Chapter 1618: Different methods,same results
What the hell am I even touching right now?! ’ Zhen Liu thought to himself in alarm as he felt his fist go through the corpse puppet in front of him. ’This is way too squishy for an undead weapon; what the fuck?!’
When Zhen Liu initially saw the attacking forces of the Erupting Dawn Empire, he immediately realized that while the warriors in the back maintaining a battle formation were real people, the ones attacking the mercenaries and the shanty town were anything but normal people.
Aside from all of the little details that gave off a sense of inhumanity, Zhen Liu could sense that there was a weird external power source that was humming along inside of what he could tell were corpses.
Under the assumption that these were weird corpse puppets after he had tossed one of the bastards, Zhen Liu proceeded to try and see if he could rip one open to see what made them tick. This, in turn, led him to try and slam a fist right through the [Core] of one of the puppets.
He was expecting the [Core] to be something solid, but instead, he found his hand going through something uncomfortably squishy.
Once Zhen Liu had extracted his fist, causing the impaled corpse warrior to fall to the ground in a heap, he noticed that his arm was covered in a goo that vaguely stank of rotten fish and sour vegetables.
"Ick."
Whatever was controlling these corpses, it wasn’t anything good.
...
’Logos. Pathos. What the fuck did I just get all over my fist?’
<We’re still in the process of analyzing it, but it appears to be some kind of...wait, I don’t think we can use the term parasite for this. It’s more like...an advanced microbe?>
=That sounds about right.=
’What the fuck?’
=If you want a more conclusive answer, you’re going to have to capture one of these corpse soldiers. Actually, it would probably help if you also got one that was being used by the Sacred Flame Theocracy too.=
’Are you sure about one of those things appearing here? I figured they would only be used for faking attacks on the city.’
<=So did we, until we noticed the guy coming in from behind.=>
’WHOA!’
...
Before Zhen Liu could fully analyze what the fuck is fist was coated in, he found himself being attacked from behind by one of the Temple Guards.
Or at least, what appeared to be a Temple Guard on the surface. Once Zhen Liu got a good look at his assailant, he realized that this guy wasn’t a real person either.
Everything about this new attacker was very similar to the ones being used by the Erupting Dawn Empire.
Same jerky movements, same aggression, even similarly weird smells, but the smell was akin to decomposing fruits and rotten flesh.
However, that’s where the similarities ended.
Their uniforms were obviously different, but Zhen Liu noticed that the eyes were once again different.
The sclera on the Temple Guard were a weird blue color, while the pupils in the center were pale white like they were blind.
’I wonder...’
Out of curiosity, Zhen Liu jammed a fist where he could sense some kind of [Core] equivalent, while mentally preparing himself to be covered in more weird goo.
Thunk!
"Oh, well, that’s unexpected."
However, instead of being covered in goop, Zhen Liu found that his hand had indeed punched out a coconut-sized orb from the Temple Guard’s abdomen. Once this object was dialoged, the Temple Guard immediately fell over like the Erupting Dawn Soldier.
’Well...that’s different.’
As an unexpected lull in battle allowed Zhen Liu to relax, he took the opportunity to look over the orb he had just dialoged.
The orb was small, black, and felt surprisingly warm.
’Wait a minute...’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he pulled out from his pouches a very similar item. ’Huh...’
That weird black orb that he received from the people of Soot Snail looked incredibly similar to this newly acquired one, but there were two very noticeable differences.
Firstly, the orb Zhen Liu owned was covered entirely in runes. These runes had some unknown function to Zhen Liu, but he figured it had something to do with the [Sacred Flame].
As for the orb he just ripped out the guts of a corpse soldier, it had only one rune carved on it, and staring at it gave Zhen Liu a headache.
Secondly, and this was the most important bit, the energy composition between the two were different.
The energy inside of the orb Zhen Liu has was minute, but one could clearly tell that it came from an ancient and high quality source.
