Chapter 1657: The Missing Crusader
...No, seriously, how was the battle going between Rianna and her False Crusader...
THWANG!
CRASH!
"Oh come on!"
In a portion of the library that had been converted to mimic a tropical jungle, a rather miserable-looking False Crusader, who was once known as Vitani the Bold, had been pinned for the sixth time in a row to a large pseudo-tree.
The arrow had pierced where his heart used to beat and was buried several inches deep into the trunk of a tree made to mimic a giant kapok tree. If he were a normal mortal, this kind of blow would’ve been fatal, and the arrow would’ve definitely pinned him down like a display pin for a case of taxidermied butterflies.
However, Vitani was technically nothing more than a corpse being powered by a ball of fucked-up magic flames. As such, he did the sensible option of simply walking forward and allowing the arrow to fully run through his un-beating heart.
’Tsk! This is getting silly,’ Rianna thought to herself as she watched yet another fatal arrow of hers get ignored. ’Not even the undead zako are this ridiculously regenerative.’
Out of everyone in Zhen Liu’s party, Rianna was the only one to insist on fighting one of these False Crusaders without any assistance from the kaijin.
Why?
Because out of everyone, she was the only one who could take a part one of these guys from a distance and see what made them tick.
Everyone of her mortal friends and allies were better at close quarters combat, while Zhen Liu had yet to make a proper sniper kaijin despite having ample opportunities to do so.
As such, Rianna took it upon herself to see how these "False Crusaders" acted when their opponent was someone they couldn’t see coming.
So far, the results were...annoyingly even.
The False Crusader wasn’t able to sense Rianna no matter how obvious the arrow flight paths were, so she could fire as many of her bunker-busting arrows as she wanted without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, at the same time, the False Crusader proved to be incredibly resilient to the point that her attacks did a little less than nothing.
More than once, Rianna had landed an arrow in a part of the False Crusader that would’ve been considered fatal by most other people. But every single time she had done so, that weird [Flame of Ambition] somehow managed to heal the fucker back to maximum health and keep going.
’Hmmm.’
It was starting to get to the point where Rianna considered that the only possible course of action at this point, might be to just tear the thing to pieces to the point where it wouldn’t be able to stitch itself back together.
That, or maybe go into melee and see if that made a difference?
’I remember the kaijin playing one of those games that Pathos whipped up and complaining about enemies having hidden weaknesses...maybe that applies here?’
As this train of thought continued to play out in her head, though, Vitani let out a howl of frustration.
"GODSDAMMIT! IF YOU DON’T COME OUT OF WHATEVER SHIT HOLE YOU’RE HIDING, I WILL BURN THIS JUNGLE TO THE GROUND!"
’Eh. Maybe not.’
...Well, that’s fun...
<Well, good to know that these regenerative fucks aren’t immune to [Chaos]. It’s just that they’re built fucking weird like that,> Pathos noted as he looked over the battles featuring the aforementioned undead fuckers. <It’s a good thing that they don’t seem to be able to tap into their original abilities as Aether Lords. Otherwise, this could be a problem. >
As Pathos shared her observations with Logos, the latter appeared to be absorbed in a tangentially related task. Namely, he was putting together profiles of all of the False Crusaders they could identify.
=Bolandra, Magnarus, Vitani, and...huh. Now that’s interesting. =
<Oh? Interesting good or interesting bad? >
=Just...interesting.=
Logos swirled a finger like it was a wand and summoned several transparent windows in front of Pathos.
The windows displayed information they had managed to gather about the False Crusaders. The moment Zhen Liu had laid eyes on the group, Logos and Pathos had been working in the background to gather information on who these undead warriors used to be before becoming puppets for the [Flame of Ambition].
As such, they were able to identify Bolandra, Magnarus, and Vitani as being nothing more than somewhat famous mercenaries who answered the call of assistance from the Sacred Flame Theocracy before ultimately dying in battle. Other than that, they had nothing else in common.
