Chapter 1658: The Power of Unknown
Everybody wants to be famous.
To be well known and remembered by all.
But nobody talks about how fame isn’t just a benign thing or just a good thing.
Fame is a cage because it forces one to move in a certain way, lest you be called a criminal.
Fame is an altar, and if you can’t perform the miracles that are prescribed to you, you’ll be branded a false idol.
Fame is a scrying mirror, where every breath and action you take becomes something someone else will scrutinize and judge you over.
Many crave fame but fail to realize how comforting and useful the cloak of anonymity can be.
After all, if you’re famous, everyone knows what you do and when you’ll do it.
But if you’re anonymous, well...nobody ever expects you to take the life of someone famous.
-The words of an assassin.
...
’Okay, this is starting to get annoying...’ Hurricroak mentally grumbled as she walked through a set of weird tree-like shelves.
Hurricroak had been chasing after this missing Crusader through several sections of the library at this point, and it was starting to get on her nerves.
Not necessarily because she couldn’t find the guy, as she had managed to keep pace with them up until this point, but because the False Crusader seemed able to disappear from her senses whenever she got close.
She didn’t notice at first when she had tracked the bastard through the swamp books, but she started to notice it through the frozen tundra section before completely confirming that this was the case when they finally arrived here at the forest section of the library.
The smell of petrichor and aged literature should’ve been comforting to the storming kaijin, but alas, her mind was occupied by the current situation.
Well, that, and the fact that the room this time around felt a touch more hostile than in previous encounters.
To be more precise, the False Crusader had decided not to erase their presence whenever Hurricroak got close enough to electrocute them.
Instead, the False Crusader opted to go for the exact opposite: sensory overload.
Hurricroak could sense the False Crusader’s presence all over this pseudo-forest and that fact pissed her off.
Beguiling and bewildering opponent’s senses was her thing, after all.
’On the one hand I could just blast lighting all over the place and gamble on it hitting someone...or...’
As Hurricroak thought about her next course of action, he eyes lazily looked over to a sign that reminded the kaijin and other visitors to keep quiet as they perused the library shelves.
A sense of irony tickled at the back of her skull as she filled her cheeks with air.
’Meh. This is an emergency.’
After she had filled her cheeks with enough air to the point that they began to balloon, Hurricroak lived up to her name and released a powerful croaking sound that reverberated through the false trees and caused them all to subtlety rumble. However, the force behind the croaking wasn’t enough to knock any of them over.
"GAH! WHAT THE FUCK?!"
[HA! FOUND YOU, JACKASS!]
It was, however, enough to fuck up the False Crusader’s ears and force the bastard out of hiding.
Before Hurricroak’s eyes, an androgynous figure manifested out of nothing like someone had just added their existence to an empty scene apropos of nothing.
As Hurricroak looked over the figure, she couldn’t help but to notice the neck tattoo that tickled a memory in the back of her head.
[Hey...were you by any chance a member of the Shadow Garden?] Hurricroak asked as if she didn’t just blow out the man’s ear drums. [Because I have been meaning to get in a round two with that crazy operatic bitch.]
The exposed False Crusader didn’t provide an answer.
Instead, faster than an eye blink, the shadowy bastard rushed at Hurricroak with clear murderous intent and a hand that was cloaked in a mix of Caligos aether and a spark from the [Flame of Ambition].
[Whoop!]
With uncanny reflexes, Hurricroak twitched her head to the side and immediately launched a counterattack in the form of a push kick to the False Crusader’s abdomen.
Channeling her innate frogginess, Hurricroak’s kick landed with enough force to instantly chop down an oak tree that was as wide as a sewer lid.
The False Crusader was sent crashing into a nearby tree shelf, which is when his insides more or less popped like an overfilled balloon.
Hurricroak was surprised at the results, as she figured that the reanimated corpse of an aether lord would be a bit tougher than that.
Several moments passed as she stared at the exploded corpse, the expectation of something happening slowly dwindling inside of her...
[Huh. That’s mildly disappoint-]
FWOOSH OF CONSEQUENCES!
[Ah. There it is.]
...up until the aforementioned blown-up corpse exploded in a blaze of flames.
Hurricroak recognized the color and feeling as being the [Flame of Ambition], but the amount of it was much higher than what she had seen being pumped into the False Guards. Not only that, but the amount also seemed more refined than what her fellow kaijin were reporting from their battles against the undead weirdos.
Hurricroak didn’t know who this False Crusader was in life, but they must’ve been the favorite to the [Flame of Ambition] for some unknown reason.
The flames disappeared as quickly as they appeared and took away the injuries that the False Crusader had suffered in that same instance.
Now that their chest cavity had been restored and their insides had been more or less refilled, the False Crusader got back up and immediately tried to attack Hurricroak again.
Oddly enough, the False Crusader was attempting to perform the exact same maneuver that had failed literally seconds ago.
Hurricroak had enough time to quirk and eyeball and understand that performing the same counterattack as last time was probably going to lead to consequences she didn’t want to deal with at the moment.
[Fine, if you don’t like frog legs...how about some crab claw?!]
The moment the False Crusader got in range to try that claw attack again, Hurricroak whipped an arm up and grabbed the offending limb between the pincers of her transformed crab arm.
The False Crusader was actually anticipating another kick to the abdomen and had attempted to twist their body around with a surge of aether as a means of avoiding the attack that never came. Instead, the corpse warrior had twisted their own arm in the socket.
If they weren’t undead, they would’ve been screaming in pain right about now.
[Oh, that looks like it hurts.] Hurricroak commented with a click of her tongue and a further tightening of her crab claws. [You know, the best way to treat a limb this messed up is with a simple amputation!]
Keeping her crab claw locked, Hurricroak transformed her other hand to resemble a tiger’s claw before slashing down hard on the joint that connected the False Crusader’s arm to their shoulder.
No blood splatter occurred as the wound happened, but the [Flame of Ambition] activated once more and immediately cauterized the arm and shoulder. At least, that’s what Hurricroak thought was happening at first.
As she held on to the severed arm, she noticed that flame that had started at the open wound had begun to spread downwards in an attempt to engulf the entire limb in flames. At the sight of this, Hurricroak released a surge of [Chaos] to try and douse the flame, but this had backfired in an unexpected manner.
The moment her [Chaos] surged into the severed limb, the flames burned even brighter and hotter, causing her to release the arm in surprise over the fact that she could feel the heat. As she released the limb, the arm immediately became engulfed in flames before turning into ash and flowing into the open mouth of the False Crusader.
And it only got weirder and worst from there.
While this was happening, the fires around the False Crusader’s severed shoulder began to grow and distort until it resembled the arm that had just been severed.
The False Crusader then flexed their fiery arm, and the limb turned solid in an instant.
Needless to say, Hurricroak became cross and significantly more annoyed at the sight.
[Oh joy, an opponent that can regenerate... well then, I guess I just have to—]
"Wyvarra..."
[...what the fuck did you just say?]
Hurricroak had been ready to quip over the fact that this damned meat puppet was forcing her to fight for real, but her demeanor did a complete one-eighty as soon as she heard that name come out of the False Crusader’s mouth.
"Wyvarra..." the False Crusader repeated, answering yet ignoring Hurricroak’s question so that they could ask their own. "Why didn’t you go after him? Why didn’t you...go after Draigo? Didn’t you...miss him?"
[...]
Hurricroak went silent over the questions...but the aether and [Chaos] around her was becoming...agitated.
And for the first time in her new life, she got...angry.
[Ask that question again, and I’m going to beat you to death with your own spine.]
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