Sexy Sect Babes: Chapter Twenty Six - Epilogue (Patreon)

AN: This isn't really an extra chapter. It's an addition to the end of the last chapter for those that chafed at the cliffhanger ending :D


To tell the truth, he’d mostly just used his opening question as a means to take the god-being off-guard. In his past life, he’d found that a small smidgen of audacity could be useful when dealing with powerful people.

So long as those people were feeling secure in their power. If they were feeling insecure, well, that shit could backfire.

If it worked though it helped set you apart from the crowd. Of course, after you’d said your bit, you went submissive. Real submissive. Because you didn’t want that hint of sass to start being seen as rebelliousness.

Given all the giggling the Divinity had been doing, he’d expected more laughter. The fae like existence seemed to like to laugh.

What he hadn’t expected them to do was unveil his greatest secret without even a moment’s hesitation.

“I carefully hide my ki,” he lied instinctively.

The Rooster cocked his head. “Huh, I genuinely can’t remember the last time someone actually tried to lie to me. And no, you don’t. You just don’t have any ki.”

Jack’s heart pounded in his chest. “With all due respect, how do you know I’m lying?”

He didn’t bother addressing the ki sensing thing.

“Because your pulse jumps when you do. A tiny amount admittedly, but that’s more than enough for an old monster like me to tell when you’re lying.” The Rooster spoke offhandedly as they stared with undisguised interest at Jack’s chittering microbots. “This construct of yours really is fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ki network quite like it. It’s so… rigid.”

Jack eyed the tentacle that had formed over his shoulder with something less like interest and more akin to complete befuddlement.  His microbots had ki? How? Why? Was it a result of all the quirks he’d noted the things having – or the cause of them?

He shook his head.

Unfortunately, the abnormal state of his single most valuable weapon wasn’t his main focus right now. His main focus was on the fact that he apparently couldn’t lie to the walking WMD in front of him.

Which was a problem. Lying was, like, ninety percent of what he did.

“You can feel my pulse? Through my armor?” Armor that was both sealed and rated for radioactive environments. Or it was once. Nowadays he wasn’t even entirely sure it was even airtight.

“This Yating is a divinity. Did you expect any less?” A proud smirk slipped over the Rooster’s features. “So, as much as it hurts, try being truthful. It will be less painful for all of us in the long run.”

Jack frowned. “Is that a threat?”

Yating laughed. “I’m a divinity. People tend to take our very existence as an implicit threat.”

…So it was.

“I…”

Jack searched through his mind, trying to find a way out of this. And found none.

Truth be told, the main reason he wanted to lie was because the truth actually sounded more ridiculous than the lie. A crazed hermit who used strange and unknown magical techniques actually made more sense than him being spaceman from the ‘future’ with technology beyond anything the locals could even conceive of.

Like, how did you even go about explaining a computer to a person that wasn’t already familiar with them? Because saying it was a rock filled with lightning that could somehow think for itself – but not like a person – was a pretty hard sell.

“I’m not from this plane of reality.”

So, he didn’t try to explain all of it. The person across from him could sense when he lied? How about lies of omission?

Let them believe his fantastical traits were in fact a result of his extraplanar origins. Hell, some of them were. Like his immunity to magic of all kinds.

Still, he practically jumped out of his skin as the being across from him all-but teleported. Between one eye blink and the next they moved from across the room to right in front of him. He didn’t even have to think – and part of him wondered whether it was even his own subconscious choice – before one his microbot tentacles lashed out like a whip.

The Rooster dodged it. Easily. It wasn’t even really a dodge, more like a casual lean to the right that had the attack fly over their shoulder. It was so effortless that Jack could genuinely believe the Divinity hadn’t even noticed the blow, moving purely on instinct.

The desk behind him certainly felt it though.

Am I going to have to pay for that? he thought absently as the mass of varnished wood was reduced to little more than kindling.

“Really?” Yating breathed, eyes all-but sparkling as they gazed up at his helmet.

Jack nodded slowly, even as he noted the conspicuous lack of guards streaming in through the door behind him. They would have definitely heard the noise.

“You believe me?” He gazed down at the Divinity.

The being shrugged. “We are not unaware of higher planes of existence. At my level of cultivation, I can… feel them in certain spots of the world where the fabric of reality is thin. Perhaps one day I might even be able to pierce through to them myself.”

That was… terrifying.

Heedless, or more likely, simply uncaring of Jack’s trepidation, the Rooster continued. “Does that mean there are humans in other universes? What about kin?”

“There’s everything out there,” he answered simply. “And you can sense that I’m human?”

“And more.”

The Divinity hummed distractedly and Jack nearly jumped as he felt something run across his chest. Under his armor. Like fingers running across his skin in parallel to the motions the Rooster had started making across the surface of his armor.

Terrifying.

“I suppose that explains why you feel so different.” The Divinity continued. “For a while I thought you might have been a traveler from some other part of the world. Like that magister friend of yours. But you’re too… different. I’ve met plenty of foreigners. You don’t feel like them.”

The being eyed him. “You’re empty. Those others, they might not have had ki, but they had… something. Even those that couldn’t do magic or whatever they called it, they still had the latent whiff of it to them. Like a mortal without the ki to ever truly cultivate.”

The Rooster deliberately took a step back, eying him up and down. “It’s a little eerie to be honest. Because part of me keeps telling me that you’re just… a thing. An object. Even the creature attached to your soul feels more alive than you. Yet all my other senses tell me you’re a living being with blood pumping through your veins.”

