65 - The Ghost of Ghostwater (Patreon)

Sky roared out a litany of unintelligible words, punching the air with a furiously satisfied expression as Ziel hammered Jingye into the ground. All Lindon could feel, in the meanwhile, was horror.

They should run.

He activated the Soul Cloak, and quickly ran up to snatch Dross within the Eye of the Deep vessel that Jingye had stolen away, running away from the titanic fight as Jingye peeled himself up from the ground and met Ziel’s fury with trident and book in hand.

Dolph, Palutin riding saddleback, flew down from the hole in the roof Ziel left behind. The Wastelander didn’t bother with words. He just turned to the enemy and used a nasty dream technique—even the peripheral echo of it that Lindon picked up on felt like a tide of blood and slaughter. But it failed to affect the Underlord, apart from a brief moment of distraction that Ziel used for another hammerblow. 

Palutin then visibly cursed and formed a weapon Forger technique Lindon hadn’t seen before. A stream of fire madra from Marigold, and what had to have been steam madra from Dolph—Forged together and interlayered into an explosive charge at the end of his harpoon, which he instantly launched with an over-handed explosion of strength.

The harpoon got the distracted Jingye in the leg and detonated—but it barely got through his skin, and failed to bring him down, his newly advanced body was just too tough. 

Before Lindon could even contribute to the fight as he had wanted, Sky released another beam of super-charged madra, while Yerin and Ruby released their own attacks at the same time, constantly keeping the sacred orca on the defensive while he ran away from the attacks of Ziel, interrupting every attempt of his to summon more power from those unfairly powerful relics.

Finally, Jingye erected a wall of blood, water and force madra between himself and Ziel, creating a lull in combat.

“You were an Underlord all along, Chosen of the Beast King,” either he was finally once more making an effort to modulate his massive voice, or his Underlord advancement had taken care of that glaring problem of his.

“Will you leave?” Ziel asked.

Jingye stood still for a moment. Then he chucked the treasure from the ceiling of the Well, his trident and his book into his open Void Key. 

“I got what I came for,” Jingye said calmly, clearly losing interest in the battle.

The relief that ran through Lindon’s body and spirit was almost palpable.

Maybe they would survive this.

000

“I got what I came for,” Jingye said with casual, infuriating arrogance. 

Which was what, exactly? What did you come for, big man? I wanted to say that with every bone in my body, but I also desperately wanted him to leave.

I really hated that about this guy; how much he just… outclassed us.

Why? We had every advantage, and we still couldn’t beat him even five against one.

And he wasn’t even Akura Harmony.

Or Sha Parizad.

He was a fucking Tidewalker. A nothing faction from the ass-end of the world, with no Uncrowned to their name, and one off-screen Herald that literally never mattered in all the books I had read.

Perhaps he would have in future books, but as of the Uncrowned Tournament, all he had for representatives were inept fools that hadn’t even posed an appreciable threat at the second round.

And yet, Jingye–who I had no knowledge of, at all– outclassed us. Utterly. 

Where in the fuck had this guy been in the Uncrowned Tournament?

How old was he? Was he perhaps some kind of old monster? He gave me the impression of a youngster, someone from my generation or a bit older, but this wasn’t the level of skill that I could expect from such a person. His foundation wasn’t just deep but broad. I knew that sacred beasts were judged by different standards than humans, but, what were those standards, exactly? More importantly, how much of an outlier was he by those standards? And where did we… no. Where did I stack up?

I clenched my teeth hard enough for it to hurt as pure rage and vitriol took over me. I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to continue this impossible fight against this asshole. I refused to accept that I was weaker than him.

I was rebelling against reality.

Delusional.

I forced my emotions in check. My muscles slackened as I induced a feeling of helplessness in me. It wasn’t a reflexive feeling, but a deliberate one. In fact, this feeling was for my own good, in order to prevent me from meeting him in a fight that I wasn’t capable of winning.

Because I was outclassed, in every metric.

