203 - Return the Flesh You Stole [Cherno] (Patreon)

The sizable man stared down at Casus, grey force coalescing around his fists and continuing further up his arms. The telltale tendrils of a baneworm twitched under his skin, concealed somewhat under a generous layer of fat.

A grey fist came flying at him. Casus shifted to the side and came running after his foe right away, closing the distance.

The man was impressive — his strength rivaled Casus’ own, and despite his size, he was no lumbering brute. It was true that his sheer size limited his mobility, what movement took place was both calculated and explosive. His technique was equally impressive — a mixture of common bare-knuckle boxing techniques elevated through understanding and adjusted to fit the user’s nonstandard anatomy. It wasn’t every day one met a man built like a hippo — that is to say, a mountain of solid muscle disguised by far less fat than there seems to be. On top of that, he seamlessly weaved thaumaturgy with boxing, using only simple but rock-solid techniques to magnify his comparatively far more advanced martial arts.

Casus matched the giant blow for blow, seeing something unsettlingly familiar in him. He wondered what exactly it was, and in the midst of their second exchange, he realized it. Tsetse. This was astonishingly similar to Tsetse’s style, but focused near-exclusively on the arms.

Right hook. Casus blocked it, ducked right, and drove a flame-wreathed uppercut into his foe’s armpit. A left hook came flying in, but Casus willed his arm-blade to spin, its force throwing the punch off-course, cutting through the wards, and biting into flesh. Without time to spin up in advance, it didn’t get much further than a shallow cut.

He immediately hopped back, landing across from the giant. To his right, the stairs and the rest of the foyer. To his left, a scorched, ash-encrusted double door, beyond it a hallway across which awaited the door to the ballroom. The graft-beast was banging on the door beyond which Lady Blackhand was, but Casus held no doubt in her ability to deal with just one of those things. Still, he shouted a warning — he couldn’t afford to do much more.

Though he had not noticed it, a fifth star had joined the four revolving above his head, and with it, his strength had grown in all aspects.

Casus had decided: this battle would end with the next exchange.

“My name is Casus Aristedes. Return the flesh you have stolen and go unto Kenoma,” he recited as he pressed in the eye of his belt, expecting no reply.

“Some call me Strongman,” his foe replied, not divulging his true name.

The third exchange came and went, a dance of violence. Casus took some hits, but compared to Tsetse, Strongman was a manageable opponent. Merely applying what he had learned from his fights with Tsetse was enough to start pressuring the giant.

Such was his thought process: How could he ever become something more than a mere shadow of Silberblut if he couldn’t even best someone objectively weaker than Tsetse, let alone Tsetse himself?

To any reasonable individual, of course, this was an absurd mindset, but it was the epitome of reason for Casus Aristedes.

His heroic aspirations demanded him to surpass himself, and with hope and anger in his heart, that was what he did.

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Strongman didn’t understand what was happening.

With every passing moment, that black-armored Mamon Knight was just getting stronger and stronger. He called himself Casus Aristedes, and sure, his suit resembled descriptions of the Silberblut Armor, but it clearly wasn’t the Silberblut Armor. The eye on his belt was all wrong as well, and the outer rim was the colour of copper instead of gold.

And yet, somehow, he would have preferred to be fighting Silberblut right now.

He had sent out his emergency ping before that explosion, but no help had arrived yet. Even that stillborn had left his side, bashing at a random door on the lower floor for some forsaken reason. Strongman hated this… But he still put up his fists and summoned his strength.

____________________________

Moments earlier…

___________________________

The moment it was out of the box, Atomica’s seals sloughed off, revealing a gleaming mass of opaque, red crystal. Despite its far weaker physical glow, it still seethed with an immense aura — noticeably less intense than it had been right after transmutation, but far more solid. Tendrils of crimson energy reached out for Krahe and the key floated towards her hand, floating near it. Only one talisman stayed in place — it stated the voidkey’s system readout.

[ATOMICA REFULGENT, FRACTURED SOLOMONIC KEY]

[Tags:]

Fourth-order

Voidkey

Incomplete

Imprinted (Brunhilde “Blackhand” Krahe)

[Details:]

Thaumic Throughput +C1^

Entropy Tolerance +D3^^

Entropy Dissipation +D3^

Thaumic Fusion Efficiency +18%^^^

Isotope Tolerance +D1^^

Isotope Dissipation +D2^

It curiously showed which aspects had grown during its stabilization period, with small upward arrows next to each attribute signifying growth. A side effect of the seals? she wondered, thinking back to Yao mentioning the possibility. She peeled it off, stowing the box back in her Kenoma Sack. The readout continued onto the other side — there was one new line, a reiteration of the warning Yao had given her about possible collateral damage.

First-time implantation of this voidkey will reshape the holder’s Soul Furnace, permanently conferring the following Boon: “Astral Implosion Furnace”

This voidkey may be safely implanted only by the Imprinted individual. Implantation by any other individual will result in catastrophic Soul Furnace rupture (as with simultaneous implantation of two voidkeys).

First-time implantation may cause volatile thaumetic phemonema. Conduct in a safe place free of fragile objects and/or people.

Stowing the paper in her Kenoma Pocket, she quickly formed a tar tendril, grasping her gun with it — the loaded clip held six mescalt bullets. After that, she extracted the Twin Serpent Key, her unenhanced dissipation more than enough to maintain that one tendril. At the instant the Twin Serpent Key was out, her thoughts of implanting Atomica triggered something. With a pulse of red light from the hexagonal voidkey, Krahe felt a searing hot sensation race up her right arm, quickly spreading throughout her entire body, settling in her chest, in the same place she felt the flame of thaumaturgy when channeling. Her spine and ribcage thrummed with a strange vibration, a dull headache took hold, and then, she knew.