Artorian slipped the Core from the liger’s grip, who now occupied the entire rest of the couch. Decorum’s attire was straining to contain the muscle and added bulk of his breaking humanization. As Decorum watched, his father pressed the Core to his forehead to set the liger at ease. The once-again youth experienced a flicker behind his eyes, and Artorian, in the span of moments, experienced a century of life as a Liger Prime. At the end of it, when the Core was empty and no longer glimmered with content, Artorian spoke but a single word to describe the sights he had just seen.
“Beautiful.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Decorum’s relief felt palpable when he returned to his senses as a fully humanized and stately individual over the course of a few minutes. Artorian was standing next to the clear beeswax window, gazing at the lake as the sun was coming up over the Midgard horizon. “I understand now why you called me father. I don’t mind, my boy. I am whatever is needed to those who end up under my wing. Let’s not pay too much attention to the fact that I’m currently twelve.”
Artorian smirked and tapped the side of his nose with a wink. The motion helped Decorum break from his shell further. Though the man felt distraught over his ruined attire when he noticed the state it was in, and sighed. Putting the destroyed outfit out of mind, he joined the youth at the window. “I… thank you. Is something on your mind? You seem wistful, and distracted. As if you are elsewhere.”
The youth nodded. “Astute observation. I am elsewhere. Currently I’m roughly in three places, and I can only actively do things in one at a time. Alas, the Long-form is still a fruitless endeavor. Even with a century of memories from the best liger in history, I’ve pulled myself back from that. Down to two… down to one.”
Artorian inhaled deep, back fully in Eternium. “Always an experience. Moving one’s consciousness between forms. The transfer is becoming less jarring, that’s good. No, my friend. Currently my heart races. I know that you enjoy the finer things in life, but after those memories all I want to do is go on a hunt. I know how to move, how you moved. I know how to bite. How to claw. How to lunge and how to stalk. I feel the ripples of it move in my muscles, even if this form is wrong for the event.”
Decorum’s weak expression slowly blossomed into one of pleasant warmth. Artorian was going to give him all the time he wanted to get out of that shell, but for now he was dying for some quality time with his friend. Decorum knew it. Able to tell via animal instincts alone. Today, he was the father, and Artorian the cub that supposedly knew how to hunt. *Mhm*. He’d believe that when he saw it. Nobody became a top-grade hunter just because they’d watched a few scenes.
Artorian raised a brow at the sound of Decorum’s hummed disbelief. “Oh really? Well let’s go then. Where’s the hunting ground? There must be something left that’s a challenge for you.”
The humanized liger dropped the pleasantries, his warmth slashed away by unwelcome thoughts as he forced out a sickening name. “Mokono. That blight-burned boar.”
Steadying himself with a sharp intake of breath, the stately consul looked down to see a toothily-grinning child. “Tell me more. Also, does your human form also go by Decorum? Or did you attain more names?”
Decorum considered his memories from the depths of society. “I did… but I no longer wish it. I would take a new name, if I could ever return. I don’t know what. As for that claw-clashed boar, it lives in a forest that borders the neutral, unclaimed fields of the Barren Lash. Nothing but Kudzu pretending to be filled with treasure as it tries to get you. Mokono is known as an Area Boss, according to the screens that like to annoy my vision. However, he should have been killed long ago, and is now too high of a level to really belong in Midgard. I remain at the border of acceptable. Another ‘level,’ and I would get another prompt to ‘move on,’ and I have a terrible feeling that the next one will not give me the option to decline.”
Artorian kept looking at the lake. “Do you wish to stay here? It sounds like you’ve exhausted the place, and you’re ready to try another society dive. Somewhere they don’t know you. Does moving on bother you? I can go take a look at the next area. If you want. As for a name… Gomez.”
Decorum considered the offer, and the name. “I can’t ask that of you, and it would murder the mystery. Gomez? Feels… like a bon vivant. A heart that jumps with enthusiasm at each opportunity. A mind free of burden. Wrapped in pleasant, pleasing attire. A little dark, perhaps? Dark, but liberating. I like it.”
He spoke the last words with unbridled enthusiasm, his finger stabbing up into the air as he turned on his foot with a grand smile. “I shall be Gomez! I will indulge in my love for art! I shall take up fencing, and challenge life as a gentleman.”
Artorian shot his pleased, vivacious friend a wink. “I like it. Are you up for a boar hunt, then? It might be a challenge, but however it is that experience works now, you could get started on a new life if you gain that additional level. Wipe an annoyance off your slate before packing it in.”
Decorum tried to adjust his cufflinks, but his attire was too trashed for it to matter. His expression spoke volumes that he’d already considered moving on a few times. “It’s a shame that I can’t take my domus. Regardless, let us bask in the sun, and sink fang into… ah. No. Don’t attack Mokono directly, the tar coming out of him isn’t as flammable as it seems, but it definitely acts as an acid and will peel the health right off your bar. Still… how will you hunt? You are a youth. Not a beast.”