He outclassed us.

But did Parizad?

“Jingye,” I called out. The orca looked over at me. His face was human enough that I could make out his expression easily, and it was one of simple curiosity. A raised eyebrow and a flat mouth. “How did you know about Dross?”

“That guide construct of yours?” I nodded, and his eyebrow raised further. “That should be obvious at this point.”

I closed my eyes. Goddamnit. Dross and his ‘ghosts in the system, watching him.’ The security scripts. Acting strangely, for days. The Ninecloud Three had seemed to lean heavily on constructs, and they weren’t even their faction’s chosen. They were just the extras, the pawns hastily added to a chessboard of young masters, if I was understanding the broader context even halfway correctly. Which raised an alarming question; just what could a real Celestial Radiance artist do in a place like this, if they thought to use Ghostwater’s abandoned infrastructure? Was this Parizad a soulsmith? Had to be.

A Celestial Radiance soulsmith, in a place like this. An entirely new horizon of worst-case-scenarios had suddenly become all too possible, premonitions of disaster were suddenly flashing before my eyes with all the force of prophecy.

I should have seen this possibility coming. But no. I was too shortsighted. Too arrogant. Too drunk on my own plans. I had been acting like some stupid, shortsighted kid, leaning too hard on my knowledge of a possible future already set hopelessly astray, forgetting the independence and the agency of the people around him. 

I had to be better than this.

Well then.

I opened my eyes. “And what is the nature of your allegiance to Sha Parizad?”

Jingye snorted, “Simple gratitude.”

“How much gratitude?” I insisted.

He didn’t answer, instead fixing me with a look.

“Help us get rid of him,” I said, “And I’ll show you something to be grateful for. Then we can go our separate ways. On my soul.” I was loath to give this fucker anything more than he had already taken, but his neutral stance, though infuriating, had reminded me. Jingye didn’t even know what Dross was. He wasn’t the real enemy. The real enemy, this ‘Parizad’, was somewhere else, watching and waiting. How long had he been spying on us for? How much did he know? How much had I let slip? 

I wanted to turn over the board. 

I wanted see the horror and hatred in the eyes of an opponent that knew they had fucked with the wrong person. Jingye was only the hatchetman. I wanted to find the client.

“Count your blessings that I am leaving,” Jingye said, scoffing in an all too humanlike way. He turned to exit the ruined chamber, and started walking. “Leave things as they are, human.”

I stared at his retreating back, working my jaw furiously. I wanted to rebel, but what choice did we have? He was leaving. He wasn’t even taking us seriously. This was good for us.

Even if it sucked.

Even if it forced us to stay still and say nothing in spite of the fact that we were the thoroughly defeated party.

Using water aura, Jingye pulled out a set of outer robes and tied them around himself. They were ludicrously oversized for his slighter frame, the hem trailing on the ground behind him, but it looked far better than the tatters he wore.

Those tatters reminded me; although he had gotten stronger during the span of the fight as he learned more about his new weapons, we had almost gotten him near the end as we figured out his style and he became more and more fatigued. And we would have gotten him hadn’t it been for the enormous amount of resonance that he had with this Monarch instrument, even at Truegold.

Or so I kept telling myself. Again, and again, and again.

After Jingye’s spiritual presence departed from the dream library habitat, I let out a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding.

It was over.

“Finally!” Mercy groaned, falling slack to lean against a fallen chunk of rubble. “I didn’t know the sea made them that tough.”

Lindon’s expression was one long grimace, but he still cast a curious look in Mercy’s direction. “Apologies, but, do you know if there are more like him?”

“I doubt it,” Mercy shrugged. “Well, I’ve heard certain things about the sea dragons, but my uncle said they don’t really like to cross paths with other factions, even the other dragons–”

Yerin just stabbed her sword into the ground. She was still staring in the direction Jingye had left; like Lindon, her expression was nothing but a single grimace that could have been carved out of stone. 

