the sake of the world's safety, all demons must be wiped out, and you're one of the worst demons of all."
"Then let's see it! Let's see if you can wipe me out!" Gaius retorted, leaping down from his perch to assail his opponent. As he fell, he materialized a spear in either hand, then threw them one after the other. Varun knocked them both out of the air, but it left him open to Gaius' next attack, a kick which snapped his head back.
He'd already proved that his ability to create matter was at a much higher level in this form, thanks to improved qi comprehension. Now, it was time to take that and test out something much scarier. Focusing his will into his arm below the elbow, Gaius... destroyed it. Or rather, he turned it into motes of light. Then, pulling the motes back in, he reformed it in a different shape. Normally, that would be an unthinkably complicated process, but a body made of solid Dao Magic was much easier to shape through intention. This new appendage came together not into a hand, but a blunt spike, a lengthened nub of bone with a tip perhaps one inch in diameter, similar in shape and function to the beak of a warhammer.
Drawing Varun's guard up with a left-handed feint, Gaius lunged forward with his right side instead. He slammed the altered hand right into his opponent's face. The result was immediate and satisfying; Varun was knocked back several feet from the full force of Gaius' haymaker, groaning in pain in a way he hadn't from previous punches. He fired another shockwave, which Gaius jumped over.
This time he changed his foot, reshaping it into a raptor's talons. Clamping onto the Hunter's shoulder, Gaius took to the air and carried Varun off with him. Before the Hunter could properly react and hit him with the big scary hammer, Gaius immediately spun around several times mid-flight before throwing him into a pillar, which toppled over from the force of the impact.
Not wishing to give his opponent a chance to adjust, Gaius changed his hand and foot back into their proper shape, diving after his opponent and continuing the close-combat assault. After several more volleys of strikes, Varun finally seemed to adapt to the pace of Gaius' movement, blocking several strikes and slamming his mace into the King's side, which cracked a few ribs. Gaius slid back ten feet and stopped moving for a moment, his torso briefly deforming as he replaced those ribs.
"That ain't gonna work!" Gaius laughed, preparing to rush back in, only to suddenly stop moving. It wasn't that he chose to stop; he was unable to move at all. His perception grew dim and hazy, all of it replaced by an intense pain. Something inside of him was twisting, stretching, on the edge of tearing; everything felt so horribly wrong.
Ah, that was right, he'd almost forgotten; this was an impossible transformation which broke his normal limits. By putting on the same vestment twice, he had become a living paradox. His whole body shook and quaked, his Emanations weakening and his qi signature seeming to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Varun was probably going to take advantage of-
Suddenly, a massive impact struck Gaius' leg at the knee, breaking it backwards and sending him to the ground, then another hit him across the head, snapping off one of his horns and making the world explode with colors. As much out of instinct as it was out of conscious decision, Gaius sank into the ground, avoiding the killing blow. A moment after that, the sensation of being unmade came to an end.
Gaius' awareness burst back into its normal state, prompting a huge gasp of air from him. He rocketed back to the surface, bursting out with such force that he was propelled into the air and landed atop a pillar on his intact leg. Varun responded immediately, blasting the pillar with a shockwave, but by the time it hit, Gaius was already re-creating his leg in the proper shape. He jumped off the crumbling pillar, getting right back into the melee.
Unable to use Bloodflame and having lost his sword, Gaius' only recourse was to simply pummel his nearly-invulnerable opponent until he gave out. His blows smashed into Varun one after another, overwhelming his attempts at defense with terrifying power and horrendous precision. Some were with newly-created weapons, others with altered body parts, and yet more with bog-standard barehanded martial arts. He switched between them seamlessly and breathlessly, a jaw-dropping demonstration of total combat mastery.
His movements were not only unpredictable, but carried raw speed and power in excess of before. It was simple mathematics: by Gaius' estimation, his strength and speed both grew by a factor of about 1.6 in Dao Vestment, his every action buoyed by his overflowing Emanations. Maou Vestment, which forcibly layered another instance of Dao Vestment onto itself, thus enhanced him by a factor of 1.6^2, or 2.56.
However, despite the gap in performance, Varun soldiered on with impressive determination. That moment of weakness, in which Gaius' focus had slipped and his Maou Vestment had nearly killed him, had given his opponent an important lesson: Gaius could only keep this form up for a limited amount of time. Exactly what the time limit was, Gaius couldn't say for sure, but if Varun could outlast the form, he had a chance at victory.
This back-and-forth dance went on for some time, a furious exchange of blows in which Varun consistently remained on the disadvantage, but received no major damage, allowing him to bounce back again and again and land hits where he could. Not that those hits did much to Gaius besides delay him further, but under this harmful new transformation, that was already dangerous. Gaius would have liked to simply wrestle his opponent to the ground and break his limbs, but staying still wasn't viable either, thanks to those powerful shockwaves. For the moment, there was nothing more to do but continue the fight and look for more advantages.
