After a proper farewell and just before the servants were due to return, we left for Kanto again, back to training, though this time, with a restocked storage full of Phoenix Tears and the knowledge that Sairaorg was running on borrowed time, though he may not yet know it.
His mother hadn't told him about her disease yet, and if I don't get his training done at least midway through the year so he can spend the rest of it with mommy dearest, he may well come to resent me for that once she's asleep. Not to mention, again, Lavinia Reni!
Dammit!
I am skipping my first week if I need to, to get to Kuoh and issue a search order for her. Touki can wait.
Then there's also the other three peerage members I had planned, all of whom could just really use the extra time together. With me that is. In training. Every moment they are left to their own devices their potential further stagnates, and for two of them, who were born with Satan Class stats, that may not be a big deal but…yeah.
Its time to take a little risk. I really gotta speed this up.
We appeared in our rooms in the onsen, and made our way down to main hall, to announce our return. We didn't need to- Magari could sense us, really all of them could, being Senjutsu users and all- but it was a courtesy, a matter of respect.
"We're back!" I slammed open the door and announced, only to have a sake cup slam into my face with enough force to send me flying into the wall.
"Don't slam the damn doors, ya brat! Who's gonna repair them when they break?" Magari was already drunk. It's 11 am.
"Kahahaha!" I laughed and got up from the wreckage, dusting myself off as I noticed a guest in the house, alongside the row of elder Nekomatas lining the walls in polite seizas, and the palate of snacks and drinks stacked up on the table, "And what of the wall, you hag? Is the irony lost on your pea sized shrivelled bean of a brain? Yo, Nura-san!"
"It's boss Nura to you." He corrected.
"Not my boss." I shrugged and he frowned at that, but ultimately gave up.
"Nyahaha! Obviously, nya'r goin' to repair it." She pointed out nonchalantly,
I flipped her off and we smiled. I swear, its affectionate.
I snapped my fingers, a magic circle lit up beneath the wall and it began to return to way it once was, pristine within seconds, as if it had never been blown through. Imagination magic is a total cheat.
"Why are you both like this?" Sairaorg muttered in defeat, while Dulio patted his back supportively.
"Welcome back, ya bats. Hows was your visit home?" She slurred a little emptying her new cup of sake that a catboy placed before her.
"Great. Dulio had a picnic, we had a movie night, the whole shebang." I replied as we sat down, "Ready for Touki training though."
"We'll get to it." She pawed lazily at me and turned to Nurarihyon, with a shit-eating grin, "See what I told ya, boss. Now pay up."
"You were betting on us?" Sairaorg asked, a little confused.
"Things get boring around here, Sai-boya, 'specially since we had to close down for the year for your training." Nurarihyon reluctantly threw her a Phoenix Tear and she swiped it into her storage, "Without guests, we gotta keep ourselves entertained somehow."
"More importantly, what was the bet?" I asked, leaning one arm on the table.
"I bet I could get ya three to awaken within six months. Boss here said no way. Rest is history." She snickered with a 'told you so' look and Nurarihyon looks beyond disgruntled at his loss.
"I blame you brats!" He huffed, taking the bottle for a cup and chugging it directly, "Stupid, over-talented bats, coming here ruining my day... hmph!"
What a ghetto ass community these folk have. Total redneck hillbillys the lot of them.
Well, I suppose they do live in literal hill valleys.
"So…when do we start?" I brought them back onto the topic, and Magari waved her paw in the air, "Tomorrow. Too drunk. Not in the mood."
Then an idea seemed to strike her and she grinned mischievously.
"But, since Boss is here, you're getting lucky. He'll teach you himself. Special lesson."
"No I'm not." He downed the bottle and slammed it only the table, wiping his mouth, "I was just leaving."
"Boooss nyan! Come on~ Please. I don't wanna work today nya~" She whined, smacking her little kitty cat paws on the table like a baby- an 800 year old baby- as she spread out onto it like a fluffy little marshmallow.
"You have the gall to say that after stealing one of my Phoenix Tears." He swished his kasaya dramatically as if to leave, but he clearly wasn't willing to let that vial go, "But if you return that-"
"No nya~" Magari immediately rejected it, "I won it fair and square."
Now I didn't mind skipping the day. I had better things to do anyway. But I caught onto the opportunity before me that could save me an immense amount of effort and keep my personal risks down to a minimum.
"Say, boss Nura…" I played to his ego and greed, "If you really want another Phoenix Tear, I have one right here~" I pulled one out and twirled it around my fingers.
