Chapter 12: Round Two
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***
After being wounded by Murasama, I was even able to make it to my house. Frankly speaking, I thought that this Teigu would really be able to send me to the other world... but, I still didn't prepare for nothing by increasing my immunity to poisons. Murasama's harmful effects were made up of two parts, the poisonous Ki of the demonic dragon of Darkness that corroded the soul, and the toxin that poisoned the physical body itself, together they could kill a person in mere seconds. In general, I felt bad now, I could barely move, my body was aching, and not only that, my soul was being eaten away, but it was not the first time I had felt this way.
Murasama's curse that was destroying my soul with Darkness, I could block it by feeding it the souls of the creatures I had killed, after a couple of days the curse wore off, my soul was really badly damaged, but it was restored by the energy released from the souls destroyed by the curse. In the end, it turned out that after the recovery, my soul became even stronger, and gained a predisposition to Darkness Energy, so now Murasama's curse shouldn't affect me, and neither should that Teigu's toxin.
And there was a funny effect of this toxin, in the smallest of amounts, it should act as a stimulant that strengthens the human body, which is probably why the owner of this Teigu becomes stronger, because he is in close contact with the sword all the time, and a little bit of this toxin gets into his body, strengthening the swordsman. That's what happened to Akame, with Murasama in her hands she got stronger and faster than me, and it's honestly a bit frustrating when you get beaten up by some girl.
Well, the toxin has strengthened me too, my muscles have become denser, now the expression of steel muscles is real, but this metamorphosis makes me hungry all the time, my muscles demand more energy, and if I don't eat, I start to waste Ki. Considering I can move food directly into my stomach, it's a small price to pay for the enhancement, plus I can replenish energy from the domain where enslaved souls produce it, but that energy is mostly spent by my schizophrenia building something grandiose there.
≪Status≫
Life 12,367/12,367/618 per hour.
Ki 3076/3076/512 per hour
Characteristics:
Strength 736
Dexterity 431
Endurance 1890
Intelligence 156
Soul 511
- Wow, I've had a good rest, more than three days of poison attacks. - I went out of the bedroom to the lower floor, where I saw a pile of axes, which I promised to give to those guards who care about the safety of the people of the capital, and not just came to the service to do lawlessness and be protected from justice by their position. In the capital such guards are the majority, but as bad people are rushing to power, all good guards are mostly ordinary privates, though there are some scum among them, the officers are completely rotten, even if someone wants to work there according to his conscience, the other officers just throw him out of his position, sometimes framing such officers, making them look like revolutionaries' accomplices, and sometimes sending them on suicide missions.
Now, fulfilling orders for the guards, I have a good authority among them, my weapons are of very high quality, and I charge even less than other blacksmiths. I don't really need money, I make my own clothes, I eat monster meat from hunting, the only place I spend coins is to buy raw materials, and sometimes I go to a cafe for ice cream. Of all the food on the menu, ice cream is my favourite, the rest of the food is bland to me. And now, having sold a batch of axes, I waited for the guards to load them into the cart, then repaired my armour, and then closed the smithy in the evening, and went to the cafe to eat ice cream.
I literally ordered myself a bucket of ice cream and started eating it at a table outside, while drawing drawings of all sorts of weapons that I want to make in the future, as well as new improvements for armour.
I wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere, as I was not fully recovered from the effects of Murasama's poison, I still needed at least a couple of days to fully recover, so after one bucket of ice cream, I ordered another, and while I was waiting for my order, I smelled a blonde girl nearby, looking in the direction the smell was coming from, I saw Leone - that's what the members of the Night Raid called her, There was a pink-haired girl with a suitcase and a couple of bags from the clothing shop, and a lilac-haired cutie with glasses, and while the pink-haired girl was flat-bottomed, Leone's friend was only a couple of sizes smaller than Leone, and as another nice bonus, she hadn't tried to kill me yet.
Leone was staring at me in surprise, and her friends asked her why she was staring at me, and Leone told them that the guy in the white coat who had come to the Night Raid base and wanted to kill Akame was me, and that Akame had wounded me with Murasama, so I was supposed to be a corpse instead of sitting in a cafe eating ice cream.
Now the three of them were staring at me, and soon they were gone, and when I got home, I had to dodge the huge scissors that the girl with the glasses used to cut off my head.
- Man, I thought at least one pretty girl wouldn't try to kill me. - Again I had to dodge the scissors that the lilac-haired girl kept flicking while trying to cut off some part of my body.
