CoESC Book 18-10.3: The War for Turf (Patreon)

Synchronisation earlier today had been brief, and as she expected, no such spell that would Cleanse spores was available. Not that it was impossible, according to Carina, just that it would take more than four or five circles to cast it. The process wouldn’t be quick either, and it would have to be powered by a hefty amount of Animus. 

It actually took a lumen to cast a component, and while there were only five in a 1-circle spell, there were seventy-five components, arranged in twenty-five nodes, for a 5-circle spell. Seventy-five lumens of Animus out of two hundred her body could contain. That was for a roughly cast spell at that, which would only cover a cubic pace of volume at most. Enough for one walking corpse or corpse mound, probably. 

While her greater self could quickly convert Radiant motes to Animus, this body didn’t have a Radiant Colligia. It meant converting was a process that required focus, if not full meditation. She could do it while working on something else, much like she could forge parts of the Sword Seals while preoccupied, but it wasn’t a quick process, and the efficiency was shot — and while efficiency didn’t matter to her greater self considering she couldn’t expend even half of what her body produced every second without destroying everything around her, this body needed as much of the Radiance as she could get for other matters. So she could Cleanse two cubic paces of spores for most of her Animus, then spend the next ten minutes converting. No, much better to keep using Radiance to burn off the Sporoids. As it were, she barely used up any Radiance during the fight. 

Having opted to try to sneak across the district borders, Yuriko drew heavily on Amalia’s fractured memories. The girl knew a lot about the areas near her school, her neighbourhood, and the mall, but she’d actually never really left District 4 all that much. Certainly not in recent times. So Yuriko’s attempt to discreetly sneak across wasn’t that successful. It didn’t help that the borders between districts weren't entirely arbitrary either. The roads and neighbourhoods curled around natural barriers such as creeks, rivers, steep hills, flood plains, and canyons. 

So she spent a couple of hours trying to sneak through the borders, but ended up getting turned around. 

“No flying’s so annoying,” Yuriko grumbled as she turned around on her bike. “Unless I ride up that ridge, I might have to go through the freeway instead.”

Distant gunfire and sirens told her that the fighting wasn't quite done. Perhaps another Sporoid site exploded or something. 

She still didn't want to draw undue attention this early in the day, and there were roads that ran along the bottom and the top of the cliff. It was only twenty paces high and was actually an easy jump…

“Rotter, might as well,” she muttered. She went to an alley, then slotted her bike into its bag, then she ran across the road, dodged a sedan before it could hit her, then ran up the cliff instead of jumping directly up. 

Of course, someone saw her, but she crossed the upper road quickly. There wasn’t much traffic there, so no dodging cars. Once she was in a more secluded area, she popped out her bike and made her way north-northeast. District 3 was next to the Inner Ocean, and like D-2, it held the docks. It was the industrial zone rather than the leisure zone, so most of the real estate close to the water was filled with warehouses and offices. The residentials were closer to the borders, and that’s where she found herself now. 

She followed the roads as best as she could, and when they looped back and turned south instead of north, she was forced to double back and retrace her path. It was annoying, but she had little choice. 

She encountered several pockets of Sporoids that she annihilated with prejudice. After every battle, she spent some time bathing her clothes and her bike with Radiance, just to be safe. She noticed something odd with the walking corpses, though. After she disintegrated them with a Radiant mote, she saw bright sparkles shoot out from their backs. Those faded away after less than a second, but the hang time slowly increased throughout the day. 

It was midday when she noticed something following her. It stayed out of perception range, and mostly out of sight, but she caught glimpses of it from out of the corner of her eye when she rounded corners. 

Even when she expanded her perception sphere into a cone, she still couldn’t determine who or what was following her. She had her guesses, of course, but she was vacillating over whether it was the agile corpses or the bloodsuckers. 

Her meandering path inevitably led her into another dead end, and as she guessed, that was when she was confronted by her stalkers. Nine figures jumped out of the shadows. Nine Sporoids. 

They weren’t identical creatures, but they had similar builds. Each was lanky but covered in wiry muscle. The more pressing issue was that they weren’t barehanded, and the set of their eyes gave her the impression of both intelligence and cunning. Yuriko hummed as she dismounted and stored her bike in a smooth motion, even before the Sporoids made another step. She withdrew her combat knives and produced motes of Radiance to fight. 

Armed with wooden bats, the Sporoids were silent as they approached. Their gait was smooth and casual, but nonetheless, menacing. They didn’t rush her, but slowly spread to surround her. Three served as vanguard while the other six moved to cut off her escape routes. 

“Well, let’s see how good you all are,” Yuriko said loudly. She launched herself towards the side, at the leftmost Sporoid of the vanguard. The creature evaded by backstepping, and at the same time, the other two curled around her position and attempted to smack her with their wooden bats. 

