Chương 22: Antcage

[Control +2 Control 18 -—-> 20 Layering Technique +3 Layers 6-—->9] Liesel's forearm was smooth as glass, wrapped in a layer that would almost pass as a marble statue. Equally as hard, but hot to the touch. It was nearly sunrise, so for about five hours she had sustained the Materiality Layering while also expanding it slowly from a nail-sized spot to the entirety of her forearm. The brain inside her skull was boiling like soup. Her face was red, and her entire body was covered in sweat.

Liesel exhaled, unclenching her fingers. The Materiality orb dropped onto the floor and rolled away. A stabbing pain erupted in her heart each time it thumped to pump the blood through her body. Liesel was pretty sure her endurance was over the tenth threshold, even if the System hadn't reconciled it. The boundary between a human and an Ascendant was this boundary. A human couldn't cross it without a supernatural influence. Those problems would fall behind once she had formed a condensed Materiality core.

On the other hand, her Control was climbing up quickly. It was less that she was gaining even more experience quickly, and more like the System was reconciling her actual capacity with the system's understanding. It had sat on seventeen for far too long, because regardless of how powerful and efficient her control was, it couldn't be expressed by one basic technique that she had already squeezed all the value out of.

And again, crossing any subsequent tenth threshold was harder and harder, so her Control attribute was going to sit at twenty for a bit here. Liesel released her overbearing force on the Materiality. The white surface on her skin vanished, and beneath it was raw, red skin that may have been exposed to steam.

"You are bleeding from your nose," Auram said. Her voice was distant and drowning. It was not just her nose. She was sure she had harmed much of her body, including her heart. It shouldn't be lasting damage. She drank the potion she had brought from the alchemist. It should regulate most of the damage and heal it over the course of the day. She didn't have the power to speak to ease Auram's worry.

"Why'd you do something like this?" the spirit fumed. Maybe her mother would've reacted the same way had she seen what had become of her daughter. It was an odd feeling, Liesel realized. She only remembered her mother when she was having the worst time. It felt wrong. Regardless of the last years of her life, Liesel couldn't imagine having better parents—someone who could've loved a child like her more. And yet, somehow, it was these moments that brought out her mother's features.

When her body was burning, and she felt like she was slowly dying. When she couldn't control her thoughts like a drunkard. When the world around was expanding and collapsing at the same time. Maybe she'd remember her mother when she was happy, too. Not that Liesel imagined she'd ever know if that was true. Happiness was a distant imagination of a child; it didn't exist anymore. As an adult, peace was the best she could hope for.

And yet, if asked why she had pushed herself to the verge of collapse, she only had one answer.

"I was frustrated with how unmatched I am to the door guardian," Liesel finally uttered.

"I feel like I can sleep now."

Today's expedition was going to be led by Kurvam.

"I will stay and watch over the base," Liesel offered. It was a good enough excuse for Kurvam to nod. He had reeled back his attempts to goad a reaction from her. Fiya also trotted back to her room, but Kurvam called her out.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to memorize the spell for this afternoon," Fiya said. She seemed slightly panicked by the attention.

"What's in the afternoon?" Exhaling, Liesel explained the past two days.

"Fuck that!" Kurvam growled.

"All the Materiality Cores are mine alone. I will decide how we are going to distribute them once the expedition is over. No one dares steal a pip," he finished and shifted his eyes back to the mage.

"And we are going to the mist now. Memorize the spell on the way." Fiya glanced at Liesel, who decided to remain impassive. She was too tired to argue with Kurvam. And it wasn't like they were a bunch of powerless kids. They simply didn't want to argue with the Chancellor's son. Kurvam's head snapped toward her as Liesel stood up.

"I will be in my room," she uttered as she trotted back into her room and closed the door behind her. She dropped face-first onto her bed and closed her eyes. Sleep claimed her instantly. In the dream, she only saw her failure to defeat the demon. She woke up a few hours later to knocking on the door. Groggily, she answered it. Fiya was there. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Sorry for disturbing you."

"It's fine," Liesel mumbled. Slowly, the moments before she went to sleep returned to her. She raised a brow.

"How did you convince him to let you stay?"

"I said I can't memorize a spell while walking around, and I most certainly cannot do it sitting on the ice." Liesel nodded as she strolled into the hall and filled a glass with water.

"I am glad."

"I thought he'd try to fight me. He didn't."

"He can't," Liesel said.

"I may be seen as an outside entity in his eyes, but you and the rest of the expedition, minus Verka, are one unit. He can't challenge ten people at once. Well, he would under some circumstances, but if you are cordial, he most likely won't push too far." Fiya nodded.

"Did you memorize the spell?" The mage answered affirmatively. As more of the conversation returned, Liesel asked, "What about the distribution of the Materiality Cores?"

"Yehia said we don't need to argue about it right now. It's not like the expedition would be over tonight." Liesel nodded. So they wanted to take a stand. Or those who wanted to make the killing blow would also be happy. She wondered how they would rationalize the fact that they would earn significantly more under her distribution proposal than Verka's. He can always offer them more than we can, and that would be enough.

"What are you going to do?" Liesel hummed.

"Sleep some more."

