Chapter 51 - Borrowed Time

Not for the first time, Lukas woke up wanting nothing more than to stay in bed and ignore the rest of the world. That or conjure a gun and shoot himself in the head to get rid of the massive headache he was experiencing.

“Ngh.”

“I see you’ve finally graced us with your consciousness, Lukas.”

“Tanya.” Against his body’s protests, he pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes in exhaustion before remembering what he was doing before he fell asleep. All at once, his body went stiff, and his eyes darted around at full attention.

Tanya came closer and kissed him lightly in the lips. His hands went up to her hair and she deepened the kiss. Only when he relaxed did she pull back, a smile on her lips.

“Feel better?”

He chuckled. “You did that to make me relax, huh?”

“Among other things,” she said airily. “I had big plans for you, but someone decided to just sleep the entire thing off.”

Lukas opened his mouth to apologize, but she put a finger on his lips. “We owe our victory to you, Lukas. So I’m willing to cut you some slack this time.”

He barked out a slow laugh. “We won, huh?”

“Yep. Everything’s fine. We’re in your room,” she ordered, knowing exactly what was going through his mind. “There were no complications.”

He paused, and looked at her in the face. “None? No traps, no deadman switches whatsoever?”

She shook her head. “If there were any, they didn’t go off. Or were destroyed in that detonation. All thanks to you.”

A slow exhale escaped his lips, and he turned his attention to his hands as if to expect something there that wasn’t. Honestly, the last thing he clearly remembered was altering those wardstones and setting them to unleash the World’s energy directly into the fortress. He had some flecks of Tanya warping him through space to safety, and the image of something intensely bright and blue blowing up in the horizon, as a feeling of triumph surged through his body. He was almost certain there was more to it, that there was something he was missing, before his body had all but given out.

“So now… we wait?”

Tanya smiled. “Yes. We wait. It really went better than expected, Lukas. Solana spread word about the attack through secure channels. On one hand, Lord Naowa ensured that the Shimizu cannot play the Sacred Eight card anymore, and on the other, destruction of his fortress is making him look weaker than ever.”

“But Mujin is still alive and unharmed,” said Lukas, sitting with his back against the headboard. “And he’s the real power behind the clan.”

Tanya shook her head. “It’s about public perception. Ultaf’s assault on Zuken led to Lord Naowa shaming Mujin Shimizu in front of several shoguns of the entire South-Eastern dominion, in front of the Emperor and the Earth-King no less. Then, Ultaf attacked the svartalfars, and that gave further ammunition to Lord Naowa, who shamed him again, before the Fire King, and took away the Shimizu’s Sacred Eight status. This attack on the fortress only cements the idea that the Shimizu are a relic of the past, who were abusing their name to stay in power.”

“I see,” said Lukas, scratching his head. “So, there’s no way he’ll think that you were the one behind the attacks?”

“Not unless someone gives him the news, no.”

“Mmm… any collateral or potential damages?”

Tanya sighed. Her look suggested that she’d have liked it if they could have savored their intermittent peace for more than a few scant days, but then again, she shouldn’t have been surprised. She had seen him in action way too many times to know that he almost always found something to be paranoid about as soon as one obstacle was taken care of.

“Elena’s already experiencing weaknesses. Maude said that the nightmare needs to return to her body, or else, her soul might be irreparably damaged.”

Shit. That could be a minor problem. He had actually been expecting to let Ultaf just lie unconscious for a fortnight or two, until they finished preparations to take Mujin on.

“How long does she have?”

“Maybe four… or five days? Maude says that she can probably push it to six if she really tries, but it would be risky.”

“No need,” he said, pursing his lips. “We’ll just have to get things done within four.”

“Lukas, four days are barely —”

“ — better than risking her life. She did this to help us trap Mujin. I’m not going to put her life at risk.”

“So you’d choose Elena’s safety over mine.”

Lukas gave her a dirty look. “Everything that’s being done is being done for you.”

Tanya gritted her teeth and flexed her hands in frustration. “Sorry. It’s just… all of this is happening too quickly and I’m getting all jittery inside.”

