Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Book 17-23.1: Reunion

That the Ennoia was just out of reach frustrated her beyond belief, even if, logically, it was more than she could reasonably expect. Undaunted Bulwark Style had just been named after all, and while Severing Shard Style had been what led her to Bladeless Sword, on closer examination, the Truth and the sword style still had major differences.Ah, well. It should come to her, eventually. Afterwards, perhaps three different sword Truths could merge into a more powerful Truth. She wondered if it would take more Ennoias or if those could be put off for later. It was impossible to cover everything that was possible with the Sword with the relatively narrow scope of Ennoias, but perhaps if the foundations were wide enough? How many Truths would she need?

Ah, this was a distraction. Most of this was run by strands of consciousness back in Shangria, so the battle in Astoria was unaffected, but she could always use more of an edge. Shrouded Damien was proving more difficult an opponent than she expected despite how limited he was by his vessel. For that matter, she felt a smidgen of pity for the poor victim of the God-Monarch’s possession. 

The stalemate continued and she had a brilliant, yet probably foolish idea. It was only a matter of time before she touched the new Ennoia. Objectively, the clash between her probe and the invaders didn’t actually last more than about a tenth of a second. Subjectively, it could last for as long as they fought. This meant she could spend as much time as she could to progress to the Ennoia. She wouldn’t hold back, however, as that would only lead to defeat, but she could piggyback a third strand of consciousness in each probe that could be used to ponder the Truth. 

Excessive greed could lead to mistakes and disasters, so she would content herself to a passive strand of consciousness rather than forcefully experiment in the middle of a life and death battle. With Desire’s help, the mortals’ interference had been curtailed and all she needed to do was defend her Anima territory and fight back against the encroachment.

With three strands infused in each probe, she was able to push the shrouded Damien’s motes off balance more easily, and more consistently. At that point, she noticed he changed his targetting method. Before, he sought to penetrate as deeply into her Anima as he could, though he didn’t go for a straight line, but rather, a spike where the base widened as he pushed deeper into her territory. Her defence had started at the deepest point by sheer convenience, but while she pushed back against it, he continued to widen the base. Twenty percent of her Anima when the deepest point was at halfway meant that he had most of the quadrant. It was a big chunk, but she was confident in eventually beating him out. 

She succeeded in pushing back his thrust, but he covered a third of her sphere’s surface area now. The volume was a bit under twenty percent, and it was another twenty minutes since Desire arrived to kill the nearby soldiers. 

Yuriko replied.

Across hundreds of battles, she felt much closer to touching the new Ennoia. No name yet, but that would only happen once she actually reached it. What she had was an idea of what the new Sword Ennoia would entail, and as she expected, it was based on Undaunted Bulwark Style. 

Shrouded Damien had reached his plateau in how much skill he could bring to bear and she was slowly adapting. The win-loss ratio was about one to one at the moment, and had been that for the past ten minutes. With Undaunted Bulwark, her defences were more robust and didn’t lose as much Willpower as before. That was edging the ratio firmly to her side now. 

Undaunted Bulwark was interesting, she decided. She originally conceived it as a defense against projectiles, and somewhat adapted it to include melee defenses as well. Jade Mountain was better at static defenses while Flowing Water at more dynamic movements, which often meant dodging or deflecting blows away. Neither were specialised against ranged attacks, though they didn’t really suffer for it. Undaunted Bulwark turned attacks against their originator and if coupled with the other two defensive Styles, rounded out her techniques wonderfully. Of course, the other two phases had already been merged into her personal sword style, along with the Intent based sword dances of her early career. But as proven by Severing Shard and Bladeless Sword, there was no end to learning, and there was always something new to play around with. 

If she had to differentiate, beyond the purposes, Undaunted Bulwark focused more on angles of deflection as well as imparting enough force to return the attack. It was a sword style that would be impossible for a Novice to learn, and would need active access to Willpower in order to make full use of. She could probably teach the style to someone who had already mastered a single Phase of the Sword…

So what would the Ennoia look like?

Unyielding?

Yuriko frowned. Yes, that was part of it. She could feel the Ennoia begin to coalesce, and she needed to reach out a bit further to get it. 

Ah!

The next five probes popped and lost ground to Shrouded Damien, and just like that, the Ennoia faded away like a dream upon waking. 

“Rotter!” she growled, growing even more frustrated. 

Damien’s visage hadn’t changed, but the aura around his physical body shuddered with his wrath. And, perhaps, that instability was a sign of his vessel beginning to break. During the four years that the old pervert took up space in her mind, Damien’s Anima shroud didn’t last for more than ten minutes at a time. It’s been more than half an hour already, and the vessel must be cracking. 

