CH12: A Favor

Promises to women were the bane of men. It was illogical to promise he wouldn't kill every Su clan member he saw.

A chunk of rock bounced off his head after a stray round hit a rock a little too close for comfort.

Bullets fired overhead as he hovered behind a thick stalactite while he reloaded his full auto rifle.

Every firefight was getting easier, and the equipment felt more comfortable. If Vergil kept it up, he would be a professional with rifles after the mission ended.

He flashed out of cover and pulled the trigger using his superior speed, strength, and levitation to keep each bullet on target. He cleared the room's drones in one clip before hiding behind a hanging stalactite. A laser blasted into the rock behind him.

Vergil felt the stone heat behind him when he dropped to the ground. He leaped out as crescent psychic blades fired off from tentacles one after the other.

Purple glowing Blades of death flew overhead, blasting the air with psionic sparks. A hair's breadth was too close to the psychic blade techniques. One ripped through the air with a heavy tentacle bolstered by tactile telekinesis and crushed the rock beneath its falling shadow.

Vergil barely endured with his own telekinesis and felt blood shoot out of his mouth. While he withstood the attack better than the ground, vibrations shot through his body and damaged his organs; blood was in his lungs. Vergil's hand moved to form his terror blade but stopped at the last minute.

Burst erupted across his body, stronger than ever, and he moved. His fist impacted the head of the first psion and squished deep into the creature. After a breath of time, it blasted away from his fist, impacting the nearby rock wall. He flew into the psion sneaking in his peripheral, and delivered a devastating elbow.

Ki gathered in his palm before he struck a third psion blasting it down to crumple against the already cratered ground. While he didn't have any ki-based offensive techniques adding ki to his physical attacks increased the reach of his blows and their impact.

As he fought with his ki, he could feel the amount of ki he possessed refine, thicken, and become malleable. So clearly, there was more to ki cultivation than mere cultivation techniques.

Using his ki seemed to purify it, increasing its impact; however, that didn't increase the amount he had. Gathering ki was like dumping random water in a pool while combat, or any use of the ki, was like running that pool water through a filter. Only there didn't seem to be an upper limit for purification.

"Stop resisting," a loud transmission rumbled after him while he charged into an ambush. Fortunately, a mere transmission given by a silver rank wasn't enough to affect him.

The room had seven psions; some were servants, others were Su Clan, young masters, or mistresses.

Memories of seeing people fight flashed through his mind, and slowly he adapted his stance to better fit those men. While it wouldn't be one-to-one in stance or output, he slowly adapted to the fight. If he didn't have peak mind refinement, using past fragmented memories like he did wouldn't have been possible.

He shot into them as a blade of psychic energy caught him in the shoulder before he threw a punch that smacked two psions together. One reached out with its tentacles, and Vergil slapped them away with his bare hands. Then, Vergil levitated and shot forward to deliver a punch to a male psion.

Burst was painful and damaged his body as much as it empowered him, but in short bursts, it was ideal for changing up his tempo on his opponents.

Once one grew complacent, forcing Vergil to dodge psionic blades, it was time to accelerate and shake things up. He shot out and delivered several powerful blows knocking the psions around before they collapsed.

So far, it was surprising that he managed to keep his promise. None of the Su clan servants or young masters had died by his hand. He could already feel the power-ups from his own gravity chamber. Su charity was in the leviathan vein room, while outside, it was Tyson, Far Ao, and another Su clan member.

While it would be three against one, Vergil liked his odds of winning.

He found a mirror in one of the knocked-out Su clan member's storage rings. After giving himself a once over, he restored his features to a heroic rendition of his most teenage appearance. While his body's ki, vital energy, and psi hadn't changed, he looked young and powerful. He let his hair turn into its former grey, blond, and brown mess and removed his facial hair. He used to be completely clean-shaven.

Liquid dripped down his body while he used Black Goat's Embryo to heal himself. A dark wooden womb of thorns wrapped around his body as a thin membrane. The technique had reached a new form after repeated use. Techniques had realms, and stages like cultivation did. There were nine in total going from Mortal Killer, Earth Erupting, Immortal Slaying, Underworld Erupting, Devil Destroyer, Heaven Defying, God Shaking, Universe Breaking, and Almighty Anathema. As for the stages, they were low, mid, high, and peak, practically the same as stages in cultivation realms.

His Black Goat's Embryo had reached the mid-stage. However, unlike Lord of Terror, Black Goat's Embryo increased with use and will from his patron. The reason for that was simple it was a summoning-type technique that borrowed the manifested power from an outer being.

At the mid-stage, his wounds healed much faster; even his lungs somewhat recovered after 15 minutes under the technique's care. That was a great boon; he needed all the strength he could get for the confrontation.

He broke free from the womb and let it dissolve into motes of psi. Then, once he felt comfortable with his slight increase in vital energy, he entered the antechamber to see Tyson waiting for him.

"You just won't die or get out of our way. Even Jacob couldn't convince you to join us. So what are you even after? I know you don't want to return to your miserable life, so why don't you find a nice slave girl and disappear while the people who matter take care of business." Tyson said.

