From Mountain to Swamp
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After destroying the Tomb Keepers, the Imperials began to behave in Putra as if they were at home, there were more Imperials here than locals, who due to the rather dry climate had never been numerous. There were plenty of Imperial labourers dismantling the rubble, and plenty of soldiers guarding them, but no one strong enough that I couldn't beat them. The Empire has too many enemies to leave strong warriors guarding excavations in the desert when those warriors are needed to eliminate the Empire's enemies.
The Imperials looted the tomb pretty quickly, you can see the professionalism in this business, and when after a couple of months they reached the treasury of the tomb, I decided to wait for them to do all the work for me and pull all the gold out and pack it in convenient crates for transport.
After interrogating another soldier, I learned that the Empire has a Teigu that allows teleportation, and the owner of this Teigu is the son of the Prime Minister himself. It would be great if I could kill the Prime Minister's son, but his Teigu can teleport me straight into a volcano, I'm not quite sure I could survive that without a decent defence. So I used invisibility to sneak into the empire's warehouses, and took all the crates of gold and my artefact weapons from there. My spatial pocket added a couple of dozen tonnes of weight, so I had to change into my half-beast tiger form to be able to move with such a load on my body. This transformation makes me several times stronger in all parameters, but I grow white fur, my head turns into a tiger's head with a toothy mouth, sharp claws appear on my feet and hands, and my tail grows. In general, there are more benefits than disadvantages, but I'm more used to my human form.
- Great, even with the weight I can move normally... and before I leave Putra, I'll leave them a present and exterminate as many Imperials as I can, like a true Guardian. - I said, and then I walked out of the warehouse and took the head off a guard with a clawed paw.
I'd seen Imperials carry firearms, but I'd never had the privilege of using them, and now I had the perfect opportunity. I attacked the soldiers in the centre of their camp, and all the soldiers, including the musketeers, were sent to eliminate me, with rather powerful rifles that pierced my skin and the upper layer of muscle. Some of the shots managed to get through to my internal organs, a couple of times they even hit my heart, but the bullets couldn't penetrate my skull... unless it was through my eye, which happened and made me very angry, or it was the destruction of part of my brain that removed some restrictions from me, so that I started to act like a berserker, killing the Imperials despite my wounds.
Regeneration at that moment I was working hard, healing the damage from rifle bullets, but I stopped feeling pain, and when my second eye was blown out, I stopped seeing, so I had to orientate myself by sound, and when the first eye was able to recover, it turned out that there were no Imperials left, they either escaped or died from my claws.
≪Don't you think we just did something fucked up? I mean, not us, but you? I didn't mind taking the treasure, but I don't think it's a smart move to massacre Imperials with a good chance of dying. You're lucky that our mind is not attached to the brain, and its trauma can not kill us, although it will be difficult to live without a head, but I think I can grow a head for us, but I do not want to check it. ≫
- Perhaps the extermination of the Guardians has hurt me more than I realise, and since the Imperials are committing genocide, I see no harm in committing genocide myself. - I'm off to the desert to find out who's responsible for the extermination of the camp.
≪On the other hand, I've absorbed enough energy from the souls of those killed, I'm part demon, if you keep on slaughtering people like this, I'll turn into a real demon, who won't mind wiping out your bloodthirsty reckless personality. Do that again without my permission, and I'll really wipe you out. ≫
- Reckless? You offered to make Esdeath my slave the other day, that's reckless.
≪I don't like senseless killing, but these soldiers are certainly not innocent, so I didn't intervene. ≫
- Goddamn firearm. - I pulled a bullet out of my regenerating eye with my claw, - Then I see on the border of the Empire the level of development of the tenth century at most, and then they shoot at me with multiple-shot rifles of the twentieth century, I won't be surprised if I find some robots in the capital of the Empire. - I kept digging the bullets out of my body with my claws, freeing the wounds from the excess metal that was preventing the holes from healing.
≪Well, in addition to gold, I can turn into energy and part of our weapons, we don't need so many swords, we will convert them into energy, and together with the energy received from the souls of the killed, it will be enough to create a domain, we will have a small safe dimension, which in this bloody world will not hurt. We've got to keep a harem of slaves somewhere. ≫
- Are there more useful options than a dimension I don't need?
≪I'm the one who decides what we need. While I'm busy, don't mess around. By the way, we didn't do this one, study it at your leisure. ≫
A belt appeared in front of me, definitely a Shingu, when I recovered, I even put it on, and this belt formed a suit of armour on me, with arms and legs turned into huge shovel paws, like a mole. This suit gave the user the ability to move easily within the soil like an Earth Dragon. There was one guy among the Guardians that, by eating mole-monsters could turn into a mole, and move inside the ground as well as a person wearing this armour.
