Chapter 27

  Somehow, some way, the act of accumulating supernatural power became mundane for Yin.

  Day in and day out was the same, cycle, practice techniques, practice with his halberd, sleep and repeat. Even the odd trip to go exterminate some weak pack of dreadbeasts became just another thing he did. Barely even worth mentioning.

  Conversations on the mountaintop became more and more scarce as months passed, nothing new to discuss. The most exciting thing had been Yin’s ascent to high gold and subsequently having his Falling Star goldsign grow.

  Fortunate or unfortunate, he’d gained not only another big tusk to distort his mouth, he’d also grown two extra arms. But only on his left side. They were even more of a nuisance because they were only sort of under his control, constantly grasping for things when they were out.

  But even that had become boring to make fun of for the others, so back they were to only going through their routines.

  That was, until Duong came up to Yin’s pavilion with a long expected gift.

  ‘’Oooh! Hoooh! Ooo!’’ Yin uncontrollably hooted like a monkey as he saw the metal in his friend's hands. His goldsigns going nuts, smacking him over the head a few times. ‘’Ooo hot me mah-’’ He switched to his pure madra and tried again. ‘’You got me my Melon Grippers!’’

  ‘’Wrong! I’m not letting you call them that.’’ Duong scowled, the devastating expression might have killed a lesser man. ‘’If you don’t like the Titans Grasp then make up something that isn’t disgusting.’’

  Yin, who had been trying to snatch them out of Duongs hand’s, paused. ‘’Disgusting? What’s wrong with picking melons?’’

  Duong’s face was blank for a moment before going red. ‘’What- But you..’’

  Yin pulled the two pairs of gauntlets out of limp hands and admired the honestly amazing craftsmanship. The normal sized pair had their scripts engraved into the metal and leather, perfectly joined so the lines wouldn’t be broken even when he moved his hands. ‘’What about God Hands then? Mh, but I’m only going to have these on when I use pure madra..’’

  ‘’It wasn’t an innuendo.. No, he’s trying to fool me.’’ Duong muttered, pacing back and forth.

  Yin pulled the smaller pair on and worked his fingers, admiring the perfect works of art. Then he slid his hands into the larger pair, so big that they could wrap around his entire torso. The scripts hummed, a connection formed from Yin to the gloves and he allowed it to siphon his madra to power them. It came to life instantly and suddenly every little movement was mirrored by the massive gauntlets.

  Yin carefully brought a finger as thick as his arms up to scratch his chin, still hairless as ever, and hummed in contemplation. ‘’What about Pumpkin Grippers-’’

  ‘’Fuck off.’’ Duong growled in accented english. ‘’Those are my greatest achievement in either life, can you take this seriously!’’

  Seeing he’d actually pissed him off, Yin let the bigger pair of hands down on the floor and deactivated the scripts. Pulling his normal sized, now feeling pitifully small, hands out he pointed to one. ‘’The Judges,’’ He pointed down at the bigger pair. ‘’The Executioners. How’s that?’’

  Duong was still fuming but seemed at least a little appeased. ‘’Judge, Jury and Executioner?’’ Sighing he sat and picked one of the massive gloves up and polished some already spotless parts with a cloth he’d taken out. ‘’Better, but it’s a bit.. edgy… Why are you looking at me like that?’’

  ‘’You care about things like that?’’ Yin asked, honestly blindsided that Duong of all people had a sense for things being cringe.

  ‘’In this case, yes. You giving them a name that has to do with lawfare is concerning considering how often you assign people the death penalty. You even did it to Zeurel the other day-’’

  ‘’And she deserved it!’’

  ‘’My point is that.. I don’t know what my point is. Try again.’’ He went back to stubbornly polishing as Yin snickered and played with the other massive gauntlet.

  Thinking about it for a while, Yin eventually had to admit he was stumped. ‘’I can’t think of anything. Can’t even remember any names from Earth that would be fitting for these.’’

  ‘’In that case they’ll be the Titans Grasp until you figure out something fitting that isn’t an innuendo or nonsense garbage.’’ Duong placed the gauntlet back over Yin's hand and rose. ‘’I’m going to do some more work with Secretary, she wanted you to come and bounce some ideas with you.’’

  Yin pushed himself off the floor with the knuckles of his gauntlets and quickly followed. Part of his willpower training had been to simply ignore distractions and continue working. An excuse to break the pattern was more than welcome. ‘’She’s been cooking something up for a long time now. Do you know what it is?’’

