Chapter 303: Chapter 303

Watching the two battles and waiting to decide which to move to was challenging, but in the end, Jake realized that neither truly needed his help in order to win. He placed his finger on the scales with his Resonant State of the Monarch, buffing Ophelia and Bloodberri, and that, combined with his buffs and Presence, was enough to make the difference on the battlefield.

Instead, he was more uniquely suited to help capture the two betrayers, in an attempt to get as much information out of them as possible.

Fhesiah said to him in his mind, [These guys often self-destruct, and I doubt you’re going to get anything out of them, husband–I think it’s better to just put them down the moment you have a chance. But I do have an idea. With any luck, you can at least keep them busy while I steal their stuff. But again, if they took anything out of their Refuge with them that was particularly incriminating of their allies, I would be shocked. They can’t be that dumb, surely? The communicators are likely the best we can hope for.]

“Just do your best. You never know. If they’ve bypassed PvP, stealing even their weapons and jewelry is on the table if you can manage it.”

[Good point. Just keep them busy and give me a moment, and I’ll make it happen.]

Jake arrived on the battlefield a little ahead of the moon’s flare, Ira easily altering his course for his arrival. Wrapped in a cloak of his hearth flames, he flew toward the betrayers and fired his rain of mana bolts and struck a few of them, finishing them off while Fhesiah tailed him closely, hidden by her kitsune flames.

Really, he was the most obvious bait he’d ever seen, but he didn’t have a lot of options if he didn’t want them to run away. They already looked like they were considering turning tail and running after the avalanche and losing a majority of their forces, so he presented himself as a target.

And they took the bait. The two flew over with haste on their mounts, wearing the black miasma over them like cloaks. They had used an artifact of some kind, granting them the malevolent energy. Knowing how these guys usually operated, it was entirely possible they sacrificed many of their own people to gain this protection.

Jake decided to give them a hard time of it. He was in the State of the Monarch to empower Bloodberri and Ophelia, so he was limited to control spells that also did some damage. Quickly fusing the runes together, he cast the Tier 2 version of his Cone of Cold, [Glacial Breath].

Avaron’s non-combat mount was dispelled easily as he was struck by several shards all at once, his black corruption roiling to block the ice on himself, but not so much his mount.

Cassius’s griffin was protected by black corruption as well, but it was not enough to stop the blast entirely. It cried out in anger as the corruption and parts of its body partially froze and it was shoved by the blast, but it forced itself to continue forward.

It rushed forward in a blur by enhancing its speed with wind magic, and so Jake just sped up as he strafed the creature. Avaron raced to catch up, but Jake moved far too quickly as he prepared his next spells.

Fhesiah chuckled. [Maybe don’t play with them too much; it’s difficult to keep near you if you move too fast. I don’t want to get too close to Avaron until you’ve partially disabled him.]

Jake flew over gemlike plants and trees that dotted the landscape as the griffin chased him. The ground was uneven and covered in mismatched stone, and he chose a small clearing to descend, and then unleashed his spell.

He created a Ring of Flame, a small explosion of black-gold fire rising in a circle around him as he landed. The griffin balked and reared up rather than chasing through circular wall of flame, as Jake prepared his next spell: Hearthtree Vines.

The fiery plant appeared, then exploded outward from Jake’s position. It wrapped around the griffin and attempted to grab Avaron as well, as he arrived with his spear, but he teleported in a beam of light toward Jake–and right into a Wave of Force.

Like a slap of a giant, Jake sent Avaron flying backward and right into a bundle of vines, which wrapped around his form–and dragged him into the Ring of Flame. The black corruption energy protected him from the powerful flame. But Jake could see it was being burned away rapidly by the flaming vines, and now the Ring of Flame’s scorching heat.

Cassius and the griffin had managed to cut through the vines somewhat, but they regrew and wrapped around them with fervor. Covered in gold runes from Jake’s covenant as he fed them more mana, they had far more resilience and power than they expected, and Cassius roared as he sent out a wave of war energy, cutting through it.

But Jake was only getting started. Another frost elemental apparition appeared, and a Nova of Frost was sent out in a wave as he canceled the Ring of Flame. Avaron was frozen just as he had mostly freed himself from the vines with a shimmer of bladed light, only to get blasted with the cold. The griffin was covered in ice as well, even as it tried to break free using its claws.

Cassius said, “Enough! Do it now!”

The two Divine Descendants looked determined as they reached into some pouches at their waists. The skull-shaped item drawn from Cassius’s was alarming in the wrongness it spilled out into the world as it was removed.

And Avaron threw several stakes into the air, and then they shot into the ground, the runes lighting up and pressing down on Jake with a special weight. The runes on them were clearly Nordic, but perverted in some way.

As Jake looked at them, the runes shifted and became blurry, and he could tell they had a small level of Divine Essence contained within them. He wasn’t sure what the runes said exactly, but after reading so many, he understood some amount of Divine Script was interspersed in between what looked to be some sort of set of rules.

Of course, Jake didn’t just stand around as they tried to activate their tools. A second Glacial Breath had washed over them, and the corruption protecting them was largely expended as the frost was removed, but some corruption still remained.

Avaron and Cassius had then taken out daggers and cut themselves, even though Jake’s hearthvines were burning them and the golden frost was chilling them to the bone. Their blood carried a significant amount of their Nascent Divine Essence, and both the odd skull from Cassius and the stakes drew in the blood like streamers, despite his blast of frost roaring through.

A pulsing barrier spread out from Cassius’s skull item, separating Jake from the rest of his wives–except for Fhesiah. It seemed they wanted to face him without anyone getting in the way. What surprised Jake, however, was that his Hearthian Presence shrunk until it only covered himself, and his vines started to wither away and disappear, and his floating shield fell to the ground. He quickly grabbed it with a frown, and Avaron laughed.

