62 - The Sacred Orca (Patreon)

The arms of the infernal clock slowly scraped on by, agonizingly laggard millisecond by millisecond. 

Tick. Tock. As Yerin’s inexorable, unavoidable, unstoppable fist came for my face, millimeter by millimeter, I reflected on every bad decision I had made over the past half hour. Tick. Tock. 

No, I wasn’t reflecting on every mistake I had made across my entire life, even if I had the relative time to do all that and more, including the sillier mistakes. No, not even you, Nora. 

I just–

Tick. Tock. I could do nothing but wait in the purgatory of helpless relative time, the path to my defeat already set in stone. And I reflected on every mistake over the past half hour of this multi-round bloody beatdown that very, very generous people, or particularly ashamed cheerleaders, might have called a spar.

I could have opted for a more indirect, lateral strategy, taking Yerin from more indirect angles in this fist fight. She prospered in direct confrontation, but had problems in indirect battles, especially when an opponent tried to overwhelm her with quantity rather than quality, speed rather than strength. There were limits to her focus. I could have leaned harder into that approach, sure. Tick. Tock. 

Just as well, I could have let myself be the one on the defensive, the one trading space for opportunities. That would have opened up entire avenues of feints and misdirections that I had neglected.

I could have focused on my footwork more than my punches.

I could have slowed down Starfire Surge’s mental component, reducing my own Enforcer technique’s efficacy, and enjoyed the fruits of better body-mind coordination.

But, as always, I could take the aggregate of my mistakes and see that it all came down to a single unitary factor.

My reaction speed. My body’s relatively laggard speed in general.

It was the single most serious problem of this prototype Ethereal Iron Body that Eithan had given me, above and beyond even my (thankfully, formerly) gimped ability to take a hit and recover from damage. My reaction speed.

Thanks to the effects of the Eightfold Wheel of Reincarnation and Starfire Surge, my ability to process and retain information in battle was hundreds of times beyond that of the average sacred artist. But my flesh and blood body was the bottleneck of that equation–faster than Yerin’s Sage-crafted Steelborn Iron Body by a decent margin, sure, but an infuriating bottleneck all the same.

Because my mind was just too fast. For example–

I will my feet to slide back a little, pull my fingers together to prepare to send commands to my fingers, to prepare for a punch to her face, but then I’d come up with a better idea, realize a new and better battle tactic, and try to have my feet slide back a little more, grip my fingers a little harder, for a punch to her throat–

Something failed in the translation of those commands, every time. Every time I tried to overwrite my own former commands prior to their execution, I failed. It was almost like there was a queue system to get into the vast highway system of possibilities that was the maneuvering of my own body, a bottleneck of my own nerve’s ability to translate thought to action, gatekept by a one dinky little single-lane road, and whenever I tried to cut that line, I’d get kicked out of line entirely. And when that happened, my hands would spasm for a brief instant, losing all commands sent to them–it wasn’t long before I could regain control, a brief interlude even under the effects of Starfire Surge’s relative time–therefore, invisible to anyone in the entire world anywhere near my own advancement rank that wasn’t named Dross. 

Put more simply, it felt like lag when trying out some computer game. Lag, with frequent disconnections. Your friends might not notice it, but to you it was the most infuriating, the most performance-impacting feeling in the entire world.

Tick. Tock. 

Yerin’s fist moved a little closer to my face, and in that moment, I saw a ripple of her facial muscles, as they began to arrange into a new configuration.

Depressor angulioris, zygomaticus major, zygomaticus minor, levator labii, superioris risorius. The five roots of expression, branching out into the forty-three facial muscles that controlled every expression a human could possibly make.

Muscle by individual rippling muscle, Yerin’s lips were slowly stretching, a warrior’s set line of resolution slowly becoming something else entirely–

The point was, signals were getting crossed. This body’s nerves were not capable of supporting the potential of my Path, the (rest of) my Iron Body, and my sacred arts. 

These problems were less than imperceptible to anyone apart from me. Even Eithan had seemed skeptical, saying, perhaps accurately, that all I needed to do was train until I learned to control my body on its own terms.

