Chapter 895 - Exchanging greetings

The train continues to rattle as Group 4 gathers in Sophie's favorite garden. Favorite because kindred children rarely get there, owing to the narrower hallways leading to it, where even a human has to push and squeeze through sideways.

Min-Jae sits in front of me, and I am using oscillating mana at the tip of my finger to cut his hair. We do that sometimes when there is no hairstylist nearby, and for some reason I am the favorite pick for him and Dennis. The girls usually prefer Tess, or when Izzy is bored, they let her do it.

I don't know why, but Lily is behind me, standing on a small stool and styling my hair too, mostly by making a mess of it. A few times she cuts too deep and quickly regrows it, thinking I wouldn't notice. Once, in a panic, she makes it shoulder-length, and then both of us pretend like nothing happened while she styles my luscious long curly locks.

So I blow into my bangs to get them off my face and continue to cut Min-Jae's hair.

"I do agree with you, a good fight could push some of my levels higher, and that could be advantageous to my primary class," I say to him.

He nods excitedly, causing me to slip and cut off too much of his hair. Yet unlike Lily with mine, I ignore it and leave an empty patch on the back of his head.

I already asked him multiple times to stop moving.

"You can probably level up a lot again against a Champion or two if you really go against them. But wouldn't challenging her before that be better? She wouldn't kill you and..."

"I think she would."

"She would?"

"She takes challenges quite seriously."

"Oh."

"Yes," I say, "Oh. But even then, I think you're onto something. For the Champions, I will need to crush them quickly and cheat. While against her, I will be forced to go all out and use everything I have. When it comes to a proper duel and pushing my abilities, I think she is more fitting."

"Maybe you could try fighting Tacita?" Min-Jae asks.

"Hell no. I'm scared of her. Plus I would need to fly and cheat just to survive. And I bet she would use Veto against me if truly forced."

"Savant? Your sister?" Maya asks, training with evil orbs while resting against a tree.

"There is no way I will ever fight Victoria. And Savi wouldn't fight me properly even if I stole his sword. Instead of trying to get it back, he would patiently wait for me to die so he could take it off my cold, manaless corpse."

(Isn't he French?) Aaron joins the conversation, leading to Dennis getting his shoulder slapped by Izzy, who is smiling even as she does it.

"Jean is French, not Savi," Maya says.

Tess disagrees with her. "Jean is Canadian. Savi is from somewhere in South America."

"A Handler then?" Min-Jae asks. "You could probably give trouble to some."

"Not really? I mean, I hope not. All of them should at least be proper Champions. Some might be fresh and on a quest as Handlers, so..." I pause to think it over. "...maybe? Now that I think about it, isn't-"

"Make sure someone is recording that so I can watch you get your ass handed to you," Sophie snorts, not sharing my confidence in myself.

But it's okay, I trust myself enough to rebalance the unbelievers. Though even as I think of that, I keep coming back to that demon girl currently on the 6th floor of Beyond.

If I challenge her after getting my primary class, my chance of beating her will be 50/50. If I challenge her now, I estimate my odds of winning are lower, and I will be lucky to escape alive. That albino is like a hunting dog once she smells blood.

I might be underselling myself, but I sometimes do that outside of a fight. Once I can't avoid it, once it starts and I feel my blood boil, there is no doubt in my mind about winning.

So I wonder, am I scared of Nyssa sometimes? I didn't go against her with such thoughts when she challenged The Boys, so why now? Is it because of the fight and the strength I was able to witness?

I was weakened back then, half dead, not used to my powers, tired. And it still ended with Zant having to stop the fight and save Nyssa from me kicking her ass.

By now she likely has her primary class, if she didn't have it back then, and who knows what she gained from the sixth floor.

My thoughts wander, and I watch as I make a deep cut and a patch of Min-Jae's hair floats down in front of my eyes.

I catch that patch and press it back against the place where I cut too deep, tapping on it a few times for good measure.

As I let go, the patch of hair slides down again while I imagine in my head how I would face Nyssa, and more and more it seems I have decided what I will do. It might be a whim and my own desire to fight her. Or it might be an actual plan to push my skills as high as possible.

