Chapter 798: Demon Riot: Family Matter
No, seriously, you didn’t think it was weird that there was another voice that was able to-
|Worry about it later, we got a thing to do right now.|
Fine…don’t blame me if everything suddenly goes to pot because we’re not being diligent enough or something dumb like that.
|I won’t. Now, please?|
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“Alright, that’s it,” Zhen Yue suddenly said as she stood up from her seat with a look of determination plain on her face. “We got to get out there.”
“You mean out of here, right?”
“No.”
“Dammit.”
“Should’ve seen this coming…”
“I suppose it is the Zhen Clan way…”
While everyone else in the arena was hauling ass in order to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, the Zhen Clan scions were still watching everything unfold from their private box while remaining unharmed.
Apparently Aranea had gone out of her way to make sure that the Zhen Clan’s skybox was one of the safest areas in the arena after paying to have the whole place overhauled.
This meant that, technically speaking, the Zhen Clan scions could wait out this entire conflict by just staying in their private skybox. However, the found that idea rather repugnant.
After all, this arena was a part of their clan’s territory too, and they would be remissed in letting some random assholes show up and make a mess of everything without some form of retribution.
Granted, not all of the scions were up for the idea of getting involved in whatever the fuck was going on beneath their feet.
“Zhen Yue…are you sure we should be getting involved with that?,” Zhen Guo asked. “I mean… they’re at least Grandmaster level and that’s not factoring in the fucking aether treasure flames being swung around like swords down there.”
“It’ll be fine,” Zhen Yue assured her cousin. “The seven of us just gotta work together and we’ll be able to-”
“Uhh…not that I want to rain on your parade, cousin of mine. But…Zhen Liu doesn’t appear to be here right now,” Zhen Xing pointed out.
“That’s fine. We saw earlier that he didn’t have any of his puppets on hand, so he probably went back to grab them from ho-”
“Uhh…it also appears Zhen Hai is missing too.”
“Okay, what?”
Zhen Yue did a quick visual sweep of the room to make sure that her cousins weren’t fucking with her…only to confirm that they were telling the truth.
Neither Zhen Liu or Zhen Hai were in the room at this moment in in time, and she had no idea where either of them could’ve gone…sort of.
‘They either both decided to head back together to the estate to get help and/or get their equipment…or they’ve both gone off independent of each other to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous’ Zhen Yue thought to herself. Evidently, she wasn’t necessarily wrong with this guess.
“Alright,so our two heaviest hitters are currently missing while a pair of lunatics rampage below…fuck it! We’re going down there anyways.”
“Seriously?”
“Why?”
“Because, if there’s anything I know about you guys, especially those two, they’re going to eventually involve themselves in the battle anyways.”
“That’s not…er…”
As much as the other scions wanted to argue against Zhen Yue’s observation, she wasn’t exactly wrong. Especially when they thought back on their behavior for the past few months.
“Now come on you lot! We have a battle to intervene in!”
“Err…fine!”
Compelled by Zhen Yue’s forcefulness, the other scions opted to do as she said and followed her out the door.
“So…who do you think is going to be the first to intervene in the battle?”
“My money’s on Zhen Hai.”
“Really?”
“Zhen Liu may be a horrifyingly strong when it comes to brute force, but he still needs his puppets to fight. He has to go home to go and grab them. Zhen Hai, however, brought his war club with him. More than likely, by the time we’re halfway there, we’re going to hear him scream an obscenity before rushing in like a lunatic.
“True…”
Evidently, this was a bet that had already been resolved, but none of them would know this…yet.
…
‘Dammit, dammit, dammit! I need to find a better angle before I can rush in…ugh! I hate having to actually think strategically in battle!,’ Zhen Hai mentally griped while walking around the outter perimeter of the arena’s stands.
[Kill, kill, kill!]
[BAHAHAHA! THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!]
‘Then again, it probably doesn’t help that Xiao Liu is acting like a murderous berserker…wait, do I get like this too?’
When the “Kaijin Lord”, aka, “mysterious warrior in black [Regalia]” appeared on to the scene, Zhen Hai had a sneaking suspicion he knew who it was.
‘Come on Xiao Liu, I know you’re more level headed than this. Get it back together…what the fuck is a kaijin anyways?’
Surprisingly though, he had a fairly nuanced list of reasons as to why he knew it was Zhen Liu fighting this Olstenna guy.
For starters, amongst the Zhen Clan scions, hell even amongst the Zhen Clan members in general, Zhen Hai had the distinct pleasure of being subjected to Zhen Liu’s weird power boost ability to know that it wasn’t as simple as it looked.
The two times it had occurred, Zhen Hai could feel that something or someone was inside of his head, guiding him on how to use aether in ways that he would never realize were possible until they got in there and making his normal patterns of thought and mannerism different than how he would normally act. It would not be that big of a stretch to assume Zhen Liu had done this exact thing to himself multiple times before, to the point that he’d be able to fake entirely different personalities with entirely different abilities.
On top of that though, Zhen Hai also recalled that Zhen Liu had recently acquired some weird-ass cursed hammer that seemed to be able to manipulate blood into weapons. Again, wouldn’t be a massive stretch to assume that Zhen Liu or his weird master could somehow modify the thing to be able to manipulate bone as well.
That or the hammer already had the manipulate bones as well as blood, Zhen Hai didn’t know because he never asked.
As for his last reason for thinking this “Kaijin Lord” guy was Zhen Liu…it was because he had seen this warrior before.
Back on Roaring Tide, back in the Willow Scale City Arena, back when he was fairly certain that an aether fueled bomb was about go off and kill everyone he knew and love, he saw this exact same warrior turn up out of nowhere and save the day with barely anyone noticing.
Zhen Hai didn’t really think about it at the time, but he swore he saw this guy rescue Jin Fang and saw how Jin Fang was oddly intimate with the guy despite only seeing her act that way around Zhen Liu. Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps it was adrenaline but he couldn’t help but think in that moment maybe, just maybe, it was Zhen Liu underneath that weird [Regalia].
He had seen Zhen Liu use his [Regalia] earlier that day and it looked absolutely nothing like this black [Regalia]. However, he also saw how he used one of his puppets to augment his [Regalia]. He saw first hand how Zhen Liu used his red jade warrior puppet to change not only how his [Regalia] looked, but also how it seemed to develop a completely different set of abilities.
Zhen Liu’s [Regalia] looked somewhat heroic, like something out of a fairytale.
This other warrior’s [Regalia] looked…straight up demonic, like something out of a nightmare.
However…Zhen Hai couldn’t deny the possibility that Zhen Liu had been keeping a few more secrets than he had been letting everyone on.
Eventually, Zhen Hai stopped running around the arena’s perimeter, having found his angle of attack. As he readied his weapon, one last thought went through his head.
‘Maybe it’s a stretch, a massive one at that, but…one possibility is that Zhen Liu somehow has two [Regalia], the other is that he has a hidden aether puppet that he hasn’t told anyone about for some reason or that this guy has absolutely nothing to do with him and I’m going crazy. Either way, I should try and put an end to this.’
With no more stray thoughts going through his head, Zhen Hai steeled himself to do something…wreckless.
‘I really should’ve practiced this move more.’
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=Sometimes, yeah…wait did your voice just change?=
=How the fuck is he pulling that off?=
=How?=
