Chapter 780 - A bit of a problem (Patreon)

"If we knew someone was home, we wouldn't have touched the body," I am the first one to talk, gesturing at the others not to interrupt.

"How polite of you," the demon says. He continues to smile, but the expression lags behind his words. His jaw stutters in a rapid, mechanical vibration, flashing a dozen different expressions in the span of a second. "[IMPRINT STATUS: ACCEP-P-PTABLE]... But unfortunately, as you said, n-no one is home. What you talk to is an imprint of my mind, set for mental defenses with the help of my disciple. The highest directive would be to destroy you all, but that changes a bit with the host being dead. Honestly? How stupid can you be to invade the body of a Champion even if dead without proper..." he pauses for ten seconds, "...precautions?"

These words, though mimicking the personality of someone long dead, bear no true emotion, interwoven with a flat voice glitching out.

"If we were always worried about everything, we could just sit at home and suck on our thumbs." I scratch the side of my face while watching the demon, who continues to smile in that creepy way, and I try not to show anything more than I need. I continue to think it over, comparing the power of my mind to what is a mere imprint. For now, I hold myself back from doing anything rash.

"What happened to me?" The demon gestures at us to sit, and when we do, he continues to stand. Still near the window. As his hand moves, the air around it ripples and pixelates.

"No idea, we found the body on the planet called the Pit," I answer

"That is very unfortunate. I wonder who killed me, that bitch Florien or... [ERROR 356: DATABASE CORRUPTION]. Do you also hate these flying mage types who constantly shoot out pathetic mana attacks, hoping some of them will hurt you and actually cause more damage to their city than you?"

"I fucking hate them," I nod.

The imprint nods eagerly in that creepy, twitchy movement. "They always thought themselves to be safe from me until they saw the speeds I could fly at, with their fields and domains useless to disrupt it. Ah, the good times."

He taps with his finger on his knee, but I am sure even if he is an imprint only, he continues to examine what is happening in here. Not that I don’t do something similar. My mind is now brought to the utmost maximum.

Then the tapping stops, and the look in his eyes changes, and for the first time, he looks directly at Sophie. "[REDUNDANCY CHECK FAILED] It seems like the main protocols still remain even as the host is dead. I will now proceed to destroy..."

The demon’s imprint stops moving entirely, and Sophie is back standing with her hand extended towards him. One of his arms twists and breaks, and a crack appears in the side of his head from where no blood flows. By then, I am already in front of the imprint, a sword manifesting in my hand and cutting into the imprint’s neck, where it lodges itself and stops as the imprint moves and swings his hand against my head.

The mental space around us twists and changes, and we find ourselves outside, standing in the grass.

"You three run!" Sophie shouts at the twins and Maya. "Your mental defenses aren't enough, and your attacks won't do much. Nat, we need to slow it down so I can unwind the mental space and..."

She doesn't get to finish. From the skyscraper in the distance, all the thousands of glass windows burst one after another, and in a blur, a figure shoots from there at us.

I think that the imprint is nowhere near the level of the Champion. It is weak after hundreds of years, the owner of the body is dead, and it is within the mental space Sophie and the others created. Yet it is scary.

Armor manifests around my body as I crash against him with a powerful impact just before the imprint reaches Sophie.

The punch almost throws me away, but I grab his unbroken arm and pull him back towards me. My armor groans, the metal shrieking in my ears as the imprint’s sheer presence tries to erase the idea of 'me' from this space. My grip on his arm begins to liquify, my fingers turning into smoke. I have to pour all of my concentration into keeping my hands solid and my [Manifestation] here together.

The demon almost doesn’t seem to notice me and just shoves me away, eyes locked on where Sophie is. It doesn’t even react as my punch caves in his head, cracking it, and with another attack, I break one of its legs.

Then I feel my movements halt. Everything stops moving. The grass, the leaves in the trees, and the fake wind of this mental space all seem frozen in time. Walking past frozen me, the imprint with deep red glowing eyes moves towards Sophie.

But before it can take another, a new presence appears. With a shout, a young boy appears behind his back, holding a folded steel chair high over his head and slams it against the back of the demon’s head, causing the imprint to stumble and fall to the ground.

With that, the boy disappears in a flash of a torn and bleached red blanket cape around his shoulders.

Finally piercing through, I take partial control over the mental space Sophie created, and as if flipping a switch, all the colors of this mental world disappear, with just black and white remaining. Within it, I free myself, appearing in front of the imprint and stepping on his head, caving it in further and then again. A sword manifests in my hand, which I use to cut off his head before my movements halt again.

The body of the imprint ignores the severed head that stays on the ground and stands up to begin to move towards Sophie again.

Both twins move nearby at a burst of high speed, about to attack, before a hole made by Sophie appears under their feet, causing them to drop down just as the imprint swings a hand, and everything in their direction explodes in a glitch like wave reminiscent of kinetic energy.

"Be careful!" Sophie shouts again, but her words stop as the demon stands in front of her and his hand pierces through her chest.

Her face shows shock, and large tears of pain appear in her eyes.

Maya flickers from the air like the twins before, a blank expression on her face as she swings her glowing sword down, cutting off the demon’s arm entirely and leaving him with just a broken one. As the cut off arm falls down, Sophie disappears as the twins’ near-perfect illusion is gone.

The imprint’s body turns in place and looks somewhere far into the distance, where it locates the real Sophie. Exploding into a charge, his body entirely breaks apart like shards of glass mid-movement.

For a while, these shards glitter in the air before dissipating. Then there is a silence.

Finally able to move again, my senses begin to wash over the area to confirm my initial scan didn’t trick me.

I take a few steps and stand next to an emotionless Maya, her sword ready for attack if needed. With a flicker of the air, one of the twins appears next to us as well, breathing heavily, not from the exertion, but from the tension of the situation we went through.

