Chapter 1017: Timing is a Pain, ain’t it?
“Meh…nrr…GAH! PLEASE STOP NEEDLING MY BELLY!”
“Hey.”
“BAH!”
Despite being the first to pass out, Zhen Feng ended up regaining his consciousness after Zhen Hai up first.
By a solid twenty minutes.
Either way, Zhen Feng didn’t appreciate being surprised in such a way.
“Please don’t do that again.”
“No promises.”
“Wait a minute…are we moving?”
“Yeah.”
Zhen Feng and Zhen Hai were left on the deck of the [Storm Queen’s Galleon] after their tattooing session, partially due to how quickly the situation changed, but also due to the fact that there was no reason to actually move them.
There was no sun beaming down on them in the [Abyssal Lands], so they wouldn’t get burned or worst.
Either way, because they were left to snooze off their pain while on the deck of the ship, they both regained consciousness while on the move. As such, they were a bit confused about what the fuck was going on.
Well, Zhen Feng was confused.
“Wait, what’s going on?”
“Well, to explain in it as plain language as I can manage, turns out the Fallen have been fucking with us by using these fish puppets that had the War Elder’s energy markers on them. As such, we’re going to be heading towards the last known place that the matriarch saw him at. Supposedly there’s a faction there we can talk to in regards to the Fallen, but I have no idea how we can talk to them.”
“Huh…okay…wait…,” Zhen Feng paused as he looked around himself. “How come I don’t see Xiao Liu laid out with us? I thought the Matriarch was going to tattoo all three of us at once.”
While the Zhen Clan scions basically agreed that Zhen Liu was no the strongest of their generation, not even they were confident about him being able to handle Zhen Xun Tian’s creative…gift.
“Oh, yeah, he’s piloting the ship right now,” Zhen Hai answered. “Apparently, with everything happening so quickly, the matriarch decided to postpone his tattoo until later.”
“Seriously? Damn.”
It sounded childish, but they were kind of hoping that they would all suffer from the pain of being inked, together. Shared pain breeds fellowship, after all.
“Well…has anything else happened while I was out?”
“Not really. Zhen Liu has been as silent as a gravestone while steering the ship. Then again, that might be needing to also control all of these puppets,” Zhen Hai commented as he lifted his feet so that one of the aforementioned “puppets” could swab the deck beneath it. “He got this super serious look on his face like he’s in deep thought though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh…wonder what he’s thinking about.”
…
‘Ya know…I always figured after I opened the kaijin making floodgates by creating Kit, that my follow-up requester would be someone in my family…I was not expecting it to be a kaijin from a previous lord,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he kept steering the [Storm Queen’s Galleon].
Thanks to his real time connection with Razorstella, he was able to listen in on what exactly she and Tortallion were talking about the entire time. Hell, the turtle-like kaijin even said as much earlier that he was willing to talk because of that.
That stated, out of everyone who could listen in on Razorstella and Tortallion’s conversation, none were more surprised than Logos and Pathos.
=Of course fulfilling the desire delays core collapse! Why didn’t we realize this sooner?!=
‘Wait, what? I thought you guys could process information from the kaijin directly.’
=Think of it like this, a camera can record visual information, but a human needs to label what is being seen. Alternatively, a program needs to be trained in order to read it.=
‘Ah…okay…oh, speaking of humans and information that can be difficult to interpret…,’ Zhen Liu trailed off while refocusing his mental connections.
‘Arachnidane, Lacerage. Have you informed Jin Fang, Jinju Ren and Cornelius about our destination yet?’
[Just about to.]
[Wanna listen?]
‘I’ll pass, but let me know if I need to open the gate.’
[Of course.]
‘In the mean time…I guess I should figure out what kind of Kaijin would be the most appropriate for a place like Undertow…’
____________Meanwhile…________________
As the Zhen Clan expeditionary force continued sailing, this time with a clear destination in mind, the Zhen Clan back at Stone Claw City had just finished the first part of the their defensive preparations. Now came the hard part: perfecting everything.
“And with that…the walls are now completed! Good job y’all!”
“Hell yeah!”
“So…now what do we do?”
“Well…the aether beasts heading our way includes several species that can fly and several species known to crawl up walls. Meaning we gotta prepare for dealing with those.”
“Which pertains to us…”
“Learning how to use ranged weapons or learning how to fight on the walls…unless y’all want to be in front of the walls.”
“Fair enough.”
“How are we going to fight on the walls?”
“That depends on how good are y’all at circulating ya aether or whether or not you can ride a spider comfortably.”
“Come again?”
…
“Is that the last of the defensive siege engines?”
“Aside from ammo? Yeah.”
“Aside from the ammo? What’s wrong with the ammo?”
“Something about the cuts being too smooth for the shrapnel rounds. Apparently they want the cuts to be rougher.”
“That…kind of makes sense but is also a really weird thing to complain about.”
“Right???”
…
“We need to make how many trap arrays?!”
“There’s no way in the nine hells do we have enough materials to make even a third of the arrays they want.”
“Yeah!”
“Normally, I’d agree with you, but the Zhen Clan has actually opened their stores for us to work with.”
“Oh…okay.”
“That and the Zhen Clan has also decided to open up their archives and gifted us some other types of trap arrays to set up alongside our traditional blast ones.”
“How many other types?”
“About thirty-two.”
“Holy…”
“Damn, no wonder they’re the hegemony of the frontier.”
…
The defensive coordination of the Zhen Clan and Stone Claw City had actually gotten so great, that people were actually starting to believe that even if none of the city’s powerhouses made a move, that the beast tide would be smashed into pieces. Granted, this partially by design.
The main architects of these defensive efforts, Lady Aranea(Arachnidame) and Lady Lucille (Lacerage).
Technically, they could’ve put in less effort so that warriors of Stone Claw City could be placed under more pressure and be forced to grow in order to compensate, but they decided against that for one important reason.
They wanted to make sure that their lord’s consort had ample time and opportunity to reconnect with her past…and deal with any of the demons that came with such an affair.
…
“Pardon me, mistress. Am I interrupting?”
“Huh? Oh, hello Arachnidame, ah, Miss Aranea. Feel free to come in.”
“Thank you, and feel free to refer to me by my Kaijin name if that makes you more comfortable.”
At this moment in time, Jin Fang was in the middle of cultivating her formula while making use of a private chamber that was designed to help her growth. Zhen Liu and the kaijin had designed and constructed in secret, away from prying eyes so that she could use it to the fullest. He did also do this for Alicia, Bellona, Rianna and Jinju Ren, but those former two were rarely used due to them still having to attend schools…for now.
Thanks to this effort though, Jin Fang managed to breakthrough to the first ring of Aether Grandmaster quite recently. Although, she kept this information under wraps.
It wouldn’t look good from any point of view if the servant of a clan was stronger than the clan’s elders. Granted, those aforementioned elders were starting to get stronger too, but haven’t broken through…yet.
Regardless, Arachnidame’s arrival to Jin Fang’s cultivation chamber was an indicator the former that a development had occurred on Zhen Liu’s end. What that development entailed though was unknown to her.
“If you’re coming to see me in the middle of the day must mean Xiao Liu has found something important, right?”
“That is correct, mistress,” Arachnidame nodded. “The expeditionary force is on the way to Undertow Kingdom now and will be reaching its gate soon.”
“Oh. That’s good to hear…but I assume there’s more?”
“Indeed,” Arachnidame. “One of the kaijin of the Storm Queen has been found to still be active and guarding the kingdom as we speak. If you so desire, we can arrange a meeting.”
“O-oh.”
Evidently, this was not the kind of news Jin Fang was expecting to hear today.
