Chapter 23

  ‘’Still no sign of them!’’ Zeurel called, still peering out at the plains and woods under them with Duongs spyglass.

  No one bothered to answer as that was the twentieth time she’d made that call out. Instead they practiced. Ten forged yet another knife and let it drift up to the umbrella over her head, a terrifying thing made up of dozens of blades.

  Yin and Ti Li meanwhile forged their own constructs and tried to keep them stable in their aura for as long as possible. A matter of focus and willpower, and actually a very good exercise that neither had done much.

  Going further than usual Yin had made a hand of forged madra, but this time in open air instead of around his actual hands. And while he had it under control he tried to unfurl its fingers.

  This was completely contradictory to how he always used forging, turning the madra as hard as possible, and led to the construct destabilizing every time.

  Maybe because she was Ten’s sibling, or because her mindset was more malleable, Ti Li had a little hand that moved as fluidly as her real ones. When he’d been careless she’d already used it to rifle through his pockets, finding nothing since Yin didn’t own anything other than the necklace he’d taken.

  Advancing to gold was a massive boon to Yin, the amount of madra in his pure core was already approaching double of what he’d had at peak jade. So he had plenty to work with when Ti Li’s little thieving madra hand poked his own and made it fall apart.

  But it had been hours of this already and Yin was bored, so he switched tracks and ruled the pure madra scattered around them. Pulling it all into a cylinder and then sharpening it’s tip to make a javelin, finally he channeled more of his madra into it and forged it into stability.

  Plucking it from the air and twirling it a bit he paused, not knowing what to do with the thing he’d made on a whim.

  ‘’Oh? Oh! I see one! Oh shit, I see a lot of them!’’ Zeurel bounced by the cloudships boundary, her horns nearly scraping the rose thorns above.

  ‘’Finally.’’ Ten murmured while getting up, her blade umbrella following the motions fluidly.

  ‘’Zeurel, go stand in front of the cockpit and point the way so Secretary can take us down to them.’’ Yin dropped the javelin and carried it in his aura like Ten was doing. Much less successfully, the white spear dragged along the cloud as he walked. Looking down from the edge he saw a trail of destruction starting in an open field and leading into a hillside forest.

  Trees shivered and some fell as the dreadbeasts made their way through, eventually coming out on the other side finally letting Yin see what they were.

  Deer.

  Nightmarish, nearly eldritch, deer. Most lacked fur, covered in festering boils and jagged wounds. Some had horns, randomly branching and sharp, the leading beast's antlers were on fire.

  One caught sight of the cloudship and let out a braying shriek, its mouth split all the way back to its neck. The rest of the herd picked up the cry, the resulting cacophony hurt his ears even as far above them as they were.

  ‘’Alright, fuck these things.’’ Yin cocked back his spear and focused more madra into it. Then threw it with all his cloaked might. The spear whistled through the air given a minor correction by his will before it left his aura domain.

  The pure white construct was hard to see as it traveled, but its effect became very apparent when it took one deer in the back, bisecting it.

  The herd didn’t take the loss of one of their number quietly, the leading one barked and brayed, the fire on its antlers gathering.

  ‘’Shit. What do we have for defense?’’ Yin asked, and Zeurel shrugged, vines of forged madra curling around her arms. Ten likewise shrugged, waiting to get into range for her to unleash devastation. ‘’Awesome, I should have had Duong make us something before we left.’’

  ‘’Should I tell Secretary to go higher?’’ Ti Li asked, hanging back by the building.

  Yin felt out his reserves and shook his head. ‘’I might be able to do something.’’ More quietly he added. ‘’God I hope this doesn’t mess up the ship.’’

  The deers attack gathered over the herd, a great fireball that shot up towards them. Yin cloaked and jumped out to meet it, pure madra surging through his body. A moment before impact Yin expelled all he could contain within his aura and circulated it around him. The fireball hit his hollow domain and exploded.

  He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d just been temporarily blinded by the blast or if he’d actually lost consciousness, but he was falling in the wrong direction now. The hillside was approaching his head faster than he was at all comfortable with. His Falling Star cloak flared and all he could do was extend his arms and prepare.

  His hands met the dirt and he heaved, narrowly saving his spine from being crumpled, instead breaking ribs and bones.

  His body bounced, and he felt like he was watching it from far away, as madra ripped through him to heal the damage. Pain was surprisingly not all that bad, but Yin realized his brain was probably floating in more adrenaline than most people experienced in their lifetime.

  His pure core started to gutter out, but it felt like most of his bones had popped back into their correct alignment. And his heart was still beating, so that was good, even if it was doing it so hard that he felt it all the way down in his toes. Screaming, explosions and roars of fire, the forest caught another fireball and went up in blazes.

