Chapter 190: Baby’s First Chaos Art
‘Hold the fuck up…is…is this my first actual art? Oh shit.’
As Zhen Liu thought about how the hell to focus on the concepts of [War] and [Rebellion], his mind wandered to the realization that this was the first art he had learned since being able to cultivate at all.
‘How and why did it take me this long?’
Now, while technically he was able to use aether arts with the help of his kaijin taking over his body, but that was the issue, it wasn’t him doing the arts, it was his kaijin using his body to do the arts. While this didn’t bother him at the start, he started thinking about it more and more during his free time. It made him realize that this was kinda like letting someone else play through his save file in a boss rush roguelike, the credit might have gone to him, it wasn’t really him doing it though.
But now, he was being taught an art that only he, and probably anyone else who could use [Chaos] if those formulas exist somewhere, could do. It was kind of a surreal realization.
‘Wait…is it just based on my memories? Because I’ve never been in a warzone or an active rebellion…hold up, could that work? Well, nothing ventured nothing gained…’
The thing about being a yeeted soul from a more peaceful world, is that there isn’t a lot of opportunity to witness war and rebellion up close and personal, but there was a lot of media created around those themes.
With this in mind, Zhen Liu took up the stance he was just shown and began to focus his mind on a few key pieces of media he grew up watching. As he did, the bone club in his hand began to vibrate like crazy and glow as a weird ball of energy began to form at the top of it.
“Ooooh, it looks like you’re getting the hang of it!,” Anton praised as he saw this development, “now, when it’s fully charged, swing the club as hard as you can at the target!”
“Okay…how will I know when that is?”
“In about…three seconds.”
“What?!”
“Fire it now!”
“Gah! [Imperial Crusher]!”
Zhen Liu swung the bone club as hard as he could and fired off the ball of energy at the target dummy. Surprisingly, the shot didn’t go wide and hit anyone in the head.
“Huh…those are weird images.”
As the ball of energy flew forward, it rapidly morphed between men on motorcycles, women using flaming bottles as weapon and a rockstar armed with a guitar along with several other strange images.
When the energy impacted the dummy, it got burned, shocked, shot up, cut up, blasted with some foul smelling gas and hit with an unusually large amount of explosions, a lot more than what was honestly necessary. The dummy looked incredibly beat up at the end of the attack.
Anton stared impressed and a bit surprised about the results.
“So… how’d I do?,” Zhen Liu asked with his face looking like (._.).
“Well…on the one hand, that was a very impressive application of my art,” Anton praised.
“Thank you.”
“On the other, either war has changed dramatically in the centuries since we have been dead, or you have gone through an unusually large amount of traumatic experiences up until now,” Anton followed up. He was used to blades, arrows, the occasional cannon and aether arts being used liberally. He was not used to…whatever the hell just happened to this dummy.
“Uhhh, not exactly…I just know really, really creative story tellers,” Zhen Liu said sheepishly. ‘That and watched one too many documentaries.’
As Anton appraised the damage while Zhen Liu stood off to the side, the sound of knife tapping at the door echoed through the room in a rhythmic manner.
“Can I come in?,” a sharp, feminine voice called into the room after the knocking had stopped.
“Oh, she’s here. Yeah, come on in Razor Maiden.”
“Your proto-kaijin’s name is Razor Maiden? That a placeholder?,” Anton asked.
“Kinda, that was the name of the puppet she…was.”
The aforementioned Razor Maiden carefully opened the door and gently closed it behind her as she entered the room.
“Apologies for the intrusion,” she said with a small bow.
“What a polite proto-kaijin! How cordial,” Anton mused.
‘Huh. I guess coming here helped to boost Razor Maiden’s development. Neat.’
Razor Maiden, back home at least, was usually very wild, a bit blunt and had a pretty bad habit of just…cutting stuff, a lot, so the fact that she now using etiquette and not cutting open doors was a good sign.
“Alright, can Razor Maiden here go into travel mode?”
“Yes, but-”
“I don’t like doing so. Can’t talk to others, otherwise,” she interjected.
“Yeah, that,” Zhen Liu confirmed, “not sure if that’s gonna be a factor here or not.”
Anton looked surprised at the Razor Maiden’s statement, but shrugged it off for later.
“No worries, alright, Little Liu. Is it safe to assume you know how to enhance your kaijin’s power? As well as extract excess aether from them?”
“Yeah…,” Zhen Liu getting the feeling that this question was about to segue into something…weird.
“Cool! In that case, in order to do this next part, you’re gonna have to rapidly cycle your aether through Razor Maiden, and then absorb it back into yourself, mix it with [Chaos] and channel it into the club. Simple right?”
“Uhhh…”
“What?”
The words by themselves sounded simple, but when strung together in the manner Anton just delivered, it really fucking didn’t.
The skeleton looked at Zhen Liu’s and Razor Maiden’s blank stares before rolling his…eye sockets.
“Okay, kaijin are essentially [Chaos] incarnates, but they have more narrow definitions of chaos. [Imperial Crusher] is a way for you to channel [Chaos], you with me so far?”
“Yes… you’re saying if I channel [Chaos] into Razor Maiden, I can change the nature of the art?,” Zhen Liu guessed.
“Got it in one!,” Anton exclaimed with a happy clap, “Now try to put your money where your mouth is and give it a whirl.”
Zhen Liu and Razor Maiden looked at each other, a tad bewildered, but decided to roll with it.
“Is this going to hurt?”
“I have…no idea. Let’s find out.”
Zhen Liu focused his mind onto Razor Maiden and began to channel his energy into her. If one could see the flow of energy, one would notice stream of Omni aether flowing into the Razor Maiden.
“Ooh, tingly!”
“Good, good, now try extracting the aether you just cycled into her,” Anton instructed. Zhen Liu didn’t exactly know how to do that, but he guessed it was similar to absorbing energies from an array.
“Okay, it shouldn’t be that-whoa that’s a weird feeling.”
“Nah! Weird scratchings.”
Surprisingly, Zhen Liu could easily retract the aether he just gave to Razor Maiden, but now he had the sudden urge to cut and scratch things…and do ballet….
“Hah! You’re a natural at this! Now just focus that energy into the club and let it loose!”
“Alright, [Imperial Crusher]!”
