Chapter 966: A Cultural Experience

Onslow’s shell had expanded to the size of a house. It was serving as combination command centre, rest area and triage tent, always hosting one or two healers. As powerful as the adventurers were, no gold-rank monster was to be dismissed, and even silvers were a threat with numbers so high.

Jason landed inside Onslow’s shell in a half crash, tumbling on the floor. Arabelle was kneeling next to him a moment later as he rolled onto his back and pushed himself into a sitting position. Dripping sweat, he took heaving breaths.

“I’m fine,” he panted. “No injuries. None that didn’t heal already. Just exhausted.”

“How?” Arabelle asked. “It’s extremely difficult for gold-rankers to get tired.”

“And all that breathing won’t help you,” Clive pointed out. “You don’t need to breathe.”

“It might help,” Arabelle said. “A recent study suggests that high-rankers imitating biological processes can accelerate the magical replication of those effects. Mind over body, as it were.”

“Interesting,” Clive said. “That sounds familiar, now that you say it. Did my association do the study?”

“It did.”

While they were talking, Onslow, in baby ninja turtle form, waddled over to Jason and held out a lettuce leaf.

“Thanks, buddy,” Jason said, taking the leaf. He crunched down on it and patted Onslow on the head. The tortoise-boy grinned and tottered back to Clive’s side.

“How exactly did you manage to exhaust yourself?” Arabelle asked. “Do the gold-rank monsters have some kind of stamina drain power?”

“No,” Jason said, pointing outside as the massive column of light, still pouting out of the giant portal. “I know I make clamping a hole in the universe shut with a giant god beam look easy, but it’s actually quite a strain. If I don’t let it go, my avatar will eventually break down. I don’t know exactly what will happen then.”

“Probably a transformation zone,” Farrah said. “Now that I know what I’m looking for, I’m working on stopping the magic being fed into the manifestation. The grid, while artificial, works on the principals of a natural array. I’m working up a ritual that will look for incongruities in its operation that will let me identify divergences, indicating interference points from traditional ritual magic. That will let us pinpoint the physical locations where the grid is being interfered with and go stop it.”

“That makes sense,” Jason said.

“You understood that?” Clive asked.

“Of course I did,” Jason said. “You’re the one who always hammered me about studying magical theory. She said ‘something something, deflector dish,’ and then we go break some stuff.”

Clive let out a sobbing breath as he continued firing magic blasts from his rod and staff. Onslow gave him a comforting pat on the thigh.

“I’m going to need Nik,” Farrah said.

“I don’t like bringing him out into this,” Jason said. “He’d be the only silver-ranker in the field.

“We’ve both faced off against much worse.”

“And we’ve both died!”

“You can’t shield him from everything Jason. Not if you want him to grow. And sitting inside Onslow’s shell coordinating things is hardly throwing him into the clutches of a gold-ranker.”

“She’s right,” Clive said. “If you don’t let him face danger he can see coming, how will he fare against danger you can’t? I’d say you know that’s coming, but it already came. Unless you missed it, Jason, he’s spent more years adventuring than you have. He didn’t deal with the crazy stuff you get us involved in, but he’s going to now, and you know it.”

“Your absence denied him the only validation he truly cared about,” Arabelle added. “If you deny him the chance to prove himself to you, you’re going to further damage a relationship in which you have already left deep wounds.”

“Fine,” Jason said. “But can you portal him in please, Clive? I’m kind of wrecked. I’m going to coast the rest of this battle and let my familiars do all the work.”

***

Marie pointed out one of the feeds on the four monitors in front of her and Elizabeth. On it, the desiccated husk of a gold-rank monster fell from the sky, covered in leeches. The leeches melted and flowed together, taking the form of Jason Asano, but made from glistening red liquid. The blood clone flew into the air, reached another monster and broke down into a leech swarm once more, rapidly coating the monster’s body.

“Are you seeing this?” Marie asked. “That’s happening in multiple places at once.”

“I noticed.”

“This is the guy you picked a fight with?”

“I never picked that fight. My kind have instincts that are extremely hard to resist. They made him, and humanity at large, an inevitable foe. You are the one who picked a fight. It is far from a secret that he is extremely opposed to the harvesting of reality cores. He cut himself off from the magical factions over it, and spent months preventing the transformation zones from forming. He won’t react well to learning that your secret little group within the Network has secretly been triggering new ones. Which he will discover, following this event.”

“The attempt wasn’t my choice. I didn’t like the potential exposure, although I didn’t fight the idea as hard as I could have. On paper, it seemed sound. If we take him out, problem solved. If not, we at least show the world that he’s not invincible.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I see. You didn’t account for him actually being invincible.”

“He’s not.”

“For practical purposes, it seems that he is.”

“I could hardly expect an army of otherworldly gold-rankers, all with power exceeding any of our native ones. Or that he could shut a rupture in the universe with what looks suspiciously like the divine light of heaven.”

“Didn’t Rufus Remore warn the world of this? And Anna Tillman?”

“No one thought they were telling the truth!”

“I did. I warned your co-conspirators myself, after what he did to the vampires in France and Slovenia. And now, you have a choice. Cut your losses and try to cover your tracks, or double down.”

“Double down?”

“You’ve resisted providing reality cores to enhance my blood oaks.”

“You think enhancing them will be enough to defeat all of this?” Marie asked as she gestured at the monitors.”

“No. But they will be dangerous enough to get concessions for leaving them in the box.”

“You’re talking about your exit plan. Pinning your hopes on Asano wanting to protect the world from you more than he wants to see you dead.”