WIEDERGEBURT Act III: Chapter 18

I could do nothing except stare blankly at the spot where Kayli had been standing. It was just a trench now, a long stretch of gouged out earth. Kayli was gone. She was gone. Gone gone gone gone gone gone—

“That was easy,” a voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked up at the man who had killed my daughter. “I suppose she was just a child, after all. I didn’t have to use so much power to kill her, but… oh, well.”

As the man continued to talk, rage welled up inside of me. It bubbled in my gut and surged through my veins. I hated this man. I hated him. I wanted to murder him. I wanted to tear off his arms, rip out his throat, and strangle him with his own intestines. I had never hated anyone as much as I did this man right now.

“Do you want to kill me?” The man’s smile was condescending and filled with malice. “You are free to try, though you’d only be wasting your time. I’ve attained this grand vessel. I have the powers of the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain, while you haven’t even unlocked your potential yet.”

I had no idea what this man was saying, but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered anymore.

Nothing except killing this son of a bitch.

My Spiritual Power surged as my body transformed into lightning. I rocketed forward faster than anyone could track. I was going to run straight through his body.

That was the plan anyway.

The man lifted his hand and a massive well-spring of Spiritual Power burst out from it. An unfathomable black fire spread from his hand and formed a barrier in front of his body, though this didn’t stop me. I poured even more Spiritual Power into my body, transforming it into lightning, and then I ran straight into the wall.

“Ah! AHHHH!!!”

I had been expecting to break through the wall, but what happened instead was I slammed into it and nearly broke instead. This wall, whatever it was made of, was sturdier than anything I’d felt before. But that wasn’t enough to make me give up. I screamed and poured more Spiritual Power through my body and kept going. Cracks formed on the wall before, with a sound like shattering glass, the wall broke apart.

And turned into a flame that engulfed me.

“AAAAAAHHHH!!!”

My scream of pain was drowned out by the roaring inferno of the black flames which sought to consume me. I hit the ground and rolled. My body transformed back into a regular human as the flames greedily devoured the Spiritual Power I was using. The pain intensified. It was like my body was being dunked in acid. These flames were eating away at me! It felt like they were eating my very existence!

“How pathetic,” the man said with a scoff. “You’re not even close to being considered a worthy adversary. If it wasn’t for the fact that you have the potential to grow beyond me, I would have never considered wasting my time with a fool like you.”

Even though I was in pain, I could still hear what this man said, but I couldn’t understand what he meant. I also didn’t have time to think about it.

I writhed on the ground and struggled to put out the fire, which was melting my flesh from my bones and eating away at my muscles. I tried to channel my Spiritual Power to create water that would put out the flames. Yet no matter how much water I created, all that happened was the flames ate my Spiritual Power like it was a snack. What was this?! Why couldn’t I put these flames out?!

Just when I was about to give up, a powerful beam of golden energy washed over me and snuffed out the flames. The pain was still there. However, I cracked my eyes opened and looked up just in time to see a being made of pure gold slam into the man who had killed my daughter.

A scream of pain ripped from the man’s throat, finally, and the man was sent flying backwards. He crashed into a building nearly a dozen meters away. The force he was thrown with was so powerful that the building itself collapsed on top of him.

The golden energy landed on the ground and turned into a person. It was Kari.

“Eryk!” she shouted as she knelt beside me and tried to help me up. “Eryk! What’s going on?! Are you okay?!”

“I’m… I…”

I tried to tell her I was fine, but I couldn’t. I was not fine. However, I knew that if I told her about Kayli’s death, it would only make the situation worse. It would only hurt her and leave her incapable of attacking like I had been. She would find out eventually, but before that happened, I wanted to kill this man.

Of course, Kari was not the kind of person to just leave things be.

“Where is Kayli?”

Tears sprang to my eyes even as I began channeling the water element through my body to heal myself. I couldn’t even imagine what my face must have looked like, but Kari seemed to understand because her lips began trembling.

“I see. So… so Kayli is… gone…” Kari gritted her teeth and struggled against her own tears. “That man… he is the one who killed her, right?” I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded. Kari sucked in her tears and narrowed her eyes. “Eryk… let’s kill him.”

