Chapter 909: Mimicking a limit break
[Wait a minute…director? What’s your boo thang doing?]
‘Razor, again, please stop using my old world’s slang.’
[It’s funny watching you cringe though.]
‘Razor…’
[I am dead serious though, what is your bride-to-be doing?]
‘Well…it looks like she’s trying to augment her attack with the power of her other dragon familiars in a manner similar to what I do with the Godoku Cannon and you-and I just realize that what she’s doing is probably a really bad idea because I use what is essentially a black box weapon while she is pioneering an attack she’s never done before.’
‘Please tell me she’s going to be okay, if not, tell me how to prevent this from possibly killing her ASAP!’
=She’ll be fine, milord. It looks like Princess Jinju Ren is indeed as much as a martial genius as she purports herself to be. In a couple of moments, she should be launching her own version of the [Godoku Shot]. Granted, she’s using dragon force instead of [Chaos] so the results are going to be a little different.=
‘Hallelujah!’
‘DAMNATION ON HIGH!’
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‘Shiiiit, no wonder darling uses that weird gourd of his! This is draining as fuck!,’ Jinju Ren cursed as she willed her aether and dragon force to move in ways that she never thought to do before now.
In order to overcome the Dragon Thief Monkey before her, and its stupid modified copycat attacks, Jinju Ren decided to try and mimic something she saw Zhen Liu do once, and attempt to “mix” the powers of all of her familiars at once.
This wasn’t a bad idea, since combining the powers of multiple different dragons at once was a surefire way to produce an attack that was greater than the sum of its parts. Plus, on a massive technicality, her [Dragon Dominating Saber], technically served a similar purpose to Zhen Liu’s [Godoku Gourd].
Both could holster their respective familiars, both could be used to channel the power of those aforementioned familiars and both were made from highly questionable materials that should never be explored for fear of breaking fragile minds.
That stated, it should be noted that the [Dragon Dominating Saber] was not made with the idea of combining the powers of different dragon familiars, a limitation that Jinju Ren didn’t consider until this moment.
Of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to try and brute force this combination effect by relying on her own innate power.
‘Wait, what if I use this symbol here…’
Instead, she was stupid enough to try and come up with a brand new aether array right on the fucking spot and embed it into her aether treasure.
‘No, that would end badly…’
One was already hard enough, the other was borderline impossible.
Throughout heaven and earth, it’s known that trying to create a new aether formula, art or array was a monumental task.
Not necessarily because it was hard to come up with a name or because one needed to come up with the appropriate mindset, it was because manipulating aether was…weird.
Not tricky, not hard, just…weird.
‘What if I use this part here…yeah…and then…’
Aether is the energy of nature and order, as such, forcing it to move in ways against the natural order was difficult, especially in the case of aether arrays.
Unlike arts where the main difficulty was just trying to figure out how to channel internal aether and get it to play nice with external forms of aether, or formulas where it’s about determining how to make aether flow inside of a person’s body and soul, aether arrays were all about manipulating the flow of external aether.
Every line and symbol of an array has to fit in a particular way, otherwise it won’t work in most cases or it’ll do something else entirely in rare cases…or it’ll just explode.
This normally isn’t an issue if the medium for a hypothetical array exists in the environment or on a throwaway material like a scroll, it’s a whole other story if someone tried to inscribe such things on an aether treasure.
Aether treasures are normally created with a particular intent in mind, meaning that adding any additional arrays or features had to be done by professionals. Professional in this case meaning, the type of people who spent literally centuries mastering on how to permanently fix aether, anima or whatever weird energy is in a material to a particular form and function.
Not only that,but the ability to modify and improve aether treasures was inversely related to their rank. I.e., a Bronze treasure got lots of room to modify and grow, a Gold treasure, less so.
Needless to say, a saber designed for and by Imperial Dragon bloodlines was…less than compliant to say the least.
However, Jinju Ren was confident that she was able to do this nearly impossible task for a couple of reasons, but there was only one reason that really mattered: the saber picked her.
‘Come on, you silly old hunk of metal, what do you mean you can’t do it…’
An open secret about the world is that powerful and ancient aether treasures have a tendency to develop a form of sapience that is rather alien to most people, but is still cognizant enough to act as a basis for communication between themselves and their particular wielder.
The [Dragon Dominating Saber] had originally been the Pearl Scale Emperor’s weapon for a number of years, even using it to defeat several other dragon emperors once upon a time, before he decided to put it down in favor of ruling with an open palm…and an even more dangerous sword. As such, it had been languishing for decades, rejecting basically everyone and anyone who dared to even look in its direction…until for reasons beyond everyone’s understanding, it chose to be usable by the 38th Princess of the Pearl Scale Empire.
Was it because she was the most brilliant?
No, that was the 15th Princess.
Was it because she was the most powerful?
No, that was the 1st Prince.
Was it because she was the most beautiful?
No, that…was up for debate. The running for this particular title was between the 13th Prince and the 24th Princess.
Other than Jinju Ren, nobody knows for certain as to why the [Dragon Dominating Saber] chose her. As to the reason she was made privy to…she was still trying to figure it out.
Regardless, she knew that this blade of hers was a lot deadlier back when it was in her daddy’s hands…but it was now hers.
So, it would be rather remiss of hers if she didn’t just match up to that expectation, but exceeded it as well.
Which is why, despite it being borderline impossible and painful as all hell, she was determined to figure out how to combine the different types of dragon force she had access to.
A small part of her had thought of giving up…until…
‘Wait…a minute…there we go!’
LIke a switch being flipped, she figured out the component she was missing and managed to figure out the array.
What followed was the feeling of four different types of dragon force coalescing within the main body of the blade, and the feeling of her own aether getting drained at a massive rate.
‘Oh shit.’
On the plus side, she was pretty certain she would be able to hit hard enough to turn a mountain into a crater…or a lake.
‘Alright, you fucking monkey bastard. Try copying this!’
Unfortunately for her, that was exactly what he was going to do.
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“Ook…ook…”
The Dragon Thief Monkey was, once again, perplexed by the actions being performed in front of him. Once again, his opponent was manipulating their energy in a way that didn’t align with the way those other two old bastards did with their attacks. If anything, it didn’t look like any offensive skill he had ever used.
But unlike the troubling human with swords for legs, this time the Dragon Thief Monkey could keep up with what was going on.
He could see how the warrior woman armed with a dangerous feeling sword manipulated not only her own dragon force, but the dragon force of several different dragon blooded beasts at the same time.
He could feel how she gathered the power, caused them to blend in a way that he never thought possible and produce a reaction that seemed even more powerful than anything he had ever seen before.
Evidently, it was a bit jealous at seeing this display of power, this strange ability to combine multiple sources into one.
However…
What was stopping him from doing the same?
Or at least, something very similar…
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‘Alright, what the fuck do I…wait…why am I sensing a raging ball of fire coming here at breakneck speeds?’
[You know why.]
