Apocalypse Cultivation 2, Ch 25

Okay this is it for the uploads tonight. :)

I'm working my ass off trying to get this book done this week.

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Jake didn’t exactly lose consciousness, his mind just couldn’t properly comprehend what was happening.  He instinctively knew that time, space, and every other building block of reality was being stretched, moved around, or even replaced.

The sensation didn’t last long, or maybe it did.  Jake had no way to tell.  Not for the first time, Jake was reminded of the limitations of his cultivation time sense.  He could usually tell what time it was, but when he moved between worlds, or things changed too much, everything could get wonky.  At least he’d been growing, being able to reintegrated with a world’s energy upon returning and be able to tell how much time was there…maybe.

If he’d had more time to spend on his senses on earth, maybe he’d have a better grasp of it.  Insead, he’d been fighting nonstop, and now he was being pulled to God-knows-where, probably about to die.

In the moment, he wasn’t that upset about his looming demise.  Live by the sword, die by the sword, he thought.  But if at all possible, he was going to live by the sword and hopefully put it through the bovine fuck that wouldn’t leave him alone.  Jake hadn’t picked this fight.  He never picked the fights, just tried to finish them.

The shitty thing about being stuck in limbo, conscious, was how much time one can spend stuck in their own head with nothing to do but think about things.  Jake realized that losing consciousness in the past when he’d traveled between dimensions or worlds had probably been a kindness, or a lucky break.  Maybe he was more powerful now and this was a natural result.  He had a hard time believing that the gods or whatever just sat around in the darkness between seconds having an existential freakout, though.

Next, his musing turned to what he’d just been thinking about before.  Was it true that he hadn’t picked this fight?  Like, if it isn’t intentional, does that mean he didn’t do it?

Jake didn’t like that line of thought.  He didn’t like it at all.  But stuck in his own mind like this with no distractions, he couldn’t help but keep nagging himself about it.

Ultimately, he had to admit that everything that had happened to him had generally been a result of choices Jake had made or things he’d done.  Granted he didn’t regret them–he’d never just lay down and give up or chose the easy path if he didn’t think he could live with himself afterwards, but he really had managed to do a good job pissing off several evil gods.

It wasn’t like Tlaloc had just pulled his name out of a hate and decided to hate one man-turned-ghoul in particular.  Even Ahriman had good reason to hate Jake.  It wasn’t all about Jake turning down his job offer, there was the small matter of a destroyed world…or something.

Jake realized that even though it was unintentional, he was becoming something of an annoying splinter for evil gods.  And the realization amused him.  In fact, wasn’t it possible he’d just fucked up another one of Tlaloc’s schemes before being kidnapped by Retard the Demonic Bull?

Very possible.

Jake thought about a few more things, going back as far as his childhood.  He realized that there wasn’t much good that could come from feeling memory cringe for the 1000th time for mixing  up the words, “mutilate,” and “rape,” when he was nine years old.  He forced himself out of his memories and instead focused on the Phoenix Dao he’d assimilated, as well as the Four Winds of Heaven Spirit Purification.

As he floated in the void, with nothing to distract his mind, not even his senses, he felt an…awareness take seed of something he was still not aware of, something he might know to exist now.  He didn’t know what it was, but even the certainty it was out there felt…invigorating.  Almost enlightening.

In fact, Jake felt like he might be on the path toward another type of enlightenment.  Something within him also cautioned that he wasn’t quite ready yet.  Jake heeded this voice.  There was no lying in this place, even to himself.

Next Jake thought about his affinity for shadow, really tried to explore it in a way he’d never be able to do in the material world.

Whatever surrounded Jake was the deepest darkness he had ever experienced.  Not a speck of light contaminated this endless expanse of black.  It was intimidating, terrifying…but also beautiful.  Jake reached out and touched it, welcomed it.

He mentally subsumed himself in shadows, submerged himself in the idea of darkness.  Even though he existed only in spirit, he knew how his energy, his soul moved and vibrated as he cycled his cultivation base.  So while he could not actually cycle his cultivation base, he could create a virtual approximation, all while pondering the shadows and filling himself with darkness.

What was a shadow anyway?  Shadows were not the night.  They were darkness, yes, but had boundaries, existed right next to the light.  At night there was no duality, no puddles of light.  It was only during the day, with shadows, that light and darkness existed together.

Light and darkness.  Often thought of as two sides of the same coin.  Sometimes darkness was thought of as the absence of light, like non-light.

It was true that light dispelled darkness, but did it?  If white paint were applied over black paint, did the white paint cease to exists?  White and black mixed together created grey.  The closest Jake could think of to “grey” in the natural world regarding light and darkness was twilight, but that didn’t feel right.

Boundaries.  Grey.  Light and darkness.  Rules of light.  Absence of light or darkness.  Jake felt like he was close, very close to something amazing, maybe even another enlightenment leading to a great dao.

