Second Genesis

Chapter 433: Gifts (1)

Petri coughed up a mouthful of blood long before he hit a wall, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. It felt like every one of his organs had been turned over at the same time, his body flooding with a deluge of energy that he couldn’t quite understand.

He grasped far too late that this energy was foreign in more ways than one. It wasn’t just the power of Grey’s fist, but the hidden energy he had fueled it with.

Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi.

Petri’s Frame was suddenly locked down, a large number of white-gold lines blooming out from his body and then attaching themselves to the walls and ceiling.

He was instantly strung up like a pig waiting for slaughter. He looked the part too with all his fat spilling out from between the diagonally cutting lines that covered him.

It was just as Grey had said. Building a Frame for Pandro had been mind numbingly easy. He hardly spent any effort on it at all. So, the question was... why was he so tired this morning?

Well, that was because he had spent all of last night trying to understand how to use these Bringing Light Gloves. Or, rather, its much longer and more obnoxious name, the Charisma of the Bringing Light Puppeteer.

The item itself was also a lineage item, but that meant that it likewise relied on bloodline compatibility. The trouble was that even Old Ones had trouble comprehending the lineage that it held because the "Bringer of Light" had taken a completely different path from everyone else.

The path of the Old Ones was one of control, destruction, menace, one could say. But one of the very first abilities that Grey had used from the white gloves had allowed him to support Amunet.

Of course, he had also used them to slice apart many of the Old Ones’ corpses that had been in the graveyard, but controlling someone else wasn’t something the Charisma of the Bringing Light should be able to do. At least not in the same sense that Old Ones were usually capable of doing this.

Grey knew that he would be facing Petri today, and he also knew that he would be exceptionally powerful, maybe more than Grey alone could handle.

He needed a way to quickly disarm him. Just catching a man like this off guard once wasn’t enough. It would just make what would be a long, drawn out battle a little easier.

But that was when Grey had an idea.

When he first put on the gloves, he had immediately felt how similar its "light" was in relation to Holy Energy. He thought that didn’t make any sense at all, but he had ended up ignoring it because he had other issues to deal with.

But last night, he had a thought.

Just because the Bringer of Light was taking a different path from the other Old Ones, and just because he was using light, didn’t mean that he didn’t still see the Paladins, Monks, and Nuns as his enemies.

What if...

The Charisma of the Bringer of Light gave up more general control of all beings, for more specific control of Paladins and users of light themselves?

Just because you used light, didn’t mean you were a good guy. And considering how many assholes there were in the church, just because you fought against them probably didn’t mean you were a bad guy either.

The moment Grey had that breakthrough, he started looking to see if he could use his white gloves to control his own Last Paladin power.

It was so difficult he spent the entire night without much success at all. In fact, when he got here, he was half resigned to only being able to partially control Petri.

What he didn’t expect was that while it was supremely difficult to control his Holy Energy...

Controlling Petri’s was so easy it took a single punch.

Grey almost cried tears of joy. It was about damn time he had some good luck.

"Well, well, well. If I knew I could do this I would have shut that annoying mouth of yours a long time ago."

Petri tried to speak, to roar, to do something, but it was like a million tiny wires had bound up his tongue in an instant. They tightened, and little filaments of blood began to squeeze out.

"Ah, ah, ah, I would be careful if I were you. Wouldn’t want to rip yourself to pieces, now would we?"

"You did that and you didn’t expect it to fucking work?" Amunet spoke out everyone’s thoughts, including Elowen’s, seemingly.

If this was Grey’s plan from the beginning, she could let it slide. But this was just... unreasonable.

Grey grinned. "Well, I expected to be able to dock his power by like 10-20%. But this is way better than that."

Amunet glared at him, but Grey only winked.

"At least I’m honest."

"Are you... kidnapping me?"

Elowen’s voice was still quite firm despite the situation she was in, but Grey wasn’t surprised by this. There was a lot of fire in that small frame.

Their first interaction was literally her shrieking at him.

"I don’t know. Are we?" Amunet asked, crossing her arms.

Brad’s lips pursed. "Are you trying to build out a harem or something?"

Mauve blushed.

Grey scoffed. "I’m a gentleman. Do I look like I’d kidnap women for my own pleasure?"

"So you are kidnapping me," Elowen said.

"Yeah, real gentlemanly. You just grab asses left and right as you see fit. You know, there’s a red mark on mine still. It’s going to bruise."

Grey blinked. "Can I see?"

"Fuck you."

"If it helps, I don’t think we’re actually kidnapping you," Brad said to Elowen. "I don’t know how we make it out of the city, exactly."

"Well, technically we could. There’s a hidden passage out of here." Grey said.

Elowen’s eyes widened. "How do you know that?"

She looked a little more panicked now, but still oddly calm.

"I’m a man of many talents." Grey grinned. "But no, I am not kidnapping you if you don’t want to be. I need you for something else. I come bearing gifts."