Chapter 59: Chapter 57
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I had hours of nothing to do, which was still an odd concept compared to my time in Remnant. I always had something interesting to do there. Training Harry was somewhat interesting, but more of a way to waste time than anything. I'd get my payoff in a few days when the first task for the tournament began. But besides that I could only spend time with Kuroka, who had her work to do, and occasionally manage my growing religion, which was growing about as fast as it could with or without my constant involvement.
I checked in once a week to 'bless' everyone Elsyria managed to convert. Ever since that first group congregation where I appeared in a flash of lightning, leaving people seeing only a silhouette of me and the heavy feeling of my aura and magic pressing on them, Elsyria had been flooded with potential converts. She was being careful, taking only the people who were actually being honest. I was taking a mostly hands off approach, letting her do all the actual managing.
At the end of the day I just didn't have much to do. I needed more than a part time job like I had teaching Harry. He could actually do most of the exercises himself now and he seemed more motivated. I suspected that he had seen the results of his work and had decided to commit to my regime. That left me with even more potential time since my position as moderator of the tournament was only supervisory. I could handle any foul play through Helen anyways since she saw everything that happened on her grounds.
I had to handle a few cases of bribery so far but that was just taking the money used in the bribe and giving everyone involved a politely worded letter that if they tried foul play again I would drop them in the middle of a swamp with an anti-apparition jinx on them. Nobody had done anything illegal since then.
Besides, for all this work I could just reach through the void and make an avatar from hard light to take my place like I used to do at Beacon. My presence was required in most cases, but my skills were not.
So… what to do?
I reached out into the void. 'Bring me somewhere where I will have something amusing to do,' I communicated into it. The void seemed to swirl, the echo from my command taking almost a full second to complete for some reason. I knew that the void could process information, it sorted through an infinite amount of information to fish out worlds with my desired traits after all. I assumed that I could use it to find something more subjective, like something interesting.
I felt myself being pulled through the void by my affinity only to open my eyes in a somewhat smelly city on top of a building. I looked down at the people in the streets to see what looked like almost normal people, though they weren't quite in the modern era yet. Clothes were made of cotton, though I saw a few people in alleys wearing sackcloth. Some of the wealthier dressed people wore more colorful clothing that made them look like maritime merchants. Things looked… normal. A little poor, maybe, but not bad.
I frowned and looked around. I was put here for a reason. Perhaps I should look for a landmark. I almost turned in a circle, but froze the moment I looked behind me. A massive, absolutely gargantuan palace sat in the middle of the city. It's gleaming emerald domed roof sat with smaller towers headed with only slightly less opulent copper, perfectly accented by gold supports all across. The walls were made of pure marble with open aired windows and balconies.
I knew where I wanted to go immediately. There.
I pulled out a dark grey cloak from my inventory to hide my ears, though I wasn't sure whether I'd keep them hidden permanently yet, and a long sleeved shirt. I also put on my belt and shortsword, as well as the inequalizers just in case I needed to get serious fighting somebody. Nobody I had seen in the streets was magical though so perhaps I wouldn't need them. Since I didn't know if magic was common in this world, I would be relying on my skills with a sword and my physique first. There was no need to make myself stand out for now.
I looked at the gap between the roofs and wondered if a normal human could conceivably jump the gap. I nodded to myself and took a running start before I leaped across flawlessly and continued over the streets, knowing in my bones that there would be something interesting in that giant palace. I just needed to be enterprising enough to find it. Worst comes to worst I could steal all the comfortable furniture I found and call the day a success.
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I mostly used mundane skills to infiltrate the palace. A little metal magic to pick a lock here or a jump higher than most humans would be able to do there wasn't a bad thing. I could have just teleported inside in all honesty, but it was partially the challenge of infiltrating the palace that appealed to me.
I thought about trying to scale the massive walls holding the palace away from the rest of the city, but decided I'd stand out against the white walls. Instead I found a guard's turret and picked the lock to get inside. I climbed the stairs, dodging a few guards along the way (doing so was easy with Bella's training and my ability to sense them through walls). When I could, I reached the inside of the walls and dashed into a fancy house. The massive palace was just a few streets away, but breaking into some noble's house would help make infiltration more fun. I wasn't in this world to be serious, after all. I was here to amuse myself.