She ducked under her target’s fending strike, advanced, then stabbed the creature’s arm with her knife. The creature didn’t even have time to pull back before the tip pierced its wiry muscles. The mote of Radiance penetrated and then permeated across the body. It heated up, then caught on fire before it began to disintegrate. One of the backup Sporoids dashed towards the stricken one in an attempt to help, but once the chain reaction began, without an equal amount of Primordial energy, or a vastly greater amount of Elemental energies, the reaction would not be stopped. 

Yuriko darted away from the burning creature and struck at another vanguard. Like the first, its agility failed against her greater speed, and a moment later, it too was burning to a crisp. She went after the last vanguard while the backup Sporoids tried to help the other two. And by the time she stabbed the third one, the first Sporoid had already been consumed. 

She expected the others to charge her then, or if they were smart, they’d retreat. It was a mixture of both. The ones who initially rushed to help the vanguard retreated, while the other three rushed recklessly towards her. Yuriko danced between their blows and killed them in seconds. But by then, the other three had run out of the cul-de-sac and were out of sight. 

“Did they actually try to help?” Yuriko wondered as she recalled what her perception aura had caught. The annoying part of her incarnation body was that it still only had six strands of consciousness. Her 1st-incarnation body already recovered the missing strands, or better to say, her true body donated more strands while the latter managed to create more. She hadn’t been able to receive new strands of consciousness simply because there were none to spare. Yeah, her true body had more than a hundred strands, but each one was necessary. And she simply didn’t have enough time to split off more strands. 

Huh. The Sporoids didn’t actually make any attempt to help the stricken ones. She didn’t see what they actually did. Oh well. 

She shook her head and pulled out her bike after sheathing her knives. One went at the small of her back, while another went up her sleeve. She really needed more knives or a sword. An arming sword would be enough, but those things really stuck out here. Ah, how about a cane sword? Where would she find one, though, and how much would it cost? 

Hmmm, probably a pawn shop somewhere. Amalia had the idea that anything could be found in that sort of shop if she just looked hard enough. The notion clung to her mind, and as Yuriko pedalled across several city blocks, she found an open pawn shop. Luck wasn’t with her, however, and she didn’t find a cane sword. Pity. 

She paused in her travels across an appliance centre that had televisions on display. A pity that the sets were muted, but the channel was on the local news. Snippets of the battle against the Sporoids were featured in several sets, and Yuriko watched them curiously for a long moment before her eyes caught an interesting point of view. 

“Isn’t that Lucian?” she muttered as the camera focused on several fighters independent of the military or the police. She spotted Elaine, Nemeo, and a couple of others, along with Amalia’s brother, as they beat back the Sporoid horde with guns and batons. 

Yuriko pursed her lips as Lucian’s baton practically decapitated a Sporoid walking corpse. Actually, even the two new ones fought with increased strength. It wasn’t really easy to see how much stronger they were than mortals, and she had a fuzzy impression of that, too, so it made it harder to judge. A strike with leverage and a good weapon could do as much, but for someone who only learned how to fight for a month…

She also noticed that none of the five used any flashy elemental attuned spells, but that tracked with what Elaine revealed to her a month ago. The skirmish lasted for a few minutes before the news switched over to another set, and Yuriko continued on her way. 

She encountered a few more pockets of resistance, and she helped where she could. She kept her hood over her head to obscure her features, and few deigned to comment on it. Soon enough, she reached the boundary between District 3 and District 2, and unlike 3 and 4, it was the river that divided the two districts, the same one that flowed near Amalia’s high school, or rather, it merged into a much bigger one here. 

Unlike the cliff, the river only had select crossings, and she assumed all of the bridges had checkpoints. She could probably swim across, as it was just as easy to dry her body and clothes with Radiance and the Cleanse spell; she just had to find a place across that wouldn’t be difficult to climb out to. 

The water was murky, and the current looked fast. She also wasn’t sure how deep the river was, and her bags weren’t quite waterproof. The embankment was about three paces higher than the water, too. Hmmm. She examined a nearby bridge and noted that she could probably use the underside to sneak across. Yeah, that should do. 

It didn’t take her much longer to do just that. She was spotted, of course, but she crossed and lost herself in the bustle of the district easily. That, and the emergency wasn’t quite over yet. 

____________

The Collective was more than satisfied. Samples of the unique energy had been taken, and all they needed to do was learn how to produce and harness it. They had thousands of strands of consciousness to devote to the matter at hand, and it would only take time for research to come to fruition. 

Further efforts were deemed a waste of resources, and they pulled their devoted strands back into the minor nodes. Those had remained undetected so far, but with the locals alerted, it was only a matter of time before they were found and eliminated. Thus, they abandoned their drones to continue to draw attention while their local agents pulled the samples out of the city.