In general, the armour is pretty mediocre, but the mechanism of its appearance on the user is interesting. The armour had a core that was in the belt, this core created pseudo-matter from energy, and even if the armour is damaged, it will regenerate as long as the core is in the belt, which is quite well protected.
It would be a good idea to create such an artefact for oneself, with its core placed in a spatial pocket, where it would be safe and could constantly regenerate armour.... However, there was a downside to this kind of pseudo-metal armour, it was less durable than real metal processed by a blacksmith. This Shingu was curious, but exactly as armour it was rather mediocre, there were clearly a lot of weak earth dragons used here, instead of that one strong earth dragon that evolved into a super class monster.
For now, I decided to continue my emergency interrupted trek of hunting monsters and extracting materials from them.
Judging by the merchant maps I got in one of the cities, and also judging by my impressions of the places I've been and the beasts I've seen, I can say that I'm on some planet very much like Earth. The Thousand Year Empire occupies the territories of China, Mongolia, and central Russia, Putra is located roughly where Afghanistan was in my world. The Putra Empire used to be like the Persian Empire in my world, and covered the territory from Egypt to China, but in two thousand years, it collapsed. In the south-west of the empire are mountains like the Tibetan mountains in my world. I was born roughly in Thailand, near India, where there are tigers and snakes. Now I plan to walk through the area where India was in my world, and then visit the local analogue of the Tibetan Mountains, there should be enough strong monsters there.
In general, the geography here is similar to Earth's, in the east there is the island state of Wokoku, apparently the local analogue of Japan of the Sengoku period, as it is full of small provinces-states, fighting all the time among themselves. There is also an island archipelago to the south, in my world it was Indonesia, and the Empire is even trying to invade those islands with a navy, they're doing about as well as the Americans did with Vietnam. Maybe if the government was less corrupt and gave more money to the navy, things wouldn't be so dire.
It's funny how this world is so similar to mine, yet it's populated with all sorts of dragons and monsters, I guess if my world started randomly having various magical monsters, it would be roughly like that. Although, even in my world there were places with advanced civilisation, and somewhere the natives were running around with bare bottoms and hunting with spears.
For about a month I hunted in the Indian region, mostly tigers, they were one of the strongest beasts there, and near the Tibetan mountains I met a white tiger with wings... apparently there are winged creatures in the mountains, some overgrown eagles or griffins, and the frequent use of these winged creatures had changed the tiger, adding wings to make it easier to hunt mountain monsters.
In the mountains themselves, there was a huge number of griffins, which are also chimeras, looking like a mixture of lion and eagle, perhaps originally there were eagles, then came the tigers from the south, and began to eat eagles, while turning into half-eagles. Now there were almost no eagles left here, but there was a huge number of griffins, which were not very convenient to kill, because of their ability to fly, so I had to make a huge metal bow, shooting heavy metal arrows, with my eyesight from me turned out to be a good sniper. Rifle was not profitable, the projectile is too light and small, and even with the creation of ammunition would have to be steamed, and the arrows are reusable. It was possible to create a weapon firing energy beams, but for a powerful shot you would have to waste your own energy or create some kind of magic reactor, and all this is definitely more steamy than creating a bow and arrow. Maybe later I'll make my own magic pistols, but in a more appropriate setting.
I once saw a griffin being eaten in mid-air by a huge white winged tiger. If we take into account the size of the griffin, which is about eight-ten metres, and how the griffin easily fit into the tiger's mouth, we can roughly estimate its size, and it turns out that from the muzzle to the tip of the tail, that monster is about two hundred and fifty metres long, and if it stands on the ground on four legs, it will rise about sixty metres.
- How tasty it must be. - I licked my lips as I looked at the huge tiger-griffin that had landed on a nearby rock to rest. Since my energy was part tiger energy, the tastiest things to me now seemed to be anyone with tiger energy.
≪ And what an artefact it would make. It looks like it's a super class monster that we've heard of, it's unlikely that two such monsters would coexist in these mountains. The domain is still underdeveloped, but I think I can try and capture the soul of this beauty to make it the source of the artefact's power. ≫
- Not bad, now all that's left is to kill this super class monster the size of a battleship.
≪Jump into its mouth, and use the old-fashioned scheme to kill it from the inside. ≫
- I'll try to kill it normally first, if that fails, then the backup plan will automatically come into play when it eats me. - Said standing with his bow on another rock.