“Don’t be. You still have to face your grandfather. Speaking of, what about the others? Don’t tell me everyone’s just waiting for me to wake up.”

She snorted. “Barely. Solana and the rest of her crew are already creating layers of barriers above and around the yokai territory as we speak. Ryu is helping Olfric out with a clear picture of our boundaries.  With the Sacred Eight status gone, Mujin wouldn’t be able to call upon the Cobalt Army, and Lord Naowa can safely pull them to some other territory when the fight inevitably happens. Already there is speculation about who destroyed the Peak, but general consensus is pointing fingers at the Fire King.”

Lukas did a double take. “The Fire King?”

Tanya’s lips quirked into an amused smile. “Jimmo Asuka. Demigod and brother of the Emperor. Rumor says he was really pissed at the Shimizu’s actions, like really, really pissed. For whatever reason, he takes his role in managing inter-racial cooperation seriously. And seeing the Earth-King speak in my grandfather’s favor might have ticked him off something fierce. It doesn’t help that the entire mountain peak was blown up. It obviously couldn’t have been the action of a Water, Earth, Ether or Wind spiritist. Too clean for that. And the only known Fire Warlord is in the Western dominion.”

“But you just said that the Fire King was in the session.”

She clearly was enjoying the look of confusion on his face. “They say he spoke his judgment and walked away. Mujin was still stuck there for another three hours or something. For all we know, he could’ve obliterated the Peak right after.”

“And no one even asked him about it?”

“Accuse the Emperor’s brother openly of destroying the castle of a disgraced clan? The Shoguns might be arrogant, but not stupid.”

“What about sympathy plays?”

“What plays?”

“Sympathy. The Clan loses their status, and an unknown force blasts their castle apart. Wouldn’t that attract sympathy from the other clans?”

Tanya threw her head back and laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The Empire isn’t a place for the weak, Lukas. The Shimizu blood is in the water, and every Clan will come at them like hungry sharks. They’ll laugh at him, demean the clan, stuff like that. In one move, Grandfather has lost everything.”

Lukas frowned, and looked at his hands again, before grabbing the pendant hanging around his neck. His expression turned blank.

“Not everything.”

“Excuse me?”

“He hasn’t lost everything. His name, his army, his castle and potentially his grandson, yes. But he is still a Warlord. Only when I’ll have taken that way, will I have truly deprived him of everything. Only then, will my sacrifice be complete.”

“Are you…” her voice cracked slightly. “I mean, there were thousands of soldiers there.”

He shook his head. “Believe me, no one would be happier than I if that were enough. But it isn’t. All those deaths, all that destruction, everything we accomplished, was aimed at plundering from Mujin. And that won’t be complete without snatching away his final and most devastating power.”

“His kami.”

He nodded.

“Do you think you can… you know, absorb it?”

He frowned. “Absorb a Warlord-class kami? I can, but it won’t be as useful as you think.”

“I don’t understand,” she said with a growing frown. “You’ve absorbed other creatures before. Lots of them. Why is this one different?”

“Kami aren’t like other creatures, Tanya. They are parasites. I’ve no doubt that Mujin’s kami was actually a Level-1 or Level-2 when he began. I’ll have to feed them my soul capacity to use its full power and skill, and while that’s not an issue for anything Level-3 or lower, it becomes a massive problem when you go to Level-4, or God forbid, Level-5.”

“Like that Ifrit King.”

“Yes.” He said, looking away with a frown. “The moment I give a Level-4 kami the soul capacity it needs, I won’t just gain the kami’s power and instincts, I’ll get the Level-4 skill as my own. The soul reflects the body, so my body will morph accordingly. My bones, my tissues, my body — all of it will transform, granting me absolute affinity with the element and anything that complements it, but —”

“It would make using other elements more difficult.”

“...Yes. My greatest strength is my unpredictability and to an extent, my uniformity with the other elements. After all this time, I can safely say that I have close to Level-3 control over all five. The moment I grab a Level-4 wind manipulation skill, all that control goes up in blazes. Until I can safely manage to hit Level-4 in all the other elements, I’ll be stuck trying to play aeromancer with the big boys and failing miserably.”