In the meantime, there was something strange creeping in at the edges of Gaius' perception. It shouldn't have been possible, given he was in a closed off space, but perhaps it wasn't as isolated as it seemed. After all, for the Iron Pillar to send the competitors to their individual zones, there had to remain some sort of connection between them all, even if in three dimensions they seemed totally distinct.
But whatever the reason was, the King could faintly feel them all. The fighting spirits of his comrades, struggling to survive and to crush their opponents. Surging qi, flaring wills, thirteen in all. Twelve other competitors, plus the Grand Elder. None of them were at full strength, obviously; some were flagging more than others, but all were wounded in some capacity.
More than their strength, though, Gaius felt their limitations. All of those walls and barriers between them and their full potential, like so much grime, building up and congealing since the birth of the universe. It was said that all people were infinite and omnipotent, and that cultivation was the method by which one reached one's true self; never more did that feel so clear to Gaius as it did right now.
There was another being here, actually, one he recognized instinctually as a Devil. Only, there was no solidity to that presence; it was merely an afterimage, the impression left on the world after that person had already left. Whoever they were, their strength was so great as to feel like a full person merely from that. They tasted of sorrow, of regret, of bitterness and failure, and of a great determination to undo all of that. Ah, a ghost, only half-awake and half-aware, acting on instinct alone.
What if he just... reached out and knocked those walls down? Not all of them, certainly, he couldn't hope to do that even with a thousand times more power than he had. But right now, in this impossible form, in this impossible place beyond space and time, Gaius felt more real, more alive, than he had ever been.
Rina, in particular, was a unique existence among the others. Beneath the paper-thin layer of humanity that was her flesh, there was an idea, complete and well-formed enough to exist on its own, without so many pesky physical laws to bind it. It was like an infant that had finished gestating and was now ready to breathe the same air as its fellow humans. He understood now what the Golden King had been aiming to do here.
It wasn't just Rina, even if she was the most dramatic case. Each and every one of these people had a new step, a better version of themselves, slumbering beneath the surface, ready to break through if not for all these layers and walls of weakness and doubt in the way. It was an affront to him, to see such great people, with such strong ambitions, dreams and desires, limited by something so mundane and limiting as reality.
And so, Gaius began to speak; not through his mouth, but through his overflowing Emanations. He pushed at them, in the higher dimensions his eyes couldn't perceive, and felt the walls of this place giving way. His comrades came into greater focus. Even as he continued to fight, avoiding Varun's strikes and hitting back with all the diabolical strength he could muster, the Hollow King made an announcement at the same time.
"All of you. Heroes, Devils, warriors of great ambition, you have to wake up. The potential within you is still sleeping, the greater self you were meant to be! Let it out! None of you understand the power of the Great Dao. Not the Grand Elder. Not the Shining Hope. Not even that old ghost who just left."
He could feel it already, the quaking in their souls. Too much pressure, and he might cause some catastrophic reaction; already, the bubble in which this competition was being held was pressing back against his intrusion. It might unmake him and everyone here if he, in his fumbling, touched the wrong place. Or perhaps he would break open a breach in this dimension, letting unreality come flooding in; maybe that was too arrogant of him. If that incomprehensibly strong ghost hadn't done that, then it was sturdy to withstand whatever a mere King could do.
But then, could he even be classified as a normal King anymore? Best to hurry up. He pressed harder, clawing and ripping at his fellows, tearing the barriers blocking their potential out of them in big, heavy chunks.
"Feel my Emanations inside of your bodies and minds. Don't fight them, go along with them! Feel the sleeping power within you! Pull yourselves higher and higher, and grab ahold of the future with your own two hands! WAKE UP!"
----
Redmoon was not having a good time today.
Lying there on what might be a literal sacrificial altar, with who knows how many fractures, trying her best to keep breathing and stay awake through the haze of pain, she could not help but reflect upon her journey thus far, and how it had brought her here. Perhaps she had reached for too much, too fast. Perhaps the Altar Lord had seen more in her than there really was. After all, nowadays Kings were not as miraculous as they used to be - she'd gotten too cocky.
But then, wasn't that the point of being a King in the first place? Redmoon would not, could not accept that notion, nor could she ever lay down her pride. Her goal was to bring forth a new, pure world - she couldn't get discouraged by something like this. And so, through the exhaustion and the pain, the Purity King got back to her feet.
"I think we're just about done. Are you ready to let me kill you yet?" Sanjit called out, cracking his knuckles languidly. He casually stood upside-down on the roof of the temple, lording his untouchability over his opponent gleefully.
That said, for all of his boasting, the Hunter hadn't come out completely unscaled either. She'd nicked him several times, and even managed a deeper cut across his thigh, robbing him of a significant sum of qi. Furthermore, Sanjit's teleportation was surprisingly cheap, but it was not free; using it over and over was tiring him out, as was his attraction technique. She could, in theory, still win a battle of attrition, if her body didn't give out first. The fact that it hadn't already succumbed was a small miracle in itself.
