Chapter 62

It smashed Lukas out of the sky like a falling comet. A single backhanded swipe from the immense, wind-covered, scalding hot conjured limb sent him hurtling down, crashing into the desert floor. The impact with the kami’s limb hacked through his body in half, and he smashed into the sands, his body splattered and his intestines dripping out of him.

Lukas Aguilar died.

Instance PRIME HOST Destroyed!

Installing fresh Instance — PRIME HOST

And was born anew the moment after.

Exactly like he was, before death, complete with memories and a perfect metallic body.

Accessing Skills from KIRIN…

Accessing Skills from THOGGUA…

Accessing Skills from CINDERFACE…

Combining with given parameters.

Setting a new Instance. Configuration saved and loaded.

Enact.

Two blades appeared in each arm, and [LUKAS] went out to battle yet again.

And on and on it went.

He had been a little surprised upon coming across the Anomaly Guardian’s prototype. He had, in all honesty, thought that it had been annihilated when he had siphoned the Crypt’s Omphalos into himself. But the moment he had come across its spiritual design and what it represented, he knew that it was exactly the solution he wanted.

Multiple variants of himself, each of them ‘installed’ with a specific combination of skill sets, working both autonomously and in perfect synchronicity.

As an Individual. As a World.

Even so, no matter what he, or any of ‘them’ did, it seemingly made little difference. The vast shadow that was Mujin’s unleashed kami encompassed the sky above the desert with its hateful malevolence. Each of its wings were the size of a passenger jet. Enormous canvases of darkened crimson threatened to block out the sun, casting a shadow on the sandy terrain. The body, if it could even be called as such, was lined with jagged protrusions, each of which were openings through which the great beast was launching impossibly powerful bursts of raw power that could decimate the size of a small building to zero within a split second. The head was a monstrous skull-like thing, with a bestial wrath and intelligence, with Mujin Shimizu floating in an orb in its center, glaring at Lukas.

All of ‘them.’

“YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME?” roared the titanic warlord. “YOU ARE WEAK.”

Its jaws spread open, and out of it was unleashed a bolt of white lightning. It struck the desert, and exploded in a radius of several hundred feet, leaving a massive crater in its place. Five Instances of [LUKAS] had been blown to bits, and were slowly trying to amalgamate back to reform into shape.

“DELUDED!”

Its jaws parted in a hateful expression. Tornadoes arose from its wings.

“YOUR DEFIANCE WAS MOST MAGNIFICENT! NO ONE HAS CHALLENGED ME LIKE YOU HAVE. I SHALL CRUSH YOU, SHATTER THAT DEFIANCE FROM YOUR VERY EYES.”

The volley of carquane missiles were grabbed in a sphere of vacuum and pushed into the very sands, causing it to detonate yet again, creating earthquakes.

“I CALL THAT… RESPECT!”

[LUKAS] used the immense bulk of his massive axe into a fatal strike, but the beast’s protrusions were spreading out of its body like the plague, making it incredibly difficult for him to focus and actually destroy anything. Aqāru was useful against spiritual beasts, but what he was facing was a pure element, and against its might, it was just another metal.

He was strong. His weapon was heavy. Between lifeforce and momentum, every blow was deadly. But how could you decapitate air itself?

He saw a chance. Right at the center where Mujin was floating. The axe divided itself into ten knives, each of them laced with poison.

Kinetomancy and Shatterpoint Intuition got them midway.

They were blown away like cobwebs in a hurricane.

“ALL THAT POWER. ALL THAT POTENTIAL. IT WILL SAVE… NOTHING! THE ETERNITY OF WAR WITH THE YOKAI WILL COME TO AN END. AS WILL THEIR FINAL HOPE, FOR I WILL CRUSH IT, WITH MY OWN HANDS. I —”

“Are mouthy,” said [LUKAS], and launched a carquane missile straight at the wind orb in the center. He soared into the air, his axe cutting deep, carving through every single thing that came to the rescue without slowing. But a massive claw moved like crimson lightning, and slashed into his chest, tearing through the metallic skin like it didn’t exist. His hasty attempt at kinetomancy shattered before a power like nothing he’d seen in any monster before. The kami’s claws simply obliterated his chest, not merely hacking into flesh and crushing bone but erasing them. A severed head, legs and piles of metallic gore fell into the sandy terrain as the majority of his torso was annihilated.