That wasn’t technically true. All he needed was to elevate himself to Level-39 and he’d be good to go. Kinetomancy, the Apex skill he had gotten from Inanna, controlled motion itself. And what was elemental manipulation if not motion?

But Tanya didn’t need to know that.

She pursed her lips. “You’re telling me you’ll set it free?”

He shook his head. “I cannot use it directly for myself. I said nothing about setting it free.”

And to be frank, he already had ideas. He had come a long way from that surprised guy with tunnel vision that didn’t think any further than the finish line. Sometimes it was a fight, at other times, a bargain with Inanna, or Solana, or just developing a particular skill. It was exactly that kind of shortsightedness that had led to him sacrificing himself foolishly which later caused Inanna to sacrifice herself in return.

No. The moment he had known that he had to kill Mujin, he had already prepared multiple plans for what would follow, both in the short and the long-term. He knew that he’d elevate himself to Level-39 and beyond, which would put him in the league of every Warlord out there and possibly a King or two. There was a difference after all between a Warlord that controlled one element, and one that controlled all five of them. But that was where his growth would slow down to a plateau.

It took decades to potentially elevate a Level-4 skill to a Level-5 skill, and Lukas just didn’t have that kind of time in his hands. Not with the kind of attention he was attracting and would be attracting. Inanna’s warnings still rang in his ears.

No. He needed to play to his talents. And his talent in this case, was his nature as a World. Creation. Alteration. Soul Siphon. Endless Soul Capacity. All of them and then some.

If he wanted King-level power, he’d need to siphon King-level creatures.

The Ifrit King would be a good start.

Again, not something he could just assimilate into himself. Like he had said Tanya, absorbing high-level beings came with their own issues. The Ifrit-King was Fire Incarnate. Adding his skills to his roster would turn him into an ever-immolating fire demon, destroying all his hard work. Same for any other creature on that thing’s level.

No. He needed an alternative. A way to harness the power of these creatures without actually doing it himself.

It was like the saying went — the best way to fight a war was to make someone else fight it.

Blob was, arguably, a good development on that front. A puppet that moved at his will, and while that worked for most creatures, it wouldn’t in case of a kami, owing to their lack of soul capacity. He’d need to create a synthetic prototype — a body capable of storing soul capacity within itself, with a physiological constitution compatible with the spirit’s element.

A featherglass core would take care of the former. Aqāru was more than capable of the latter. Perhaps he could add a skeletal framework using carquane, just to facilitate better conduction of the stored energy into every part of the body?

It would still be connected to him, but only on a technical level. For all intents and purposes, it would be an independent organism.

It would be… sapient. Conscious of its own existence.

The only real snag was his lack of a suitable Creation skill. Metaforge was great, but it was still Level-1, and could barely make shit that lasted longer than a couple of hours before they disintegrated into motes of energy. He could bypass some of that issue by using Level-3 Alteration to create featherglass and carquane from other substances, but aqāru… aqāru was the deal-breaker. Unlike other substances, aqāru was spiritually pure, and extremely potent. It required a level of alchemy that was beyond his current ability, and unless he pushed himself to Level-3 metaforgery, he doubted he’d make any significant growth.

If nothing else, there was always the option to get into the Haze and search for useful minerals. Maybe he’d discover some alternatives? He really could do with Mori’s sensing skills.

No. Bad Lukas. Bad! No considering killing others for skills.

He nodded to himself.

Even if it’d make things easy.

In the long run.

“Lukas?”

“Hmm?”

“You have that look on your face again.”

“What look?”

“The one that says that you’re planning something crazy, and that I’m gonna be stuck in a position I really don’t want to be in, and you’re going to do nothing about it no matter how much I ask otherwise.”

“Believe it or not, I was born like this.”

She snorted. “Whatever, think you want to get up? It’s already past noon.”

“Past noon?” He blinked. “That means… I slept for an entire day?”

Tanya gave him a wry grin.