This might have been the first time that either of them had been outmatched by someone within their own advancement rank. Let alone… all of us at once. That had to sting them, especially.

Ruby, for her part, was just lying on the ground spread-eagled, seemingly without a care in the world.

“Thanks for the save,” I grinned at Ziel.

Infuriating as this had been… I wouldn’t let myself get too worked up over it. I knew now that we could’ve taken Jingye if it hadn’t been for all his borrowed power. More importantly, we had survived, intact, without losing Dross or anything else I considered irreplaceable.

The Spirit Well and its foundation treasure were both gone, but we had been prepared to move on regardless. We had plenty of advancement juice stockpiled. And there were plenty of other habitats to raid.

We had lost to Jingye. But there would be a next time for us, as Underlords; and it wouldn’t turn out the way this had.

“...Save your thanks. He should’ve been dead on my first strike, even with that body of his,” Ziel said slowly, returning to his dead-eyed look. “What kind of a sacred artist can’t put down an enemy taken completely by surprise?”

“How’d you even cross paths with ‘im?” Palutin asked, still eyeing the direction Jingye had left in, frowning. “Thought I’d told ya’ll to steer wide and clear.”

I laughed. “We didn’t cross paths. He did. He came here swinging, wanting nothing more than to shake us down and fight us for everything we were worth. He had no interest in anything but testing out his new treasures.”

“Rough luck,” Ziel muttered. 

I scampered over to where Lindon stood, staring transfixed at the exit from which Jingye walked out, and pulled the Nine-Light Mirror shield from his arm. “Mine!”

All thoughts of Jingye were forgotten as he looked at me in aggrievement. “I accomplished far more with that shield than you did. Surely, you can see the sense in leaving it to me, can you not?”

“Make your own, Soulsmith,” I stuck my tongue out at him and pulled down my lower eyelid. “This is mine!” I showed him both middle-fingers and bobbed them up and down.

“Why don’t we play that paper, scissors, rock game again?”

“Why don’t you wipe those tears off your face?”

Lindon growled at me.

Then I realized one of us still hadn’t spoken.

“Dross?”

The nascent mind spirit remained quiet, and after a moment, alarm spiked through my thoughts.

“Dross?”

Had Jingye damaged him or something?

“Sky,” Dross whispered. “He’s still watching us.”

“Who?” Orthos asked.

…Ah, shit. I grimaced, and I instantly felt Lindon and Yerin cycle their madra again. Ziel’s eyes narrowed, and Mercy stood straighter.

“I’m sure of it, Sky,” Dross’ voice was still low. “I don’t have the authority to directly detect him, but I can feel the aftereffects. He’s here. In the scripts, circling us. If we’re in the center of a graveyard, then he’s the Remnant haunting the stones, waiting in the dark. I don’t know what for.”

I sighed. “He’s been watching this entire time, hasn’t he?”

Dross nodded from above Lindon’s shoulder, giving me a grim look.

“What’s your construct talking about now?” Palutin asked.

Ziel just sighed. “Come out, Parizad.”

“You should have accepted my offer of partnership, Ziel of the Dawnwing Sect.”

Ziel’s grip on his hammer tightened, hard enough to make the haft audibly creak.

It came from every direction, all at once: high and low, left and right, forward and behind; even the open door behind us leading to the library.

That voice. It couldn’t have ever come from a being of flesh and blood. It didn’t sound even remotely human. It was… almost mechanical, deeper than anything human; a metallic grinding that could only vaguely be called a human voice. It sounded more like something that could have come from the throats of twenty different metal-aspect Remnants all at once. 

It seemed like the well chamber’s scripts and the outside library habitat had a public announcement system (probably well in the process of breaking down, from the sound of it) and Parizad had commandeered it. All of it, at the same time. 

