Chapter 831: Illusions do not equal deepfakes
=Manual. We don’t want our “master” sounding like a goat.=
=Uh oh? Why is there an uh oh?=
=Seriously?!=
=Fantastic. Where in all of heaven and hell are we going to find someone that can…wait a minute…Pathos?=
=Do you remember which room we sent our lord and his cousins to stay in?=
=Time to pay rent, motherfucker.=
________________________________________
“Wait a minute…that’s not Logos and Pathos…,” Rianna observed.
“Who the hell is that guy?,” Jinju Ren asked.
“Hold on…I think I know who that is…,”Jin Fang mumbled as she half-recalled a memory of her first trip to the library.
More specifically, she remembered a talking skeleton of some sort.
‘But last time I saw him, he was nothing but a pile of bones! How the hell…”
________________________________________
“Well…”
*Sound of a door being kicked in by a man wearing steel bottom combat boots.*
‘Oh thank the maker,’ Zhen Liu muttered to himself, once he heard the sweet sweet sound of his ass getting interrupted and sensed the rolling waves of [Chaos] energy flowing toward him.
‘I wonder what Logos and Pathos cooked up for-‘
“Good afternoon, Zhen Clan scions! I hope my library’s defensive measure didn’t cause y’all to lose too much of your nerves! How is my darling disciple doing under your care, by the way? I literally saw him passed out in the infirmary not too long ago. I mean, he looks fine now, but still.”
‘-wait a goddamn minute, Anton? How,no, why is he here?!,’ Zhen Liu mentally screamed into a void that wouldn’t respond.
Over the past few months, whenever Zhen Liu decided to drop in to the [Library of Nowhere], he would occasionally drop in on his predecessor, Anton the Damned Drunkard, in order to pick up advice in regards to life, battle tactics and how to use bone club without breaking the damn thing.
This meant, as a massive technicality that needed to be squinted at in order to find the fine print, Anton was Zhen Liu’s master.
He just wasn’t the one that Zhen Liu had been lying into existence this whole time.
“Wait a minute…”
“Huh…he doesn’t look like that old guy who covered our asses last time…”
As for his cousins, they were just about as lost to the plot as he was.
From what they remembered, Zhen Liu’s master was this mysterious old man that wore a pitch black robe and had this weird aura around them. It was incredibly hard to forget such distinct details, especially when compared to this newcomer.
“What? Is there something on my face?”
The man who arrived looked to be about middle aged but carried himself with the same mannerism as an old war veteran. He was radiating that same weird aura that the old man had,however, he also looked incredibly…sloppy.
They couldn’t exactly pin what it was that made them think of this word, but it was the most accurate description they could pick from without picking slightly more offensive options such as homeless or lush.
Either way, the scions couldn’t help but throw up their guards at the arrival of this strange looking man.
Even if they could sense the sheer amount of power rolling off of him, they would rather go down fighting.
“Okay, now this…oh wait a minute…I see what the issue is,” the sloppy veteran said with a knowing smirk. “You were expecting me to look a bit more like how we first met, right?”
Under the watchful gaze of the Zhen Clan scions, Anton snapped his fingers together and caused his entire body to ripple like a mirage during a heatwave for a split second.
“What the fuck?!”
“Whoa…”
“How did he…”
The next thing any of the scions knew, the middle aged veteran had somehow transformed everything from his clothes to his countenance to be exactly like that robed old man who saved their asses not too long ago.
“That better?,” the old man asked in the same tone of voice he used back in Roaring Tide. “Or you know, if you’d prefer not to talk to an old bastard like me, I could try something more pleasing to the eye.”
With another snap of his fingers, he became a she, and that she happened to be an exact duplicate of their great grand auntie, Zhen Xun Tian, down to the tattoos.
“Oooh, I must say! I keep forgetting how surprisingly fit this body is,” the false Zhen Xun Tian said in a voice that mimicked her down to the exact tone, with mannerisms that were exactly like hers.
Needless to say, the Zhen Clan scions were stunned silent.
“Well…that’s unsettling.”
“Apologies, Master…master…”
“Anton, you can call me Anton.”
“Master Anton. Can you please change back to your original, er, initial form?”
“Of course,” Anton agreed before snapping his fingers and changing back into his middle aged war veteran form.
“Now then, I think all of you and I have some important things to discuss about, yes?”
“Uh…sure…”
Despite literally seeing the man shapeshift before their very eyes, which should’ve immediately been a red flag, their instincts and mind told them that these forms were all “real”.
The thing about shapeshifting arts, as far as the Zhen Clan scions were aware at least, was that there were always flaws mixed into whatever disguise was being made.
The clothes were wrong, the eyes were the wrong color, the tone of voice was too high, etc.
There was always something…off in regards to someone’s transformation, this especially being the case when someone tries to mimic another person’s appearance.
As long as someone was at all familiar with a particular form a copycat was trying to copy, they could always point out the flaws…not in this case though.
Master Anton had somehow managed to reach level of transformative mastery that allowed him to look however he wanted without so much as a stray hair.
That said, while most of the Zhen Clan scions were shocked at this sight, Zhen Liu was absolutely stunned.
Evidently, he was so shocked by the sudden shifting appearance of Anton, that Zhen Liu had to use a bit of [Chaos] to disguise voice so he could ask “Harriet”(Hurricroak) to figure out what the fuck was going on.
…
“Pst! Hurricroak, what the fuck is going on?!”
“Huh? Maestro? Are you whispering in my ear? That’s weird!”
“I-wait, what? Yes, why are you finding this weird?”
“Well, I’m more used to you speaking in my head and vice versa. Although, it seems like I’m unable to do so right now because of the droning snore happening in your brain.”
“You can hear-wait, no… more important things to worry about…okay, Hurricroak, why the fuck is Anton pretending to be the old ‘master’, who resurrected my ass and how is he able to do shapeshifting thing? I was pretty damn sure y’all we’re going to use some kind of super illusion array or something, not a deepfaked impersonator.”
“Aren’t deepfakes a computer thing? Is that even applicable here?”
“You know what I mean!”
“That’s fair, maestro. Anyways, yeah the reason why Anton is doing that is because the illusion array they’re using is kind of incomplete. So we had to use a volunteer to pretend to be your master, as it were.”
“Ah…why aren’t one of the other kaijin doing it?”
“Because there’s a very real chance we’re just going to call you our personal terms instead of your objective name. Would be rather awkward for us to randomly call you maestro, jarl or milord, ya know?”
“That…that makes too much sense.”
“On top of that, Anton is technically your master…to an extent.”
“A surprisingly hands free one, but I get what you mean…alright, let’s roll with it.”
…
“So! You’re probably wondering why I have you younglings here instead of outright kicking you out or burying in the lake with lead shoes on, right?,” Anton asked in a weirdly cherry voice.
“Er…I guess?,” the scions answered while side eyeing Zhen Liu, who was maintaining an incredibly neutral expression at this point in time.
The Zhen Clan scions couldn’t help but to make a mental note that perhaps part of the reason why Zhen Liu got accepted by this eccentric master, was due to the fact that they were similar to their aforementioned cousin’s mother.
Regardless, there were more important things to worry about.
“Simply put, there’s something I want to confirm.”
“Which is…?”
[Can you understand me?]
“Yes…wait a minute.”