Everyone else, apart from Dross, when I tried explaining the problem to them–they’d looked at me like I was a loon. They had no ability at all to see, to even understand the problem.

This kind of continuous, low-grade mental pollution that impeded execution of action was exactly the kind of problem that a Presence-class mind spirit like Dross could have passively fixed, just from being there. Or the actual active use of the Ghostwater elixir.

And then Yerin’s fist began to hit me, knuckles slowly sinking into my skin, a shockwave of flesh spreading outwards as my lower jaw peeled off from alignment with the upper, and my eyes began to roll uncontrollably in their sockets, due to the introduction of an outside vector of forces whose potency far overpowered my seven extraocular muscles.

And through it all, Yerin’s forty-three facial muscles had now formed into their final shape. A final configuration that absolutely infuriated me, as her fist continued incrementally crashing into my face. It was when her third knuckle began to make near-direct contact with my upper left premolar tooth that I started to become aware of a sensation–

Right, that was the thing that sucked about using Starfire Surge at this level of acceleration. It dragged out the pain. With a brief twist of a mental latch, I turned off the mental component of the Enforcer technique, and–

Sound and pain and the whooshing fury of air and a sensation of bones bending and pain my entire body bouncing like a flat stone skipping over water and more PAIN–

I came back to myself on the far side of the Spirit Well chamber, insensate, tongue lolling out of my own mouth as sound and sensation returned to the world. Oh god, this was embarrassing–Mercy was kneeling beside me with a cup of well water, concern writ all across her features. I took it from her gratefully. Right before drinking it, I stopped.

The pain had been worse at the time of the strike, but… I patted my face carefully,  searching for tender, bruised skin, and perhaps the sting of abused bone. The flesh felt sore, but otherwise, I was… fine. I hopped up to my feet and faced Mercy with a goofy grin.

“So, how’d I do?” I asked the girl in purple and silver and black, taking a modest sip of the well waters as I did. My condition, focus, attention, will–all of it recrystallized to top condition. Even the pain went away, which was actually a bit annoying. I missed it, a little. It felt… appropriate. A due penance for failure.

Off on the far side of the chamber, Little Blue was bouncing up and down, cheering for Yerin like a particularly musical whistle as the swordswoman stood with both hands on her hips, radiating satisfaction as Lindon congratulated her. Her expression was one of pure smug. Smugness. Whatever.

Had she enjoyed punching me that much? Damn, girl. I had noticed that the distances I had been getting punched had kept increasing, as Yerin realized I could keep getting up from her punches, and as I wised up to her ways and began to turn these bouts from brief beatdowns into things that lasted for at least two or three continuous real-time minutes–

Mercy gave me a sunny smile, and her smile, like the curve at the end of a rainbow, was filled with nothing but lies. “You did great! Good fight!”

“Wow, gee, thanks!” I said, looking all ‘aw shucks’ and pretending to believe a word that she said.

The best I had managed was an accidental kick to Yerin’s forehead, one that I was sure would have snapped my shin like a twig. Instead, it had barely hurt, and it had stunned Yerin into stepping back.

It was that exact move that had convinced me that I had a chance against her in a full frontal brawl. Well, that and my own interest in seeing how I’d fare. For science.

And the answer was, surprisingly well. I could pack a punch now. Perhaps if Yerin had been her average strength, or if I had been facing off against a sacred artist with an average Iron body, I would not only have matched them for power, but completely blown them away. It was only because Yerin was such a monster that I had no choice but to lose in this instance.

“Sick of getting slapped around yet?” Yerin asked, hands on her hips and head tilted to the side. She was actually enjoying this.

“Not yet,” I said. “Let’s reset.” For the tenth time.

She shrugged. “Your burial.”

I activated Starfire Surge, and saw the world slow to a crawl. Fine. Whenever I change my mind or adapt to the movements of my opponent, that’s when my body would completely glitch out. Okay then, fuck it. 

Let’s get all our ducks in a row first, then. I would plan exactly what I wanted to do ahead of time, gamble that she moved within the expected parameters by getting into her head and pulling that information out with pure deduction.

