SIS Book 4 Chapter 20: Duel of Reapers and Shúzuì's Development

A/N: Slightly later than I wanted it to be, sorry about that. Hope you enjoy.

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"So what Embers did you pick?" Daz asked.

Mu nodded and answered, "Loneliness, suffering, and sweeping."

Daz knew basically nothing about Embers since he couldn't consult anyone on the topic unless they had a high enough access level or already knew about embers, so he was greatly intrigued by both what these Embers of Mu's could do and why he had chosen those three from the available five options.

Mu reached out into the open space in front of himself only for an ice-cream to appear in his hand. He brought it to his mouth and gave it a good lick. "It's wonderful how the system can preserve foods in my Dimensional Ring."

Daz noticed the wooden accessory on Mu's middle finger and shook his head while smiling. "You can be really profound at times and also really strange when you want to be."

Mu grinned as he enjoyed his chilly treat. "Is that not true of everyone? Most people simply tend to hide their inner strangeness. Not us though, Brother. I greatly enjoy that about both myself and about you."

Daz nodded. "Fair. So, why those three? I feel like the Ember of Respect would have been a good choice. Hell, couldn't you have even waited until you had a grasp on some more Embers? There wasn't a time-limit to pick your prizes if I recall correctly."

Mu closed his eyes and leaned his back flat against the porch, though he oddly kept his legs crossed. He licked his ice-cream some more as he answered, "Embers are not easy to learn, even the simplest of concepts. I felt it was wisest to choose them now. The amount of Embers one can obtain are not finite. I can always spend the time to study more in the future if the need arises, for now though, I am happy with my choices."

Daz contemplated over Mu's words for a few moments before he said, "Okay, but again, why didn't you take the respect one?"

"Because it is not as important as the three I selected," Mu chuckled. "The Ember of Loneliness and the Ember of Suffering greatly complement my natural Ember of Fear. I chose the Ember of Sweeping to better enhance my battle prowess with my war scythe."

A somewhat sad look entered the young man's eyes as he said, "The Ember of Betrayal, as well as the Ember of Respect, are not ones I have any desire to pursue."

"Why not?" Again, Daz cursed his ignorance on the subject. 'Thank God I have Mu. I would have been screwed if I ran into one of the other Ember-wielders without knowing anything about Embers. Well, assuming they wouldn't be friendly, that is.'

Mu finished off his ice-cream then jumped up onto his feet. "It is best that I show you why, rather than tell you why."

"Show don't tell?" Daz asked as he, too, got up. "I can appreciate that. Sure thing."

"First, fear," Mu said as he closed his eyes and focused.

Not a moment later a misty shadow appeared behind Mu and loomed over him. It had countless teeth and two soulless eyes, both of which stared deeply at Daz.

This shadow was filled with thousands of faceless heads, all of which were screaming and cursing Mu's existence.

Daz frowned lightly, but other than that, he didn't react.

Mu cancelled his concentration, resulting in the apparition's disappearance. He smiled softly and said, "That was my raw understanding of the Ember of Fear. From what I have learned, I can outwardly display my understand of Embers with a bit of concentration, but as you saw, it doesn't really affect anything. My understanding of it is far too shallow to cause anything but mild discomfort."

Apparently, he wasn't disturbed by the faceless heads. After all, it was him coming to peace with his fears that had led to him earning the Ember in the first place.

Daz stroked his jaw and nodded. "Interesting." He didn't ask any questions since he was eager to see Mu's other visible representations of his understanding of his Embers.

His fellow reaper noticed Daz's intentions and quickly went on to show the other visible representations of his acquired Embers.

The Ember of Sweeping displayed itself as a single repeating motion of a farming scythe cutting down countless stems of wheat.

The Ember of Suffering was, surprisingly, an apparition of Mu's head. It was easily the size of a car and it was crying tears of blood.

Lastly, the Ember of Loneliness manifested as a young Asian boy no older than ten - presumably Mu when he was a child - trapped in a box barely large enough for him to fit inside of.

"And those, Brother, were the raw visual representations of my humble understanding of the Embers thus far. If you don't have any questions I would be happy to show you them used in a more practical sense," Mu offered.

"... I have a lot of questions, most of which I can answer myself. Sure, show me them. Can they all be used in combat or is that limited only to the Ember of Sweeping?" Daz asked.

Mu smiled warmly. "Only the Ember of Sweeping, I am afraid. It is a far more physical Ember than the others. I simply do not have a high enough mastery over the other three Embers to effectively use them in a battle, though they have other applications."

"Oh? Well, let's have a quick spar and you can show me the power of the Ember of Sweeping, okay? If you don't mind, you can show me the others after that," Daz suggested.

Mu beamed from ear-to-ear. "I would be honoured."

While he was a peaceful man most of the time, he, much like Crusher, truly enjoyed fighting. Unlike the Russian giant of a woman, however, Mu loved battles where he was unlikely to win.

He felt he had more to learn from them than he did with fair fights or ones where he was the more powerful participant.

Mu shook his wrist, resulting in his war scythe appearing in his hand.

Daz moved his retinue of gems away and controlled Hamson to enter his palm.