Well, at least now he knew that the walking WMD hadn’t just been poking him to freak him out. Still, he felt himself shift uncomfortably as the Rooster stared up at him with unadulterated curiosity.

…So, he changed the subject.

“Well, now you know what my deal is. I’m just some jackoff who happened to get stranded in this part of reality and got caught up in your war. So now it’s my turn to ask a question. You’re the one who put the idea of independence into Shui’s head?”

That seemed to snap Yating out of his reverie as he broke out into a wide smile. “Guilty.”

“Why?”

The Rooster flitted over to sink down onto the couch. “Shui told you why she’s rebelling.”

“Yes, why she’s rebelling. Not you. I mean, you were one of the Empire’s founders, you-” Jack paused as he realized that the Rooster had actually answered his question in a roundabout way “Except you’ve received similar orders to the ones Shui got. The Empress has ordered you to head to the breach.”

Which didn’t sound like too bad a deal when you realized that if every Divinity headed to the breach it would be an eleven to one Divine smackdown against the Monkey.

Yet… that hadn’t happened yet. More to the point, the Monkey would have been aware of that possibility when all this kicked off. And the mind behind this invasion would have had a plan for that eventuality.

One beyond the dragon he’d so recently killed. Because as scary as the Red Death had been, he’d heard nothing to imply that he’d been stronger than a Divinity. Hell, he might even have been weaker.

He’d certainly made for a bigger target.

Still, he knew he’d hit paydirt when the Divinity sniffed dismissively. “It’s not so much the orders themselves as the fact that fishy thought she could give me orders.”

“I wouldn’t have thought she’d have to, given that the Empire you helped build is in danger,” Jack pressed curiously.

“Who says I’m not looking out for the Empire?”’

“I fail to see how splitting the Empire asunder in the middle of an invasion could help it. Or staying away from the frontlines by hiding out here.”

If anything, it seemed rather cowardly. Not that Jack was hypocritical or suicidal enough to point that out.

“Perhaps it will. Perhaps it won’t.” The Rooster shrugged. “Do you really care?”

Truthfully, no. His only interest in the Rooster’s motivations were in the ways in which they might affect the Divinity’s actions going forward. He was hardly about to commit to this rebellion if the main reason for its viability was going to fuck off next week to pursue some other whim.

“No.” He said finally. “Why here though? Why now?”

“Seems rather obvious, no?” Yating reclined in his chair, allowing one incongruously long smooth leg to cross over the other – he was a guy dammit! “The fish has never been weaker than she is right now. My more… hidebound fellows have never been more distracted. Most importantly, I’ve never had someone like you on my side before.”

Jack resisted the urge to point out that he was on no one’s side but his own.

“Me?” he echoed.

“You killed the Red Death.” Yating leaned forward, white teeth gleaming as he grinned. “He wasn’t a divinity, but he was similar. A warped mirror of sorts. He scared me. As I’m sure I scared him. When you get to our level you can count on two sets of hands the number of entities in this world that are actually a threat to you. A real threat.”

The Rooster leaned back again. “They are known though. The God-Djinn. The Winged-Snake. The Jubjub. The Yokai Lords. The Fae Elders. The Dancing Jackal. The list goes on. The point is, they are known to us. They can be defended against. Predicted. Mostly. To tell you the truth, the Red Death hopping continents caught us all off guard.”

“You killed him though.” The Rooster eyed him intensely. “An unknown. Using unknown means. And that terrifies me.”

“And what scares you will scare the others too? Make them step cautiously.” Jack cocked his head. “You want to hide behind me?

Yating Laughed. “Think of it as us mutually hiding behind each other. Me, the known threat. You, the unknown. Together we’d be less vulnerable than apart. The Fish is busy for sure, but not so much that she couldn’t dispatch two of my fellow divinities to hunt me down and bring me back into the fold before she launches her big assault.”

“Last I heard she was planning on a drawn out defensive action. A war of attrition.”

The Divinity frowned, but answered in spite of Jack’s interruption. “For now. And for years to come. But when you measure your life in millennia, a decade can seem like next week.”

Alright, that made sense to him. That gave the Empress plenty of time to rouse her reticent fellow divinities out of hiding using those she already had on hand.

“Alright, so she’s got time. And to capture us both intact, she’d need three divinities to guarantee a success. Otherwise she’d risk losing assets for no gain,” he finished the train of thought.

That brought a smile to the Rooster’s face. “Exactly.”

“And in that time you want me to… what? Save the Empire? From outside it?”

The Rooster just kept smiling. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. That’s all I ask. Without Imperial interference.”

Jack thought over that ‘request’ long and hard.

“Say I do this,” he said finally. “I want something in return.”

Yating chuckled. “Of course you do. I assume this request will be an addition to the terms you dictated to Shui?”

“Given that one of those terms was to meet you face to face, I’d like to think so,” Jack deadpanned. “Besides, it’s something she’d never grant me.”

Specifically, it was something Shui couldn’t grant him. Because she wasn’t holding the reigns here. She was just a figure head.

“Oh, now I’m interested, but I think I have some idea as to what you’re aiming at.”

Jack was sure he did.

“I want to be the next Magistrate of Ten Huo.” He paused. “And all the lands surrounding it. The farmers. The merchants. The cultivators. The Sects. What’s left of the Council. Shui. All of them. I want them all to answer to me.”

He’d need all of them if he was actually going to make this work. And if he did make it work, he was going to get something out of it.

And while it wasn’t quite the position of ‘God-King’ he’d had in mind when he’d first arrived on this world, ‘Undisputed Magistrate of the North-West Province’ sounded decent enough.

In fact, it sounded better than decent.

It sounded damn good.