Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

The daemon ape’s dinner plate-sized hands careened towards Yuriko’s head. She took a small step to her left, and skillfully positioned her training sword—a fencing sabre—and made contact with the daemon’s wrist. Her Anima perception skillfully read the attack’s momentum, direction, and target, and with a nudge transmitted through her blade, she altered its path.

The ape’s right hand veered towards its left. It collided with the opposite limb and fouled up its grab. The ape was long used to the way she played with it, considering she’d been dancing around it for the past ten minutes, and so, it didn’t stumble as it did the first time it found its limbs befouled. Instead, it growled, then roared, then took a couple of breaths’ time to regain its balance, then proceeded with a punch. It was the same variation it did three minutes into the fight, and this time, instead of gently redirecting the blow, Yuriko punished the ape.

Her redirection of the punch was more forceful, and it was strong enough that the redirected punch actually hit the ape on its opposite shoulder, hard enough that— Crack!—it shattered bone. The ape faltered and staggered back. Yuriko sighed. That was the end of this dance partner.

She flicked the sabre and released an Invisible Edge that carved into the daemon's skull. It fell over with a blank expression on its face. It would take a few minutes before the daemonic corpse disintegrated to dust, which was the only reason why the village wasn’t hip deep in dead daemons, really.

Yuriko sighed as she pulled out her phone and navigated to the AWH app. Asymmetrical Warfare Hub, built and released about three weeks ago in response to the invasion. Astoria wasn’t faring very well against the Irvallans, considering they managed to occupy most of the northern part of the Prismatic State. Neo Prism City was awash with refugees, and at the very least, the invaders hadn’t sent any further attacks against it.

She’d taken a mission, as Regalia, to investigate and/or eliminate daemonic incursions at the edges of the conflict zone. No new daemonic rifts opened in Neo Prism City, or anywhere south of it, but they continued to do so to the north. She wasn’t sure how far west the incursions happened, probably across the entirety of the Republic, considering there were two other beachheads that the military had located. But the rifts now only opened around the beachheads, and they did so more often than before.

Investigation concluded. Daemons eliminated.

That was all she reported to the app, the bare minimum. The remuneration for it was less than a tenth of what it would have been if she submitted photos, videos, and samples along with the report, but it would have wasted her time for nothing more than a few thousand Tories. She earned just as much from the interest of her savings account, to say nothing of what she earned as an actress. She was somewhat worried about the fate of The Last Warrior, as the production had not anticipated that an actual invasion would happen before they could release the film. The schedule was set for next year, too. From the way things were going, dislodging and driving the Irvallans back would be the work of Seasons, if not years.

She received a notification from the hunter app. A sighting of a daemon band some thirty longstrides south of her position. The report came from one of the more stubborn homesteaders, who should have evacuated already instead of hunkering down. She could understand the drive to protect their property, however. She accepted the request and flew towards the last sighting.

She hadn’t spent the last weeks just fighting and training herself, however. She dedicated most of the pondering to strands of consciousness left with her true body, while her incarnation body practised. It was easier that way since her true body was too strong, not to mention that she lacked useful opponents. Automatons were hardly challenging, for all that they served a good baseline for projectile deflection and reflection.

But she felt that Bulwark Style shouldn’t be limited to those things, which was why she toyed with the daemon apes. Redirecting a melee attack was easy and was foundational to any close-quarters combat techniques, but doing so in a way that her foes harmed themselves? Directly, to be certain, as she knew of several martial styles that used an opponent’s momentum and force against them. What she did with Bulwark built upon that concept and pushed it to an extreme.

She was happy to make quick progress, but she could already feel the plateau. To complete the Style, she needed another aspect, though she was uncertain where to bring it. Bulwark mixed Flowing Water and Jade Mountain Styles, and it certainly wasn’t on the same tier as the other Four Phases of the Sword. Much like Severing Shard, Bulwark must exist on the next tier, supported by the base…or that was her thought, anyway. It was incomplete, and she needed combat, training, and insight to make it whole.

The flight south was quick, and soon enough, she was at the place indicated by the report. There was a small group of five homesteads within the area, a little settlement too small to be called a hamlet, much less a village. She wasn’t actually sure if the buildings all belonged to one family, though the perimeter was not walled.

‘Oh, wait, that’s not the norm here,’ she thought ruefully.

Well, there were definitely signs of an incursion, considering two of the homesteads had huge holes in their walls. Her perception spread inside, and she sighed in relief at not finding any bodies or any sign of an attack. No blood, no broken furniture, and no trace amounts of gunpowder or bullet casings. So why were the daemons here?

A Crimson Ape was in the kitchen with its head thrust inside a refrigerator. It was ravenously eating, and just as interesting, she didn’t see any sign of pentapod domination. It was the same in the other home, except the ape was scrawnier. It wasn’t a four-armed cretin either, so…a juvenile?

