Chapter 64: … Next,a roar…
Sullivan’s Perspective
In the span of a few minutes, Sullivan was subjected to a series of events that he could only describe as…confounding.
Sullivan saw the Fourth Young Master of the Zhen Clan use his puppet to have himself thrown at a wall made of an incredibly hard and valuable metal, and explode into a burst of blue and white light.
Immediately after, the puppet that had thrown Zhen Liu suddenly turned into a ball of red and brown light that shot towards the explosion of blue light and disappeared within it.
But the absolute weirdest thing, was the giant demonic being that suddenly manifested from the aforementioned explosion of light. Sullivan had thought this was another enemy, but calmed down once he had a better look at it. When he began to look at it with critical eye, he noticed that it was surprisingly transparent and a tad glow-y.
“It’s…made of aether? Why is it just staring at the wall.”
“Roar!”
Although Sullivan was entranced by the sight, the mechanical centisnake wasn’t. In fact, it was rather crossed by the appearance of the glowing giant, so much so that the aether around it began to violently churn and become superheated.
“Oh shit!”
Sullivan proceeded to get the hell out of the way as the centisnake fired off a beam of concentrated Ignati aether that it reignited all of the lava that the Fenririte wall had cooled down earlier. A devastating attack that could render even Aether Masters into ash.
Too bad it didn’t do squat as it just harmlessly passed through the aether giant and was promptly absorbed by the Fenririte wall. The giant didn’t even seem to register that it was just attacked and continued to stare at the wall in front of it. A second later, the giant had plunged it’s hands into the solid wall before it like it was water, causing ripples to form as it’s hands went deeper.
“What the fuck…..”
[With my power I forge your body,] the giant suddenly spoke as he pulled a molten ball of metal from the wall and began to mold it into a humanoid shape like a clay doll.
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From Zhen Liu’s (Thomas Lee’s) perspective
After Zhen Liu activated the [Chaos Body Forge] in earnest, he was quickly blinded by the sheer amount of light produced by the seal and ring on his left hand. For whatever reason, they ended up activating in tandem.
“Ow…that hurt…like a lot…wait…why do I feel like I’m floating?”
Zhen Liu had to blink his eyes a number of times until the splotches disappeared and he could finally see again. It was once he was able to see that he realized he was floating in an empty space.
“Okay, what the he-”
“-GAH, LOUD DISEMBODIED VOICE!,” Zhen Liu shouted as he covered his head. “Wait…this didn’t happen last time…”
As if ignoring Zhen Liu’s outburst, the slightly otherworldly voice continued speaking.
“Huh…okay…so I just say the words?”
“Why is the ancient magic thing using modern-nope, don’t. Do not ask that right now,” Zhen Liu muttered as he straighted his posture. Once he was comfortable, he stuck his left hand forward and recited the words he used last time.
[With my power, I forge your body.]
As these words left his lips, lines of aether began to flow out of his open palm and condense into strange shapes in front of Zhen Liu’s eyes. The shapes then began to stack upon one another until they formed what appeared to a 3d printer akin to something from a science fiction drama or a certain super hero film about a metallic man.
After the printer formed, three balls of light manifested from the empty space above and began to float around the magical construct. The balls orbited the construct a few times before two of them moved to float above it.
Zhen Liu could feel his mind getting probed for a bit until the image of a large bearded viking wielding twin axes appeared before him, literally in the form of a holographic image made of aether, for a split moment before being absorbed by the printer. Additionally, one of the balls light momentarily projected the image of a strange, elephant-like monster with stark white fur and icicle covered tusks, before that too was absorbed by the machine below.
After this, the other ball of light immediately dove into the printer below and began to diffuse along it’s surface, causing the mechanisms to activate. Various tools and machines that Zhen Liu vaguely understood about, began to assemble a large humanoid shape piece by piece, limb by limb.