He groaned, disappointed with himself. He’d had taken serious beatings before and still woken up within hours. After everything he went through in the Haze, all the leveling up, and most importantly, the remarkable ease with which he had taken down the Shimizu army, the last thing he had expected was to sleep for that long.

“Guess even Outsiders suffer from mana poisoning.”

Lukas shook his head at her statement. He hadn’t used mana very much. At least, nothing compared to the levels he had grown accustomed to using while traveling in the Haze.

“I channeled energy directly from the ley line beneath the castle,” he said. “I guess it affected me more than I expected.”

He’d need to do a quick scan of his anomaly faculties as quickly as possible. And then work on developing his new fighting style.

“What about the others?” he asked. “I’m surprised no one even tried to wake me up.”

“Well, Zuken is resting. Maude’s busy playing nurse. Elena’s with him. Olfric is out with Ryu, and Solana is busy. Everyone else just… doesn’t want to bother with you?”

“Why? I think I pulled off the mission pretty well.”

“Are you kidding me?” Tanya asked with a laugh. “You should’ve seen the shitshow that followed after you went to sleep. Everyone just went crazy at the idea of you being capable of taking out the entire fortress like that. Even with my fullest power, I couldn’t have brought the outer wards down, forget destroying the castle. You just made it vanish in a sea of flames.”

He took a moment to realize the implications.

And they weren’t surprising. It was no different from bait fishes making sure they weren’t in the path of a shark swimming in the vicinity. Not because the shark had a bad temper, but because it was a shark.

He was that shark now.

And that… suited him, somehow. He felt raw, and a little uncomfortable. Like there was something within him that needed fixing. And maybe scrubbing his skin off with moss and hot water. Maybe having a little distance from the yokai mob was a good thing. At least for a while.

“Good.”

“Good?”

He nodded, and scratched the back of his head. “It’ll give me the privacy I need. After everything we went through there, and with everything that’s coming, I more or less need to figure out how to fight again.”

Tanya was silent for several long seconds as she digested his words.

“I don’t understand. You fought the Empress, and trained yourself in whatever World-powers you have. Then you spent all that time in the Haze fighting monsters and gaining more power, and just before waking up, you totaled the Shimizun fortress and the army within like they were nothing, and now you're saying you don’t know how to fight?”

He shook his head.

“My fighting style involves melee combat against large-groups with heavy emphasis on kinetic attacks and terramancy. But every time I’ve had to fight an opponent stronger than me, I’ve had to improvise new ways to counter them. I used a suicidal mind-technique against the anomaly’s guardian, and corrosion against Hreidmar. If not for your aid, I wouldn’t have gained the bylestyr’s skills, or the chance to level up. And even then, Blob was instrumental in killing them all. Inanna used Motion Negation against that Ifrit King, so that’s not on me. Against Solana, I used kinetomancy. And I tricked Meynte using Alteration and Territory Creation. I used Blob as a puppet against Ultaf’s army, and even then, I had to improvise by drawing power from the ley lines.”

Tanya crinkled her face.

“Mujin Shimizu is unlike any of them. He’s a Level-4 Aeromancer, which means he’s way faster than I am. His force blasts would be infinitely stronger than mine. His reflexes and movement would be beyond anything my brain can keep up with. Your grandfather is… smart, dangerous, ruthless, experienced and a hell lot more unkillable than I am. He might not be as deadly as that Ifrit King, but unlike that beast, he won’t be playing with me. Honestly, between him and the King, I’d have gone for the latter.”

“Lukas, the ifrit King would have scorched us alive without your goddess helping.”

“And what does that tell you?”

That shut her up.

For a couple of seconds.

“You can always spar with me,” she offered. “See where you stand against an aeromancer. I’m sure Frost would love the idea.”

“Of course, darling,” Her voice strained as Frost spoke through her. “Thanks to my other half, I completely missed the action, as they say.”

“Could you not just warn me before you do that?” Tanya complained, rubbing her neck. “It hurts when you tighten my vocal cords without giving me a second to brace it.”

