Chương 77: Book 1, Chapter 77: Probing

John really should make upsizing the hoverdisc a higher priority. He kept finding himself in situations where he was crammed onto the thing with Yuki. Even if he wasn't afraid of falling off, there was far too little room to move without hurling himself off the contraption that might as well have been a flying manhole cover. It wasn't as if his kitsune companion would let him fall; her reflexes were far too sharp. Still, he'd appreciate some extra leg room. Tick.

John looked down at his wrist, his Mage's Compass revealing a contact toward the east. With a lazy twist of his foot, he angled his flying disc toward the source and flew headlong toward it, idly sweeping the area ahead of him with his Nameless detector.

"Another read," he muttered to Yuki, the towering kitsune leaning over his shoulder to keep track of the compass with sharp eyes.

"Let's hope it doesn't take as long to find as the last one."

"You seem to be getting used to it. It only took half as long as the first to track it down," she gently reassured, although John couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"It took me nearly half an hour to realize that the reason the signal kept'moving' was because there were two separate hits, and one was in a blind spot directly below me," John grunted in response, double-checking the charge on the disc's capacitor through the handy-dandy display he had installed into the top plate. Still plenty of charge, it seemed, after their last five minute break to let it top up.

"And that is better than your first attempt," the entirely too smug yokai quipped back. John didn't rise to the challenge lest she get him all wrapped up in another conversational game and instead focused on his work. He could already feel the limitations of the device creeping up on him, and if he had more time to redo this crude device, he would. Mostly majorly, it needed to read out far more angles if he ever needed to use it under pressure.

The purely eight directional display made it nearly impossible to tell the exact location of a distant target at a glance without some fiddling. Sure, it may "only" delay him when he was on the hunt, but what about in a situation where he was pinned down and trying to pick enemies out in a treeline?

Knowing whether they were in the pine on the left or the will on the right could be the difference between coming out without a scratch and getting eaten by his own shadow or whatever bullshit the world decided to throw at him that day. Maybe, if he refined it enough, it would allow for combat without direct line of sight. Most of his premier ranged options already hardly cared about most obstructions, and he had to actively restrain their range to avoid causing dramatically more damage than he planned.

The only thing that really stopped him from using it as such right now was a lack of targeting capability. The day would come when they had to storm the Nameless' tunnels, and if he could clear out a few pitch black tunnels full of body-snatching spiders without walking headfirst into an ambush, he might save himself a heart attack or five. Man, fighting the Nameless and Kiku sucked. Why couldn't the local town be besieged by something simple, like a gang of bandits?

Hell, maybe the tax collectors could have just been thugs playing dress up. Life would have been so much easier if he could just swoop down, scare them off, and then get to rebuilding the local economy. He couldn't wait to get to that once the spiders were dealt with… Well, once he dealt with whatever came from the 'Transcendent Alchemy' incident, too. It'd be stupid to assume that nobody noticed the two giant pillars of impossible colours; it would absolutely get investigated.

Then he had to deal with any further revenge seekers linked to the Unbound they had fought against. Not to mention that the tax collectors were probably still government officials, even if corrupt, and any investigation into the slaughter of them might turn up Yuki's true origins. John sighed, already feeling exhausted from the mere thought. Maybe he could offload some of this onto the kitsune if he ate one of those mushrooms from his first year in the forest and made himself sick for a few weeks.

"Two and a half o'clock, between the gnarled tree and the boulder," Yuki helpfully chimed in, a large arm emerging into his vision from beside his head to point. Narrowing his eyes, John could just barely see the telltale mound of disturbed earth from a recently buried Nameless. Unlike some of the others they had found, this one was uncomfortably close to the road. While not in direct line of sight, he did not doubt that it was within range to scent valuables.

John aimed, carefully lining up the sights on his knuckle. He adjusted his fingers carefully, double-checking the cone's power, range, and size. He breathed in, holding onto it like a life raft for just a moment before releasing, easing the air out of his lungs to keep his aim steady. Then, he twitched his fingers, firing a blast of impossible cold through the air like a missile. The moisture in the air turned to ice on the spot, tiny, glinting crystals dropping from the sky like a rain of stars.

