Episode 58: Contracted

Jade tried not to watch over her son, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d never been able to see how her mother could seem so rewarded each time Jade herself had grown as a child or young adult, but now…

“Kick him, boy, you are better than that!” An entire wall of Jade’s lab displayed a hologram of a Raid Corp broadcast named Feed the World. Jade froze after Troy was sent through the air toward a giant tree, and heel dropped out of the sky through a miniature purple white sun that seemed to be growing darker until Troy’s actions.

“Ooh,” murmured Jade, as a large corona was created by the burst orb of flames. The shard of mana stone in her hand was three times larger than her palm and grew hot the closer it came to the perfect placement within the mana core she worked on. The heat pulled her eyes from the holograms temporarily, and she missed Troy’s kick land.

She fit the piece of mana stone where she thought it went and smiled when it was pulled from her fingertips and snapped into place linked seamlessly next to its brothers and sisters.

She had completed more of the core of Ikarus than any of her ancestral predecessors. Almost half of the tribal sun’s structure had been restored from its base upward. A multi-colored symphony of pieces hummed with an inner light that vibrated and filled the gymnasium sized room around her while she worked.

“One piece at a time,” said Jade, before she turned back to the holograms. She didn’t have to move from where she was to get another piece of the mana core. She simply bent down and picked up another piece from the trillions of shards piled a few feet around the entire 101 foot perimeter of the construction.

She didn’t have to walk around its border to find where the next section to fit the piece belonged either, but old habits sometimes didn’t die in immortals ever, and this habit had been formed when she had been a mortal and couldn’t use her power to shift the construction mentally.

At least I don’t use it like a table anymore, I dare not face the shard of my mother left inside the purity of gravity if she were to find out, thought Jade with a sigh.

Mom, I bet you would still try and kill me for that one. Jade couldn’t help but laugh at where her mind took her. Though with each action the children in front of her took, the more she returned to the present mentally.

She rarely took her eyes off the screen, more and more proud of her son and his friends with every breath taken. More and more proud of what she taught them shining through their newly forming bonds and foundations within cultivation.

They were improving rapidly, and though she regretted sending her son away to grow on his own, she now knew her actions to be justified. He’d needed a solid independence to be able to lead the impressive group of orphans he’d gathered by his side.

“I have now seen your growth, your grace, and so much more, it is time to show your purpose and your prominence, my son.”

…

Rob had to admit he was having an absolute blast. He had terrible aim, but a countless number of disposable potions that had gone wrong during their creation process stuffed away within his spatial backpack.

He’d at first been throwing them away, but when he’d mention to Arson that some could cause violent effects due to being spoiled… he felt ashamed that he hadn’t thought of using them as potential weapons before his young leader proposed the idea.

Now, cultivators ate potions all around Rob. At first he’d wasted a lot of potions with a lack of proper aim, but what he’d proven far better at doing was handing the potions over to the flying robotic hands with next to perfect aim all around himself.

“Here you go,” said Rob before another hand swooped in and grabbed a bottle from his upturned palm. He winced when the hand didn’t even manage to throw the potion but collided with a young woman’s face at full speed. The girl didn’t even get up before the hallucinations set in and she writhed on the floor under attack from absolutely nothing but old ingredients and improper manufacturing processes. Rob found this hilarious and chuckled heartily at each person effected this way.

“Rob, I don’t know what you think is so funny, you are softer than most of these— Khalif’s words in the coms cut off when a cultivator managed to sneak up on Rob only for the chef to flip him over his back and slam down a potion into the man’s face.

“What were you saying, my guy, I couldn’t hear you with all the sparks I’m putting into the opposition,” said Rob impersonating a mobster the whole time.

“Look boss, I get it, I can sneak around, cool whatever, but throw a guy a break and give me the break neck job every once in a while,” said Khalif annoyed.

“Noted,” said Arson through the coms, and Rob didn’t expect him to respond. Last time he’d seen Khalif he’d managed to teleport into the branches that surrounded Arson’s brother Auto.

Then to Rob’s further surprise, a new voice entered the coms, “Hey boss, it’s Aura, I know you have been snatching up prominent figures on vacation for Raid Corp, and I’m guessing your here for Autumn, but could you please not kidnap my sister?”

