The moment Zhen Liu and the girls returned from the library, they were greeted by the sight of Nepherage, Hurricroak, Frosttusk and Razor Maiden, in their human disguises, standing by a pile of bodies...who Zhen Liu seriously hoped were just unconcious.
"Those guys still breathing?"
Of the four kaijin turned human, Frosttusk was the one to bend down and place a finger under the nose of one of the unconcious people.
"They’re...breathing..."
"Zhen Liu? Why is an amazon, a giant viking, a ballerina with sharp features and a..."
"Neon popstar," Bellona interjected like it was the most natural answer in the world.
"Neon popstar, thank you, telling you that they have acquired a bunch of spies/standing atop an unconcious pile of people?," Alicia asked, "wait a minute..."
"Oh right, we’re still in our disguises! Whoopsies!," Hurricroak replied while making a cute face and knocking her head like an anime character, "give us a moment."
Before the group’s eyes, the four strange humans began to shake like dogs, as they did, their humans melted away to reveal the kaijin they actually were.
"That’s better," Hurricroak...croaked as she stretched her arms.
Alicia, Bellona and Matilda looked at Zhen Liu in shock.
"Since when could they turn into humans?"
"Uhhh...a while ago, give a minute."
Zhen Liu walked over to the pile of unconcious people and proceeded to add his two unconcious volunteers in top of it. Before he did however, he made sure they all that same weird marking on their foreheads like the ones he just added.
Thankfully, they all did and his kaijin didn’t just knock out random ass people...yet.
He was about to whisper to the kaijin, but then he remembered he had telepathy.
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[What’s wrong, maestro? Not happy that we took the initiative?,] Hurricroak asked with a teasing smile.
[We figured we’d be proactive and secure the spies before the main branch people could retaliate,] Nepherage added, [It’s not our fault they were so easy to take out.]
[Folded...like...paper.]
[I had nothing to do with this,] Razor Maiden interjected, [ I just watched.]
’Choosing inaction is giving consent, but back to the matter at hand,’ Zhen Liu lightly scolded, ’y’all do realize that this is probably gonna have unintended consequences, right?’
[Unintended like what?]
Zhen Liu didn’t have a concrete answer to this question, but he had a couple ideas, of which some will be proven true the next day...
For the time being though, he had minds to jumble...again.
’None of them are dead or dying, right?’
[We made sure to simply knock them out, and prevented Nepherage from eating one of them.]
’Nepherage, what the fuck?’
[He called me a bitch and I wanted to see if he tasted like one.]
=Kaijin Lord, the mindjumbling preparations have been made, feel free to drag in the new...guests, at your leisure.=
’Wait, I didn’t even ask to do that, how did you-?’
=Saw this coming a mile away.=
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What followed after this short exchange was Zhen Liu, the kaijin and their zakos, dragging the bodies of all of those unconcious people back through the door to the Library of Nowhere.
Bellona and Alicia were mildly shocked at the sight of yet again more strange beings under Zhen Liu’s command, but we’re quickly mollified when he explained what the zako we’re exactly.
"Wait, your statement seems to suggest that the zakos can become kaijin as well. How does that work?"
After that, Zhen Liu bid the girls a good evening before leaving through the door.
They had initially thought of joining him and seeing what this mindjumble process was like, but decided against it after realizing that their respective fathers would probably disapprove.
Well...except for Jin Fang.
"I’ll go join him and make sure he doesn’t stay up too late," she told the other three. A small hint of jealousy could be sensed in two of the three women leaving the area, but nothing too big.
However, just as Zhen Liu saw coming, there were going to be a lot of unforeseen consequences for this evening, not just due to the action for the kaijin, but the actions of one metaphysical clown...
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=Pathos, what did you give to our lord’s consorts? I don’t recall us having a "goodie bag" system. =
=Experimental...how?=
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"Here, Xiao Li. Something to warm your bones."
"T-thank you master," Zhen Li managed to say between chattering teeth as he took the bowl of soup from Zhen Wang’s hands.
Even after being rescued by his master, Zhen Li was still partially frozen in a block of ice. While normally he could break through such things via his own aether, that weird monster’s ice was something...different.
Regardless, with the combined efforts of him and his master, they managed to break the former free of the ice. He had a nasty chill going on though.
As Zhen Li attempted to reclaim some form of feeling in his lower extremities, Zhen Wang sat close by and began to think about the demands of this mysterious "overlord".
’There is no way an Aether Overlord of all people would be out here in the sticks , right? There’s hardly any resources to support such a figure out here, and with that kind of power, he’d be able to take over at least three of the local kingdoms at once,’ Zhen Wang thought to himself,’why bother with us?’
Something about the situation didn’t add up in regards to this mysterious Overlord, to Zhen Wang at least.
He had met Overlords in the past and they were never this...amicable, at least to someone of his status.
If they wanted someone dead, they’d be dead, simple as that.
On top of all that, there were those unusual monsters with that strange energy that just showed up out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast.
Zhen Wang had attempted to go after them after freeing Zhen Li, but his searches came up short.
No matter how far he extended his senses, he couldn’t pick up that energy again...which was also weird.
’Even if they were actively suppressing it, a small wisp of it should have leaked out. It was like the energy just...vanished.’
As Zhen Wang thought longer in the subject, his eyes wandered to the mirror aether tool on the ground, a realization dawning on him at that exact moment.
In a hurried manner, Zhen Wang rushed to the mirror and activated it with his aether, causing it to glow with life once more.
Aside from the two blacked out displays that should belong to the two captured operatives, all of the other displays were in working order with their respective operatives still tailing their targets.
Zhen Wang was about to let out a sigh of relief and assume that whomever his disciple talked to was merely messing with them...and then the displays started going out.