Knife Guy emerged in the dedicated portal room of the Crime Factory. If sentient knives could feel tired, he would have been.
Next to him, a portal opened up and dumped Kash’s corpse, to be given to the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect.
The Knife Clones were sent through portals as well. Knife Guy commanded one to hold him. He didn’t love floating around in the air, instead preferring to be held by a Knife Clone that he controlled.
A man with reddish-brown hair and light stubble awaited Knife Guy. He had a long scar stretching down from his hair and through his left eye.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks, Gael.”
“Laertes will be able to meet with us in just a minute. And the fourth member of the Criming Council is... occupied.”
“I understand.”
Gael went silent, deeply pondering something.
Knife Guy spoke up.
“He deserved the title of the strongest. His dimension displacement was unfathomably powerful.”
Gael started walking, Knife Guy following him.
“That’s to be expected from a Dimension Displacement. It’s much more powerful than a Dimension Expulsion, and only a few cultivators can even pull it off. We couldn’t observe the fight when the dimension was displaced. What happened?”
“I nearly died from two hits. I just barely got in the dimension-severing slash.”
“Our Hibiscan instruments picked up reverberations from the dimension-severing slash. Everyone else will know too, soon.”
Knife Guy smiled. “It will damage the reputation of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. It will be assumed they paid us to kill Kash.”
“Pushing them closer to us, as planned.”
They emerged into the grand atrium of the Crime Factory. It was a clashing of architectural styles: corrugated metal and raw concrete were shaped into Corinthian columns that held up the roof. The new moon held itself above the skylight. Milk from the creature coursed through pulsating tubes of flesh that wrapped around the pillars.
The creature was less obviously biomechanical than Knife Guy. At first glance, it was entirely organic. But its milk contained nano machines powered by Hibiscan energy. The body of the creature itself was made of those nanobots, and so it and its milk were merely the solid and liquid forms, respectively, of itself. It could disperse itself into milk or coalesce milk into a body.
It was Kambili’s final project, left untitled before his death. Gael, to honor Kambili, refused to name the creature, instead merely referring to it as “the creature”.
Gael was a legendary figure. He was one of a scant few that were in Kambili’s inner circle. But after the Second Battle of Heaven, he disgraced himself by stealing the three sentient Hibiscan artifacts and running away, thus establishing his reputation as a thief.
Laertes walked in and sheathed his foil.
He glowed with the aura of a peak-tier Kambili, one of now five in the world. He was still dressed in immaculately clean fencing attire.
“That took a while,” he commented.
“You didn’t do any of the actual work,” said Knife Guy. “Just busy aura farming here, I guess.”
“Is the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect here already?” he asked, ignoring Knife Guy’s comment.
“They’re on their way,” said Knife Guy.
“Good. Let’s get to the chamber.”
The three present Crimers sat on a couch, microphones placed on the table in front of them. On the wall lay a television displaying a grainy video feed of the room the entourage from the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect were once again in. It was a clever construction with Hibiscan energy and bore little technological resemblance to traditional pre-Hibiscan TVs.
“They’re even more nervous than last time,” Knife Guy commented, pressing a button that muted all of their mics.
“With little reason,” said Gael. “It can be assumed that Lubomir and Katarzyna can displace a dimension.”
He glanced at Laertes with a smirk as he said that.
“They could take us in a fight,” noted Laertes, ignoring the jab.
He hadn’t bothered any practice with a dimension expulsion, let alone a dimension displacement. Such things were apparently less honorable than the pure swordfighting he favored. Laertes would only agree to battle an opponent if they made a Bondage Vouch in which they would stick to a strict set of rules that meant they wouldn’t use an expulsion or displacements.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Lubomir had been hashing out the exact terms of the deal. The number of corpses had been decided at 500 Aunty Ifeomas, 300 Ade Cokers, 100 Jajas, 40 Eugenes, and 10 Kambilis.
The Red Dragon slowly flew above his head in a circle as he pondered.
“I believe that’s everything,” Lubomir said.
“Satisfactory,” Knife Guy said. “Instruct your people to open the portals.”
The Tortoise Sect delegation didn’t move.
“Knife Guy?” asked Lubomir.
“What,” he responded. “The deal is concluded. Transfer the corpses.”
An awkward silence followed.
“We agree to the deal,” said Lubomir.
“Yeah, I already said that,” said Knife Guy. “Just open the portals already.”
“This silent treatment aura farming bullshit isn’t going to work on us. If you renege on the deal, we’ll kill you. You know that your sect wouldn’t be able to stand against our full might.”
Knife Guy belatedly realised that their mics were still muted.