Above the remains of the Spirit Well, a colorless projection slowly emerged. Massive, hundreds of times larger than it should have been. The image wasn’t stable at first, flickering in and out. Probably due to the damage Jingye had done to the scripts. But over the course of ten or so seconds, stability was achieved. A projected image of a pale-faced, long-haired young man resolved into view, wearing goggles with a braid of hair pushed to the side of his face, seemingly wreathed in shadows despite the chamber’s bright light. 

And either the scripts really were failing, or Sha Parizad had a decided flair for the dramatic, because his projected image–just his head and shoulders–filled half the entire chamber, like some titan of old, in an image of only black and white. 

“Skysworn of the Blackflame Empire, and chosen of Ashwind’s Beast King,” the figure said, eyeing us in turn. “I would like to negotiate with you. Regarding something that is mine. I will pay you to surrender that guide construct, intact and unharmed. Deliver it into my hands, where it belongs, and I will give you a payment fit to make your Emperor weep, and your Herald ache in jealousy. Only to whichever group can deliver it to me.”

“No shot.”

Contrary to my expectations, it was Palutin who said that. His arms were folded and he looked up at the ruined ceiling as though that was where the source of the voice was.

Palutin continued, “You couldn’t pay me all the scales in the daggum world to be your errand boy. I ain’t got a clue who you are, but I know there ain’t a bone in your body worthy of my respect.”

Damn. He came out swingin’.

Parizad rested his chin on his interlocked fingers, giving Palutin a condescending grin. “And why, pray tell, am I unworthy of respect from the esteemed Wastelander?”

“You couldn’t come here and face us like true-blue sacred artists,” Palutin said. “Meaning you ain’t worth the pebble in my shoe.”

“One-hundred supreme-grade scales.” His grin sharpened, “Of Celestial Radiance make.”

Fuck off! There’s no way this little bitch had that much! Only Archlords could make supreme-grade scales. And Celestial Radiance madra? Was he kidding me? Those were the most expensive scales of any grade by far. Even one Overlord-grade scale of that kind would make Naru Huan’s gift of four actually look like chump change.

It got to the point that I actually glanced surreptitiously at Palutin, wondering what was going through his mind. I almost felt like I would betray me for that much. I suspected this offer was comparable to a year or two–no, scratch that, I forgot the Path multiplier–probably an entire decade of the entire Blackflame Empire’s national budget.

But Palutin didn’t waver. He glared stubbornly at the large projection of Sha Parizad. “Make that a million for all I care, I still ain’t listenin’.”

Was Palutin out of his mind? I could only boggle at his back.

Yes, I was gratified. Gratified beyond words. But this hillbilly of a Wastelander was truly, genuinely, from the bottom of his heart, insane.

Sha Parizad’s expression faltered at that, but then his smile widened once more. “This offer goes out to everyone still in this facility. If you won’t surrender my construct voluntarily, someone will merely have to take it from you. Do you really think Jingye would not turn around for one-hundred supreme scales?”

Fucking let him. With Ziel in the mix, it would only be a matter of time. Beating him would cost a fortune in healing elixirs, but I’d spend that in a heartbeat to pilfer his little aquaman trident and that fucked-up book he had.

“Why do you think Dross belongs to you?” Lindon asked, his eyes dark with Blackflame.

“The Ninecloud Court has always had first claim to the constructs in this facility, of course,” Parizad said genially. “All of them. When Ghostwater was first opened, each faction had their conditions, their agreed first rights to the best treasures of certain types. The Akura clan laid claim to the waters of the wells and the guardian Remnants, Redmoon Hall claimed the facility’s research literature and findings, the Gold dragons claimed the noncritical aura treasures, the Tidewalker sect claimed a list of specific treasures they claimed Northstrider had stolen from them, and the Beast King claimed the extant and imprisoned beasts. That was one of the conditions the Heralds agreed to when this facility was first claimed. Not that you provincials would be aware. Forgivable. Do you accept my offer, Blackflame artist?”

“No,” Lindon growled.

