Fates Parallel Chapter 402 - Claim (Patreon)

Setting aside the horrible experience of having a piece of her mind hijacked by an unknowable eldritch being, Yoshika focused her efforts on figuring out the problem before her.

According to Void, it was possible for her to move Chou’s realm somehow, but she couldn’t even begin to fathom what that would require. At the very least, she suspected it had something to do with the Tear.

The focus of almost the last three years of her life floated gently above the dais, easily within arm’s reach. It was innocuous and daunting at the same time. A tiny little red stone with the power to move worlds. Apparently literally.

If she removed the stone, Chou’s realm would crumble, spitting them back out in the physical place where it had been anchored to her own world. If what Iseul’s ‘grandpa’ said was true, then only Yoshika would survive the transition, and that wouldn’t do at all.

But what else could she do? Leaving it seemed terribly anti-climactic after all the work she’d done to get here, and that would just doom her world to inevitable destruction from the Tear’s overflowing essence.

No, she had to somehow do both. Take the tear and leave it where it was. In other words, do exactly what Chou had said—conquer his soulscape.

Feeling a bit stuck, Yoshika used Rika’s Hundred Mirrors technique to create illusory doubles in the form of Jia, Eui, and Kaede. She still had their avatars, but she was experimenting with different methods of managing her aspects.

Kaede stared at the Sovereign’s Tear, frowning while Jia and Eui made a show of stretching their imaginary joints. Meili raised an eyebrow at them and Jia shrugged.

“It just seemed like the thing to do?”

It was a strange feeling to be surprised by her own idiosyncrasies, but Meili liked it. She felt like there were unexplored facets to her beyond just being a gestalt. Eui cracked her knuckles and stepped up to the dais.

“Alright, question one—can we even trust the ‘old monster,’ as Jianmo calls it?”

Kaede shook her head.

“Almost certainly not, but that doesn’t mean it’s lying. We can safely assume that it’s pushing us into action that benefits it, but there’s no reason to think it’s malicious.”

Meili nodded in agreement.

“It was the same when we met it back in Songdo. It doesn’t care about us, but it doesn’t mean us harm either. In this case, I think our goals just happen to align.”

Eui scoffed.

“Convenient that every time it tells us to do something our goals just happen to align.”

“It’s obviously manipulating us. That’s probably just the best way to get people to do things—give them the right information to make them do what they would have done anyway.”

Jia pursed her lips.

“I’m more concerned about what it said about ‘insinuating’ into mortal realms. Chou said that gods entering mortal realms was always destructive.”

Jianmo cut into the conversation, their voice echoing strangely as the blade vibrated to speak.

“I can explain that one, actually. The Void doesn’t do avatars. Instead it just sort of...leaks through the cracks in reality to exert its will. The idea is the same, though—it’s just a tiny fraction of its power just...still attached, unlike most avatars.”

“Like dipping its toes into our world?”

“Hah! More like gently grazing your world with a microscopic flake of a single fingernail. The Void is...well, massive feels like the wrong word to use. It doesn’t really have a size or shape, it just is—existing everywhere that nothing else does.”

Meili shuddered.

“And Chou thought he was even stronger than it?”

“He was. That’s not just bragging, either—they’ve fought, and my master won. The only reason it’s still alive is because it probably can’t be killed. It’s just too...ubiquitous.”

Kaede hummed thoughtfully.

“I wonder if it has a core, somewhere. The size of an entire world, or bigger. A concentration of Void essence comparable in power to the Sovereign’s Tear.”

Eui chuckled darkly.

“Thinking about going hunting?”

“I’m not suicidal, no—just curious. Let’s get back on track—I think we need to break our task down into smaller problems and solve them one at a time.”

Meili nodded, counting off on her fingers.

“We need to gain control of Chou’s realm.”

Jia chimed in next.

“Figure out how to draw power from the Tear ourselves.”

Eui grunted irritably.

“Move the entire thing, somehow.”

Then finally back to Kaede.

“Then survive the ensuing battle once we return to our world. Controlling Chou’s realm and controlling the Tear are essentially the same, so we can group those together, and before we can think of moving it, we should consider where we are even moving it to.”

Jia stroked her chin thoughtfully.

“I assumed we’d just pull it back into the physical world where it’s anchored.”

“To the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a giant maelstrom where one or more extremely ancient and powerful cultivators may be waiting in ambush, and further surrounded by a storm that we were only just barely able to navigate thanks in large part to Jianmo’s instruction and the Tear itself—which we will then be carrying—acting as a beacon.”

“Well when you say it like that, obviously it’s not a good idea, but what are our other options?”

Meili furrowed her brows.

“What about Geumji?”

Eui’s eyes widened.

“The Academy?! That’s halfway around the entire world!”

“Hear me out! Jia was suggesting the maelstrom because that’s where the tomb is anchored, but if we gain control of it, then it will be anchored to us, and we’re anchored to Geumji—not just because we’ve got an avatar there, but it’s like...a physical part of our domain now. You can all feel it, right?”

