Chapter 312: Strange Behaviours on Holiday (Patreon)

Chapter 312: Strange Behaviours on Holiday

Neither Zyl nor MuCheon had been willing to follow through with killing each other despite the girl in the middle. The cult leader had, however, taken a very different approach to cancelling the attack. Zyl’s world still rumbled.

When the dragon opened his eyes, he saw the little girl standing perfectly unharmed between the two of them, despite the boiling heat that still collected around him. He also saw that the cult leader had still swung their sword, carving a gash into the world as though an enormous knife had come down to simply separate it.

A kilometre-long and almost equally deep, perfectly smooth scar along the world extended about two steps to Zyl’s right. It was a brutal scar on the earth, but when he looked at MuCheon, all he saw was a faint annoyance.

With the violence fading, Zyl saw the infernal flames still biting at his fire, but his interest in the fight was gone. Mercury had already travelled away. Pali clearly meant enough to the idiot across from him that they didn’t want to hurt her, and Zyl was rather sure that she’d intervene once more if they went for another exchange. 

She had that look in her eyes. The kind of deviant, childish look that one could only have when they believed that everything was a minor issue. A fight to the death was no different from a tamper tantrum to her, Zyl thought.

He withdrew his fire, his crown, his intent to kill. All the violence rushed out of his body like water sliding down the drain, leaving him hollow, and his lips dry. He breathed in deeply, then out once more, his emotions in turmoil as his horns vanished.

Looking at his hands, he found that there was no blood on them. 

That made him happy.

MuCheon stared, narrowing their eyes. “This isn’t over!” they yelled, angrily. “I’ll find you again, even if my idiot peak masters have been swayed by your honeyed words!”

At that, Zyl just snorted, then snickered. “Sasasa. Sure, sure,” he said with a tired wave of his hand. “Try your best, buddy.”

When he turned around to leave, though, the young girl quickly took a step forward, blurring through the air, and reached for his wrist. Her grip was like a steel vice. Not that it harmed him, though, that was really just to say that she was a little poor at controlling the appropriate amount of power.

Zyl gave her a small look and a smile. “Hm?”

Pali grinned brightly at him. “Tell uncle Mer I say hi!” she said happily.

“Will do, Pali,” Zyl promised. Then he turned and walked away.

MuCheon, the Cult of Infernal Flames’ paranoid leader, cussed him out behind his back. They called him a coward, a wretch, a pathetic moron, heartless, spineless cur, courting death… It was a really rather impressive tirade of meaningless words. Zyl felt a little sorry for them.

Someone with that much obsession would surely be favored by the system and develop strong Skills rather quickly. The cult leader evidently had a rather strong mindset. They were also just a little annoying, though, he found. So many flaws condensed into a person.

He understood why they led the cult, of course - their insights into martial arts were genuinely incredible. The rot and decay that clung to their fire was scary, even to him, and he was sure they’d hidden techniques from him. The kind that could potentially even give Mercury an injury that’d last more than a few hours.

Which was not an easy task at all, anymore. The cult leader was scary. They were also incredibly poorly adjusted. Being riddled with paranoia didn’t exactly make for the best sort of leadership. But they were strong.

And also, no one in this damn cult was well-adjusted.

Every single peak leader Mercury trained under had tried to kill or near-kill him in some way. It had been really rather frustrating to watch, Zyl thought. Then again, it was what his idiot boyfriend wanted, so perhaps that was fine.

Walking away from the battlefield, the dragon felt as though a weight lifted from his shoulders. He took a deep breath, and when he was far enough away, he took his suit back out, brushed off any dust, then put it on. He combed his hair, drew his gloves over his fingers, and took a few deep breaths of mountain air.

This place was still beautiful. It had a lot of wilderness, and many rocky, uninhabited plains, where old battles had criss-crossed the language in scars. There were so many places in this martial world that were full of dust and emptiness, and so many full of vivid, enduring life despite the adversity and harsh conditions.