The leaves in the beam's path simply disintegrated in the breeze, flash-frozen husks brittle as the early morning frost. Below, the mound twitched once as the Nameless recognized it was being attacked for but a second before being no more, its aegis soundly punched through as a thick sheen of frost covered its surroundings.

"Good eye," he responded, checking his wrist. Tick. Of course, the creature's body was still fresh enough to respond strongly to his tracker, as much as he wished the reading disappeared the second his target was dead, so he had to carefully make sure it was the only thing he was reading. Idly, John piloted the disc around the corpse in a wide circle, watching carefully for any other Nameless. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

Cold sweat dripped down John's spine as he whipped around, searching for the sudden danger that the sensor detected all around them, but there was nothing. On instinct, John threw his disc into a quick reverse, reversing them out of the incoming damned ambush, and— Tick. Suddenly, only the corpse below him was reading, not the space right in front of them, which was screaming moments ago. What the hell?

"John?" Yuki's voice was level, but Yuki's furred hand grasped around his shoulder like an armoured gauntlet, and two of her tails wrapped around his lower half like the tassets of some samurai.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." He breathed deeply, tapping his chest to slow his racing heart.

"For some reason, my tracker started going insane the second I flew us over there. I thought that we were surrounded and were about to get ambushed."

"We're safe. If the Nameless were going to attack, they would have tried to salvage their plan once they realized we knew they were there," Yuki confidently stated.

"Is it a fault with the device, perhaps?" Yuki curiously leaned in, peering over John's shoulder.

"I wouldn't be surprised; this is the first time I've used this thing," John sighed, glancing down at his wrist.

"I mean, if something seems to work flawlessly the first time around, that probably means it has faults you haven't noticed yet." A frown split his face as he fell deep into thought. Even then, it was an extremely simple device, and all the detection hardware was already proven technology. What could have caused it to fail like that?

"Maybe it's something with the corpse? I could see if it repeats if we fly back in."

"I shall be on guard," Yuki said, uncoiling her tails from around her legs. Well, that was probably the best he was going to get. The kitsune would doubtlessly notice anyone below trying something before he did. It was another good reminder that he had to make a bigger and better alternative to the hover disc, though. It'd be a lot more comfortable flying over Nameless territory if he were inside something built like a tank, complete with mounted weaponry and thermobarics to drop.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. John pulled his handheld Nameless sensor from his pocket and pointed it toward the corpse. Click. Well, that seemed to be working fine, at least. He then pointed it towards where his Sentinel System was going insane, scanning along the ground in a grid, but nothing read. Just in case, he pulled the Nameless filter off the device, too, but it still didn't read above background levels.

Hesitantly, John drifted the disc forward, inching through the air like a burglar creeping through an alleyway. With every passing moment that nothing happened, John tensed more. Was it just a one time event? Why hadn't it— Tick-tick-tick! There! There it is again, at the same spot, too! What the hell could be causing it? Now no longer buried under an avalanche of panic, John's analytical mind spun up. He glanced at his wrist, and, indeed, the entire dial was lit up like a Christmas tree as the alarms blared.

Pulling out his magic detector, he— Click-click-click! Okay, now THAT was a reading a half. The thing was screaming about Nameless being all around him. He pointed it at the ground and got the same response. At the sky, same again. Hell, he even tried pointing it over his shoulder at Yuki, and it was still going off, almost like the sensor thought there was somehow a Nameless between him and her overwhelming might.

It confirmed that it wasn't merely a failure of his Sentinel System, but that there was something strange going on here. John backed off until the alarms fell silent before going in again. In. Out. In. Out. Eventually, he managed to narrow down the location where it triggered to a few inches.