One bright side: she had quite a bit of spilled blood to work with now. She gathered a mass of it into a tight point and launched it as a lance, which Sanjit teleported out of the way of. The instant that happened, she fired off a ring of blood around her, hoping to hit the Hunter no matter where he had appeared. To her left, she heard him curse, alongside the sound of flesh being sliced and the sensation of her qi reserves refilling a bit.
Suddenly, Sanjit was right in front of her, his foot appearing mid-kick less than an inch from her face and crashing into her. Redmoon went sprawling, and before she even came to a stop, she was struck by another explosion, sending her tumbling until she lay at the edge of the firepit, the heat of the nearby flames tickling her back unpleasantly. "Redmoon, I want you to admit your loss and let me kill you." The Hunter called out, spinning one of his spheres on the tip of his finger. "I want to take your life away as casually as taking a piss."
Hm. She should have been able to react to that kick. It would have hit her no matter what, but normally she would be fast enough to partially move out of the way and roll with the blow, greatly reducing its impact and allowing her to strike back. That she failed to react at all until she was already hit was a sign that her reaction time had drastically fallen. She really was at her limit. Everything hurt.
"Wake up!"
A pulse. A ripple. Something stirring, something she couldn't name.
"The potential within you is still sleeping, the greater self you were meant to be! Let it out!"
A writhing. A snarling. Something growing, a battle cry echoing forth from deep within.
It was awful. It was beautiful. A nauseating lurching took hold deep inside of Redmoon's body, forcibly shattering wall after wall with no concern for her own comfort or safety. Her Emanations quaked, becoming unstable, rapidly oscillating up and down in intensity.
"Maybe this'll help you go to sleep!" Sanjit laughed, teleporting in between a wall and a heavily damaged pillar. He propped his back up against the wall and used his legs to push the pillar with all his might until it broke. The huge stone column fell toward Redmoon, poised to crush her to death.
She was a purifier, a destroyer of wickedness. What in the world was she doing, being made a fool of by a weakling, a charlatan with nothing to his name but a few overpowered parlor tricks!? That wasn't right at all; someone who fell prey to a feeble sinner like him could not even save themself, let alone others!
Dao Emanations exploded out of Redmoon, in far greater density than she had ever managed before. To her, they seemed nearly endless, a river of untapped power which flowed out from her very mind. And, without being taught, she knew exactly what to do with it.
Redmoon turned the palm of her right hand upward, curling her fingers as if she were holding the underside of a fancy cup, with the stem between her second and third fingers.
"Chalice."
The Emanations which had been overflowing from her body in all directions retracted, concentrating, swirling together in her hand. She poured her qi into that same hand, mixing the two power sources together in the same vessel until the emanations took on a physical form. They stirred up the air, creating a powerful, violent cyclone in the palm of Redmoon's hand. A Divine Wind.
At her unspoken command, it lashed out, mighty gusts striking like the tendrils of some massive monster and blowing the pillar to pieces. One of them struck a glancing blow against Sanjit, who had been about to teleport away. To his horror, he now found that he could not. Another burst of wind attacked from a different angle, plowing into the Hunter and carrying him along, dragging him across the wall before flinging him away.
"Gah! What's all this then, Redmoon? Were you hiding your secret technique!?" Sanjit shouted indignantly, deftly dodging blast after blast of wind. He really was quick on his feet, Redmoon distantly noted. The speed of a hare, ever desperate to avoid the jaws of the wolf.
After a few seconds, Sanjit's qi, previously neutralized, came roaring back, and he grinned, preparing to make his counterattack. Preemptively setting up her next move, Redmoon turned her hand over, causing the Divine Wind to immediately stop blowing. Next, she made a half-circle with each hand and joined them together, finger-to-finger and thumb-to-thumb, making a full circle.
"Wheel."
From beneath Redmoon's feet, stirring from nothing, the Divine Wind surged and swirled, creating a tornado one hundred feet across. Only she, standing in the center, was safe from that rending assault. Sanjit teleported in above and behind her and was immediately struck, the qi surrounding his body being forcibly dissipated as he was flung helplessly into the air. The shocked look on his face was worryingly intoxicating; she shouldn't be reveling in this battle too much, Redmoon reminded herself.
Dismissing the manifestation of the Wheel, Redmoon made another sign, pressing her index, middle and third fingers together and pointing them all at her airborne opponent.
"Arrow."
The wind once more obeyed her command, blowing out from her fingers in a straight line ten feet wide. It reached Sanjit before he could reactivate his teleportation, once more destroying whatever half-formed techniques he was cycling and blasting him back. He smashed into the wall at hundreds of miles per hour, making a substantial crater.
Sanjit fell to the ground, coughing up blood from a damaged lung. No doubt several of his ribs had broken after an impact like that; he wasn't particularly sturdy. Redmoon aimed her fingers again, firing off another huge blast of Divine Wind, but Sanjit leapt into the air, just barely getting over the danger. He threw a dozen glass orbs at Redmoon in a haphazard fashion, setting off a dazzling and very loud series of explosions.