Even after all this training and everything I have learned, I still improve the most in combat. When that pressure is at its highest.

So the plan in my mind is made, and I begin to count down the days.

The female kindred called Kiki bounces against me with her head, pushing me against the wall.

"Play with the children! Children will be happy. Happy happy!" she shouts at me.

"I barely escaped them, you play with them!"

"Too tired to play!" She bounces against me again, slamming me against the wall once more.

"Hell no. You just want to avoid your caretaking job and put it on me so you can slack around."

"I will talk to my mate to let you into the sacred machine! He won't be happy happy, but he will do it for me!"

"Deal."

"Happy happy."

While waiting to get into the sacred machine, I spend my time gathering mana, training, flying around, and sometimes watching some of the kaiju from a distance.

During one of these trips, Min-Jae sits next to me on top of a broken building that must have been taller than anything on Earth. It is brightly colorful, covered in greenery, and inside is the typical architecture of the kindred.

It feels a bit solemn to walk through it all and see the broken city around us, with nature taking over even on the inside.

But it is quiet, it is peaceful, and beautiful.

Min-Jae watches a kaiju ten miles away, using his gravitational senses to try to calculate its mass and weight from the way it interacts with the area, all while taking notes. I join him at his side, watching the kaiju through the screen he made with mana in front of us, which works like a sort of giant pair of binoculars.

Out there, the kaiju just slowly walks. An ancient weapon made long ago by gods to use against the system and its slaves.

[Behemoth Relic - lvl ????]

It is likely close to level 600, but the problem is its field, which so far totally nullifies any mana we throw at it.

The kaiju itself is big, this one is twice as tall as the Burj Khalifa and probably half as wide. It is shaped like some animal that likely doesn't exist anymore, a sort of lizard with six legs, two heads, and a long tail.

It uses no skills, and it doesn't show intelligence or ill will. It just moves and destroys. All kaiju are like this, dozen of them all over the planet, constantly moving, attracted to the highest population density in the area.

Many generations ago, they awakened and climbed from deep inside the planet. Likely the entirety of this planet served as an armory of behemoths to be used during the system war, forever forgotten for millennia while the unknowing kindred spread across the world.

Then one day the relics awoke and climbed out, each heading toward the most densely populated cities, and once those were gone, they started heading for smaller and smaller ones. There is an entire science the kindred built around predicting their movements and how certain population numbers, environment, and such affect the movements of the relics.

To get this planet to the point where it is now, it took hundreds of years.

In the first six months, the world as the kindred knew it collapsed. The relics marched straight to the biggest cities without anything thrown at them being able to stop them. Before the kindred were able to adapt, around 40% of the population died. Due to direct attacks, starvation, infrastructure loss, famine, panic, and the like.

They call what followed the Second Era, which took ten years, during which half of the survivors died as the relics systematically moved from smaller cities to refugee camps all over the planet. No matter if on the sea, in the air, or deep underground, nothing even so much as slowed them down.

And the latest is the Third Era, which has already lasted over 300 years. No one knows exactly how many kindred survived, but they had to adapt to always be on the move. In a way, their entire lives revolve around these ancient relics. The train is one of the ways they do so.

As I watch the behemoth, I can’t help but to think that all of it came about because of a war that was long since lost.

Later that day, I am unable to hold myself back anymore. The sacred machine can wait.

I have tested my passive, I have stored as much as I could, I have leveled up my skills, and I have gathered enough mana. And so I make my way to Beyond, appearing in Megacity.

My mind sharpens, and even now some of the colors drain of their vibrancy. The sounds in the background lessen, and I entirely ignore the people trying to have a conversation with me.

Forcefully, I change the rhythm of my heartbeat, making it beat only once every ten seconds and sending a powerful pulse of kinetic energy through my chest.

The halo over my head spins as I pull on ambient mana, and Ignition Heart starts heating up my chest.

Outside of the city, a group of people attacks me, assassins carrying low pristine weapons and traps modified to face me and my abilities they have knowledge of.

