As Zhen Liu studied the contents of the [Chaos Art: Cipactli’s Feast], Logos and Pathos were off to the side studying with intense curiosity. Then again, they could’ve just been studying the giant crocodile shadow monster that was enveloping Zhen Liu’s form like spiritual armor.
=Well...I certainly wasn’t expecting that when you decided to bring out this scroll for our Lord to peruse,= Logos admitted to Pathos. =Tell , did you know that this was going to happen?=
Pathos answered with no sha in his voice.
=Because our lord already has the innate ability to consu fire and other weird energies?=
Pathos shockingly refuted.
=That...tracks...hmmm.=
Logos went silent as he began to parse through his mories and the archives of the library, looking for materials pertaining to...a very specific type of entity.
=I think I figured out the real reason why our lord has a karmic void.=
...
"Okay...what the actual fuck?" Zhen Liu grumbled after he had finished ntally processing the new [Chaos] art in his head. "Do I really need to manifest that many mouths?"
When he first started reading it, he had assud that he was going to be forced to undergo so weird training regint to perform the art properly like how his family had to do when they were learning the [Echoing Frost] and [Primordial Scripture].
As luck would have it though, he had accidentally trained himself up to the point of already being able to perform it.
Apparently all of those tis where he devoured weird energies in situations that most sane people wouldn’t do so out of sheer safety concerns had strengthened his mouth, throat, and esophagus to the toughness necessary to properly perform [Cipactli’s Feast]. Well, the most powerful part of the [Chaos] art.
This art, like Tiamat’s Dance, would allow Zhen Liu to mimic the power of the nasake beast with his [Chaos] and the properties that composed them.
Tiamat was the mother of life, all life, so when Zhen Liu channeled her power, it was as if he was dropping an entire ocean on top of soone’s head.
Cipactli, on the other hand, was a giant crocodilian nightmare made of mouths and eternal hunger. As such this [Chaos] art would enable Zhen Liu to summon mouths all over his body and use them to attack from very weird angles. Not only that, but the mouths in question would be directly connected to his formula and stomach, aning that he could theoretically speed up his absorption of aether or [Chaos] by multiple factors.
Of course, none of this theory crafting would an jack unless he actually put it into practice.
"Alright, fuck it," Zhen Liu eventually snorted. "Logos, Pathos, can you two go and set up a training room for ?"
"Not this ti," Zhen Liu readily refused. "I would rather not have people see looking even more demonic...especially if this art does what I think it does."
...One walk and a construction montage later...
"Alright, everybody, please get off my body and go sit yourselves in the safety zones."
[Of course, milord.]
[A]
[Are you...sure?]
"This is more for your safety than mine. So yes."
From what Zhen Liu could rember about [Cipactli’s Feast], all of the mouths manifested had to form directly on his body. Ergo, there was a small but very real possibility that performing this art could lead to an awkward mont where Zhen Liu would accidentally devour one of his kaijin while they were still in accessory mode sowhere on his body.
The possibility was low, but not zero, and Zhen Liu didn’t want to risk the possibility of accidentally devouring and absorbing one of his precious kaijin.
[Co on CD, we got to sit over there.]
[Okay!]
Once all of the kaijin were safely situated away from the potential danger zone, Zhen Liu let out a breath and focused his mind on the task before him.
=Alright, milord, for this first test: you’re just going to just activate the art and attack the practice dummy before you,= Logos announced as she took their position at the training room’s control console.
"Easy."
Through a short console command action, Logos summoned a standard wooden training dummy right in front of Zhen Liu. And it was truly standard by every aning of the word.
A part of Zhen Liu had expected Logos and Pathos to summon a zako or manifest it out of [Chaos], but no. It was just a plain wooden dummy.
As soon as Zhen Liu confird this, he prepared himself to perform the new [Chaos] art.
’Okay, step 1: Channel [Chaos] into your stomach and focus on your hunger...’ Zhen Liu instructed himself.
Zhen Liu’s body briefly glowed with the rainbow glint of [Chaos] before gathering over his stomach.
In combat, this type of showy behavior was an incredibly stupid idea, as it would alert the opponent to what one’s move was going to be. However, in a practice situation like this, it helped people who were assisting to determine what was going wrong with soone else’s technique.
So far, nothing bad was happening... other than Zhen Liu feeling as if his stomach developed a massive hole as he went from feeling peckish to famish in a couple of seconds.
’Ugh...okay. Next part: redirect this feeling towards the part of your body you want to manifest a mouth, or in this case, directly to your mouth,’ Zhen Liu managed to instruct himself despite his own hunger making his head feel like it was splitting at the seams.
Evidently, that was kind of the case.
Physically, Zhen Liu could feel his mouth growing wider and his teeth growing sharper, like his mouth was transforming into a snout that could rival the largest crocodile’s, but only slightly. Surrounding his transforming visage, the spiritual shadow of a monster that looked like an Aztec hieroglyphic given life began to form around him like armor.
’And once the hunger reached its peak, EAT!’
Once the visage had solidified to a certain point, Zhen Liu made a lunging motion like he was aiming to bite out the training dummy’s non-existent throat.
In reality, he ended devouring even more than that.
’Huh...like tofu.’
Zhen Liu didn’t physically bite the training dummy; rather, the crocodilian shadow surrounding his body did the actual biting. The bite was swift and brutal, tearing into the dummy like it was nothing more than a block of tofu. Hell, the wood didn’t even have a chance to splinter due to the sheer ferocity of the bite.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Once the swirling debris of broken dummy parts was inside of the construct’s mouth, it began to spontaneously degrade into tiny motes of energy that seed to radiate the power of wood and nature. These motes were then sucked down by Zhen Liu’s real mouth and down his gullet, where he could feel these weak wisps of energy barely fill his stomach.
From what Zhen Liu could rember from when he read the [Chaos] art scroll, this was the full effect of [Cipactli’s Feast]: the ability to consu and break everything down in her maw to its most energetic state.
He had assud that this was taphorical, but it turned out to be incredibly literal.
Once he had fully digested this first bite, Zhen Liu began to devour the rest of the dummy. He only stopped once he had fully consud the very last splinter and the construct around his head disappeared.
"Ugh...that felt weird," Zhen Liu mumbled as he began to feel his mouth restitch itself back into its original shape. "That thing tasted...actually not that bad. I...I don’t know if I should be worried or relieved about that revelation."
Pathos joked.
"Oh, haha."
=Enough banter; let’s see if your technique can be used on multiple targets of differing quality. =
Under Logos’s command, even more training dummies appeared only this ti they weren’t just made of wood.
So of the dummies appeared to be made of stone, tal, or bone, and there were few that were just straight up made of at. Mixed into these eclectic dummies, Zhen Liu could even make out that the materials were of particularly high quality.
"Wait, did you make so of these dummies out of the materials we looted from the Redox vault? What the fuck, guys?"
=You weren’t using them to make any kaijin or weapons, so we figured we’d put it practical use. Now stop complaining and get to eating.=
"Ay carambe..."
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