Chapter 129- Investigation (Patreon)

Mark the Hiss

Markhiss descended from the sky. His back was to First Father, its light obscuring him from the sight of his prey. His aura was held tight, lest they feel it before his arrival. A fleeting memory of Jiran squashing his manabody with unopposable might caused his heart rate to spike and a shiver to crawl across his shoulders.

Focus, must focus. Don’t let it in, don’t-let-them-out. But those ones are just animals, animals can go, I can let them out. Jiran wouldn’t want them dead. They don’t know any better, focus!

His thoughts churned between clarity and chaos as the blessed calm from days ago faded further from his grasp. The church was just beneath him now. His prey squirmed across the grass as they laughed and played.

No! Not the animals. Only their tenders. The believers. The LIARS!

Fury overrode reason as he took note of the two templars standing by the doors to the opulent building. His mana was far from recovered after being drained completely, but he had enough for this. Teleportation sucked him forward. The voicers responded instantly, reaching for their weapons. Being tier three, they didn’t stand a chance. His hands struck out, a dagger in each, the blades elongated with black shadows that pierced their necks, severing their heads.

The animals behind him began to scream as he kicked down the doors. His aura raced ahead of him, flattening those too weak to resist. His blades found the rest as he dashed through the building at blinding speeds. He knew where the secret entrance was, having been here many times before. He didn’t bother with the hidden switch as he smashed the wall to pieces, revealing the stairs. He arrived below amidst frenzied shouting. Markhiss went to work, his eyes bloodshot as he killed without remorse, without pity.

I’ve waited so long, so long, so long. I’ve chosen my side, his side. No more hesitation, no more uncertainty.

No door was left unopened in the vast underground facility. When he came to a room overflowing with the helpless animals, he turned away, leaving them untouched. With their hollow gazes and sunken cheeks, long since dried of tears, they stared silently after him as he walked away.

These people will oppose him, they’ll do whatever it takes to kill him. They must not have that chance. Do what you have to do and leave!

Twelve tier fives waited for him behind the final door. He had left them for last on purpose to let their auras taste what he did to all the rest. When he kicked down the door, their leader finally recognized their killer.

“What have you done?! This place is neutral ground! Do you have any idea the da—” The man discovered how difficult it was to finish a sentence without a head.

The rest fought well, though after tasting Jiran’s aura and seeing his techniques, Markhiss found their resistance a pitiful thing. The burns and stabs he received were a minor inconvenience compared to the enormity of his task. But he would not be alone in what needed to be done. Shadows rose from their corpses, they gathered around him before falling into his body to join the murmuring voices that had only stopped once in the last fifty years. As he walked back through the facility, one of the animals stood in his path. It must have been new as it was able to look up at him with some semblance of humanity.

“Thank yah, Mister. C-can I go home now?”

Jiran of Madra

Cameron didn’t say anything else after smacking the back of Jiran’s head. He approached the wall of metal protecting them from the fallout of Jiran’s gravity blast. Jiran didn’t stop him, knowing how important it was to seize the feeling of Oneness once it was achieved. He opened a hole for his friend to walk through. Beyond, blood and rocks rained upon the ground from the massive explosion.

Cameron's aura pulled back into his body. He leaned forward and jumped with a roar. His feet kicked up a wave of freshly compacted soil that discharged behind him. Dozens of Graymin that Jiran inadvertently protected were slain in moments. Every swing of his hammer killed another beast as his aura conformed to perfectly flow with his movements. It stretched and bent, turning the arcs of his weapon into unstoppable attacks that annihilated everything in their path.

“Take care of the kids while I’m gone, honey,” Jiran winked at Mayalyn who grinned back at him with the true joy of a born predator enjoying the hunt.

If they feel like leaving, Mayalyn shouldn’t have any issues getting through this.

Jiran followed Cameron after sealing the sphere behind him, if for no other reason than to keep the blood rain from the new suits of armor. The western portion of the horde had been truly decimated by his attack. Only sparse pockets of Graymin remained. How they survived the blast, he had no clue. Cameron dove into their numbers with relentless zeal, leaving nothing alive in his wake.

