Gaius Antonius 94 - Feed the Beast
The Abyssal Devil Bee Sect. A distasteful bunch to be sure, but an important piece of the geopolitical puzzle that was the Virtuous Flipper Region. Redmoon had ridden past horrendous things on her journey through this land; rivers of blood, brutal religious idols made from tormented living humans, massive insects whose form she struggled to even describe, so profound was their mutation.
And now here she was: being led into an unremarkable clearing nestled at the foot of a towering mountain. The people who brought her to this place were likewise not particularly awful-looking. Here and there she could see someone with macabre tattoos or extensive ritual scarification, but those were the outliers.
Tents, bonfires, cook's cauldrons, men gambling. It was the very picture of a mercenary company's temporary lodging. The King could almost be convinced this place was ordinary, were it not the kind of meat being cooked in those cauldrons, or the uncomfortable miasma that hung around each soldier in her spiritual sense - evidence of the curse each soldier bore as punishment for eating their own kind.
"Your lodgings are quite well-maintained." Redmoon commented, looking to the brawny woman to her left. "It seems I will be well taken care of here."
"You talk pretty formal. We'll have to wring that out of ya!" The woman laughed, patting Redmoon on the shoulder. "Oi, gather round everyone! We've got a new member, an Expert!" She shouted, drawing the gazes of the hundred and fifty or so soldiers present.
That got their attention. For a relatively unremarkable group like this, the arrival of a new Foundation-level Cultivator to their ranks was a sign of good things to come. Through the use of her Vessel Flower, Redmoon had cloaked much of her strength, appearing as a mere Three Pillar to the senses of those around her, which was still enough to have the mercenaries cheering her on.
"Oh? Did I hear that right?" called out a voice in the center of the camp. She turned, beholding an extraordinarily hairy man with a big beard and an even bigger belly. He set down a bottle of wine on the table beside him and sauntered up to Redmoon, looking her up and down approvingly. "You've got the eyes of an experienced killer, I can see that much. What makes you want to join our merry band?"
A valid question. The Hornbearers were mercenaries through and though, doing things their own way and not adhering to the standardized tactics of any particular nation. Though they primarily fought on behalf of the Abyssal Devil Bee Sect, they had no permanent loyalty toward them, and had worked for other Demonic factions in the past. The types who joined their group generally either couldn't get into a wealthier sect or had some dirty business that necessitated them living off the grid.
"Because I'd heard of your leader, of course." Redmoon replied with a coquettish smile, bowing respectfully. "Lady Greathorn, master of the Thunder Bringer, up-and-coming hero of the Great Era. I wished to fight under her banner."
Close enough to the truth. Lady Greathorn, a rather mighty Saber Palace disciple who had been transformed by the Blood Mists sixty-five years prior, had grown significantly in power since then. She was most infamous for stealing an extremely powerful secret weapon from the Palace as she fled, and had used it to rapidly advance her cultivation whilst amassing a motley crew of hangers-on.
That answer seemed to rouse some excitement in the Expert - perhaps he and his leader were close friends? The big man grinned, pressing his fist into his hand and giving her a bow. "The name's Beartooth, second in command of the Hornbearers. Pleased to have ya." He grinned, revealing a mouth full of unnaturally large and sharp fangs. "Unfortunately, our esteemed leader ain't present at the moment. She wanted some time to herself, so I'll handle your initiation process."
Redmoon smiled again, brushing her silver hair behind her ear. She considered her surroundings carefully as the old mercenary continued to blather on - this wasn't quite in the center of the camp, but she was still a decent way in. She could cross from one edge to the other in about four seconds when sprinting at top speed, and her spiritual sense could easily pick up and distinguish every qi signature present.
This position… it wasn't perfectly ideal. Redmoon had been hoping they would crowd in a little closer to her than this. Still, it would do. She took a slow, deep breath and held her hands a foot apart, open palms facing each other. The next few things, she did near-simultaneously.
The Blood Flower's restriction ceased, releasing her true, Kingly strength back into her body. Dao Emanations exploded out of her body at maximum speed, enveloping the entire camp and bringing most of those present crashing to the ground in convulsions, or at least driven to their knees. A few Experts had enough strength of will and body to remain standing, but they shook in place, taking a few moments to get used to this feeling of paralysis they had never before encountered.