"And what'll it cost me? I know you don't want a personal lesson, brat, so spill." He didn't reject me outright, that was a good sign.
"Why don't we make this fun? You like to bet yeah?" I offered.
"Depends on what we're betting." He was cautious, as he should be, not that that would save him.
"Simple. You hide, I seek." I placed the bottle on the table and gestured with open palms, making a balancing act, "An unconditional favour for each vial. Your choice on how many you want to bet."
He narrowed his eyes.
"How many you got?"
I grinned.
"More than you can afford."
"Cocky brat. Just pay me for the favours. Why bet?" He snorted and waved me off, but his eyes never left the vial, especially as I added a second one, and then a third.
Because you wouldn't do them even for triple the price, old man. Though I didn't say that.
"Because its fun!" I smiled innocently, but I could tell he wasn't buying it.
"Two vials per favour." He demanded, fishing the waters.
"Sure." I agreed immediately and added another three vials into the line.
"Damnit. How dangerous are these favours boy? Can't you just pay me?"
I didn't answer and simply upped the ante.
"Three vials."
"No. I'm not doing it. Something is very fishy here." He said with his mouth but his body answered something different entirely as he was still sat there, fingers tapping nervously on the table. He gulped, and though he tried to hide it, I could see he was beginning to consider it.
"Come on~ Surely the famously stealthy Nurarihyon isn't afraid of losing a simple contest of hide and seek against a ten year old boy?" I egged him on and in the presence of his subordinates, he couldn't exactly refuse.
"Yeah, boss! You're not scwawed of a wittle boy, are ya?" Magari joined in, enjoying herself even as Nurarihyon gave her a dirty glare.
"What are these favours?!" He asked, ever more concerned now.
"You know what I'm hearing? Buk buk bukwawk!" I mocked, "And here I thought I was supposed to be the chicken?"
He looked around and saw all eyes on him, and though he wanted to refuse, the prize was just too valuable.
Still, he was no fool. He knew that if I was betting this much on something, it must be because I had a plan.
"Three times." He finally said, after a moment of consideration, "You must find me three times to win."
"Hmm…" I pretended to think, before answering, "Two times. And you can't leave this room or move from your place once you've hidden yourself."
"Three times." He felt more confident now, "And I will stay in this room and not move, but neither can you. You have to stay seated there the whole time. And those two can't help you."
"Sure, but only if I get three favours." I amended the deal.
"Only if you find me all three times. If you miss even once, you lose." He countered.
"How about if I lose, whatever amount of favours I didn't get, I pay you for them at a fair price? Your ask. No discussion. Or even better, if I win, I will still pay you one vial per favour for two of them and you do the third one for free. My choice of favours paid of course."
"You really want this, don't you brat?" Nurarihyon was amused, "Now I am really scared as to what favours you will ask." He sighed, "But in for a penny, in for a pound. Alright, deal."
He should be afraid. The things I was about to ask, he wouldn't do it usually even if I paid triple the price. I had to resort to this. Or wait seven years. This was the obviously better option comparatively.
"Deal." I felt the contract settle over us and smiled.
I had already won; he just didn't know it yet.
"Round one." He said and disappeared into thin air.
I tried sensing him using my magic sense, but there was no sign of him. No problem, I was just checking. I knew it probably wouldn't work, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Besides, I already had a plan.
I extended my senses through my wind manipulation trait and imbue it with the concept of life that we Phenexes were so close with, sensing for all living breathing life. A spell I had created after remembering the Wind Swordsman from the manga Ares, and perfected after seeing how Dulio used his sacred gear to naturally get a feel for his surroundings.
Immediately, I could feel all creatures around me with every breath they took, their youki appearing as a thick miasma in my senses, lingering around them like a cloud.
Of course, being a master at stealth, I knew he would hide both his breath and aura entirely, along with hypnotically casting a suggestion that would obscure his location from the minds of anyone who could sense him, even if they did find him.
It was a subtle thing, an anti-memetic effect that most didn't even begin to consider about his skill, and something I only realized after my father- the one who helped me create this spell in the first place- failed to find him in that banquet hall.
Which is exactly why I wasn't searching for places he could be. That was impossible anyways. I was searching for any corner of the hall where my senses told me he definitely wasn't, in fact those places where my senses said, 'Don't bother even looking here'. The parts I literally couldn't bring myself to look at, even if I tried. That was where he was.