The girls nodded. It was true—ever since Yoshika’s ascension, the old Academy grounds had felt like they were part of her on an almost physical level. Eui frowned.

“That still doesn’t answer how we’re supposed to get there in the first place.”

Kaede shook her head.

“No, but it’s a start. Something to work towards. Let’s move on for now—what avenues do we have to take control of the tomb?”

Jia held a fist up to her mouth and frowned in deep concentration.

“In theory, the formation surrounding the Tear. It’s all one big spell and it’s already designed to be controlled by an intelligent being. It’s not that simple, though—we can’t really alter it without breaking the whole thing, and it’s way too complicated for us to just extend.”

Eui chuckled mirthlessly.

“Magic has always been our biggest weakness.”

Kaede sighed.

“Mine as well. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year working with Dae, but even between that and our more recent efforts studying with Ja Yun and Iseul, I agree that this is too far beyond us. It might even be beyond Do Hye.”

Jia’s ears perked up, her tail freezing in place as she had a revelation.

“Iseul!”

Eui raised an eyebrow at her.

“What about her?”

“Remember when she was holding off the army? The way she was controlling and modifying Ja Yun’s formations dynamically?”

“Sure, she was using her body to change the formations because she’s made of essence—wait...”

Kaede cocked her head.

“Are you suggesting that we do the same? We don’t have amorphous bodies like Iseul does.”

Jia shook her head.

“No, but stop and think for a second—where is our body?”

Eui and Kaede looked at Meili, who smiled stiffly.

“I’ve got our core, but the rest of me is just a construct of essence like the rest of you. A bit more permanent, but still constructed. In fact, after that tribulation, the only one of us who still even has the body we were born with is Kaede.”

Kaede pursed her lips.

“And even that’s a matter of opinion. So we do have an amorphous body. It’s as Shen Yu said—we are essentially our core, while the rest is window dressing.”

Meili crossed her arms and pouted.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but since ascending there’s definitely been a lot more leeway in what makes up us.”

Jia nodded.

“So maybe we can do the same thing. Take control of the formation by becoming part of the formation.”

Kaede shrugged.

“It’s unorthodox, but that seems to be our preferred mode of operation.”

Eui held up a hand and began listing things off.

“So we try to take control of the Tear and the tomb that way, then try to move it to the Academy somehow.”

Meili nodded.

“I’ve got some thoughts about how, but let’s start with the tomb. We’ll have a better idea of what we can do with it once it’s under our control.”

“Assuming we don’t bring it down on our own heads in the process.”

Yoshika tried to suppress her own pessimism as she dispelled the illusions. It had been good for getting her thoughts in order, but she needed singular focus for what she was about to attempt.

It was a crude plan—something that Dae would surely yell at her about, and would probably make Ja Yun faint—but the simplest way to integrate herself into the formation would be to take the place of existing infrastructure. In other words—the Tear.

But of course, once she did that, she’d be stuck in the unenviable position of having her essence stretched out across an entire demi-realm as it tried to trace the entire formation, the full breadth of which she did not understand. She expected it to be interwoven throughout the entire realm.

She took a deep breath as she approached the dais. Yoshika’s domain wasn’t nearly powerful enough to power the complex extradimensional space of Chou’s tomb by itself, but she didn’t have to do it by herself—the Sovereign’s Tear was a supposedly unlimited wellspring of essence.

Chou’s tomb would still be powered by the Tear. It was just going to go through her first.

Yoshika studied the way the formation interacted with the Tear carefully. If she’d learned anything from Dae—which at this point he might argue she hadn’t—it was that meddling incautiously with unknown formations was a good way to end up dead.

Actually, in hindsight, she might have added the ‘incautiously’ part herself.

She shook her head and smacked her cheeks.

“No more stalling, Yoshika!”

Closing her eyes, she gently extruded her domain, envisioning it as tiny probing tendrils feeling their way around the formation and the Tear. She needed absolute precision. This was the source of all mana in the world, and if the absurd density of the divine essence in the room was any indication, the formation had to be drawing astronomical amounts of it.

If it was deprived of that essence for even a moment, the results might be catastrophic. On the other hand, if she was stuck with that burden without the Tear supplying the essence, there was a very real chance that it would tear her soul into unidentifiable ribbons of essence.

Actually, given how much essence was going to be flowing through her, it might do that anyway.

Yoshika pushed her nerves aside. There were always millions of ways that she could imagine things could go wrong. It didn’t matter—she just had to make sure that didn’t happen. She’d connect to the formation and to the tear at exactly the same time. Seamless.

It was a bit like dual cultivation, and she’d been doing that literally from the very first moment she’d become cultivators—or...some of her had.

She took her place on the dais—which was slightly awkward since it wasn’t really the right size for a whole person, but she was quite small—and took one last breath to steel her nerves.

“Here goes nothing.”

The tendrils of Yoshika’s domain split into hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, wrapping around the Tear and preparing to attach herself to key points on the formation.