Redmoon brought her hands together, releasing a crisp, sharp clapping sound. She visualized a sphere with a hundred foot radius with her at the center appearing around her. In this sphere, she could be wherever she wished, and space was no obstacle.
Finally, Redmoon brought her hands apart again and touched the tips of her thumbs and middle fingers together to create a circle.
"Wheel."
The Divine Wind whirled around the King in a mighty tornado, lifting her enemies and flinging them every which way. The noise was cacophonous; shouts of surprise, fear and pain, howling wind, tents being torn out of the ground, objects and people crashing into one another. The weakest cultivators died the moment they hit something, but even those who endured the attack found themselves in dire straits, their qi drained and their techniques not activating.
Redmoon wasted no time, drawing her blade and bisecting a man who was falling towards her, then turning to impale a woman who had sprawled on the ground to her left. A few more seconds, and the faster enemies would be on their feet and ready to fight; best to take those ones out first.
She swung her sword in a horizontal slash, aimed at the empty air. Clicking her tongue twice, Redmoon instantly transported herself thirteen feet forward and to the left, behind a man who had risen to one knee. She appeared mid-slash, beheading the enemy instantly, then did it again, moving twenty feet backwards and spilling the guts of a huge man with an equally huge mace.
Redmoon wasn't sure what Sanjit had called this technique, but she called it Folding Path. Using her own observation of him as a model, paired with the insight she'd managed to gain from his arm, she had reverse engineered it to an acceptable degree.
The secret was thus: take a teleportation technique, a type which was notoriously difficult to execute, and give it two restrictions: first, it could only be used within a certain area. Second, it required a clap to attune and two clicks of the tongue to cast. Next, decouple the tuning, the 'creation of the area', from the casting, the actual teleportation. By doing this, it enabled Redmoon to create a zone in which she could teleport at will by folding space between herself and the target area.
Slash, click-click, slash, click-click, slash slash, click-click, slash. It was a simple approach, but almost impossible to counter. Even without Folding Path, she was at least as fast as the average Great Circle Expert, and there were none of those here; her victims simply couldn't keep up with such disorienting movement.
This had become a standard tactic for Redmoon: fill the Vessel Flower to max capacity, giving her a large reserve of qi to draw upon. Second, approach the enemy, establish the area and hit them with her Dao Emanations at the same time. Third, suppress their techniques with Divine Wind. Fourth, use Folding Path repeatedly to quickly cut down every single hobbled opponent before they could do anything. The substantial amount of qi lost to teleport over and over was a pittance compared to how much she consumed from the enemies she cut down, keeping her and her flower topped up and leaving a very large sum to cultivate with.
Things were progressing faster and faster in a political sense, and so Redmoon had to advance faster than ever, removing evildoers and growing in strength.
She made sure to not kill them all efficiently. This was meant to look like the work of a small army, not a single person, so they had to die in many different ways. Bleeding out from lost limbs, cut many times but not fully dismembered, stabbed in the belly or the heart or the throat or the lungs. Cut in two at the waist, at the belly, at the chest, at the neck, at the head. Every time, all that spilled out was pure, clear water. They'd need to fix that too, to cover the bodies in animal blood to make it look right.
The fighters were put down. Next came the runners, those fleeing either for their own safety or to find their leader. Those too were cut down thoroughly. Finally came the hiders, those cowering in the ground, in tents, or beneath the bodies of their fellows. There could be no survivors to tell the tale of what really happened here.
This wasn't anything worth feeling guilty about - these people were murderers, marauders. All of them would need to be purified down the line one way or another, and it might as well be today.
——
Precisely six minutes after Redmoon's work was finished, her temporary master arrived, a huge fish following closely behind. The pair came down the mountain, Scylla with dozens of bodies piled up on her back. The bodies in question were, she knew, disciples of the nearly destroyed Seven Divine Saber Palace, an expeditionary group Gaius had left to eliminate one day prior.
Upon his arrival, Gaius immediately got to work, unloading bodies from the back of his companion beast. There were no words of introduction exchanged, for this plan had been thoroughly discussed beforehand.