Free daemons?

The bigger ape startled when her Anima touched its fur, and it pulled out of the refrigerator. His head swivelled around in her direction. Yuriko obliged by flying into the building, and the ape’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“Ancient.” It…he growled. The voice was low, and there were other masculine markers in his features.

“You are free?”

“Escaped. Born into slavery, escaped.”

“This country would not welcome you.”

“There are a multitude of wildernesses to lose ourselves in.”

“I see. What can you tell me?”

The ape trembled. “He comes. For you.”

Yuriko frowned, “Who does?”

“The Tyrant. He hunts for the gold.”

Yuriko hummed, then nodded. “I didn’t see you here. But avoid other settlements. You wish to remain free, take your friend and flee.”

“My gratitude.”

Yuriko nodded and flew out of the homestead. She expanded her perception to the rest of the settlement and found the person who was likely the one who reported the incursion. They were hidden in a bolt hole in the basement. That was fine, at the very least, there would be no complications to the freed daemons from leaving. She would kill them if necessary, but she wouldn’t do the same to the farmer. They were alone in the settlement, and she wondered where the rest of the community was.

She held vigil over the homesteads until the apes fled. The larger one threw her a grateful glance as they disappeared into the woods northwest. Afterwards, she reported the quest as complete, with no sightings of hostile daemons. She knocked on the bolt hole’s trap door and said it was clear, but she didn’t stay to entertain the farmer. Instead, she searched for another sighting, and a notification led her to another area about five leagues east.

This time, the daemons were hostile, and she made short work of them. She left only a single daemon alive, then spent the next hour practising. She changed out her sabre for a longsword. The technique was different when using a one-handed sword against a two-handed blade, though the main difference was in how she held her stance.

The Crimson Ape’s attack had a desperate edge, which made it easier to unbalance and redirect the attack. Aside from that, it was rather easy to adjust the technique, though she ironed out a couple of kinks and, on the whole, furthered her study.

Even while she practised, she couldn’t help but dwell on other things. For one thing, she had started training Scarlett in earnest with the Four Phases of the Sword, albeit adjusted for the baton rather than a bladed weapon. She’d been working to bring the smol woman around, and considering the country was now at war, learning how to use a lethal weapon would be best.

Astorian firearms had trouble penetrating Irvallan armour, and even the infantry had bullet-resistant clothes and helmets. Their gear was enhanced by Occult Resonance, as they called their art, and mundane projectiles more often than not deflected off of it. A lucky shot would still kill the soldier, but more often than not, an Irvallan infantry soldier would take three times or more fire before they were overwhelmed, and it wasn’t as if they were foolish enough to stand and take it rather than dive for cover at the first hint of gunfire.

Scarlett had progressed to the point where her swordsmanship…baton technique was infused by her nascent Anima, and the couple of times she brought the girl to a firefight, she knocked out an Irvallan soldier in a single blow. Not that they rushed headlong into the fight…

That had occurred a couple of weeks ago, when the Irvallans pushed into one of the towns just a couple of leagues north of Neo Prism.

In other news, Pixel Fairy had moved its headquarters out of the city and into the next State. Thornton City was close to the border of the Prismatic State, and her agents deemed it too close to danger. Ideally, they wanted her to move south to Miraga City, which was about a thousand longstrides away from Neo Prism, but Yuriko didn’t want to be that far away from the action. The compromise — if the agency capitulating to her whims could be called a compromise — was for a satellite office to be put up in Thornton while the majority of operations moved elsewhere. In essence, the satellite office was put up to cater to her wishes.

The three of them moved out of their home near Neo Prism, of course, and they rented a penthouse suite in Thornton’s uptown neighbourhood. It was close enough to Pixel Fairy’s office to walk in five minutes. Her college education, as well as Scarlett’s, had been put on hold, considering Trinity College stopped classes and opened as a refugee shelter.

Aside from that, she spent most of her free time—when she wasn’t training or meditating—watching the news, both on television and through the Network. Major news stations downplayed the gravity of the situation, and while social media sites did mostly the same, Capewatchers Online was replete with daring netizens eager to show the world the truth. And it was quite chilling.

The Irvallans had taken ground and were holding on to it tenaciously. In contrast to their initial lightning assault, they were now building up and fortifying their beachheads. It only took a week before the breach north of Neo Prism City looked more like an old fortress than a hasty bivouac, and there was footage of railways and locomotives emerging from the portals. And each locomotive pulled along hundreds of carriages laden with war materiel.

By the time Yuriko finished with her training fight, she sheathed her sword and sighed. Her incarnation body felt the need to defend the nation, but her true body did not. The dissonance had not been that evident at first, but it was slowly growing stronger. She wasn’t sure if she should be worried or not.