I perused the house with leisure. I found a butler and a maid upstairs in what was presumably the master bedroom naked and smoking something pungent. I ignored that room and explored the rest of the house. It was mostly what you expected on the inside for a rich person. There was a wine cellar, a large kitchen, four guest bedrooms, a well decorated dining room for eight people at most, and a few other mundane rooms. I stole a few pieces of furniture and a bunch of spare nice clothes in my size from one of the guest bedrooms.
But down in the wine cellar I reached out with my space affinity to get a sense of the area and stopped dead in my tracks.
"What the?" I muttered. I turned towards one wall in particular, having a few missing wine racks from the symmetry of the room. I used my space affinity again to map out the room and found the same results. There was a secret passage. And as with all secret passages…
I pressed a few bricks, pushing on them. The wall moved backwards and I stepped back smirking… then my smirk dropped as nothing happened. I pressed the same area again and the wall moved.
"Oh, come on!" I complained as I pushed the fake door back. Hinges squeaked a little as the door moved and I walked down the passage. There was only one door at the end of the passage and I held my breath as I opened it. The door swung open ominously and I held back my excitement at finding treasure or something.
What I found was not treasure.
A young naked lady, perhaps twenty or so, was lying asleep in manacles connected to the floor. I saw bruises young and old on her body, though none touched her stomach or her face. A stomach, I noticed, which was very obviously pregnant. Some dried blood was on the stone floor around her.
"Oh… oh no," I muttered, my stomach rolling. I had seen some very messed up things when I was on my murder spree in Vacuo, and I had seen plenty of corpses searching through the magical hotspots in Remnant. I had broken a few human trafficking rings tearing through Vale's underworld for Roman but every time seeing things like this still got to me.
I walked to the woman, who woke up slowly. When she saw my shoes the first thing on her face was fear. Then surprise as she looked up at me. I knew my cloak covered the top of my head but I still made an illusion from light to hide them as I pulled my hood down. She looked dimly at my ears but didn't seem concerned at all.
"I don't suppose you're here by choice, huh?" I asked a little piteously. The woman blinked and slowly shook her head. I paused.
"Hold on." I turned around and walked to leave the room. I heard the manacles clink and a faint noise but I still walked through the door and waited a second as I got a blanket from my soul space. I entered back in and tossed the blanket over the woman. She looked down at it and up at me stupidly.
"Do you want out of here?" I asked her slowly. Her eyes widened and she nodded several times quickly. I sighed lightly and reached into my cloak where she couldn't see and pulled out a pack of mints, one of which I took from the metal tin.
"I'm going to have to give you a sedative. I can't smuggle you out of here, I'm a thief and not supposed to be here, you see, but I'll bet that I can carry you out," I said calmly. "It's fast acting but won't harm your baby… do you want that child in you?" The lady looked down and her bottom lip trembled.
"W… water," she rasped. I nodded and left the callar. A few minutes later I had a glass filled with water alongside a pitcher, both of which I gave to the woman. She took the pitcher and drank greedily while I rolled my eyes. I felt that the situation was less amusing when she finished the whole thing. She must really have been that thirsty.
"I… I don't want it," she said vehemently. I nodded.
"Well you're going to have to find a doctor with loose morals. You look like you're in the last stages of pregnancy. I can bring you near a hospital, though I myself can't bring you in. I'm sorry about that." The lady's eyes darkened and she looked at the mint. I handed it to her and she swallowed it whole. I waited a few seconds then pulled on my mind affinity, making the woman feel drowsy.
"Leave it to me. I'll have you out of here in no time," I said as the woman lost consciousness. The moment she was asleep I waved my hand and the manacles on her hands melted to the floor, leaving her unharmed. I gently wrapped the blanket around her body and teleported away from the horrible house back on top of the building I started at. I leaped into the alley and approached a man who I tapped on the shoulder.
"I'm looking for the nearest hospital. Do you know where one would be?" The man's face grew angry.
"Piss off!" he spat. I scoffed and my left hand moved as my right went up. A quick application of blink had me holding up two copper coins. I gently slipped the pouch I had lifted from him into my cloak's left pocket.
"Hospital?" I asked again. The man grunted at the coins and took them.
