Chapter 47 - Massacre Part 2

“Why the hesitation, Outsider?”

“Just thinking… I mean, the soldiers. They are just people following orders.”

“I’ve been at the mercy of people following orders,” Tanya shot back. “They will not think twice before killing you. Why must we be different? And where is this even coming from? You had no trouble massacring creatures back in the borderland.”

…

…

…

Back then, Lukas had stayed silent. After all, what would he have said? What could he have said? That this hesitation to kill, this reluctance to cut down a life before its natural time had arrived… He had suffered from no such issues when hacking down monsters and other creatures in the Haze-worlds, and yet when faced with the idea of killing beings that just looked like himself, he suddenly was having cold feet?

Why?

Those were monsters. He had justified himself. These are people.

But didn’t monsters too have lives? Didn’t they also have dreams, a future, a family to call their own? Did they also not seek to grow? When he had committed genocide on several borderlands in his attempt to grow stronger, had he not inadvertently downed the chances of their species’s upliftment?  What right did he have to cut them down like so much dead meat, and yet hesitate when asked to kill something that looked like a fellow human being?

I’m an anomaly, he had told himself. They are monsters. Monsters, not species.

Why does that matter? Asked a dark part of his soul. All creatures— monsters, species, demons, and gods — for an anomaly, everyone is prey.

If Inanna was here, she would definitely ask it of him. Why the hesitation? Because they look human? And if monsters are monsters because of appearance, how different are you than those that kill based on gender or skin color or religion?

At least the fanatics had religious beliefs on their side, no matter how twisted they might be. They probably thought that by cutting down those they considered blasphemous, they were following divine providence.

It didn’t make what they did any less wrong, but at least they had something to pass the blame on.

Lukas? He had none. If he was slaughtering species, he had to own it. Unlike back on Earth, humanity was not the apex of the food chain, and these people, no matter how much they looked like it, were not humans.

They were bremetans.

And he was an anomaly. Their natural ‘predator’.

There will be time for morality once you reach the apex, Inanna would have told him.

But saying, hearing or even contemplating it, was one thing. But to see them cut down by his own hands? That was different.

The human animal was oriented around a sense of sight. Things weren’t really real, until you saw them. Two centuries ago, the world used to be a far more secluded place, divided between countries and kingdoms whose people had very little to contribute on the global level. Because the methods of communication were so rudimentary, most of what you could know about the world outside the kingdom was usually through hearsay and official notices. Compared to that, the Internet and social media had cut down those borders in communication, and thus made the world smaller. That was why there were more protests, more reactions, people being more vocal about things, and ironically, this fact was also used to promote a far greater violence than it could have two centuries ago.

Why? Because as they say — Seeing is believing. Reading about a crime in the newspaper wasn’t exactly the same as viewing a live video on social media about it.

So when the first soldier ended up decapitated with such a twitch of Lukas’s fingers, he was faced with a very important and crippling question.

Why was he doing this?

He could have told himself it was to free Zuken. But he knew better. Olfric and Elena didn’t know this, but he could have done it by himself. Sure, he would still have needed Olfric to get past the entrance, but he could have already freed Zuken, and escaped with the duo through the Haze without incurring even one-tenth of the trouble.

He could have told himself that it was about exacting vengeance for Tanya. Tanya who he loved, Tanya who had been mercilessly hunted for years by Ultaf and Mujin. The Shimizu had destroyed Zuken’s mansion, and had slaughtered half the svartalfars at Zwaray Keep. and yet, they were above reproof because of their status in this world. They were a quintessential example of power residing in the wrong hands.

He could have sold himself the story that he was humiliating this bastard, and giving him a taste of his own medicine. That by destroying his men, wasting his castle, and leaving him a downing wreck, he was making an example out of him. Showing the other powers that having power did not make them immortal or above justice.

And justice could be cruel.

But he wasn’t there for that either.

Tanya had told him of how the soldiers were turned into flesh puppets that followed Mujin’s will to the letter. For Lukas who valued freedom over all else, who had rejected the goddess Inanna’s offer of vassalage several times in the past, who had spat in the face of yokai, monsters, anomalies, and the shard of an Empress because they wanted to dominate over another’s will — such an existence was absolutely abhorrent. It sickened him, made him want to throw up.