  Duong scowled as Yin played around, using the Titans Grasp to walk with his hands and randomly swinging them around. ‘’She’s been raising a dream remnant to true gold, it’s going to be her new body.’’

  Yin broke into a sprint with his pure cloak, bounding into their vastly expanded living room. Kaido was on the floor, looking ragged as had become usual the last few months, he bounced over her and into the short hallway to the crafting room.

  The old workshop had been too small so they’d simply broken down the walls and subsumed it into the living room. The new one was six times larger, and many times that more well stocked.

  ‘’Yin.’’ Secretary greeted, surrounded by half a dozen clones and enough forged calculations to fill a textbook.

  ‘’Secretary!’’

  ‘’Yin!’’ The Secretary in the middle of the group repeated louder to match him.

  ‘’Tell me everything! Except all the nitty gritty details and anything superfluous, keep it concise!’’ He pointed at her with his massive fingers, doing his best not to get distracted by all the casters laying around Duongs workspaces.

  Secretary tilted her head this way and that, face remaining expressionless. ‘’Secretary has finished her plans for her upgrade. And she has spent the last two months analyzing and refining her new command network.’’ Her clones dispersed into motes of light and purple clouds one by one. ‘’Secretary believes that she is experiencing anxiety in the face of a big change.’’

  Yin walked up and embraced her, patting her head with a single finger of his gauntlets. ‘’C’mon Secretary, you’ve got nothing to be worried about.’’

  ‘’This is true. However, as Secretary has come to learn, emotions are illogical.’’ She gripped his clothes and tried to grind her head into his chest for a bit before letting go. ‘’Secretary is ready.’’

  Just like that huh? Yin watched in amusement as she tottered over happily to a containment script and let out a deep purple remnant that was tall enough that it had to hunch over to not touch the ceiling.

  As she led it over to a desk she began explaining. ‘’This will be Secretary’s new body. Her calculations have revealed that the synergy between a pure dream remnant and her spiritual body will be greater than one diluted by light.’’ She wasted no time, picking up a blade and carving into the remnant as soon as it was on the table.

  ‘’To further increase synergy, and potentially create exponential enhancement upon ascension Secretary will forge all internal scripts herself and dedicate parts of herself to maintaining them until they become a permanent addition.’’

  Yin watched the macabre show of her splaying open the remnants chest, then its arms, legs and head. The result was something like an animal skin rug, a purple humanoid one at least.

  While she worked, Duong came in and stood next to Yin. ‘’She’s been dragging her feet for months and you got her going just like that?’’

  ‘’Yeah, just like that.’’

  Duong sighed and walked over to some shelves and picked up a pair of clinking boxes. Setting them down near Secretary Yin saw they were full of dream and pure scales.

  Secretary directed a drudge that had unfolded from the ceiling while Yin had looked away for a moment. A dozen metal arms came down and held the purple flesh open.

  Secretary turned to Duong and handed him the knife, her illusory appearance fading to reveal her pinkish body. ‘’Please open Secretary’s head.’’

  He was somehow unfazed by the request and set the knife on her forehead. ‘’Carefully.’’ She added as he made slow incisions.

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  Yin had to remind himself that she was basically a mech pilot and that splitting her literal skull open was just her way of disembarking. The analogy didn’t make the pins and needles that crawled up his spine subside in the least.

  Her face fully split and was pulled back with the help of the drudge, and the scripts they’d written inside were revealed. One by one they started to fade, and after a moment Secretary started to come out.

  She was different from the cloudlike mass she had been, now more a purple eldritch tangle of writhing impressions and thoughts. Yin had to look away as just the sight of her started to scramble his mind.

  Relief - Curiosity - Desires - Remnant - Work - Focus - Duong - Focus - Yin - Focus - Focus - Focus - Remnant - Scripts - Work

  Duong groaned and staggered a few steps back as Secretary seeped down into the purple remnant. Her previous body’s head slowly stitched back up by a pair of arms from the drudge.

  ‘’Strange.’’ The remnant whispered in Secretarys voice. ‘’It is.. lonely. Only one of me now.’’

  With its head made whole again the remnant drifted around a bit before coming over to Yin and holding on to him as if he were a rock in a river.

  Meanwhile impressions from Secretary’s main body continued to flow. Control, flow, division, merging. The process was fast, scripts written all over the internals of the remnant at the same time. Smaller, denser and much more numerous than what Yin and Duong had done before.