“Okay,” I finally said.

I had healed my body by this point, so I took my own weight and grabbed the Dragon’s Tail Ruler. Standing side by side with Kari, I stared at the collapsed rubble the man was buried under, though he did not remain so for long.

A powerful explosion of energy erupted from the building, reducing it to rubble, and the man who Kari had attacked stepped out. I was shocked to notice that aside from a single scratch on his face, he didn’t have any other injuries. And even as I watched, that scratch was slowly disappearing.

“I never could have imagined there’d be someone with the accursed light element here,” he said. “You must have the blood of the Ljósálfar somewhere in your ancestry. Not that it matters. You’re no match form. The Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain is the supreme Ljósálfar. You shall die with that half-blood.”

This man kept calling himself the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain, but all that did was confuse me. The Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain was supposed to be a hero, one of the people who nhad given their lives to seal away the Sekbeists’s leader. It also didn’t escape my notice that this man was speaking in an odd way. The way he talked about himself made it sound like he was talking about someone else.

“The only one dying here is you!” Kari snarled.

As one, our power surged as we released every limit we’d ever placed on our Spiritual Power. We were going to go all out from the beginning.

I could feel my body transforming into lightning, cracking with energy, but then I took my transformation a step further and began channeling the water element as well. My body went from crackling pale blue to pure white. Meanwhile, Kari had transformed into a being of pure light. Her golden body looked almost divine.

The man before us snorted. “If you believe that simply transforming into an element will be enough to defeat me, then feel free to try. I shall enjoy watching the despair grow on your faces when you realize how futile it is to fight against me.”

Neither of us listened to this man as we shot forward. I appeared before him in a crackle of thunder. Swinging the Dragon’s Tail Ruler, which had transformed into lightning with me thanks to the Runes carved into it, I tried bisecting this man in half. At the same time, Kari appeared on his other side and thrust out her ranseur, which had also transformed into her element.

The man reached out with hands that were coated in darkness and caught our weapons, his fingers clenching around them. Kari and I were shocked. We tried to pull our weapons free to no avail. When that didn’t work, I leapt into the air and launched a powerful kick at the man’s head. Lightning crackled as my foot slammed into his face… or so I thought. What my foot had actually hit was a wall of darkness.

“The two of you are no match for me, and I’m going to prove it to you right now!”

The man yanked on our weapons, pulling us off balance, let go of them seconds later, and slammed his darkness coated fists into our chests.

If I had not been transformed into an element, my chest would have probably caved in. Instead, I was sent flying backwards, slamming through several walls before eventually bursting out the other side of a building. I skidded along the road, my feet digging large trenches through the ground. When I finally stopped, I looked up at the decimated building I had just plowed through as it crumbled, and narrowed my eyes.

Bending my knees, I launched myself skyward. I could see the man that Kari and I were fighting. He hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d been standing. Snarling, I held the Dragon’s Tail Ruler above my head and gathered water and lightning into it. Spiritual Power swirled and crackled around it. Arcs of arcane energy lashed out at the atmosphere. When I felt like I had gathered enough Spiritual Power into my weapon, I swung it down.

A massive burst of white Spiritual Power erupted from my swinging weapon, taking the shape of a large dragon with four legs, vicious claws, and wings that spanned nearly two dozen meters. The air exploded in front of it. This was one of my most powerful attacks. I had used this attack one time to take down an A-rank Demon Beast in a single blow.

The man looked up and raised his hand. Once more, darkness erupted from his palm, overflowing like a black cloud. This time, it took the shape of a spiral. The spiral shot forward and pierced straight through my dragon, where it continued on toward me. My eyes widened as I turned into a streak of lightning and shot away. The spiral kept going, higher and higher, until it disappeared into the clouds.

Before he could attack again, a powerful lance made of golden energy flew from behind another destroyed building. This lance slammed into the man, who had raised his hand and tried to block the attack. He gritted his teeth as the darkness erupting from his palm struggled to push aside the golden energy, but it looked like he was having trouble.