From his vantage point, by killing them, he was actually bestowing an act of mercy. It would not be painless. They wouldn’t even know why he was doing it. They would think of him as a monster until their dying breaths. But…

They would be at peace. In Death. The only peace they would ever know.

Lukas could have sold himself that story as well.

But he didn’t.

The truth was, he was a man seeking power. He was there not to save Zuken, or humiliate or possibly kill Ultaf. He wasn’t here for Tanya’s vengeance, or inflicting justice upon the Shimizu for their vile actions. And despite how much he would have wanted to say it, he wasn’t there to bring a final relief to those tortured souls serving as the protectors of this fortress.

He was here to collect sacrifices to resurrect Inanna. Because he was selfish and didn’t care how the world might be affected because of it. His own promise, made to a dying goddess, was worth more on the scale of balance than all the other reasons. And yes, when he was killing these people, he was committing deliberate, calculated murder.

The least thing he could do was own it.

Like Inanna would have said. He’d have all the time to deal with morality once he was at the top. And whatever he needed to do to get there, he would do it.

….

….

….

Shock was always the most important aspect of warfare. From ancient to modern history, it had always been the crux upon which battles changed from utter defeat to overwhelming victory. In the medieval ages, it was provided by the cavalry arm of each faction. Armored lancers, astride massive horses, thundering down upon poor, unfortunate souls that made up the infantry line. The initial impact of thousands of pounds of horse flesh and armored rider inflicted such horrendous damage, such psychological shock, that entire formations of men would break and run.

It would be followed by volleys of arrows shooting from the sky, aiming for the escaping soldiers.

The modern world had changed from cavalry and archers to fighter jets and missiles. A single detonation of the first atomic bomb had ended the war. Biological weapons, nuclear warheads, terrorist sleeper-cells, the methods had evolved but the psychology behind them was always the same.

Shock the enemy into inaction.

That had been Lukas’s plan from the very beginning.

The ironic thing about the Peak was, for all its defensive fortifications, Mujin Shimizu was its greatest power. Its deterrent against invasion. Very few people would want to infiltrate a place so powerfully warded, only to find a bloodthirsty Warlord residing inside. Not that the protections were weak, but compared to his overwhelming might, they felt like a complementary addition at best.

Hence, getting Mujin away, even if it was for some hours, was a deciding factor in this plan. Shogun Naowa had taken care of that, and Ultaf’s own ego had opened doors to an onslaught he had possibly never imagined happening, even in his worst nightmares.

Hence, Blob’s draconic transformation. Lukas had gotten the physiological baseline from the giganotosaurus, while adding some extra physiological characteristics, such as the roar of the Neothelid, a sound so deadly that instantly impaired the sympathetic system, and went perfectly fine with the massively strong vocal chords of the dinosaur prototype; the bylestyr’s ability with fire, and finally Blob’s own anti-mana constitution. The result was a deadly combination that any army would hesitate to take on, even on a good day.

The key was to layer shock on top of Blob’s already imposing stature. To build a sense of invulnerability around this beast of fire and metal while tearing down the opposing side’s confidence of victory. To inflict so much psychological and physical damage that the enemy would be fundamentally incapable of continuing the combat.

So when he had hurled Ultaf out like a dishrag, he inflicted shock on the protectors standing guard in the antechamber. After all neither Lukas nor his friends had any fractals. They were in the heart of Shimizu territory surrounded by powerful spiritists and men of power. Never in a hundred years would anyone expect a dinosaur exploding out of the walls and tearing them apart with its jaws and fire.

Twelve men. Dead. Just like that. Blob swathed its large tail around, leaving a trail of bifurcated corpses in its path. Wherever its body swung, cloven body parts fell around it in gory rain.

More guards had arrived and reacted, but it was too late. The fear and confusion had set in. Their power was halved by the utter loss in discipline, as they shouted, screaming and ran around in general confusion. The more experienced ones were attacking, while their partners were busy defending them with shields of force and metal, attacking Blob with weapons that didn’t even scratch his outer shell.