A spot in the left-hand corner of the room behind a five tailed nekomata elder who I unconsciously skipped. I wouldn't have even realized he was there if I hadn't counted the number of people in the room as soon as I had the idea of the bet and written it down on my palm with magic.
I smiled, shut down all my senses, lest I accidentally point somewhere else due to his powers, and lifted my finger, pointing over to him, and at the same time trying not to even think about him or that general direction.
"There." I muttered as if detached from the context of the bet. It's just a word, I assured myself internally.
Nurarihyon's stealth, it was on a whole different level. A truly powerful conceptual ability, it negated all things that could be conceptually regarded as a 'sense', including the sense of language and direction, time and space, even something so abstract as the sense of context and correlation of identities.
"You found me." He sounded amused and intrigued, as I opened my eyes again and let my senses pour in again, "I was wondering what tricks you had up your sleeve, but this is truly beyond my expectations. You looked for holes in your perception. Instead of looking for me, you looked for where I wasn't. A completely ass-backwards thought!" He laughed, "Wonderful. This really is fun."
He looked me in the eye, and I saw his competitive spirit was stoked.
"You won't win again, boy."
With that he disappeared and I declared, "Round two."
Again, I spread my senses and tried the same trick, though I knew it wouldn't work again.
As suspected, this time there wasn't just one void in my perception, there were even two dummies made of a semblance of his aura, as a distraction. And I smiled. This was even simpler than last time.
Nurarihyon's ego was hurt, but he wasn't going to be as impulsive this time. He was not about to bet again. So the choice was obvious, I didn't even bother to check anywhere else. He wasn't in any of those.
I lifted my hand straight up and pointed to the ceiling.
"There."
"How?!" He shrieked, distraught, as he jumped down.
"Fairly obvious, if you ask me." I shrugged and he opened his mouth to counter but closed it again, accepting his defeat. This time.
"Don't get cocky now." He didn't seem as confident as before now, and I knew he wouldn't be pulling any tricks now. It was going to be a straight battle of skill vs skill. Or so he thought.
Heh.
"Round three."
This time when I checked, the room was chock full of voids and decoy duplicates, even the ceiling and the floor. More than 40 separate iterations of either.
This was no longer a bet, it was a matter of pride and skill, for him.
Shame. To me it was a game I had just won.
I simply let go of my spell and let his anti-memetics take hold of my senses, distorting them to high heaven. I was straight up tripping, seeing things, shifting shadows, hallucinations- both auditory and visual, and even my sixth sense was so tangled up, it might as well not exist. But that was exactly what I wanted.
I smiled and slammed my hand into the floor, as a black bubbling flame gurgled into existence before bursting into an inferno that consumed the room whole.
"Black Flames of Judgement." The completed version of the spell.
And it's target? The one person in the room who had attacked my senses.
And that someone was about to have his world rocked by the equal and opposite reaction. His own senses deceived beyond recognition by my flames.
Punishment fitting the crime. You distort my senses? The black flames of judgement will distort yours. Fool me and get fooled in return.
To everyone else, the flame was utterly harmless, as if it didn't even exist- because to them, it literally didn't.
But to him, he was seeing his subordinates go up in flames, their flesh melting off, their skin peeling as the flames charred them, fall off the bone good.
"How dare you?! Stop this madness now, boy!" He appeared before me instantly, his sword unsheathed, its tip drawing blood against the nape of my neck as I let go of the spell and pointed at him.
"There."
At the same time his senses returned to normal as his own ability had stopped and he saw clearly, what had happened.
He looked around shocked as all eyes fell upon him and Magari was ready to jump in to stop him.
"Boss nyan! Stop-"
He looked back at me in a mixture of horror and surprise.
"You brat…what did you do? How-" He stuttered as he stumbled, dizzy from the counter-reaction to my spell and fell to the floor.
"I win." I declared with a smug grin.
"Fuck you." He muttered, rubbing his cocoon shaped temples in pain, the same pain I had instantly recovered from, thanks to my regeneration, "Damn brat!"
........
The bet with Nurarihyon. He lost the moment he agreed to it.
Phew, 2700 words. I really gotta start cutting these word counts short lol, but when them words start flowing, boy oh boy, do i lose myself into the process...
Tell me what you thought? The black flames of judgement are really versatile and useful aren't they?
Also, we are about to reach 3000 collections! Get ready for an extra chapter tomorrow!
Not to mention 300 powerstones.
I am gonna have to pull double duty for that triple release lol.
Anyways, Thanks for reading!
See ya~