“Behold! The runic law. You may only fight with Technique and melee–no magic can leave your own body and weapon, not even Divine Energy.”

Cassius added, “You’re done for, summoner.”

Fhesiah arched her brow at him from the side; she was pressed up against the inside of the dome. She had previously let out her flickering kitsune flames to conceal herself, and Ira had also surrounded her with just a little bit of void energy to aid in hiding her aura.

Jake frowned, and shifted his staff into a halberd much more like Ophelia’s Retribution and placed the butt of it on the ground as he replied, “This is…you think by limiting me in this way, victory will be yours? Surely, this sealing cost a lot of your own resources. You guys are breathing hard, and we haven’t really even begun fighting yet.”

Avaron frowned at him. “We’ve paid attention to how you’ve fought, and we’ve done our research. We know you rely on spells and summons. Without them, you can’t be our match.”

Jake chuckled, and shook his head. “Certainly, I’m stronger with those things. By limiting me, perhaps you’ve given yourselves your best chance at victory. But you do realize even if you were to beat me here today, you don’t actually win, right? My wives will crush you both shortly after–just mountain behind us.” ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝※𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖※𝕟𝕖𝕥

It was at this point that Bloodberri had summoned Echidna, growing as tall as a twenty-story building–standing on her tail, of course. She was about to bring down the axe, so the image of her doing so as he spoke behind him was a perfect frame. The earth shook as an epic Twilight Divide shattered the mountain behind him, causing Avaron and the griffin to stumble, nearly falling to the ground.

Jake said, “No matter what you do now, you will pay for your betrayal of good and life.”

Cassius and Avaron were both shocked as a pillar of flame then descended, the son of Ares looking at it with disbelief as the Fortress Assault was concluded. “Just how?”

Avaron laughed, and shook his head with an incredulous look. “You and your allies are strong, but so what? You think we’re afraid of the Framework’s punishment? There are much scarier things out there than our avatars being dissolved.” The man suddenly looked all around himself, worried, but shook out of it a moment after. “Thanks to you, we’re already dead men walking, and there is no place for us to run. We might as well make you suffer while we’re at it.”

Cassius shook his head from on top of his griffin, the monster already heavily slowed and harmed from the waves of frost. “We don’t know how you defeated the tainted moon; it was divined that you had no means to resolve it in time, let alone even detect the Aspect. And yet you did so quickly what nobody at this Tier should have been able to do… but it does not matter. Our patron wishes you to suffer, so that is what we will gladly carry out. Even if it’s just to ease our own.”

Thankfully, Ophelia’s battle was already mostly concluded, theirs having started minutes earlier. Sati had already arrived there, and he knew Ophelia wouldn’t have issues with his shift of his Resonant State. With the mountain destroyed and the fiery flare from Sati’s moon completed, Jake went ahead and shifted his covenant to the State of the Sage.

He did this to maximize Fhesiah’s strength once she joined the fight, and improve his control over his family’s numerous flames. As he did, he took on Ophelia’s melee side of the covenant, causing the demonic and Celtic runes on his armor to be filled with a prismatic light. He had long since gotten rid of most of his Nordic runes on his armor after the enemy had used them against him, so only a few had dimmed from their heretical stakes, this runic law.

The flames of his hearth danced to his will, his skill with manipulating each wife’s flame increasing. Empowered by auril mixed with hearthflames, he was ready to meet Avaron and Cassius’s charge as they rushed forward with their weapons.

He did better than just meeting them. Using Ophelia’s Vajrafire, Jake moved forward so fast only the griffin properly reacted, stopping and raising its paw in counter. His bastardized version of his valkyrie wife’s Technique allowed him to blast into the griffin’s chest with his shield first, crashing into the creature far harder and faster than his enemies could predict, sending Vajrafire traveling into them.

Because Jake was much more massive than he appeared to be. Hiding that he was a Hearthian with the cosmetic item, his height was normalized to be within what a Second Tier human should be–about seven feet tall or so, just as he had visited the Earth. Jake was thirty percent larger and nearly twice as massive as they would expect; Tier 3 races were just that much more dense.

Not prepared for his momentum to be so great, the elephant-sized lion creature was bowled over from his blitz. And Jake capitalized with a couple of stabs of his polearm in the process, targeting the downed griffin, the monster screeching out in pain as his polearm pierced through the corruption and reached flesh. The auril-infused blend of hearthflames did actually spread into the creature; the fact that it was delivered via his weapon must have been within the rules of the runic law.

Jake felt a little bad targeting the griffin, but the sooner he removed the element from the fight, the less the creature suffered. Its master had unleashed some form of corruption on it, which appeared to provide a blanket defense and empowerment.

Cassius had fallen off his mount from the back, and Fhesiah made her move, snatching the man’s communication token and the pouch from his waist from behind as he got back up in a rage. Jake had wondered why they hadn’t simply used Storage Rings, but it seemed they desired to keep contraband items out of or away from Framework storage.

Avaron was fast, his spear flickering several stabs at Jake in defense of his allies. The man was covered in both light and darkness and had rushed forward in a hurry once he saw what Jake had accomplished, a determined expression on his face. Jake was ready to meet him with his shield and polearm, able to wield his weapon one-handed thanks to his pyrokinetic control over his flames and weapon.

Deflecting the spear with his shield, Jake countered with several vicious chops, which Avaron was deft in parrying and evading with his skilled control of his own weapon. Still, he grunted with each block, Jake’s surprising strength pushing the man back.

Cassius had put his shield away, it seemed, and was wielding a two-handed sword this time as he joined the fray, rushing in and swinging his sword toward Jake’s flank in a quick flurry of attacks.

Jake was forced onto the back foot, parrying his swings or shifting his shield, nearly dancing as he drifted over the ground with his hearthflames and backing away from the two warriors as they chased him.