By the time the flash died down and the King could see clearly again, Sanjit had already scampered off. A few seconds passed, after which the disruption wore off again. The Hunter wouldn't face directly again after this; he'd taken a bad hit, and didn't seem like a very courageous sort. Things would get a bit trickier from here on out.
"You're already wounded, you know. I have no reason to dignify you with a fair clash." Sanjit sneered from atop a fallen statue, teleporting away before her retaliatory blast of wind could strike him. "You're a close-range fighter, and this new gimmick doesn't change that. You have no ranged attacks fast enough to hit me without surprise. I'll simply continue to strike you until you go down." He continued, now behind her, his tone growing ever more arrogant and contemptuous. Once again, he teleported away before her blast could strike him, and another cluster of explosions struck Redmoon from above.
The King fell to one knee, gritting her teeth against the pain. She'd just gotten these abilities a few minutes ago; she didn't know how to use them creatively yet. There were no doubt countless ways to blend the Divine Wind with her pre-existing techniques, but she would need time to experiment. The only way she was getting out of this was by playing the cards she had in the right order, at the right times. Redmoon once more forced herself to stand, narrowly dodging another assault from her constantly mobile opponent. One of the bombs suddenly changed direction and came back at her, but this time she was ready for that trick, and dodged once more.
"You have no resolve at all, Hunter." She declared, balling up her fists and extending her thumbs. "Resolve will bring us into a new, purified world, and it's with resolve that I will win this battle." Pointing one thumb down and the other one up, she touched the tips together, stirring up her Divine Wind once more.
"Double Vajra."
The pain was immediate, and clarifying. Being struck by her own hostile Emanations helped Redmoon to understand an aspect of herself which she had never before been able to consider directly. So this was what her killing intent felt like to her enemies; it was frightening, she had to admit, being on the other end of such benevolent violence.
The wind tore at her flesh like razors, rapidly draining her qi and rending her with dozens of painful cuts. Sanjit cried out in pain and tumbled across the ground, losing both his balance and the rapid teleportation he'd been maintaining. Running and teleporting at the same time, if the one doing so had enough coordination to pull it off, would no doubt make one incredibly hard to hit, but such a state required intense focus which was easily disrupted. The sudden, painful attack, plus the snuffing out of his technique, shocked Sanjit and left him unable to respond for a moment.
Redmoon covered most of the distance between them in that moment, until only another twenty feet of distance remained. She felt Sanjit spin up his technique once more and responded, summoning another Wheel. This time, as she flung him into the air, she jumped into the current of wind herself, letting herself be launched in the same direction.
She slashed at the Hunter in mid-air, drawing a nasty-looking gash across his chest and knocking him back to the ground. Sanjit righted himself before he could strike the ground, managing to fall on his feet. Seeing Redmoon falling towards him with a downward slash, Sanjit charged up a huge blast to blow his opponent away. Undeterred, the King held the back of her fist against the blade of her sword, summoning up her Emanations once more.
"Sword."
This time, the Divine Wind wound around her blade at incredible speeds, transforming it into a miniature cyclone. Redmoon swung with all of her strength, smashing right through the attack and cleaving through Sanjit's arm. His hand went flying, spurting not blood, but only pure water. In that one attack, she had sucked out nearly half of her opponent's blood supply and broken it down into qi.
He screamed, as most people would, clutching at the stump where his arm had just been and trying not to succumb to unconsciousness or shock. For just one wavering moment, Redmoon saw bloodlust in his eyes, an urge to stay and avenge this injury, no matter the risk. The emotion passed almost immediately; this Hunter was not that sort of beast. Redmoon tried to finish him off, but Sanjit's own fist struck his token before her blade could reach his neck, and then he was gone.
Redmoon collapsed to her knees, awash in the thrill of victory, as well as the relief of her life no longer being in danger. Her head hurt... a lot. Oh wow, it hurt quite a bit actually, more than it should have even with all the hits she took. The King doubled over, clutching at her head at images, concepts and ideas that were not her own flashed uncontrollably through her mind. Her body quickly processed the huge amount of qi she had taken from Sanjit, but she could feel something else floating in that mass too. Some hard, solid lump, difficult to digest, causing her insides to alight with fire.
Was this the work of those horrible Emanations Gaius had put out; were those making her take in more than usual, more than what was
safe? Or was it another side-effect of Redmoon's own growth, and the increasing sophistication of her Dao Magic?
Space was not as uniform as it was perceived. It imperceptibly flexed and relaxed constantly, like a giant fabric or a great ocean which swallowed all. The fastest route between two points was a straight line, but not all straight lines were equal. There existed dimensions and directions which the human mind normally could not process, ones which her brain was being
forced to process. By reaching into the fourth, the third could be folded, bringing two distant points into direct proximity. One need only pass through that now non-existent distance, then release the hold.
The lump shrank, slowly dissolving, becoming one with the hunter, the predator, the carnivore, the taker.
"I see..."