Vergil eyed the two psions and estimated the length of his terror blade. They were only a little out of reach of a lethal attack. Revealing his blade early was only asking for trouble.

"Do you think advancing into the advanced stage of the prenatal realm matters? Dante is already in the intermediate natal realm. The things he can do you can't compare with your weak speed and strength. What did you waste your third slot on? Was it flight? Tell me it was flight." Tyson said.

He would need to keep his Terror blade in reserve until Tyson revealed his final technique. While it was most likely fire, that could have been a red herring by using a sleight of hand. Then again, what was fire but a little friction and oxygen for fuel. With enough ki control, making sparks or even open flames might be possible. Odds were fair, Tyson showed his hand, but it was just as likely that it was not the case. Controlling fire was a good reliable skill to have. Tyson was a straightforward guy when Vergil knew him, but that was over a decade ago.

Vergil estimated that with his vital energy, he had the physical strength of around 4 horses without taking ki or psi into account. Add ki, which multiplied to around 24 horses; if he went all out, then with psi, it went up to around 192 horses. That was if he devoted all his resources into a single blow. Afterward, all his ki, vita, and psi would be spent, and he wouldn't have any strength left to do anything. It was safer to say he had around the strength of 30 to 90 horses at any given time. Burst increased that in short bursts to around 100 to 150 at its current low stage. Burst used a unique application of psi to facilitate the increase, so it wasn't as taxing as going all out.

He hovered in the air showing the hand Tyson thought he had and playing into his past of gullibility. "So, what if it was."

This was the final test to see if the psions could actively share information with Tyson or if they were companion NPCs like in Skyrim. Knowing how the connection worked was an important part of his deception. The psions should be able to tell he was using levitation, a psion technique.

Ki sense and Ostrich Oscillation were two very different techniques. One was the sight from a person's eyes, and the other was a research team with all their equipment. Psi wasn't in the spectrum of ki sense, and neither was vital energy.

It was a feature of the brand. Only knowledge sought after could be searched, and what information was found had to be filtered. The difference between peek stage prenatal realm mind cultivation and a normal human brain was insurmountable.

"Then you wasted your time trying to be superman, and I thought you always preferred the hulk," Tyson said.

Vergil let himself settle back on the ground. Memories of conversations with Tyson flashed as he walked down memory lane and saw the sights.

"I thought the steroids damaged your heart, not your brain," Vergil said.

"What do you care? It's not like it matters anymore, not for me or you. Was this what you wanted to gain power by becoming the slave of a demon and a toddler?" Tyson

Vergil studied Tyson and the psions under the man's control. They were weaker than they had been. He hadn't noticed it before. Psions were wells of psi normally, but his relativity to them had changed after reaching the peak stage in the prenatal realm. It wasn't by much, but the psions were losing a small amount of their psi permanently. By his estimation, the Su clan member had a month before it fell from mid to low-stage silver rank. That power was going to Tyson.

At the same time, the guy wasn't cultivating any mind techniques.

Unless he was hiding his mind cultivation. Even if that were true, Vergil should have felt it in Tyson's strength.

"I'm tired of your holier-than-thou attitude. So you had some heart surgeries, so what? I'm sick of being the one who has to maintain contact. It's not my responsibility to hold your hand through life. You could have asked for my number and tried to stay in touch, but you didn't. So I don't owe you anything. You made that clear you all made it clear."

He activated burst, but there wasn't any pain anymore. After digging deep apertures through his body, the psi ran smoothly. Instead of ripping him apart, it felt like his psi was a 5-gallon bucket, and he quickly poured it out.

An aura of soft blue psionic energy gathered around his body as the skill finished ripping holes in his body. He struggled to hold power in while the psions rushed him.

He dropped burst to 3% and dodged through Far Ao and the other psion's tentacles.

Tyson laughed as Vergil moved between attacks before knocking one of the psions hurtling into a nearby wall. Golden energy gathered around Tyson, and Vergil felt ki explode off the guy. Vergil upped burst to 10%, and it felt like his muscles were tearing apart, and his psi was draining faster than ever. He was scooping a full cup of water at a time out of his bucket for the ten seconds he held a 10% burst.

"You're weak. I was the power-lifting champion, and you quit," Tyson yelled, and Vergil ducked under the man's punch. Tentacles shot out in Vergil's direction, and Vergil caught one. He stepped forward and yanked hard on the psion. Its body shot forward like a wrecking ball until Tyson punched it.

Golden flames shot across the psion's body, cooking it on the spot.

Vergil felt its psi erupt from its death. He quickly cultivated it recovering his 5-gallon bucket of psi for the fight. He began trading blows with Tyson but found his strength matched, and the smile on Tyson's face hadn't gone away. The room was heating up.

"What do you know?" Vergil said.

Vergil had embraced the leviathan vein dimension by killing with his hands, rocks, and fear. The psion smelled deliciously cooked, even if it clung to life. While Tyson laughed like a madman, Vergil thought about eating the psion after the fight. It seemed they were both affected by their techniques.