An Arcanist's Citadel 5 (Patreon)

An Arcanist’s Citadel

Chapter 5

-VB-

Lieutenant Emily Yokkuniji often got questions about her lineage from people who had too much time on their hands and not enough time spent sculpting their body to perfection like they should be. 

They asked if she was Japanese. 

She hated that question not because she hated Japanese (she didn’t think or care about them or lineages in general) but because she’s been asked that question so many times because her surname apparently sounded Japanese and also because she had narrow eyes. 

‘As if narrow eyes were a trait limited to the Japanese or East Asians,’ she thought. 

And why was she thinking about this? 

Because she was trying her goddamn best to not look around and fall into fits of hysterical screams of terror.

Because she was an independent woman with a kill count over a hundred.

Because she was a professional soldier, which meant sometimes having to stand guard or in terrifying positions and holding it regardless of what may come! 

Because if she stopped thinking about something else, then she might really drop her guns, run away, and hole up in some forest.

But she was a professional soldier! 

She was a veteran of the Corporate Wars! 

She was tougher than some ghosts-! 

Emily shivered and almost whimpered when a Batarian ghost with shackles and chains all over its body passed through her. 

The feeling was … 

It was horrible. 

Despair, anger, hopelessness, and so much more negativity packed into a single emotional outburst so quiet yet thorough that it had felt like they were her emotions and not the dead’s. 

This wasn’t her first time seeing ghosts, and certainly not the first time that she took part in a mission carried out by the Exorcisia specifically to remove ghosts and harmful demons. 

But this was the first time that she was encountering human evil forced upon the dead. 

Because that’s what she was looking at.

True Evil.

Those Batarian souls were being forced to do something. She wasn’t sure what, but every time they did it, it was the equivalent to chipping away at the soul, rendering them down one bit at a time while they were fully conscious.

She knew that they were slavers and raiders; some of the dead Batarians had their Hegemony military uniform, too. However, there was a limit to what punishments should be. What was being to the Batarian souls was nothing more than torture… and if she was right, they were being tortured into oblivion and non-existance. 

To never know the grace of God. 

To never see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

To know over a long period of time as they were forced to chip away at their own souls that no one would remember them.

To disappear.

None of the colonists reacted to the Batarian souls. Couldn’t see them at all, in fact. She made sure to look for reactions while her CO was talking with one of the heads of the colony. 

Jeffery Bolkins, the owner of the space port, also looked like he was doing his best to mislead the investigators, who also noticed it. 

… Actually, no. It was almost like he was trying to warn them away. To pull them away from a danger that they didn’t know about. 

Considering that the higher-ups wanted them to the man who was the only possible person that could have done whatever hellscape Elysium had become for the spiritually attuned, he wasn’t wrong to try to steer them away from him.

But the mission was clear. 

The Holy See needed to know. 

No, the Pope and the Vicar of the Exorcisia wanted to know if some sort of spiritual power had been behind the awe-inspiring carnage that allowed a single human man to decimate xeno slavers. 

Eventually, the spaceport master gave in and gave her superior some information. She didn’t hear anything because she was too far to hear the quiet words, but the way Major Kim stiffened told her all she needed to know. 

This “Alan Marris” was dangerous. 

Eventually, they got into the UT-40 Kodiak Shuttle within the frigate and then followed behind the wheeled ICE jeep driven by one of Bolkins’ men. Because the Kodiak, despite how uncomfortable it was, was the least offensive transport the Exorcisia had on its roster. 

---

I was enjoying a nice day. 

I really was. 

With all of the kids around, my wives and I didn’t get to have a lovely threesome, especially since both Orihime and Tatsuki both got hobbies and jobs they liked (but we weren’t dependent on them). 

We were having such a good fucking time, literally, and then the feds were coming to ruin it. 

Well, not really. The Pope’s personal attack dogs weren’t the feds; the feds of Elysium and I had a good understanding and wouldn’t come knocking without prior appointment or only do so in the case of emergencies. 

So right now, I was upset. 

I was even more upset when the “the papal investigators and the escorts” landed a few hundred feet from my house in a goddamn Kodiak. You know, the troop transport shuttle that the Systems Alliance and other militaries of the galaxy used specifically for military purposes like insertion into an active battlefield? 

That was a statement and a half, and I did not appreciate someone threatening me. 

So instead of the business casual button-up and pants I would have worn to see important people, I came out of the house with three items.