The griffin had gotten up now and was about to come after Jake, and now he couldn’t find an opportunity to attack at all, from needing to block or parry the three’s attacks. If he wanted to keep them thoroughly distracted from Fhesiah, he knew he needed to go all out.

Jake had been testing his runes within his Hearth, and sure enough, casting spells using Nordic runes was restricted even if he kept them within his own body. But Jake had long since prepared several alternate spells with demonic runes.

They were lacking in complexity and often had trade-offs between effectiveness and efficiency compared to their Nordic counterparts, but they would do the job.

Preparing them even as he defended himself, he eventually released various spells at once from the bubbles in his hearth, lesser versions of Holy Might and Giant’s Growth, and then two spells he had devised that were entirely new: Alacrity and Dark Armor, a haste and a protective spell, respectively.

Each still appeared to be boosted by Jake’s specialization, and he became larger, stronger, and faster–and threw his shield right at Cassius’s face, the errant object shocking the man and striking his chin. Jake then leapt into the air and brought down his halberd powerfully on the griffin’s shoulder, and this time, he had infused some of Fhesiah’s draconic flames into his Divine Weapon. The bronze flames wrapped around the creature as it screeched. The monster was dispersed into motes of light a moment later, and Jake shifted to take on his two foes.

Cassius was building up his Nascent Divine Energy, enlarging himself to match Jake, and Avaron rushed forward, his body in a blur, multiple copies of his spear piercing toward Jake like beams of light.

With his arms and halberd covered in Avenging Flames, Jake brought down his blade in a cruel counter into Avaron’s chest. Unlike Avaron’s beams of light being turned aside by his hearthflame and auril-infused armor and defensive buffs, Jake’s weapon cut through the last of the corruption covering him, and struck him hard across the chest, slashing a few inches deep.

Filled with Vajrafire, his knee struck Avaron’s chin and sent him flying, before he spun his halberd around to prepare to meet Cassius’s attack. Rather than block the man’s overhead swing, Jake twisted his shoulder with the blow and struck him back with a sideways slash, his halberd covered in holy dark.

Cassius’s sword cut deep into Jake’s shoulder, but with a shout, Jake continued his swing, and his halberd cut into Cassius’s gut from the side. With a grunt, Jake then kicked the man free.

Fhesiah had made her move as Avaron had fallen to the ground, grabbing the pouch at his waist before going back into hiding to look over what she obtained.

Cycling through weaker versions of each of his wife’s Techniques, he traded blows with the two warriors, the wounds piling up on all three of them. This was yet another method he had devised to fight with his State of the Sage, happy for its plethora of options. Hydra would have destroyed these two men already, but their runes were frustrating to counter.

While they likely thought Jake was being wounded too, he knew something that they didn’t.

Avaron grunted as he took another cut through his attack, and backed off for a moment along with Cassius. “This strength! Hitting him is like hitting a wall. And look! He’s healing.” He pointed at Jake’s shoulder.

Cassius was nearly breathless. “Just what are you, and how can you keep up with us? This shouldn’t be possible; we should have every advantage. I can tell you’re not even expending Divine Energy.”

Jake was happy to list their failings. “You two are skilled with your weapon of choice, but you don’t take your training or your leadership seriously. You take the easy path to victory, only winning against your enemies by extorting and bullying lesser foes, or colluding with the enemy, rather than using superior tactics and personal strength. You are a reflection of your people, and nobody in this sector actually respects you.”

“You dare lecture us? I’ll make you pay–” Avaron reached for his waist, and Jake interrupted with a snort.

“You asked, didn’t you? But yes, I dare. This fight is already over, and your hubris has made this your loss.”

Avaron was alarmed and nearly shouted out that his items were gone, but Fhesiah’s draconic claw pierced through his middle back, the woman shifting to a dragoness just before her illusion wore off. His eyes went wide as the wind was knocked out of him, and Cassius turned to him, shocked.

Cassius swung his sword at Fhesiah with a roar, and Avaron turned into light and teleported a ways away, twisting reality with his Nascent Divine Essence. Feeling that Cassius infused quite a bit of his Nascent Divine Essence into his attack, Jake had shifted his Divine Weapon into a shield, and blocked the sword strike–and he was glad he did.

An explosion of chaotic blades was released from his strike, the power contained within his blow immense. The force of the blast, despite his block, sent Jake flying into the air, his body flung toward where Avaron had landed.

Because Jake had redirected the chaotic attack, Fhesiah’s reprisal was vicious and unimpeded. She had stored up a bunch of flames up to now, waiting to strike. And seeing that the explosion of chaotic blades from his swing worked, she gathered her draconic and kitsune flames into her claw with it closed, compressing the two flames into one. Bringing it up to his chest, the explosion of golden flame washed over Cassius and sent him flying, scorching him with the celestial flames of alchemy.

Jake caught himself with his hearthflames before he fell to the ground. Avaron was crouched while gathering his light and Nascent Divine Energy into a spear thrust, with some item from his Storage Ring helping him recover from his injury. Transforming his shield back into his polearm, Jake brought it down to meet his attack with the full gamut of his hearthflames.

His prismatic halberd met the spear of light and deflected it off to the side, but it pierced Jake’s shoulder–not far away from Cassius’s strike from before, as the spear continued past him.

It seemed that Avaron was limited in how he could alter reality thanks to his limitations from the runic law. Because he had looked at the stake with a bit of consternation as Jake landed next to him and punched him powerfully in the face.

Jake had grabbed Avaron’s spear haft with his other hand as he went flying, and disarmed, he couldn’t do anything as Jake added a few more wounds to him. He then turned Pyros into Runic Shackles and wrapped it around his wounded body.

“H-How! What kind of weapon is this?”

He punched him in the face again, which finally knocked the man out. Jake did restore a few of his wounds to prevent him from dying, but little more than that.