It was a nice thing to see, he thought, the way that this place rearranged itself around its own traditions. The way life and people flourished everywhere, even if it was horribly dangerous. How battlegrounds kind of arose from large, open spaces, and fights in civilized areas were frowned upon - both by righteous and demonic sects.

Life, at the end of the day, was valuable. Even if to the powerful it was sometimes seen as a commodity to be taken, it was not one to be squandered. Cultists might absorb life-force from mortals, the righteous might pay them poorly for labor, but even in those scenarios, they tried to keep a reasonable population alive.

… In fact, Zyl did think he could draw some comparisons between cultivators living in collaboration with mortals and thugs demanding “protection money”. He snickered at the thought.

The blade and insults pointed at his back left him entirely unbothered, frankly.

- - -

Mercury woke up in the middle of a forest, with tall trees. Their leaves had taken on different colours, and judging by their shadows, it was evening, the last rays of sunlight filtering through between them. Long streaks of darkness painted his fur in between golden rays ducking between the foliage.

And his skin didn’t burn.

Perhaps someone else would have taken that for granted, but Mercury most certainly didn’t at that moment. Finally, after so long, the sun didn’t burn him. He felt warm, even. The air felt comfortable against his skin, the breeze gently brushed his fur, and the wanted for nothing.

A faint hunger sat in his stomach, but it was nothing he couldn’t easily quell. “Where am I?” he asked, and the world <Answered>.

His hunger quelled when he ate the information up. It was an odd feeling, kind of like drawing pudding up through a straw and through gaps in his teeth, but he ate the information anyway, since it was kind of tasty. The knowledge about the forest, about the trees, smelled of freshly cut grass and tasted like greek salad. 

Juno and Zyl sat next to him, the wolf curled around his side, and the dragon sitting on a rock, with a small notebook and a pencil in his hands. He was drawing again, sketching Mercury in the forest this time, and he had given a small huff when his muse dared move.

“Good morning Zyl,” Mercury replied happily.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” the dragon replied with a smile. The words landed between them comfortably, wrapping around Mercury like a warm blanket. 

Sleepyhead. How silly. Mercury barely slept like a normal person these days. His habit of passing out was entirely because of… occupational hazards! Yes, occupational hazards. That’s what he’d call it.

He couldn’t help but snicker at it, then poked Zyl’s legs with his snout. Mercury’s own legs hadn’t yet regrown, but now that he was awake, he could easily make prosthetics. He didn’t, though, because Juno still had her eyes closed, and seemed like she needed the rest.

The wolf had stood up for him. She was strong, and had accompanied him to places where it would, perhaps, have been wiser not to go. She had stood up against people who could kill her for him, and she had done it without complaint or fear. What a brave friend he had.

What an idiot friend he had. Seriously, putting her life on the line like that when, what? At worst, he’d get decapitated once or twice? Who cared about trivialities like that?

Seriously, these people. Mercury shook his head with a smile. Despite everything, despite his great resilience, he was still so happy that they came to save him. Not because he needed to be saved, or enjoyed being a damsel, but simply because it showed him how much they cared, and he found that beautiful.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” he said, looking at the dragon with bright eyes. 

Zyl just smiled, then leaned forward to pet his boyfriend’s head. His fingers dug into the mopaaw’s soft fur, in between Mercury’s ears. Currently, he was fully feline still. Perhaps he’d shift back when the time came to interact with cults or sects again, but as of right now, he had little interest in that. “You’re welcome,” Zyl replied. Then, his smile turned a little smug. “What else?”

Rolling his eyes softly, Mercury hid his amusement. “Fine, I’m also sorry for almost dying again.”

“You have to mean it,” Zyl chided him gently.

“Well now we both know that’s a tall ask.” Mercury let a small smile spread on his lips. He did feel bad for making Zyl worry, yes, but at the same time, he would not stop putting himself in harm’s way. It would almost inevitably happen again. “But yes, I do apologize for giving you reason to be concerned.”

Zyl shook his head, rolling his eyes. Then, he ruffled Mercury’s fur again. “Dunce.”