Mujin’s beast tried to step over the remains, and one of the arms snapped up and gripped it, channeling terramancy infused with anomalous energy, instantly solidifying it as another [LUKAS] dug his axe directly into the frozen portion, channeling kinetomancy to destroy the wind motions within the kami’s massive form. The beast staggered, and slammed into the bared desert sands, with enough force to raise a massive gale.

[LUKAS] stood, facing the beast’s fallen form, as four of his fellow compatriots instantly channeled terramancy into the sands, creating a makeshift sand-coffin, entrapping the wind-beast within its prison.

“You probably assumed you won, but I'm afraid, I'm forbidden to die. Fortunately, I'm quite skilled at staying alive. Shall we try again?”

The beast roared, not the cry of an animal, but the roaring of a hurricane about to make landfall. It shook the entire area, made the skies darken, and every single being felt the temperature fall down by at least ten degrees, as if life was trying to slide from his veins at the mere sound of the cry. Which, he realized, after a moment’s reflection, was exactly what was happening.

This is just like the Dranizthl all over again. Pity I can’t use it with my current tactic at the same time.

“INSECT!” Mujin lashed out. “DO YOU THINK THIS CAN REALLY HOLD ME?”

“Duh,” said Lukas. “That’s why you’re on the ground, trapped in my sand-coffin, genius.”

Mujin didn’t scream this time. Instead, he smiled.

And just like that, a shudder ran down his spine.

“CEASE THIS, STRANGER!” He said, his voice still reverberating, even though the rage behind his words was missing. “I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE, BUT KNOW THIS. YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED. NOT YOU, NOT THIS SAND TRAP, NOT THAT RAG TAG ARMY OF HOLLOW GHOSTS. NOTHING CAN SAVE THE CREATURE FROM ME. BUT YOU… YOU HAVE POWER. POTENTIAL! SOMEONE LIKE YOU COULD BE A FORMIDABLE MEMBER OF MY COURT.”

“You talk too much.”

The blades flew straight on, streaks of dark gray, hitting against Mujin’s orb and exploding with blinding light. Two more [LUKAS] joined from either side, and all of them began hurling Level-3 metamantic arrows of pure pressure, blasting it head-on into Mujin’s barrier. Sooner or later, the constant bombardment would crack the impenetrable defense.

At least, that was the theory.

“No, what are you doing? Level-3 won’t faze that—” asked another [LUKAS], looking at the constant onslaught as he sprinted around the attackers to open fire from a different angle, crafting a kinetic blade to skewer through the barrier, stopping only to dodge another wave of projectile bombardment from the head-region of the monstrosity.

“You talk too much too, [LUKAS],” said [LUKAS].

“Oi, I’m you too.”

“As are we,” said the others.

“....Sorry. This form really makes pronouns difficult,” said the first [LUKAS]. “Now please. I cannot keep doing it all by myself for long. I —”

Instance PRIME HOST Destroyed!

Installing fresh Instance — PRIME HOST

[LUKAS] rose anew.

“... I swear that doesn’t stop feeling any worse even after the fiftieth time.”

“Fifty-seventh,” suggested one of them hopefully.

“Yes, because that’s the relevant point,” he growled, as Mujin’s beast broke free of one of the sand-chains, and a hundred grasping hands, tentacular and clawed at the same time, each of them sharpening to razor-edge and lashing out. Each claw split, and then split again, and again, until a storm of a thousand bladed projectiles, a wall of blades, with space itself warping around them as they multiplied again and again, and lashed out viciously at the army.

“... You know,” said one [LUKAS], “I’m really beginning to hate this.”

“Preaching to the choir, brother,” said another [LUKAS], as both of them, as well as fifteen more of his kind, stared in resignation as the torrent of madness and sharpened wind blades fell at them like rain, a sword of the absolute that could not fail to kill its target. They knew it was going to hurt. And the cost requirements of raising all Accessories after they had been blasted to smithereens like this would be enormous, and only hoped that the real Lukas Aguilar would survive with his mind intact.

That made them laugh.

Really, even in such a situation, they could still wish for unreasonable things.

That plea resonated through the metallic hearts of all of them, and was answered.

Loudly.

“The problem with my family,” said Tanya, standing before them, and somehow, watching her made Lukas’s heart skip a beat with the sheer audacious shock of the moment. “Is that they spend too much time making grand statements about their own power, when in truth, they are a bunch of sore losers that just can’t face the reality of their situation.”

Something about her felt strange and utterly, utterly unreal, something Lukas had always known existed, but had never really truly understood before now.

“Unfortunately,” Tanya went on. “They also lack any and all appreciation for subtlety. No wonder they called him the Hammer of the Wind King.”