…

Rob’s laughter in the calms after Aura managed to use her work link to join the coms made Arson roll his eyes, even as he sliced through the explosive clouds all round himself. The powerful attacks reminded him of larger condensed versions of his own conductive water orbs, but he pushed potential upgrades of his own attack aside to respond to his older sister.

“Sorry Aura, I gotta get up to the sky island and talk with the king, nothing personal,” responded Arson with a heavy cleave that made a dozen of the clouds around him pop like soap bubbles filled with miniature storms.

“What, you need to speak to my dad? Why didn’t you just ask me? I can work that out,” said Aura. Arson pushed through the field of explosions all around him, sliding through the torrents of exploding water with exact movements, his sister’s words growing more frantic with every burst of speed that came with his powerful blast of momentum forward. Each step making him vanish and reappear closer to his sibling’s position.

“How many bloody anomalies can our brother and these BHC Black Hole bastards find?” yelled Ash in the background of Aura’s coms.

“Shut up, Ash! Things are about to get much worse if we don’t do something now,” yelled Aura. Arson sighed, knowing that his sister was correct, things were about to get much, much worse.

“Sorry Aura, BHC….,” started Arson, a half completed statement left in the air momentarily picked up by every other member on the coms in the next breath.

“Doesn’t do favors!”

Arson charged forward and began his assault on the humanoid tree figures that gushed out of the large trees main body. The smaller forms seemed even stronger than the skeletons Arson fought recently, and were far more accurate than clumsy in their movements.

“Xani, block Aura’s access to the coms for the day, and begin the final phase.”

Large clumps of the tree figures were either sliced in half or thrown aside. Arson then shifted stances into his flicker stance, and the flow of combat changed once more.

Arson still unaware of the forms that painted the sky when he used his own created style of combat, pushed beyond the limits of natural skill.

The forms above him in the sky shifted constantly, different images performing his exact movements across various battlefields, all throughout time and space.

The legacy he attempted to inherit by his pure focus on his current weapon united many different combat styles, made and perfected long ago. Only, Arson’s every movement was a perfected feint, parry, counter, grab, or even combination. Actions cultivators throughout existence used to survive and grow, now instinctually completed and transformed by Arson.

“Hey, little buddy, turn it down a little,, we have to make this look like a struggle remember?” Xani’s voice came through the coms, and though Arson heard the words, his focus was powerful enough to drown out the sensation as white noise.

With each perfected movement with the broken scythe, a line of power pierced the sky like falling stars to enter his weapon. This occurrence normally happened a handful of times throughout a cultivator’s life, no matter how long their immortal existences were, but had happened every breath he took almost since the beginning of the fight.

Only beings of extreme high levels of cultivation could witness the images above Arson, but the energies of the legacies he tapped into naturally had started to pulse out from the scythe he used, making the weapon’s growing aura visible to all around.

“Arson, you okay, I’m struggling to hold back too but you’re leaking mana,” said Troy into the coms. Her voice did pierce his focus enough for him to glance at himself. It was then that he realized something was different, but not wrong enough for him to stop.

“I’m not using any mana, the scythe is doing something…” Arson’s voice was low and filled with power to the point that it was heard not only by his team through the coms, but all through the battlefield they fought on. Then the notification popped up in Arson’s vision and he cursed allowed.

Skeletal Horde wave 2/3: Mana Locked Event, survive for great reward. *System Alert* Scythe metamorphosis currently in progress, determination for necessary increased event difficulty processing…

Come on, come on, show me some love and don’t make this any worse than the situation already sparking is! Arson’s mental prayers went unanswered as usual, and he wanted to rage at what came next.

Increased difficulty determination processed. All qualifications met. Increase mandatory. Simultaneous wave summoning initiated.

Skeletal Horde waves 2-3: mana locked event. Survive and gain access to upgradable skeletal horde spell and more. *System Alert* uncompleted cores cannot use magic of the immortal grade due to instantaneous fatality potential. Spell will be locked within Overlay if gained until immortal ranks system usage is acquired by user: Sovereign Arson Omni.

“Guys, we got a problem, Troy turn things up all the way, you too Xani, Rob if you got anything else hidden in the bag, do it now, Khalif, hitman tactics, get my siblings out of here now and bag Autumn if you can manage it, otherwise just stay alive!”

…

Troy didn’t know what was going on with Arson. She’d been using her advanced levels of speed to plague the giant tree with hard-light clone attacks from the creatures seeming blindspots, when Arson suddenly yelled in a panic.