"Past baker's street. The big dark blue building over there." He pointed behind me. I looked back there and nodded at the man before stepping quickly away from him and into the alley again before teleporting as soon as I was out of sight.
"THIEF!" I heard the man roar from the roof. I picked up the lady and chuckled as I heard the coins gently clink in my cloak. I was also pretty happy that I didn't have to hide my ears. Apparently animal people are multi-universal. I hadn't seen any faunus or other beast people around, though. I should probably look into that…
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I left the lady with the nurses at the hospital, who were happy to treat the perfectly healthy but unconscious lady thanks to my life magic. I skimmed the minds of the nurses and gave only enough money to pay for her treatment for a day before slipping the pouch filled with coin between the blanket and the lady's skin. It had a few silver coins and a large gold one that looked valuable. If she was smart she would get a nice job or something. Perhaps she had family in the city. Either way I continued my adventure.
Feeling gloomy but still excited to reach the palace, I began again from the noble's house. Getting to the palace was surprisingly easy. The streets were mostly empty except for a few carriages escorted by armored guards on horses. At the first wall I had to curse. The only way in was through checkpoints manned by guards and a line of carriages were already slowly going through them. There were two lines, one of which spoke to the guards, sometimes for several minutes, before normally being turned away. The second simply showed the guards a badge or talked for a moment before being let through. Judging by the more plain suits of the people in the second line I deduced that it was for servants bringing in deliveries.
I thought about making a carriage of hard light myself and trying to get in but I didn't want to sound any alarms if I arrived off schedule and I didn't want to wait in line in the first place. Eventually, I just changed into the fancy looking clothes I stole from the unknown noble's house and teleported inside the walls. I made myself look like I had a purpose and walked around the palace's inner grounds.
A few servants looked at me somewhat oddly but I gave them my best practiced haughty glare and they quickly found better things to do than bother me. I walked around randomly until I eventually found a side entrance where a servant came out. Hard light disguised me in servant clothes and made a basket of green apples in my arms. I knocked and waited a moment for somebody to open the door and made to step inside when an older maid opened the door.
"We asked for apples?" she asked, seeming puzzled.
"Somebody asked for an apple pie, fresh she said," I responded. She made an aah of understanding and walked away. I walked with my basket of apples to find some corridor and walked down that, having absolutely no clue where I was going but having a hell of a time of it.
After consideration I stepped into a bedroom of some sort and dropped the illusion. I considered wearing the noble's clothes but it just wasn't… interesting enough. I wanted to walk around the palace like I owned the place and see something interesting. I could just walk around with my fake apples but something interesting wasn't just going to come to me. I had to make something interesting for myself. So I changed into my cloak and comfortable clothes again and thought for a moment before putting on the armour for my huntsman outfit over the clothing but beneath the cloak. It should make unimportant people bother me less.
With my clothing set, I looked boredly around the nice room and stole a few things. A vase, a couch, the incredibly soft sheets on the bed, and some pleasantly scented hand soap from the personal bathroom connected to the bedroom. When I stepped out I saw a man in the fancy armour I had seen on a few guards in the palace.
"Were you… are you… that's General Esdeath's room," the guard said, confused.
"I know, that's why I was there," I lied with a roll of my eyes. I stepped past the man and he looked between me and the room, with a shiver, he decided to not mess with me. I walked down the hall and was genuinely surprised when people looked at me curiously but minded their own business like qualified experts. I considered if there was anywhere to go as I walked and ended up in a garden. I smiled pleasantly as I kneeled down to pick a white flower. I sniffed it and hummed before I tossed it aside to look over the whole garden.
"Alba dolore," a voice said from my right. I looked to see a woman in a military uniform with long blue hair and a tattoo between her very exposed breasts. I hadn't seen a military uniform ever accentuate a woman's breasts better.
"Do you know the translation for that?" I asked.
"White pain." she said with a smile. It seemed a little fake.
"I'd have thought it to be something about beauty. It doesn't smell all that nice but it's one of the better looking flowers I've seen," I said with a frown at the innocent looking flowers. "Does it have a legend about causing pain? Or is it a narcotic?"