And meanwhile, the Screen kept throwing endless notifications at him. Proof that his plan was working.

Gathered +9241 Soul Capacity

Gathered +15876 Soul Capacity

Gathered +12781 Soul Capacity

Gathered…

And on and on.

It was part of the plan Frost and Tanya had helped him come up with. Once the two were able to get past their odds and worked together, they became a deadly combination. Frost’s ruthlessness combined with Tanya’s pragmatism; Frost’s knowledge of esoteric lore and Tanya’s experience with the political world outside; Frost’s natural affinity with Everfrost and Tanya’s diligently acquired skill at Wind and Pressure Manipulation  — they were practically invincible.

Even Solana was shellshocked at Tanya’s improvement and the caustic remarks that were part of Frost’s winning personality.

It was honestly a little surreal at first, seeing the same person flit between two personalities at a whim, but he supposed it could have been worse. With Frost’s suggestions, and whatever little Tanya knew about rituals, Lukas had been able to craft a rudimentary ritual circle that would allow him to store the ‘sacrifices’ he would make as a way to recharge Inanna’s divinity. He didn’t quite understand everything that the aeromancer tried to drill into his lawyer-brain about circle design, and frankly, he had stopped listening somewhere after knowing that there were nine hundred and thirty one different combinations that could be crafted out of a straightforward ritual circle.

Instead, he had forgone all of that, choosing to use a pentagon in the center — Inanna’s symbol of Order and Harmony, instead of the pentagram that the Asukans tended to favor.

Tanya was not amused.

The point was, it was working. He had used the pendant as the vessel for all the acquired ‘sacrifice’. Not only was the ornament a relic that belonged to Inanna, giving it symbolic strength, it was also a relic crafted to contain a Truth, and by extension, Divinity, making it the perfect recipient for all the sacrifice. He didn’t know exactly how much soul capacity would be good enough for this, but he resolved to find out. If nothing else, this place had no dearth of sacrifices, but the real problem was —

He paused his line of thought and snapped his hand down, snapping a man vertically into two. Two equal, diametrically perfect halves flopped to the ground.

Lukas walked through the space between the halves before they could fall, all the while smiling at Ultaf who looked like he would have fainted had his mind not been paralyzed by the horror he was witnessing.

Gathered +21411 Soul Capacity

The real problem with Sacrificing wasn’t the widespread extermination of these soldiers or tearing down the fortress. No, if that was the case, he could have just chosen the pragmatic and efficient route — get down to the lowest floors where the wardstones were kept, and use his most devastating attack on them, before vanishing into the Haze. According to Solana, the entire place would just crumble from within if he did that.

The Sacrifice, if he had understood it correctly, would only work if the act itself resonated with the god or goddess one was trying to invoke. The Norse god Odin was infamous for demanding blood-sacrifices — a brutal sport where the Viking warriors would maim, tear and kill each other until there was a last man standing. In exchange for all the sacrifice, Odin would bless the winner with an Arcane skill. Others, like the Vanir God Eir, were different. A naturopath’s true test of devotion lay not in taking lives, but in saving others at the expense of one’s own. According to Maude, several naturopaths would exhaust themselves to the point of death, before Eir would be pleased with their devotion, and grant them a boon. Or an arcane skill.

Inanna was a goddess of Lust. Lust for power, Lust for Truth, Lust for pleasure — the entire Universe would fall short before her Lust would be quenched. And as a war goddess that held the Truth of Depredation, plundering and ravaging was what She would resonate best with.

Just like that child in the memory had said.

Bloodshed and battle.

Just killing the enemy wasn’t enough. He needed to systematically rearrange the landscape to send a message. He needed to make the opposition know that there was no place in this world they could hide where he would not find them and annihilate them. Blob kept slashing and gobbling multiple attackers while smashing through the stone pillars and ornately carved architecture of the garrison.

Lukas’s own skill completed the ensemble. Blob was the main distraction, a perverse predator amid the running, screaming, attacking foe. It just chose whoever caught its fancy and made them scream while wriggling like captured worms. Lukas’s own bursts of conjured lightning and overpowered blasts of kinetomancy only added to the image.