She raised one hand. And blurred.

And then Lukas saw it.

White.

They slithered like snakes, numbering in the hundreds and thousands, crawling over one another in their haste to surge upwards, creating a barrier of white, meeting the onslaught of blades head-on, trapping them in their mesh, the frost all but devouring the power contained in those blades, leaving absolutely nothing in their wake. And then, without warning, like vipers they resembled, they struck. The vines of living frost slithered all over the fallen beast’s body, wrapping, impaling, piercing, entwining around its body — freezing it, trapping it, draining it.

The massive beast was growling and screeching in defiant fury, but utterly, absolutely helpless against this newest trap.

“You did it,” said [LUKAS]. “I — I thought —”

“What? That I’ll hesitate, and let you pull off something that will take you even further and further away from me? No, Lukas. I’ve found someone to trust after all this time. I won’t leave, not now, not ever.”

She paused.  “Even if it turns me into my own worst nightmare.”

[LUKAS] frowned. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“You’re right,” she said, and he got the impression that she was smiling. “I don’t have to. But I want to.”

“I can separate Mujin from that beast,” said Tanya softly, though none of them could really even see her anymore. It was like something large, ghastly and blurry had taken form within the Desert. Even the sky had taken on a dreary monochromatic gray.

A tendril, wire thin and colder than ice, shot out from her large form towards Mujin’s protective sphere. It impaled through the defense like it didn’t even exist, wrapping around the man’s neck, constricting it like a snake. The next thing [LUKAS] knew, Mujin was dragged out of his protective shell, and thrashed into the desert. Instantly, the kami went berserk, thrashing and flailing in the absence of its bremetan host, and doing its best to fight its way out of the frost chains.

And in Tanya’s place, was… something. [LUKAS] couldn’t truly determine its shape or structure, but he glimpsed a flash of bone white teeth, razor sharp and as long as his arm. Distorted light reflecting off skin like the rippling surface of a frozen lake. An impression of a being so massively large that its bulk was scarcely contained within that limited space, so big that he felt certain that it could gobble Mujin’s kami whole with a single bite.

Bursts of newly made white mist poured out of the blurry figure’s form as she exhaled. The little glimpses he caught resembled nothing he had ever seen before, and the Screen threw a mass of contradictions. This was not a creature that could have been made naturally, for Nature could have never birthed something so twisted.

The pair of glacial white eyes that shone clearly through the mist was the only thing that remained of his lover.

Then It spoke, somehow managing to convey it through a hiss.

“I leave the rest to you.”

[LUKAS] narrowed his eyes. “Do you not want to finish this yourself? That man….” he looked at the fallen figure of the Warlord, crashed within the sand dunes. “He wronged you.”

The white eyes flashed, and [LUKAS] thought he saw the hints of a smile.

“It’s a waste of time for the killer to speak with one she’s about to kill.”

“But —”

“Make no mistake, Soulcrafter. We both know that you shall strike the killing blow. But I was the one that deprived him of his greatest strength.”

He looked at the growling, snarling, entrapped beast of wind. The fact that she had addressed him as Soulcrafter did not go unspotted either.

“Go. Finish your task. Fulfill your desire. We shall continue… afterwards.”

“Alright.” [LUKAS] said with a frown, and dissolved. All of them did.

Installing Prototype FORMLESS GHOL

Adding Anti-spiritual matrix

Enact

And almost a mile away, standing next to Elena and Ultaf’s paralyzed form, the real Lukas Aguilar slowly phased his way through the sand. He looked absolutely frayed, his eyes bloodsoaked, and he knew that if not for Tanya’s transformation and timely aid, he’d have suffered lasting damage, Prophylaxis be damned. But more important than that, he couldn’t help but stare with worried eyes as Mujin stood there, his kami trapped within strands of aqāru and Everfrost, with Tanya — gigantic and twisted unlike anything anything else, restrained Mujin’s Level-4 kami with her frost chains.

Briefly, he remembered meeting Frost inside Tanya’s mind and seeing the absolute hollowness inside her, a void draped in bremetan skin. He remembered how shaken he had been at the sight, but it was nothing, nothing compared to the flashes of that thing he had seen Tanya transform into.

“So….” he said at last, shaking his head in a contemplative moment of silence. “That is what an Anathema really looks like.”

He glanced at Mujin Shimizu, who was pushing himself up. If the man was anything like Ultaf, he would probably try to run.

He glanced at Ultaf’s fallen body, currently possessed by the nightmare within.

“Maybe I should give him a parting gift.”