“Counter-offer!” I said, raising my hand, and Parizad regarded me with that same genial smile, “You leave well enough the fuck alone, and avert your gaze from our treasure before I get vindictive,” I said, clenching my fists as hard as I could, giving him what I hoped was a pleasant grin, “You haven’t done anything that I can’t forgive yet. Keep that in mind. And you must be here for something just as great as what Jingye got, right? Another foundation treasure or two? Go look for that instead. But if you refuse to mind your own business, I will make it my personal mission to make sure you fail in whatever endeavor you’ve set out to do. On my word.” I pointed at the projection.

Parizad grinned placidly, head tilted as he listened to me. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said in a light voice. “Three times I have asked, and been refused. I am done asking.”

And then, to my alarm, the Spirit Well chamber’s surviving scripts began activating. But they looked… unhealthy. We all shifted in alarm as we felt the local aura begin to coalesce.

“What is he doing?” Lindon asked.

My eyes were flickering, roaming over the patterns of the newly revealed scripts emerging from hibernation. These patterns. Some of them reminded me of–

No. No! This was so bad.

Dross spun out of Lindon and cried out quickly. “He’s overloading the transportation scripts! They’re partially collapsed, preserved in maintenance mode. They aren’t supposed to be used!”

“Remember, Skysworn, in the moments of unimaginable suffering yet to come… that you could have walked away.” The shadows in Parizad’s titanic projection became longer, darker. His grin widened and became intensely mocking, teeth bared, head tilted, eyes widening in amusement, lips stretching far, far back, making him look like a genuine psychopath. “I offered money—riches beyond your wildest imagination! You could have returned to your backcountry as kings! I gave this offer peacefully, fairly, rationally. And you spat on that.” 

Off to the side, Orthos unceremoniously grabbed Lindon with his beak and started galloping away, despite Lindon’s protests. Palutin and his companions all clustered together under some kind of combined defensive technique like a shield with five pink petals, and the rest of the crew, wide-eyed, were cycling defensively for everything they were worth.

As the scripts died, one after another under the strain of the forces they were channeling, the scripts all throughout the chamber turned to red, casting the collapsing chamber in a dark, bloody light. Parizad’s voice, now, was nothing less than a cackle. “You pathetic, ignorant little peasants. Nameless cretins coveting treasures far beyond your ken. You could have walked away. Don’t blame me for what’s to occur!”

Dross was still shouting, voice echoing to reach us despite Orthos’ decisive retreat. “You all need to run! He could destroy the entire habitat–!”

The aura of the chamber was reaching a crescendo, the scripts vibrating and overloading and burning out all around us. Then there was a sensation of shattering. Like a far-off explosion, an earthquake felt through the echoes. Water, imploding inwards from every direction ALL AT ONCE–

But that was for only a single moment. And then my vision was covered in that deep, textured blue of the Way.

A moment later, I was standing on sand, in some random habitat. The area was lit up by a tubular green tree, but there was nothing else of interest I could spot.

I looked around, dropping Starfire Surge.

There was no one here.

Fuck.

000

I held my spear in front of me, Nova Blade activated on it to illuminate most of my surroundings. I had absolutely fuck all of an idea where I was. Wherever it was, it was dark, the tree-thing serving as the only illumination in the entire habitat, and I had appeared in the middle of some kind of array, partially collapsed and overgrown with vegetation–mundane vines and moss, mostly. Beyond that lay nothing but scrub vegetation and a few trees, in every direction.

My Truegold senses showed nothing of particular interest within my range. I shrugged, picked a random direction, and started walking.

All the while, I considered what had just happened.

Since Sha Parizad was very likely not a Truegold-Sage, I’m guessing he must have activated some of Ghostwater’s spatial transfer constructs to separate me from the rest of our group. More than a guess, really–I knew I had recognized those scripts. Or, at least, I recognized the underlying concepts and theories; Northstrider’s scripts had been a fair bit more modernized than those used in the Broken Star City. Which was definitely where the theory undergirding Ghostwater’s spatial transport system had originated from. I had no doubt at all of that, not after seeing the patterns.