Cameron’s bout of inspiration with Oneness lasted nearly an hour. Jiran followed in his wake, testing his new skills by altering the flow and intensity of mana as each one activated.

Mana Confluence: + 1

Elemental Castigation: + 2

Mana Omnis: + 5

Enthralling Touch: + 3

Each of Cameron’s lightning-fast jumps took them further from the walls. By the time he finally stopped swinging his hammer, the only living Graymin were far to the north and south.

Jiran landed beside him and tapped his shoulder, sending waves of healing mana cascading through the berserker. "Good job, you cleared phase two with shining colors. Impressive."

Cameron grunted a laugh, "Turns out I’m a natural at something you get better at the less you think, who woulda’ known?"

"Yeah, you've a real aptitude for being a blockhead alright," Jiran snarked and they laughed while turning toward the massive walls of the distant city. "Okay, pull it back in and overcharge it."

"Overcharge?"

"Yup, stuff your mana in until it grows. Now that you're more connected with your manabody, you should know when to stop," Cameron’s aura once more returned to the confines of his skin and Jiran watched with interest as his friend’s mana folded in on itself to become part of his aura.

"Hah! It's so easy! We call that feeding, by the way. What kind of name is overcharging? You’re so weird. I've never heard of someone doing it with their manabody fully inside their body. This works great, no backlash and no tapping. Awesome!"

"Backlash I understand all too well. What's tapping?" Jiran wondered aloud.

"Oh, uh, from what I’ve heard, it's a really long process of finding the specific point in your body that your aura comes from. If you know where it is, you can push mana through there without the backlash, but it can take decades to find."

Jiran immediately realized he was talking about the spot in his neck where he was injured so long ago—that now housed the gate in his soulwall. "You might still need to find that after all," He mused.

"What? Why? Your method works great without it."

"For the final phase."

"Are you serious? There’s another phase? Just when I thought I was getting somewhere.”

“Worried the girls will beat you to the finish line?” Jiran laughed at Cameron’s grimace before continuing. “Anyway, phase three is understanding that aura is more powerful than mana. And the final phase is visiting where your aura comes from—your soul. Not sure I can actually help you guys get there, but I have one idea, though we’ll need a special location to test it out.”

“Hold on a storraks second, the what-now? Did you say soul, as in the soul? That’s a real thing?” One of Cameron’s brows lifted.

"Of course it is. Hmm, I'd rather not say more until you visit yours. Wouldn't want to color your perspective when your experience may end up being totally different from mine."

"Oh, c’mon! You can’t leave me there. How did you ‘visit’ your soul? D-did you hear Madra’s voice in there? Can you… touch it?" Cameron’s face skewed more with each question. “You can at least tell me what it is!”

"Impatient, you are, young Camowan. Fine, fine. I’ll tell you about the part that’s connected with your aura. Your soul is protected by a membrane, or soulwall, and your aura is an extension of that membrane bleeding into the physical world. Actually, I think I got that backward. The membrane isn't protecting the soul, it's protecting your body from the soul. My soulwall has a hole in it. I’m pretty sure my memories leaked out of my soul through the hole in my soulwall, which almost killed me. Soul touch body bad, don’t do that.”

A brief pang from the unpleasant memories was quickly squashed and Jiran continued. “Once you find that tapping spot, you can pull on your soulwall to temporarily boost the power of your aura. By the way, be careful doing that. The last time I did it, my brain kinda melted."

Cameron looked at him like he just realized Jiran wasn’t human anymore. "Your head must be full of rocks, man. Why would you screw with the only thing protecting your body from your soul?"

"Desperate times. Not like it’s part of my morning stretches or something! Ready to head back and check on the others?"

"No, I'm going to keep going, at this rate, all the Graymin will be dead by the end of the day. If I don't kill as many as I can now, I'll miss my chance."

"Here," Jiran held out his hand and when Cameron gripped it, Jiran fed him mana until he was full. "Don't go far, I’d be annoyed if a rook killed you after I spent so much time on that armor."

"Hah! Right, right. Love you too, man," Cameron was about to leap away but Jiran held him back with his aura.

“What’s that?” He pointed far to the south of the city at several thousand Graymin charging away from them. The beasts typically stood still unless they saw something to kill and seeing such a large group fleeing in mass was certainly unusual.