"It's a narcotic, though not a useful one. It only causes pain. It can't be used to relieve it unless it's processed and even then it's inferior to other options. Truly it's only good for looking beautiful and causing pain. It's my favorite flower." The woman walked next to me and looked down at the flowers with a more honest smile. I came to the conclusion that she was just a bit unhinged. She was definitely into S&M, though.
"I suppose there are worse flowers to enjoy," I thought out loud. "I dislike roses myself. They're pretty but so cliche, and everyone forgets their thorns. I prefer orchids myself, though I'm not all that interested in flowers in general. They're almost all nice to look at and there are some really interesting ones. I know that one of them even grows in the air."
"Grows… in the air?" The woman looked curious and raised an eyebrow as she looked at me.
"Yes," I confirmed. "They grow in the jungle, as a lot of strange and dangerous things do, and form on the branches of trees. They need a lot of moisture in the air and grow slowly since they take all their nutrients from the air as well. The only reason they as a species survive is because they survive where few if any other plants can."
"For somebody who claims to not like plants you seem to know a lot about them," the lady noted.
"I only know about the interesting ones, though I suppose I know a lot more than most people about plants. But that's another story."
"I suppose it is," the lady agreed. Her eyes narrowed a little bit. "But onto the matter of interesting things… you don't seem to be a sniveling noble nor an assassin. Who, exactly, are you and why are you in the palace?"
"My name's Abyss Mavros and I'm a traveller," I smiled at her and noted the woman's hand on a rapier at her side. I hadn't noticed. Perhaps this lady is actually dangerous. "As for how I got in here… I just walked in." The woman looked at me dubiously.
"Truly, I did," I told her somewhat honestly. "The guards at the first checkpoint were busy dealing with some noble lady causing a fit over how her entry ticket was legitimate. I just walked past them. Then I came into the castle through the servants entrance on the west side and went through some corridors, just seeing the sights."
"You came into the castle… to see the sights?" she asked, not quite as suspicious anymore but more confused.
"Well… you didn't hear this from me but… I'm also a thief," I told her conspiratorially. She heard me say this and stared at me with wide eyes, as though she couldn't believe her own ears. "I have to pay for my travels somehow, you see, though I'm not in the palace for that exactly. I already robbed a noble's house outside the palace's walls. It was the… Argosian manor, I think?"
"The Argosians do have a manor next to the palace, yes…" the lady said slowly.
"Are their butler and maid in an affair?" I asked.
"They're married I believe."
"Did they kidnap a woman earlier and put her in a cellar?" The lady was silent for a moment.
"I believe I have enough evidence that you broke into the Argosian manor." I nodded.
"Is that sort of thing common around this city?"
"… Yes." I nodded, not feeling very surprised.
"Your nobles don't seem very noble." The lady paused for a solid two seconds before a small chuckle left her mouth at my bad joke.
"So you're here to see the sights, hm?" I nodded again. "Would you like to see the torture chamber?"
"Is it in use?"
"It's always in use." I sighed.
"No thank you. I tend to avoid unpleasant places." I was considering killing all the torturers in there though. This world was horribly dystopic. The lady frowned at that.
"The torture chambers are lovely places!" she argued.
"Maybe if you're a sadist or a masochist. But even if you are, pain gets old fast," I retorted. Esdeath opened her mouth as if to speak then frowned. "Pain isn't a bad thing. It's a great teacher in some cases. But to my knowledge people inflict it either to feel better about themselves or to accomplish a goal. If you already feel better about yourself, inflicting it just gets boring. It's worse if you're an empathetic person because you relate to that person and feel pain yourself."
"Torturing has gotten a little boring lately," the lady said with a trace of disappointment in her tone. "I don't suppose you have any suggestions?"
"You've tried spicing it up?" the lady nodded. "Try making it personal. If you're just torturing people for the hell of it that's not anything anybody would find fun after a while, if at all. That's not something you do for fun. That's a job. Do it when you feel like it if you must, but random people don't make anything fun. But everything is more fun if you have somebody you care about with you, either alongside you or… if you're torturing them. Whether you love or hate the person isn't important. You're lacking emotion in these things and you need to bring somebody you care about into it. I'd recommend getting an apprentice or capturing somebody you hate."