At one point her scissors flashed brightly, disorienting me a bit, which my opponent took advantage of by cutting off my hand, which I didn't have time to fully pull away.
- Where's Leone? - I picked up my hand and reattached it to my arm, regeneration reattaching it almost instantly.
- She went to the base with Maeyn, leaving me to keep an eye on you, while I decided to eliminate the threat to the Night Raid. I'm sorry, but you have to die. - The girl replied in a monotone as she continued to attack me.
- You're as bad a spy as you are a hairdresser. - I caught the moment when the scissors were closed, and fixed them with my hand in such a non-threatening state, and then, I was stabbed in the heart with a dagger, which was quickly pulled out by the opponent, also quickly reacting to the fact that her weapon was disarmed, - So beautiful, and so evil, took and stabbed my heart. - I grabbed her other hand and elbowed her in the head, which knocked her out.
- I'm so sick of these revolutionaries. - I pulled the dagger out of my heart, of course the dagger was poisoned, but compared to Murasama's poison, I didn't even notice it.' Okay, round two. - I put on my armour, wrapped the girl in a white cloth, became invisible with her, and started walking towards the Night Raid base, meeting their squad on the outskirts of the capital.
- I wonder why you recruited so many beauties for the Night Raid. You could have had some homos, like that dude in the armour and the green-haired one. - I said, putting the package with the girl on the ground.
- Hey, I'm straight! - shouted the green-haired one.
- I don't care, before I wanted to kill Akame, Esdeath and the Prime Minister, but in light of recent events, I'll have to kill all of you too, because you're getting in the way of my preparations for the Prime Minister's assassination in the capital. Every day is another of your attempts to kill me, this fool with scissors cut off my arm and stabbed me in the heart, and that's not very nice, just so you know.
- How did you survive Murasama's poison? - Akame came forward.
- Oh, I've been preparing myself for you, I've been exposed to every poison on this continent, and now I'm safe from Murasama's poison. I have also prepared for killing Esdeath, and I cannot be frozen. However, you won't need that information. - Since I don't have to fear Murasama's poison, I can fight you in this form, less protected but stronger.
- I understand that Akame is also responsible for the deaths of your friends, but she realised that the Empire was rotten, so she joined the Night Raid. The past cannot be erased, but Akame is trying to make the future of the Empire better. - Najenda said, -We have the same goals, and we can become allies.
- Oh, so I should forgive Akame, just like that, just forget everything she's done? So how about I forgive Esdeath and the Prime Minister too? How about all of you Night Raiders forgive all your enemies and live peacefully, huh? That's a load of bollocks. - I replied.
- Too bad. - Najenda said, and Akame attacked me, along with the armour guy and the guy with the threads, Leone didn't have the Teigu Belt, but I still had it, so Leone had to stand next to Najenda, and the pink-haired girl, who started firing her huge cannon at me.
The cannon's threads and shots did minimal damage to me, which was quickly regenerated, but those attacks limited me a bit, so Akame's sword and Bulat's spear wounded me more than once, sometimes even in the heart, but in this tiger form and with my blade, which gave me a boost of beastly Ki from the domain, I could fight without stopping, and my wounds healed in no time. Akame realised that there was something wrong with this blade, it looked so strange for a reason, so she coordinated her attack to chop off my sword arm, she tried to chop off my head too, but my neck is quite thick and she couldn't chop it off in one blow, so she switched to something thinner.
Fighting with so many strong opponents was a learning experience for me, I was probably just getting beaten up by a bunch of them, but I was doing some damage, and I was able to defeat that green-haired guy. My blow hit the armour he was wearing, and although he wasn't injured, the force of the blow still broke his ribs and he's out cold.
- I got one. - Akame threw it aside, but the blade was bound to the domain, so I returned it to me, along with my arm, which I immediately reattached,' she said, 'You can't grow limbs like I can. I don't care about my wounds, I'll take you all down no matter how many times you attack me. I'll take out the weakest parts of your team. - I turned to the pink-haired girl and started running towards her, Akame and Bulat trying to stop me. When I was very close to the pink-haired girl, her cannon fired an unexpectedly strong beam of energy that threw me a hundred metres away, burning my fur and damaging my skin.
- That cannon was definitely Teigu's, though. - I got up, recovering quickly, and then lunged back at the pink-haired girl, who was weakened from the last shot and unable to deliver another attack like that. I knocked her out, though in addition to Akame and Bulat, Najenda and Leone were in my way. Najenda's prosthetic was pretty strong, but it wasn't Teigu or Shingu, so I quickly knocked those two out, too, and now I was only left against Bulat in Incursio armour, and Akame and Murasama, whose poison was no longer affecting me.
