Chapter 976: How Much Punishment They Could Live Through

Jason rested his hand on the grip of his sword, but didn’t draw it.

“Before we start—”

Amstutz launched at Jason, the air around his fist shimmering with power. Jason casually tapped the man’s forearm, deflecting it to the side. A surge of force fired like a cannon beside Jason’s head, shooting off behind him. At the same time, a kick to the chest sent Amstutz sprawling back onto the roof of the bus.

At gold-rank speed, the exchange had lasted less than a second. Geneva, the sole silver ranker present, had barely been able to track it. Jason, floating in the air with his familiars looked around the prospective battlefield. There were eight gold rankers on the roof of a flying bus, hovering halfway up a steep mountain, deep in the Alps. Two of the gold-rankers had been knocked on their rumps, Remy still recovering from having his teleport disrupted.

“You might want to head back into that cave,” Jason told Geneva. “Gold rankers fighting in an environment like this is going to cause a ruckus. At the very least, I wouldn’t expect this bus to remain intact.”

Geneva didn’t move, instead glaring Jason.

“Why are you here, Asano?”

“I told you: to have a rummage around inside.”

“This place is not yours, Asano.”

“Yes, it is.”

She scoffed in disbelief.

“Why in the world would you think that this place belongs to you?”

“Because I’m in it.”

It was the study of aura powers that first led to the theory that all essence abilities were impacted not just by their essence and awakening stone, but by the person awakening them. Aura abilities were unique in being more than just their stated effects. They were also the platform through which their wielder’s soul was projected into the world. The aura was both a product of the soul, and of the power unleashing it, becoming a beacon announcing who and what a person was.

Jason’s aura power was called Hegemony. Its nature was domination so all-encompassing that it did not possess power, but was power itself. Concerned not with the petty rule of kings, it was that which governed right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Defiance of hegemony was not rebellion, but sin.

This was the concept that mixed with Jason’s soul to produce his aura. It held echoes of gods and great astral beings, of being laid low and rising up, more than he had been before. It held scars of facing the greatest forces of the cosmos and claiming not just victory, but a share of that power for himself.

Jason didn’t make a soul attack against the essence users, but having never felt the real thing, it felt like one. Simply showing them who and what he was, unadulterated and unmasked, struck their souls like a besieging army. The gold rankers blanched as Jason’s aura flooded out. Geneva staggered back, Bussinger catching her before she stumbled off the bus. The hood of Jason’s void cloak slid back up over his head, shrouding everything but his glowing eyes. Amstutz got to his feet, standing in front of the others with defiance on his face.

“You’ve got some fight in you,” Jason said. “That’s good, but you’re sloppy. Your mana control is atrocious, and that costs you when your body is a flesh bag running on magic. You’re not just telegraphing your powers but everything you do. I can feel how your body is going to move before you even twitch.”

The gold rankers rallied their auras, pushing back against Jason’s. One of the strongest advantages essences users gained from working in teams was layering aura powers. It was the strongest edge they would have against Jason, which he denied them by crushing their auras completely. As of gold rank, he could use his aura to supress multiple people without needing to divide its strength. He supressed the gold rankers easily, but was surprised by their reactions. There was none of the panic he’d expected, only nervousness held down by determination.

“I suppose they don’t choose their gold rankers by accident,” he mused. “You’ve all impressed me.”

“We don’t care if you’re impressed,” Amstutz snarled. “You think you can come to our world and act however you please?”

“Yes.”

Amstutz leapt forward again, stepping on the air as if it were solid ground. Jason held himself aloft with his aura, controlling himself using methods he’d taken from the messengers. The familiars backed off, not yet involving themselves. The incorporeal Shade and Gordon floated through the air, while Colin still looked unhappy at being ferried on a patch of cloud.

Jason’s gold-rank foe launched a flurry of blows, blasting force attacks with every strike. Sweeping kicks launched waves, fists and knees delivered sharp blasts. Jason reflected that it was like sparring with Sophie, if she’d taken several severe blows to the head.

Amstutz had clearly developed his technique from Earth martial arts. That was a grievous error when such arts were designed for normal rank humans. What a gold or even silver rank body could do required a different approach not just to technique but biology and physics. What would cripple a normal person was laughable to an essence user.

Amstutz also had speed like Sophie, but again fell short in its use. As with technique, he was thinking like a low ranker. He tried to move like a normal person, just faster. Jason watched him leave one opportunity after another unused, too blinded by what he was to realise what he could be.