----
There came a certain point where a fight lost its novelty. That wasn't to say it got boring, certainly, but that patterns began to develop, ones which were followed again and again. Some things could be done differently, but the push and pull of strengths and weaknesses would, after a period of experimentation, develop a framing within which every decision in the fight had to be made.
For instance; in terms of the resources each man had on hand, Varun clearly held the upper hand, and no compunctions about using it. Gaius' heavy blows, which came mercilessly and struck the other man again and again, would have killed him a few times over by now if not for Varun's armor. His mace, too, broke Gaius' bones and sent him flying whenever it managed to successfully hit him.
For all of Gaius' other advantages, this was one which could not be ignored. With his Bloodflame sealed away on top of that, he had no choice but to chip away at Varun ever so patiently. Oh, the storm of blows they were throwing at one another could hardly be called 'chipping away', but that was another thing about fights: you could never get the full picture of one unless you were in it.
Gaius kicked Varun in the midsection, driving him back and pursuing. He swayed back to avoid a mace strike, then punched his armored foe square in the face, pressing him against a salt pillar. He pressed the attack with a flurry of blows, the Maou Vestment's reinforcing Emanations allowing his body to perform at a level that would be unthinkable to him normally. He drove Varun into the pillar like he was hammering a nail, until the whole thing collapsed, raining white crystals down upon their heads.
Varun swung again, striking a crystal as it fell and launching it toward Gaius, who deftly shattered it with his fist. This disturbed the strike that had been branded onto it, which unleashed itself into Gaius' face, breaking several of his teeth and sending him flying onto his back. That damn branding; it was an incredibly difficult move for Tabula Rasa to predict, as it could be used at any time on any swing, and applied to any surface.
But even so, this wouldn't take much longer; Varun was running out of steam. Gaius spat out his broken teeth, quickly reforming his jaw into an intact state, and got back on his feet. Varun, his breathing heavy and his stance unsteady, shook his head rapidly, no doubt trying to fight through a concussion.
No matter how invincible one's armor was, it would not literally stop all energy. If it did that, it would be impossible to move at all - there had to be some give. As such, armor too durable for someone in the same Great Realm to break was more like a durability multiplier, reducing the damage of a blow to a small fraction of what it would have been. An edged blow could be deflected partially or entirely - and most armor was in fact molded for this purpose - which caused the vast majority of the weapon's force to be negated. Blunt force, on the other had, had a larger striking area and could not be as effectively deflected; much more of that would get through.
In other words, barehanded attacks could never be totally negated, so long as the attacker's own body did not break in the process. And in Maou Vestment, that was not a problem; he was a true shapeshifter, albeit one who did not yet comprehend his own limits, and thus he could repair most physical injuries by simply remaking himself to be whole again. Gaius would be careful in this live test, using only the applications which were both relatively easy to perform and certain to be effective.
Not only that, but the armor which had caused this fight to drag on for so long in the first place was finally falling under the sway of Gaius' Dao Magic. It had taken a long time, relatively speaking. The structure of Gravesilver was exponentially more complex than that of Gravebronze, and this armor had no doubt been worked on by only the most truly exceptional of craftsmen since it was first forged. Even so, flaws did exist in its structure. Locations where it had been damaged and repaired, as well as locations where an old injury on the Devil themself had manifested in microscopic weak points. But now, Tabula Rasa had taken that information and added it into the predictive process, guiding Gaius' strikes unerringly.
Gaius charged back into the fray. As he narrowly dodged a ferocious hammer swing, his fingertips dissolved and reformed, becoming the ugly, half-mechanical products of some demented surgery. His fingers terminated in drills, each of which came to a wickedly sharp point. It came to him rather easily, how to make this, even though he had never seen it in real life. Perhaps he was just more enlightened than normal in this state.
He jabbed, striking at those tiny weak points with finger-strikes again and again. Varun, try as he might, could not land a hit, growing ever more desperate and furious as the exchange went on. The Hunter roared, bringing his weapon down on the ground and setting off an explosion which launched Gaius into the air.
Now that some distance was made, Gaius gathered the light around him and made a dozen tiny drills, identical to the ones which tipped his fingers, and commanded them to spin. He launched them with both great force and fine control; Varun knocked half out of the air, but the others struck home, stubbornly whirring and pressing into his weak points like vengeful insects.
Gathering his qi into a shell around his body, Varun roared with exertion, creating another shockwave. This one, rather than directed, was spherical, clearing the air around him of those projectiles. Softening his mace into a flail again, he swung at Gaius over and over, attacking with frantic speed many times per second. With surgical precision Gaius dodged them all, quickly closing the distance.
As the Devil approached, Varun suddenly made his weapon rigid once more and slammed it down, only for Gaius to reach up and catch the head of the mace with his hands. Ordinarily such a thing would be suicidal, given how quickly that huge sphere degraded one's will, but that was no issue now. Gaius had an endless supply of will, flowing into him from nowhere. Having stopped the attack, Gaius struck out with a now drill-tipped tail, boring into a particularly worn-down spot on Varun's abdomen. After a moment, something finally gave way.
