Chapter 22

  Yin expected to be led to a palace, or at least a large kingly, or queenly in this case, mansion. Instead the royal guardsman that looked like he belonged at a desk doing paperwork pointed for him to set the ship down over a two story building.

  The only thing that set the building out from the ones around it were some colorful banners and flags. Though those flags could be seen here and there on other buildings too.

  Yin exited the cockpit, climbed over Kaido who’d wrapped herself around the little house on the ship, and followed the guards down. There was no entrance from the roof so they had to jump down to the street and then go in from there.

  The interior was obviously remodeled, discolored stone in lines where walls had been. New supports were added to keep the second floor from becoming the first floor and so on.

  Kaido squeezed in through the front door and slithered alongside Yin into an expanded room with a large table. At the end of it sat a teenage girl with way too many accessories, too much makeup on her face, and one soul core too many to be a normal person.

  ‘’Yuri.’’ She began, sour as all hell glaring at the dragon who let out a low rumble. Then her eyes focused on Yin, dropping to his chest and then back up. ‘’And Yin, I suppose?’’

  ‘’Yep. Pleasure to make your acquaintance your majesty.’’ Yin forced out after the royal guard dude dug a finger into his ribs from behind.

  ‘’I suppose I’ll start with you and your.. Is her name actually Secretary?’’ A muffled voice from upstairs drifted down, sounding a lot like Secretary confirming that, yes, that was her name.

  ‘’Yeah, I’m not gonna repeat the whole story but she’s a dream spirit we implanted into a remnant.’’ Yin scratched his nose and looked around the cluttered room, tons upon tons of documents.

  ‘’I.. What? Yuri, is he for real?’’ Kaido grumbled like a landslide. ‘’Yuri!’’

  ‘’I didn’t believe it either at first but it’s true.’’

  ‘’Where is Secretary?’’ Yin picked up some random documents and scanned them, dry reports from some mine. The guard guy slapped them out of his hands.

  ‘’She’s explaining how her array works to my array master. Now back to you Yin, you’ve moved in on top of my mountain. What made you think you could just go and do that?’’ Talia pointed a quill at him, glaring disingenuously, no actual heat in her gaze.

  ‘’I have a permit.’’ Yin stuffed his hands in his pockets and pretended to rifle around in the empty expanses. ‘’I don’t have it with me but it says ‘Do whatever you want’ and it’s signed by Emriss.’’

  Kaido’s arm shot out and pulled Yin close to her massive head. ‘’Can you NOT say her name while I’m here?’’ Her mouth parted enough to show those massive teeth.

  ‘’That’s on the permit too.’’

  ‘’So you’re an idiot.’’ Talia signed some document and threw it over to a pile in the corner. ‘’First of all, if you’re going to be staying there it will not be for free. Livian, report please.’’

  The guard guy, Livian apparently, stepped beside Yin. ‘’There was one more person with a split soul, one core high gold and the other jade. There were also two sacred beasts, a goat and a large bird, both true gold. The goat was a pure life artist and the bird some amalgam of shadow and blade madra.’’

  ‘’Wind, Shadow and Blade.’’ Yin added helpfully, but Livian glared at him. ‘’There’s also a high gold blade artist and our second youngest member split her soul yesterday, so y’know, send a congratulatory gift or something.’’

  Talia somehow called him an idiot again purely with her expression. ‘’Good.. In that case you all qualify to perform some work to pay for your stay.’’

  ‘’Here we go..’’ Kaido muttered loudly enough that the neighbors probably heard. ‘’Demands and more demands.’’

  Talia signed a document, threw it on the pile and paused before starting on another, glaring at the dragon. ‘’For someone who lives here you sure aren’t concerned with the general well being of our people.’’

  ‘’You talk like it’s all on me.’’

  ‘’You are by far the best equipped to handle our problems.’’