I ran up to her, feinted with a knee kick. I pulled her strings like a puppet. Her defense wasn’t overcommitted, as she would never be so green as to fall for one measly feint, but it did move her just the way I wanted. I saw a golden path in the air that would strike right above her guard. I followed that golden path with a Brazilian kick, raising my right leg—bent—above my waist, turning my entire body, and straightening my knee and hitting the side of her head with an irresponsible amount of force.

Not irresponsible because of the threat it would have posed to her. Irresponsible because of what it would do to my shin bone.

Bone against bone impacts were generally considered a ‘bad idea’.

My shin bent slightly around her head as it delivered the full force of my kick, powerful enough to break the bones of anyone that tried the same thing.

She staggered to the side like a drunkard, eyes swimming. My eyes widened in glee and I seized the opportunity to rush up to her with a flying knee-kick. It struck dead center on her face. If that wouldn’t lead to a break, I didn’t know what would.

Then, while she staggered back further, I swept the legs off her feet, causing her to fall to the side like a sack of potatoes. 

She didn’t stay down for even a moment as she pushed herself back up on her feet, raising her fists and giving me a bloody smile, nose bleeding. “Why don’t you give that another shake?”

“Nah,” I said, deactivating Starfire Surge, “A ten percent win-rate is fine by me. I am, after all, competing against the lauded disciple of the Sword Sage,” I turned to Mercy with a smug grin. “I would never presume to—”

One moment we were talking. The next, a fist loomed in my vision. Then I was on the floor, ears ringing, feeling profoundly dizzy.

Refreshing water ran down my throat and I woke up immediately.

I jumped up to my feet from my back and gave Yerin a withering glare even as she looked at me smugly. “Cheap.”

She snorted, “I’ll take it.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered. Still, that couldn’t dim the tide of elation borne from my first ever win against Yerin!

Of course, I had gotten lucky with how she had moved. If I hadn’t seen that path through her guard, I would have been the one bleeding on the floor. Foreplanning was well and good, but the moment one of my cold-reads or deductions fell flat—which they absolutely would in time—, I’d be fucked out of a win, and probably my life.

“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands together and feeling only a tad bit suicidal. “Let’s do weapons.”

That was when I felt a dramatic change in the vital aura. Fire battled the ever-present water aura, and that thing that I recognized as destruction aura was present as well.

It abated in a moment, and in my spiritual perception, there was now a new black sun on par with Orthos.

Lindon had advanced.

They walked back into the Spirit Well together, Lindon’s chin raised proudly at his latest advancement.

Before I could say anything, I caught sight of Yerin’s expression and stopped dead in my tracks. The raw tenderness, pride and joy in the subtle curl and quiver of her lips and the slant of her eyebrows was… an interesting development.

“Bleed me,” Yerin said, “You finally caught up. Took you long enough.”

Lindon grinned and gave a bow of his head. “Apologies. I had to survive a Dreadgod attack and then find a Monarch’s abandoned pocket world first.”

Yerin snorted. “How long has it been now, since I found you? Not even a Copper. Lindon, that’s…”

They shared a moment together. A moment that not even I would interrupt.

“Twenty months,” Lindon said as she walked up to Yerin. “Almost two years.”

From nothing to Truegold in two years. That alone would be considered a legendary feat anywhere on Cradle.

“It’s just like you to keep a count,” Yerin said, taking steps forward as well, until they were only two feet apart.

I shot Mercy a look, and she returned that look with one of surprise and bafflement as well, but also intrigue that made me remember a conversation we had had.

“Ah, Lindon and Yerin?” I had told her in response to her pointed question about the nature of their relationship. They were training around the Spirit Well when I had caught Mercy walking around looking for Dream Tablets in the library, and we were well and truly out of earshot enough for me to feel comfortable gossipping, “They’re madly in love with each other, but are utterly terrified of making the first move, or doing anything really, to jeopardize their current relationship. It’s incredibly cute, and weird. I’ve had a front-seat view of this idiocy for seven months straight.”