"Weird," he mumbled to himself. John scooted to the left, but eventually the detector went silent. He drifted forward again, and eventually the sensor started clicking again. Going with the flow, he traced the boundaries of the zone, slowly revealing it to be a circle maybe half a kilometre in diameter. Next, he drifted higher and lower, trying to figure out the shape of this anomaly, but no matter how high or low he went, the diameter didn't change.

It was almost a sheer cliff face of Nameless energy, purpose-made to confound his sensors yet undetectable to Yuki. So, it was a cylinder of Nameless aligned magical energy, stretching into the sky… John breathed in sharply as the bottom of his stomach dropped out, memories flooding to the forefront of his mind. Two pillars split the sky in the distance, impossible hyper-reality crushing down whatever was foolish enough to exist where titans duelled.

Terrifying shadows deeper than anything the mortal plane could conjure and light bright enough to scar the world itself fought alongside one another against a tide of broken flesh and souls rewritten. Colours were smeared across the sky as the rules of existence were reforged and rewritten by wills mightier than that of the world's.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no." John frantically threw his disc into reverse, pulling themselves back out of the field as he pivoted back towards the fort, screaming through the sky as fast as was feasible.

"John! What's wrong?" Yuki asked. Her hands landed onto his shoulder and gripped, not quite digging into his body, but enough to hold him steady, as if she was worried he'd dart away.

"It's a pillar, Yuki, like your or Kiku's Transcendent Alchemy," John hissed, shuddering.

"I don't know what the hell they're doing, but it has to be something related to it. Is the Greater Nameless preparing to perform it? Fuck, can the whole hive collectively do it? Why out here rather than somewhere tactically useful, like the fort?" Every word that spilled out of him came out faster than the one before as he rushed to warn his companion. The entire time, Yuki was dead silent, but he could feel the kitsune's grip grow ever tighter and hear her nine tails lash through the air like angry snakes.

The yokai growled like a primordial beast, the sheer bass rumbled in John's form as her Presence flared. White-hot anger hammered into his chest like a gunshot, and he felt the sheer fury of the sun bearing down on him like the eye of an angry god. Sweat beaded on his brow, running into his eye as he tried his best to focus on flying. Instinctually, he wanted to step back, but behind him was an endless, terrifying abyss from which nothing could emerge.

His fingers grazed it, but ice and something far worse threatened to take them with but a brush.

"Yuki?" John called, cutting through the sheer, crushing pressure of Yuki's spiritual weight. And then, it was gone as the world snapped back to reality.

"I'm sorry, John! Are you alright?" Her grip loosened, claws no longer threatening to press through his clothes.

"Yeah, just… You know what they're doing, don't you?" John uneasily glanced behind him, committing the location to memory. Yet, he couldn't help but catch the sheer, unrelenting worry that coloured the kitsune's muzzle out of the corner of his eye, which was terrifying as any army of monsters.

"I do," she said, an almost sad resignation settling behind her eyes.

"I've been wondering why all the entrances to the Nameless nests are so obvious. Why create a massive area that is easily visible from the air? Why not have some hole in the ground? Why do they care about controlling the area around the exit so much when they could have just easily dug a few secondary exits? It would have been much easier to defend, and not visible to any hostile Unbound who might pass overhead." Hmm. Cold gnawing dread settled in John's heart as he started to run over the facts.

That was a good point. Sure, having subtle nest entries wouldn't protect them from the locals tracking them down, but it wouldn't have let him pinpoint each and every one in an afternoon once he could fly. Hell, given how dangerous a threat Nameless were, it would have only taken one Unbound taking the shortest path to somewhere else to bring it all crashing down. The entrance itself was absolutely more easily defensible than the area around it was, so it wasn't likely made to hold the line in case of an attack.

They hardly needed supplies, so they didn't have to worry about being trapped inside and being sieged out. More exits could be dug out, given time. If it were just to inform them of attackers, they could have Nameless camouflaged nearby with a few subtle threads as traps. So, the area itself was important in some way. He had only seen one Nameless nest up close, but the creatures had pointedly come up through an impossibly small hollow in a tree trunk rather than a hole at its base for seemingly no reason.