Fhesiah chuckled as she dumped the wounded and unconscious Cassius onto the ground next to him. She had buffed herself with draconic strength, and plowed right through the man’s war energy defense since he was weakened by her blast, and his use of his blood on the stakes. Not only that, but both had used at least a portion of their energy during their Battleground match, which they likely wouldn’t have had much time to recover from.

It seemed the two had planned on using items inside their sacks, and were easily defeated as they hadn’t used the sacrificial tools to empower them. Jake doubted

Fhesiah said, “May want to tie him up too. Then we can have Nessa question them both and get all the answers. Let’s take out those stakes–ah, they’re almost out of energy anyway.” She turned to walk over to one of the stakes and the skull, and Jake realized she was right. Naturally, they’d need to collect them anyway, but he could already Call Summon his wives.

Jake stretched Pyros a bit thinner and made more links, tying the two men together. He was about to turn around to join her in that, but suddenly, he heard several tiny bells ringing. He blinked, his train of thoughts disrupted. They rang again, a peaceful bell chime that made Jake feel calm.

A person slowly walked into Jake’s view, his form constantly shifting. He was a bald, wiry Buddhist monk wearing simple gray robes, with a wide smile on his face–so wide, his eyes were closed. His form was shifting between a young man, a child, an adult, and an old man, his form not sticking for more than a brief moment.

The bells were tied to his waist, and they chimed as he walked.

The monk gave Jake an odd feeling, but his slow and unhurried gait didn’t seem to raise any alarms in his mind, soft bell chimes continuing to ring from his steps. Jake felt nothing from the man at all, or perhaps, very little. The man walked close to Fhesiah, who also looked a little out of sorts, blinking as the sound of the bells washed over her.

The monk suddenly opened his eyes, looking at her waist, where her several cosmos sacks were. They were where she was keeping most of her pilfered items and tokens. His voice was jovial and matched his smile. “Oh, what’s that you have there? You shouldn’t have those, Miss. They’re very dangerous. This humble monk would be happy to take them off your hands for you.”

Fhesiah frowned, then placed a hand over the pouches defensively. “No, you can’t–I need that. I have so many things I wish to research and learn.”

The man’s eyes widened–it was like he couldn’t believe his request was denied. He took out a pouch of his own, looking at it for a moment, and Jake noticed the contents of it shifted. He began to reach toward her waist slowly, but then he spotted Jake watching him, which caused him to freeze.

The monk closed his eyes again, and chuckled a little awkwardly. “Ah, I’ll…come back to that. I’m sure I can offer you something so that you’ll part with it. Would you mind moving, Miss? I need to get at this fellow, and you’re in the way.”

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Fhesiah turned to look at Avaron on the ground behind her, who she was almost standing over, and blinked. “Oh, sure. Sorry.” She frowned, and moved out of the way for the man.

The man smiled again, and seemed relieved that she didn’t fight him further on it. The bells kept ringing within Jake’s mind as he moved, and this man’s actions felt perfectly normal.

The monk suddenly withdrew some nasty-looking shears from his belt, a black pair with serrated edges. He brought the shears close to Avaron’s chest, and finally, something screamed out at Jake. That this was not normal, even though Ira was suspiciously quiet, tilting its head at the man in confusion as well.

Jake pulled Pyros toward him, bringing the two men closer to him, much faster than the ponderous man was moving. But the shears had grazed something near Avaron’s spiritual body, and something shifted, though Jake didn’t quite know what.

The monk had a curious frown on his face for a moment, before he smiled and began to make his ponderous approach toward the bodies next to Jake once more. As he walked, Jake saw more movement through his Umbral Gaze, a silhouette moving through the stained glass windows of reality. And now, he felt something was very off. How didn’t he notice this before?

It was like a specter, or a ghost, or perhaps, a swarm of them in the shape of a man. In other dimensional planes, Jake wasn’t really able to understand what he was looking at aside from oddly shaped silhouettes, but he could tell this was certainly more than a mere monk. Most beings he had met, aside from Ira, did not really exist in so many planes all at once, and had a more…contiguous form.

Alarmed at these revelations, Jake drew Avaron and Cassius, and even grabbed Fhesiah to drag her further away with his hearthflames.

“Ah! What–” Fhesiah was shocked at the sudden alarm Jake was feeling, and was unable to sense much of anything at all. Even Ira sent him some confusion over their bond. It couldn’t seem to sense the monk at all until just now.

The man’s eyebrows were at the top of his head. “How strange.” He smiled as he looked over at Jake. “You can sense me, but you should have no karma, no fate with me. You must have karma with someone who does. Who could it be?” His mouth opened, as if to taste the air, and he looked at his open palms, a light dazzling in his eyes. Jake thought he saw what looked like threads for a moment.

Jake was, of course, guarded, and he kept his captives wrapped with Pyros still. “Who are you?”

Several eyes opened across the dimensions at once, and the man’s gaze fractured as he looked at Jake and all around them. And he ignored Jake’s question for a moment as he watched Jake with this unsettling look from multiple angles, before he began speaking softly to himself.

“No wonder the seers have been blind. Your void does more than swallow, and someone has gilded and hidden its hunger. I can smell the Nidhogg on you…so Odin has meddled. Your race, your bloodline–it’s like the perfect storm of causality. Interesting. And so many karmic threads for someone in the Second Tier in a Frontier Sector. It’s no wonder you can see me and overcome the sacred bells. The woman is a big surprise, though.” He chuckled. “She has a strong spirit and desire for those items, and for such a mundane reason.”

He folded his hands as if in prayer, then met Jake squarely. “As for a name: call me what you will. This monk keeps no ledger. I travel between debts and seek only to sever what must be cut. My business is with them.” He jerked a single finger toward the betrayers. “Hand them and the items to me. I will take the trace, close the wound, and leave. No trial. No cascade of revelations.” He gave a sad sigh, his expression matching a deep sadness. “And billions don’t have to suffer.”