I leave only their pieces behind me and ignore the ones running away as I make my way toward the 5th floor. To enter it, I sacrifice 15 stats of constitution, and there I use a key etched into my right forearm to open my way to the 6th floor.

There are no shining crystals visible on the ceiling, yet I feel the need to squint as if under a harsh light. Everything here feels muted, gray stone, gray sky, and gray clouds pierced by a bright yellow glow.

There are holes so deep I can't see their bottoms, and mountains so tall they get lost in the clouds of this gigantic underground cavern. Pools of molten metal spray from the ground as I make my way through.

As if led by some instinct I can't even understand, I find her.

Nyssa Volare is asleep, sitting atop a massive, red-scaled corpse. The dead monster reminds me of a wyvern, only wingless.

She has her eyes closed as she sits there and rests against the greatsword that is stabbed into the monster. That sword is beautifully white, with her primordial blood flowing through it.

Even here, even at this place, she doesn't react to my presence nor to anything else. She is breathing out softly in her sleep, and for the first time I've seen her, wounds cover her body and her clothes aren't pristinely clean.

Only when I look at her with the intention to fight does she move.

Reacting to what must feel like a weapon pointed at her, she opens her eyes and finds me. As she moves, her black hair sways off her pale face, revealing her equally pale red eyes as she stands up in a slow, stiff motion.

Slightly, she tilts her head, watching me, judging me.

After letting go of her sword, she then takes a step toward me, and I begin to walk toward her.

She jumps from the monster's corpse, leaving her sword behind, and her eyes change. Her irises remain pale red, but her pupils begin to glow. That black turns into the brightest shade of red I've ever seen. It burns in her eyes, and every time she moves them, it leaves a trail of deep red smoke behind.

And for the first time, she shows me her third primordial energy.

Nyssa uses her Binding Primordial Energy to bind her body together. Her blood begins to flow more violently, and her already gargantuan kinetic output increases by multiple times over as she holds her body together to handle it.

At the exact same moment, kinetic energy boosts my movements, I strengthen my defensive layer, and I use the reinforcement technique taught to me by Lissandra to power my movements with the entirety of my mana.

Both of us turn into a blur, meeting somewhere in the middle and crashing against each other, sending us rolling through the ground.

I straighten my fingers and stab them toward her eyes, which she dodges, and in a blur, she flashes and bites them off. My elbow hits her eye, nearly blinding her, and she deflects my other attack while punching against my chest. I absorb the kinetic impact of the hit, and the defensive layer powered by all my mana defends against the rest.

She kicks me off and instantly charges while I use my forearm to block another of her attacks, boosting my body further to match her speed, but she catches my hand and throws me into the air.

I boost myself with kinetic energy to land faster, but she is already there. My knee explodes as I lift my leg to block against her strike, and she tears a hole into my side. A woven together boost of kinetic energy and mana moves me faster, and I grab her hair, pulling her toward me and slamming my broken knee against her face.

As she slings back, I follow with an attack, but she deflects it, breaking all the remaining fingers of my right hand and then breaking my elbow.

I bring my head down, slamming it against her forehead and barely avoiding her horns. As she stumbles back, I kick her, sending her flying to crash against the body of the monster nearby.

Just now, Nyssa spits out my fingers that she bit off. The entire time, those burning, bright red, smoking pupils remained fixed right on me.

She taps on the body next to her and turns it into her [Weapon].

It twitches a few times, and then it begins to move. What I guess to be a drake stands on its legs again, opening its blind, milk white eyes and moving its head toward Nyssa, who reaches out and pulls her sword out of it. Bright white, and as if covered in her blood. Almost as long as she is tall, and as wide as her leg, she holds it as if it weighs nothing.

Ignition Heart beats freely in my chest, my bones snap back into place, and my fingers regrow. As I select to force my body to adapt to the strain of the movement I put it through, I also stop holding back my mana.

My vessel forms behind me, growing in size to match the drake opposite me, and empyrean mana crackles around my palm as I extend it into the shape of a short sword that burns brighter as my blood drops out of the palm holding it.

The greetings have been exchanged. The fight can start now.