Understanding grew in Jake, blooming like a withered seed that greedily drank in all the shadow that Jake had channeled into his soul.  He learned that much like he’d always suspected, light and darkness did not have any inherent moral affiliation.  Light had been claimed by “good” as much because primitive sapient beings relied on light to see than anything else.  Blindness was frightening.  It could hide predators and could rob one of one of their senses.

However, without darkness, like would not be like, but just what was.  And if one was no inconvenienced by darkness, they would not fear it.  Without fear, perhaps the day could be considered inherently evil.  After all, the heat of the sun could kill as surely as the cold of night.

Location mattered, too.  Night in the desert could be as welcome as daytime in the arctic.  Duality.  Relativity.  Variables all circling around one great truth.

Jake felt his mind explode.  It was different than the last time he’d attained enlightenment.  This time he had no physical body so it was purely spiritual.  It was also not complete.  The best analogy he could think of was that it felt like getting halfways up the stairs and finding a comfortable resting place, but not quite making it to the first landing.

He wanted to make it the rest of the way.  All of his instincts were telling him that it wouldn’t take much more of a push.  But before he could fully cross that threshold, throw himself into the abyss of understanding the rest of the way, he was suddenly corporeal again.  He was only surprised into inaction for a fraction of a second, but he likely wouldn’t have been able to react in time, anyway.  Manacles of silvery metal erupted from shadows, fastening onto his arms and legs.

Jake tried to reach for his weapons, to open his storage ring, but nothing worked. He was helpless.

Then the silvery constructs dragged Jake away, seemingly right through mountains, through pouncing beasts, over oceans, and past stars.  None of his senses could agree on anything.  The world kept changing every heartbeat, and sometimes what Jake’s senses told him didn’t make any sense.  He couldn’t move, couldn’t cycle his cultivation base, but he was definitely back in his physical body.  Yet it felt now like he was trapped in a never ending kaleidoscope fashioned in the bowels of hell.

Blasts of fire destroyed islands in the distance as massive glaciers crashed down upon active volcanoes.  Some of the chaos was beautiful, but it was primale, savage, and unending.

Being pulled by the sifling chains at a high rate of speed, passing through these enormous panoramas of destruction and creation was like passing through the extreme ends of time.  Jake felt he was in danger of being overwhelmed, but the glimmer of a new dao he’d begun to incorporate helped him keep watching, observing everything around him no matter how nonsensical it was.

He never had to close his eyes or shut off his other senses.  As a result, he kept his wits and actually had some time to think even while he was presumably being carried to his doom.  His cultivation senses were opened up as far as he could push them, but he wasn’t actually able to learn much.  The very nature of the place he found himself pushed back in on them, sort of like a supernatural pressure that got stronger the farther his senses extended.  He could only vaguely tell that Canophta was nearby.

Jake was able to run through every other way he had to gather information, and had a lucky, surprising break.  He also was able to establish a new, “local clock” for whether this place was that allowed him to watch time tick past while he traveled.

Finally, he began to slow.  Instead of tensing, Jake actually loosened up.  He’d had some time to think, to go through all of his available resources, and discover another new tool he had at his disposal.  While it was true that he was restrained, wounded, exhausted, and in a completely unfamiliar place, he also had a few more tricks up his sleeve.

One moment Jake was watching a swarm locusts the size of small moons rain down on the land, snuffing out entire ecosystems, and the next he was moving past an archway with an energy barrier into what looked like an ornate garage.

The chains, wires, and manacles on Jake’s limbs stayed in place, but now they terminated directly down in the floor.  Jake’s belt was empty.  His wooden sword was in his storage where he’d put it, but Bloom had been lost when he’d been abducted.  Jake didn’t have any weapons on his person and his storage was being suppressed.  Again.  Still.  This was becoming annoying.

Logically, he concluded it likely had something to do with the manacles.

“Welcome to my home,” said Conophta.  Now that he’d said something, it was obvious that the room had been created at giant, demonic minotaur scale.  The ceilings were warehouse-high.

This was the first clear view of his enemy that Jake had gotten.  He was fully healed and rested, that much was obvious.  He was also wearing a highly sophisticated, metal arm as a prosthetic.

As the minotaur walked, the chains dragged Jake after him.  But instead of being dragged around like a sack of flour, Jake opted to walk upright like he was here of his own free will.  Conophta glanced back once to confirm he was following and his mouth twitched.  His face wasn’t human, but Jake could read amusement mixed with respect.

Jake knew he was here to die, and Conophta knew he knew it, and also saw that Jake was still unbowed.

They left the garage and entered a massive sitting room with a huge, roaring fireplace surrounded by stuffed animal heads, most from animals Jake had never seen before.  There was even a huge lizard head that looked like a dragon.  Maybe it had been a dragon.

Conophta gestured before sitting down.  The chains dragged Jake over on the other side of the room.  “I feel that I must apologize.  When I first met you, I’d wished to have an honorable fight.  But before anything else, I am the champion of a God, and his orders must come first.  So despite the fact that you fought bravely, even earning a momentary draw–”

“You ran away when I was about to beat you.”