With an ominous crack, fractures appeared in the Gleaming Garb, a spider's web reaching this way and that. One weak point giving way exacerbated the others, compromising the structural integrity of the armor as a whole. Finally, a pathway opened. The endless series of simulations running through Gaius' mind began predicting a course toward his inevitable triumph.
Varun would fire another shockwave. Gaius leapt backwards preemptively, shielding himself with his wings and summoning an Aegis in the fraction of a second before it happened, allowing the attack to launch him backwards through the air. After precisely 3.7 seconds, he spread his wings, slowing his trajectory just enough to collide with the salt pillar behind him feet-first without going through it. He kicked off, propelling himself forward and toward the ground, which he smoothly submerged himself into.
He emerged a moment later, creating a spear with Stars of Gold and driving it into a crack in Varun's armor. Varun broke the spear in half with his knee and elbow, then counter-attacked with his mace. Gaius fended off another series of strikes as Varun spun his mace this way and that, attacking from all angles and at all ranges to try and drive him away. His opponent did not grow weaker as the fight went on, but instead attacked with greater and greater ferocity as he was pushed into a corner. Nonetheless, it was still not enough; the optimal path through was clear to him, playing out before his vision like a rehearsal before he even performed it.
Spinning out of the way of a thrust to drive his elbow into Varun's temple, he then kicked out the Hunter's leg, sending him to one knee. He then quickly rolled over Varun's back to avoid his next swing, then pinned the mace in place with his armpit and his elbow. Finally, he shaped his fingertips into sharp, thin claws and rammed them through a crack in Varun's armor.
Finally, he heard the squelch of pierced flesh. Finally, he felt his opponent's body give way before superior force. Finally, he saw hot, red blood spill from the Hunter's body. Varun pitched forward and dropped his mace, and Gaius kneeled down to his level, grabbing his opponent's shoulder and ramming his claws deeper into Varun's chest.
Gaius leaned forward, wrapped up in the sheer intimacy of this moment, with his hand feeling the warmth of another person's insides. The Seeker began to whisper in his opponent's hear as he choked and gasped. "You're strong, you know. Damn strong. You've got all sorts of shiny skills, lots of determination, and you're smart too. Just one problem." His lips pulled back into a savage, fanged grin, the face of a true Devil. "You just ain't as strong as me. This is why I asked for the strongest. You oughta just unseal my Bloodflame and give yourself a quick death, 'stead of chewing on your misery like this."
Indeed, no one could deny that Varun was not a capable warrior. He was dangerous, thoroughly and holistically, and could definitely defeat most of his teammates, though tokens complicated the matter. It could have been a wonderful fight, if Gaius was weaker. A part of the King was bitterly disappointed that he couldn't have had something to draw out everything he was capable of, even if his gambit had succeeded.
But before Gaius could press the attack any further, something terrible happened: his body locked up once again. He shook and trembled, limbs twisting this way and that as his body fought the urge to spread all of its particles across the universe in an equidistant pattern. That would probably be very bad to do. Varun blasted Gaius point-blank with a shockwave, breaking several of his ribs and puncturing a lung. He was blasted backwards into a salt pillar, which broke in half and fell on him, adding insult to injury.
As Gaius fell to his knees vomiting blood and working on the brief but difficult process of recreating his torso, Varun was also having a very bad time. That last attack had some serious damage; he had felt his opponent's insides being torn up quite vividly, in fact. With wounds like that, plus an ailing soul and a body covered in bruises from all those hits his armor had only mostly absorbed, Varun wouldn't be fighting for much longer at all.
Of course, Gaius had even less time left. This form should have already fallen apart. The strain of forcing a logical paradox to remain in existence was killing him - literally. The next time Gaius lost his grip on the Maou Vestment, he would be unmade.
"Fifteen... no, ten seconds! You've run out of time, I can feel your qi signature falling apart!" Varun shouted, staggering back to his feet as blood poured out from the holes in his armor and mixed with the water around his feet. He picked up his weapon, gripping it with both hands. "You'll rip yourself out of existence in ten seconds!" His qi blazed like the sun, pouring endlessly into the Mindbreaker Maul. A lesser weapon would have exploded from the sheer amount of energy, but it held it without complaint, churning with incredible power.
"That's all I need!" Gaius cackled, concentrating his donated qi into his arm, which immediately discorporated. When it came back together, it could hardly be said to resemble an arm at all. A massive, bulging mound of muscle and metal many times larger than an ordinary arm, topped by a mining drill three feet across. Gradually, it began to whir, Gaius rearing it back as Varun bore down on him.
This was good, the King thought as he charged back. For all he hated Varun's guts, and those of every other invader, he could not deny that the Hunter truly looked beautiful right now. A human life, blazing with determination as it fights for life, for pride, for principle, for ambition. This was when a person truly became something sublime; something asserting its existence, rather than coasting through it.
I am real. I am real. I am real.
I am more real than you.