Light was the antithesis of darkness, after all.

Since it looked like he was distracted, I appeared before him using the Flash Step Version 3: Lightning Step. I tucked my fists into my torso, adopted a wide stance with my legs bent, and thrust both fists at the man. A wall of darkness appeared before me, but I poured on even more Spiritual Power into my punch and broke through the wall. My fists soon slammed into his torso.

The man grunted, but that was all he did. With a grimace, he clenched his left hand, crushing the lance of light, and then spun around and slammed his darkness covered foot into my face.

My head exploded.

Since I was made of a combination of water and lightning, I was able to easily reform my head, but it took a lot of Spiritual Power. What’s more, I had already used so much. Merely maintaining the Third State of Spiritualism required vast amounts of Spiritual Power. Using this state in conjunction with my Spiritual Techniques meant I was close to running on empty.

I disappeared within a Lightning Step and reappeared next to Kari, who had been hidden behind the rubble of a destroyed building. She had already transformed back into her human shape. I did the same.

“That attack… didn’t kill him… did it?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Damn.”

I reached into my pouch and took out two Advanced Recovery Pills. After handing one to Kari, I popped the other into my mouth and broke through the outer shell with my teeth. The healing fluids gushed down my throat. I almost sighed in relief when I felt my Spiritual Power recovering near instantly. Kari did the same.

“Congratulations. You managed to injure me a little.” The man we had been fighting appeared before us, his eyes narrowed. “However, now I’m angry.” He lifted his hand and darkness gathered above his palm. “You two are going to die here. I am going to erase your very spirits from existence.”

The darkness swirled around his hand and turned into a giant sphere, but then the man clenched his hand, and the sphere was compressed until it was no larger than a fist. He took this sphere and almost lazily tossed it at us.

The sphere shot forward faster than light.

Kari and I barely had time to respond, but we did our best to create a barrier. We combined light, water, and lightning to create a massive wall, which was erected seconds before the sphere slammed into us.

Despite the attack being merely one that relied on energy, I could feel all of my muscles straining as I struggled to maintain the barrier with Kari. It felt like stress was being placed on my body. Every fiber of my being felt strained. Blood began pouring from my eyes, nose, and mouth as I screamed out in defiance. I wasn’t going to let this stupid thing beat me!

Little by little, the sphere seemed to lose its energy, until it finally dissipated. Kari and I gasped in relief as the attack subsided. I glanced over at Kari. She wasn’t looking any better than me. Her mouth and ears were leaking blood. Crimson had welled up in her eyes. It looked like she was about to start crying rivers of blood soon.

Just then, my sense of danger caused the hairs on my arm to prickle. I looked back at the man and saw him toss another creation of darkness at us. This one looked like a javelin.

I had no time to consider my options as this thing flew toward us. It was moving too fast. I didn’t have enough Spiritual Power. There was simply no way to dodge.

But I could at least protect Kari.

“Watch out!!”

However, just before I could place myself in front of Kari, I was pushed away. I landed on the ground as the wall we had created shattered. My eyes widened in horror as I looked up. Kari was standing where I had been, a massive javelin of darkness piercing her chest. She stood there for several seconds, tottering back and forth, and then she began tilting backward as the Javelin disappeared into wisps.

“K-Kari!!!”

I scrambled over and caught her in my arms before she could fall. However, the weight of her body was too much for my weakened muscles to handle. I fell onto the ground, but I at least made sure Kari didn’t hit the hard stone road.

“Kari! Kari!”

“S-sorry… Eryk…” Kari smiled at me, but it was trembling and weak. “I didn’t… want to… to loose you too…”

“How do you think I feel?!” I shouted. “Damn it! Hold on! I’ll heal you right now!”

I popped another Advanced Spiritual Recovery Pill into my mouth and began channeling the water element through my body and into her. However, where I normally would have been able to heal her completely, this time I couldn’t do it. Every time I sent the water element into her wound, the Spiritual Power I used to create it was devoured. Black energy seeped out from the wound. This strange power that seemed so much like the darkness element but even stronger was keeping me from healing her!