"He's got high hopes for this one, but frankly I don't see it." Scylla remarked, turning slightly so that she could look Redmoon in the eye with at least one of her own.
"She's just a monkey with an especially good stick for hitting things. We'd be better off giving that lump of iron to someone special."
"The fact is, she can control it even though she's at the Foundation level." Gaius replied, picking two up and carrying them on his shoulders onto the scene. "How many Experts are good enough at sword arts to do that, strong enough to swing the damn thing quickly, and canny enough to steal it in the first place?"
"He's correct." Redmoon interjected, watching as Gaius laid out a body in between two Hornbearers. "From our prior observations, Lady Greathorn seems to be broadly skilled in a number of disciplines."
"Either of you could do more with that sword than she can now." Scylla replied, squirming as Gaius pulled two more bodies off her back, causing the weight to shift.
Gaius paused, laughing at her statement and flashing a grin. "You want me to give the first word to someone stronger than me!? I ain't
that stupid, you mackerel."
Redmoon noted that statement carefully, and adjusted her plans accordingly. If she ever came across a sudden influx of new power, she would hide just enough for Gaius to believe her weaker than him.
As if detecting what she was thinking about, Gaius turned in Redmoon's direction. "Ya did good, real good." He declared, nodding in satisfaction. "Looks like the work of a Saber Palace attack, just like we needed."
"What about the ones thrown to death by the wind?" Asked Redmoon. "Those won't raise suspicion?"
"There's a Favored from Strength Purity, Hong Dandan. Uses wind techniques."
"Ah."
The two worked in uncomfortable silence for a while, Gaius carefully dumping out bodies here and there as if he were an interior decorator. Where appropriate, he splashed them or their surroundings with buckets of pig's blood. By the end there were about two Saber Palace bodies for every three Hornbearers.
With that taken care off, all that was left to do was disguise the evidence of Redmoon's presence, which meant more pig's blood, all over the Hornbearers and their surroundings. She couldn't help but feel uncomfortable, playing dolls with the dead like this. It felt almost as if she were killing them all over again.
"You've gotten pretty damn strong, Redmoon." Gaius remarked, futilely trying to flick off the blood which coated both of his hands almost up to the elbow. "But don't get cocky. There's a lotta folks out there who're stronger still."
"Thank you." Redmoon responded, bowing slightly in her fellow King's direction. "And rest assured, I have ideas for how I can keep improving."
"I'll be lookin' forward to seein' it."
——
Once the stage was set, Redmoon climbed partway up the mountain, settling onto a small outcropping a thousand feet up and pulling out a telescope to watch the results play out. Up here, that whole scene all felt so very small, a micro-drama one was bound to miss unless they had a reason to turn in a very specific direction. All human lives were like this in the end; tableaus of suffering and impure desire, sweeping their souls up in a storm they couldn't hope to understand. Tiny fragments of a huge, chaotic world.
A figure approached, returning from a town built alongside a mountain stream some twenty miles from the Hornbearers' camp. The one person this whole charade had been constructed for, Lady Greathorn.
She approached at a pace that was not particularly urgent, unaware of what was waiting for. She rode a huge, speckled stallion, perhaps the only hint to her status aside from the unusual, elaborate pendant around her neck. Nothing about her disposition could be made out from here, but Redmoon imagined she must have been in a good mood.
That mood soon seemed to change as she sped up, urging her horse into a sprint no normal animal could hope to match. Perhaps it was because she heard nothing coming from the camp, nor did she feel any qi signatures.
Greathorn leapt off her horse, charging into the camp and shouting something. She looked around frantically, but found nothing but corpses. After a moment, Gaius rose out of the ground at the outskirts of the camp, now clad in his identity-concealing cloak. He called out to the despondent warrior, who whirled around with fury in her eyes.
Confronted by the deaths of her companions and cornered by an unfamiliar figure, Greathorn shouted something Redmoon was too far away to hear, then did what any sane warrior would do in such a situation: clasped her pendant and, in a flash of light, summoned her weapon.
Why was Greathorn such a desirable target for uplifting? Well, she was certainly strong, with a variety of potent abilities backed up by a mighty body. But the real reason was the weapon that had appeared in her hand just now.