Mercy giggled at my words. “You can’t be serious, right? You’re joking, right?” I pursed my lips and shook my head. Mercy looked genuinely aghast at that. “Shouldn’t we… do something?”

“No!” I said, “Their ‘will-they-won’t-they’ is one of the most entertaining aspects of them! Why would I ever sacrifice that?” I pointed at her and gave her a stern glare, “You better not mess around with my mobile melodrama theater troupe.”

Mercy gave a helpless look and shrugged her shoulders, “I’m sorry, but I really can’t make any promises.”

I sighed, “At least wait until they’re out of the pocket world first? This place is terrible for romance, you know. Look around. The only chef here is me, and all the food we eat is sea monster and rice. The lighting is horrible, too, and honestly, the water aura is enough to make anyone feel wet and gross. You might make things worse, you know.”

“I get your point,” Mercy said, nodding along with my words. 

And now… it might already be happening before schedule!

“What Sandviper would have dared give you a dirty look now?” Yerin asked. “What about Jai Long? I bet those two pigs will start asking you for permission to talk.”

Lindon chuckled. “Gratitude. I… wouldn’t have made it the first step out of Sacred Valley without you. I know you are aware of this already, but… truly. My journey would have ended on the same day if it hadn’t been for you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.” Yerin’s smile practically glimmered as he spoke. “And… I want to spend many more years traveling with you.” Oh. Oh my god. Was Lirin a go?

Lindon obviously realized—and then summarily regretted—what he had said, and in a legendarily hamfisted backpedal, he added, “With all of you! Really, I’m so very grateful to be practicing the sacred arts with you.”

Yerin’s expression quivered in an instant of uncertainty, but she ran with that, too. “I’d contend that’s my plan too, provided the Skysworn don’t bury us after this.”

“Can they?” Lindon asked.

Yerin grinned proudly at that. I could practically feel the joy radiate from her now that her man had come into himself. “I don’t contend they can anymore.”

Then, Yerin ruined it all by looking at me and Mercy, who were standing side-by-side, watching this unfold. Her cheeks reddened immediately and she turned to face the other way. “So,” she called out loudly, “We hunting for soulfire or what?”

Wait, is it over?

What happens next?! What the hell, why is it over so soon?! We’re not gonna have another episode until the Tournament at this rate!

Could the Nightwheel Valley be made into a nice date spot? It could if they were at all the Halloween-loving types. Perhaps I could ascertain whether they were or not by telling them scary stories and gauging their reactions?

“Uh, congratulations, Lindon!” Mercy said, throwing her hands up jubilantly, while I figured out what horror story to tell them.

“Congratulations,” I echoed.

Mercy looked over at Orthos. “That was a very generous thing you did, Orthos.”

“He’s my partner,” Orthos said, head raised, “And I would be remiss to leave him helpless in this pocket world. If he was all that we were waiting for, then we may as well continue our mission and then leave with all due haste.”

Dross spun out from Lindon’s spirit, where he was being kept long-term in order to grow more powerful from all the Spirit Well water. His state of existence had advanced drastically, to the point that his purple, pebbly skin almost looked physical. I wondered what that would mean for him once we fused him to Lindon’s spirit and turned him into a Presence.

At the very least, his consent was the least of our worries. He was practically dying to complete ‘the master’s’ great work.

“Fortunately, we can start right here!” Dross said, “In this habitat’s foundational script, there should be a flask of soulfire lying around somewhere. I don’t know the exact location, but I know where we can start!”

“A moment of your time.”

000

The voice was deep, bassy and heavy, settling on me almost like a physical weight, tickling my ribs. I heard footsteps in the far distance, through the open entrance to the Spirit Well. The voice sounded like it came from within this room, however. A sacred art?

I stretched my Truegold senses out, finding them to be strong enough to encompass the entirety of this tablet library, and then some.

And there I found him. A spirit of forceful, pressurized water, heavy beyond heavy, taking lumbering but sure steps towards us. 

Fast, too.