“Damn it! Damn it damn it damn it!”

What should I do?! What was I supposed to do?!

“E-Eryk…”

“Don’t talk! Just let me heal you!”

Kari shook her head as if she knew there was no hope, but I refused to give up just like that. There had to be something I could do! There had to be! I coldn’t…. I couldn’t lose Kari too…

However, before I could attempt to heal her again, Kari reached out, grabbed the back of my head, and pulled me into a kiss. She pushed her tongue into my mouth. The irony taste of blood filled my tongue as she kissed me. Against my better judgement, I kissed her back. As I did, the Runes that I always saw appear on her chest when we had sex appeared again. They remained there even after Kari stopped kissing me.

“I love you,” Kari said in a weak, shakey voice. “I love you… so much…”

Tears stung my eyes. “I love you too! That’s why you can’t die!”

Kari didn’t say anything more. She just smiled at me. Then her body stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating, and her eyes became glazed over and lifeless. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the expression on her face.

Kari was still smiling even in death.

***

Days passed by swiftly once I began training the Spiritualists who would make up the core of the Nevarian Braves. I found myself incredibly busy, not just with training them into a force that I considered acceptable, but also dealing with the various aspects that came from managing a sect.

Every day, I would wake up early in the morning and begin training the Spiritualists after eating breakfast with Kari, Lin, and Fay. Sometimes Kari and Fay joined me. However, they were also still attending the Nevarian Spiritualist Academy, so they couldn’t always be present. Lin was, though. She helped me out every day by sparring with many of the Spiritualists after their morning exercise.

Training consisted of the same kind of regiment I used with Fay. Each day the Spiritualists would begin their training with an obstacle course, one that I changed every day so they couldn’t rely on their previous experiences to complete it. After the obstacle course came physical exercises like pushups, situps, pullups, crunches, and squats. I increased the amount they were required to do each day, until they were doing over 1,000 of every exercise. They would get a chance to relax after that. Of course, I called it relaxing, but they were still exercising. I had them take a Three Way Spiritual Widening Pill and use the leaf floating meditation technique to increase their Spiritual Power, expand their Spiritual Pathways, and gain a greater understanding of their own powers.

Then came the sparring.

On days when Kari and Fay were present to help us train, I divided the 33 Spiritualists evenly among us, meaning two of us fought against eight people while the other two fought nine. I always fought nine. Kari, Lin, and Fay would often switch who fought the other nine. When Kari and Fay had to attend the Spiritualist Academy, Lin would fight sixteen people, while I fought seventeen.

After training for the day ended, I had everyone use a Body Forging Pill in the bath to absorb the nutrients. This helped their muscles recover and grow even stronger than before. The increase in their strength was visible each day, which probably explained why nobody complained about the grueling training I put them through. That said, I did hear Bjark once griping to one of the other Spiritualists about my “Training from Hell” when he thought I wasn’t listening.

He got an extra hour of sparring with me that day.

While all of the Spiritualists grew at a rate that would have made others spit up blood from sheer envy, the one who progressed the most was none other than Geirolf.

I wasn’t sure what had changed in this young man. I hadn’t even seen him since rescuing him from the Basilisk and Sekbeist Shaman. However, he had changed. That was undeniable. The overbearing arrogance he used to display was almost entirely gone, and he focused on training far more intensely than anyone else. I actually had to stop him from training after my regiment was finished. Training hard was fine, but over training would just wreck your body.

Of course, there was a lot more to managing a sect than training Spiritualists.

The first thing I needed to do was get in contact with Feinrea and have her create a list of all the medicinal ingredients she needed a constant supply of that could only be acquired from the Demon Beast Mountain Range. After the list was created, I had to go through the whole list and categorize them. Some of the ingredients were simple plants that could be attained by traveling into the Demon Beast Mountain Range’s nearest sections, but some of the ingredients were much harder to acquire. There were also the monster cores. By listing the ingredients from easiest to hardest, I was able to create a ranking chart from F to S, with F being the easiest to acquire plants and S being the most difficult.