Killing the enemy was good. Killing the enemy in the most brutal ways possible was better. The shock factor became multiplicative.

Meanwhile the toll kept rising further.

Gathered +7741 Soul Capacity

Gathered +12854 Soul Capacity

Gathered +9763 Soul Capacity

Gathered +8917 Soul Capacity

The usual.

He needed to drive the point home that he was the most dangerous and overwhelming force these men had ever faced. He had to inflict a horror so terrible upon a few, that the rest would immediately lay down their weapons and surrender.

He watched several soldiers whipped blades of intense pressure at Blob’s giant reptilian form. A single hit from even one of those could cut a stone wall in half. A bright red beam of intense flame careened towards the towering figure, a warhammer-wielding warrior capable of knocking his target senseless for a week with a single blow came for it.

The blades slashed against the beast’s neck. The red beam hit through its jaw. The hammer slammed against its knees.

The slashes melded into fluid, metallic skin.

The red, half-molten jaw reformed.

The hammer was pushed back with an equal force, and flung the warrior back.

Lukas watched in morbid fascination as his dinosaur snapped a man’s upper body and ate him in a single gulp, leaving the remainder, spurting blood, and painting the floor red. One of the soldiers tried to stick a flaming sword into the beast’s gut, only for the sword to be pulled into it.

Claws wreathed in flames cleaved through him a second later.

Blades of wind, torrents of flames and overpowered bursts of raw power struck it, but could barely manage to halt it for half a second, before a loud roar caused almost half the warriors to fall down to the ground, grabbing their heads and crying in agony.

“It’s a demon! Summoned from the pits of Yomi by that madman!” yelled a guard. “Kill him and the demon will die.”

Please. Lukas thought. Believe that with all your hearts. It will only make the end easier.

The guard roared and came at him, warhammer in hand. He leaped at him mid-air, only to pause, as if frozen. Then, like a marionette with its strings cut, the guard crumpled down to the floor, unmoving.

“Why are you in such a hurry to die?”

Lukas took a moment to register the irony that for someone that went out of his way to avoid a fight, he ended up taking up the mantle of executioner more often than not. First the Crypt, then the borderland and now this…

Got to be Inanna’s curse. I just know it. Why else do I feel so… invigorated?

He wasn’t lying. Despite being wracked up with the realization of what he was about to do, despite the fact that taking another life was absolutely antithetical to everything he stood for — the moment he started massacring the soldiers, something about it blazed lifeforce through him even strongly. More than anything else, it just felt right to be the one slaughtering, to blaze through hordes of armies, tearing through them without care or concern. Was this what Inanna felt like?

His eyes scanned the crowd and found Ultaf gone. Clearly some of the guards had escaped with him. No matter, he’d find him soon enough. Speaking of —

Scan Complete

Loading Structural Lattice into Memory

Anomalies were terraformers, ever-consuming and forever mutating. Grasping the structural configuration of its immediate vicinity was as easy as breathing. And with both Scan and Analyze upgraded to Level-3…

Number of Prey within Scan Radius: 4522

Lukas raised an eyebrow. Over four and half thousand? Even considering Olfric’s fears of the number being a magnitude more than what Tanya had suggested, it was still less than half of what was here. With the powerful ward barriers, the presence of a Warlord, and such an army, no doubt the Peak was considered an unbreakable stronghold.

He could only picture the expression on Mujin Shimizu’s face after he plundered it.

“Time for a castle exploration then.”

His feet rose from the floor, no longer dependent on lifeforce to push him up. Altering Gravity was a no-brainer, now that he had gained a significant grasp over Kinetomancy, or related aspects of it.

Hmm. The castle would serve as a fine target to test his abilities on.

“Blob,” he commanded. “Come to me.”