The shining sun illuminating their struggle, the sky reflected beneath their feet, the two warriors reached one another, braced their feet, and swung with all their might. The drill-arm met the hammer-
And blew it away. Varun skidded past Gaius empty handed and allowed his weapon to be knocked out of his grip. There had been no clash at all; the weapon had simply bounced off as if it had barely any momentum behind it at all. All of the qi that Varun had poured into the strike seemed to have vanished at the point of contact.
But there was no time to contemplate this, as the King had finally reached his time limit. As intense pain filled his body, which threatened to rip-tear-twist-crunch itself to peaced, he had no choice but to finally let go. Like a piece of elastic that had been stretched far too tight, the Maou Vestment came undone the second Gaius' iron grip on that transformation was released. And, of course, his transformed arm went back to normal, disturbing the brand Varun had left there containing almost all of his remaining qi.
As Gaius' transformation dissipated, the delayed strike went off, obliterating everything around it in a huge thunderclap. The ground was cratered fifty feet across, spraying water everywhere with such force that it turned to mist. It was a perfect maneuver.
...If not for the fact that when the form of the Maou Vestment dissipated, there was nothing behind it. It burst apart and left behind only empty air.
As Varun stared in uncomprehending shock for a single, vulnerable moment, a blade slipped through one of the cracks in his breastplate and into his back. Gaius stood behind Varun, reduced back down to his normal form and holding a sword whose blade was so paper-thin and delicate, the slightest wrong move might snap it. But it was also thin enough to get through that crack and into Varun's lung, which it had done.
The Hunter crumpled to the ground, already spitting up mouthfuls of blood into the inside of his own helmet. It welled up inside of that indestructible suit, dripping through the numerous cracks where the flow had previously stemmed. Gaius took several steps back, drenched in sweat but otherwise unharmed - beyond the wounds he already had when he transformed.
"I can make hard light, dumbass! What made you think I couldn't make it in the shape of myself!?" Gaius jeered, slapping his thigh and letting out peals of cruel laughter.
"You wouldn't even give me the dignity of exchanging finishing moves. It's my fault for expecting better of you." Varun mumbled, voice overcome with frustration but resigned to his fate. Even in as dire straits as he was, the Hammer of the Sage still didn't reach behind his head to break his token.
"You don't deserve no fuckin' dignity!" Gaius yelled, summoning up what qi he still had. "But speakin' of finishers, you're all dried up now, ain'tcha?" Gaius smirked, pointing his palm at Varun. "It's over."
Bloodflame engulfed Varun's body for a moment, driving him to his knees, before the curse that had latched onto Gaius earlier took effect and snuffed the technique out. "Wow, it really did take away my ability to control my qi. I can't feel it all!" Gaius exclaimed, impressed by how total the spiritual numbness was. "Maybe if you'd specialized in curses instead of swingin' that stick around, you wouldn't be dyin' on the ground right now."
After precisely fifteen seconds, Gaius' qi came back under his control, and he blasted Varun again. Over and over, he burned Varun with all the strength he could muster in those split-second flashes, and each time, the signal, the self that was Varun Vasistha faded a little more.
"I was right. I was dead on." Varun wheezed, trembling on his hands and knees as his soul was gradually blasted away. "You'll destroy everything, you demon bastards. Why did you have to come here? You ruin everything you touch."
"Dying curses? You're fuckin' feisty! You still aren't running away, I'll give you kudos for that!" Gaius shouted. He continued his attacks unabated, every fifteen seconds on the spot, forcing his wounded and tired body to remain standing as he crushed his opponent bit by bit. The Cruel Edict only served to siphon out the last remnants of Varun's qi even more. The water around Varun was evaporated by each blast, then more water flowed back into the new dry spot, only to be vaporized again by the next blast.
In between his cries of pain, Varun's parting words were surprisingly coherent and composed.
"May you take everything you want!"
fwoosh
"May you live as you wish!"
fwoosh
"May you wear the crown as long as your tender neck can bear it!"
fwoosh
"Then, at your moment of greatest triumph, may you lose it all and die a cruel, miserable death!"
fwoosh
The flames roared in strength, and this time, the curse did not snuff them out. They persisted, feasting on the tinder that was Varun's soul even as they did nothing to melt or blacken his armor. Gaius let it burn for another minute, until he could feel his supply of blood running dangerously low, then finally cut the stream off.
It was done with. They hadn't given him the strongest hunter after all, most likely, but in the end things had worked out. He had attained greater strength, won his fight, and punished an impertinent invader who dared to come here to massacre his people. All that was left was the traditional victory dance of the Cultivator: looting.
After taking a minute to simply catch his breath, Gaius got down on one knee, flipping Varun's body over and searching for some kind of straps or latches he could lose to take his armor off. Before he could get anywhere, however, a quaking similar to what had occurred before the pair were taken here began - this time centered around the Hunter's body. Gaius got to his feet and stumbled backwards, trying to get out of range of whatever was about to happen. After the amount of exhaustion and abuse he'd put himself through, he wasn't sure how much fight he had left in him, if any at all.