  Yin saw the stairs to the second floor and left the passive aggressive conversation behind. Kaido, as usual, didn’t seem to notice him stepping on her to get past. The second floor was even more hollowed out than the first, only pillars kept the roof up. The rest of the space was littered with papers, shelves with books and scrolls and in a cleared space Secretary scribbled on the floor with chalk while an old man watched.

  ‘’Hey Secretary.’’ ‘’Yin.’’ ‘’I can’t remember if I said it, but we actually need to ask for permission before we set up arrays in someone else's city.’’

  ‘’This has become apparent to Secretary.’’ She said while continuing to scratch out designs. Yin joined the old array master in looking over the design being drawn. It was a single square meter segment of something larger, possibly her dream gathering array judging by the characters.

  Kaido’s rumbling voice sounded out louder, shaking the parchments and forcing Secretary to pause until the shivers subsided. Kaido’s rumbling voice became the backdrop for the next few minutes.

  Bored Yin picked some random books up and skimmed through them, nothing but info he already knew. In the parchments were mostly simple lines and suggestions on improvements to existing works. The most interesting thing was a scroll with ideas for enchantments to robes and armor. Not just basic toughness enhancers, but cloud madra to dampen impacts, water scripts on cloth to turn attacks away. Very interesting. Yin memorized a few for himself and Duong to consider.

  ‘’Hold on now.. Who are you, young fellow?’’ The old array master finally pulled his eyes away long enough to notice Yin was in the room.

  ‘’Yin, nice to meet you.’’ Waving, Yin continued to unfurl the scroll. A compound script for breastplates that used force and fire madra to create a blast to counter attacks that landed on it. ‘’Ooh.’’

  ‘’Those are..’’ The old man stopped, looking over another module in the greater array. ‘’Ooh. Those are classified boy, put them down.’’

  ‘’Yeah, yeah, of course.’’ Yin unfurled another on a table and went over those contents too. Weapon designs. ‘’Oh wow.’’ An axe that could contain a striker binding of any kind, as long as the metal was forged correctly and the scripts were solid.

  ‘’This concludes Secretary’s perpetual gathering array.’’

  ‘’Amazing.. Boy! Put those down lest I grow mighty furious!’’

  ‘’In a minute, old man, I need to memorize this one.’’ Yin longingly gazed at the designs for two pairs of gauntlets, one normal sized, the other five times larger. They would be paired with a force script to make the larger ones move in tandem with the smaller. Yin longed for giant hands to beat things with.

  The old man turned out to be a force artist and used a striker technique to knock the whole table over.

  ‘’Secretary read everything in here.’’

  ‘’Do not! Both of you out, I must consider things!’’ The old man threw them both down the stairs with a wave of his hand and a complex technique working. Livian pulled them both back into the ‘throne room’ with an angry expression. Probably because he hadn’t noticed Yin leave.

  Talia was red in her now mostly makeup-less face, she’d apparently worked up a sweat and wiped it off on some official looking documents. Kaido similarly huffed after their lengthy match of trading insults. ‘’Insolent.’’ She huffed. ‘’I’ve had more than enough. You will work to pay for your stay or I will have the full might of my militia expel you from my country.’’

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  She rifled through a different pile of documents. ‘’Here! Dreadbeast herd, gold equivalent, in the eastern range. You will cull them within the month or face the consequences! Livian! Take them away!’’ She threw the paper and when it predictably didn’t make it very far from her hand shrieked for Livian to take it.

  Moments later they were all out of the queen's building.

  ‘’She needs a vacation.’’ Yin stated, wondering when they’d get the go ahead on Secretarys array. ‘’Anyways, lemme see that paper so I can plot and scheme.’’

  ‘’Whatever, I’m going back to-’’

  ‘’You’re on the extermination team.’’ Yin looked over the details, showing it to Secretary so she could calculate the travel times. ‘’This looks like a job for you, Ten and Montai. You guys could have it done in a day or two.’’

  Livian made a disbelieving sound, almost mirroring Kaido’s indignant huff. ‘’No way, I am not working for that bitch.’’