"That wasn't so bad," I say. When I get a blank look from who I guess is Aaron, I add, "All things considered."

The space around us shifts again as we reappear in the same space as before: the top floor of the tall, undamaged skyscraper. There, Sophie tiredly slouches in the armchair with the rest of us standing nearby.

"I was careless," she says straight up, face pointed down at the floor. "I didn't check it as deeply and carefully as I should have because I did not expect any notable reactive mind defenses from a demon. From my experience with them, they usually defend their minds actively, through willpower. We were lucky this imprint was almost out of mana and damaged."

No one says anything as we, one after another, sit in the seats around her. Even I can’t find too much excitement in myself to tease her. I can probably excuse myself by saying this wasn't a mental space created by me, and that’s why I wasn't able to manifest much of my strength, but that’s it. Even if true, it still feels like an excuse.

"For the next day, I will spend my time looking for similar traps, more imprints, or the possibility of the one we met reactivating. Only when I’m as sure as I can be that there are no more surprises like that will we continue,” Sophie thinks, then sighs. “...If that’s even needed.”

"Good. Lessen your hold over the mental space a little so I can partially take it over," I ask of her, and she meekly does so right away.

"Your usual mental space won’t be compatible with what we are doing, so you will have to make changes. If you mess with it too much, you could break this place apart and throw us out. If that happens carelessly, we could all get some damage from it and..." She stops talking. "...Just be careful."

The following silence is awkward as both Sophie and I split and work on different things, while Maya and the twins are left to wait here, useless for now.

***

Once I’m done taking over parts of the mental space just a few hours later, I stand up and head toward the window. To test things out, I make a change. One of the mountains in the distance crumbles, and rocks fall down to gradually reveal the shape of a glorious sleeping corgi carved from the entire mountainside, stretching a mile or so tall.

Both twins stop by my side, wordlessly staring at the beauty as I tell them, "Sophie might keep hitting her head the most for what happened, but don't let pity stop you. Keep reminding her of it."

"Would feel better if we were able to do more than that," Dennis says.

"So what. Be unfair. I also didn't do much and will tease her for what happened. Because it was mainly her fault, and it will remind her of it. If I do something similar, do it to me as well," I say simply.

"Sure. By the way, that boy with a steel chair..." Aaron begins.

"Secret weapon. Can't tell you more," I cut him off.

"He looked a bit like you..." Dennis stops talking and shakes his head. "Whatever. Want to spar a little before Sophie is done? Maya said she will join as well."

With nothing better to do, I agree with that, and we move to the rooftop floor, where we spend the next day sparring.

Within the mental space, the use of mana is weird and sometimes just straight-up doesn't work, at least not for the three of them, so we go for hand-to-hand combat mostly.

While weird, it is an interesting experience. Our body stats don't match the outside world, some sensations are also off, and our senses along with them.

Still, I might cheat a little and make my physical stats just that tiny bit higher when I start losing against the more trained Maya.

***

Once the day has passed, we surround Sophie again, and she tells us what she found.

"I’m as sure as I can be that the imprint is done. During this time, I confirmed it must have been seriously damaged. I dated it at 441 years old, while the body has been dead for 435 years. I won't bother you too much with details, but it was set as a simple scan and copy of the Champion by a mind mage who then created an imprint of the mind. That imprint was kept functional by a trickle of mana from the Champion that was cut off after his death, so it began degrading. It is a miracle it was still somehow functioning."

Even after all of this, Sophie keeps some of her arrogance when it comes to mental stuff, as she says. "I can’t say it was a bad job, but it also wasn't anything too impressive. The mind mage did an amazing job at creating the imprint, but not that good at setting up the rest. But that aside, I have a bit of a problem I tried to fix," she finally stops delaying and gets to the point.

Sophie pauses and takes a deep breath. "When I unwound the imprint, I had to use Blackie, and to do that quickly, he was forced to deeper integrate into the body of the Champion. I kept trying, but I couldn’t get him out anymore, he's stuck inside. That alone wouldn't be terrible, but another problem is that the imprint left a mark on Blackie. While he is still my bond, I can sense it changed him in a way I can't stop or revert."

"Will he turn into that Champion? Will it take over?" Maya asks what the rest of us are thinking.

Sophie shakes her head. "Nothing like that. It’s... it’s like he gained more consciousness... individuality. He almost feels like a child now. It is really hard to describe. You will see it for yourselves once we are back outside, which we can do right away if you don't have any more plans here."

We look at each other, and no one seems to be against the idea, so we slowly get to it. We take apart the mental space, throwing us back outside, where probably only around 10 minutes or so have passed.

Right away, my eyes turn to the body of the Champion, and so do everyone else's.

Sophie’s bond, now trapped inside it, awakens. The body moves after 400 years of lying here dormant. The shrivelled arms move and gently press against the ground for the body to slowly stand up, swaying but straightening up, even with that huge hole burrowed through the entirety of the chest.

With Sophie wearing a difficult to read expression on her face, Blackie takes a step closer toward her. Though a few people around panic at that, aware of the possibility of what that powerful trait can do, Sophie doesn’t move at all. She stands there, looking toward the reanimated dead body.

Blackie reaches toward her, and for a moment his face almost twists into a childlike smile, grotesque on that shrivelled face, before his hand stops just short of her and he pulls it back.

His arm lowers, stopping halfway, then fully drops to his side. He tilts his head, the movement stiff and uneven, with eyes constantly gazing across Sophie’s face and then past her.

Blackie shifts his weight, almost losing balance, then corrects it with a clumsy step. He looks down at his own hands, flexing them once, watching the motion closely, as if confirming they belong to him.

When he looks back up at Sophie, there is something expectant there, but Sophie just stands silent, not knowing what to do.