Jake felt like he was still in a bit of a daze, still dealing with this man who felt like he barely existed. It felt like if he looked away for a single moment, the man might disappear, never to be seen again. And, perhaps thanks to the bells, the man’s request felt reasonable, something twisting in his mind–he was reminded of Sati’s visions where the Maya and Mara spoke to her, and how true the words felt, yet different entirely.

Fhesiah was still getting her senses under control, but she was ready to fight, her Qi drawn into her chest. She knew Jake was concerned and alarmed, so she was too.

Jake tightened his jaw, holding firm with his will. “If we turn them over to you, how does that spare anyone suffering?”

“If the patron is dragged into light, the Territories will bleed for generations. Exposure is a blade that cuts nations. Leaving it buried is not just virtue; it is triage.” The monk’s voice grew almost gentle, pleading. “Give me those men, and you reduce a billion deaths to two quiet erasures, and justice is served. Refuse, and you set the Multiverse on a path where the body count multiplies until the scales tip. Can you live with so much death, so much bad karma weighing down on your soul, Brother? Please, see reason.”

Jake glanced at the captives, his Umbral Gaze still trained on the man. What he saw was rather alarming–the nordic man, whose name he didn’t quite remember, had started to become translucent starting from his wound, his skin like fractured glass covering much of his body. “So you’d have us cover up betrayal for the sake of fewer bodies?”

“You perceive correctly.” The monk inclined his head. “So?”

Jake narrowed his eyes. “I’m curious about the other option.”

The monk’s lips curved. “This humble monk prides himself in running away from fights I can’t win instead–you and the dragoness, and your goddess won’t be able to keep me from escaping, believe me. For you are but a child of the void, but this monk has journeyed the veils for his long life.” As if to punctuate his threat, his forms across multiple planes moved in what…felt like different directions, and one stretched and twisted, then even disappeared from his view, moving too far for him to see at once.

The monk shook his head. “I don’t wish to threaten you, but if you are a cruel man lacking compassion, and you would choose these two over the blood of billions of innocents… then I will have no choice but to teach you a painful lesson, Brother.”

He lifted a hand, and the specter form that Jake could see in one of the other dimensions grew, and now, it could be seen that there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ghosts inside his spiritual body.

For the first time, the monk’s tone sharpened like a razor. “That there are many things worse than death. The sea of bitterness you will feel as I trace your karmic threads one by one, hunt down your loved ones, and consume their fates and erase their existences will drown you. You won’t even remember their faces, but you will feel their loss. The emptiness.”

A picture of his children and wives appeared before him, their smiling faces being erased one by one. The threat cut through Jake’s fugue like a knife, his heart suddenly beating faster. Something within his body stirred, his flame of the void burning hotter.

His mind was now clear, and somehow, his wives also understood what was happening, and Ira began to growl.

Jake realized that the man was a karmic cultivator, and now, knowing what he was, he understood what he could see in his Umbral Gaze. The specters crowding inside his spiritual body were hungering ghosts, spirits with an endless hunger for the things they desired or lacked in life. Perhaps, he had also gathered those that had matched his path in some way.

The shears in the monk’s hands were exceptionally dangerous. With just a tiny nick, Avaron’s existence was being erased. He was only barely alive, but Jake had trouble grasping why he even had him imprisoned in the first place. It was only through Cassius, who was chained with him, that Jake understood who he was at all to even remember his name.

Karmic cultivators were one of the few that Fhesiah had warned Jake about when teaching him about cultivators–even her father, a powerful dragon, feared them. They were some of the most dangerous kinds of cultivators, especially when they were powerful. Put simply, karmic cultivators could trace threads of it, and erase them if they could afford the price. And with no karmic threads linking someone to the tapestry of existence, the person would no longer exist, not even their memory.

However, normally, a karmic cultivator would not be great against Jake in a fight: Jake was a Champion of a Divine. His karmic link with Hestia went far above something that could easily be erased by anyone but a god themselves–the cost to the karmic cultivator would be far too high. The man needed to exceed the strength of those he was connected to in order to erase him from existence and memory.

That didn’t mean the man couldn’t hurt Jake–he had managed to accomplish something with Avaron, a Divine Descendant, surely having connections to Loki. The shears were mysterious. Perhaps, they were a true divine artifact, just like Jake’s weapon, capable of cutting such threads.

He knew that to accomplish this, a karmic price had to be paid–the monk would have to pay it later, perhaps, or maybe, had preloaded this price into the shears in some way. If Jake was going to act against him, he absolutely had to separate the man from the shears.

Jake wondered how this worked with the Framework, but clearly, it wasn’t an issue since it was here. Unless it only worked underneath the veil they were in. Thankfully, the divine essence within the stakes had already completely run out, as he had been able to wrap his hearthflames around Fhesiah only a moment earlier.

Jake would have no issues casting spells now, or calling upon Hestia thanks to his bloodline’s natural resistance to these sorts of effects. Unfortunately, the man would probably flee if he called upon her, judging by what he said–and that was something Jake could not risk.

Now that Jake could think more clearly, he realized that he had, in fact, received a prompt at some point.

[Divine Aspirant(Champion) ????? Detected. Defeat for Extreme Reward.]

The man was a Divine Aspirant, a term Jake had not seen before, but he intuited what it was by the name. He was a man just like Guan Yu: a person who had formed their Nascent Divinity, and was gathering Divine Essence within his vessel, hoping to achieve godhood. This man was incredibly dangerous due to his vast experience. In actuality, the monk should not be much more powerful than a Champion, though one at the Fourth Tier.

