SIS B5: Chapter 10: Six Stars and Eastern Arrival

As Daz felt his internal energy flood through his Hamilio bloodline and rush into his right eye, he focused his thoughts on fighting the two ancient figures floating away.

Fire, destruction, death, and victory were the prevalent things Daz witnessed while a vision presented itself to him.

Namely, El Dorado was what was covered in flames. Flames of death and despair.

The buildings and temples lay in ruin. Destroyed in a pointed effort by him during the fighting.

Hundreds of natives, both mummies, Ak and Tek, as well as Rose, Sir Albert, and his assistant George, all breathed their last breath as Daz watched on in cold fury.

He, however, was standing alone with nary a scratch on his body. From the start, neither Ak nor Tek had bothered to attack him, clearly knowing full-well they had no chance of beating him. Instead, they slaughtered everyone else to hurt him as best as they could.

The vision faded only to be replaced by a frown appearing on Daz's face. 'They're a lot stronger than they look if our battle would result in pretty much everyone but me dying. For me to not be able to kill them quickly like that... Well, they did survive a purging of an entire pantheon by the esper families of old.'

Fighting them now was obviously out of the question, but it was reassuring to know that they didn't have some hidden card up their sleeve that could somehow overcome his Curse of Loneliness.

"Let's get on with the rituals, shall we?" Daz asked Sir Albert.

The old man nodded. "Happily."

Meanwhile, Rose gave him a funny look though she kept her thoughts to herself. Clearly, she had seen him using his Future Vision.

He did wonder what exactly it was that could be going through her mind right now but he wasn't going to ask her.

If she wanted to reprimand him for using his ability so openly, she would. The girl rarely chose not to express her opinions when they were negative, after all.

So either she thought it to be a pointless endeavour or her upset was caused by something else. Regardless, Daz had more important things to deal with than his snarky little sister right now.

The rituals had, of course, been a complete success. All six went as planned though Sir Albert did start looking exhausted after the third.

Right now, Daz was sitting on the Alter of Permanence of the newly restored Muisca pyramid.

Sir Albert and Rose had both left a short while ago. The former to return to rest off his newly formed fatigue, and the latter to explore the city.

Daz wasn't worried about letting Rose go tour the city of gold on her own. After all, she was stronger than she looked even if her class wasn't combat-oriented.

She was capable of some pretty frightening things if she wanted to destroy a person though she'd likely never admit it. Her wheelchair was also a powerful tool which had a lot of deadly tricks hidden within it.

Additionally, unless Ak and Tek wished for El Dorado to be brought to a smouldering pile of rubble before he had even made a decision on if that really worth it or not, then they'd leave his sister alone.

As for his six new Stars of Eternity, Daz had spread them out a bit.

First, since he wasn't in any immediate danger of having his system upgrades stripped from him like he was when warring with the Truthians, he ignored the system side of his strengths initially.

With his coming confrontation with not only Madison's family, but also his father and perhaps even more esper families since he intended to visit the Crowthorne ancestral home sooner rather than later, he felt it was wise to focus on that aspect of himself.

He had no idea what sorts of esper powers were out there. Perhaps there existed one that emitted a cancellation field, disallowing the use of esper powers? Perhaps one that took control of them from other people at a certain range?

Just thinking about it was flaring up Daz's recently waning paranoia. He used up three of his five 'free' Stars of Eternity to resolve his primary worries in this regard.

First, he made his self-created silver bloodline permanent. Yes, it was his weakest bloodline but it was well and truly his. Besides, it had grown well during his many training sessions alone and with his grandparents. He was confident that if it came down to it, he could rely on it in a scrap of esper powers.

Second, he dedicated one ritual to his internal energy as a whole. Currently, his internal energy was sitting at a cool 15.54. After discussing the matter of esper powers with Rose, Madison, Emma, Lorenzo, and lastly, Ho Ran, he had a baseline with which to work.

Each person had revealed to him their internal energy amount. Everyone did so without hesitation bar his grandmother who took a bit of cajoling.

Rose has 42.32 units of internal energy. Unsurprisingly considering that while she was, indeed, young, she used her power to augment her mind almost nonstop.

Madison actually had less, only owning 31.23 units of internal energy. This made sense. Her power of Alternation was not one that could be used passively nor constantly, after all.

Emma was different as her ability which allowed her to make people see her in a brighter, friendlier light, was a passive power. Funnily enough, it used an absurdly low amount of internal energy so even if she pushed the power from time to time, she only had 29.47 units of internal energy.

Now, the true monsters were his grandparents, because of course they were.

Lorenzo had a whopping 432.10 units of internal energy. Over 70 years of training as a Hamilio had benefits if you looked past the horrific practices of the family, it would seem.

His grandmother, however? She was in a league of her own. She had 2,003.98 units of internal energy. This honestly scared Daz a bit.

It was a daunting number. Still, she was afraid of his grandfather, was she not? So clearly, internal energy was not everything.

It was still a vital resource to espers though, thus his ultimate decision to make it an unmovable part of himself. Thankfully, it could still grow as it had been without any restrictions even despite now having a Star of Eternity binding it to his very being.