When the figure turned a corner of the library’s shelves, I could finally make him out.

Tall. Impossibly tall. Wide, too. He was a creature of pure muscle and flesh, a head like a shortened whale’s snout that was white below his lower jaw, and black above it. He wore a five-piece suit, navy blue, with golden epaulettes, a cord of rope, and a white-scripted breastplate made of bone, carved to look like a waistcoat.

With each step, a black and white tail with horizontal fins swished from right to left.

In one hand, he was carrying around a trident of all things. It looked rather simplistic in make, a black handle wrapped in black leather cross-spiralling up the shaft. The pommel, a simple bulb, was made of dark-blue Forged madra, the same material as the trident itself.

Then I realized.

All the water aura in the entire habitat–all of it–was being disturbed by the mere movement of the weapon. Where the trident passed, its three prongs swishing through the air, the currents of the library’s breezes changed, intensifying by degrees, the ambient particulate waters condensing and sublimating from the air with the orca man’s every step. 

It felt like the world held its breath as the weapon passed, as if it were an eddy in the flow of reality itself. Like it was the only real thing in the entire world, a black granite island in the center of a storm unblown, and we were all just passing flotsam, ephemeral and insignificant.

The orca man wasn’t even using the trident, not in any sense I could discern. This disturbance, it was just from the weapon being here.

Then I realized Starfire Surge was active; my heart was hammering. This threat level was so extreme that I had instinctively activated my Enforcer technique.

From the look of it, eyeing my left and right under the effects of accelerated relative time, my friends were faring little better. Widened eyes and backsteps, being taken in every direction.

What was that trident?

I had never seen anything like it before. It felt like an entire ocean, formless and gargantuan on a continental scale, Forged into a shape; this was not, could not have been something that had actually been crafted by mortal hands. 

I couldn’t even directly look at the thing with my spiritual senses; my senses just whitened out, like when my mind was overwhelmed by the higher principles involved with trying to read the Sage of Red Faith’s memory tablet; but this somehow was even worse. I couldn’t directly interpret anything at all from the trident.

It only gave me an impression of doom; doom unvarnished, doom pure and clear. 

This was a Sage-level weapon at the very least. What was worse, this sacred instrument was responding to his embryonic, miniscule measure of authority as–what, a mere Truegold from what my scans were telling me. The weapon was allowing him to pull out a measure of its power. An infinitesimally small measure to be sure, but one that carried a weight that transcended the physical world.

This was supposed to be impossible; or, at least, something that could only happen in legends. Truegolds could not wield power like this. At least, not except if…

The power was deliberately allowing itself to be wielded.

Even the tiniest sliver of actual, real-deal Authority was a power head and shoulders above anything we could bring to bear.

The orca stopped at the doorway. “Fighting me is inadvisable,” he said. His voice sounded more… human now. Less supernaturally deep and heavy. “But you’re welcome to try.”

I forced myself not to think about his trident and gave a chuckle. “Pardon us. We didn’t realize we had a choice in the matter. How can we help you, Prince Jingye, I’m presuming?”

Jingye looked around with his black eyes ringed with white, and then turned back to me. “I’m here for this habitat’s foundation treasure.”

I gestured my hand. “Go right ahead.”

“Once extracted, this structure will collapse, destroying the Spirit Well forever,” Jingye explained. He actually explained himself. 

Palutin was right. This guy could be reasoned with. That felt like a monumental weight off my shoulders.

“We’ve taken all that we need,” I said carefully. “You’re free to crack this clamshell open at your leisure. No skin off our backs.”

“Perfect,” Jingye said. He started looking around the Spirit Well, and then turned his back on us, like he was utterly unconcerned with anything that we might pull. “He said it had to be somewhere…” 

He raised his trident, and the water aura stirred. I opened my Copper sight and saw that the entire room’s aura bent to his will and crashed against the ceiling, cracking it open. Not long ago, it would have been impossible to crack open those tiles, but now they bent and cracked under his Ruler technique like ordinary matter. And from those cracks, something emerged; a form of aura I had never felt before. It felt like a vast, but gentle river. Beyond even that, I felt the unmistakable impression of raw power. There was something truly potent beyond that ceiling. A genuinely unique natural treasure, probably, and certainly priceless. “The Heart of the Mother River. It truly is here. Is there no end to Northstrider’s desecrations?”