On that note, there was only one S-ranked medicinal ingredient in the entire list. I highly doubted anyone but me could acquire that one.

Once the ingredients had been ranked, Feinrea delegated her people to create quests, which she then gave to me.

On top of managing the quests, I also had to create a budget. That meant I needed to balance out the amount I was spending with the amount we would be making. This was a lot more difficult than it first appeared because, currently, we weren’t making anything. All the valis I was using to fund the Nevarian Braves came straight from my own personal funds.

I fortunately didn’t need to worry about running low on valis. Before I created the Nevarian Braves, I had an estimate of 3.5 million valis thanks to my deal with the Alchemist Association. At present, I had only spent about 500,000 of those valis on the Nevarian Braves. Still, the budgeting was going to become increasingly more difficult as we took on more quests. Kari had been helping me with this, but she did suggest I consider hiring someone who could do this for me.

Because of how busy I was, I no longer went outside except the two times a month I visited Empress Hilda at the Imperial Royal Palace for lunch. Kari, Lin, and Fay joined us. During those two moments, I informed the empress of how the Nevarian Braves were progressing. I didn’t have much to say since all we did right now was training. However, Empress Hilda had been impressed when I informed her of the training regiment I had made for the Spiritualists. I believe she planned on having the Nevarian Spiritualists and Imperial Royal Guard adopt a similar regiment in the future.

Like this, one month passed.

***

The morning was early and the air crisp. I stood inside of the Nevarian Braves headquarters instead of waiting outside in the courtyard like I usually did. Kari, Lin, and Fay were with me the same as always. However, we weren’t alone. There were two young women standing behind the counter. Both had blonde hair, though one’s hair was a lighter shade than the other’s. They were both attractive in their own way but didn’t look anything alike.

While we waited, Kari and I were having a discussion.

“I want to begin exploring the Demon Beast Mountain Range again.”

“You’ll be able to, though I’d like it if you get wait a little while. I hate to admit it, but I need your help with managing the sect until I can hire a capable accountant who can manage our budget for us.”

“I hate balancing budgets…”

“You think I like it anymore than you do? I’m not good with numbers, you know.”

Our conversation wasn’t what I would call important, but it was one that we’d had many times before. Kari had been expressing her desire to explore the Demon Beast Mountain Range more frequently. I knew she was getting adventure sickness. Whether it was this life or my previous one, Kari always had a strong wanderlust, which had only settled down after she had Kayli. Even then, she would sneak off to explore ruins when she thought I wouldn’t notice.

“I’ll stop having sex with you if you don’t let me explore the Demon Beast Mountain Range soon.”

“Then I’ll just have sex with Lin and Fay.”

“Wha—that isn’t fair!”

“Life’s not fair.”

“Could you two please not bring up sex in public like this?!” snapped an embarrassed Fay.

“Is there something wrong with talking about sex in public?” asked Lin.

“Is there something—yes, there is,” Fay huffed, her cheeks growing even darker.

Lin tilted her head. “What is wrong with it?”

“Just… everything!” Fay exploded. “Sex is supposed to be a private, intimate moment between people who are in love. It’s not something you just talk about for everyone to hear.”

“This princess doesn’t understand.”

Fay threw her hands in the air at Lin’s words. Meanwhile, Kari and I continued trading banter, which had devolved from her threatening me with “no sex” to her trying to seduce me into letting her go exploring.

“Eryk… have I ever told you how handsome you are?”

“Not for awhile, but while it is nice to hear you find me attractive, knowing you’re just saying it as a means of flattering me so I’ll let you go exploring makes the words lose their effect.”

“Tch!”

Chuckling as Kari clicked her tongue, I reached out and cupped her face in my hands. She stilled as I rubbed my thumbs against her cheeks, then closed her eyes and nuzzled my hand. Seeing this caused me to smile. I couldn’t resist leaning forward and giving her a soft, gentle kiss that Kari melted into.

“You’re so unfair,” she muttered after I retracted my lips from hers.

“But you love that about me, right?” I grinned at her.

“I suppose…” Kari muttered, though her unenthusiastic words were contradicted by the glint in her eyes.

