It took a few Shadow Walks for Chusei to reach the bottom of the magma chamber. The low visibility in the region due to the fire and smoke forced him to rely on his memory to navigate. Protecting himself from the oppressive heat by extending his Domain out one inch from his skin, he hugged the wall of the cavern as he made his way clockwise along it.After a few minutes, he came across a rock formation that was formed from several large boulders gathered in an incomplete ring. Immediately upon entering through the gap in the rocky circle, he felt the characteristic tingle up his spine that told him he had entered another"s Domain and noticed the difference in the quality of the air.
Getting down on his knees, he lowered his head. "Lord, I have news."
The Shogun"s voice bounced off the rocks and reverberated in the air. "Report."
Taking the newspaper that he had swiped from the town, Chusei held it out.
As the rolled-up paper floated up from his hands he raised his head slightly and caught a glimpse of his Lord"s current state.
Nurarihyon looked absolutely terrible. His body was emaciated with his ribs clearly visible and his limbs little more than twigs. His skin had wrinkled like a dried raisin as the muscle and fat under it had withered away. Now it hung loosely off his frame. He looked like he was on the verge of death.
And he truly was. A slimy substance that covered the entire lower half of his body up to his navel. Jet-black veins spread throughout the slime like a network and attached to his body. The only things keeping him alive were the mana and nutrients that were continuously being pumped into his body through the veins. It was an arrangement very similar to the way the eggs were kept in the hatchery of the fire ants.
Though his body was broken, his eyes were still bright.
Nura floated the paper up into the air with wind magic and unfurled it. Holding it in front of his eyes, he began to read. The more he read, the more amazed he was. Reaching the end of the paper, he looked up and sighed.
The air around him vibrated, replicating the sound of his voice. He was too weak now to even talk without the aid of magic.
"Really, fate plays cruel jokes upon us all. I was sitting on a treasure mountain without even knowing it. It took a boy with a fresh perspective to unearth the buried gold."
He turned his gaze to his most loyal retainer and looked him in the eye.
"Chusei, I"m dying. That old geezer Ragyo… I underestimated him. Even though I hid my traces. Even though I should clearly be incapable of killing the twins according to the information they have… he still linked their deaths to me. Or, at least suspected something and acted on that suspicion."
Nura closed his eyes. A slight wind blew his bangs off his forehead, revealing a contract marking beneath. Just, in this case, there was a scar shaped like lightning cleaving the mark in twain. Instead of the dark red gloss of a healthy mark, the lines looked like half healed scabs.
"I don"t know how he did it, but he managed to sever my relation to Aiko. And he did it in a manner that harmed only me. When it happened, I felt like a part of me was being ripped out." He let out a ragged breath. "A sixth of my mindscape is gone now, leaving a huge gash that is leaking out my mana and my life…"
He sighed. "At least I can be thankful that the old man isn"t cold-blooded enough to take his ire out on his niece."
"Lord! There must be something we can do… Maybe we can ask the Dark Sun for help," exclaimed Chusei agitatedly. "She saved you last time and stabilized your condition with this slime."
Opening his eyes, Nura turned to the distraught man.
"That was just a stopgap measure, not a true solution. It won"t help me this time around…
"But," he continued before Chusei could protest, "there is still one method I have yet to try. It is entirely theoretical, and I have no idea of its chances of success. It"s a gamble. A gamble with my life on the line…
"So, if I die, I want you to take my body to the homeland and bury me there. If possible, tell my children and my wives about my last moments. After that, go live the rest of your life for yourself. Not for a Lord who can give you nothing."
"Lord! Please reconsider… There must be another way!"
"There isn"t. And if there was, I don"t have the time to wait till it becomes available. Now shut up and listen well…
"When they limited the cultivation of my wives, and therefore me, I started seeking for another path to power. After much fumbling, I settled upon bloodlines since that was something I didn"t have as a Hominum.
"To promote to Tier 4 from Tier 3, one needs to fuse their bloodline with their mana. So, as Tier 4 mages, the mana of my wives contained their bloodlines. And as I could access their mana through our bonds, I was able to experiment with extracting the bloodline out of the mana and using it separately.
"To an extent, I succeeded. But the bloodlines still belonged to them and I could only use them for a short time before they started harming my body.
"When I used all six of them, the boost was stronger, but the consequences were correspondingly severe with the six bloodlines turning my body into a warzone in their struggle for supremacy. This would last till I managed to purge them from my body."
He sighed. "Now, with my mindscape damaged, I can"t purge the bloodlines anymore. I can"t stop my body from withering away. The only thing I could come up with at such short notice was to use the bloodlines themselves to patch the wound in my mindscape. I"ve never tried it out before. I"ll be the very first test subject."
Pausing, Nura summoned a scroll out of his shadow s.p.a.ce and floated it towards Chusei who was still kneeling with his head lowered, fists clenched and shoulders shivering.
"This is the culmination of my research on magic. If I succeed, well and good, but if I don"t, transmit this to my children. Hopefully they"ll be able to do something better with it than their father."
As Chusei looked up with reddened eyes, he was startled to see a black armoured hand reaching past him and grabbing the newspaper that was still afloat. He instinctively leapt backwards ant took up a battle-stance only to shiver in fright when he realized who he was baring his fangs at.
The Dark Sun ignored him and began reading the paper with an emotionless visage.
Her appearance had changed a lot since that fateful day she had first named herself that. The horrific cracks on her skin had healed, leaving an unblemished complexion that was a papery white. Her luxuriant tresses that had been scorched off by the dark flames had been replaced by a cascade of solid flames that burnt silently behind her like a cape. Her eyes were portals to the deepest abyss as they scanned the news article.
But, unnoticed by all present, even herself, a tiny spark of rose red flame smouldered at their very depths, flaring hotter as she read onward.
Having read the article, she looked up, the paper charring outwards from where her fingers touched it. By the time it drifted to the ground, it was naught but ashes.
"I shall help you," she said, her voice echoing from all around the chamber in three different tones. "But you shall pay a corresponding price."
They held each other"s gazes for an interminable moment... The Dark Sun and Nurarihyon... a cursed girl and a dying man... while off to the side Chusei sweated bullets.
Finally, Nura lowered his gaze in acknowledgement. "It shall be so."