  ‘’This is going to get a bit weird.’’ Yin idly patted the upset former body of Secretary. The remnant was obviously going to keep staying around. ‘’Let’s figure out a new name for you-’’

  ‘’Secretary is Secretary.’’ The remnant said, a shimmer passed over her and she was in Secretary’s usual appearance.

  ‘’Yeah, that’s what I mean though, because Secretary is over there.’’ Yin pointed to the tangle of dreams that was working its way into the chest cavity of the purple remnant. ‘’Did you have any ideas for what you would be called after the, uh.. split?’’

  The former Secretary frowned, throwing Yin for a few loops as she made a seemingly authentic facial expression for the first time. ‘’The plan was this one would be Sub-Secretary One. But Secretary is Secretary, so that one should be Sub-Secretary One.’’ She pointed at the one on the table.

  Duong rubbed his face with both hands and walked away.

  Yin wracked his scattered brain. ‘’Aah, uhhh, assis- Assistant!’’ He wrapped a Titans Grasp around her torso and picked her up so they could see eye to eye. She wriggled a bit but seemed pleased to be in his grasp. ‘’Secretary is the dream spirit, we can agree on that right?’’ She nodded. ‘’In that case you can’t continue to be Secretary, since she is over in that body now. Your new name will be Assistant. How does that sound?’’

  She wheeled through several expressions and kicked her legs a bit. ‘’Maybe..’’

  ‘’Well, let’s see how this goes and then we can discuss it properly afterwards, alright?’’ When she nodded meekly he went to set her down, but she refused to leave the embrace of his massive metal hand.

  Meanwhile the operation was proceeding at blistering speeds. Scripts had formed rudimentary bones and channeling pathways inside the splayed open remnant. And Secretary in her gaseous dream spirit body was sinking into them, slowly spreading to become part of the whole construct.

  ‘’What’s going on in here?’’ Kaido asked, slithering over the floor on a bed of water madra. Yin was deeply tempted to yell for her to shut up, because it would be funny, but he didn’t want to distract Secretary.

  ‘’Kaido, say hi to Assistant.’’ Yin wheeled around and presented her as if he were holding a kitten.

  The dragon looked from him to Duong, obviously confused.

  ‘’Just say the goddamn words Kaido!’’

  ‘’Hi Assistant?’’

  Yin turned her around in his hands. ‘’See, what’d you think of that? Do you like Assistant?’’

  Her head swaggled around a bit and she muttered rather than speak in perfect monotone like Secretary always did. ‘’We.. I.. I will think about it.’’

  ‘’What’s going on, has he finally gone insane?’’ Kaido ‘whispered’ to Duong, having slithered up to him at his desk. The human actually being able to moderate his volume whispered back too low for Yin to hear. Kaido rumbled in understanding after a moment.

  ‘’Assistance is required. Yin. Yin. Yin.’’ Secretary called through the dream remnant, repeating his name until he came to stand over it. ‘’Secretary overestimated her reserves, please supply dream scales.’’

  Finding a conveniently placed stash of them, Yin picked the box up with a rattle, then dumped one massive glove off so he could fit his hand into it. ‘’Where do I put them?’’ The internals of the remnant now looked very similar to a poorly organized server rack strapped onto a human skeleton.

  The purple smoke inside the hollow bone structure coalesced where a heart would have been in a living creature. And then shifted into a horrifying maw filled with noxiously purple teeth. ‘’ ‘Aah’, as they say.’’ The mouth spoke without a tongue.

  Yin dropped two scales in and watched the mouth chew them, swelling a bit as the condensed energy expanded. ‘’Please continue to provide more until Secretary says stop.’’

  ‘’Are you going to keep working more today? Because I’m getting kind of hungry and I was wondering if you would like to go down and eat at a place by the waterside.’’

  Yin let his Falling Star madra come out and glared at Duong and the dragon who were making lunch plans during an open body cavity surgery. They thankfully took the hint and left.

  Huffing, Yin absently pulled the halo of madra back in. It had been an intimidation tactic at first, but now it would just come out subconsciously when he didn’t even mean to do it. His Starshot binding made it so easy that he barely needed to think to make single bands these days.

  Assistant came up next to him and grabbed a handful of pure scales from the other box to eat like they were popcorn.

  Secretary paused in her work and a few purple eyes formed along the bones and channels inside the remnant body. ‘’Sub-Secretary One, what did you just do?’’

