Chapter 189 - Big Kitty Convo (Patreon)

Second chapter! Yippee! Hopefully I can re-enact the success tomorrow, because Arc 4 is thiiiiiiis close to being wrapped up. Maybe just next chapter and some smaller interludes before we move into the Shin Ren Interlude Arc! Big Exciting!!!

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Well then.

Almost done.

Taurus stands, the last phase of negotiations over with. His instructions were necessarily pretty vague, actually- if she finds something interesting, send him a report about it.

When she asked the very pertinent question of how, exactly, he gave her two gifts: a seal of rank for the Division of Altered Cultivation, such that she can get at least some shit done around the fortress-cities and use some of their infrastructure, and a spatial ring. She can’t use it, obviously, but he told her there’s a piece of metal in it that can allow for direct contact in an emergency, and otherwise, well… it’s a spatial ring. A copper in the first ring, a silver in the second, and ten gold in the third, as the saying goes. The ratios are fairly accurate, even if the prices are not.

And then she watches, carefully, as Taurus leaves.

What he does is… hard to describe. It’s like one moment he’s where she is, and the next moment he’s somewhere else and where she is, and then one of him is gone. She tracks a sort-of path for it as his Qi reacted, reaching up towards something, only for a hint of something that smells like cold steel and dead flesh and pain reached down and plucked him like a string, separating the two instances of him.

Well. Explains how he got here so quick, even if it doesn’t explain what he just fucking did.

It can’t be all-powerful. If it was, then any surveillance they have on him wouldn’t be any sort of issue. There’s probably a cost to using it the way he did.

She smiles at that.

It pays to be expensive, eh?

Well. Today has been productive.

A friend freshly introduced into an all-new form of cultivation and already breaking it, check. Her own chains broken and forged into something more useful? Check. An enemy she now has far more insight to, and has harvested resources from? Check and check.

Any Imperial scholar would be proud of her, she’s checking boxes left and right.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to do.

She heads to the perimeter of the bamboo, walking just past the edge of it… to the east.

The same direction she last met the divine beast in.

She slits one wrist and lets the arterial crimson drip heavily onto the floor. Only when there’s enough to form a puddle of dense blood, hyper-oxygenated to an almost neon degree, that she closes the cut back up.

And then she waits.

It doesn’t take long.

It steps out of reality like it’s coming from just off the page. A stray bamboo sprout a few meters past the perimeter, lonely and slender, allows it to slink into view like it’s coming through a doorway. A single eye dominates its face, its entire head, like the upper half of its skull has been replaced by clear, viscous jelly and a darting pupil, and the same mane of wriggling red knife-tendrils frames its movements.

Her Mind moves faster this time. It already has the connections, already knows what the gestalt of her being wants, and pulls forth the intrinsic translation of the creature’s nonverbal “language”.

Curious. Want. Fresh. Why.

This time, she doesn’t bother responding in words. Human words for human concepts don’t serve here.

Instead, she uses her Body.

Supreme Body Art: Gigant has many applications. It’s mostly just a way to memorize the steps required in making a body meant to exist on two limbs below ten feet not collapse in on itself as it reaches fifteen, or twenty, or thirty. She’s pretty sure it’s still kind of pretentious to name the “style” as the “supreme body” art.

But it can do wonders.

She drops to all fours, her back arching and vertebrae cracking in sequence as they are enlarged near-simultaneously. Her hands turn to longer, sharpened things, the last knuckle on each hand turned to a long, sharpened dagger of bone and Blacksteel, while her hind legs reverse their joints and dig into the earth with thick talons. Her face blooms, skull splitting open skin and flesh only to be retaken a moment after as a skeletal structure closer to a hyena or wolf forms, hints of feline nature and a secondary set of near-reptilian teeth making up the last of the amalgamation before she grows back over it.

In seconds, she stands across from the divine beast, her flesh reshaped to mimic its own in size and musculature… and with more than a few original twists. Sharp spikes and plates of bony armor over rippling black skin like midnight, equipped with nanoweave and a thin fur coating of a bright red with hints of gold, contrasted with the maroon of the cyclopean lion.

