"Diabolic Dragon Whiskers...price point:six hundred fifty-eight thousand gold coins...at the cheapest...Twilight Star Iron...price point...enough to fucking buy Stone Claw City...and finally...Diamond Grizzly Bile? Oh shit we actually have that in the storehouse."
It had been about a week since Zhen Liu had returned from the Library of Nowhere, and he wasn’t exactly happy about the results of the trip, but he didn’t hate it. Aside from getting more insight about what he can do, as well as getting what was essentially a laundry list of materials he needed to get, he also borrowed at least several dozen or so arts that he could lend to his family. Nothing at World class, but nobody would snuff at a major Ethereal art, especially the ones compatible with unusual formulas....
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"[Megalodon Thrash]? What’s a megalodon?," Zhen Hai said as he looked over the new art Zhen Liu had brought back with him.
While Zhen Liu had gone on his little training trip, he ended up running into his mysterious master again, who decided to bestow him an absolute fuckton of aether arts that seemed to be all over the place.
Movement, offense, defense, even support arts!
The variety kind of made sense, what with Zhen Liu’s weird puppet tricks, but it was surprising how oddly appropriate they all fit to the clan’s needs. Even better, they finally got some new arts that Zhen Yue could learn.
"Whoever this master is probably has an insane background.Five different moon aether arts? All compatible? Crazy," Zhen Hai muttered himself, a habit he started picking up from Zhen Liu.
Once he had finished looking over the art, Zhen Hai proceeded to get up from his seated position and circulate his aether.
"Let’s hope this art is less of a hassle than [Echoing Frost]," Zhen Hai grumbled as he began to go through the form of this new art.
Despite having recently broken through to Aether Master, Zhen Hai still couldn’t wrap his head around the [Echoing Frost] art that he and his cousins retrieved from the ruins. At the very least his grandfather had mastered it, so it could be used if things got hairy.
"Now! [Megalodon Thrash]!"
A giant shark made of water fired from Zhen Hai’s fist as he launched the art forward at the training dummy...well, what was the training dummy.
When the art had finished, giant shark bite shaped crater was left in the ground and the training dummy was reduced to a pile of junk.
Zhen Hai stared wide eye at the devastation wrought and down at his own hands.
The ratio of aether used and destruction produced didn’t make sense to Zhen Hai, because he swore that he used way less aether than intended for that art.
"The fuck kind of arts did that old guy give Zhen Liu?"
A similar scenario was happening elsewhere in the compound, but replace Zhen Hai with Zhen Yue, replace [Megalodon Thrash] with [Enigmatic Moon Cutter] and replace crater with a dummy cut so precisely that it essentially crumbled apart.
"Holy shit...damnit, now I’m cussing like that fucking shark again..."
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"Alright, so I’m missing at least half of the items on this list," Zhen Liu wrote down on a piece of parchment, "and I get the feeling that...wait, is any of this stuff in that shit I stole from the Marquis?"
The kaijin now had human disguises, so they could now go and do things more independently as opposed to just being accessories and/or toys on his person. That being said, they were currently dealing with a different problem.
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"Stand still, dammit! How does he still have so much energy?!"
"Was I , not too long ago?"
In the time between leaving the Library and returning home, Zhen Liu thought now was a great idea to turn the new puppet his family got him and turn it into a proto-kaijin too.
Razor Maiden was starting to mature, so maybe she could help supervise the new little guy like a big sister.
This new puppet was known as a "Spring Brawler", as evident by the fact that it’s arms and legs were coiled springs while the hand and feet were heavy looking weights.
Apparently it was Bronze tier aether puppet, like Razor Maiden was, meaning it could put up a bit of fight in the right hands, but in the hands of a life creating hapless hero...well...
"Hahahah! Playtime! Jump!"
"Gah! It’s like trying to pin down a cartoon!," Hurricroak yelled as she failed to tackle Spring Brawler.
For the better of an hour, Nepherage and Hurricroak had attempted to pin down Spring Brawler so they could pass on some form of wisdom to their new companion, but the latter had been less and cooperative.
There was a running theory in the group that maybe the tier of the aether tool/treasure determined the starting intelligence point for the proto-kaijin, but nobody had anything higher than Bronze to test this out.
Frosttusk didn’t move to help secure their new proto-kaijin friend, namely due to being too slow and cold to be able to, whole Razor Maiden didn’t do anything because she was a tad embarrassed.
"It’s like staring at an old video. Embarrassing...," she muttered while watching Spring Brawler hop about.
She may have had blades for limbs, but it was still somewhat strange for her to see a fellow puppet born kaijin act so...immaturely.
"Was I...this energetic?"
Nepherage launched herself forward again in order to tackle Spring Brawler, but the latter had leaped up into the air.
Apparently Hurricroak and Nepherage decided to coordinate their efforts this time around.
As Nepherage went low to tackle Spring Brawler on the ground, Hurricroak used that opportunity to leap into the air and intercept Spring Brawler under the reasonable assumption he would attempt to leap to escape as well.
It went off like a charm.
Up until Spring Brawler somehow used his spring force to launch himself sideways.
They didn’t know how it happen, Spring Brawler didn’t know how that happened, but he just learned how and was going to abuse it.
"Gah! That’s it! Alto, Bass get out here and you two take care of this, I need to rest my thighs," Hurricroak commanded as she summoned her two zakos.
"Oh right...Copperfist, you go to," Nepherage said as she summoned her zako.
"Hmm!" "Hmm!" "CLANG!"
While the two of them weren’t sure if the zakos could help in this situation, it was at least better than nothing.
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"Okay and after going through the ill-gained goods from the Marquis, the only thing I’m missing is Diabolic Dragon Whiskers," Zhen Liu cheerfully noted as he marked down the rest of the materials. But as he made a happy note about just missing this one piece, the gears in his head began to turn as a frown formed on his face.
’Wait a minute...this is usually the part when-"
"Xiao Liu, did you hear about the rumors?"