386 - The First Two Guidestones Pt. 2/Fear of Perfection Pt. 1 [Sturmblitz]

The Estoras Family’s Seven Calamity Armaments were unique in being a truly independently-developed art, but to say they were entirely unrooted from Grekurian cultivation and martial arts would have been a lie. And these… Crovacus couldn’t articulate what a treasure this was if he tried. Despite only totaling three or perhaps four volumes across all the fragments, Crovacus knew that with these as his reference material, he could refine and evolve the Calamity Armaments to a level never before seen. He also knew in his heart of hearts that he simply didn’t have enough time to achieve it on his own, and that he would inevitably require the aid of the Newman Sect in one way or another — and he didn’t care.

The weapons, then, put the Estoras family treasures to shame completely and undeniably. It was one thing when it was the Walking Tribulation with her monstrous, shapeshifting cleaver — there was no such thing as that among the Seven Calamity Armaments. But these ran the full gamut. There were two examples of each of the seven, except for swords and spears, of which there were four each. With blades of singing steel and stone as black as the night sky, with jewels like stars gleaming down their lengths and handles of wood that could scarcely even be considered mere wood, shod with metals no living man knew how to produce. Half of them were worthless to him, carrying mighty imbuements of elements counter to flame, but Crovacus didn’t care, he was completely willing to trust that someone, some day, would somehow develop a variant of the Calamity Armaments 

“With this…” he uttered under his breath. A few stray thoughts sailed past — with this, forget a single noble family, a single city. With this, he could sail to the far lands of the eagle-men, he could found an entire sect with this as its foundation, he could be a god-king in a far-off land.

All those thoughts crumpled under the weight of reality, of the impending future that Crovacus forsaw for Willowdale, his people, his family, here in this land.

“With this, I no longer hold any doubt that I shall carve the Estoras name into history for all time. Halxian!”

He took in hand a mighty spear of pure blackstone, with seven gemstones down its shaft connected by channels inlaid with silver, and held out its surprisingly weighty form to his son.

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With countless eyes upon the Newman Sect Founder’s every public move, within only days of her doing something, rumors quickly began to spread.

Whether it was recently-awakened cultivator-beasts or the possibility of unwelcome cultivators from the Survivor Sects or the Order of Six Truths, she had been going out under the slightest excuse, bringing lower-ranked sect members along as part of training. They, in turn, acted as witnesses and disseminated these rumors. She knew of this, and it didn’t bother her at all.

The most recent rumor was, to the unenlightened, merely interesting, but to those with eyes to see, it was unprecedentedly audacious: She had begun wielding a wild variety of weapons.

To those who had even basic knowledge of Storm-soul Cultivation and its characteristics, it was like saying water had become dry. This method, whose greatest flaw was that it shackled the practitioner to one or at most two weapons — how could someone so dedicated to it, whose cultivation had taken her through the deepest abyss of having your living weapon shattered, now disregard that same restriction out of hand?

It was a key detail that contained the answer — every single weapon Zelsys brought to bear possessed the monstrous features of Carnifex Fulguris. Short cleavers, kriegsmessers, longswords, spears, battleaxes, halberds, great lances, tiny daggers, maces and hammers, even bladed fans and rope darts. Then, there were the claws, and the biting. The claws were one thing — she already had them, and simply built upon them by adding False Fangs on top. But the teeth, the teeth stuck with people. It wasn’t just the fact she bit her prey, or even that she bit chunks out of her prey while it was still alive. No, it was how far she took it. She would open her mouth, and keep opening it, willing her cheeks to split open so she could open it wider, and then she would form an oversized set of external teeth out of a dozen False Fangs, creating the appearance of a chittering lower-face-mask when her mouth was closed. With this, she was seen to directly bite off the top half of a beast’s head, swallow it, and digest it within seconds. One moment, the bulge could be seen traveling down her throat, and the next, in a flash of lightning and enormous exhalation of steam, it was gone, flesh, bones and all, and she spat up the Azoth Stone unharmed afterwards, having stowed it in her second stomach.

All of these widely varied armaments were still Carnifex Fulguris.

In the absence of a challenge suitable to Carnifex’ true form, Zelsys had intentionally restrained herself in this manner, not only to entertain herself, but also to gain a better understanding of other weapons.

“Carnifex Fulguris is the only blade allowed to Zelsys Newman.”

But Carnifex Fulguris could become whatever she required of it.

In this manner, not only could she refine her skill with changing Carnifex’ shape, she could also handle any melee weapon she could think of, explore its martial arts, and take from them whatever she wanted.

But it still wasn’t what she wanted.

By any reasonable metric, it could be said that she had been advancing with meteoric speed.

But Zelsys felt that, despite still moving forward by momentum, she had lost some propulsive force of advancement — that everything since the Blue Moon War until now had been a continuous path of advancement, which she had only just now finished walking. Kugelblitz Incarnation, the Truth of Fangs, the reforming of her flesh to fit to the utmost extent — it all came together to a sense of “completeness.” And that was a problem. Perfection meant the inability to improve further. She couldn’t let herself become “perfected,” not at this stage, not ever.