Arc 2 | Chapter 76: Shrinkage

V’s laughter as they fought what Emilia could only hope was the boss of the library heartcore’s labyrinth was equal parts endearing and aggravating. Yes, they were having fun fighting the boss, but also! This was serious! Many lives were on the line—four lives, to be precise. Theirs, along with Rin and Key’s, who—rather amusingly—were currently locked in a cage, suspended high above their battlefield.

Even from so far away, Rin looked simply bored, while Key looked irate. Occasionally, he would yell advice at them, although virtually none of it was of particular use—as much as Key had fared well in their previous fights, first against her Risen Guard babysitter, and then Taoran, he clearly wasn’t formally trained in combat.

She and V, on the other hand…

A decade and an entire world removed, Emilia knew that both of their fighting styles were vastly different from anything they would have been in the war. Even with someone like Rafe, who she had known and worked alongside most of her life, their previous synchronicity had become scattered and unreliable during their years apart, following the war. It should have been the same with V: if they had ever fought alongside one another, they should have fumbled and misread each other, excepting one, common war strategy and receiving something wholly different.

It

should

have been awkward and stilted and dangerous.

It wasn’t.

They were perfectly in sync. They danced and swerved around each other, despite the fact that Emilia could find no resemblance to anyone she had fought alongside in V’s movements—at least not obviously. Clearly, the man hadn’t been lying or exaggerating when he had said he served.

Well, it wasn’t that people lied about whether they had served or not, more that they implied they had been active combatants or supports in the war, when in reality they had held behind the scenes jobs. Those jobs were important—the military couldn’t run without cooks or engineers or people keeping their gear maintained—but those who had fought on the frontline, even in the less active zones, were regarded much more highly than anyone else.

So, people exaggerated their roles. Usually, it became pretty obvious they were lying once anyone who actually had been on the front—had actually learned to fight in ways that were most effective against their enemies—saw them in action. Even a decade on, you could still see aspects of those skills in a person’s fighting style.

Emilia could see those aspects in V’s style—could see them in the way his body moved, so many echoes of the amalgamated martial arts they had created in those first few years, when the monsters they fought had been smaller. A decade into the war, the monsters had outsized most of humanity by several feet. By the end, the largest recorded monster had towered nearly a hundred feet above them.

This thing, gross and slimy and dirty as it was, was nothing. It was larger than them, yes, but compared to the things she had faced on the front, it was nothing but a nuisance that they had to figure out how to rout. V seemed of a similar mind, either from his own experience during the war or in the decade of raids since. Cool and collected, they danced around each other, V swinging and throwing his spear while laughingly trying to explain to Emilia how he had shrunk it down.

She didn’t understand, V’s words more practical than logical, but her own weapons, small as they were, weren’t exactly suited for shrinkage anyways. She didn’t

need

to know—to understand—how he had done it. Not that that was stopping her from wanting to know the

how

of the shrinking. One day, she might have a weapon she wanted to shrink, and—

Emilia’s thoughts cut off as V’s {Blood Spear} slid into the ground next to her.

“Try with that,” V called back at her, spinning gracefully out of range of a mouthful of the monster’s spit.

It was just as toxic as the spit from the monsters she had faced at the cavern lake, although unlike their clear spit, this guy’s spit was muddy. Both she and V had been splattered by a moderate amount of it, her own {Blood Armour} protecting most of her skin, while V had been forced to abandon his shirt after the fabric had begun to meld to his skin.

Emilia had bolted over and helped him yank it off, before it permanently melted to his skin. It had been disgusting, and now his admittedly attractive body was marred with splotches of red and slices of missing skin. Slowly, they were healing, but Emilia had been counting and comparing the healing time to her own previous wounds. These ones were taking significantly longer to heal, unfortunately.

⸂Behind you!⸃ Key yelled, V seamlessly bolting forward because his visit to the heartcore had helpfully(?) supplied him with the ability to hear the local’s native tongue.

“Couldn’t I have gotten the ability to understand locals at a better time?”

the other visitor had muttered when he realized he could hear Key’s extremely distracting yelling. Even more unfortunate for him, Key had realized V could hear him and had taken to mostly yelling at him, all but forgetting that Emilia existed.