That was… concerning. Just how deep did this link run? I had no idea there was a true connection to the legacy of the Broken Star Sect in Ghostwater–a few looted and ignored tablets hardly counted–but I supposed it made a certain sense. In their heyday, over two millennia ago, the sect had been the world’s pioneers and great innovators in spatial and dimensional theory. And Arakmedes had not been shy in passing down that knowledge after the sect’s fall, globally, in his centuries as the Wandering Scholar. 

For all I knew, every modern pocket dimension and spatial transport script was based on those same theories, passed down and innovated upon over the centuries.

In any case, by using those scripts, Parizad had outmaneuvered us. Thoroughly. A shit deal, all things considered, but I’d rather this bullshit befall me than actually kowtowing to that prick.

On the bright side, there hadn’t been some ambush or another waiting here for me. Curious. That seemed the obvious step to take if he could control spatial transport and use it on his enemies. Barring just sending them screaming into the void.

I’d think about that more later. Right now, I was just… way too angry at the moment. Getting my ass kicked by Jingye was one thing, but when I stopped to consider things…

…we had taken nothing but Ls ever since we got here.

Sure, Ekeri lost, but that was hardly a fair fight at all.

The Tidewalkers had almost killed several of us.

Yerin had been in quite a pinch as well, battling a Lord-level beast. She could have lost her life.

I had almost been killed by Sha Dellian’s group.

This was literally nothing like the fun stomp in a sacred arts utopia that I had envisioned from the start.

This was hard, man.

Ugh. These thoughts… disgusted me.

I slapped myself on my cheek. Hard.

I took a Blood Shadow as a Lowgold with zero preparation, and only an Underlord’s soulfire seal to save my life. And I flipped that Blood Shadow to my side as well.

I survived an ocean of Dreadgod sheddings.

Got back up even after being in more pain than the average person could possibly bear. I fought through that pain, too, at Highgold, not relying on Frozen Heart to find my way to the Life Well water. It was only through pure grit and determination that I had made it this far.

And ‘this far’ was extremely far. By any measure.

I am Truegold now. One in ten-thousand in the Blackflame Empire. 

The journey hadn’t been as easy as I had wanted it to be, but I had made it work, and I would continue to do so.

And by the end of all this, we would make it out with a barrelful of Cradle’s most valuable mental elixir. And we would have a working artifact never-before-seen on this planet, an artifact that even heavenly bandits had to steal since they couldn’t make it themselves.

There was nothing interesting in this habitat save for a single series of dilapidated buildings, completely wrecked. As far as I could tell from reading a collapsed signboard, this had been a backup housing habitat that had still been under construction when Northstrider abandoned the facility. 

I went in and checked the few houses over for anything worth taking, but there was nothing left but broken things, and evidence of a decades-old campfire.

There was a school of Silverfang Carp in the distance… grazing on grass, as far as I could tell, like some glorified herd of cattle. Bottom-feeding omnivores, I guess it tracks. 

I ignored them, instead thinking about what I could do to increase my power in the short-term. Well, now that I was alone, my Starseed was finally an option. Currently, all it was good for was creating blinding light that only my eyes could pierce, hence why it was better to use it without any allies around.

I had some theories on what to do with that beauty, however… The Tablet Library had given me some truly wild ideas, ideas that I suspected could become the next step of Arakmedes’ star madra research.

I needed more data, however, and far more strength before I felt confident in doing anything along those lines yet.

That only left me with my precious little symbiote. I needed some experimental subjects I could use, first.

My head whipped back towards the school of Silverfang Carp.

Ugh, this was going to be messy.

From a distance, I shot off a fat Solar Flare at them. The Truegold version of the technique was truly gratuitously wide and destructive, and made me confident that I could probably raze a village in under a minute or so, given that no one shielded against it.

The initial wave of power blasted half of the carp to bits, and destroyed their Remnants as well.

