Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Book 17-22.3: Escalation

Yuriko wasn’t quite good enough to lead two probe battles at the same time, but thankfully, she could chain a bunch of probes together to fight sequentially. After another objective ten minutes, the infection had stopped and stabilised at ten percent, even with the interference of the guardsmen filling the air with indomitable bullets. Her defence there was cruder as she had little choice but to create hexshields to hide behind rather than deflect and defend with her blades. The stalemate lasted for another couple of minutes, just long enough to have hundreds of probe versus invaders battles, then the tide turned in her favour. There was a way to cut the motes without consuming as much of her Willpower. Much like how she could tune her Invisible Edges to cut things that couldn’t be conventionally cut, so too could her Willpower pop the enemy’s bubble more easily. 

That advantage lasted for about three battles. Before, after a certain point in the battle, the shrouded Damien’s invasion plateaued in skill. It was odd since she knew the Ancient pervert should have been more skilled than she was. But then again, perhaps he was limited by his vessel. 

She remembered the aftermath of when he possessed her body, and she was almost always wiped out. If that happened here, the vessel would be defeated as long as she endured. That was probably a viable strategy, but something within her rebelled at the thought. She just wasn’t sure if that was her or if it was the echo of Damien left within her psyche, or just as troubling, Lilibeth’s remnants. That girl had been quite reckless, which was how Yuriko wound up taking over her corpse. 

After the third clash, Shrouded Damien’s methodology finally changed. Instead of the spikes, the mote that faced her probe was now a reflection of the shrouded Damien’s figure. A mini-Damien, much like how her probe looked like the Golden Silhouette while wielding two sunblades. The mini-Damien wasn’t armed, but his fists were covered by a golden glow, much like how her Anima would look if she pushed too much Radiance into a specific place and then condensed. 

She really should have learned not to freeze in surprise anymore. The mini-D rushed towards her probe and slammed it with a fist. That broke her probe just like the spike did. But by the next clash, she was ready. 

Not that it did much. 

She knew Damien was skilled, since he taught her a lot after all, but she had never faced him in battle. Her probe and the mini-D clashed, sword against fist, and she lost. Not easily, and not because he was faster, more agile, or stronger. He simply moved in such a way as to anticipate her movement and struck once there was an opening. It was frustrating and felt as if she were back in training, and when she fought against someone who was further into their own level. Still, she wouldn’t give in. He wasn’t stronger or faster, and now was the best time to hone her skill. Each battle, no matter how long it lasted subjectively, wasted only a tenth of a second in the real world. And only one such fight could happen at a time. It was the perfect time to train, and if her suspicions were correct, mini-D would have a ceiling to the amount of skill her could access through his vessel, while she did not. 

Hmm, or rather, she didn’t think she had a ceiling. Well, this was her incarnation body that fought, so she was limited to a tenth of her Anima reach, her Animus, and her strands of consciousness. Her Willpower reserves were actually shared between the bodies—and she still has no real way to quantify them since she figured the amount of Intent she needed to create an Invisible Edge was probably less than what she needed at the beginning—and her incarnation body’s root Ennoia was not Radiance. She still had Radiant Physique on both, however. 

Perhaps she was unable to notice the limitation on Ennoias simply because her Colligia of Radiance was more a state of being rather than something she actively did. All of her Sword Truths were in the Ennoia stage after all. Well, either way, she could use this to refine Bulwark. Sort of. 

So she did. She applied Bulwark with one sunblade, while she used the Bladeless Sword with the other. She didn’t create an Invisible Edge since that would only waste her Willpower. Bladeless Sword was meant to cut anything, including things that couldn’t be cut, and while she was still quite a distance from that Ideal, it allowed her to extend what she could conceivably damage, such as another opponent’s Willpower.

The infused sunblade carved into Damien’s glowing orb and smacked his fist away. In the meantime, the other blade sought to deflect his other attack, but her defence failed. Somehow, the empowered fist circled her parry and smacked the silhouette’s hand. It forced her to let go of the sunblade, and it damaged her construct at the same time. Willpower started leaking a moment later, and she lost half of the infused amount, and not to mutual annihilation either. 

She desperately attacked with the other sunblade, and when he tried to parry, the Bladeless Sword sliced past his empowered orb. The image’s face had the same frozen expression as the shrouded Damien, so she couldn’t tell how he felt or reacted. There were also no emotional threads between them, though her true body could see a connection beginning to form from her dreamscape body. It extended outward from the dream but hadn’t connected to the other side yet. 

The lack of reaction didn’t throw her off that much, and she watched for any kind of improvement in her skill. At the same time, she pressed the attack. Since she nicked the invader’s arm, he, too, was leaking Willpower. Sparks flashed where they clashed, though most of the leak dissipated after a couple of seconds. Another couple of seconds later, and her probe popped, though the other was probably at quarter strength. 