On the flip side, the energy inside this second orb was abundant and fit to burst. However, it was incredibly low quality.
If Zhen Liu had to make a comparison, the energy in his orb was like a flame burning pure oxygen, while the energy in the second was like someone took a barrel of diesel and dumped it over a garbage pile before setting it on fire.
In other words, it was bad.
And yet, it was enough to empower a corpse into a fighting machine.
’Okay, I am definitely going to need a sample of these corpses...’
"Graw!"
Clang!
"And there’s my cue," Zhen Liu declared as soon as he heard the fighting.
It took him all of five seconds to find a pair of corpse warriors from opposite sides fighting one another.
’Alright, let’s do this quick,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he summoned the [Key to Everywhere].
The plan, in theory, was simple.
He was going to draw the doorway to the library directly beneath the conflicting corpse warriors, and have them drop in. Ideally, Logos and Pathos would have cages ready for the two living weapons and that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go that smoothly.
The moment Zhen Liu got within a certain range of the corpse puppets, they both immediately turned towards him to try and rip his head off.
[Senbonzuru! Alf Layla wa Layla!]
Fortunately, Zhen Liu was prepared for this.
A pair of scarves immediately manifested around Zhen Liu’s neck and entangled the two corpse puppets, locking them in place.
Once they were fully bound, Zhen Liu simply drew the necessary doorway and tossed the bastard down the hole.
A sigh escaped Zhen Liu’s lips as he watched his new test subjects disappear into the loving arms of the Curators.
"Okay, with that out of the way, let’s...wait a minute..."
Zhen Liu paused as he looked around himself and realized that he might’ve made a mistake.
"Where the fuck did I leave the others?"
...Meanwhile...
[Primordial Scripture: Titanoboa!]
"Who the fuck are these guys?!"
[Phantom Claw!]
"I thought there were nothing but cowardly mercenaries here!"
[Twisting Dragon Cyclone!]
While Zhen Liu was busy getting lost doing...whatever it is he does...Jinju Ren and the others had gotten in direct conflict with the actual mortal forces of the Erupting Dawn Empire.
Due to Jinju Ren’s royal background, she knew a thing or two about military tactics, and understood that the longer a battle formation stayed on the field, the worse things got for the target of said formation.
As such, she took it upon herself to lead the others in attacking the formation before things got dicey.
"Aim for that bastard in the back!" Jinju Ren commanded. "That guy is acting like one of the anc—whoa!"
But before Jinju Ren could finish her command, a heavy broadsword came swinging down towards her head like a guillotine. Luckily, she managed to get out of the way at the last minute by using another aether art that simultaneously pushed herself and her attacker back several steps.
"Don’t you know it’s rude to attack a lady?!" Jinju Ren shouted as she drew her saber.
Her attacker was an Aether Lord armed with a broadsword-like aether treasure that caused her skin to crawl.
"Wait a minute..."
"You know, when I was initially told that this [Dragon-Cutting Broadsword] was a weapon meant to injure dragons and their descendants, I just thought the guy was just blowing smoke," the enemy Aether Lord mused as he readied his blade. "But the fact that it caused you, a princess from the Pearl Scale Empire to flinch, might mean there’s some merit behind those claims."
"Oh? So you know who I am and are willing to deal with the consequences?" Jinju Ren asked in an amused tone. "You’re not afraid of causing an international incident?"
"Pfft! If we have a crap about something like that, then we wouldn’t have...you know what, I don’t need to tell you anything. Especially since you’re going to die here. [Gale Slash!]"
Casting aside diplomacy, the enemy Aether Lord unleashed a wind slash technique that was empowered by his aether treasure’s innate abilities.
In other words, he created an attack that would surely injure Jinju Ren.
But alas, that wasn’t going to happen.
"Why don’t we take the dragon monkey for a spin..." Jinju Ren muttered as she readied her saber, coating it in pitch black dragon flames.