They began screeching in rage in some fishly war cry, shooting off—wait, they were shooting off towards me!

Oh? You are approaching me?

I had hopes for this. If I could control one of the carp, benefits of testing Bruno out aside, I could maybe use it as a mount and find the rest of the crew far more quickly than if I tried swimming around with my sad little legs. Keeping that in mind, I aimed my Solar Flare carefully.

The wide band of power wiped out almost every remaining fish. 

The three that continued chasing after me were very quickly whittled down to one by my spear.

When only one remained, I summoned Bruno and—dropped my spear, preparing to wrestle the fish into submission.

I felt extremely unsure about this. I had no idea how strong they were, but I knew that I was just helplessly weak. Hopefully, all that carp-eating should have taken care of that, but my having hit that limit didn’t give me much confidence.

As it charged me, I slid to the side–and then jumped on, straddling it. After some adjustments, I was hugging the very confused carp from the side, bidding Bruno to begin subsumption. 

Bruno latched onto the carp, and it immediately froze in my hold. Then it became heavier as it dropped its water ruler technique. I dropped it on the sand and stepped back to observe if the carp had maybe died.

No, not yet.

I could feel Bruno pumping its spine-tendrils, infinitely narrow, tens of thousands of them all through the carp’s body, feel it gain gradual control and influence over the creature. I bid Bruno’s form to dematerialize and become smaller so that it could actually live inside the creature. It did, disappearing into the series of tiny holes it had dug with its spine-tendrils, wounds bleeding lightly in their wake.

And as the tendrils spread with horrifying, sanguine alacrity, my mind grew heavier and heavier with impressions, feelings, shunted proprioception.

The experience was almost enough to make me throw up my belly-full of assorted Well waters that I had chugged like a man possessed while fighting that fucking orca.

Just as the tendrils reached the end of their spread, I fell on my knees, losing almost all control over my body, before then violently throwing up.

Awful.

God.

The fish is there, brain. There! Not on me, not fused to me, and certainly not in me. 

I opened my eyes and forced my brain to adapt to the fact that it now had two bodies.

My body, and the fish body.

I stood up, keeping my body in mind all the while, and watched as the carp jerked like a fish out of water, over and over.

I took several breaths and started walking. It took a surprisingly short amount of time before I regained my ability to move around as normal. The extra piece of body I now carried around was still a trip, but it only made me dizzy at best. I activated Starfire Surge to see what that would do as well.

Nothing to the fish, sadly enough. I wondered if maybe it would have cycled some kind of full-body Enforcer technique, at least a version compatible with its madra types, but that wasn’t how things worked at all.

But it did drastically ease up on the mental load of being me as well as a floppy carp.

Big relief: this whole avenue of research wasn’t a complete waste of time, then. I could adapt to the Lightningroot Parasite’s feedback. And once I had it take over myself, that dissonance in feedback wouldn’t be nearly as pronounced.

Or it would be even more pronounced. A rather risky cointoss, but you couldn’t be a mad scientist without taking a risk or two every now and then.

Despite my best attempts, the fish body did nothing but flop. I could control the flops. I could control everything, in fact. Everything that could be controlled, at least. There were still some autonomic nervous reactions going on, but its skeletal muscles were fair game for me.

Not quite its… madra, however. 

Something was wrong.

Lightningroot Parasites were supposed to be able to control the madra of their thralls, but… was I fucking something up? Or was Bruno broken?

…

Right.

The fish’s water Ruler technique had been broken. It really was a fish out of water, that was why it was flopping around on the ground.

How in the fuck do fish cycle when they can’t breathe?

And… I didn’t know the pattern for its water aura propulsion technique. Therefore, I didn’t know how to fix this.

I’m a fucking moron.

Still, this was… an astoundingly successful first attempt, all things considered. Bruno’s Lightningroot Parasite instincts had almost completely guided this process, and because I had a link with Bruno, I had been given perfect control over the creature’s muscles.