If Zhen Liu wasn’t so focused on the task at hand, he would’ve been shocked at how easily this “machine” processed and forged the Fenririte into form. From what Zhen Liu understood, Fenririte was ice aether enhanced Wolfram, also known as, Tungsten.
Back on Earth, Tungsten is famous for two physical properties: it’s hardness and it’s melting point. When properly purified, pure tungsten is five times harder than steel, meaning only diamonds can at most scratch the surface. As for the melting point, one would need to somehow heat it to over 3400 degree Celsius, which is about a little over half of the average surface temperature of a sun.
When Wolfram gets infused with ice aether and become Fenririte, things gets even crazier.
Fenririte’s hardness is at least five times harder than that of normal tungsten while the melting point for Fenririte becomes so absurdly high that a fist-sized ball of the stuff can turn an erupting volcano into an extinct one in a matter of minutes.
And Zhen Liu was about to make a kaijin out of this stuff.
When the “machine” had finished making the body, Zhen Liu moved on to the next line.
[With my wisdom, I forge your mind.]
Zhen Liu’s ring lit up as threads of aether rapidly escaped from it and formed several bookshelves made of aether to the left and right of him.
At the voice’s command, one of the tools in the “printer” came to life and began to emit a blue laser that quickly carved into the body an aether formula. When the last line was carved in, a low roaring sound echoed in the space.
The shelves on Zhen Liu’s left and right began to rumble as several scrolls and books then rapidly shot towards the body, turning into balls of light that quickly infused themselves into it.
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The aether giant eventually stopped molding the metal once it was satisfied with how it looked and began to admire his handiwork. He then leveled the molded figure at eye level and spoke once more in that strange, rumbling voice.
[With my wisdom, I forge your mind.]
Under Sullivan’s gaze, the giant took a deep breath, one that caused the aether in the room to suddenly go…quiet. Actions performed by powerful warriors and beings normally caused great disturbances in the environmental aether, so a lack of it was unsettling to say the least.
“Fuuuu…”
As the giant exhaled, several dozen runes of pure aether manifested from his mouth and rode the wind of his breath, flowing into the molded figure that was held in his hands. When the figure cooled and solidified, the patterns of several different types of runes could be seen marking it’s body up and down.
The figure looked to be completed at this point and had this unusual quality to it that caused Sullivan to stop and stare in awe.
*Crack!*
Which is why he was shocked when the giant suddenly broke the figure into several pieces with a single punch.
“What? Why would it-”
*Fwoom!*
The giant then flicked a finger upward from the hand he just punched with, producing a strange glowing ball that looked significantly more solid than itself.
[And with my will, I… merge your soul with Chaos.]
The ball suddenly began to spin, unravelling into amber gold threads that filled in the cracks that the giant just made and restitched the broken figure.
As each thread was placed, Sullivan began to feel as if the air in the room was getting heavier.
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Zhen Liu was about to say the last line, a name already in mind, when the voice decided to pop up again.
A small blip to information soon entered his mind, initially causing him confusion before making way for realization.
‘Huh? Oh…okay then.’ [By my will, I merge your soul with Chaos.]
The last of the balls of light moved away from its orbit and made it’s way to the side of the one that had projected the image of a mammoth just moments ago.
Once the two got close enough, a crack in reality opened above them as a strange dark energy escaped from it and wrapped the two balls of light into one. When the ball was complete, it floated downward until it was chest level with the body.
The core jammed itself into the chest of the metal body, causing lines of aether to suddenly flare up all over it and bringing it to life. As it did, the light got brighter and brighter until Zhen Liu could see nothing.
He did however feel reality around him warp and a pair of voices in stereo ringed in his ear.
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When the giant had finished it’s work, it said one final line that sounded like it overlapped with another.
[May your roar freeze the universe, Frosttusk]|
The figure began to glow brighter after these words, while the giant itself turned into wisps and were promptly absorbed by the figure itself.
The figure soon became so bright, that it blinded the room. Once everyone couldn’t see, a low voice sounding like a crashing glacier filled the room.
“Paooo…too…cold…”