“No you,” Mercury returned, sticking out his tongue. The both of them laughed for a long, quiet moment. Mercury stretched on the grass, splaying his limbs wide. He took a deep breath of the fresh air, then a second one, and enjoyed the fact that he was… painless.

Sure, he felt sore. His Skills felt thin, and he was a little distractible. His mind felt narrow and small - probably almost entirely asleep except for his physical brain. Every movement felt sluggish and delayed, like his body was covered in cotton and bubble wrap. But he felt free.

The pressure that had pressed down on him for so long was gone. He wasn’t even meditating, and the pain was so manageable. Even his lost limbs… perhaps he would have phantom pain in the future, but for now, it was okay. In the future, he’d simply regrow them, when he was ready.

Long, deep breaths. Despite everything, Mercury finally felt like his life was on track to continue properly again. Like he wasn’t constantly on the run from something, or towards something. Sure, there were open ends in this place. Things he still wanted to learn, to do, before he left. 

But they could wait. For now, Mercury laid on his back, looking up at the sky, past the setting sun and at the rising stars. Zyl laid down next to him, then cheeks leaning against one another, and they stared upwards. Minute by minute the sky darkened. Stars rose. The moon shone down.

Pale light cast the world in monochrome. Mercury could have seen perfectly well, pierced everything obscuring his surroundings… but why bother. There was beauty in having limits, sometimes, and Mercury was perfectly happy to see the wonderful ways in which the light filtered through the leaves, rather than just forcing the whole world into focus.

Eventually, Zyl closed his eyes, and the dragon’s breaths grew slower, more rhythmical. Not too long later, Mercury closed his own eyes, too, and fell into a slumber.

Perhaps, if he’d tried, he could have reached his dreamscape.

But he didn’t try. He was a little too tired.

- - -

Mercury took a page off. 

For a whole ten days, he mostly just lazed around. He didn’t go hungry - Juno hunted for herself, Zyl foraged, and Mercury ate every grass and bit of leaf he came across. He was no longer a particularly picky eater, after all. He could eat the memories of smells, the knowledge of what a plant might be used for…

So as he lived he didn’t need go hungry. And he didn’t wanna cook, either. So, instead, the three of them settled into a very comfortable, slow routine. For the most part, they talked and partook of what Mercury could only call hobbies.

Zyl would draw, perhaps poke and prod at a few plants. Juno played hide-and-seek with them, sometimes taking to puzzle games, filling out ones that Mercury had… liberated from a certain library. For his own part, Mercury slowly regrew his legs, and explored the forest a little.

He still wanted to learn alchemy, so now that he was in a somewhat untouched environment, there were plenty of ingredients for him to pick. He just kept them in his inventory and his log, though. Stockpiling them.

Mercury wasn’t bored. Even when relaxing, he just couldn’t keep his grubby paws off of magic, so he toyed with mana and qi some more. He kept his experiments light and small-scale, rather than frying his brain again. It was almost fun to compare how small-scale he could get.

Keeping his manipulation too granular took more effort again, trying to perceive tiny particles. So he had to gradually work with what he could roughly consider “handfuls” of mana, shaping them into rings, creating interlocking structures.

<Crystallization> let him create solid constructs of the stuff, but most of that was brittle and sharp. After all, they were mana crystals. But <Magical Metallurgy> allowed him to create patterns of mana flow and storage in mundane materials to enhance them. So, evidently, mana could act in ways that were more flexible. 

Mercury, now, found that an interesting thought. The fact that solid mana was more dense than liquid made sense to him, since it was an organised way of shoving mana particles together. Could he compress it further? Perhaps - but that was also an exercise for when he had more brainpower available. For now, he just stuck to simple exercises.

Rearranging structures, trying to find constellations that were more or less brittle. The vast, vast majority of the time, the mana simply destabilized and turned to gas in a volatile release of magical energy that sent his cells buzzing. It felt a little like the buzz of caffeine and ozone at once, but faded very quickly, too.