He was still brought down to Jake’s Tier. If there was a time to defeat the monk, then it was now. The monk was clearly an important agent of Tartarus, a man who behaved like a fixer, a person that erased evidence of their crimes.

How many betrayals had he already swept under the rug? How many good people had been erased? Jake immediately discarded the man’s promise that he’d leave his family alone. By making the threat, he already made it personal.

The monk spoke up, and once again, it was more of gentle concern rather than the near condescending anger from before. “Are you okay, Brother? It looks like you are about to do something you will regret. I understand that you seek vengeance, and it pains me that you would clutch the name and strike a match to the world. Let go, Brother–freedom is the absence of such burdens.”

Jake didn’t answer and instead, took a steadying breath.

And then exhaled void.

Like a blanket or net that spanned multiple dimensions, his void wrapped around the interdimensional monk’s form, and Jake infused it with his dao: the weight of his bonds–his void of family strengthening its spiritual weight–and dragged the man’s form together, as Ira roared to help him out, and make sure it was all encompassing.

His blanket did a little more than that–it was like a bridge or window between dimensions, and now, even Fhesiah could see and sense his form with her Divine Sense.

Fhesiah’s flames began to merge in her chest, preparing her breath of Celestial Alchemy as she launched several kitsune flames at him like darts, and rushed toward him with her claws out with her draconic flight.

Looks were deceiving, however, as while she flew toward him rapidly, it was like she hardly got any closer to his spiritual body, the extra-dimensional movement made things a unique challenge. And while her flames struck him through Jake’s void blanket, it didn’t feel or look like she hit anything substantial.

Ira roared as it gathered its flames in its mouth, and moved through the void at Jake’s mental target, and Jake had Pyros leave Avaron and Cassius, snaking outward, as Jake took on the state of Family.

His wives’s emotions were in sync from the man’s threat on their children, and those nearby already started to rush over. The others on the wind continent sat cross-legged and gathered mana, ready to send all the assistance they could.

Jake’s Hearthian presence, the flame in his chest, and the runes on his armor, shifted to a bright, golden flame that enhanced himself, Ira, and Fhesiah to an even greater level.

His void blanket did not last for long. Dozens of hungry ghosts burst through in nearly all directions, the monk following shortly after as he leapt away from Jake. And Ira’s mouth was there to bite off his hand at the wrist, and Pyros latched onto the handle of the shears in the shape of a chain with a cuff at the end.

The monk looked at his wounded wrist, Sati’s Pure Heart Flames burning away at his ghostly, spiritual form. “What! Impossible–” He grabbed the shears with his other hand as Jake tried to pull them away with his chains, but he couldn’t get them away from his grip–the monk was strong, somehow.

And a fist of Qi had shot out at Ira, forcing his familiar away. Meanwhile, the monk’s form started to spread out and split up, hundreds of hungry ghosts being released, his body or spirit not shrinking at all in the process. The spreading of the ghosts was reminiscent of eldritch tendrils, the man seemingly trying to find a path to escape.

Some headed toward Jake and Fhesiah, and some even lashed out at Ira–who met them with wicked claws of the void, dispersing them.

“Hestia, guide me to protect my family.” Jake said a quick prayer.

He knew he didn’t have much time to draw upon much Divine Energy, or the man might escape. So he did the next best thing: he asked his Goddess what the best action he had, and to his surprise, he remembered an object within his Storage Ring as she transmitted a thought.

Just like Fhesiah, Jake was a bit of a hoarder, always keeping tons of miscellaneous items, and to Berri’s consternation, not enough space for more superballs. Among his numerous cultivator artifacts and doodads, there were several that were a bit mysterious, and Jake hadn’t really found much use for them.

It was a karmic bell of echoes, an object that was almost like nine small bike bells on a jade base with a small lever that would hit the bells when pressed. Daoist scripts were inscribed on its surface, with a coiled bone through the top as a receiver of the sound.

Cultivators used it during rituals to weigh the karma in disciples, its sound reverberating across the veil like a tuning fork. It was a diviner’s tool that rang differently when the vibrations returned and scripts lit up, depending on a soul’s karmic burden, and it had numerous uses. Karma was often directly related to luck and fate, and negative karma could impact a soul’s general health.

The tool could even, in theory, out a spy or doppelganger. There were many mysterious magics among cultivators, but karma was one that was incredibly difficult to fool, and the ability to manipulate it in the first place was extremely rare.

In truth, Jake only had the bells with him or was interested in it for its side effect–the chimes soothed the soul, and he was hoping to enhance this effect–or somehow help Jasmina to learn or recreate it. So when Hestia pointed it out as a path to victory, he was shocked–it was only a measuring tool, after all. But without a moment’s hesitation, he brought it out and began gathering divine energy to ring it.

“A karmic bell? You think such toys–” The monk gloated, but was interrupted with a shout when the bells were rung.

The soft chime of many octaves at once sent out a near-white wave of force of holy light, and the beautiful sound was soothing to Jake’s ears–almost like the monk’s bells. But to the hungering ghosts, they screeched in pain and anger, the ghosts’ forms shrinking, the spiraling tendrils slowing.

When the chime returned and the bells rang again, echoing, it dragged the ghosts’ forms together like a net, far better than Jake’s original void blanket.

And now closer to the total form as she had been racing toward the hole in the dimensions, Fhesiah breathed out her Celestial Flames of Alchemy from her chest at what she perceived to be the man’s center mass.

Her powerful golden flames contained both the fires of creation and destruction merged into something even greater. The flames blasted into his form and shredded through several of the swarming ghosts, and the monk cried out in both pain and alarm.

As powerful as that seemed, Jake understood the truth. It was more like her flames had blasted the man’s foot outside a doorway, his form crossing multiple dimensional planes. But her flame hungered, spreading across even more ghosts and burning away at his spiritual body.