The tree itself had been wrapped in a heavy layer of silk, wide bolts hanging from it like the rafters of some great temple… It was almost ritualistic. A memory twinged in his mind as John remembered the shrine outside Broadstream Town. Yuki eliminated a location where Iwao could have stored sensitive supplies due to contamination from a hole into the spirit world, hadn't she?

What if it was their equivalent of that shrine room, and they were retreating into a space beyond this world, created using a process similar to Transcendent Alchemy? The idea was unintuitive, but something about it felt like it made sense. The strange readings his Mage's Compass got seemed to point to something shaped a bit like Transcendent Alchemy. In addition, there was at least one extra plane of existence which was 'higher' than this one.

If someone could create something that overwrote the natural world, could you use that to carve a space for yourself?

"Fuck," John cursed.

"It's some sort of… parallel mini-world made with Transcendent Alchemy, isn't it? They're not hiding underground at all. Most of them aren't, at least. Every one of the 'nests' we've destroyed were just doors into it." Much to his growing horror, Yuki nodded.

"What you found is most likely them bringing it closer to reality, so they can spill it open. We might have hours. We might have weeks. There's no way to know." And just like that, they would be free, completely ending the siege. The Greater Nameless would be free to go to ground wherever it wanted. Even if the beast didn't take it out against Broadstream, the monster would doubtlessly leave a wide swathe of destruction in its wake as it fled.

What was supposed to be a decisive blow could fade, and it might turn into a multi-year slog as the creature fled; he doubted that it would ever make the same mistakes again. Shit! He couldn't just let them get away! Wait.

"When you and Kiku both used Transcendent Alchemy, they fought against one another, right? What would happen if you were to use it against this hidden realm? Would it collapse?" John hurriedly asked. A smile, however faint, flickered onto the kitsune's muzzle.

"Where they clashed would reveal a path into their sealed realm as it overlapped with mine. The Greater Nameless isn't strong enough to maintain the effect by itself and is almost certainly working together with the rest of the hive. While I lack the strength to crush it directly, if we can get inside and kill the Greater Nameless leading the hive, I might be able to manage its destruction while they are in disarray. We could take them all out in one go."

"Isn't that suicide? I mean, I saw what you could do, and if it can even do a tenth of that to anyone within…" John muttered, eyes darkening at the thought of what such a monster could do. Kiku could warp flesh and soul from a distance. What if it could directly teleport its spawn inside a person's body? While Yuki's Aegis might provide her protection, John doubted his far less comprehensive warding would.

Shaking her head, the kitsune explained, "A chorus of souls can not manifest the same power as a single, overwhelming voice, even if they weren't focusing on maintaining such a vast area. At most, they will be able to impose minor environmental effects rather than the techniques Kiku and I employed in our duel."

"And if she is there?" John needled. A pause. The corners of the kitsune's muzzle twitched down.

"If she is, then she will be in a far worse state than I am. She'd be half-solid at best, lingering between life and death. There is one issue, John. We can only break in because we are across two different planes. Once inside, any further conflicts will not open up a path out. We will have to break it apart from the inside." Cold settled across his shoulders like a mantle. It was like the jaws of an eel, with teeth pointed inward, offering only one path forward. There had to be a better way, but…

they didn't have time. He couldn't prepare. If they delayed for even a moment longer than necessary, it might burst open like an overripe egg sac and spread its cursed contents across the land. John was a coward. He knew that; the first time he faced down real combat had taught him that. Yet, he couldn't just sit aside and let this happen. How could he live with himself if he knew what was going to happen and did nothing? Well, maybe it was for the best that he had allies.

Perhaps not acting alone would give him a bit more courage to do what needed to be done. In the distance, the fort emerged from the sea of verdant green below, the faint white sheen of the inner buildings seeming to gleam like a beacon in the afternoon light.

"Well, we best figure out a plan, eh?" John mused grimly, scratching his chin.

"We'll brief Rin and Yosuke, then we end this today, one way or another." The kitsune's tails tightened around his legs, but she said nothing.