Before long, the two began sparring. The sound of metal hitting metal filled the large garden of Mu's home as two blurs constantly slammed into each other then retreated only to repeat the same action over and over again.

As time slowly passed Daz was noticing that more and more he was being pushed into a corner.

Despite Hamson's incredible sharpness, he couldn't damage Mu's war scythe since a strange layer of invisible energy was covering its blade and perfectly countering the deadly weapon.

Frustration welled up in Daz's mind. 'Mu's far more talented at melee combat than I am. Either that or he has a lot of skills dedicated to physical combat. If I want to win this, I need to start getting serious.'

Daz let go of Hamson and jumped back. He began controlling the weapon mentally as six death energy arms grew out of his back, three on each side.

He immediately used Crystallisation to turn the arms into the same material GriD CrosS was made out of, giving him some control over gravity.

Mu was very surprised by this change in Daz. He'd never seen him do this before, after all. Regardless, he still didn't use any of his other skills and continued to tirelessly counter every attack of Daz's with his war scythe.

Ten minutes quickly passed before Daz had to stop the duel. "Any more and I'll die. I only have one more spare life until midnight since I accidentally killed myself earlier today."

His body was covered in gashes large enough to kill a grown adult individually, let alone collectively.

Four of his extra arms had been cut off at the elbow while the other two were covered in dinks and chips. His crystallised skin wasn't much better off with cracks spreading across it like a spiderweb.

At some point during the battle, Daz had decided to use his Death Beams. He could always pay a ridiculous amount of money to the system if he almost killed Mu, or, in a less serious situation, get Madison to heal him.

What had shocked Daz though was that after being hit by three Death Beams, Mu suddenly learned how to apply his Ember of Sweeping to his right arm.

With both one of his arms and his war scythe being laced in the invisible energy, Daz wasn't able to land a single attack on him after that.

'Fucking hell... My Survivor's Instincts don't work on Embers... Regardless, I doubt I'd have been able to dodge or predict more than 90% of his attacks... He's a damned genius at fighting, and at understanding Embers, it seems,' Daz though as his Crystallisation's time-limit was reached, returning his species and flesh back to normal.

He dismissed his death energy arms and sat down on the mostly destroyed grassy floor. His breath was ragged and sweat covered his body. "I'm amazed."

Mu smiled warmly as he stashed his weapon back wherever he kept it usually. He approached Daz and sat down in front of him, only leaving about half a meter of distance between the two of them. "As am I. I did not consider using Death Energy Manipulation like that."

He closed his eyes and nodded softly. "Foolish, now that I recall when we first met one of your arms and legs were made of death energy."

Daz shrugged as his halo got to work fixing his body. "You still beat me."

"True," Mu replied. "However, you did not use your clones nor Rimmy. You also didn't use your Laughing Skull skill."

"You didn't use your clone either," Daz countered. "I didn't use the Laughing Skull because I didn't want to ruin your summoned skull again."

"And I thank you for that," Esmerelda said as she popped out of Mu's shirt pocket.

She was almost entirely healed now with only a few cracks and minor scratches on her cranium remaining.

Mu smiled. "Well, regardless, thank you for holding back. The purpose was to show you my Ember of Sweeping anyway, and luckily, during the fight I gained some further understand into the subject. I can now apply it to my right arm, as you saw."

Daz nodded. "If that's the power of a single attack-focused Ember, not to mention one only at entry-level, then it's a bit frightening to think what the higher levels of insight are capable of."

"Indeed. Shall we head out now so I can show you my other Embers, or do you need more time to rest?" Mu asked.

Most of Daz's injuries were healed now and his Travelling Gear of Altros had already repaired itself, so he got up and shook his head. "No, I'm good. Let's go."

"Excellent," Mu replied.

"Ah, Mu," Daz called, seemingly remembering something.

"Yes, Brother?" Mu asked.

"Next time we duel, I'll be infusing a soul or two into Hamson. That might even the odds a little," Daz said.

Mu nodded lightly. "The thing you did during our first meeting that turned the edge of your shovel red?"

"Yeah, that," Daz answered.

"I look forward to it, though I don't doubt that my insight and understanding of the Ember of Sweeping will have progressed even further by then," Mu said.

"I sure hope so. It'll be incredibly useful against those Truthians," Daz said a bit jokingly but mostly in a serious tone.

Not long after that, the two reapers were walking down a street in Shúzuì's Japanese district.

The two were causing quite a stir since they hadn't bothered to disguise themselves.

One was their local lord who usually kept to himself in his little Chinese home while the other was their king and ruler who was usually doing something beyond them to help further his reach or improve their lives.

Hamson and the floating gems were a wonder for the children but a thing to fear and be cautious of for the adults that had yet to fight anything truly dangerous due to Emperor Nishikawa looking after them.

"So, Mu, how do your Ember of Suffering and Ember of Loneliness work?" Daz asked while he looked around in interest.

The clearly different culture of Japan was something new to Daz, so everything he was seeing was a wonder. 'Mu's really done well developing Camp Waterford into a nice little base. It wasn't a mistake to treat him as more than a guard dog.'

Mu noticed a young girl sitting on a pavement throwing rocks at the road a bit absentmindedly. He smiled kindly and answered, "As I said, I shall show you."