Pushing her focus to its utmost limits, four minds acted in unison under the support of Absolute Awareness, creating a bridge between the Sovereign’s Tear and Chou’s realm where there hadn’t been one moments ago.

Yoshika had braced herself for the surge of power, but nothing could have prepared her.

The Sovereign’s Tear was a surprisingly gentle thing, simply providing whatever was demanded of it without any trouble. It was easier than drawing from a mana core, without any of the throughput or loss issues that plagued them.

Chou’s formation, on the other hand, was as unyielding as one might expect from the single pillar supporting an entire world. As soon as Yoshika made herself a part of it, the formation tore the essence from her meridians with ruthless efficiency—and found her wanting.

Yoshika had done exactly what she set out to do, and made no mistakes save for one—while the Sovereign’s Tear didn’t have an upper limit on its throughput, she did. She’d turned herself into a living bottleneck for the entire world’s supply of essence.

The formation cared little. When her meridians failed to satisfy its hunger, it tore them out. The framework of her avatar body buckled, then ultimately broke as the unfathomable torrent of divine essence tore through it, obliterating everything but her core—now floating right alongside the Tear.

It was all Yoshika could do to maintain her concentration. Her body didn’t matter, her meridians could be rebuilt. As long as her core survived and she kept focusing on her domain, she’d be fine. All that mattered was that she maintained the connections—if she failed now, it would be no different than if she’d carelessly torn the Tear free and replaced it with herself.

That would be the worst of both worlds.

So Yoshika held on—focusing every ounce of her existence on the task of maintaining the bridge.

As the Tear’s essence flowed through her, it became part of her. More than she could possibly refine at such a pace, but with so much volume that it couldn’t help but accumulate—slowly reinforcing Yoshika’s inadequate tendrils of power into something more sturdy.

While it stabilized, Yoshika felt the roots of her domain spreading throughout the tomb, across dimensions and through space, branching off in seemingly endless fractal patterns that she couldn’t spare the focus to think about.

Her essence spread through Chou’s palace and treasury, encompassed the stormy expanse and the winding white labyrinth, permeated the village of mud huts where her friends were still waiting, expanded further beyond to cross the threshold of the grand gate, and weaved through the golden plains of wheat.

Yoshika sensed the anchors tying the realm to the physical world—two of them. One at the bottom of the ocean, where she felt the powerful auras watching for any sign of disturbance, and another on a strange barren surface covered in dust and devoid of any life save for a single very surprised spirit.

She didn’t have the mental wherewithal to feel bad for being rude about snubbing the spirit’s curious probing. The rapid expansion of her senses was jarring, and she still had to focus on her connection to the Sovereign’s Tear.

After what felt like an eternity, the foundations of her new connections grew stable enough that she could try to make sense of the formation’s dizzying feedback. It was trying to draw something else from her—more than just essence.

Yoshika had an aching sense of wrongness. She’d laid her claim, but the realm wasn’t hers. Not yet.

Acting on intuition, she fed a part of herself to the formation to fill the gaps that it demanded. Yoshika’s domain was not a grand palace, or an endless expanse of wheat. It was a quaint little house where Jia could lounge on the soft couch while Eui cooked and Heian curled up by the fire. A tiny courtyard where Yue maintained her little flower garden—a perfect spot for outdoor meditation.

It was a dormitory of scattered houses just like hers, where her friends and family could reside in peace. An academy, the size of a small town—a place where enemy nations put aside their differences and came together as one in the pursuit of higher learning.

An unconquered mountain—teeming with interesting plants and animals, places of power, and hidden secrets.

Yoshika was not taking Chou’s realm—she was making it hers.

Mountains rose, and great impossible constructs fell. The land shifted as mud huts were replaced by solid wood and stone constructions—what Yoshika now recognized as a fusion of styles from all the nations on the continent.

Everything from the great towering lecture halls, to Elder Qin Zhao’s enchanted gardens, the flattened track surrounding the training field, even all the way down to the disorganized mess of Hwang Sung’s laboratory—the former tomb transformed into a perfect replica of The Grand Academy of Spiritual Martial and Arcane Arts, including the lands beyond.

No—not the Academy. It was Yoshika’s soulscape. A truly physical representation of her domain.

Yoshika’s friends shot to their feet in alarm, then watched in awe as the world transformed around them. Unbidden, Heian stirred within Yoshika’s soul and settled into the part of the formation where Chou’s administrator had once been.

She manifested next to Yue, still looking exactly as she had when Yoshika had been temporarily borrowing her form. Yue jumped in surprise as Heian put her hands on the ground and stretched.

“Oh! Y-Yoshika? Is that you?”

Heian shook her head and rubbed her eyes blearily.

“Mmno. Mommy is busy with big confusing things again.”

Yue smiled wryly.

“I see. That certainly sounds like her, and I have to say that it’s rather difficult not to notice her influence. Shall I assume that she’s done it then?”

Heian nodded.

“Mhm! We did it. We got the treasure.”

“The Tear?”

“No. The world.”