In halting translation, with nearly all of her mind churning to accurately convey the desired meaning, she speaks as beasts do. Scents, subtle flickers of muscle and posture, and the varied intricacies of eye contact turn words into a language altogether devoid of them.

Passage.

She does all she can to indicate that all she wants from the creature is a passage. A space to move through, without infringing on its territory.

And yet… the not-lion has no mouth, no snout, no nose… but it looks like it tries to smile. A little thing of amusement, somehow.

And If Not? It asks, its voice becoming clearer as her Mind adjusts further.

Well. That’s easy.

Death.

The language to express that particular concept isn’t very different from a human’s, actually. She turns to face fully forward, rather than aimed slightly off to the side to avoid direct eye contact. Her claws flex and tear through the soft dirt, both anchoring her body and letting show just how easily they sheer through roots and stone. The faint scent of adrenaline and cortisol wafts from her towards her would-be opponent.

And all along her back and tail, long, lashing tendrils of flesh and sharp-tipped bone and Blacksteel make themselves into being.

The not-lion looks a little less amused by that. There’s just less… room, so to speak. Less space to be entertained by death threats, by genuine challenges.

Raika makes it abundantly clear that she is going to walk to the east, towards the fortress-cities.

And she makes it just as clear that she will do her best to go through the divine beast if she has to.

Now here’s where a slight communication breakdown occurs.

Just as scent is crucial to this sort of non-verbal communication, so too is Qi. The nuances of its movement, the details of its flavor and intensities, all are important to communicate properly. And she simply cannot exude anything without her Reactor, which does so primarily by overwhelming her cursed skin enough to slip through and forcing her to Change fast enough that it can slip through cracks in said curse. Even if it were viable, it’s an expensive and possibly deadly option, since she can barely control it and it lights a fucking beacon informing anyone and everyone of where she is.

Knowing this before she arrived, the possibility of combat has been present from the start.

But… well. 

Despite how deeply upsetting the eyeball looks atop the head of the divine beast… she’s pretty curious what it would taste like. And her Body is very certain that whatever else it might be, it would certainly be… nutritious.

She holds her position, hackles raised, gaze focused on her would-be opponent, and waits.

And the cyclopean spirit beast breaks first.

It does so casually, calmly, as if dismissing something beneath its attention. To genuinely back down from a fight would be a loss, but to act unbothered puts it in a position of tenuous authority still.

She notices, after the fact, that its claws have reappeared on its paws. Like they’d been just ever so slightly placed somewhere else, somewhere she guesses wouldn’t be very enjoyable for her.

It lays down, looking utterly bored with the whole thing. Acceptance, it communicates through a yawn. Or what would be a yawn if it had a jaw, and instead looks like a dislocation of bones making the eyeball that replaces its face wobble like jelly.

Raika makes a little chuff sound. Good. 

There is no real way to say “thank you” without offering some sort of gift simultaneously, so she doesn’t say that. It’s just the next best thing, really.

Your Metal Polite, the divine beast says.

She blinks at that. Forms a fresh eye to look down at Dink, still hanging from its chain around her neck.

It sort of floats, ever so slightly. The chain isn’t quite taught, as if the semi-living tool is levitating just a bit above its norm.

She huffs out an amused noise, then nods. Is Good. Small But… Sharp.

Kittens Often Are.

She lets out a deeply unnatural sound that her new jaw does not enjoy, an instinctive attempt at laughter. It doesn’t really work with the new body, but it still lets out a few amused exhales.

Is True. Though Prefer Dogs.

The divine beasts makes another gelatin-like sound with its “face”, rolling a bit onto its side and letting its knife-tendril mane churn up the ground. Then Why Eat Packmate?

She cocks her head to one side, letting her tongue lol just a bit and sitting on her back legs. Packmate?

Big. Many Litters. Swim Like Me, But Brighter.

Takes her a while to parse the nuances of that one. The term “brighter” especially took her a few seconds to puzzle out.

