Chapter 350: Humanity (2/2)

So long as their souls never made it to the astral, this did not draw the attention of the Reaper. Once a soul entered the astral it was the Reaper’s to govern, but until then it was the affair of the local death god, if any. The Reaper’s concern was not with cheating death but coming back from it once the soul passed on to the astral.

The bond served as a tether for the soul, guiding it to the new body. It was the reason she had refused the magical augmentations that her position in the EOA offered. Although the potential of the bond was untested, she did not want to risk severing it. It was the reason why she had looked the eldest of the Four Cardinals, despite Mr North and Mrs West both being her senior.

After all those years, Audrey had finally tested it out, with success that both surprised and relieved her. Her new body felt strong and potent, although it was possessed of an unnerving power that she was yet to understand. She felt like a child wearing new clothes that had been bought for her to grow into.

One thing about her body she was very aware of, was that it was hungry for power. The car had contained a small fortune in spirit coins taken from the Network years previous; mostly bronze coins but even some precious silvers. The first thing she had done after steadying herself enough to move around properly was to shove bronze coins into her mouth, one after the other. Each left the electric tingle on her tongue of licking a battery but their power felt hollow, like diet soda of the soul. Ten of the coins vanished into her mouth before she was sated. She felt a craving for the silver coins but steeled herself to keep them in reserve.

Her senses were far more powerful than those she had had in her old body. More than once as she drove along the highway she had been forced to pull over with vertiginous sensory overload. Even the monochrome, empty desert was capable of overwhelming her. She saw things far in the distance; colours she didn’t know existed. The dry air on her skin told a story of the weather and her location that she understood on an instinctive level. She had the concerning sensation of the instincts behind that sense not being entirely human.

Sitting the driver’s seat by the side of the road as her dizzyingly overwhelming senses settled once more, she considered her options moving forward. The smart move would ordinarily be to stay dead, collect the resources she had hidden away and live quietly on a beach somewhere. With the complications likely to arise from her new body and a world facing a monster apocalypse, this was not a viable approach.

The EOA’s plan was precipitously close to the next phase, the media interference preventing the Network from effectively seizing the initiative before the monsters started to appear. She couldn’t go back the EOA, nor would she. There was the Cabal, with whom she had contacts, and they might even see her as one of their own, now. She had no idea what their response to the EOA’s actions would be, though, and she would be tarred with the same brush, even after leaving them.

That meant the Network. She didn’t have as strong connections there but she did have leverage. The information she possessed was exactly what they were going to need. Even so, she hesitated. They would likely be even more hostile than the Cabal and there was an outside chance some local goon might decide to torture what she knew out of her. It was unlikely anyone would take the risk with what was currently at stake, but it was something she was wary of.

She thought about what she had done, standing up to the other cardinals. She was not a decent human being. The decent part was long gone and now the human part was gone with it. But there had to be a line. She wasn’t going to become a monster, which is why she could not tolerate letting civilisation crumble in a grasp for power.

She'd had to walk to the gas station to get the car running. The petrol in the can in the shed had long since degraded. Fortunately, the money stash had not. She’d bought a cheap burner phone while she was there but she didn’t have any of her contacts saved. Like everyone else, she had given up memorising phone numbers years before. She did know where to find the Network branch in Phoenix though, so once her head cleared, she started up the car and continued on.

Jason and Kaito were flying over an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory that wasn’t large enough to be spared a Network presence, which was true of most of the outback. Jason blurred and vanished from the passenger seat of the helicopter as he phased into the proto-space. It was something that continued to unnerve Kaito, even when he knew it was coming.

Kaito landed to rest and recover some mana, consuming an iron-rank coin for himself and feeding one to the helicopter through a slot on the outside of the helicopter. The slot had originally been in the cockpit but every person who saw him use a spirit coin on the helicopter made a coin-operated joke. Now, when he conjured the helicopter, the coin intake was located in a discreet spot on the exterior.

Twenty minutes later, his helicopter detected a strong aura burst a few kilometres away and he moved to pick Jason up. Jason had emerged from the proto-space after hunting the anchor monsters.

“Any problems?” Kaito asked as Jason stepped aboard.

“Nah, the anchor monsters were only bronze. No flyers, either, so Shade just flew me right over the trash. It would be nice if I could bring you into the spaces with me.”

“We both know that won’t be happening.”

Jason could only transition into proto-spaces alone and there was no way Kaito trusted Jason enough to enter his spirit vault.

“Mr Asano,” Shade said. “There is an issue that has arisen at the family compound.”

“Didn’t we decide to call it Asano Village?”

”That proposal was rejected,” Shade said. ”Discussions are ongoing, although the situation is generally too chaotic for such organisational concerns. There is still some contention as to the necessity of moving to the compound, despite your warnings and demonstrations.”

“People have been watching the stories that say I’m either a hoax or a killer?”

“They have,” Shade said. “The latest family-related problem is quite different, however. A woman has arrived from Japan claiming that she wants to test your worthiness to carry the Asano name.”

“Bugger that,” Kaito said. “No one gets to tell us if we can carry our own damn name.”

Jason glanced at his brother and they shared a nod.

“Damn right,” Jason said.

“What would you like me to do until you get back, Mr Asano?” Shade asked.

“Find that lady and tell her to park her worthiness where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Very well,” Shade said. “If you do not mind, however, I would prefer to paraphrase.”