Ultimately, there was no self-destruct, anti-theft attack, or anything of the sort; Varun and his weapon simply vanished. Gaius cursed, stomping his foot and kicking up small plumes of water. Damn it, that was some incredibly valuable loot! "Guess that was pretty smart of 'em." The King sighed, planting his hands on his hips.
Nothing left to do now but wait to be sent back.
----
This fight is one I've been thinking about for... half a year, I think? Maybe not that long, but a long time, ever since the Special Trial became a thing. In order to make the showdown more dramatic, I asked to take a -20 penalty to Gaius' fate roll before the fight. In terms of actual mechanical benefit, all this did was retroactively heal one of the others by one step, but the reason I did it was just to make it more dangerous.
Gaius' original plan was to face off against the strongest possible opponent with no chance of escape, in order to forcibly evolve his Dao Magic and potentially trigger a jump into the Fifth Reinforcement. While he didn't manage the latter, he did unlock the Maou Vestment, which is some insane shit. Varun was far from the strongest of the Hunters(he's the fifth strongest, iirc, since these guys were listed roughly from weakest to strongest), but his weapon happened to be perfectly suited to what Gaius wanted to do, so it worked out. Gaius was also handicapped the whole time because he didn't have access to Scylla, ignored potential ways to kill him early on because he wanted to be pushed into a corner, and deliberately killed him the hard way after transforming because he wanted to test out his new abilities.
Mechanically, I just got rid of the 6-impact Dream Sword and replaced it with the 6-impact Maou Vestment, because Stars of Gold can already create weapons on-demand which are at Gaius' strength level, which covers most of what the Dream Sword does anyway. In total, Gaius now has a net Impact of 30: -6 for insanity, 6 for Scylla, 6 for the Maou Vestment, 6 for the Blood-Forge Constitution and 18 for Stars of Gold. Since a King in the Fourth Reinforcement is equivalent to a Foundation-level Cultivator with twelve small realms from their base capability, that means Gaius' total combat ability is that of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator with 22 small realms' worth of power. Sounds crazy strong, but he's actually eleven small realms behind Wei Feng in effective combat power. No matter how high you climb, there's always someone whose kung fu can kick the shit out of yours.
As for all of this other trippy stuff, it's mainly foreshadowing for future twists. Why did Gaius, in his half-lucid state where he was generating additional Will through this mysterious transformation, call out Jovi Callista? How did he somehow feel the echoes of Heraclius? Why was a dagger made from his own corpse sent back in time and put into the Quintia family vault for him to find? Tune in next time... or in like two years, for some of those.
But basically, in this new form, Gaius' emanations grew in strength to the point that they could penetrate the barriers between the sub-dimensions. They then resonated within his allies and caused them to awaken their inner potential and win their battles. Part of the reason why this happened this way is that of the thirteen seeds taking part in the contest, ten of them got extra cultivation from their fate rolls - a very unlikely result.
I also invented a thirteenth Trial Hunter from whole cloth to give Redmoon and Scylla something to do to further Redmoon's development, and to demonstrate what Gaius' emanations did to everyone with an NPC in case anyone else wants to pick up that ball and run with it themselves. Redmoon has actually become my NPC now - Alectai gave her to me because his insanely good rolls have caused Rina to leap so far ahead in strength that Redmoon will never be a threat to her. I've got some plans for her though.
As for Varun himself, I can't help but feel a little bad for the guy, since I wrote him specifically to job against a new form. He essentially exists to be a test subject for what the Maou Vestment can do. I wanted someone who acts righteous but is ultimately pretty rotten, to contrast Gaius acting at his most antagonistic here but still fighting to protect his people and his loved ones. Though his abilities are all quite strong, he is ultimately countered pretty effectively by Gaius' powerset, and wouldn't have lasted as long as he did if he wasn't mostly immune to physical damage.
It is ultimately just mostly immune though. I'm someone who dislikes the notion often seen in fiction that if your armor is sturdy enough, you just can't be hurt, and that the only way to hurt a person in armor is to break said armor first. Ultimately, there is some amount of force which will still be hitting your body even if your armor stops a blow from actually penetrating your flesh. That's why blunt weapons work better against heavy armor - the momentum hits the opponent through the armor, as opposed to an edged weapon, which will be deflected away rather than the armor directly taking that force.
I also invented an entirely new NPC Hunter in order to give Redmoon something to do, since she is ostensibly here. I was able to use her fight here as an example of what Gaius' stunt with his Emanations actually did to the other Seeds to prompt that sudden and intense growth in cultivation. Since Alectai has given her over to me, I needed to figure out what her Dao Magic did, so I based it loosely on the Buddhist Wisdom King Vajrayaksa, the wrathful manifestation of Amogus Amoghasiddhi. He is associated with wind, purification, fearlessness and the moon. Each of the Divine Wind's configurations is based on one of the objects he holds in his six hands.
Wow, this author's note ran kind of insanely long. I guess I just had a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head that I wanted to communicate, since I've been looking forward to writing this fight and formulating ideas for it for so long.
