When the time finally came for the rock to depart, the council was more than willing to let Arbiter Ertzu leave on this mission. They also unanimously agreed to have all the Warriors leave alongside. A few CorpseBrigade-members offered to go, arguing that the Arbiter would need some bodyguards, but this request was rejected. CorpseBrigade was essential for the tribe’s defensibility.
Everyone was aware that even if they were to survive they would never again be welcome in this tribe. The supplies given to the team made that abundantly clear. For the three Chifu on the mission, the tribe provided fountain water that would last them ten days, which was ridiculously low for this kind of mission. The Council also paid all existing obligations to the Warriors and for the first time ever paid for the upcoming mission in advance.
As with every longer mission, the Warriors packed up all their belongings. For easy travels, their stuff was stored in the soulcastle of Waji, the Mind-Mage. Being some of the most wealthy citizens of the tribe, they had quite a bit to pack, but since none of them had family their last farewell was strangely easy on their emotional condition.
The only ally of the Warriors left in the tribe was Officer Hazvi, and the next in line of succession for his position had a very unique standpoint on the topic of Warriors.
Even if Fawou did not fully buy into the rhetoric of the Councillors, she also believed that she did not need Warriors. Her abilities alone would be enough to deal with any militaristic conflict that could come her way. Especially if the growth of her abilities continued at this pace. From her perspective, it would not be long until she would be able to handle multiple squads of soldiers even without intermediary Officers. And once that happened no tribe in this desert would be able to stand against her might.
This way the departing party was far greater than initially intended, and the rock was accompanied by twelve humanoids.
The team’s travel to the mountain-range took barely a day, as the rock created some kind of vehicle in which it transported its humanoid teammates.
The vehicle was made of sand and had the exterior shape of an orb. In the orb, there were twelve horizontal pockets, tailored to the size and proportions of the twelve very diverse humanoids. And in the centre of the vehicle was a little space for the rock and its seven pet-elementals.
The vehicle was propelled by the rock’s native ability to manipulate its environment, which did not mean that it was a fun ride for the passengers. On the contrary, at the end of the torturous tour, all twelve of them were nauseous and dizzy.
Realising its mistake the rock made a mental note that such vehicles needed to be split into two parts. One section for holding the passengers and one for propelling the construct.
Due to this oversight, the group had to take a rest.
In anticipation of finally meeting its old friends again and agitation over having to explain its new living situation, the rock was less than thrilled about this delay. But as the situation was a hundred per cent its own fault it could not do anything about it.
As they finally carried on with their travels, the group realized a massive structure blocking their way. The rock created another vehicle, this time with more concern about the passenger’s comfort.
This second vehicle was also a sphere, but this time it consisted of two spheres. The inner sphere and outer sphere were separated by a highly viscous sludge, which acted almost like a liquid when put under high tension. This sludge had been invented, by the combined efforts of the rock and Vebjik, because neither gasses nor liquids were capable of suspending the inner sphere.
When they came across the second fort, the humanoids started to grow concerned, but the rock sensed a familiar existence within the fort.
“Again?” Trein, the Martial Knight, voiced his discontent, vocally and via the prayer-channel directly into the rock’s soul.
“Don’t fret! I have a plan. The elementals need to be hidden, in the best case, each of us is carried by another humanoid. Waji, you will have the honour of carrying me!”
After distributing the elementals among the humanoids, Ertzu asked: “Are you going to tell us your plan?”
“Sure, I know the person guarding this fort, so Waji here will impersonate me. Just repeat what I tell you and because she won’t believe you, I will at some point invade her mind.” the rock obliged by explaining the plan.
“Sounds like how you met me!” Waji was not convinced by the practicality of this plan.
“That was actually a fluke and will probably not work a second time. This time it is different because Noii is one of my disciples.” the rock reassured.
“WAS one of your disciples! Who knows how much time went by?” Ertzu reminded the rock that it didn't know how long it had been since its previous iteration's death.
“Does not matter! If she starts trouble with us, I know how to deal with her!” the rock was very confident in its ability to deal with Noii.