Thirdly and finally, he had used a star on the base aspect of his Survivor's Instinct esper power. Sadly, its Future Vision ability or his self-created Success Sight would need additional stars.

He would never make his Hamilio bloodline permanent since he planned to remove it someday, but he would happily steal its associated ability.

Daz was tempted to spend the three remaining rituals on his Crowthorne bloodline, the Gravital Body ability, as well as the Soul Collector power he had inherited from his mother, Helaina.

Ultimately though, he decided those abilities weren't critical to him. Instead, he invested the other three collections of moonlight into system-given powers.

First, he made the Legendary Gift of the Gab permanent. His reasoning? It helped him substantially with convincing others of his views and opinions. Secondly, while he didn't use it often, the skill's thought seeds were incredibly useful.

Daz had a few hang-ups with the morality involved with the usage of said seeds, but he still wasn't above utilising them if needed. In fact, he had made this skill permanent partially because he had plans related to that aspect of the skill.

The final two Stars of Eternity had been used to first make his reaper evolution permanent, and then the same for his status as a Justice Reaper.

'A few more stars and I'll always have access to my Archreaper's Aura and my Halo of Absolute Justice. As much as my Curse of Loneliness makes me immortal, I feel it would be wise to not let too many people know about it,' Daz thought.

His thinking was that perhaps out there in the vast spectroverse or maybe even beyond it, there lay some method to counter his invulnerability to death.

It only made sense that if some random magical door could give him the power, then some random magical crab or something just as ridiculous could nullify it without exactly removing it since it did come prepackaged with a Star of Eternity.

Granted, it was a farfetched theory but Daz wasn't ever going to rule out any exceedingly unlikely events that could threaten his life.

That being the case, having his halo which could save his life twice a day would be very useful as a disguise to hide his curse and as well as a failsafe if the curse was ever countered.

He had already tested it to confirm that the halo would activate before the curse, meaning he could come close to death twice per day before he would actually die and then be asked if he wanted to stay that way or not.

He slowly stood up and stretched. "Well, that's enough thinking. I should probably go see what Rose is up to. Knowing her, she's busy pissing off the locals while salivating over the buildings here or maybe she's trying to teach them how to use smartphones."

***

"Here you are," Daz said.

He'd found Rose relatively quickly with his Soul Vision but she wasn't where he had expected her to be.

She was actually atop one of the Incan temples, the temples that used collected moonlight to induce heavy bouts of inspiration into a person.

In front of her stood a native Amazonian man. Upon noticed Daz, the man bowed graciously.

Rose turned his way. "Damn. Is it time to go back to Fort Home already? I was kinda hoping you'd keep doing that melancholic brooding thing you like to do so often."

"Adorable. How did you even get up here? Last time I checked, they didn't have ramps installed into the temple's stairs," Daz returned fire as he approached her.

"My chair can fly, you dingus," Rose snorted.

"It couldn't last time you told me what it was capable of. Back then it could do that thing that put you in a standing position. Anyway," turning to the citizen of El Dorado, he said, "I assume you're the priest of this temple like Sir Albert is with the Muisca ones. I'm sorry if my sister has been bothering you."

"Rude bastard. I haven't been bothering anyone," Rose grunted. "I was just super interested in how all of this shit worked. I've been to most of the temples and the tech they use to gather and manipulate the moonlight is just fascinating."

The native smiled kindly. "She was no bother, Huey Tlatoani. I shall return to my duties if I'm not needed any longer?"

Rose waved him away before she controlled her chair to position herself at Daz's side. "Fly and talk as we return to the car?"

"Huey Tlatoani? Is that like how Emperor Nishikawa called me Daz-gaikoku-no-ō way back when we met him?" Daz asked as he summoned Hamson and lightly jumped atop the blood-red shovel. He then floated off at a reasonable speed.

Rose kept pace with him in the air, her chair using some sort of gravital field to allow her flight. "Yeah, more or less. It's a term for the emperor of the old Aztec cities, I think. Honestly, history isn't my thing."

"Fair enough. You said it was tech they used in the shrines. Is it not magic? I'm pretty sure it's magic," Daz said in a confident tone.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Are you an idiot, dumb, or just stupid?"

"What's the difference?" Daz replied.

"That's my question. What's the difference between science and magic?" Rose asked of him seriously.

Daz considered a few answers, some of which he quickly dismissed as he slowly saw the differences to not actually be more than superficial.

One such idea was the usage of electricity and physical conduits like copper wires, but on the flip side, magic tended to do the same thing only with mana or other similar energy sources and with magical words and chants instead of wiring.

"Y'know, I don't want to lose this argument, so I just won't engage in it. Let's talk about something more conductive instead. Did you learn anything valuable? Maybe something that'll help Sir Albert restore the other two Muisca Alters of Permanence?" Daz asked.

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Dumb but wise. I hate that about you. And no, sadly. I used up a surprising amount of guesses on various possibles, none proved true. None except that the old geezer's granddaughter is your best bet."

