BlueShear
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Chapter 47
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 06:00:55 +0000 UTCSuddenly, it was as if the world around the young cultivator changed, as something that should’ve forever remained intangible… swiftly solidified.
Standing far too close to the epicenter for comfort, Raina felt the sting of several small cuts digging into her flesh. This despite the high tiered runic barrier that lay between them. Something that, by all rights, should’ve been impossible.
Raina staggered back, more alarmed than she was injured, as something indistinct began to form from the boy’s crimson aura.
A crude sword soon emerged from the swirling, churning mists, looking to have been inexpertly carved from red crystal. The boy clicked his tongue, and in another eye aching second the once crude weapon had been transformed into an ornate longsword, masterfully wrought of blood colored ruby. The boy hummed contemplatively to himself, examining the blade.
“Oh, I suppose that’ll do. Now, before I break myself free from this insidious cage and explain to you, in excruciating detail, the great folly you’ve made in crossing me, I have one question for you all.”
None of them answered. Even the kiddies looked taken aback. Raina only sighed. If no one else was going to…
“Alright, I’ll bite. What’s this question of yours, kid?”
“Oh, it’s very simple. Tell me, which gods do you pray to?”
Again, there was silence. Raina really needed a drink.
“And why, oh great lord cultivator, would you need to know something like that?”
“So that I might know which deities to thank for this minor distraction of course. It was very… considerate of them, to point you all in my direction.”
And then the boy struck, lunging forward with a deceptively clumsy swing. His movements immediately followed by a dense ripple of crimson aura. Only to… have his blade bounce off the golden barrier harmlessly, leaving not even a scratch on its shimmering surface. If anything, the kid looked even more surprised than they were. For a long time after, the arrogant brat merely stared down at the ornate sword with a look of incomprehension.
“Well damn. You know, I’d really thought that would work.”
Raina, for her part, couldn’t help but chuckle at the boy's antics, before, with renewed confidence, she began the long chant that would link this idiot’s soul with that of their employers. Shifting the comatose body of the young girl until it conformed with the greater ritual formation as a whole, Raina began infusing the process with her spirit—the many talismans she’d arranged lighting up in response.
It was always difficult, performing delicate soul work, though Raina was so proficient at it by this point that she made it look easy. Her teacher had always told her that it was far easier to injure a soul than it was to manipulate one, and harder still to piece it back together again after the fact.
What she was attempting now wasn’t anywhere near the hardest ritual she’d ever done. Though much of that had to do with the souls in question, and less to do with her own personal prowess.
More specifically, that of the girl’s. Less of a true soul than it was a heavenly treasure, expansive soul realm, and once in a generation opportunity all rolled up into one.
A perforated anima infused with fragments of the divine.
A rare and little-known phenomenon. One which, if you were to take little old Raina at face value—Raina the drunkard, Raina the failure, Raina the two-bit mercenary for hire—you could be forgiven for assuming she’d never even heard of, let alone knew the first thing about.
That you’d also be dead wrong was merely your own damn fault, or more specifically, the fault of their employers. Because as soon as she’d seen the girl, the unwilling puppet of some higher power, she’d known.
And ever since, their plans for this mission had irrevocably changed.
Seeing as, of course they wouldn’t just stop at transporting the boy’s soul into that bountiful realm, then fuck off with their meager payment to the next shitty job. Not when they’d benefit so much more from taking the perilous plunge themselves.
Mouth still occupied with her recitations, Raina used her hands to sign for the others to take their places around the ritual circle—swiftly finding her own place in turn and sliding down into a comfortable seated position.
From there, she got to watch in growing irritation as Viviana did her best to gaslight the kiddies. Before Raina could intervene, however, with a flash of purple light, the whole lot of them disappeared—each having been teleported away with a flick of Arthur’s staff; transported back to their families and friends no doubt.
It would’ve been a simple enough thing for a spacial practitioner of Arthur’s caliber to pull off, especially with the help of Edmond’s way-finding rune techniques to guide him. Viviana, as was to be expected, appeared less than pleased with this new turn of events, though after a loud clap to grab their attention, and the meanest glare Raina could manage, she was able to wrangle the bickering mercenaries into their proper places at last.
And then, signing for the others to close their eyes in preparation, all that was left was to finish the ritual. Already she could feel the invasive tug as a trickle of the ritual’s binding energy wormed its way into her soul shell. Just as she could faintly feel those same threads drilling their way into the others’.
It was only when she’d nearly completed the ritual that she picked up on something rather ominous. That the boy, normally so vocal, hadn’t deigned to make a peep for quite some time now.
Opening her eyes to see what he was up to, the shock of what she was presented with nearly made her fumble her pronunciation. Because now a distinctly separate aura swirled around his crouching form. A shining emerald hue she knew quite well.
One he had no business possessing in the first place. Everyone knew it was suicidal for any but maybe the boundless emperor’s descendants to harbor more than one war concept at a time. They were called martial alignments for a reason.
To court two at the same time…?
His soul should’ve been shattered by the conceptual dissonance on the spot. A thrill of panic shot through her then. If his soul imploded while she was still bound to him by the ritual?