There was an odd sensation to it, though. In the back of his head, the kind of feeling that told him things that he had no way of rightly knowing. It was a passive pressure behind his eyes. It didn’t hurt him, just reminded him of its presence, and after a small conversation with Zyl, he learned that it was probably his newfound crown.

“They’re not just active Sills,” the dragon said. “Lots of Skills have active and passive effects, but for crowns it’s more noticeable. My <Desolation> gives me a passive sort of intuition on how to break and burn things. I assume that your crown… <Understanding>, yes?”

“That’s the one.”

Zyl nodded, rubbing his chin. “Yeah, if it absorbed other comprehension Skills, then it still has and enhances their effects. The System doesn’t take away, after all, it just lets you shift your growth in different directions. So, the crown is passively shoring up your comprehension and intuition.”

Humming along, Mercury thought that made sense. Anytime he’d fused Skills, they’d retained the previous powers. It would’ve been strange had he gotten plain denser without his crown. In fact, even now, he felt its power like a knot in his brain, constantly hanging there. With just a reach, he could feed and conjure it.

But he didn’t. Instead, he used only its passive, almost gentle effect. His origin qi circulated through his meridians in tune with his heartbeat already, so there was plenty of energy to feed the passive effect. Insofar as it wasn’t just his own understanding. He still wasn’t sure how external or internal Skills were.

Nor did it really matter all that much. Mercury took a deep breath in, then out, and let the pressure settle. He was constantly surrounded by so much of it, after all, he just needed to embrace it as part of himself. This intuition wasn’t foreign, in this case, it was his own understanding of things. All he had to do was… trust his eyes.

Opening them again, he took a look at the mana, and the world had shifted slightly. He just had… what exactly? How best describe it?

Mercury had shifted his own resonant frequency. It was a minor act of re’zil, a hummed musical note that plucked both at him and at the idea of his crown, of the pressure, and brought the two of them into closer alignment.

He would still have to wrangle it when summoned, he imagined - it consumed a monstrous amount of power, after all - but that was fine. For now, he would simply feed it passively. The two of them were one and the same. He was the wielder, it was a simple expression of his abilities.

Was that an internal interpretation of Skills as inherent to him, rather than as an external enhancement? Yes, perhaps. He considered what he had earned to be his. The evolutions, perhaps, were driven by external assistance, but now it was his crown. His to wield, summon and dismiss. That means these were his intuitions, too, so he adjusted for them with a minor <Shift>. 

A deep breath later, he focused on the mana again, with a small thanks to Zyl for his help. The dragon shook his head with a wry smile, resuming his drawing as his boyfriend returned to his mana. Blue swirls of crystal and power soon spilled forth around Mercury again.

Except, this time, his eyes saw deeper. Not yet to the same extent as when he was fully recovered, many of his Skills were still a little strained, but it was improving moment by moment. Still, even with so many of them hidden away, Mercury saw the intricate structure of the mana, the crystal lattice, the way bonds formed between mana particles.

He tilted his head. What made them stick together?

There were clearly bonds, and those stored magical energy somehow, but now he wanted to see them. Mercury pulled and prodded. The crystal in front of him stretched.

Mercury tilted his head the other way.

Stretched? Now that… that was really, really odd.

He applied sheer force. Shattered. Pulling? Shattered. Pressure, and it shattered. He tilted his head even further.

Focusing his mind onto a smaller area, he created a plane of twisting force that pushed two halves of the crystal apart. It was a gentle motion, by creating flows in the mana. And then, the lattice stretched. The mana turned partially liquid, then re-crystallized into a different shape.

The mana was now solid, but spread out further. The energy density had gone down slightly, but the storage was smoother. He poked the stretched part with a finger, and it even had some give.

Okay. Mercury determined, then, that mana, much like matter, had a lot of states that were rather odd. And a lot of ways to bond to itself that were rather odd. He prodded the regular crystal lattice again, which was still perfectly rigid. The shock distributed through the entire thing and made it all shake.

Brittle, since it had hardly any absorption capabilities. He tapped the softer spot. And it rippled out like a wave across water. Mercury snickered to himself.

How odd. How very odd!