“Let’s go find out!” Cameron’s enthusiasm was infectious as he dashed away with a wild grin. Jiran pulled his aura inside and shut down his mind, his body reacting on instinct and desire alone. They blurred to the south, moving with mana, aura, and muscles combined in perfect harmony.

A flare shot from the top of Mortan’s wall. It sailed over the horde and was quickly demolished as a rook made its position known. Jiran slowed, part of his brain dedicated to Mana Omnis as he memorized the green swirls and orange motes of the mana inside the flare. Another part of his focus was on the rapidly compressing ball of lightning forming at his side. A second later, a beam of currents cut through the Graymin to the distant rook. Along the way, thousands of arcs split to the sides, each one spearing and cooking another low-tier beast.

Lighting really is the perfect element for weak enemies like these.

Slowing down to deal with the rook allowed Cameron to reach the retreating section of the horde first. He blasted into their backs, sending dozens of tier fours flying while his aura crushed the tier three’s outright. Meanwhile, Jiran released a dozen flares, spreading them all across the southern flank of the city. Two more rooks appeared, only to be vaporized a second later. Deeming the sky temporarily safe, he flew high enough to see over the wall of gray flesh.

Less than two hundred tier four imperials stood before a curved trench. They wore white armor stained dark red from dried blood. Half their number held large shields and knocked down any Graymin who tried to leap across the trench. Behind them, a line of spears steadily thrust over their shoulders. The entirety of the trench was filled with roiling flames that swallowed any Graymin who fell.

Despite the massive casualties, pawns continued to jump across the gap, eager to throw their lives away. In the single moment Jiran stopped to watch, the shields of two soldiers were grabbed and both men were pulled in to burn right alongside the beasts. Their screams were drowned out by the frenetic beat of a pitched battle for survival. At the far end of the curved trench, three men with slightly more ornate armor were facing off against a tier five knight. Their fight was surrounded by a dozen soldiers with long spears who did their best to corner the higher-tier beast.

The distraction of that single knight was damning to the entire formation. The humans were already vastly outnumbered and despite the trench reducing the beasts to ash, it was rapidly filling up. Seeing his countrymen about to be overwhelmed awoke something primal in Jiran. Mana boiled within him, demanding release. Jiran filled his lungs with air, aimed at the trench, and when he blew out, a storm escaped from between his teeth as mana propagated into torrential winds. The humans and Graymin flew away from each other as they were tossed by the raging gale that filled the line between them.

Jiran raced toward the three officers and knight, their auras keeping them grounded amidst the howling winds. In his wake, tiny embers filled the sky like stars in the night. Each one ballooned into a fireball upon landing, decimating a huge swath of the beasts. His aura crashed into them from above—a twenty-five-meter radius of force that stomped out their lives. The single second he took to form a wall of ice further separating the two sides, was all it took for the knight to plunge its arm into one of the officers. The man's chest exploded as spikes along its forearm tore through armor and flesh with equal ease.

Jiran’s aura wrapped around the knight until he got close enough for his mana to cave its head in like a rotten fruit. Mana Omnis revealed the damage before he touched down next to the dying man. His heart, lungs, and half of his stomach were shredded and mixed together into a soup that leaked from the gaping hole. Even as Jiran reached out his hand, one of the remaining two officers called out to him.

“Don’t waste your mana, sir! He’s already dea—” His words died in his throat as time unwound before his eyes; the wound filled in with new organs, bones, and flesh. A ripple of current arced across the dead man’s skin before he took a gasping breath, life returning to his glassy eyes.

“Whew, that was close. Now, which one of you idiots is going to tell me what the fuck you’re doing out here in the open like this?” All three stared at him with wide eyes, which only turned to gaping shock as Cameron came leaping over the wall of ice to crash into the ground next to them. Jiran had to admit that with his pristine futuristic armor, wild aura, and immaculate superhero landing, Cameron struck a rather imposing figure.

Cameron’s tone adopted the crack of a commanding officer. “Third voicers battalion? What are you doing here? I thought you abandoned the city?” All three of their jaws slammed shut in unison as Cameron’s judging gaze swept across them.