While we were flirting, Lin and Fay stared at the two of us with expressions that I could have only called deadpanned. Their eyes were lidded and blank. There was also a strange vein throbbing on their foreheads.

“Somehow… seeing them like this makes this princess want to smack them.”

“I understand how you feel. I know Eryk loves me, but I can’t help but feel jealous whenever he and Kari begin acting like this.”

“This princess wants to be pampered too.”

Fay and Lin weren’t the only ones watching me and Kari make a spectacle of ourselves. The poor receptionists, Dagny and Eira, were blushing to the roots of their blonde hair. Seeing the way they were acting, I decided to stop for now. The other Spiritualists were finally beginning to arrive anyway.

“Eryk,” Catalyna greeted as she and Marko entered the lobby and sat down on the nearest benches. “I see you and Kari are having fun at the expense of others this morning.”

“Good morning, Catalyna,” Kari and I greeted at the same time.

“They even talk in sync,” Lin muttered. “This princess also wants to talk in sync with Darling.”

“Are we not training today?” asked Marko with a frown. He was no longer hostile toward me, and he didn’t try to woo Lin either, which I was incredibly grateful for. If he had, I would have probably been a lot more brutal during our spars.

“Not today,” I said. “I have an announcement to make today.”

Marko nodded and Catalyna looked curious, but they didn’t ask for specifics since they knew I planned on telling them once everyone was present.

After they arrived, the other Spiritualists who had opted to live here came into the lobby, including Hansel, the big guy with the scar on his face. He used to belong to a mercenary company. However, his group went out of business when their leader died. Apparently, he’d been fighting against sobriety when he found the flyer stating I was looking for Spiritualists to join my sect. He was an excellent fighter, but he lacked any leadership qualities and didn’t have much ambitions.

It wasn’t long before all the Spiritualists living here found themselves standing in the lobby. After that, the people who lived at their own home soon began arriving in twos and threes. Once everyone had arrived, I stood up and moved over to a large board where several sheets of parchment had been tacked on.

“Everyone!” I called out, getting the group to settle down. “I am pleased to announce that your training has officially ended. As of this moment, all of you are what I would consider B-rank Spiritualists.” A loud cheer went up. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I let them celebrate and waited for them to settle down before continuing. “Now that you are B-rank Spiritualists, you can begin taking on quests. All of our current quests are tacked onto the board right here.” I patted the board. “When you want to take a quest, just grab the one you want and take it to either Dagny or Eira over there by the counters. They’ll register you as the quest taker. When you complete the quest, you will earn your pay, which is sixty percent of whatever the quest giver is paying for the completion of this job.”

Several eyes widened, including those of Hansel.

60% was a lot. Most mercenary companies who went through third parties for jobs only earned about 40% of the total quest money. I was giving them a lot more than what most mercenaries would make.

“When you take on a quest, you can choose to work alone or in a group,” I continued. “I personally recommend working in a group. You never know what sort of dangers there are in the Demon Beast Mountain Range, and if one of you died during a quest, it would bring us a lot of trouble.”

I didn’t go into greater detail, but I was sure they understood. If someone took a quest and died, it would mean the quest would be marked as incomplete, and we’d either have to get someone else who could take the quest, or inform the quest giver that we weren’t able to complete the mission. Both would cause a lot of problems.

“There are a few rules for taking quests,” I kept explaining the rules. “Since all of you are currently B-rank Spiritualists, if you wish to take on a higher-ranked quest like an A-rank one, then you need to have a group of at least four Spiritualists. This is not negotiable. A-rank quests are not only several times harder and more dangerous, but they are also a lot more important. Of course, if you become an A-rank Spiritualist, then you can begin taking A-rank quests on your own. However, to become an A-rank Spiritualist, you need to reach the Third State of Spiritualism.” I paused. “Does anyone have any questions?”

I waited to see if anyone had anything to say, but no one asked me a single thing. I hoped that meant my explanation was easy to understand.

“In that case, the Nevarian Braves is officially open for business,” I said, and the group of 33 Spiritualists thrust their hands into the air and cheered.