However, there was one outstanding profile that caught the eye.
Or rather, the lack of a profile.
This final window depicted an incredibly androgynous fellow that didn’t have a name or label attributed to them. However, there was a breakdown on a tattoo that was noticed on the side of the neck.
The sight of this tattoo caused Pathos to quirk an eyebrow.
<Wait a minute... I recognize this symbol...isn’t this a variation of those Shadow Garden guys from a while back?>
= I thought that too, but this is actually a little older than that, = Logos answered.
With a wave of her hand, additional text boxes appeared right next to the symbol.
The text boxes explained that the symbol on the anonymous person’s neck actually belonged to an organization that predated the [Shadow Garden] called the [Dark Menagerie]. Despite the immense record-keeping abilities of the [Library of Nowhere], the details Logos was able to provide were...surprisingly sparse.
Pathos was able to read through the provided text boxes fast enough to direct a look of confusion towards his logical counterpart.
<Is this seriously it? It just says here that they were an assassination organization that existed during the era of the Devout Heretic. Nothing too weird about that sort of organization having that sort of name. >
=Not the important part,= Logos chided his counterpart before directing them to read a specific portion of the entry. =Re-read this. =
<Okay...>
...You get to read this part too...
The Dark Menagerie was recorded to have been destroyed during the Omninarii crusades when a warrior known as Odabax the Great pushed his way into the Umbral Spider continent and wiped out at least fifteen countries before being defeated by the Devout Heretic and several of his kaijin.
However...this might not be the case.
The Dark Menagerie had been known to be the keepers of a very special aether formula known as the [Dark Forest Mantra.]
The [Dark Forest Mantra] causes cultivators of this formula to take on the mindset and existence as a "creature of mystery and shadows."
Humans often speculate and imagine the worst-case scenarios when exploring places of nature that have been untouched by man, to the point where they see fleeting shadows as insidious predators in the dark.
This phenomenon is what cultivators of this formula aim to achieve.
By erasing one’s existence to the point of becoming a "shadow amongst the trees," the warrior aims to turn this fear of the unknown into a weapon.
As a consequence of this formula, though, the cultivator ends up becoming almost completely anonymous.
There is no glory in being a shadow; there is no fame in being thought of as a passing nightmare.
...
<Huh...reminds me of that Schrödinger’s Cat Bloodliner we met awhile back. Wonder if she’s still an assassin or not...>
=Pathos, focus.=
<Right, right,> Pathos sighed. <So, you think whomever this final False Crusader is, they managed to reawaken this ability? Because from what I’m seeing from the other False Crusaders, they’re not exactly doing much in terms of showcasing why they were able to become Aether Lords. Hell, none of them have even summoned their [Regalia] yet.>
=That’s the thing; I don’t think they can because they don’t have the power to do so...at least, not currently. =
<Weh?>
Logos dismissed the information windows and summoned one that was more or less a picture of what the False Crusaders and Erupting Dawn Empire warriors looked like as they plummeted into the depths of the library. However, Pathos noticed that the former group was outlined with glowing circles.
=They’ve been fighting the kaijin long enough that I can now measure the amount of... I guess [Sparks of Ambition] is a good name...I can now measure their [Sparks of Ambition]. The amount sparks inside of the False Crusaders currently in conflict is comparatively higher than the False Temple Guards, but not as much as they could be. As evidenced by...=
<The fact that the assassin-looking motherfucker is glowing brighter than a road flare in this picture. >
=Exactly.=
In Pathos’s mind, this revelation meant one of two things.
It was very possible that this assassin was more or less a favorite of the [Flame of Ambition], and that fireball had a vested interest in this particular individual remaining in one piece.
Alternatively, this could mean that the [Flame of Ambition] was currently inside of the library and was piggybacking inside of this particular False Crusader.
Neither option was good in their eyes, but he greatly preferred the former.
<Hurricroak is going to need back-up, isn’t she?>
=Yup.=
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