The minotaur ignored him and continued, “I had to come back and ensure your demise.  This is, unfortunately, no longer a fight, but is now an execution.  We had our battle, and it was satisfying, but now I must carry out the will of my master.  All I can do is ensure, one warrior to another, that you die well.  My master has no direct ill will for you, but he still suggested that I torture you.  It would please Ahriman more.”

“So is this a sexual thing?” asked Jake.  He  had a plan, so he channeled a bit of Aldina.  Nobody could talk shit like his late sister.  “Is this your kink?  All tied up, powerless?  I didn’t know you were into that stuff.”

Conophta made an expression like he’d been hit in the face with a shovel.  “What?”

“You know, having an enemy, a dark and sinister man bound and at your mercy.  Should I beg?  Is that what you want? Like, ‘Oh, mister bull man, please, no!  I don’t have udders!  Not the electric fence, anything but that!”

“I, no. I–”

“Because I’m not going to beg.  Also, I can see you are all healed up.  Fit as a fiddle.  So time must move faster in this place, huh?  So you’re going to kill me?  I hope you’re not planning to use some crude weapon in your inventory.  An execution needs an execution blade.  But then again, you need to have your way with me, first, right?  I mean, that’s the main reason you brought me here.  Just an evil god champion, raping bull.  That’s what they say about Conophta.  I heard it, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Rape? That’s not it at all. I–”

“Just admit that I’m sexy, cow man!  I’m sexy, and you can’t control yourself.  You found a flavor you like, and that flavor has claws and sharp teeth and smoky stuff always rising from his skin! Why must I be cursed with these amazingly good looks.  Is it the horns?  It’s the horns, isn’t it?  Do you have horn envy?  Maybe my dick is bigger than yours too. That would be the real irony, but I hear that sometimes the bigger guys are lacking, you know, downstairs.  That would be awkward for you, but good for me, I guess.  You look like the type of kidnapper that won’t use lube.  Are you going to use lube, Conophta?  But that would be honorable, right? And you’re all about honor, or so you say.

“Are you going to use lube, you tiny dicked, kidnapping, fake honorable cow rapist!?”  He shouted the last line.

Conophta blinked rapidly before his nostrils flared and a crease formed between his eyes.  His jaw set and he gestured.  A new cable rose from the floor and the stip at the end went over Jake’s mouth, keeping it shut.

“I’d hoped these last moments could be more civilized, but so be it.”  Then the huge minotaur stomped out of the room.  Jake figured he couldn’t kill him right away or he would have already done it.  Either that or he had something to do first, some preparation to make.  Jake had bet everything on it, but for good measure he’d thrown in the line about the execution sword.  Conophta wanted so badly to see himself as a noble warrior, maybe he really had gone to get one.

Jake pulled himself as far over to the left as he could, and smiled when he saw it was just barely enough.  This is what he’d needed, to be left along, even for a moment.  The manacles and chains wrapped around his limbs were the real deal.  Jake could sense that even if he were another full stage higher in cultivation, the restraints could have probably rendered him powerless.  Of course, that was an assumption, and the reality was if he hadn’t been wounded, and especially if he’d been more advances, he highly doubted the restraints could have latched on in the first place.

Either way, Jake was wounded, actually more badly than he’d though before.  He was bleeding all over the marble floor.  His power was dangerously low, even if it hadn’t been suppressed.  He was currently standing in the heart of his enemy’s seat of power, in his fortress-like home, apparently on a world so confusing and chaotic that the minotaur had zero worries about Jake escaping.

By all accounts, Jake should be dead to rights.  However, he had two, maybe three trump cards.  The first, Phoenix Piercing Talon, could probably still be used even in this situation.  However, the backlash would be severe.  Still, Conophta obviously had no idea how cultivation powers worked, or about any Jake’s power in particular.  If Jake had to, he could probably free himself, it would just come at a great cost.

However, he had another, better option.  One he’d just acquired.

Short of even a glimmer, a glimmer of a glimmer, he’d still stumbled across the tiniest portion of a new dao.  Sunlight in Shadows.  And while there was a cost to use a new power from this dao that he possessed, it would be easier to pay than the alternative.

He checked one more time.  Yes, his foot was touching a shadow on the floor.

This would be the first time he attempted Shadow Meld, but he’d been flirting with this new Dao for a while, and he had the benefit of borrowing some of Morrigan’s power.  When he activated the ability, it was like riding a new, heavier bike.

Jake turned into living shadow.  It was just for a second or two, but he felt everything change.  His senses, his physiology, even the way he viewed the world.  It was a transformative experience.

Since he’d technically be incorporeal, when the transformation ended, he’d expected the restraints to have fallen right through his limbs.

Unfortunately, when the effect ended, he was still tied up and helpless.  And now he had almost no power or focus left.  There might not even be enough to use Phoenix Piercing Talon, at least not enough to sever all of the restraints.

“Shit.”