Frantically, Raina followed the thin tether temporarily binding their souls. Within moments she came into range of his soul shell with her spiritual sight. At which point she was presented with yet another anomaly. One that immediately brought her up short. Because there wasn’t just one soul shell trapped behind the barrier, but two.
Not a spectacular discovery, all things considered, were it not for the way they slowly revolved around one another—strangely connected in a way that, in all her years as a soul practitioner, she’d never before seen. Before she could properly make sense of what it meant—or indeed, understand how the young man had access to two separate martial alignments—her soul ritual finally came to a close, and her surroundings were suddenly leeched of color.
To be immediately replaced by a raucous aurora of neon blues, pinks, and violets, as she shifted all but their employer into the astral plane. Breathing through the familiarly unnerving sensation that was floating up and away from her own body, Raina first made sure the now visible tethers connecting each of their astral bodies was secure.
That done, she gave each of her four passengers a quick once over.
Less accustomed to the rather jarring transition, both her partners and the boy bobbed along limply through the air, dead to the world for all appearances. It wouldn’t last long, and they wouldn’t sustain any long-lasting damage, though it did mean she was on her own for this next bit. Cargo secured; only then did she properly take in their surroundings. She was almost too late.
Throwing herself to the side, she just barely managed to avoid serious injury as a massive jade serpent, wreathed in glittering ice fire, barreled past and through the astral rift that’d appeared just above the comatose blond.
Their ticket in.
Raina waited there for long seconds, her impatience steadily rising, as the serpent’s prodigious length whipped past at incredible speeds. Finally, after the last of the creature’s bulk had entered the rift, Raina waited several more interminable seconds for the sake of caution, took a few more unnecessary breaths, before she hovered forward and plunged into the rift. Acting quickly before anything else could skip ahead in line. Dragging, as she did so, the unconscious train of astral bodies that bobbed up and down in her wake.
***
When Jun came to, with the sun on his face and what felt like grass prickling at his skin, it was on a wave of nausea and disorientation. And all the while he unhappily nursed what had to be the mother of all headaches. This sorry state of affairs wasn’t helped in the least by the string of notifications that greeted him upon waking.
Ding!
You have found enlightenment in the concept: [Piercing]
|Concept of Piercing| (1st Aspect)
Aspect of Focused Penetration
+5 to resonance
Ding!
Congratulations!
You have formed a Single Aspected Mantra.
Mantra: [Spearing Hand] (1st Aspected)
My will is piercing.
Grade: (Poor Quality)
Ding!
You have found enlightenment in the concept: [Cleaving]
|Concept of Cleaving| (1st Aspect)
Aspect of Unhindered Separation
+5 resonance
Ding!
Congratulations!
You have formed a Single Aspected Mantra.
Mantra: [Splitting Chop] (1st Aspected)
My will fells forests.
Grade: (Poor Quality)
Ding!
Congratulations!
Your Mantra [Sword Cyclone] (Great Quality) has evolved.
[Sword Cyclone] (Great Quality) has become:
[Blade Manipulation] (Excellent Quality) +15 resonance.
Your insight has transcended its natural limits.
18 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.
Your insight has transcended its natural limits.
18 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.
Your insight has transcended its natural limits.
56 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.
The first two notifications weren’t all that unusual. The last thing he remembered was eating the piercing, then cleaving fruit of enlightenment and meditating on the conceptual threads which the attuned beast cores had left him with. So, in a way, that he’d formed two early mantras wasn’t totally unexpected. No, it was the nature in which he’d formed them, and what came after, that seriously made him worry.
Because, simply put, he didn’t remember finishing his meditation session in the first place, let alone the ordeal he must’ve gone through to bump his sword cyclone up a grade. Was he somehow finding enlightenment in his sleep now? Unlikely. Which meant something else had to be going on. He just wished he had the smallest inkling as to what that might be. And then there was the question of where exactly he was, which, admittedly played quite well into the whole memory loss question mark.
Dismissing the notification, Jun squinted up into the light, practically willing his eyes to adjust faster. When they finally did, he was astounded by what he saw. Just how long had he been out?! He was in an open clearing ringed by trees. Above him stretched a brilliant blue expanse of sky—the voluminous shapes of distant clouds drifting lazily across its otherwise pristine surface.
He was… free. Just the thought of it brought a swelling of relief and jolt of panic in equal measure, as his brain was shoved straight into fight or flight mode. He had so much he needed to do! So many more things he could see to, now that his timetable had been pushed up! It was the kind of opportunity he’d only dreamt of previously, and he’d be damned if he wasted even a second of the precious time he’d been given.
Jun launched to his feet, lurching forward with clumsy, uncoordinated steps—plans and contingencies already underway in his mind. He barely made it more than two paces, however, before his face rebounded off of something hard and unyielding. Jun flailed backwards, half blind from the collision, tripped, then landed squarely on his rear. Blinking away the tears of pain, he took a proper look at his surroundings for the first time, only to find that some sort of transparent golden barrier blocked him off from the outside world.
His disappointment was immeasurable.