Compared to a sparring with Sophie, always a desperate scramble, he felt like a cat toying with a mouse. He moved slowly, reacting to moves before they happened and deflecting blows with casual ease. Powers erupted around him, never landing. Amstutz was a blur, while Jason barely seemed to move by comparison. He was the gentle eye of a furious, impotent storm.

Amstutz retreated to the roof of the bus, shame and rage on his face.

“Mrs Andros, go inside,” he said. “It will take all of us to fight him.”

“Take the portal specialist with you,” Jason said. “He’s not a fighter. Do not try to leave, however. If this place is what I think, we’ll have some things to talk about.”

Jason was impressed at the degree to which Geneva maintained her composure under the full force of his aura, despite the intensity of it taking a physical toll on the silver ranker. She maintained her glare as she and Remy dropped off the bus and retreated into the cave, leaving seven gold rankers still on the roof. As the pair retreated, Jason’s familiars moved closer, and he finally drew his sword.

Aside from Amstutz, the gold rankers each had their own magic weapons, gold-rankers getting their pick from looted monsters. Jason could sense that the golden vambrace-and-gauntlet sets on Bussinger’s arms were more powerful than the others. She didn’t waste time, stepping forwards and raising her arms to blast a wide cone of electricity, arcs spreading out like branches of a tree.

Jason was already pulling his cloak around himself as she moved. The arcs that struck him shot off into the void through his portal cloak. The familiars had already evaded, Colin ducking behind the cloak. Shade vanished and Gordon exploded into a blue and orange nebula that shot away like a comet. He reformed and beams immediately shot from his eye orbs.

Jason was already amongst the gold rankers, his sword flashing. Shadow arms grew from his body, each using a black and red dagger to inflict his special attacks. As they did, he quickly muttered the incantations to his spells.

“Bleed for me. Carry the mark of your transgressions. Your fate is to suffer.”

Amstutz had the speed to react to Jason’s assault, as did a couple of the others, yet they still found themselves struck by multiple, albeit glancing, blows. Though the cuts were shallow, they were under no illusion that the strikes were harmless. With access to the system, they saw the laundry list of afflictions delivered to them.

• Special attack [Punish] has afflicted you with [Sin], [Price of Absolution], [Wages of Sin] and [Thief of Spirit].
• Spell [Haemorrhage] has afflicted you with [Bleeding], [Necrotoxin], [Blood From a Stone], [Tainted Meridians] and [Exsanguination].

Now that he was gold rank, Jason’s powers delivered even more afflictions, while many of the existing ones grew worse. Thief of Spirit was new, continually draining mana and feeding it to Jason. Similar was Thief of Life, doing the same thing to life force.

The new Exsanguination condition in particular was a milestone. The Bleeding affliction was common, but also one of Jason’s signature tools. The damage it inflicted was relatively small, but its true value was in absorbing healing magic. Exsanguination allowed the condition to now stack, absorbing even more healing and making the blood loss far more drastic.

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• Special attack [Leech bite] has afflicted you with [Bleeding], [Leech Toxin], [Tainted Meridians] and [Thief of Life].
• Spell [Castigate] has afflicted you with [Sin], [Mark of Sin], [Weight of Sin] and [Mortality].

Of all the new capabilities Jason gained from his powers reaching gold rank, the most simple was also the most lethal. The very core of his power set was to heap on so many afflictions that even a gold ranker would die. Inexorable Doom was arguably Jason’s most iconic power, in that it made everything else work. It took all the stackable afflictions he perpetrated and made them keep stacking. At gold rank, it didn’t offer a new affliction, or make any of them stronger. It did the same thing as ever, stacking up afflictions, and simply made it faster. Much, much faster.

• Spell [Inexorable Doom] has afflicted you with [Inescapable] and [Persecution].
• While affected by [Inexorable Doom], stacking afflictions will rapidly accumulate additional instances.

Instead of his usual hit-and-run tactics, Jason took the fight to the enemy, diving into the enemies gathered atop the bus. The roof was large, but not when eight gold-rankers were clashing on it. The tight quarters were to Jason’s advantage, leaving his numerous opponents more likely to hit each other than him. Some, like Bussinger, backed off. She flew out, trailing electricity from her feet as she looked for opportunities. With Jason surrounded by her allies, she needed to pick her moment for a precision strike.