That was fine with her. All she had to do was tune Key out and listen to the rare comment from Rin, speaking directly into her core about one danger or another. While more personal, the touch of her voice intimate across her core, it was still somehow less intrusive than Key’s screaming.

⸂I believe he has summoned friends,⸃ was all the other girl had to say, and Emilia was spinning, level 300 eyes taking in not nearly enough information about the environment, but enough to tell her there were at least a half dozen of the smaller, lake cavern monsters beginning to ooze out of the room’s muddy walls.

“Gross,” she muttered, sending a {Blood Needle} shooting towards the largest group of them. Wet screams fizzled out as it exploded, and mushy pink flesh splattered outwards. Another needle shot out of her hand. Another. More and more of the creatures fell while she tugged the {Blood Spear} from the soft earth.

It was heavy in her hands and far taller than she was. She heaved it upwards, following the shocking instructions that V had given her earlier.

“Is that a skill that your weapon came with?”

she had called over the grumble of the monster. The grumbling was weird, at least to her. She was used to monsters that roared and shrieked and growled—and in a few unfortunate instances, howled with laughter. Grumbling and belching was just too… normal. It was off-putting in its own, strange way. When she had told V this, after he had asked about her glaring at the monster whenever it made any sort of sound, he had practically fallen over for how hard he had laughed.

Emilia really didn’t think it was

that

funny. The universe had soundly punished him, however, when his amused distraction had resulted in him getting hit by a shot of mud on his upper thigh. Luckily, whatever his pants were made of was sturdier than whatever his shirt was, and he hadn’t been forced to lose them as well. She did feel a bit bad, watching him limp about, but not

that

bad. The man really did tempt the universe too much.

“No…”

V had replied, something off in his voice, and Emilia had been forced to follow him around the area, nagging him with questions and promising not to do anything bad with whatever he told her or judge him too harshly if it was something weird.

V’s steps had finally halted as one of her {Blood Needles} collapsed a portion of the ceiling, bringing it toppling down on top of the monster. The monster had grumbled and begun shaking the rocks off, but they had had a few moments for V to look seriously at her, returning to being the man he had been in the moments he had spent with his now deceased Enclave babysitter: serious, stern, cold.

“Not something weird,”

he had muttered, eyes shifty and reminding her of a child who knew they were about to be reprimanded.

“Then…”

The man had sighed, hands sliding into the back pockets of his pants as he stared upwards and sorted out his thoughts. Across the room, the monster had sent one of the larger sections of ceiling rolling away, and Emilia had sent another needle flying into the rocks above it. More had tumbled downwards, crashing soundly over the ground and the monster’s head. The monster had grumbled in lazy complaint and returned to removing rocks from its body, while she shuddered at the terrible noise.

“Then~”

she had tried again, giving him an encouraging smile as she shifted her weight in front of him, bobbing cheerfully from side to side.

He had sighed again, giving her an impossibly fond and long-suffering look. She knew that look, although not from any particular person. She’d been getting that look from half the people she knew most of her life, but usually, it took at least a few days for new friends to get there.

“I’ve played blackaether raids,”

V had told her, explaining that they often involved… less than legal setups.

“They use cores,”

Emilia had guessed before he got around to telling her himself, his words instead avoiding the reality of what happened in those illegal raids.

He had blinked at her and nodded.

“How did you—”

“I’m in an illegal knotting clinic at the moment,”

she had told him, almost immediately regretting telling him so much. If he did know her, he would surely be wondering what she was doing there. Then again, maybe if he did and was wondering what was up with her personality, he would assume it was the knots.

Some of it was the knots. Not all of it, however.

“Anyways, I’ve been having some… weird core issues in here? I wasn’t sure if it was the platform or the access point—or both.”

“I thought you said you didn’t raid often?”

the other visitor had asked, face screwed up in confusion as they bolted away from a rock the monster had hurled their way.

“I don’t.”

“Then how do you know how to access your core? That’s not a normal skill. Seriously, they run entire blackaether courses, so people can learn how to use their cores in raids. Most people can still barely utilize them.”