Jake used Call Summon on Avalara, Bloodberri, and Bree, knowing that these three were ready to continue fighting, and because they were so close, they appeared in fractions of a second. They immediately began to rush toward the monk, who was brought toward the physical dimension thanks to the bells.

It might have been smart to bring more of his wives, but the truth was that many of them were a great distance away. While it would only take a few seconds for them to appear, he didn’t have that kind of time right now. Not only that, but Team Wind was rather exhausted from their battle, comparatively.

Jake rang the bell again, knowing he would have to keep ringing it to keep his form from escaping. Fhesiah’s draconic claws swung at the monk, shredding his condensed form, and then Bree and Avalara’s claws and mace did the same, each maximizing their damage with manifestations of auril beasts.

Each blow caused the monk to grunt, but Jake could tell he was blunting the blow with countless hungering ghosts. It was as if he had a skin made of water, dulling the attacks, and the water refilled with each passing moment. It was only the weight of their spirituality that was piercing through, striking him and weakening his spirit.

Bloodberri brought her axe down, her body covered in bronze energy. The man grunted once more, and sent out several golden fists of Qi, reminding Jake of Sati’s moves. They attempted to knock the girls away, but they blocked the attacks with their spirits, roaring in defiance as they continued their assault. Vines stormed outward from Bree and Avalara, but the ghosts caused the vines to wither away rapidly.

Jake tugged on the shears even as he rang the bell a third time, expending more of his Divine Energy, and began preparing his Scorching Ray. He thought it was best to taunt the man, to make him stick around if he could.

Tugging on the shears with a bit more strength, he began to move the monk’s main form even closer. “Why don’t you let go, Brother? Freedom is the absence of such burdens.”

The monk was pissed, his breaths coming in uneven gasps and his voice filled with pain. “You… will pay. You don’t know what you face. Very well… then let me show you the weight of karma and fate. Let me show you how even gods are devoured by it.”

The man let go of the shears, to Jake’s surprise, and a chilling sensation crawled up Jake's and his family’s spines as dozens of bloodred eyes opened across the man’s ghostly outline. The monk’s weight on reality increased, a dread filling Jake and his wives as his malevolence was released into the world. Only the Enforcer they faced could compare, a terror that twisted their stomachs and drained the blood from their faces.

Shadow and light pooled within his eldritch body as the ghosts tightened within him, before threads of light and darkness launched out in all directions, like a halo of thousands of strands of hair.

They moved nearly as fast as lightning–Jake and his family members, and even Ira, were struck without delay. Most of them headed toward an unexpected direction: the collapsed mountain and the nearby army. Threads connected to people’s chests and foreheads, and began draining them of their existence.

The monk’s voice was mocking. “Do you see, Brother? Even your allies exist only to be threads in my loom. Their fates are mine to weave, their endings mine to devour. I may not be able to consume all of your fate and karma, true. But with their fates, I shall crush you all the same.”

Even the dead spirits of the betrayers and the Aspect’s followers were being consumed, their fates and karma eaten by the threads. With a storm of vines and claws, his girls and Ira tore through the threads, and Jake focused on ringing the bell again as he continued to gather and compress mana for his Scorching Ray spell.

While the threads were being replaced rapidly, it felt like his wives were not being drained very fast, compared to the forces outside, who were rapidly brought to their knees and fading away. Jake’s wives certainly appeared to have more resistance than the rest, and they continued to blast out into the monk, unleashing their attacks.

Avalara released the flames of conflict, her golden flames shooting like a beam of destruction into him. The man let out a pained grunt as many threads were torn away, his body succumbing to the attack.

Fhesiah launched yet another breath attack at his form, burning him and severing even more threads, but new ones appeared with each one burnt away. Bree’s claw, combined with a powerful manifestation and covered in her Nascent Divine Energy, swiped into his form, and tore much of it away. The man let out another pained grunt, the spirituality from her attack unable to be denied.

Because Jake did not want the side effect of her Twilight Divide, she used Between Heaven and Hell, holy dark wrapping around and debuffed him and the ghosts. Holy light smote the ghosts as it came down from above, and then she used her Technique to strike powerfully on his form, while both Blood and Berri infused their manifestations into the attack. Blood’s will of the monarch held him down, while Berri’s spiritual baseball bat slammed into him with their axe, cutting his form deeply.

And Jake launched his Scorching Ray, the prismatic flames of his family burning him brightly. This same attack had burned away even Tartarus before, but the monk just laughed. “Your little attacks are strong, true. But it only burns away my husk. What I offer the ghosts, they gladly surrender. This is not loss–it is still a feast.”

The man’s body swelled despite being burnt by the numerous flames, but Jake frowned and got an odd feeling as he watched with his Umbral Gaze. The threads appeared to be made up of tiny ghost faces. He realized that the threads were made of the hungering ghosts, their bodies stretched thin, each mouth attempting to bite and consume karma and fate, empowered by his Nascent Divine Essence.

Jake was different. The strands burned and frayed where they were meant to touch Jake, and rather than be afraid or concerned by this development, Jake felt…

His breaths came in heavy, his void-divine hearth flaring brightly. It was like Jake’s body had a taste of these hungering ghosts, and like before with Sati and the moon, it wanted more. At this pace, the man was going to consume his forces, and even his nearby wives–and burning him away meant burning away their fates instead.

Knowing that the man was made of hungering ghosts, he realized that he had something that they wanted.

He flared his void flame from within his furnace, bringing it out into the world in the palm of his hand. The many eyes once again focused on Jake, and the strands appeared to freeze.

The monk’s main eyes widened, the man gasping in alarm. “The void… no. Not here, not at this Tier. Who has fed you such poison flame? How can you exist?”