Obvious, in hindsight. The other semi-feline divine beast, from the tournament.

She does the animal equivalent of a shrug, her lower jaw unhinging open like petals of a flower to let her tongues loll out further. Dunno. Bad Luck. Tasty.

The divine beast wriggles its agreement. Yes. Tasty. Mark Of Best Eater. Better Eater, Better Taste.

She huffs in amusement again. You Eat Many Packmates?

If Hungry. If Packmates Weak. If Bored. If Need Materials. If They Cannot Stop, Cannot Hunt Back, Then Are Prey, Or Are Pack.

She growls a little, low and back in her throat. She doesn’t stand up again, doesn’t communicate her disdain for the idea so blatantly, but she puts enough emphasis that the divine beast turns itself to look at her a bit more closely.

Divine Beast Bad Name. Am Just Beast. Beasts Eat. 

To Eat Is To Live. To Live Is To Eat.

She blinks. That wasn’t… wasn’t language. The “words” to express an idea like that would require literally eating something, the contextual nature of non-verbal communication making many concepts inaccessible without certain environments. But that hadn’t been body language or scents or pantomime. 

That was just… True. 

Directly True, transmitted straight into her mind, intact, as clear as if it had been spoken aloud.

It’s her first time directly encountering a Truth not her own outside of a combat scenario. Project 13 obviously had some pretty blatant ones, but… she just hadn’t really noticed the moment that she just sort of knew what those Truths were. 

That’s… interesting. A Truth, once presented, becomes self-evident, transmitted directly. That’s useful information, and a hint that she can probably find ways to both hide her own deeper Truths and detect that of others more easily.

Off to one side of her “processor” sub-mind, she starts growing a new bit of grey matter, transmitting between her brains a sequence of pattern-recognition training ideas that might help with that.

Still ever so many more brains to make, so many potential improvements and new ideas to try out. Pretty soon she’s going to run out of room.

Well, that’s a problem for when she gets there.

She bows her head a bit to the divine beast (who… apparently doesn’t like the title?). Acceptance. Truth.

The beast huffs and rolls onto its back, exposing its belly almost playfully. Yes. Good Good. If Ever You Want To Try To Be Predator, Am Happy To Play. Will Bite You And Have Fun.

Now that, she can reply to easily enough. A similar roll onto her side and a widening of her jaws transmits her return very clearly.

Happy To Bite Better.

And she is, too. The longer she stays like this, her Mind shifted to comprehend its body language, the more she thinks the beast looks absolutely delicious to bite into, just bursting with Qi and vitality and accumulated traits.

Delightful.

The beast leaves a note of amusement behind, and then simply… rolls away. Into itself. As if by completing its roll from side, to back, to the other side simply erases any part of it left behind, as it falls out of reality. Not even its scent remains, a fact that feels either pointedly threatening or gently mocking. It really does feel like some rambunctious sibling, more than willing to hold you under water longer than is comfortable but also entirely suited to begging you not to tell mom afterwards, and offering a punch to its ribs as a bribe. Having grown up around cultivators for the most part, the blatantly inhuman behaviors and strange language make for something weirdly nostalgic, despite how strange they are.

But now the beast is gone. It takes her just a few seconds to shift her Body back to normal, transforming the additional biomass back into blood and dumping it all into her stomach to be re-digested back into her system. It’s a waste, and there’s always a decent amount of Qi-fueled growth lost in the process, but until she learns to transform flesh into Qi directly, it’s what she’s got.

Though she will figure that out. Someday.

She’s got a lot of other projects to get through first.

Touching the puddle of blood on the ground, she briefly reabsorbs it, only to dump it back out while inside the bamboo perimeter. She doesn’t need it, and it can stand as a bigger meal for the Heart that they’ve managed to set onto the land.

The final thing that needs resolving before they leave.

But, well… for one day, that’s probably enough. 

She has a warm bed, and all this posturing and social interaction and dark rituals have been exhausting without something tasty to eat or something fun to fight.

Leave it for tomorrow.