“Of course we agree,” he said. “It’s a highly mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“Whatever you say,” said Lubomir, who waved his hand as portals opened behind him.
The Cracked Shell Council convened underneath the belly of the Five-Headed Tortoise.
Katarzyna had departed to her sect. As the leader of a tributary sect, she was not a full member of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect and wasn’t privy to the highest tier of information. Such was Lubomir’s belief in the importance of what the Snake would say that he didn’t want Katarzyna there. If it ended up being less important than he thought, then he would tell her. But he wouldn’t take the risk.
It was just Lubomir, Wen, Stefan, and Iwan, suffocated by dead silence. The Snake hadn’t deigned to appear yet, despite the warm corpse of Kash oozing blood onto the floor.
“That last time it was like this was over a hundred years ago,” whispered Iwan. He was the Chief Hibiscologist of the sect, and had served under the previous sect leader.
“It can only mean one thing - the five heads of the Tortoise are divided in what they should say. One can only imagine their deba-”
The Snake erupted from its place of emergence in the belly, darting towards Kash and slurping the cadaver with its tongue before arching its head back to swallow.
“Speak,” declared Lubomir.
It flicked its forked tongue.
“Do you know why Kambili made the deal with us?”
Lubomir’s eyes widened.
“Of course. He needed information, you needed sustenance.”
“The body of a cultivator who once held one of the Celestial Dragons is permanently imbued with a trace of its essence, even after the power has completely vanished. Every time we eat one, we gain the leftover Hibiscan knowledge. We get one step closer to solving the problem.”
With that last sentence, it used its head to gesture in the direction of the gaping wound the Five-Headed Tortoise had received centuries ago.
“Everything we eat only delays death. The true goal is to once again have the eternal life of a Heavenly Beast. He would help us get immortality, and in return, we would help him with the same goal.”
Lubomir gasped in shock. “Did you succeed?”
“We prevented his death, in a manner of speaking. I suppose you would call it hibernation. Think of what we did to him as a more advanced version of Saddam Hussein’s lifespan extension.”
“So he can be brought back.”
“Not easily. But from what we learned from consuming the corpse, we’re nearly there.”
“How soon? And what would you need?”
“The corpse of another cultivator that had possessed a Celestial Dragon in life. But theoretically, an enormous supply of Hibiscan herbs would be sufficient.”
“I-I see,” said Lubomir, his mind reeling with the possibilities.
“We are on the precipice of greatness,” the Snake hissed, and coiled itself back into the belly of the Tortoise in an eyeblink.
The four cultivators stood in silence. Finally, Lubomir opened a purple portal and walked in, the rest following.
They emerged into the meeting chamber of the Cracked Shell Council and took their seats. Lubomir spoke up.
“Evidently, our options are thus: Kill Czeslaw, or raid their herb stockpiles. One is much more practical than the other.”
“It would mean war with them either way,” Wen commented.
. The spymaster looked disturbed. “Considering the current political situation, another global conflict seems imminent. We need to strike as soon as possible while we have the advantage.”
“The noose tightens around our neck even as we speak,” commented Stefan. “Eugene is back and the Jade Alliance is stronger than ever. I agree that we need decisive action.”
“My spies in the demonic sects tell me they’re already on a war footing. Their search for Eugene continues,” said Wen.
“So, me, Katarzyna, and Saddam jump Czeslaw and kill him?” asked Lubomir. “It’s not the worst plan of all time. I would get the Blue and Purple Dragons again, and the Jade Alliance would lose its only peak-tier Kambili stage cultivator.”
Stefan shook his head. “Such a brazen act of aggression would unite the entire Hibiscan world against us. The Jade Alliance could easily make an under-the-table agreement with the demonic sects to try to fight us. Considering the current internal dissent among the subsidiary sects of our sect, a few might join their side. Even with a revived Kambili, I’m not sure we could win that war.”
“Certainly not with Eugene on their side,” Iwan commented.
“Raiding their herb supplies, while still an act of war, wouldn’t be quite so compelling of a casus belli” said Stefan, “and our own credibility wouldn’t suffer as much.”
“I concur,” said Wen.
Lubomir sighed. “I’m going to have to overrule you. The advantages of killing Czeslaw are simply too immense.”
The room was silent.
“We’ll jump him in the next few days, whenever he’s most vulnerable. Katarzyna will have to be brought into the loop on this, otherwise she wouldn’t agree to fight him. We might be able to involve Saddam, although likely he’ll be honor-bound not to participate.”
Lubomir looked at each of them in turn.
“This meeting is concluded.”
Who has the most aura?