  Yin could process how idiotic and reckless he’d been later, for now he still had some dreadbeasts to kill. A painful step took him high enough to oversee the carnage Ten was wreaking on the beasts. Her blades like a mist that constantly harried the monsters, not allowing a single one to gain momentum.

  Yin readied a four band Starshot with a large portion of his Falling Star madra and waited for a good target. The leader of the herd diligently stepped up to take one for the team, another massive fireball building over its head.

  The bands collapsed, and the miniature star fired, carving a glowing line in the air ending at the tip of the dreadbeasts snout. The explosion of all the energy expanding hid the deer from sight for a second, and when Yin saw it again the nightmare was even worse.

  The creature was in the truegold range, and being a former sacred beast that meant it was quite durable. The explosion had destroyed it’s upper jaw and not much more, the lower half of it’s face slacked down touching it’s neck. It screamed spraying blood and corrupted madra out of the destroyed portion of its head.

  Ten sent a concentrated barrage of knives at it, only making the shrill shrieking worse. It only ended when Zeurel finally acted from even further back than Yin. A tangle of forged madra vines was lobbed over the group and explosively shot into every living target in its range. The green tangle pulsed and dragged the hooked bodies back towards its center.

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  The technique seemed to feed off of life force to keep itself going, sinister, something he’d expect from maybe himself or Duong, not Zeurel. Shrill cries and braying barks, coughing groans and maddened rumbling, they were dying, but not quickly.

  He had enough madra left for another six band Starshot so he readied it, bringing it together slowly, concentration shot by the horrible sounds. The technique collapsed and was sent out with a peep, then exploded violently in the tangle, putting an end to two or three of the monsters.

  ‘’Is it safe to approach your.. thing, Zeurel?’’ Ten yelled, bringing most of her still intact knives back to bob around her.

  The goat came into Yin's view a moment later, further up the hill and looking even more harrowed than Yin was currently feeling. ‘’It shouldn’t be able to grab anything else now that it’s in stage three!’’

  Shouldn’t?

  Ten approached the wheezing beasts regardless of the very tangible danger and set to poking holes in arteries to end their suffering faster.

  Zeurel caught sight of him and started to hop down, the Miniature Rose appeared over the crest and stopped a safe distance from the gore pile.

  ‘’Are you okay?’’ Zeurel’s voice jittered and when she reached him and half embraced half patted him down for injuries he felt her entire body shaking.

  ‘’I should be asking the same thing.’’ Yin wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. She slumped down on the ground and they stayed in their embrace for a moment.

  ‘’[Analyzing]’’ Secretary’s voice sounded in their heads before the real one spoke further away. ‘’Based on records of this species there may still be workable bindings. Additionally the gallbladders, upper intestines, kidneys, horns and nasal glands may be of use in alchemy. Secretary proposes we harvest and store these for further examination. The warping into dreadbests may have ruined these properties. Ten, please make incisions at the marked locations.’’

  The sound of meat being cut reigned, and Yin pushed himself off Zeurel, the moment ruined. ‘’I should go help out so we can leave faster.’’ She held onto his robes with one hand and rubbed at her eyes with the other. ‘’I’ll take you back to the ship first, that okay?’’ She nodded.

  —

  ‘’Can I use this blood to aspect-’’ ‘’No!’’ ‘’No Ti Li.’’

  Yin carefully splayed another carcass open so Ten could reach in and get the hunger binding. The white, see through, knot of corruption fouled Yin’s mood even more, making him think of Amau again.

  Secretary rushed in to accept the binding faster than Ten could offer it, almost wrestling for the thing. When she had it she rushed back to a pile of planks she’d had Ten cut for her. Drawing with machine-like precision scripts on the slats that would contain the binding.

  ‘’What are we keeping these for?’’ Ten asked, reaching in again to carve out the possibly useful organs.

  ‘’Are we going to use them for my aspecting?’’ Ti Li asked much more insistently.

  ‘’What?’’ Ten’s muffled voice escaped the dreadbeasts body cavity.

  ‘’No.. Well, yes, but probably no. There are a few conditions we need to meet before we can mess with hunger madra.’’ Ten slipped out of the corpse, took a breath of fresh air and then pulled Yin closer by his necklace.

  ‘’What do you mean by that? You’re going to give her a corrupted path?’’ Her eyes went up to the two bands of madra Yin circled over his head as a threat back.

  ‘’When she can handle it, yes.’’ Taking her wrist and forcing her hand away Yin continued to both of them. ‘’We’re going to use these to hopefully make weapons to do, on a small scale, what adding Hunger to our paths later will let us do. Forcefully take another creature's entire cultivation. Madra, lifeline, dreams and so on.’’

  Ten looked disgusted while Ti Li looked like she’d just been given a hoard of treasures. ‘’What kind of weapons?’’