So, a group of twelve humanoids approached the fort.
After just standing in front of the fort for multiple minutes did not incite any reaction from inside, one of the martials began to call for the commander of the place.
“Oi! It’s not nice letting old friends wait in front of closed doors!” a male intoned with a loud voice.
After repeating this action for a couple of times, a door opened up in the fort’s wall, and a sleepy woman came out.
“It is also not nice screaming around in someone else’s place!” looking around the collected humanoids she continued: “I don’t know any of you, so none of you is my friend. Leave or die.”
“Noii, Noii, Noii, how far have you fallen? Not only did you fail to resurrect your master, but you also fail to recognise me, when I finally make it home on my own!” Waji repeated the words spoken to him by the rock.
After taking a close look at the man and uttering a short nasal laugh Noii responded: “You are not my master, my master has been dead for well over seven decades. Had he survived I would know about it.”
Sensing that its former disciple was about to attack, the rock stuck pre-emptively and invaded Noii’s mind.
“Do you still want to deny my existence!” the rock questioned.
“But how?” Noii was very confused, especially about the timing.
“My soul was abducted and dropped in the ROT. It took some time for me to retrain my abilities and get back in shape.” the rock explained the part it wanted to share.
“I am so glad that you are back, Master!” the defender claimed.
“Don’t lie to me, I taught you everything you can do. That means I am better than you at everything and every thought you ever had, has been had by me well before you even thought about thinking it.” sensing its former disciple's real emotions and loyalties the rock reminded her of the world's reality.
“Yep, that is the confusing shit Master always spouted, as if he wasn’t able to talk with his mouth and tried to talk with his ass instead.” Noii made sure that her former master understood that she never bought into this rhetoric.
“See! Just useless thoughts in your stupid head. Tell me one thing: After everything I taught you how could you possibly end up becoming a talal?” with a sneer the rock questioned Noii's life choices.
“You were dead, Detester was out of the game, so all of us had to find other ways to get by!” the talal indirectly accused the rock.
“Getting by!?” screaming such at the defender the rock began to laugh: “There was enough money in the lab for all of you to get by for at least a century.”
“And look at what became of the ones who did. They are lowly members of some kind of barely effective revolution! While we who defected early on are high ranking members of the new world order!” informing the rock about the current situation, the talal emphasised her high standing in society.
“World order? I see no world order, I only see a few children hiding in an ever-degrading hellhole. World order you say! Yet you don’t even know who currently rules the world.” the rock tried to provoke by ridiculing the Talal's goddess.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Once our goddess is finished with her current project, neither the energy-devils of the north nor the tribes of the desert will be able to hold a candle against our might.” proclaiming her superior military capacity, the talal tried to convince her former master.
“What do you think? How many gods have claimed similar things? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? And then guess how many succeeded! But sure! Go ahead! Rampage through the desert and give the sealed ones an opportunity to return. Then you will be the dregs of a burning world! I would really like to talk to your little goddess and smack some sense into her.” the rock informed Noii that their goddess's project was destined to fail.
“I will gladly oblige, leave my castle and I shall lead you to her!” the talal finally found a way to bait the rock into one of her prepared traps, not feeling able to take it on in a mind-battle.
The rock knocked its disciple-of-old out and informed the team about what had transpired and what would happen next.
“Waji and I will check whatever trap she prepared for us and depending on how sophisticated it is, I may let her live. We will take all the elementals with us!” the rock informed all of them via prayer-chat.
As everyone understood the plan’s intention, they handed the elementals over to Waji and waited for the conclusion of this charade.
Surprised at how her former master had managed to easily knock her out Noii woke up.
“This way, master!” making it seem as if they were friends to her former master’s teammates, she led Waji into her fortress.
Navigating through the narrow corridors of the massive structure, the two arrived at an archway.
“In there you can talk to the goddess!” Noii intonated indifferently while pointing at the archway.
The rock reminded Waji not to go in and prepared one of its favourite arrangements of elementals. Throwing energy-efficiency to the wind the rock opted for the high-output one in this case.