A panic she didn’t feel the situation deserved. Until a portal half the size of the field they were all in opened in the sky above them face down.

“Are those…” Troy didn’t finish the sentence. Instead she moved. Skeletons of various shape, size and even species started to fall from the sky through the portal’s mouth.

“Spark no boss, I’m out, you said beat up some cultivators and your siblings, this, this is above my pay grade!” Troy didn’t laugh at Rob. She didn’t blame him for wanting to leave, as before training in the dump, a situation like this would have clearly been something she wouldn’t sign up for willingly.

Yet when she looked for Rob to support his retreat, she found him amidst the action, with no seeming intention of leaving. Instead he was lifted into the air by two of the robotic hands Xani created, and lofted explosive gas like potions that dissolved the skeletons and ate through the humanoid trees being summoned and spawned equally without discrimination.

“Sorry about this, Aura, bossman says it’s time to take off the kid gloves and wrap this up,” said Khalif into the coms. All that could be heard after that was Arson’s siblings’ screams of terror, and frantic and shock filled battle cries.

Khalif could be seen as he teleported all throughout the tree. In a single combination of movements and skills, Khalif, teleported behind his target, knocked them out, and sent them through his short range shadow gateways.

Sparks that’s scary to see at a distance, thought Troy. She knew that Khalif had issue with the power gap he saw between himself and Arson, even before he’d left, but still hadn’t acknowledged his own growth under Jade either.

Then her eyes fell momentarily on her favorite person, and the weapon he held, and felt her own guts twist in envy momentarily, before it transformed into pride. She too battled with how powerful she wanted to be, and how powerful her partner had become, but watching him filled her with light and honor.

Arson’s hair moved through the air as if he was at the center of a violent storm. Her heart fluttered as the increase of enemies swelled to the point that she could no longer see him, but when she felt a swell of rage push through their bond and Arson crush every enemy that separated them in a blink, she knew she wasn’t alone.

The sight of him made her push herself harder. Harder than she ever had before.

“Come on! Bring it!” Dozens of hard-light clones burst free of Troy’s body and spread out in various directions. There were no more cultivators beside her own team and Arson’s siblings left under the rain of Skeletons, which gave her more than enough targets to let loose on.

When Troy felt the sensation she’d been training emerge once more, she let it consume her, mind, body, and soul. The push and pull of light energies twisted violently around herself, and hundreds of skeletons began to explode underneath the pressure of her mana’s aura, and the pressure of her blows.

“Hey boss,” attempted Xani. She got no answer, only grunts and the sounds of skeletal bodies being crushed. So went down the chain of command.

“Troy, Troooy, Troy!” She still received no answer, and eventually decided for herself.

“Khalif, Rob, we have the target, we are getting out of here now, boss and Troy will catch up when they are done,” said Xani through the coms and for the first time since the battle started she flew from underground. A runic fireball exploded out from her palm with a ferocity that sent all the skeletons near the hole she flew from to be sent scattered through the air around her exit point.

…

Aura watched as her boss made a mockery of their defenses. Then she was forced to defend herself against the sky itself. A crowd that was normally very peaceful and fun loving, had turned into a group of individuals affected by the same mob mentality at an execution; coldhearted and out for blood.

“Feed. The. World! Feed. The. World!” A once uplifting chant, changed by circumstance, now filled Aura with the dread of her own potential death. When she looked at her boss after realizing she may die there, her heart skipped a beat.

He shredded, sliced, tore and sundered foes with an aggression that stole the emotion from his face, his normal smile gone, as a serene focus masked him with power and potential.

Yet, even though all those left on the battlefield gave it their all, and even Aura managed to push herself beyond her previous limits, the chant of the crowd changed. Not to her sister’s name, who spawned an army of her own. Nor to her brother that managed to change his watering drones into weighted wrecking balls and smash skeletons by the tens.

She even would have thought that Troy deserved the attention of the crowd with how her aura seemed to dissolve and absorb her enemies like rain to desert sands. Or Ash, who’d turned her body into a literal green sun of intense flames above them all. Instead all she could hear beyond the chant that was the event’s name, was the name of her boss, a man she now considered the equivalent to a pure bred demon.

“Carter Gestalt! Carter Gestalt! Carter Gestalt!”