“I guess that’s our cue to leave,” I said loudly.

“One moment, Skysworn,” Jingye rumbled, that weight returning to his voice making me feel every word in my chest. He was still staring at the ceiling, “I owe a debt of gratitude to a sacred artist named Parizad. He is interested in your guide construct. I will be taking that with me.”

I stared for a moment, jaw hanging open. How does he even–

Then, for lack of anything else I could do, I sighed, mentally resigning myself. 

It doesn’t matter.

This was never going to have any other ending. We had committed a capital sin as sacred artists: coveting a treasure that we were too weak to protect.

“Of course,” Jingye continued, still working on the hole in the ceiling, “You will be compensated considerably. Ten top-grade scales. A handsome sum, wouldn’t you say?”

“Apologies, Prince Jingye,” Lindon said, pressing his fists together and bowing his head. “But we are not interested in selling this guide construct.”

“Irrelevant, I’m afraid,” Jingye said, in his operatic bass of a voice as his attention began to focus on us, for all that he was still channeling aura into the ceiling. “You are intruders and trespassers. As such, you are not entitled to any of the treasures that you find in this pocket world. That we are still willing to compensate you should be more than enough for you as it is. But you do not have a choice in the matter of this transaction.”

“Sure we do!” I said, “You’re outnumbered. And we’ve got reinforcements coming, one of whom has the power of an Underlord. Fight us, and you won’t just walk away empty-handed—provided you’re even able to walk. We’ll take that pretty trident, too.”

“Sky,” Yerin hissed, giving me an incredulous side-eye even as she faced the intruder, hand on her master’s half-unsheathed sword.

The orca gave a half-smile, fully turning towards us as the ceiling shattered with a final implosion, a fine rain of rubble falling around him, splashing into the Spirit Well’s waters. “Fortunately for me, Skysworn of Ashwind, violence is also an outcome that I favor. I have been meaning to test the limits of my newfound power. You will make excellent sparring partners.”

Whoopsie. 

“Honored prince,” Lindon said, “Are you certain that we cannot come to a mutually beneficial arrangement?”

I was certain already. We knew fuckall about this guy, meaning we had no leverage, nothing to entice him with that he couldn’t simply take from us. Promising him a share of Ghostwater was asinine due to that. Leveraging Mercy’s connections could cause an even greater scale of conflict that might involve the Tidewalker Herald. I had no idea if the Sword Sage ever had any ties with that Herald or that sect either.

“I already proposed one,” Jingye said. 

He was doing this for a debt of gratitude, wasn’t he? He owed this ‘Parizad’ a solid. And now he was acting the mercenary. What if pointing that out would impugn on his honor? I was grasping at straws, but I might as well give it a go.

“Why act the mercenary, honored prince?” I said, “Surely, the Ninecloud delegate is able to fight his own battles. You need not bother yourself with this business, sowing ill will and enmity to pay for another’s favor.”

“I will try not to kill you,” he said, “Your enmity is regrettable, but I can live with it.”

“What if we did you a greater favor?” I asked.

“Then I would be grateful,” Jingye said. “As it stands, I do have one thing in mind: Help me learn what I can do.”

He had zero interest in peace. Fuck me sideways, there was no getting out of this.

I looked around, spying for my spear, and my new shield.

“And are you sure you won’t budge?” I asked, head tilted as I shot Lindon a look.

“Ye—”

A bar of black fire blasted towards him. It came from Lindon of all people. That decided it. Dross was Lindon’s to give, and if he said no, that’s all she wrote.

Rather than stick around and watch how he tanked it—because there was no way that would be the end of things, I turned around and ran to fetch my gear.

Just in time to catch sight of the solid bubble of water surrounding him, spinning in dizzying currents, dispersing all the force of Orthos’ dragon’s breath. A Maelstrom Hide.