≪It's unlikely this giant will take any damage from our arrows, he's got one lint on his fur, probably the size of a spear.≫
- Hmm, I've got a Shingu Venega left, and it can change its shape. - I took out a Shingu, which I decided to shoot at the tiger instead of an arrow.
≪You're such a pervert, let's start using swords instead of arrows. ≫
- What a great idea, cos I've got more swords than arrows. - I was pulling the bow to the maximum, and the tension of this bow is like that of an arcballista, about one and a half tonnes.
Shingu, took the form of a spiral spear, which in flight began to unwind, increasing the penetrating power of the projectile. I was aiming at the eye of a huge tiger, as it is easier to destroy the brain, and although I hit it, but only blinded it, and since the spear remained in the wound, it could not regenerate the eye quickly, I tried to completely blind the beast by knocking out the second eye, but at the last moment the tiger twitched, and I hit its nose, which made it even more angry, and also the monster now knew where it was attacked from.
I continued to shoot at it, using swords now, but the tiger in the air was quite agile to dodge the projectiles that hit its vulnerable spots, namely its eye and nose. Even if the swords hit the hide, they couldn't penetrate it, and just flew to the ground.
≪We'll see you in that monster's stomach. ≫
Schizophrenia was right, the option of killing this giant from the outside had failed. When the tiger attacked me, it roared loudly with anger, with its mouth open, that's where I jumped in, trying to avoid its teeth. Hitting the monster's throat was only part of the job, now I need to inflict fatal wounds, for this giant, it's best to try and destroy its brain. This time, the sheer size of the tiger clearly played a bad joke on it, for once inside it, I was killing it like a cancerous tumour, and it could do nothing, for it had paws... although this particular tiger had eagle clawed paws.
The monster was in great pain from my actions, but due to the size of the beast, I could not kill it quickly, while I got to its brain and caused it irreparable damage, several hours passed, during which the tiger roared in pain, while the beast flew away from the mountains, thinking that if it flew away from the place where it was attacked, the pain would stop.
When I got out of the tiger's carcass, instead of mountains, I found myself in some swamp.
- Monster Airlines, in just a few hours we can get you to who knows where, in the comfort of the belly of a huge super-class monster. - I said, realising that this monstrosity could have flown to another continent. But it's silly to guess about it, we can wait for the stars, and by them determine where I am or even easier, just find the nearest settlement, and ask them. But first we need to process this tiger into material for the artefact, and we must act quickly, so that the local animals do not steal the tiger for lunch.
≪The extraction of the animal's soul is still in process, don't go far from the corpse, and I think it will take a long time to process this carcass manually, it's the size of a destroyer, it's not less than five thousand tonnes. Take care of processing the most energy-rich places, the rest we'll process through the domain, turning it into energy, crystallise this energy and make the Core of the artefact, where I'll put the monster's soul. ≫
- Then I'll start with its heart, just as I'm about to take a bite.
Oh, this beast's heart was huge, and incredibly delicious, it was the tastiest thing I've ever tasted. One bite of it made me immediately overflow with tiger ki, which instantly turned me into a half-beast. It was even more comfortable to work in this form. It took me three days to process the monster, the blood metal alone was about three hundred kilograms, this metal was even more valuable to me than gold. I absorbed the monster's soul, but my schizophrenia is still working on it.
I went to check the nearest place, which smelled strange, as if there was an industrial plant, which means that there must be a city somewhere nearby. I came to a saltworks of some sort, judging by the vats of ropa, a concentrated salt solution from which the moisture was evaporated to make common salt. The saltern was empty, though it was evident that it had been in operation a few days before. There were still skeletons of huge swamp monsters lying near the saltworks, which I examined.
- It was strange, like bugs had nibbled on the corpses, good thing I'd made myself an insecticide and should take it just in case. - I drank a bitter slurry that would scare away any bugs from me, just in the swamp it was very important. After I finished looking at the skeletons and the saltworks, I decided to follow the path I had found that led me to the river, and after walking along the river, I came to the river town.
The people in the town spoke Imperial, with some sort of accent, clearly not southern or western, these accents I knew, which meant I was either in the north or the east. After wandering around a bit more, I found out that I was in the northeast, in the trading city of Sivun, where salt was the main commodity, though there were plenty of other goods as well.
As I wandered around the city, I was followed, as the city was quite wealthy and trade was quite lucrative, obviously the city attracted revolutionaries who needed money for revolution, and revolutionaries attracted the attention of imperial spies and liquidators. I was pretty remarkable, though - a swarthy southerner that suddenly appeared in the city, and wandered around as if lost, trying to sniff something out.