The lady was looking at me like she had had a divine revelation. "It's just… oh my." She was staring off into space, her eyes cloudy. "I had never thought about that before," she said contemplatively as slow smile crept across her face. "Emotion… yes…" Her eyes cleared and she grabbed my right hand with both of hers, holding it to her breasts.
"Abyss… I cannot thank you enough. I've been having problems for so long… I thought I was just wearing down! But emotion… I've never considered using emotion as a torture inplement!" I was nearly certain that this lady was batshit insane.
"Or, you know, love is nice too…" I trailed off.
"Yes! Love!" The sadistic torturer giggled girlishly and beamed at me. "Truly, torturing somebody who loves me would be exquisite. Or perhaps a companion I love, to enjoy my crafts with. Hm, I should arrest you and toss you in the torture chambers. That's what I came here to do, but can you actually fight?"
"Of course!" I said, feeling offended she even suggested that I couldn't.
"I'd like for you to come on my next campaign with me," the lady said.
"Your next campaign…" Something about those words implied interesting things. "Who exactly are you?"
"General Esdeath, head of the Empire's offensive armies." I had to stifle a laugh at that. I was caught by the head of the army? A general? I was having a great time! I mean, this was a weird conversation and I should probably kill this psycho but… this was reallyfun. Also, Esdeath? Didn't I rob her? I should probably put her stuff back or I might have trouble.
"You know what? Sure. I'll come with you, for the interesting portions at least," I said with a smile. "But I have one condition."
"So long as I can add one of my own," Esdeath said, instantly turning a bit skeptic.
"Those torture chambers? Make sure that the people in there actually deserve to be in there. I'm not the kind of person to run around doing good and playing hero but I'd prefer to help out a little bit where I can. I consider it payment for stealing and occasionally slaughtering criminals and playing vigilante."
"That won't be easy but I suppose I can do that," Esdeath agreed, not even slightly surprised by my admission of murdering criminals. She had undoubtedly done far worse. "As for my condition… you say you can fight. I want to fight you." Her eyes looked somehow more dangerous than when she was suspicious of me. She looked interested, which I doubted was good for my health.
But against my better judgement… this sounded fun. "Alright then."
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The courtyard Esdeath brought me to seemed to double as a training yard for soldiers and guardsmen. Of course, as soon as she so much as appeared every single soldier saluted her, stopping whatever it was they were doing. When she actually moved to walk onto the grounds everybody scrambled out of the way before looking on excitedly from the sidelines. When she reached the other end of the yard the sides were packed with sweaty bodies, each of them looking on. I noted that most of them were men but there were some muscular women among the soldiers too. Did this world use women as soldiers alongside men? I was starting to wonder if my original world was some sort of outlier, only using men to fight for most of history.
"This will be a fight until one of us is subdued," Esdeath said normally. I still heard her clearly since as soon as she said 'fight' every murmur and whisper among the soldiers silenced to an excited tension.
"Swords only?" I asked.
"Use your teigu-" I had no idea what those were, "-but let's try not to destroy the courtyard." Esdeath pulled out a rapier and my sword was instantly in my hand as she ran towards me. I blinked in surprise as our swords clashed. She just ran across the whole courtyard in half a second… well that answers my question about supernatural abilities then.
I pumped aura through my body and assaulted Esdeath, fighting offensively to test her limits. She leaped back, an eager grin on her face, and countered some of my strikes, dodging others nimbly. I wasn't pushing myself, though. If needed I could go much faster.
I was pushed to go faster when Esdeath turned up the heat. Her strikes started moving fast enough to blur to human eyes and her feet moved quickly enough to stir up clouds of dust. I started mixing in more kicks and acrobatics to get unorthodox angles and attacks. This definitely caught her off guard and with a corkscrew after a heavy blow against her guard I landed a solid kick to her cheek.
Esdeath stopped cold and stepped back, her face completely calm aside from twitching lips and an unnerving gleam in her eye.
"Spar or not… do you know the last time somebody landed such a solid attack on me?" she asked with a restrained voice. I didn't answer. "It's been a long time. Less than a year but those were long battles with endless weaklings to tire me out. In a one-on-one match only General Budo has ever pushed me. Lets see you do the same." Her rapier drew back and she lunged far faster than before.