Lukas stayed silent for a moment, his eyes locked onto  Tanya’s white ones, studying them carefully. It was true that he had gotten a great amount of fighting experience against a multitude of opponents, covering long-range, mid-range and melee combat. But to this day, he remembered watching her frosty avatar meet Inanna head-on, how everything around him was a blur of motion and energy, sounds tumbling upon each other so fast that it was impossible to identify who was responsible for it. Each of them were moving at such speeds that even their afterimages were difficult to keep track of.

He wondered what he would think of that fight now.

“You know…” He began, trying not to smile at the thought of it. “I think that’s a good idea too.”

“You do?” asked Tanya, surprised.

“Of course,” Frost agreed. “Seeing you trap the Empress was entertaining, but that showed your ingenuity, and not your strength. The last time, you were but a weakling, and if not for your goddess’s intervention, you’d be dead. I’d love to see exactly how far you’ve come in this short while.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” he admitted. “I’ve seen how fast Tanya is when she lets go of her inhibitions. And you fought Inanna herself. I’ve grown, but in a head-on clash, I’ll lose.”

Frost let out a wicked little cackle. “Wonderful. There are two of them. One is afraid of her power, and the other discounts his. Two peas in a pod, truly.”

“I don’t discount—”

“Oh please,” said Frost, as Tanya’s hair began changing to snowy white, matching the pearly sheen in her eyes. “I’ve seen that look on your face, Outsider. When you faced me back then in that anomaly. And again, when we had our bargain. That look that belongs to a predator, a monster among monsters. I’ve seen it in your eyes when you faced Meynte, seen what happens when you are utterly enraged and shut down your emotions… when you let your inner monster loose.”

Her lips twisted into a grimace. “That’s not true,” said Tanya, “Lukas isn’t a—”

“Do not lie to me,” snapped Frost again. “I am you. I know your deepest thoughts, the lies you tell yourself. You’ve seen what happens when someone earns that gaze of his, when he unleashes his hidden fury. No matter what defenses they have, no matter their powers, they are guaranteed death. No matter what preparations they make. The only thing that changes is the time and manner of their execution. Tell me you cannot see the stiffness in that skinwalker’s features when she looks at Aguilar. It's the same look a prey has when fending off a predator.”

“Hmph,” said Lukas. “Your concern is flattering, Frost. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re afraid of me.”

“I am.”

Lukas opened his mouth to speak but words failed him. He had not expected that.

“I am Frost, the herald and avatar of the End. Anomalies and Worlds are my food, my prey. They are Creators, and everything that has been created, shall die. And someday, even the Creator will perish and only darkness shall remain. But you are no ordinary Creator, are you?”

Her cadaverous gaze met his own.

“You are an Invader. A tyrant. A world that grows, consumes, feeds upon another. If unchecked, you will become the greatest power in the Universe, consuming men, beasts, spirits, parasites, Kings, Emperors and the Gods themselves, and then challenge the Universe itself. Your very nature will not allow you to be lesser than any other. Your world is an abomination, and yet, something unlike any other. I want to stand in awe of you. I also want to crush your throat and shatter you to dust.”

His heart paused a beat at her words. For all her mind games, Frost hadn’t lied to him. Not once. She had shown him her true form inside Tanya’s mindscape, shown him the true might of what she would become in time. For her to speak that way about him was…

It made him uncomfortable. Deeply so.

Frost snaked her hands around her neck, and brought her lips closer to his ear. Giggling, she licked his earlobe with her tongue, and whispered in a sultry purr.

“I cannot wait until I see that end, Outsider. You have such potential, so much to show me. Seeing the castle erupt might scare the lowly parasites, but that display of fireworks did not faze me. I want an odyssey. A storm of legend that would last and rage and build the universe in its image. A story that will exist in rumors and lore for millennia to come. Whether it ends in salvation, or damnation, I care not. Just you and me, on a hill of corpses, watching as the universe burns around us.”

Lukas swallowed.

Frost looked him dead in the eye again. “Let’s make a bargain, Outsider. I will help you learn how to fight an aeromancer. In return, I wish to see this world of yours with my own eyes. As the Avatar of the End, show me your inner-world so that I might judge its worth.”