Blob the dinosaur roared again, unleashing a sea of flames from its open maw, killing several dozen more of its prey, before dispersing into liquid metal, and flying up to him, cocooning every inch of his body, melding with it, a fluid suit of armor that concealed him from head to toe. It was like wearing a helmet, if the helmet was fluid and felt like a mask, the visor allowing you a hundred and eighty degrees of direct sight, not that he needed it with Scan working overdrive to provide him input from all three hundred and sixty degrees.

Aqāru was a far superior conduit for lifeforce and mana, and with his ability to alter its chemical constitution, it could be harder than freaking titanium, so long as he could keep it powered. It channeled the power directly from his Omphalos Reserves and in return, powered up his body to epic proportions. And the weirdest part? It felt strangely alive.

It was just like the Crypt’s Omphalos had predicted. Lukas supposed it was a cruel irony that after rejecting the Crypt’s offer to fuse and become a greater entity, he was on the path of accomplishing the same.

I am not the kind to go gently into the night. It had told him so in its last moments.

I am becoming you.  Becoming us.

I am you. You are me.

Us is the future.

“Really,” said Lukas, laughing. “I hope you’re watching this, Crypt. The irony!”

He closed his eyes.

“I am a World. I create. I forge. I consume and I remake. To infinity and beyond.”

The metal flesh rippled and warped, flexing and changing colours from steel gray to a hybrid gold to an intense burning crimson and then back to steel.

Maximize Sympathization Ratio

Accessing Monster Prototypes based on desired Skills

Altering and repurposing structure while maintaining integrity

“Just like this castle is Shimizu’s domain, this body is mine.”

Releasing all Safety procedures

Applying and organizing alterations…

“And I am invading.”

Executing and Forging Complete

Enact.

....

....

....

Absolute War.

There was no mercy in any of the weapons or attacks fired all over the castle,  even if it was an entire army trying to kill one individual, and neither was there any victory when said weapons shattered and the attacks exploded uselessly, missing their target. Endless sprays of mana-fire perforated the air, piercing endlessly in straight lines through the air while chasing an errant flicker of steel. Slower, but more noticeable were the blasts of fire, mana, lightning, and other ordnance that seemed to track the target’s movements to the point that one could see them autocorrect their paths mid flight.

The sounds of beasts and the warriors fighting with weapons were loudest. The percussive impact of their launches and detonations were powerful enough to scramble a normal human’s organs from anything short of a hundred meters away.

And yet, their target did not fall as it flew and flailed through the air, partially due to the massive castle and its interiors that served as obstacles for the projectiles, and partly because none of them seemed to reach him at all.

Walls crumbled. Pillars shattered. Ceilings collapsed.

Yet nothing hit the target.

Not that the soldiers were in lack of trying. Their constant barrage of spells and attacks was rearranging the entire terrain, but none connected with him. His secret? The two-inch motion barrier surrounding his entire form, a shield as perfect as possible, allowing nothing — matter or energy, to pass through. A simple attribute he had added to Blob’s exoskeleton, just to get the psychological advantage over his enemies.  Lukas crouched, barely in time to avoid a massive battle axe from being thrown at him. Aqāru armor or not, that thing would have absolutely cut him in half. He looked at the himthursars that were coming at him, several of them with large weapons in hand, a deviation compared to the crude tools the muspel had. No doubt part of the Shimizu monster breeding program.

“KILL HIM!” He heard the soldiers yell. “Attack him from all sides!”

An entire horde of himthursars rushed at him, frost coating their weapons. Each of those beasts were easily eight to ten feet tall, with massive, fur-outlined bodies and gnarled, muscular limbs, with stag-like horns growing out of their heads and thick, sharp fangs sprouting out of their jaws.

He had encountered these creatures in the Haze. Unlike their fire-breathing counterparts, himthursars were quite docile to begin with. However, they could also shift from their normalcy to heightened fury when provoked, and that was when everything changed. Run away from them, face them head on, bea them, drop them unconscious, bind them, get defeated by them… it didn’t matter, since everything seemed to fester more and more anger in them, enriching their madness.

Unbridled, unrestrained, raw rage. And if that wasn’t enough, the angrier they became, the more lifeforce they used and the stronger they got, at the cost of their sanity.

A true berserker.

From what Lukas had seen, the only peace an infuriated himthursar would ever find, was in death.

