Chapter 251: Losing the Battle to Win the War (1/2)

Jason dashed forward, his sword flicking out.

“Faster,” Sophie said, catching every strike with her hand as she moved backwards, easily matching the pace of Jason’s advance.

“You don’t need to hit hard,” she said. “If you’re going to fight the constructs effectively, it’s about building up the power on your sword as quickly as possible.”

Fending off Jason’s attacks while moving backwards at speed was apparently not strenuous enough to make her incapable of carrying on conversation. They had chosen rough terrain on purpose, with undergrowth, vines and plants growing up though displaced brickwork. Sophie navigated it easily, without even looking around.

Her perception power, the only one on the team yet to provide magical senses, gave her an advanced form of spatial awareness. Each member of the team experienced a similar gain in spatial awareness, just from their senses advancing to bronze, but hers was an order of magnitude greater. It was the difference navigating a well-known room in the dark and moving through it with the lights on.

More than just navigating whatever space she happened to occupy, Sophie’s senses made her far better at reading the attacks of enemies. She could track the movements of everyone around her, intercepting attacks she could feel, even if she couldn’t see them.

Jason had experienced a surge in his combat skills between his bronze-rank attributes and the new Way of the Reaper techniques that made the most of them. For Sophie, though, reaching bronze-rank was putting wings on a tiger. Like Humphrey, her combat skills were the platform on which her entire power set was balanced, and being stronger faster and more aware of her surroundings were acting as force multipliers to her capabilities.

For Jason’s power set, by comparison, strategic movement was more critical than combat technique. Being in the right place at the right time was the most important factor in making the most of his abilities and the balance of his training reflected that. Since many of those powers would be ineffective against the cult’s constructs, however, he would be reliant on his sword. For that reason, Humphrey and Sophie were taking turns helping him hone his swordsmanship.

As with most things, Jason’s approach to swordsmanship was slightly off-kilter to most people. As with his knife-fighting style, quantity of hits was more important than quality. He didn’t need powerful strikes but frequent ones, to build up the power on his sword. He did actually need to land hits, not just harmless taps, but even the least effective blow would get the job done, so long as it was effective at all.

With the bronze-rank advancement, the sword would not just build up charges with each hit. It would also leave behind ongoing damage effects, bringing it more into line with Jason’s normal style, although not as effectively as his normal powers. While that meant diminished capability, Jason was quietly relieved that his entire worth couldn’t be replicated by a single, albeit impressive, magic item.

“Mr Asano,” Shade said, emerging from Jason’s shadow. Jason and Sophie brought their practise to a stop.

“There’s been some activity?” Jason asked.

“It would seem that the Builder has moved to its new vessel,” Shade said. “Unexpectedly, it did not kill of the previous one, but threw it out of the fortress immediately.”

Jason and Sophie had been practising just outside the church building containing the cloud house. As Shade talked, they made their way back inside to meet with the team.

“The Builder’s vessel survived having the Builder in it?” Jason asked.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Shade said.

“Well, wait on an explanation until we meet up with the team,” Jason said. It was not long before the team were gathered in the lounge room of the cloud house.

“What are we dealing with?” Humphrey asked.

“The Builder’s previous vessel,” Shade said. “The Builder’s new one, the former Mr Mercer, cast it out of the fortified camp in person.”

“What kind of state is it in?” Jason asked. “I didn’t think it would survive.”

“It won’t have, strictly speaking,” Clive explained. “It’ll be an energy ghoul, now; an undead thing only kept animate by residual magic. Little, if any of the original mind will be intact.”

“It was acting in a very animalistic manner,” Shade said.

“The magic sustaining it won’t last long,” Clive said. “It will need more to avoid going from undead to just plain dead.”

“What kind of magic?” Belinda asked.

“The kind flowing through all of us,” Clive said. “We’ve discussed in the past about how the bodies of anyone, iron-rank or higher, move closer and closer to a generic magical substance that it shapes as need. The magic involved in that process is governed by the soul. An energy ghoul feeds by disrupting that magic with a soul attack, then consuming it.”

“Why did the Builder throw this thing out, instead of just putting it down?” Jason asked. “Won’t it be a threat to their people?”

“The cultists all have souls poisoned by their star seeds,” Clive said. “The Purity church people will be vulnerable to it, however.”

“Which the cult may not care about, now the leader of the church contingent is dead,” Humphrey said. “The Builder may not care about what they have to contribute, now they aren’t providing a silver-ranker.”

“I believe that we can surmise the church’s contribution,” Shade said. “The former vessel was in an improved condition, compared to when Mr Asano and myself met with the Builder.”

“He’s been feeding the church people to it?” Jason asked. “That’s a bad ally to have.”

“A great astral being is one of the few that do not need fear a god’s retribution,” Clive said. “The gods of our world can’t see into this astral space, because it isn’t part of our world. So long as none of Purity’s people come back alive, the Builder can just blame all the deaths on us.”

“I’m happy to do my part,” Sophie said. “I’ll kill them all with a smile on my face.”

“Sophie!” Belinda scolded. “Since when do you smile?”

The team stifled laughs at Sophie’s affronted expression.

“Let’s keep on topic,” Humphrey said, despite the poor job he was doing of schooling amusement from his own face. “How dangerous is this thing?”

“Was it a silver-rank aura?” Clive asked Shade.

“Yes,” Shade said. “Its aura is unstable, but quite violent.”

“And that’s the real threat,” Clive said. “The physical danger it poses is relatively small, akin to an ordinary, silver-rank monster. No additional powers, not even claws. Just the silver-rank attributes.”

“Relatively small,” Jason said. “You haven’t gone toe-to-toe with a silver-rank monster. Just the attributes is plenty dangerous enough.”

“But not something beyond your ability to handle alone,” Clive said, “which is the important thing. If it can suppress our auras, it will launch a soul attack. We’ve seen the results of that courtesy of you, Jason. We can most likely withstand it, but you’re the only one of us likely to hold up well enough to remain combat effective. The rest will have to focus on maintaining our aura integrity.”

“That puts it all on Jason,” Humphrey said. “Are you up for that?”

“I’ll have to be,” Jason said. “I still don’t understand what the Builder is looking to accomplish in feeding this thing up and sending it off. What does he get from doing that?”

“An energy ghoul is incredibly sensitive to the life and soul magic. It also ignores monsters, because it can’t feed on them effectively.”

“He wants to use it to find us,” Sophie said.

“That seems likely,” Clive said. “It’s not a bad idea, either. It probably won’t even take that long to find us. It’s movements will be erratic until it catches our trail. Not an actual trail, but a sense of our magic. Once it does, it’ll make a beeline, right for us.”

“I have one of my bodies following it,” Shade said. “It is making a straight line, but not in our direction.”

“I think Mr Standish may be incorrect in counting the soul attack as the largest danger the energy ghoul presents,” Shade said. “Following the ghoul is a small scouting construct created by the Builder. The moment we engage with the ghoul, the Builder will know.”

“It seems that you were right, Clive,” Humphrey said. “The Builder is using this thing to flush us out.”

“It makes sense,” Neil said. “If you have it laying about, why not throw it at us? It’s kind of wasting a soul-sucking monster, otherwise.”