"I was wondering if you wanted to play Antcage." It was a board game that Liesel had never played before, and it was not as complicated. Take your opponent's pieces and encircle the Helm with your ants—six was the lowest number of pieces necessary to create the antcage. The rules for moving the pieces and the number of spots almost forced your opponent to risk their pieces.

Because the encirclement of the Helm was the final goal, saving as many lowest-ranked pieces as possible was the most important part of the game. Despite Liesel's best attempt, her pieces were thoroughly slaughtered. Since all the board games she had played, which were the norm in the Imperial Core, were about promoting one piece to the highest level, it was always a race to see who could reach there first.

The highest tier usually trivialized the game, a mirror of how only certain pieces were important and the rest were just sacrificial pawns in their service. They were not far removed from how conflicts work in the real world. The one she was playing right now worked on the opposite logic, and it may have been frustrating to an idealistic person, stubborn to the realism of the proposed rules. She didn't mind the loss, but seeing how handily she lost the two games, she felt it might be boring for Fiya.

The mage assured Liesel she was having fun explaining the game. The games themselves were short, about half an hour. After the third loss, Fiya seemed a little worried, and she tried to explain that she wasn't trying to show off.

"It's about instincts. Because the game demands sacrificing the most useful and expensive pieces to protect worthless ants, I have to keep reminding myself of that, but it is irrational," Liesel explained.

"You say ants are worthless even though it's impossible to win the game without them," Fiya said, frowning.

"I don't understand why you'd think like that."

"I don't know. They are weak."

"Are they?" Fiya's confusion only seemed to deepen.

"How can you say that the only thing that enables victory is weakness?"

"When you consider their capacity for actual violence, to put it simply, they fall short of the game's own standard, so naturally I imagine them as useless." Fiya stared at the board, curling her brows in deep contemplation.

"Maybe they are worthless because you are imposing the wrong value on them? They form the prison for the opponent's Helm."

"You are not wrong. I subconsciously consider them worthless because power, in its simplest terms, is one's capacity to enact violence," Liesel said.

"And so long as that violence is part of the game, ants, who can only march forward to claim the Helm while being assisted by the guardian pieces, are always worthless. The rules are arbitrary and only enforceable because it is a game that insists upon rules being the divine order. I am not saying the game is wrong, but for someone from the Inceptius, it might as well be. All the board games in Inceptius have pieces that allow us to basically break every established rule.

You can see it is the inherent goal, for it reflects the Empire in its truest sense." Fiya nodded after a long pause.

"If I didn't see your strength, I'd have thought you were still at the Nebulous Stage because you were wasting time trying to find logic in games."

"I think it's a good thing to ponder upon the reflection of our reality and life in small things we interact with," Liesel said.

"It weaves strength into our character and our cultivation."

"Kurvam is so much stronger than everyone else, even though he's not the oldest person on the expedition team. Do you think he ponders the nature of life?" Fiya smirked proudly.

"There's a different kind of strength. I like to believe mine comes from understanding the nature of my power. But someone can just as easily cultivate based on their ego, greed, or just stubbornness to be the superior person in the room."

"What do you think mine is?" Fiya asked.

"Why don't you tell me?" Liesel replied, raising both her brows.

"You should know what the basis of your cultivation is."

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. Even if you don't realize it, on a subconscious level, you are aware."

"Like demons are?"

"Yes," Liesel said. It would be offensive to some people.

"That doesn't mean you are a demon. If you ask me, every being is the same instinctual creature at the core, and then there are varying degrees of control over that instinct. The ability to contradict our inherent nature that makes us special and differentiates a human from a demon."

"What about higher Demon Lords or ascendant demons? They are very much human-like in their control."

"So?" Liesel asked curiously.

"Wouldn't that make them no different from us?" Liesel didn't understand the basis of Fiya's question.

"Yes. They are a very strong race, no different from any ascendant race." Fiya's face turned pale.

"You are speaking blasphemy."

"I hope you won't report me to the Crusaders," Liesel shrugged with a chuckle. Just like that, her pawn had been taken out once more.

"I won't," Fiya nodded.

"But you shouldn't be speaking like that. Equating them to enlightened races."

"Fiya," Liesel said, "I have a very naive understanding of the complexities of the races, but the demons we see in a Necropolis and the Ascendant demons that have kingdoms and desire to conquer and build societies are two different species that humans refuse to acknowledge. Just as a wiser demon might equate us to primates, even though we are nothing alike beyond sharing the same ancestry in the distant past. Of course, it means nothing because their war is an existential threat."

Fiya seemed even more bothered by her words. This was a very normal reaction to other times she had shared her thoughts on demons. She didn't know why she thought Fiya would be a little more lax in her reaction. Maybe Isa would be the same, even though that woman was trying to heal a wretchborn orc afflicted with the Ashening Curse.

"I am just sharing my train of thought. You can say it's a wrong and naive way to think. I don't mind," Liesel offered.

"No. You are not wrong. I... just don't think it's worth risking being branded as a heretic." Liesel smiled as her mind returned to her conversation with Auram on the same topic.

"Anyways..." The air inside the base thrummed.

"It's a demon," Fiya said, picking up her spell orb. Liesel rushed into her room. Liesel's heart thumped. There would be no Shadow Stalker in daylight, so it was bound to be a different demon. Please give me a strong demon, I beg of you, My Yirriel. I need a point in Control or Perception.