Oh fallen child of Chaos.
Who’s existence lingers still.
By my will, by your flesh.
Break away from the turning wheel of fate.
Reclaim your severed threads of destiny and weave a new path.
Reform, reforge and renew.
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Zhen Liu kept his distance as he watched Rianna read through the note that her late(?) father left to her, all whilst keeping the newly refurbished saber by her side.
As she kept reading, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes as she read the heartfelt words of her father’s goodbye and words of pride of how much she has grown...Zhen Liu briefly wondered how Rianna would react if she knew that he had taken the desire core extracted from her, the body of her father’s enemy, her father’s old saber that somehow contained traces of his soul and used them to make the saber that was now laying on her lap.
But that was a question for another day, and it had been a very long evening.
That, and he had more personal questions to address.
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’So...I can turn dead..."abominations"...into weapons? I thought I could just make kaijins, so what gives?’
=Technically speaking, your current power level only allows you to turn certain material types into kaijin, but due to the extraordinary circumstances of this battle, and your opponent, you could bypass those rules.=
’Neat...so what the fuck did I actually make her? I know it ain’t no ordinary weapon, y’all had me dropped a core in that thing.’
=Anyways, milord, shouldn’t we take this opportunity to finally getting around to making those new kaijin.=
’What? Oh right...damn, feels like we’ve been down here forever...’
=Emotional trauma tends to cause that.=
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Zhen Liu took a breath before surveying the chamber before him.
Right now there was a shit ton of rubble literring the place, a big ass hole in the ceiling, a pool of weird liquid that definitely wasn’t water and about a dozen or so zakos that hadn’t die from the explosion of energy that caused all of the aforementioned rubble and hole.
It wasn’t entirely necessary to address those former three observations yet, but the latter...
’Quick question, what happens if I dismiss the zakos?’
=If you’re wondering about them dying because you said the wrong thing, fret not milord, they also have a carry mode.=
’Oh. Oh...,’ Zhen Liu went as he imagined the sheer amount of accessories that was going to cover his body.
Thankfully, that wasn’t going to be the case.
One by one, the zakos all transformed into little balls made of bone, metal or chitin. To the uninformed, they looked a lot like decorative beads.
From the remains of the chamber, Zhen Liu plucked a sturdy looking yet decorative coin bag from an unfortunate skeleton and dropped the beads inside before fastening it on his belt.
With the zako secured, Zhen Liu turned his attention towards what was essentially the cause of all of these issues, or at least part of it: the pool of Sacred Beast Essence.
’Ya come into an exotic locale, you try to steal the corpses of some high level creatures, next thing you know you get embroiled in some tragic story that tears across generations about the folly of greed and ambition...this is going to be a trend isn’t it?,’ Zhen Liu mumbled to himself as he walked up to the pool at the center of the chamber.
Having read about this vaunted Sacred Beast Essence in at least several records at this point, Zhen Liu had developed genuine curiosity as to why everyone was godsdamned murder hobo happy reckless to roll up to try and drink this stuff.
’Huh...why is it so...dingy?’
He wasn’t disappointed by what he saw, he was just a tad confused.
From what he could recall, Sacred Beast Essence tended to have a milky appearance with a jelly-like texture and shiny coloration akin to jewels, with the coloration being dependent on the type of aether the beast in question cultivated.
Earth aether was yellow, wind was green, fire was red, water was blue, the weirder types of aether being some mixture of those colors in various shades.
The pool before him was indeed milky, had two distinct colors due to coming from two different beasts and was radiating what Zhen Liu assumed to be pure aether...but there were a lot of weird black clumps floating in it that seemed to be impeding that latter radiation.
It was like staring at a giant bowl of sour milk, except the milk was magic and so was the mold.
________________________________________________
’Okay, I was super tempted to drink this shit since apparently it’s so highly valued...by everybody, but at the same time, I think this stuff would give me some kind of disease if I drank it. What the fuck are those lumps?’
Pathos geared up to answer,
’Oh yeah...Oh EWWWW!’
=No, no...,= Logos interjected, =I think that’s actually discarded remnants of his flesh?=
’I thinks that’s worst...’
=Actually milord, that means you can clean it.=
________________________________________________
Zhen Liu stared at the seal on his left hand for a moment before letting out a heavy sigh.
’You’re doing this for a reason, you’re doing this for a reason, you’re doing this for a reason...,’ Zhen Liu told himself multiple times in an attempt to control his disgust.
With as much mental preparation as he could muster, Zhen Liu plunged his hand into the pool.
Once he did...the lumps in the pool...began to swim towards his hand and slowly absorb.
’Oh no...it’s tingly...and slimy,’ Zhen Liu complained as the memories of Frederick/Grub entered his mind.