Artorian smirked, and pushed up his sleeves. He held Decorum’s hand, and *fuffed*, using Eternium’s system so the already unhappy, grumpy Core wouldn’t complain. Artorian didn’t like it. The trip was seamless! It didn’t feel like it cost him anything, and lacked the tactile, genuine feedback he felt when making the effect happen himself. It was too easy. This system method was… convenient. Too convenient. It had done everything for him, and all he’d done was add the will, tugging some mental levers to engage it. Eternium teleporting was so easy that not only did it feel like cheating, but it felt like bad cheating.
*Ugh*. Artorian squirmed a moment on arrival next to the Kudzu fields of hatred. You could tell that, if they could uproot, they would want nothing more than to hug you with the shadows created by the falling of a thousand swords. “You’re right, I’m a youth. Though if you think having the wrong body is going to hold me back, then you too should hear of my Fringe days. I have an inkling of how I want to go about this. In truth, the system has just annoyed me. At the same time, I’m about to make it do some work.”
Decorum rolled his shoulders. With a crack of flashfire, he burst from his ruined attire, dropping his humanization entirely to embody the truth of his being. Heavy air themes rumbled around him as his form grew outwards in mass. Expanding to a regal one-hundred-twenty-foot-long beast of a predator.
Artorian whistled, impressed.
Dismissing his status screen after having fiddled with it, hexagons of light flickered into place around his being. The light form shaped itself into a copy of Decorum’s liger form, but not remotely with the same dimensions. Also, stalking was going to be difficult. The system had made his light form bright. So much for the sneaky options. Artorian performed a jump to store his youth-form in the center of the adapting frame, embodying the being of the big cat instead.
It would have been terribly awkward, and impossible to know what was right, had it not been for the gift of memories. He instinctively, and from a century of knowledge, knew how to be a liger. Crackers. He wished he could have this for the Long-form. “Well, this sure is convenient. Odd, but convenient.”
Artorian performed the front paws out back-stretch. Ooh, was it goo~o~od. Oh yeah, that got all the spine spots. Mmmm. His jaws parted for a yawn, and he became aware of the seriously deadly arsenal of sharp things in his mouth. Now that was a set of teeth! Rolling his shoulders, he flop-rolled around a bit while the ten-times larger cat watched. The smirk on his whiskers was cheeky. Decorum was not remotely as stately in th
is form, and far more… well, cat-like in behavior as he enjoyed a grin. Watching the silly cub figure out where his legs were.
Decorum stopped grinning when the cub shot away as a line of light before his ears could pick the sound up. The line stopped on a hill, remorphing into a cat before blitzing off at an angle. The straight lines shot around him easily a hundred times. Always at sharp angles before coming to a standstill where it had started. “Whoooo! I’m zippy! Don’t have the speed quite under control. I have to make sure I can see the endpoint of where I’m going to stop before taking another step. I get there far too quickly, against expectations. Going straight for too long is a big no-no, I will smash through the landscape. Chandra will wring me if I break her trees. Let’s try this again.”
The unamused, supposedly superior liger could barely keep up with the beam of light that formed patterns on the ground sheerly from how fast Artorian was going. He couldn’t even follow where the beginning of the line was. His skilled predator-eyes only saw the line after it was there, at which point the cub was already elsewhere. Instinctively, Decorum started pawing and slapping at the lines. Like it was yarn to be caught.
Artorian stopped, looking behind him. “Did you just bop me?”
Decorum tried not to look guilty, eyes wide with his massive, house-sized paw hovering mere inches across a disappearing light line. “…No?”
*Mhm*. As if that was to be believed. “Sure. Alright. I’ve got the hang of basic movements. If I wasn’t an A-ranker, I wouldn’t have a hope in Cal of managing this zippy thing. Where’s the boar? Let’s go burden it. I think I can keep up with you. You seem big, but not that fast.”
The massive liger took that playful comment as a personal challenge. Him, a Prime? Not that fast? Wind bustled around Decorum in response, ground exploding upwards as he took off by starting at Mach one. The sonic boom occurred, but neither of them were there to hear it as the Kudzu field was trimmed down to size at their passing. The plants didn’t even register where all this insane damage was coming from. Whole sections of them were cleaved as if a scythe cut through the middle of their stalks, while others exploded into shiny particles as something bright passed through them.
When they cleared the weed field, Artorian’s light line ever so slightly bent. Decorum had to slow down and veer off, because Artorian missed several steps in tandem. The light-liger crashed through four hills, a small glade, a very confused pack of bowled-over beavers who just lost their dam, and whatever was left of the riverbend. Which was now filling up with water, as the freshly formed hole in its place would form a nice new lake.
A dizzy light-liger staggered back to his feet while a family of beavers whacked him with sticks, flotsam, and bits of junk that had been their dam. He blinked as a branch swatted him in the face. It didn’t do any damage, but rather just knocked a point of durability from the lightframe. Shaking his head, he watched the jumping beavers complain at him in an actual language. He didn’t speak beaver. Should he see if there was a memory Core for beaver?