  ‘’Hunger weapons. Don’t pout at me, I literally just explained it.’’ The little demon didn’t relent. ‘’Alright, fine, probably spears. We’re working on what we know from our past lives here. Now stop gawking and help out. I want to leave as soon as possible.’’

  ‘’Yin.’’ Secretary said from right beside him, making him flinch. How the hell did they manage to keep sneaking up on him? ‘’I wish to scour this area and one forty six miles away in that direction for a root called Blue Susumarium.’’ When he sighed she continued. ‘’There may also be a kind of beetle in this habitat that is useful for my craft.’’

  Yin weighed the potential gains he’d make with potions from Secretary against his fraying temper. Greed, as usual, won. ‘’Fine, we'll stick around so you can look for your stuff.’’

  Because she didn’t know how to change her facial expressions correctly, Secretary instead expressed her joy by creating little firework sparkles and hearts in the air around her head.

  Yin huffed and brought the bands over his own head into each other and sent the resulting projectile off into the distance.

  —

  At another stop Yin made sure Ten and Ti Li joined Secretary to go bug hunting while he stayed and spoke to Zeurel.

  He had to move some improvised boxes around to enter the cycling room where she sat. ‘’Hey.’’ She nodded and shifted aside a bit so he could sit next to her against the back wall. Sighing deeply as he slid down into the little room left he decided to get right into it. ‘’I totally suck at planning. I did it again, thought everything was going to work out just as I had made it up in my head and then almost died.’’

  ‘’I’m sorry.’’

  ‘’It’s literally only my fault-’’

  ‘’I could have stopped that fireball.’’ Zeurel spoke over him. ‘’I have more madra than anyone, I could have just- how do you say it? Vented it? Just vented it out and overpowered the fire.’’ She shifted a bit, pushing Yin into the wall with her hip. ‘’And that thorn tangle? I didn’t even put all I could into it.. I didn’t like doing that by the way.. … Draining life is the opposite of what I’m supposed to do as the Phoenix.’’

  Yin considered that, let her stew a bit while he thought.

  ‘’Zeurel The Phoenix huh?’’

  She turned her head to look at him. ‘’Yeah, that’s why I chose her name. From the start I wanted to be like her..’’

  ‘’Suriel.’’ Yin took a massive chance saying the name of such a powerful entity, but reality seemed unchanged so he continued as Zeurel made a questioning sound. ‘’Suriel the Phoenix, Su Ri El, not Su Rel.’’

  ‘’What? No.. No, that’s not right-’’

  ‘’It is.’’

  ‘’Shut.. Shut up! It’s not!’’ Yin laughed as he was pressed into the floor. ‘’Stop laughing at me, you’re trying to gaslight me!’’

  Yin snickered and huffed when she turned and sat on top of him. ‘’Ghh.. I swear on my soul, I’m telling the truth.’’ He said it with laughter in his voice, but the words echoed with something beyond his understanding and an odd feeling came over him. ‘’Ah?’’

  Zeurel lifted herself and stood in a startled crouch looking at Yin. ‘’Ohh. Soul oath.’’

  Yin slithered away in case she decided to sit on him again. ‘’Shit, an actual soul oath. Gotta be careful with that.’’

  She slipped back down the wall and crossed her legs, patting them, inviting Yin to sit there. He obliged. ‘’I don’t think that means what you said is true, just that YOU think it is.’’

  ‘’Pff, hah, fine fine.’’

  They sat in the dim room for a while, only quietly thinking.

  ‘’Didn’t she.. I guess I can say Suriel. Didn’t Suriel kill a lot of things? Like cutting out a tumor, I think is how she worded it.’’

  ‘’That’s not what I did.’’ She rested her chin on the top of his head. ‘’I took life from something alive and consumed it to power a technique.’’

  ‘’Even though they’re just dreadbeasts you still feel bad about it?’’

  ‘’All life is sacred.’’ Her hands squeezed his thighs as he breathed to respond, stopping him. ‘’Shut up, that’s not a thing to joke about. What I mean is even though they’re monsters that will kill until they get killed in turn, they are alive. And that life is sacred. I will kill dreadbeasts to keep them from doing so to innocents, but I won’t just close my eyes and pretend I didn’t end a life doing so.’’

  ‘’Even though they are dreadbeasts I will pray for the lives they lost.’’

  Yin felt another shudder at the edges of his perception, and he could guess what it was. Reality responding to a revelation, the requisite to advance to underlord. If the chamber had the eight treasures they needed to balance the environment it might have worked then and there.

  That was a good idea actually, to remake the cycling chamber that almost only Secretary used into a lord advancement chamber. Something for later.

  ‘’I think we might as well make an overnight stop at the nearest city and go find some entertainment. Maybe watch a movie.’’

  Zeurel nearly took his head off when she squealed and hugged him.