The least he could do was get them there fast.

His current skill set wouldn’t work. He needed a new battle style for these.

Changing Skill Sets…

Accessing SKILL - Seismic Sensing

Accessing SKILL - Terraportation

Body function was altered. New skills were rising to the forefront, altering his fighting technique to suit the new targets.

Increasing Lifeforce Output by 120%

Increasing Mana Output by 270%

Removing Limiters…

Disappearing in a flash, Lukas appeared right in front of one of them, and drove his hand in their face. His armor extended into a sharp blade, and tore through the creature’s eyes. He spun around, slicing the neck of another creature to his left, before sending a burst of raw force aimed for the knee of a third, blasting its knee off.

It was quick to follow its compatriots in death soon after.

He was moving at impossible speeds, using kinetomancy like it was his personal toy to play with, never stopping, seemingly unmindful of the elemental attacks that spat and hissed around him. There wasn’t even the shimmering glow of a lifeforce shield. His defense was movement, a blur of random motions and unimaginable speed that made him impossible to target.

And despite all the massacre, he couldn’t help but get angrier.

Just… being in this castle was pissing him off. The soldiers weren’t strong enough to be any significant danger to him, but their sheer numbers pissed him off. The knowledge that these men were literally mind-fucked into becoming puppets for a twisted old man pissed him off.

At least the yokai twisted the soul architectures of the bremetans they possessed. In a way, it was the equivalent of dying. But this? These people, monsters, every living thing here was a twisted caricature of their own selves, programmed to fight to the death to serve the whims of this warlord that wanted to play God.

Every passing second dwelling on the idea made him almost blind with rage. It was easy to forget what he was here for. It was so easy to fool himself in believing that he was playing the part of the grim reaper for these twisted, unfortunate souls.

No. He reminded himself. Don’t lie. Not to yourself. This is a sacrifice, and you are butchering them. Calling it anything else cheapens the act, and makes you an inveterate hypocrite.

Gritting his teeth, he held up his left hand, where five gemstone rings sat on his five fingers. An elegant solution crafted by Solana to send different messages between the groups. If he was going to be busy in his self-anointed task, he needed Tanya to help Elena and Olfric.

Without further thought, he touched the ones on his index and ring fingers and crushed them.

“You cocky bastard!” yelled someone. “You won’t escape this place. We’ll—”

The time for restraint was gone. There were too many of these soldiers and too many monsters under their command. Solana was holding the barriers but he couldn’t be sure that they had cut down every single possible way to send out a help signal.

It was time to end it. After all, if he didn’t stop holding back now…

Changing Skill Sets…

Accessing SKILL - Shatterpoint Intuition

Accessing SKILL - Friction Manipulation

Accessing SKILL - Earth Manipulation

Then when?

Seventy-six shards of aqāru ejected out of his armor, altering themselves mid-flight in the shape of thick daggers, each of them floating next to him and aimed at the himthursars.

Asserting Anti-Friction

Altering chemical composition to Vatuatil

Set predetermined constant velocity

Set predetermined targets

“Oh you dirty little shit—”

“Fire.”

As though a cannon had gone off, the seventy-six nigh indestructible daggers fired off en-masse, and tore into man and monster alike indiscriminately. The blades in themselves had little weight to them, but vatuatil was the sharpest thing he had ever come across, able to cut through bone like a hot knife through butter. With the anti-friction lining, and kinetomancy powering their initial momentum to move at a very high speed regardless of external factors, they were an onslaught that had little opposition.

Gathered +4,92,281 Soul Capacity

Lukas whistled. Had these been Experience instead, he would have probably turned into a minor deity by now.

Changing Skill Sets…

Accessing SKILL - Seismic Sensing

Accessing SKILL - Terraportation

Summoning Blob’s pieces back to him, Lukas terraported through the wall, down to the outer courtyard below.

And froze at the sight waiting for him.

“Welcome, Lukas Aguilar,” said the sneering face of Ultaf Shimizu, sitting on a chariot-like thing, surrounded by a gargantuan army. “I’ve been waiting for you.”