Her next probe hit that one again, and she went on a lightning assault. Sunblades whirled as she used her other Styles alongside her Sword Truths. It was hard to shift around with Bulwark, but if she didn’t use it with at least one sunblade, she wouldn’t be able to integrate it properly. Actually, she still needed to discover the full name. 

She won that clash, but lost badly against the next one. Her follow-up probes came with three sunblades instead of two, so that she could properly take advantage of Radiant Flying Swords. Damien’s follow-up motes were armed. The second one had a greatsword in hand, though thankfully, they weren’t mirrors of Fri’Avgi. Instead, they were the mundane sort of greatsword that were about two paces long, had a narrow blade, and probably weighed three and a half Jin. 

His swordsmanship was different from the Four Phases of the Sword, though it reminded her more of Roaring Volcano married to Flowing Water. Each strike was domineering, and even one blade against three, she found herself on the back foot. 

It was now a proper Debate of Truths rather than a Willpower clash. 

Yuriko felt sweat beading across her forehead as she focused on melding her two Truths of the Sword. They were far from being able to merge, but she could already use them in tandem. Damien’s Truths weren’t the sword, she was sure. She was also sure it wasn’t any kind of weapon Truth, and her guess would be his primary Truth, Conquest. 

It was somewhat unfair, wasn’t it? Conquest could cover so many things: weapons, methodologies, even ideas. At its base, Conquest pertained to military force, but it was evident that he was far from the base meaning. That Truth had taken him all the way to Ascension, and only the fact that his vessel was weak allowed her to hold her own. 

She barely won against the greatsword mote, and when she collided with the next, he bore a polearm—a glaive. Her probe popped almost immediately when he snaked the weapon around her defences, and she lost another probe before she wore it down. 

She was losing ground again, and…

The guardsmen were a pain. She clicked her tongue and materialised a sunblade, infused it with Willpower, and let it loose to slaughter the power-armoured soldiers. It would take hundreds of battles subjectively before she’d get any kind of result, but it was better than letting them be. 

With Bulwark on one hand, Bladeless Sword in the other, and Flying Radiant Swords floating around, Yuriko fought. It took another ten minutes and another ten percent of her Anima before they returned to a stalemate. At the same time, her sunblade slew five soldiers before she had to create another one to send to the opposite side. The Shrouded Damien didn’t react to the deaths and even gestured to escalate. A platoon of soldiers was no less than fifty paces from her position, and while they were within her reach, she couldn’t spare the focus to crush them. The closer distance also meant their bullets reached her with impunity and more than a couple had penetrated her condensed aura and hit her. 

Her costume was nothing more than fancy clothes infused with her aura to make them durable. Her true body would have weathered the assault with little care, but her incarnation body wasn’t as strong. The armour-penetrating rounds made holes in her clothes and scratches on her skin. She prevented the bullets from hitting her head or her torso, so it was her arms that were bleeding now. Crimson droplets with gold glitter dribbled to the ground. 

‘I’m here, Master!’ Desire’s mental voice was a welcome surprise. 

‘Get rid of the soldiers!’

‘As you command!’ 

Her bound Chaos Lord’s arrival was another turning point. Her attention returned to the shrouded Damien, and they continued to fight, trading victory and defeat in equal measure. Twenty percent of her Anima was overtaken, but she was slowly gaining it back. Neither of them could move; she’d realise near the beginning, otherwise, she would have struck already. Actually, since she could send her flying swords at the soldiers earlier, she could do the same against the vessel. 

The next five battles saw her win and lose territory in equal measure. The fringes of her Anima felt cold and numb, and she shivered as she fought down fear. She won ten battles in a row and soon found the ceiling of the vessel’s capacity. 

Bulwark came closer and closer to legitimacy, and the name was at the tip of her tongue. 

Undaunted. That was it. A bulwark protected and undaunted meant it wouldn’t crumble from fear. Undaunted Bulwark Style. Unbending, unyielding, uncompromising defence. 

The name resonated with her entire being, and she couldn’t help but grin. The angle of her sunblade matched the resonance of the style, and when Damien’s weapon slammed into it, the force was reflected back perfectly. 

The surprise of his halberd bouncing back to smack his face gave her the opening to stab his avatar. A perfect battle with no loss on her part, and she capitalised on it by having the probe pounce on the next mote. Damien recovered from the surprise, but his attacks were all defended against as perfectly as she could. Undaunted Bulwark wasn’t on the same tier as Adamant Guardian Seal…

Oh. The latter was the ultimate goal of Undaunted Bulwark, wasn’t it? The Seal had been something she kludged together after what she saw in that obsidian totem in the plane of Kogasi, and now that she had a better foundation, she saw connections and commonalities with the mandalas and the sword style. 

And then, Undaunted Bulwark rose from a barely formed Style, to one robust enough that…

She could feel it. An Ennoia, just a fingernail’s breadth from her touch.