Emilia had shot him a wide, toothy grin.

“I was a little shit, even as a kid.”

Better to leave out the part where she still fucked around with her core a bit, even as an adult, and she certainly wasn’t mentioning the whole busted core thing.

The man had blinked at her before breaking into more laughter as they bolted through the rain of rocks coming down around them.

“I can believe that,”

he had sighed, before giving her basic instructions—half of which had been screamed over the monster’s assault—on how to shrink blood weapons down.

Now, Emilia held his {Blood Spear} in her hands, watching with wide eyes as he flitted here and there through the room, decades of experience in the war and who knew how many years within virtual raids shining through. Even with such a high level, the man was astonishing. Skilled and confident, even without a weapon. Her hand tightened around his weapon, forged from the blood of someone he had viewed as a friend because the Enclave could be just as cold and heartless as this world’s police force.

“V!” she called, hurling her {Blood Blade} at him. It wouldn’t be nearly as effective against the monster as his spear or her needles were, but it was better than nothing.

The other visitor caught it perfectly, shooting her a terribly dimpled smile before surging forward because apparently he was suicidal. Giving her his only weapon—at least, it was the only one she had seen him use so far—and then attempting to take their enemy on with only the smallest of daggers!

The man was insane!

Yes, he couldn’t die, but he had also sought out this platform with a purpose. She wasn’t going to get in the way of him fulfilling his goal.

Her core spiralled outwards, burning her meridians as her energy collided with the {Blood Spear}. He had told her it would burn. Still, she hadn’t expected it to be

this

painful—not when the man had shifted the weapon’s size with barely a flicker of pain. Maybe he was just more experienced. Maybe she was just a weeny. It was impossible to tell when her entire body burned and the world went white, becoming an empty void of pain.

A second later, the world exploded back into view and the spear in her hand had returned to the small, necklace shape V had shifted it in and out of in order to make manoeuvring with it easier. It reminded her of her own willbrand, in a way, and every instinct told her to use it that way. Energy flooded back out of her, vibrating through the {Blood Spear} and burning twice as bright as before, shuddering out into the world and latching onto the monster’s head.

Her arm pulled back, the tiny spear gripped perfectly between her fingers. They had all learned how to use each other’s weapons during the war. Their willbrands, expensive and forged just for them, were difficult for anyone else to use. As a precaution, they had forced themselves to practice with every member’s.

It had sucked. Some people’s willbrands had been more volatile in the hands of others than expected. One person had lost an arm and been forced to choose between reattaching the mangled thing or learning to live with a prosthetic—they chose the latter. Overall, however, that training had saved more than a few lives, when people went down and their willbrand was destroyed. As cold as it was, looting a corpse for a willbrand was far better than dying a stupid death while you waited for help.

They had rarely been forced to remove willbrands from the bodies of their unit’s members, but the training had enabled them to more easily use the willbrands of other soldiers. Now, Emilia extended that knowledge into the present, the hours she had spent learning to use James’ willbrand—which usually took the shape of a shape or spear—rising up within her.

V’s eyes caught hers as he continued moving forward, dodging the monster’s attacks and thoroughly distracting it. He winked, and she smiled back, light steps taking her forward as her arm moved and the {Blood Spear} shot out of her hands. Her energy glowed golden around it, guiding it home—guiding it to grow into a monster of a thing, perfectly suited for taking down pink, fleshy, grumbly monsters.

The monster’s steps halted as the spear, huge and heavy, slipped through its slimy head. It blinked and then V was there, Emilia’s {Blood Dagger}—her blood itself—slicing through each eye, through places here and there, searching for vital spots. He bolted backwards just as Emilia let another {Blood Needle} fly, praying it wouldn’t hit him or destroy his weapon. Somehow, just like every other moment of the fight, he had known it was coming.

Gusts and gore exploded across the room, but V was already there, scooping her up and rolling them behind one of the larger boulders littering the area.

“Thanks,” she sighed, leaning into him as liquids slid, burning and sizzling, down the walls of the room.

“Of course, Emilia,” V sighed back, head tilting over to rest against her as they took a moment to breathe before they had to figure out how to get Key and Rin down.