One of the elementals was loaded with negative electrical energy, while a second one was loaded with positive electrical energy.
A third was constantly feeding negative energy to the first one, while a fourth one sucked negative energy out of the second one.
A fifth elemental was given negative energy from the fourth one and rerouted it back to the first.
For safety reasons, a sixth elemental was ready to jump in and prevent overcharges and charge transfer to the surroundings.
The negatively loaded one positioned itself in front of the talal, while the positively loaded one flew behind the talal.
As they had trained this for years, the whole process took barely a second, and the moment the talal realised that something was wrong it was too late for her to react.
The moment the arrangement was finished, the rock invaded the Talal's soul a second time. Not to buy time, and also not to distract her, but simply to anchor her soul in her body and prevent her from reincarnating or returning to her goddess.
Simultaneously a massive and continuous current of lightning shot from the negatively loaded one through the Talal into the positively loaded one, frying her from within.
“You know that I will come back!” as her last act of defiance the Talal boasted.
“You won’t! Simply because it is me you are up against. Did you really never wonder why they call me the Flayer of Souls?” the rock made fun of its former disciple for never having considered where its moniker stemmed from.
“It is but a moniker. The times have changed Old Man. I have a lot of cards left to play, once this mortal shell has been disposed of.” the talal was equally bragging and threatening.
“You are wrong, the times never change. There is always some stupid idiot thinking themselves above the rest. But once they are settled into a soul-door or sealed within a gem, they are all equally unable to act.” trying to set her straight one last time, the rock informed the talal about her lack of foresight.
“You don’t have any soul-doors!” calling her former master's bluff the talal began to laugh.
“That is right! But I am still the Flayer of Souls, and flaying a soul does not require a soul-door.” after this statement from the rock, the talal stopped laughing and soon after her body collapsed.
As the talal died the rock’s mind returned to its own body.
Mentally taking hold of Noii’s soul, the rock prevented it from fleeing. Then it ripped her soul apart, layer by layer.
First were the physical layers, but as the talal had no physical form left to use, this action did not immediately register with her.
Next was the mental layers, regulating things like memory, sleep and mind-magic. As the rock dismantled this part, it could not resist and ate up the mental energy within. Noii being a mind-mage and talal meant she had a lot of mental energy, and the rock had a feast. The mind-mage ignored the abilities in these layers, as most of them were what she learned from the rock's previous iteration anyway.
The martial layers of Noii were all but crippled, even before the rock laid hands on them.
The same could be said for the elemental layers.
In the magical layers, the rock found dimensional energy, creation-energy as well as some minute amounts of soldier-energy and officer-energy, but barely any abilities to use them with.
The divine layers were the most interesting one. Although there was not a lot of energy, the link to the goddess could still be brought to good use. Hijacking this connection, the rock learned a lot of things about the goddess. The most shocking fact was that she was not even a she. The goddess was not even a humanoid. It was a genderless creature of unidentifiable background.
Next up were the layers of life. Massive amounts of life force and soul energy, which the rock gladly consumed.
A small tinge of confusion came over the rock as there should not be any life force in a dead soul. Life force was the part of soul energy that was set apart for this iteration of a soul, and should have been ripped from the soul and stayed with the body.
The other confusing fact was that there was just too much life force, not just in relation to the amount of soul energy but also considering how long she had already lived.
As the rock was currently lacking a soul-castle, it just took the one present in the soul of its former student.
Her subconsciousness was completely regular and mostly useless for the rock. But it contained juicy soul-doors and even if they were never used they would still be an upgrade to having none at all, so the rock also took the subconsciousness.
And finally, there was the mind, squirming in agony and pain. It was promptly thrown in one of the newly acquired soul-doors. Freeing the door's previous resident, who did not seem to mind this change.
The mind of some ancient guy was thrown out of the subconsciousness and told to live in the soul-castle.
As Waji watched this horror show he realised just how powerful his newest friend really was and made a mental note not to get on its bad side.
For the first time in his life, Waji was glad that he did not belong to any religion that considered the soul to be sacred.
Feeling very strange Waji led the group of elementals back to their friends.