I began to carefully examine the creature, measuring the feedback-time, my development over its control, and noting down every part of my subsumption of it. I wondered if I could perhaps take control over more creatures at the same time—as worthy a fallback plan as any in case using it to boost my combat ability wasn’t possible. I could just become some kind of fucked up Pokemon master.

Or a discount Doflamingo.

That wasn’t a terrible idea. Would be a really fucked up addition to my playbook, honestly, and it wouldn’t make me any friends, but it would work.

I mentally sorted my most cogent questions and ranked them on a list.

Finally, I started going about answering one question that was most accessible to me at the moment; how did I activate its techniques?

I closed my eyes and concentrated deeply, sending a message to Bruno, telling it to swim. Not move its madra in a specific way to attract water aura to make the creature float. I wasn’t doing anything step-by-step here. All that knowledge of how to swim, all that instinct, was innate within that carp. You didn’t walk by consciously putting one foot in front of the other, bending your knees, rotating your hips and thighs sequentially like that ragdoll game on the internet.

You walked by thinking ‘walk’.

The carp shook and started flapping its gills, immediately summoning a cloud of water aura beneath it that allowed it to rise from the sand and start swimming in the air in one direction. I bade it to turn around, and then swim in a circle.

After a certain amount of time, it stopped swimming, just standing still. Eventually, the Ruler technique stopped as well, and the carp dropped from the air, back into the sand.

…it needed a continuous inflow of instructions. Bruno, at least. Fair, of course. Was Bruno really this mentally inflexible, however? Why can’t I just tell it to continuously make the carp swim?

…Perhaps I could?

I willed Bruno to get the carp to swim all the way to the water wall on the habitat. Then I turned around and thought about something else. 

Chiara popped into my mind. I winced. No. Let’s… defer that topic until I had any control over what was to come. Worrying was never my style, and I didn’t have any time to worry right now. Not when there was so much I could do to boost my chances of survival and ultimate power.

I heard a thud in the distance and swung my spear around in case of anything.

…nope. It was… just the carp that I had sent.

It fell halfway towards the waterwall.

Stopping to think about something else had, in effect, canceled Bruno’s order. 

I had done a thorough number on Bruno, huh? Shouldn’t there be any residual conscious will left in that shadow at this point? Was it literally all instinct after I had lobotomized it?

Perhaps all that boundless hatred had made me overcorrect somehow?

No. This was the best outcome. Bruno’s inability to go auto-pilot meant that this carp was all mine to control. Meaning that once I took Bruno into myself, it wouldn’t just start to do its own thing. It having no willpower was a good thing.

And once I started assimilating it, eventually it could form a copy of my own will, but one that was so close to mine as to be indistinguishable. Continuing on from that note, we would be experiencing every waking moment in tandem, leaving no room for mutual deviation.

But a mutual deviation scenario was not the horror show that it truly sounded like. Once I reached Lord, I could manipulate my dream aura and use that to induce personality synchronization in the Blood Shadow. Sharing dream aura would allow us to once again share memories and personalities. Cognition, in essence.

And a copy of myself would not go rogue and try to ruin our bottom line either. I couldn’t fathom why there would ever be a schism between the two of us when we both knew that we would be useless without the other. Betrayal was mutually destructive, and bore literally no benefits besides.

Putting myself in the shoes of the Blood Shadow that would gain a simulacrum of my self, I would not begrudge that position even if I was somehow made aware of it. Not when I knew that regaining my body and sense of self just required that I recombine with my ‘true’ self using dream aura. We would both win, in the end. I, the Blood Shadow, would have no logical reason to ruin things.

I would continue running my experiments, however, by testing out just how much of the target’s original nervous system remained after I extracted the Parasite. Would be a shame to actually lose all that flesh instead of just having it overlaid by the Parasite’s tendrils. It would certainly increase the finality of the whole endeavor beyond what I was comfortable with.

I guess I’d just have to get my scholar on, once again.