They screeched and scattered as a ten-times larger Liger showed up, followed by a cloud formation that had formed in his wake and done its best to catch up. Decorum’s heavy, large voice growled through the words. “What happened?”
Artorian watched the beavers bounce away and dive into the start of the new lake as it began to rain, the clouds above them that Decorum had dragged in starting to do work. “Tripped over my own feet. I was doing well earlier too. Made a step too big and lost my balance. How far did I…? Ooooooh. Ouch. That is a big carve in the landscape. I guess the Kudzu is getting a new source of water soon. Oh well. Did I damage any trees?”
Decorum shook himself. “None that weren’t already felled.”
Artorian laid flat on the grass. “Oh good.”
The sound of a dying Dwarven engine ground over the remaining hills, stirring him back up to his feet. Artorian’s liger head looked, but could not pinpoint the sound. There were Dwarves here? That didn’t seem right.
The awful rumbling only got louder, increasing in sharpness as the hill blocking their line of sight to the sound went up like an erupting volcano. Not for something erupting from below, but because they had found the boars. Rather, the boars had found them, and that hill had just been in the way. The shattered dirt rained back down, forming muddy patches with all the water coming from the sky. The hogs had arrived, and so had the system.
What interested Artorian the most was the freshly added pitch of a violin sliding into action. The sharp, quickly played notes stroking across the breadth of what was clearly their battlefield-to-be. The song was meant to get the heart going, and Decorum raced towards the oncoming horde to face the first wave. His first air-infused sideswipe cut through easily a dozen painted boars, mincing them like chopped salad.
Wanting some quick answers, Artorian shook his mane. The status screen pulled into view. The violin was boss event music. These boars hovered around level forty, and there was a wave of forty-fivers coming after. Then at the end of that line was a seventy-two? Wasn’t that a thick discrepancy for Eternium’s Midgard standard? That was way too high.
The cap for Midgard was supposed to be what? Around thirty or forty? Mr. Seventy-Two must have missed the memo. What level did that put Decorum at, now that he was looking? *Wo~ho~hooo*. Seventy-four. What a beast! Seventy-five must be a current hard cut-off point to get kicked out. Couldn’t one just come back? Or was it still like iteration one, where the power-gain forced a one-way trip? What was the point of the rainbow bridges then?
Later. This needed to come later.
Steadying his footing, his jaw dropped as he tried thinking of a ranged attack that would work well. A nice, thick, straight beam was solid for enemies approaching on a flat plain. Nothing happened at first when he attempted to Invoke, hearing harsh static. Right, right. Use the abyss-cracked system. Going through the menu all the time was no good. Didn’t he already get around this? All he had to do during the iteration one tests was yell out a Pylon spell… Artorian, you fool! It was always that simple. Uh… what to call this.
A quick thought crossed his mind. Could he just ask for ideas? Static was his initial answer. How about… “[Senate].”
The static faded, and Artorian partially found himself in the senate. The white marble amphitheater looked the way he remembered it. Oooh. He mentally rubbed his hands together. <[Forum connection to Discord.]>
Discord didn’t understand what was going on when he was pulled into a private space. He only knew he adored what Love had just done, even if the communication went through a grainy filter.
Artorian smirked.
Discord was on the ball.
Love mentally clapped for one of the sources of trouble Incarnate.
As Discord hastily ran off to immediately tell his friends, Artorian figured he’d dallied enough. The second wave was here. Decorum was slicing through them like they were hot cheese, and boy was that cat agile for his size. He wasn’t even needed! Still, just sitting back was no fun. Not when he’d just been given all these lovely ideas. Let’s get to blasting!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A clicking knock thunked on his forum space before Artorian could begin his stride. Oh? So that’s what it sounded like when that happened in Eternium. He understood, rather than saw the pop-up message. [Forum request from Chaos.] Well that was nice, but now wasn’t a good time,
and he moved to reject.
When the connection was established regardless, it didn’t take much guesswork to know who was responsible for side-stepping the system. That little weasel!
*Click*.
Artorian snickered. Eh, sure. Why not! Dropping his jaw, his claws dug into the muddy soil as his mana bar shrank, the Pylons drinking it away. “[Shining Ray]!”
He hadn’t thought about why he’d opened his mouth. First, a hefty ball of energy gathered in his maw. From that condensed power, a teensy, narrow beam of light stabbed faster than he could see towards the horizon. Well, that wasn’t very flashy… This line was barely a sliver thick! He was hoping for a big, tree-sized kaboom! With the ray ongoing, he dropped his head to move the beam parallel to the ground, then looked to his left in the hopes it would be more interesting over there.
The shining ray didn’t seem so paltry when the teensy thing divided boars in its path, doubling the amount of friends they had! Even if there was only half of a friend left in the ray’s wake. Crackers and toast! How much damage did this thing do to just cleave through the wave like that? He was happy his mouth stopped moving before Decorum came into view! It would have been horrible had the ray originated from elsewhere.
Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6) Page 23