My staff.

A red t-shirt.

A pair of black basketball shorts.

---

Major Kim felt sick.

His stomach churned and rioted as the shuttle grew closer to its destination.

His sights were no longer muddled by the thick miasma of suffering souls and their self-inflected tortures, but in its place sat a heavy presence that only grew in weight as they grew closer to the destination.

So much so that the spiritual attuned among his troops who might have healthy bodies were buckling under the weight like they had gone on a march with a fifty kilogram pack. 

So was he. 

He panted lightly as he tried to hang on, but the pressure felt crushing! 

His subordinates who weren’t attuned looked around in tense confusion as he and other attuned began to flag visibly. 

“Sir?” one of them asked. 

“It’s alright…!” he hissed out, but he knew that he wasn’t. 

Then the shuttle came to a slow stop.

He grimaced as he gestured to the unattuned among them and moved out of the shuttle. 

And then froze. 

Because a few meters from the front door of the small manor that Bolkins’ men had brought them to, a man stood in very casual attire. However, to his eyes, the man was a monster waiting to lash out at the slightest of provocation. 

And the staff in its hand…

It may as well be a nuclear bomb.

So many souls burned, crushed, blended, and crystallized! He could almost hear the agonizing screams of their last moments from merely standing in front of it…! 

“... What’s wrong with him?” the monster asked one of the Bolkins’ men who had gotten out to act as a liaision. 

“I … do not know,” the man replied. “Half of the papists have been like this since they arrived on the planet.”

The monster frowned and began to walk toward them.

His subordinates tensed. 

Kim quickly raised his hand up to stop them from doing anything stupid.

“A-Are you Alan Marris…?” he panted out. 

The monster stopped. “I am.”

“C-Can you s-stop whatever t-this pressure is…?” he asked politely. “It’s hurting me and my kids.”

The monster frowned before a realization dawned on him.

“Ah. You can’t withstand my family’s reiatsu.”

He half-turned around and waved his staff. 

And the pressure disappeared like a lie. 

Kim gasped and almost collapsed to his knees at the sudden freedom he felt. 

The monster turned back around and snorted. “You have spiritual essence but haven’t trained it at all. Does the Holy See so blatantly skimp out on training?” 

A few of his subordinates bristled, but Kim soldiered on. He had to get a control of the situation so that his people won’t make a stupid mistake…! 

“T-This is the first time we’ve encountered anything like yours… sir,” he said as he straightened his back and then bowed lightly. “I am Major Young-gil Kim of the Exorcisia Militant. Thank you for coming out to greet us.”

The monster glared at him before leaning on his staff. “Well, what are you here for?” he asked. “Bolkins and others wouldn’t have allowed you to come near me if they thought they could stop you.”

Here, he hesitated. 

“I am here on behalf of the Holy See. We wish to recruit you as a trainer.”

“Hell no.”

“Thank you for your answer. We will be leaving now.”

He gestured for his men and women to turn around. Though confused, they followed his orders and got back into the shuttle. Once all of them was inside, he told the pilot to get the fuck out of here as quickly as possible.

“Sir, permission to speak freely?”

“Sure,” he grunted out as he collapsed into a seat. 

“What the hell was that? You just asked and then left like a cowardly bureaucrat!”

He let out a surprised yet understanding amused bark of laughter. “No. I’m not a cowardly bureaucrat, and you can ask the rest of your comrades here who’re feeling relieved.”

The soldier - corporal - did. He wasn’t one of the spiritually attuned. He didn’t know - didn’t feel - what they did. 

“... I don’t understand.”

“Corporal, if I was given a choice of fighting that monster in human skin in fighting a Thresher Maw by myself, then I would pick the latter every single time.”

The corporal looked surprised. “You can’t be serious, sir.”

“Oh, I am. How about the rest of you?” he asked the spiritually attuned. 

“Maw.”

“I’ll take a beast over endless purgatory.”

“Maw.”

“Thresher Maw!” 

The rest looked surprised at the insistent responses. 

“... What did we just walk away from?” the same corporal asked as it finally started to settle into his thick head that they were lucky to be alive. 

“... I don’t know,” Kim sighed. “And that’s a problem for me considering I’ll have to make a report.”

But he wasn’t done here yet. Not by a long shot, whether he liked it or not. 

Vicar Emiliano had been very clear on that.