The monk struggled for a moment as if he was trying to turn away, but like moths to a flame, the threads all retracted and shot toward Jake instead, the ghosts not finishing their meals. The monk’s main body began floating toward Jake, and Jake’s body began drawing them in further–some tentacles launched out from Jake’s core, tendrils wrapping around the man’s form. It wished to feast upon him just as he had feasted upon others.

Like a vacuum sucking everything heading toward his void flame, Jake’s void in the center of his chest was consuming many of the threads instead of them being burned away. Many of the threads lost cohesion, an explosion of ghosts rushing into Jake.

“No! They should be mine–my debts, my threads, my ghosts! They are not yours to consume!”

The monk’s main body arrived in front of Jake, and while it was a monk wrapped in Jake’s void tendrils, he was still more than the man in front of him. In Jake’s Umbral Gaze, it was like a mountain of hungry ghosts was dragged along with him, the man doing everything in his power to keep the ghosts to himself–to prevent Jake from drawing them in and consuming them.

It seemed futile, however, as many threads and errant ghosts were drawn in by the moment. Jake was the perfect predator for the hungry ghosts and the monk, his hunger pitted against theirs as they were drawn in by the lure.

Having a good grasp on the monk with the void, Jake gathered the flames of his family along with his void flame into a final Scorching Ray attack. He compressed much of his hearth flames and their remaining mana from his wives, his Hearth Nexus allowing him to convert everything left, as his wives launched several attacks from the man’s rear and flanks.

Bree breathed out the powerful flames of spring fertility, which Fhesiah mixed with her blast of draconic and kitsune flames from the other side, releasing everything she had left into his form and empowered by her will. Avalara swung her mace downward, with a manifestation of an auril and nethril stag that overlapped, and crashed into his body.

Blood and Berri released the eclipsing sun, the beams of fiery light washing over his form, and the darkness held him in place along with her telekinesis. They cut into him again with their roaring axe enhanced by her bronze energies and a deadly blade. Each of their attacks weakened his spirit, and Jake could tell the monk’s ability to hold onto his form made of ghosts was crumbling.

The prismatic flame from Jake’s Scorching Ray was released directly at the monk’s core, targeting his Nascent Divinity, his spiritual body, from Jake’s chest to his.

The prismatic light was like a thunderstrike flashing in the darkness across the dimensions, the monk’s shifting silhouette pulsing against the mountain of souls. “It burns! Noooo! Do you know what you’ve done? You’ll drown in that hunger–your own void will devour you whole!”

The man burst into motes of light, the beam continuing into the sky over Bree’s shoulder. The mountain of ghosts started to flow into Jake like a river, like a dam had burst. They began to drain into his chest, his Void-Divine Hearth at a rapid pace, and Jake felt nearly euphoric as his hunger was fulfilled. He felt empowered, his body wracked with pleasure as his cells and core finally received what they craved.

His wives were alarmed, shocked by what was happening now–but totally lost on how they could help him.

Sati’s voice rang out in his mind, her voice filled with worry. [My Ishvara, you mustn’t! Please, call me to you. We must stem your hunger, before it is too late!]

Jake barely had the wherewithal to summon Sati, his mind addled from consumption. He knew on some level that consuming this man and all of the fates he consumed in his long life was not good. He wasn’t really sure how that could work with the man being in the Fourth Tier when forced down to the second, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to find out. But it was difficult to think or do anything about it, his mind becoming hazy, much like when Sati had him act as her mirror.

Appearing in motes of light next to him, numerous spiritual appendages unfurled from Sati like a flower blooming. She placed two hands on his chest next to where his void-divine hearth was, her other hands forming various mudras.

“My love, you must look at me.”

Jake turned and met her golden eyes with his, and he saw the depths of her emotions, her love, in them. Blinking from the shock of the sudden emotion, he realized he could feel similar care and love just flowing over his bonds from all of his wives. With that, he felt the hunger stem, some wherewithal returning to him.

Sati’s voice was gentle and loving. “You are more than your hunger. Any time you hunger for love, you only need to look to your wives to feast. Take a deep breath, find peace, and let it go. You have no need for this stolen karma, these tortured souls.”

Jake held on with his will, and called upon the weight of his bonds. His void’s weight pushed down on his void flame to put it away and stem the tide of his void as he took a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly.

The ghosts within him pushed outward, less dramatic than how they rushed inside, the void flame gone and no longer drawing them back in. And as they passed through Sati, they were purified by her pure heart flames. They rushed outward in all directions across dimensions, like a gentle haze or mist rather than tormented, hungering ghosts.

His other wives fell down in exhaustion, now that the danger appeared to be passing. Only Avalara wasn’t exhausted, and she instead focused on watching the criminals in case they stirred, but it seemed the draining the monk had done kept them from recovering.

Sati had a joyous smile now, continuing her various poses and mudras. “Yes, that’s right. Come into the hearth, be seared pure of your taint and hunger–not eaten.”

Jake continued exhaling, breathing out the ghosts. It was like an unending breath that never finished, spewing out the many ghosts the man had trapped inside him. He infused more mana and hearthflames into Sati to empower her, the family continuing to fuel her pure heart flame.

Sati said, “Return what was stolen, and let the world remember.”

It took several minutes, but when Jake was done, Avaron’s fleshy body looked more normal. Cassius and he were both still unconscious, and so were nearly all of his forces.

Sati smiled, proud. “You did it, my love. On this day, you have truly ended and prevented the suffering of many. The Dharma has been served.”

Jake was still alert, and he wrapped a part of Pyros back around his captives. He was completely exhausted.

Everyone was wrung out, but relieved. They had won, but each of them had an unsettling feeling lurking.

It wasn’t that they thought the monk was still alive. Jake had received a prompt that confirmed the monk was dead.

[Divine Aspirant has been defeated. Reward delayed due to fractured space and special circumstances detected. Bring any contraband items to the nearest Nexus Node.]

It was the feeling that something had changed, and it would never be the same again.