I immediately began charging up my Deadly Laser.

No, fuck. It needed a better name–

Think about that later.

That wasn’t even for the sake of vanity. A technique required a respectable name, a name that had gravity and intention, to match the intention of its activation.

As for the fight, I had a pretty plan in mind. Stay in the backlines, letting Yerin, Lindon and Orthos tussle with the big guy while I charged up the true artillery.

And then the Gamonga orca raised his trident, and the world heeded his beck and call.

The blue light of the room intensified, and I looked behind myself at the source of that light to see the Spirit Well’s water coming to life, forming one giant tendril.

It lowered and swept towards us—

I stopped cycling for the laser and immediately switched to Starfire Surge. One downside of my nascent Striker technique was that I was far too inexperienced with it to perform a parallel activation.

I flattened myself to the ground in time to avoid the sweeping blow of the Spirit Well, just in time to see Jingye opening a hole in his technique from which his hand poked out, forming an orb of water madra.

I pointed my spear at it and threw a Solar Flare on it.

He fired off his Striker technique, an orb of water. It exploded immediately upon impact with the Solar Flare, slowing it down for only a moment as Jingye retracted his hand into the safety of the Maelstrom Hide. The Solar Flare crashed against it ineffectually. No. Not ineffectually. The dispersed madra of my technique lit the shell up in white light, obscuring his form. Could he see out from it? If he couldn’t, then this was a chance.

I deactivated Starfire Surge and started once again cycling the laser technique. Gaze of Judgment? No, that was too religious of a name. It probably wouldn’t do my ego any good to compare myself to some sort of god.

I took a moment to look to the side to see how the others had fared. Orthos was embedded into a wall, body retracted into his shell. Both Ruby and Yerin were out, but they clearly hadn’t been smacked very far. Mercy was covered in crystalline armor, and was in the process of deactivating her bloodline legacy.

Lindon was lying low, body covered in a nimbus of pure madra, head swinging between the Spirit Well tendril and Jingye.

That trident was a fucking powerful Ruler instrument. The obvious play would be to find a way to separate it from the orca. Failing that, we needed to remove the medium through which it could exert its power.

“BURN THE WATER!” I roared. Lindon’s gaze snapped towards me and he nodded. Should I join him? No. At best, I would boil the water and turn it into vapor, but that wouldn’t destroy it. Not like Blackflame could. This was a job for Lindon and Orthos.

Yerin and Ruby fell upon the shining bubble that was Jingye with both their swords in a thrust of combined Flowing Swords that turned their blades into arrows of sword—and in Ruby’s case, blood—madra and aura braided perfectly together.

The shining bubble collapsed…

…revealing a second bubble. The bubble pulsed, and Yerin and Ruby were both blown back.

This Maelstrom Hide had another bubble of shielding water underneath? Shit. Even so, we had broken past one layer of protection. Now we just had to keep digging–

Before I could revel in this minor victory, the bubble widened, as though the layer we had popped just reformed without consequence.

No. Not without consequence. This technique cost madra, just like any other. Even if Jingye was powerful enough to squash any one of us in single combat, he didn’t have the madra capacity to match all five of us. And that sacred instrument must be draining him dry. 

Even if it somehow didn’t, which carried horrifying implications on its own, his techniques eventually would.

Lindon released a bar of Blackflame on the house-sized tentacle of Spirit Well water. 

But the tentacle split apart into two, then four, then eight, engaging Lindon and Orthos at once.

“As expected of my ancestor,” I heard Jingye mutter to himself. The force of his voice was such that he couldn’t but be heard. “It has both power and control. But where are the limits of that control?”

One of the tentacles froze solid, then liquified, then evaporated into a cloud of steam, then sublimated back into liquid–all in under a second.

“So it can control the physical phases. I see. But what of the madra aspects?”

This motherfucker is using us as training dummies, I realized, dodging another tentacle of Spirit Well water.

Completely ignoring a three-part barrage of Yerin and Ruby’s Rippling Swords and Mercy’s Striker-enhanced arrows, Jingye held up another tentacle and it suddenly changed in my spiritual senses, as if it began switching through every different shade of blue, from lapis to cerulean to sapphire to indigo and other hues besides.