  ‘’I know for a fact Ti Li has another gold necklace. With a gem in it. We could get Duong to resize it for you. Make it like a wrist thingy.’’

  Yin and Kaido stared each other down, the dragon's cupidity eventually winning out. She grumbled anyways as she flew back up to their mountain.

  ‘’Mister Livian.’’ Yin pulled an adorable face to ply the guard into submission. ‘’We need refined metals and some remnants. Can you open the coffers for us?’’ It didn’t seem to work. ‘’Can you tell us where we can get such things around here?’’

  ‘’The workshops are by the mountainside and in the plains outskirts.’’ He eventually relented and offered up his knowledge.

  ‘’Thank you. Alright, Secretary let’s go shake down Ti Li and then we can go shopping.’’

  —

  Yin found that carrying nearly a hundred kilograms of metal on his back was hard, even with his pure cloak. And he got no help with it because Secretary was using her own madra to pacify the dozen different remnants she’d procured.

  Stepping off the cloudship with the burden nearly saw him topple over and kill himself, but he managed to bring it all to Duongs nearly finished workshop.

  Slamming the pack down on the stone cracked the tiles his friend had painstakingly carved. ‘’Weapons and armor.’’ Yin declared despite feeling like his back had broken and mended itself a dozen times. ‘’We have roughly two years to make defensive and offensive equipment for everyone.’’

  Duong stared the cracked floor for a few more seconds before giving Yin his attention. ‘’You really think she’s going to send us into a war zone?’’

  ‘’Prepare for everything, expect the worst and so on and so forth.’’ It was really hard to stay casual while his iron body made his legs feel like they were full of worms. ‘’But mostly I want some cool boss gear.’’

  ‘’Yeah, I figured that was your goal here.’’ Duong picked up a bar of some steel alloy, Yin wasn’t sure what it was made of. ‘’This is gonna make things a little annoying. Fire scales and a script for the forge, and I’ll need to make a hammer and stuff.’’ He turned and picked up a stick of chalk to write out a to-do list on the wall.

  Yin leaned around and saw that the first object on the list was ‘Make Yin fix the floor.’ Duong glared down at him, his quicksilver madra starting to cycle.

  Darting out of the workshop in pure cloak, Yin shouted back. ‘’I’m going on an expedition to kill shit, I’ll leave that to you!’’ Duong was actually coming after him so Yin sped up to his limit and made for the Miniature rose. ‘’Secretary! Tell Montai to grab Ten and come over! KAIDOOOOOO!’’

  Yin was caught in a tangle of vines that sprouted in his path, Zeurel had betrayed him.

  —

  The extermination team changed roster a few more times before they got going.

  Now Yin, Zeurel, Ten, Ti Li and Secretary were the ones on the cloudship, Yin’s original plan almost entirely overruled.

  At least Duong would be starting to work on Yin’s armament, the Power Gloves. Yin was going to change the name silently after Duong was done with them.

  Melon Grippers? A work in progress.

  ‘’When are you going to help me aspect my second core?’’ Yin flinched, finding Ti Li right next to him all of a sudden.

  ‘’Hm, right, so I’ve been thinking-’’ The little girl looked like she suspected treachery. ‘’Do you really want my Falling Star path?’’

  ‘’Yes.’’

  ‘’Think about it.’’

  ‘’No.’’

  ‘’Because I have an idea for something that might suit you better, because going hard into a path that’s so opposite to, well, you, might make it harder for you.’’ She started to look downcast. ‘’Listen it’s not that I don’t want you to use my path, it’s that I think I have an idea for one that’s more up your alley.’’

  ‘’Just say what it is.’’ She grumbled.

  ‘’Blood, shadow, and potentially hunger. Secretary, come help me visualize something!’’

  As the remnant padded out of the cycling room, Ti Li asked a very important question. ‘’Hunger?’’

  ‘’Yup. I think you would make good use of it, you’re a little personification of greed. People are really iffy on it but one of the Monarchs uses it.’’ Sniffing, he added quietly. ‘’And the Dreadgods.’’