The Thunder Bringer. What a beauty it was. Rough steel, so unrefined in places that it looked like craggy stone, beaten into place as best as any non-Nascent blacksmith could have managed. Less a sword and more a sword-shaped mass of brutal power. One side, - the longer side, for it curved slightly - was honed for cutting, though even the most elegant motion of a weapon like this would be more of a chop than a slash. The back was blunt, and housed a series of vents used for propulsion, if the wielder wished to strike with even greater force. The bottom third of the weapon degenerated into a lump, from which a chunk had carved out to form a handle. Leather had been wrapped around that handle and paper talismans had been fixed to the side of the blade, civilizing it just a little bit.
Could this really be called a saber? Or a sword? It looked more like a six foot long, two foot wide machete made of scrap iron. That said, in Redmoon's eyes, its untamed appearance only seemed to make it feel more dangerous and fierce.
This was not always a saber; rumor had it that the Thunder Bringer was forged from a broken-off chunk of a colossal natural treasure whose purpose could no longer be divined, found in an ancient ruin five thousand years ago by the then-Elder of Day. This could be a superweapon fit to be a Late Nascent's signature tool, if it were ever made into a more elegant and efficient shape. The waves of destructive power the Thunder Bringer could unleash with every swing necessitated that it be suppressed several times over, hence the paper talismans.
Of course, Redmoon could hardly make any of this out herself, from her distant position. Much of the weapon's appearance would only be revealed to her by Gaius later on, as would that of its wielder.
The one who owned the Thunder Bringer now seemed to be a good match for it, in some ways. Lady Greathorn was a large woman, standing an inch or two above Gaius, who was himself quite tall, and filling out that large frame with a substantial amount of muscle. Her eyes were rounder than most and her long-wavy hair was an indistinct light brown that faded into blonde near the roots - likely a sign of Golden Devil ancestry a few generations back. A vertical line of characters tattooed into her skin flowed from the back of her right hand to elbow in a spiral pattern, winding around her forearm like a serpent. They read 'Wish Upon The Blade'.
Greathorn was not dressed or equipped for battle at the moment; why would she be, when she'd been helping herself to the simple pleasures of the local festival? Men, women, drink, spices, souvenirs, all manner of wonderful things, fit to distract and occupy a young and lusty warrior. Instead, she wore only trousers and a simple tunic, a deliberate touch of unsophistication so as to better fit in.
Redmoon couldn't hear what her temporary master and the Saber Palace traitor were saying to one another from this distance, but it was clearly getting to Greathorn. From her body language alone, Redmoon watched as she went from shock, to disbelief, to sorrow, and finally to rage. She roared demands to Gaius, no doubt asking what had happened and why, and each reply seemed only to inflame her anger further.
The narrative they crafted was one of simplicity itself: the Seven Divine Saver Sect, wishing to regain their lost glory, had sent its warriors after Greathorn's mercenary company, hoping to seize the stolen Thunder Bringer. Backing them up had been a Favored from the Strength Purity Sect, paid for quite handsomely. Though they met unexpectedly fierce resistance, the Righteous warriors eventually wiped out their enemies. Unable to find the Thunder Bringer, which was nigh-undetectable to the spiritual sense thanks to its many seals, they were forced to leave, lest they be caught by any Devil Bee Elders in enemy territory. After all, with the war going as it was, nowhere was safe. The fabled Wise Man, who had already been watching Greathorn on account of her auspicious fate, now wished to aid her in getting her revenge.
The story wasn't perfect, and it required many things to be just so, but how else could one explain all the dead Righteous cultivators mixed in with the bodies of the company? How else would one explain the wide variety of injuries that had killed the company, as opposed to the Righteous, who had only died of blade wounds?
Most importantly, it was the kind of story Greathorn would want to hear. One with a villain to turn her anger against, a tangible force to oppose, and a reason to still live. Greathorn would accept Gaius' lies because that was the only way she could still live.
Why were cultivators so stubborn, so childish? It was because their way of thinking was inherently limited. As one advanced in cultivation, so too must they devote themselves to their Dao, and in doing so become stuck in their ways of thinking. A cultivator ceased to think like a rational human after they had lived a long enough life. Perhaps humans were simply never meant to live so long.