  She looked at the handful of white coins and sucked on the one she’d already popped in her mouth.

  ‘’Those are necessary for Secretary to complete the process, cease.’’

  ‘’I want to be Assistant.’’

  ‘’Okay, good.’’ Yin interjected and forced her to drop the scales back into the box. ‘’How about we let Secretary keep working and we’ll go play with all the stuff Duong has made, alright Assistant?’’

  Assistant hummed in a constant tone as Yin herded her over to the desks with tools and weapons. Then he thought better of it and took her right out into the living room. ‘’Zeurel! Zeureeeel!’’ His girlfriend peered out around the corner. ‘’Come babysit our newest old member of the family, Assistant. Secretary is no longer in this body.’’

  ‘’What?’’

  ‘’Thanks, I gotta go back and help Secretary finish the process.’’ Yin turned and marched right back into the workshop, ignoring further questions completely. As soon as he crossed the threshold he heard Secretary repeating his name.

  ‘’Please continuously provide pure scales until Secretary says stop.’’

  Doing as she said, Yin dropped scales one after another into her open maw. With each one her ghastly body swelled just a little bit, filling out more of the skeletal structure she’d made.

  ‘’Sufficient for now, please standby.’’

  Apparently in the last stages, Secretary began to patch up the last holes in the scripts, sealing herself in. The dense work was beyond anything Yin could do with his level of control. Forging lines of script became exponentially harder for every character added, needing to keep the finished ones under control while forging more was like splitting his mind.

  Something Secretary didn’t need to do since she was essentially several dozen minds working in tandem. In the future, with her new and improved body, and maybe some advancements, Secretary would be able to help Yin and the whole crew do something similar.

  To his senses it suddenly felt as if Secretary the dream spirit faded away. Only the dream remnant was there now. ‘’All is working as intended,’’ The splayed open body spoke physically, rather than having his mind be tricked into thinking he’d heard them. ‘’Please aid the drudge in stitching Secretary’s body up, then Secretary will be ready to continue her work.’’

  The metal arms from the ceiling dutifully descended with a multitude of needles and an array disc that would help to turn his madra into temporary string.

  Yin took a second to get used to making strings before setting to work, starting at one foot as the drudge took the other. ‘’So you’re already getting up to speed? How’s the new body feel?’’

  ‘’Secretary has expanded her horizons.’’ The voice coming from the remnant was the same as it had been before. ‘’She will need some time to reach optimal functionality.’’

  Nodding, Yin wove his hands around the drudge arms, aiding it in stitching up the stomach.

  A clatter of noise came into the room and Zeurel came and stood over them. ‘’Hey, is this a sensitive process?’’

  ‘’Not really, why?’’

  ‘’Grandpa is back.’’

  Yin sucked in a breath and pulled the drudge's needle out of the flesh of his hand. ‘’Tell him to kowtow and wait for me to finish up here and then I can come and execute him.’’

  ‘’This is good news.’’ Secretary said, using her stitched up arm to help finish up her face. ‘’His aid will be necessary for some of Secretary’s plans.’’

  Yin put his needle down and forged some scales that he let drop onto Secretary so she could do whatever she wanted with them. Zeurel, seeing he was done, scooped him up in her arms and carried him like a limp cat.

  ‘’I’m gonna get violent.’’

  Zeurel lifted him higher and kissed his head. He was tempted to start kicking after that but it had honestly calmed him down a bit.

  Outside Montai’s madra whipped the mountaintop into a storm, only barely controlled enough that the blade component wasn’t cutting their skin. In an artificial eye of the storm his grandfather stood unbothered. Looking the same as he ever had, dressed in black clothes ornamented with feathers.

  Assistant stood behind him and was trying to pull one of the feathers out of his coat with no success.

  The Miniature Rose was still parked but Kaido and Duong were nowhere to be seen. Looking closer Yin saw Ten and Ti Li lurking in the cockpit of the cloudship. What had they been up to in there?

  Other than the whipping winds and Assistants grunts of exertion everyone was silent. So Yin decided to get things going properly.

  A twenty six band Starshot coalesced above his head, heavily pressing back on Montai’s own ruler technique to keep it stable.

  ‘’Explain yourself or face my wrath Gramps.’’ So Yin said, but the old man would be facing it either way.

  The old man’s brow furrowed into a glare and his madra churned a bit, making the shadows on the mountain deepen. But eventually he sighed and relented.