She would win the fight as long as she held on, but that wouldn’t be a satisfactory end. It wouldn’t be safe to just defend either, and she knew the old pervert was wily enough that he would gain something even if he ostensibly lost. 

So she focused on gaining back Anima territory. The volume she reclaimed wasn’t any worse for wear, though there was just a little bit of a strain when she channeled Radiance through it. It healed over quickly when she did that, and she seemed to have an advantage when he tried to take over the same area afterwards. 

In the physical world, her body was completely aglow with Radiant energy as her cells produced as much of it as possible. She was ever thankful that she didn’t try to change her Physique when she took over Lilibeth’s body, otherwise she would have already been defeated. Oh, her costume was smoldering. It wasn’t built to contain that much heat, and her Anima would normally insulate it from that. 

But as it were, her entire being was focused on the fight, and she hoped she wouldn’t end up naked afterwards. Again. 

For some reason, her body was producing more Radiance than it normally did. Close to what her true body could output now. Huh. Her incarnation body’s Physique was advancing, wasn’t it? But without a Radiance core, how was she to control it? If she didn’t remain in control, would her body just burst into pure Elemental Radiance? Would she be able to regain human form afterwards? That was a concern, and not something her incarnation body to pay attention to at the moment. It was a good thing she had strands of consciousness to spare in her true body. 

Oh. The excess production was caused by what her true body’s strands were doing. Huh. She frowned at the dissonance between her bodies’ thoughts, but shunted the concern to the back of her mind. Partitioning her consciousnesses was necessary, and was an adaptation she had to make when her two bodies experienced different time flows. Otherwise, the same thing that happened to her when she entered that daemon nest could keep happening. 

It only took a single thought to find out what the true body had been up to. Oh. She modified the Radiant Physique.

Each cell not only produced Radiance, but it also contained a tiny core of the Colligia of Radiance. She was modifying her true body in the same way, and not only did it allow her greater control over Radiance, but she thought it was the way to advance the Colligia into Reperta. It wasn’t the only thing she had to do, and she sensed that it was a different process with how the Sword would eventually advance, but there it was. 

Hmmm. Would this allow her to rebuild her body if she ever got vaporised? Maybe, but then again, she wasn’t about to test that. 

The influx of Radiance provided all of the edge she needed to win, and soon enough, she retook enough Anima territory that only five percent of it had Shrouded Damien’s incursion. The shape of it was odd, though. Instead of occupying the entire volume, he’d positioned his motes into a sheet that nearly separated a large chunk of her Anima, roughly a full third of her volume save for several holes that connected it to the rest of her. 

Oh, rotter. 

Even though the old pervert’s face hadn’t expressed anything other than a snarl, she could feel the smirk, the smugness, and the triumph behind it. And in an incredible display of finesse, he took active control of every mote at the edge, then struck. She only had time to shoot a couple of probes, with six strands of consciousness infused into them, before he finished. 

A third of her Anima was severed. 

AAAAAHHHHHH!

Where once she had a true body and an incarnation body, she now had the two, and a severed chunk of Anima that thankfully was still under her control. Shrouded Damien pulled that chunk towards his vessel and shoved it inside. 

Pain lanced through her remaining strands of consciousness, and her true body subconsciously blockaded the connection between her bodies when the pain overwhelmed her. Her incarnation body fell unconscious, though the disembodied strands saw Desire grab her before she fell. Disembodied Yuriko barely saw the Chaos Lord flee with her incarnation body before her point of view shifted away from the physical world. 

Cut off from any support and replenishment, her mind raced. She had minutes before the probes died and the Anima would be lost, and only the thought that her true body wouldn’t suffer eased her panic. Her incarnation body would be weakened, no doubt about it, but it would recover. Eventually. Now, she wasn’t about to give up either, but she couldn’t afford to fight the way she did earlier. 

The edges of her chunk of Anima were  dissolving, but it was a slow process. She could no longer see what was outside, and the only thing she could think to do was to bide her time, strengthen her position, and strike at the core of Damien. 

He brought this chunk of her into his territory, but in so doing, he also brought her to where his weakness lay, the shard that contained his ego. She merged the two probes, and pulled as much of her Anima as she could control, though not too much that it would give the game away. Then, she fashioned herself into a sword. Unyielding. And tuned it using the Bladeless Sword. After all, she was quite familiar with Damien, and all it would take to bring him down was to hit him. 

And so, she waited.