He was reaching for the different sub-aspects of water aura. The aura of the deeps, of rivers and glaciers, storms and steam. The aura of an oasis in a desert, shimmering with the effects of mirage. The aura of water electrified, scoured by internal potential energy. The aura of a silt-filled river, laden with the weight of earth unbound.

And each tendril whipped towards us. I dodged away easily, but the tendril was as flexible as water, and barely lost speed as it changed courses to chase me.

“Gamonga was always said to be among the most versatile of our kind, capable of creating techniques that could flow to meet any challenge under heaven. Is your trident a reflection of the path you walked?”

The tendrils were fast, but I was faster. I tried to slice through one tendril entirely, but my spear only flowed through the water.

Gamonga? He said it like it was a person, and not the name of his species. Right, it was the name of a Tidewalker Herald in the past. I remembered that from Arakmedes’ dream tablet. 

“I see. It can even reach beyond the borders of water and into the frontiers of entirely different foundational aspects, in the same way that water blends with every other aspect of the natural world.”

Was Gamonga the progenitor of Jingye’s bloodline? Certainly, that would explain why this weapon–probably, almost certainly a Ghostwater foundation treasure–had responded to him.

I took the tip of the tendril on my shield, activating the Nine-Light Mirror as I did. Just as expected, the reflective Forger technique didn’t work. Why would it? I was being attacked by real, physical water. Thankfully, the shield’s Goldsteel was strong enough to easily survive the impact, dispersing it along a wider area as the tendril splashed over it.

“Just as all knowledge is connected, all madra is one. Gamonga took that knowledge and focused on a single fundamental aspect, that of water, and so he found the connections by which all waters flow together.” 

Despite myself, even in the middle of battle, I hesitated and listened. That phrasing. All knowledge is connected. Practically the motto of… no, no. There was no way. Is Jingye seriously saying what I think he’s– 

“Seamless flow, perfect and firm. One madra aspect flawlessly transmutes to the next, with only the most marginal loss of energy. What a tremendous instrument you have made.”

“These insights are outstanding. Transcendent. Who created these principles? Was it your own creation? The histories say you were a Herald before a Sage; you truly must have been a genius.”

Herald before a Sage? Wait, what the fuck? Was Gamonga a Monarch?

Another tentacle swept up a roaring Orthos entirely, and drew him inwards towards the meatgrinder that was Jingye’s multi-layered Maelstrom hide–but then Lindon’s bar of black dragon’s breath cut the tentacle in two. The far half of it collapsed into a puddle, releasing a stunned Orthos before he reactivated his Burning Cloak, jumping off with an explosion of fire and destruction.

“Like a river, control needs to be continuous, or else it is severed. I see.”

He swept the trident and animated the water into several beasts. Like a pod of orcas. Five of them. They each crashed towards us.

It was all I could do to send a Striker technique at the one targeting me, before cutting as much of it up with Nova Blade, filling the room with steam.

Living techniques? For fuck’s sakes! What didn’t he have?

“This is no mere sacred art of soulfire. It can even infuse strands of my will into madra, and weave slave intelligence around those strands. I see. So this is the authority of his Icon of the Sea, held in my hands. Borrowed authority, of course, but even so, the domain of Sages no longer seems so far off.”

With every word he uttered, my heart filled with more and more lead, threatening to crush my spirit entirely.

“Why are you so stacked?!” I roared as I swung my spear along a wide arc, Nova Blade severing through several tendrils thin enough to be separated fully by the passing of Star’s End.

Suddenly, the water aura settled on my shoulders heavily, more oppressive than ever before. I could feel it not just on me, but even in me. I didn’t just pause–I stopped, unable to even move.

With horror, I realized… Jingye was turning the water inside my body against me.

“Humans, turtle, let us together test the limits of my ancestor’s inheritance.”

A Monarch’s treasure.

That trident was a fucking Monarch’s treasure.

We are so fucked.