Finally trying hard, I spun and slashed and even mixed in a roll as Esdeath started fighting in earnest. Most of her attacks were stabs but a few light slashes and feints were common. But what I noticed was that she was an orthodox fighter. She stuck low to the ground and hardly ever jumped or kicked. As fast as she was, almost as much as myself, she was limited to the ground. So I got tricky.
More of my attacks were the unorthodox, awkwardly angled strikes. I would strike with one hand only to step in and punch with the other a moment after. I jumped into the air only to lash out with a flurry of kicks. I moved with jerky, unstable movements rather than the flowing, fast attacks I preferred. It wasn't graceful, but Esdeath had a horrible time predicting my movements. I landed a cut on her bicep and two blunt blows to her abdomen before she started laughing.
I stiffened as affinity leaked into the air. Ice, cold, and… freeze? I didn't recognize the third but I could guess what it was by it's feeling. Esdeath's rapier flicked to one side and another and icicles formed in mid-air and darted towards me at the speed of bullets. I twirled and leapt to dodge some of them and still nearly ended up with an icicle through the brain. Well if that was how you wanted to play it…
I considered using icicles myself, I had an ice affinity after all, but instead blinked behind her and slashed. Esdeath, for the first time, jumped and attempted a spinning kick at me. I leaned under it and tried to roundhouse kick her but saw another icicle flying at my face and blinked once more.
Our fight evolved into a storm of icy projectiles and frantic teleporting. I hardly touched the ground so much as teleported from one place to another. I didn't bother to take strides. I warped the space in-between and pivoted, ending up at another place entirely. Icicles tried futilely to pierce me but I just moved too fast for a proper shot to be placed.
The two of us were at a stalemate. Esdeath couldn't hurt me, I was too fast, and I couldn't strike her since her icicles could deter me and her reflexes were fantastic, good enough to counter any sword strike I could attempt. So I had to reach further into my bag of tricks.
I stopped teleporting for just a moment and warped space to divert the small storm of icicles coming at me. I drew my sword back and cut strongly and a wave of distortion exited it, heading towards Esdeath. She flicked her rapier up and a wall of ice rose from the ground immediately but my dimensional cut was 2-d. It couldn't be stopped by solid barriers. The moment Esdeath saw the distortion on her side of the barrier she leapt to the side but her right leg, which pushed her away, stayed behind. The distortion cut through the front of her boot and the fight stopped.
Gently, Esdeath pulled her foot back only to gasp and stumble in place. I saw the front of her boot on the ground, red nubs still stuck in it. I had severed the tips of Esdeath's toes. That must hurt.
"Well done, it's not often that I push myself so hard," Esdeath said after a moment of silence. She sounded mostly normal but if you listened closely she sounded just a little bit winded.
"This was fun. You're irritating to fight with those reflexes of yours."
"And what sort of absurd fighting style were you performing? Did your career as a jester fail?"
"Are you saying you were bested by a jester?" Esdeath rolled her eyes and shifted on her feet, wincing when she put too much pressure on her right foot and blood spurted out. "Actually, maybe you should see a doctor," I suggested. Esdeath looked around.
"You! Tend to my wound." Esdeath pointed out a small man with a white bag on the sidelines, where there were surprisingly more people than before. The man, as well as the others, must have appeared to watch Esdeath and I fight. The small man, seemingly a medic, scrambled forwards to Esdeath and crouched down, immediately taking out alcohol and bandages. Esdeath tossed away her ruined boot and the man began disinfecting and wrapping it.
"You will be… more than sufficient to fight alongside me," Esdeath said to me.
"I can certainly take care of myself," I said dryly. Esdeath hummed thoughtfully.
"Go, and don't steal anything," Esdeath dismissed me. "Be here tomorrow at noon. I will have Doctor Stylish tend to my wound soon."
"I won't steal anything else," I said playfully. She scoffed and I waved to her as I formed a portal. She looked curiously at it as I backed inside it and it closed. I breathed deeply, still smelling the stench of the city. It wasn't a nice smell compared to the palace grounds. A look at my watch had me nearly jump in the air.
"Oh, crap I'm late for Harry!"
AN: This new world is Akame Ga kill, where there's some moral issues more than power related ones or anything.
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