Molting the Mortal Coil

Unfortunately, only the name and a simple impression came to him directly. He didn’t see a vision, hear a description, nor was he imparted with a manual. Instead he just seemed to instinctively know what the technique would do. It was a method to reforge a magical tool. It wasn’t imparted to him in those terms, but he simply knew it. Of course, he didn’t actually earn the technique, that would require him studying the symbol and learning to manipulate his Spirit Power according to the blueprint it laid out. Along the way to unlocking the technique, he spent 248 more Psionic Crystals, the actual symbol being five layers away from the ‘main path’, which required 8, 16, 32, 64, and then 128 crystals, respectively.

From some studying and wasting of Psionic Crystals, Sage learned that the first eight only unlocked a general type of power. Only upon adding 16 was an actual technique available. After wasting a few hundred more crystals, Sage found the main ring that seemed to be telekinesis. Upon inputting the following sixteen it unlocked a simple telekinetic ability. One of them was a wide area push, another was levitation, while a third acted like a second skin. The ‘push’ power had further divisions into a wall and a fist-like force. There were many others, but Sage didn’t want to waste all the crystals that quickly. Under the levitation ‘branch’ there was a power to float objects in the air, and another to toss them. The second skin branch had a strength boost, a defense boost, and a speed boost. In the strength boost specialization, it divided into arm strength, leg strength, and many others.

Sage didn’t have a ‘respec’ button and he didn’t have any guides to tell him what everything was. He wasted more than a thousand Psionic Crystals before he stopped. After finding the basic Telekinesis power, he explored what other abilities it led to. With that experimentation, he now had a decent idea of how the Spirit Tree worked, but he could still only make guesses about what routes to take in the future.

At that point, the mantis finally reached the first mine. The guards had grown lax, given how well hidden the location was. Sage easily subdued them and put them in to join the other Flares. Then he took some time to rebuild the Blacksilver Pawns. His dozen Soul Fragments had not been destroyed, but they had been damaged by the Samsara Flame. Sage had to devote all of his effort to nurturing them with the dark water from the Eye of the World for a few weeks before they were finally restored. Thankfully, the location truly was quite secure and not a soul approached the mine during that time. When the Blacksilver Pawns were rebuilt they quickly collected the supreme-grade Psionic Crystals as well as the Astral Realm Fragment.

They quickly moved on to the next mine location and repeated the process. The second mine was more heavily guarded, but a few hundred Flares were not able to stand up to him now. Only a few of them were able to resist his Hypnotic Eyes even with dark lenses over their eyes, but they were easily handled by the Blacksilver Knight.

With the easy stuff out of the way, Sage moved on to the more difficult target. At least, that was what he feared. The Flares didn’t seem that dangerous until he faced down their boss, which had nearly killed him. Heading to the Scyzur base might put him at odds with another powerful ruler. What if they had more than one? Even so, Sage had advanced to a new rank. Previously, his strength had been restricted in this world, but now he was a rank higher and operating at full power. Defeating Scyzur had been even easier than fighting with the Flares before, so with his new level he was confident of handling them.

It turned out he was correct.

On an individual level, the Scyzur had no chance against him. As soon as they locked eyes with him they instantly surrendered. On the other hand, their weapons were particularly fierce. He’d been using them himself for this specific reason, and he was once again on their receiving end. It also put him into an annoying situation. To avoid getting shot full of holes by what he had now dubbed a ‘Shard Rifle’, he had to use Foresight. Yet, to defeat them easily he had to use his Hypnotic Eyes. The downside of having two powerful eye techniques were that only one of them could be used at a time. His eyes operated in tandem, and the Timeless Eyes specifically incorporated both eyes in a unique method.

That said, these difficulties were far from putting a stop to his activities. It only served to drastically increase the time necessary to achieve victory. In comparison to the instant success against the Flares, he had to adopt a guerilla warfare approach against the Scyzur. Hiding inside the Chameleon Mantis, he used the Blacksilver Pawns to ambush small groups of Scyzur. Then he would step out and hypnotize them once they were subdued. Just like the Flares he sent them into his Inner World, where he’d specifically created an area that the locals could receive ‘new arrivals’. With time moving at such a rapid pace inside, the groups had quite some time to get acclimated to their new homes. Of course, he made sure to strip them of any valuables before sending them on their way.

It took a few weeks to conquer the Scyzur base, a few of the rat people at a time. When he stumbled onto a larger group or was caught in the act, he would switch to the Timeless Eyes and escape. Thankfully, Shard Rifles required a few seconds to charge up their shots so the volume of fire he faced down wasn’t deadly. He suffered a few injuries in the process, but the shards always passed clean through and his enhanced healing ability along with some Blood Clotting Pills got him back into action quickly.

The last of the Scyzur in the base were particularly difficult to conquer.

Once there were only a few dozen of them left they knew something was very wrong and huddled up in their makeshift fortress. A fortress that happened to be built into a fallen building. A building with tens of floors, it had toppled and the Scyzur remodeled the interior into a stronghold. It was quite odd to see staircases, doorways and hallways in a horizontal position, especially since the Scyzur had turned the place into a shanty town. The floors were previously spread out in a horizontal fashion, but now they were turned vertical. That meant the ‘rooms’ had extremely high ceilings. To make use of it, the Scyzur had constructed platforms with rope bridges and ladders running between them. They built little shacks out of random scrap and junk on top of these platforms to make some sort of strange treehouse village. At least it would be if you could call a shed made out of junk a ‘treehouse’, and a fallen building a ‘tree’.

With them refusing to move around outside, Sage had to invade their home. He hung back and used the Blacksilver Knight to slog through a hail of projectiles and knock out the Scyzur one by one. After a powerful initial resistance they pulled back. The Knight went deeper into the base and finally found what looked like a village square or tribal hall. Yet, what awaited him was what looked like a shield wall.

The Scyzur were wearing armor made from Astral Silver, just like he’d seen on those Scyzur cavalry once before. Only this time, they weren’t on the backs of giant cockroaches. There were twenty of the ratmen wearing armor and they were all on foot. They were kneeling behind a row of large shields, using them as shooting stands for their Shard Rifles. Upon a closer look the shields were actually more like a pavise, with a spike stabbed into the floor to hold them up. Their rifles also had large bayonets attached to their ends, which were large enough to qualify as small swords.

Very impressive!