  ‘’I heard that.’’

  ‘’It’s perfectly safe as long as you have a strong will, and also some help.. From a strong dream spirit.’’ Yin raised a hand and Secretary slotted herself in under it for head pats.

  ‘’Are you going to make Secretary my secretary if I do this?’’

  ‘’Never.’’ Yin denied her instantly. ‘’She’ll help you out when you need it though. So, Secretary, can you show her what we cooked up for the Seras path?’’

  Secretary wasted no time and in a moment they were covered in an illusion. Yin and Ti Li stood in a dark hallway, across from them stood a woman who looked vaguely like Ti Li. If she were thirty years older and had never showered in all that time.

  Across from her Secretary spawned what could only be called humanoid dreadbeasts, pale hairless ghouls.

  The older Ti Li started to leak red tinted black liquid that pooled around her feet. A stomp into the puddle sent a shark fin down range, bisecting the faceless enemies. Swinging her arms sent more cutting crescents, then it got more interesting.

  Ruling the blood and shadows she’d sent out to create massive spikes that tore into flesh, spilled blood only empowering her further. Then lastly she pulled massive amounts of blood and shadows back to her and forged it into a scythe.

  The illusion dropped and Ti Li picked her jaw up from the floor. ‘’Why.. Why did I look so dirty!? I wash every day!’’

  ‘’Conceptually thieves are considered to be ‘dirty’’’ Secretary explained.

  ‘’If I smelled bad, people would notice me! I’m not dirty!’’

  ‘’Confusing.’’

  Yin cut in. ‘’So what did you think of the other things? Pretty neat right? And that’s just bare bones combat stuff, you could do like Montai and travel through space via shadows.’’

  ‘’It’s.. not as cool as your path.’’

  Nodding in complete understanding, because that was totally true, Yin was forced to make a case for the other side even so. ‘’The thing with my Falling Star path is that it has a singular purpose. Absolute destruction. World ending stuff. No, I’m not going to destroy the world with it.’’ Yin explained at Ti Li’s look. ‘’But that in itself is kind of a problem, I can’t imagine a single way to spin it into having any other utility.’’

  ‘’There are paths out there that, while they do have a lot of combat utility, they can also do other things. We’ve been thinking about it, me and Secretary, and we think the way people create Void Keys is by having blade artists literally cut space before binding the pocket it makes. One of the Monarchs can make dozens of portals to subspaces, and I have no idea what madra type he even uses.’’

  Yin looked down at a winding river they were passing over. ‘’I’m getting a bit off track, but what I’m saying is that I think you should have more options than the nuclear one.’’

  ‘’Nuklur?’’

  ‘’It’s a thing from my past life, we figured out how to make rocks into suns. But that’s not important right now!’’

  Ti Li was quiet for a while, and Yin waited there with her enjoying the landscapes as they traveled.

  ‘’If I take the Seras path.. how am I going to figure out how to do all those other things?’’

  ‘’Secretary is going to help us with that.’’

  Secretary, standing by them, had made an illusion screen again and was playing the scene from earlier on it. Only this time the older Ti Li was clean and dressed much more finely.

  ‘’Well, think about it.’’ Yin told Ti Li.

  ‘’No, I’m doing it. You always want me to wait and think and bleh! I want the Seras path!’’ She stomped, completely determined.

  ‘’Alright, okay, fine.’’ Yin accepted her answer easily. ‘’You’ll have time to think it through anyways, because we’re going to need a source of fresh blood for your cycling room and I need to figure out our solution to that.’’

  ‘’Ah.’’ It seemed to dawn on the little girl that blood madra required actual blood.

  ‘’We’ve got a few more hours to go, so work on the wheel cycling thingy we taught you. And do the breathing thing.’’ Yin fit action to words, sitting cross legged and starting to move the imagined millstone through his pure core.

  ‘’I don’t like the breathing thing.’’ She complained as she laid down on her back as usual.

  ‘’The pain makes us stronger. Literally.’’