Since a cultivator could not truly change their way of life, then they would latch onto any excuse to continue living life the way they had built themselves for. They didn't change, it was their environment and their opportunities that changed. That was the rationale behind which Gaius chose his Blood Favored; those whose nature was suited for his plans, those whose environment would push them toward fighting the Righteous Alliance, and those whose opportunities would pull them toward gaining more power.
Greathorn, Gaius had said, did not have strong enough ambition to truly be great, despite her impressive potential. She needed to lose her remaining friends, lose this weak group she had kept around because she was too sentimental to enforce higher standards. She needed a strong motivation to attain as much strength as possible, and to cause as much damage to the Righteous Powers as she could.
Hm, how odd. Redmoon's fist was clenched - shaking, even. Perhaps she was more affected by this miserable work than she thought. Indeed, Redmoon was dissatisfied by the way the Empty King seemed to be changing, not that she had any choice but to go along with it.
Gaius' ambition and clarity of purpose made his soul shine with peerless radiance, but he himself was not immune to this light. He blinded himself with self-righteousness, with the long game, with an utterly insatiable hunger to achieve, to overcome, to
conquer.
Greathorn was holding her blade to Gaius' neck now, the edge disappearing into the darkness of his identity-concealing cloak, but the King was unphased. Even as she shouted in his face, he looked on resolutely, his confidence unshakeable. Suddenly, the blade fell, as Greathorn submitted herself to the Wise Man's judgment.
Once, Gaius Antonius had asked Redmoon 'do you think I'm evil?' She had said no, and she would still answer in this way. There was a kindness in his actions, however unwanted that kindness may be. He did this for his people, for his family; he did most things for those reasons. Still, one did not have to be evil to cause harm. Gaius, who had aspired to Kingship his whole life, could not relate to other people. He could not see possibilities outside the path he had laid for himself, brick by brick.
Was that why he cherished ambition with such tenderness? Was that Gaius' way of expressing empathy toward others?
Greathorn's body shuddered as the Word of Power took hold, almost as if she were suffering a seizure. The Might of the Conqueror, Gaius called this one. The warrior would be incomparable to her old self in just a few minutes, once the change set in. Without those companions, who couldn't keep up with her and held back her progress, she would grow unabated. She would crush enemy after enemy with ease and consume them all, improving her rate of cultivation alongside her baseline power. In time she would become a thorn in the side of the Righteous Alliance.
Gaius' actions would increase the amount of evil in the world, without a doubt. Mortals would starve as a result of the war. They would be killed, or eaten, or used to satisfy the base desires of invading soldiers. The right thing to do would be to end the war, to reduce suffering. And yet, were the Demonic Alliance to face defeat, it would hinder Redmoon's progress. Only by attaining the power to purify this world could she save it.
Should she condemn Gaius? Should she hate Gaius? The answer was unclear. Either way, until her term of service was up there would be no choice for her to make.
"I'll save you one day too, Empty King. From your impure desires, from your madness." Redmoon promised, her voice somber and quiet.
She put her telescope away, not wishing to watch any more.
——
Redmoon! I wanted to check back in on her. She's grown quite a lot in recent years, and will only continue to progress from here. I gave her a powerful new gimmick from that guy whose arm she ate, and also buffed her other stuff in ways that didn't come into play in this chapter. Definitely gonna do more with her soon.
I wanted to explore Redmoon's perspective on this spree Gaius is on, and the mixed feelings it's inspiring in her. Ultimately she'll stomach a lot so long as it's in service to her ultimate goal, while harshly condemning all evil outside of that. It's a hypocritical way of thinking, but aren't all messiahs hypocrites in a way?
It's surprisingly fun to get into the weeds of how a technique functions - the power system we've developed is fairly broad, but has enough rules that if you wanna yap about it, you have a lot to work with. Redmoon's got some weird abilities, so I felt it necessary to make it more clear how they work.
The title of this omake, 'Feed The Beast', has multiple meanings. The first is literal, Gaius is feeding Redmoon to keep her loyal and hardworking. The second is metaphorical, in the sense that Greathorn is encouraged to become more ruthless and brutal so that she can better make use of her Word of Power - and to make her burn out eventually. The third is the broadest - Gaius' actions can the flames of war, causing mass death and political instability