These two were some of the strongest warriors in the Empire, who eventually went to the revolutionaries, while I had only instant regeneration, and the two of them were still beating me like I was a child, but I was learning how to fight two opponents who were superior to me in skill.
But as it turned out, the green-haired guy wasn't as badly hurt as he showed, he had been pretending to be unconscious the whole time, and was weaving a trap for me, and the threads of the trap were so strong that I couldn't cut them with my sword. First, my legs separated in a twine, then the strong threads were tied around my arms, and I fell to the ground and stretched out in a star pose, and the threads were not only ten times stronger than usual, but they were also sharp and began to cut off my feet and hands.
- My royal threads cannot be torn or cut, I don't have many of them, that's why I keep them just in case. - The green-haired man said, with Akame and Bulat taking advantage of my helpless position and stabbing me in the chest with their weapons.
≪We've been defeated again, well, at least it wasn't a dry run like last time. I'll give you a hand.
- I'll see you next time. - I said.
- There won't be a next time. - Bulat stabbed me in the head with a spear.
- There will be. - I said goodbye before moving to the domain. The Night Raid fought me on the outskirts of the capital, so they had to leave quickly when they realised that I had not just become invisible, but had disappeared somewhere without a trace. After a while I reappeared from the domain in the same place I disappeared from, and then I wandered home.
- Well, taking out two more Teagues from the Night Raid wasn't so bad. - When I disarmed the girl with the scissors, I took the scissors for myself, and when I knocked out the pink-haired girl, I was able to take her gun and move it to the domain.
The scissors were well made, but nothing special, the secret to their sharpness is that there is a thin fast vibrating layer of Ki on the edge of the blade that allows these scissors to cut so well. I use this method on all my weapons, but here the effect is enhanced by the fact that the Teigu Scissors cut with two blades simultaneously on both sides. This fact will have to be taken into consideration.
The second Teigu in the form of a cannon was a little more interesting, it had some energy core, which strengthened the shot at the expense of the energy of emotions, that is, when the owner of Teigu experienced rage or fear for his life, the shot became stronger. The Teigu fired at the expense of the owner's internal energy, wasting Ki on the shots, and the stronger the shot, the greater the waste, but the energy of emotions served as an amplifier, which strengthened the shot without unnecessary expenditure of Ki. It turns out that this ranged weapon was most effective in close combat when Teigu's wielder was in danger. It's a strange weapon, but that energy core is interesting, I'll make something like that in my firearm or something else I'll use.
The night after I got home, I researched the two Teigu's, and after a couple of hours of sleep, I started making myself a better defence against that guy's royal threads, and I need something to cut through them. It'd also be nice if I could do it even if my hands were blocked.
With Night Raid, we did have the same targets to eliminate, but I couldn't ignore the fact that they had already attacked me a few times. I really don't want to kill the girls in the Night Raid, even Akame I only want to defeat in battle and disarm, that homo in armour can be killed as well as the green-haired one, I don't feel sorry for them. I was up against an entire squad of professional assassins, and I'd almost beaten them today, and now only half of the six active members of the Night Raid that Teyga had at his disposal had weapons.
I opened the smithy this morning, and I had a couple of customers during the day, but I had been busy all day making protective artefacts for myself, which should be super strong clothes made of metal-coated threads, which I was creating now, and it was a painful task, but it should help me to create armour that is not only incredibly strong, but also does not restrict movement.
I'm also going to build a lot of mini energy cores into the armour, and one large one, all of which will create a protective barrier around me that I can power with energy from the domain. My schizophrenia reminded me that if I studied and practised magic, I could create such barriers myself, but artifact-based defences could sometimes be a winner, because I didn't have to pay attention to maintaining them.
At night I wanted to continue my work, but at midnight I heard someone's cry for help, someone was being raped or killed again, I had to go to deal with this little problem. Still, the Night Raid was useful too, they sometimes patrolled the capital and killed some maniacs too. If Leone didn't mind her own business so much, I might not have even touched them, but these revolutionaries aren't very choosy about their methods, if there's someone who threatens the cause of the revolution, they eliminate them. A method identical to the Imperial method, where they just kill those who get in their way... well, I use that method myself, except I don't have the guts to kill a girl.
≪Never mind, you'll soon realise the benefits of sexual enslavement of enemy beauties, I'm already making a list of who will be our slaves, and I'm trying to expand the Domain so there's room to keep slaves... but all the space is taken up by my cyber-monster under construction.≫