Daz scowled. "Shame. Well, I'm heading to the UK soon anyway and I was planning to grab her when there regardless. I do wonder if I'll get five or perhaps more bonus stars upon restoring the other shrines though..."

"I was able to confirm that for you. You will. If they get fixed, the western one will give you eight stars. The southern one has enough moonlight for eleven. Or will have. I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details," Rose shrugged. "You can now proceed to give me all of the praise I deserve."

Daz grinned. "Hey, look at that. You being useful and everything. I knew I tolerated your toxicity for some reason."

"Bleh." Rose stuck her tongue out at him. "I love you too, big bro," she said in a mocking creepy voice.

"The feeling is mutual," Daz responded emotionlessly.

[Ember of Love [Entry-level (initial mastery)] has increased to 18%.]

***

Crusher scrunched up her brow as she banged the knuckles of her fist on the massive purple jewel in front of her.

"Hey! Heeeey! I know you're in there!" she yelled. "Do ya really answer only to Uriel?"

"It does," he travel buddy said at her side, drawing her attention.

The weird little Chinese man who she'd decided to nickname Confucius, because, c'mon, that was just the perfect name, was sitting in what he called a 'lotus position'. Whatever the hell that was. It looked like simple crossed legs to her.

Crusher was never one for the mystical.

Sure, she used to be a Titan, a being straight from myths and movies.

Sure, she had a hammer that was basically a more useful Mjolnir but without the lightning.

Sure, she was now classified as a 'peak existence' and was set to be kicked off of Earth in less than a month for being too strong.

Still, fantasy, magic, dragons, all of that crap never really interested her. Not enough to get a passion over, thus, it was useless in her mind.

"I can feel your attention slipping," Confucius said wisely. "Is it really so hard to entertain yourself for a few hours while Grid here takes us to my homeland?"

Crusher immediately nodded. "Sure as fuck is. Only thing I really wanna do right now is test out the limits of my new powers. Can't do that here. I'd only go an' blow up Uriel's flying city. Cunt'd kill me for that. Scary bastard. Not even a peak existence but I can feel it, he's way too strong for his weight class."

Confucius frowned. "He is... complicated."

"Ain't we all, sugartits? Ain't we fuckin' all," Crusher said as she slammed down onto the tiled floor of the town square, copying her companion's position.

She quickly abandoned the pose and instead laid down on her back before sighing deeply. "So, what's even the story with your old man? Uriel seemed to think he was a bit of a dickweed when he had a chat with him way back in Taiwan. Dunno why he hasn't just gone and sucked the dude's soul out of his anus or something yet."

She heard a chuckle coming from the man who was not too long ago barely two-thirds her own height but now had a good few inches on her.

"Any stories you have heard before of the Chinese dictatorship that cleverly controlled its populace with tactical capitalism and a mask of communism are all likely true. My father, Emperor Bei, was a cruel and heartless man," Confucius admitted.

Crusher sighed again. "Boring! I fuckin' know all of that. Anyone with a brain does! 'Specially me. I'm Russian. Our countries are very, very similar. Or were. Fuck me... urg. What's your deal with him? I couldn't give a fuck less about the politics, give me the drama. The juice. Why do you want to personally go there? You're a cold bitch when you wanna be. Hell, you sailed across the motherfuckin' ocean to try to kill our now mutual boss. Also heard your kill count is pretty high. Nothing on old Halo McGee back home what with the cracks, but you get what I mean."

"I really don't like the way you speak," Confucius said as he slowly stood up.

Crusher somersaulted to her feet and laughed. "Join the club. Gonna spill?"

"Hmm... maybe when we're done. We've arrived. This land... it's covered in negativity," the man noted with a deep scowl.

Crusher snorted. "Welcome to Earth. First time visiting?"

"Humorous. Be prepared. Peak existence or not, my father and his forces are not our only enemies here, Crusher," Confucius claimed, earning a confused look from her.

"Whaddya mean?" she asked.

"The esper sects. They should prove... interesting, no? That should motivate you, I would think," Confucius smiled kindly.

"Well, now that is something I kinda wanna fuck with. Espers as in, folk like Uriel, Hotwheels and McSworder? Ah, that cripple too. I wonder if Uriel's ever gonna heal her? There's that blind kid too from the orphans. We have so many little weirdos running around back home these days. I miss the times when the only one like that was Uriel," Crusher sighed wistfully.

Confucius only shook his head regretfully. "Yes, like them."

"Good. Be warned though, I will break at least some of your bones if they fold like wet water bags," Crusher threatened in a lighthearted tone.

"I really don't like the way you talk. You should try meditating some time," he replied.

Crusher grinned. "And you should try wrestling a massive monster bear to the death. It works wonders for the soul."

"I'm sure," Confucius replied dryly.

Then, the two of them jumped off of the flying city of Fort Sky with the goal of subjugating China and adding it to the ever-expanding lands of N/A.

'Uriel really should name our fuckin' empire. Then again, N/A has its own charms too,' she chuckled inwardly as she felt the wind whip past her face.

It felt good to be alive.