CH13: Cursed
Blood gushed from his wounded shoulder before a healing pulse set it on the mend. The wound itched horribly, like biting fire ants. The healing light faded before his shoulder could move. Vergil held his wounded arm and dove into the snow to avoid a volley of ice spears. It wanted him dead. Haki kept him in the fight. On his left was the high cliff of the mountain, and on his left was a mile drop. Flight didn’t mean much with the blizzard. Escape wasn’t an option. He had limited reserves of energy and had to make every hit count.
Vergil lashed out with a flamethrower. He felt his changed aura add its power to the flamethrower. The fire in his aura made the move a stab and dug into Regice’s cold presence. He absorbed multiple fire stones. They kept him in the fight.
The dungeon was good for something, even if it killed his disciples.
Every breath froze his lungs, but he spoke regardless to the dungeon. “You will pay for this. Putting final evolution Pokémon and legendaries on the first floor will have consequences.” The blizzard raged around him; its wind was all he could hear. “I know you can hear me,” Vergil said.
The only way forward was to spend money for every step. So, Vergil spared no expense; stones were absorbed, and he felt a little closer to something.
Even in the fight, he thought about the after. When he returned from this, tempering himself and disciplining the dungeon, he would need to request more elemental stones. Paying a few extra contribution points per firestone wouldn’t hurt; it was for a good cause.
There were more stones in the dungeon than in-game. Vergil had one for every type and a rare twin firestone. It was rarer than the standard small firestone. The fire-type energy within the twin firestone was a quantitative realm above the normal firestone. Unfortunately, his body couldn’t handle a twin firestone yet, but he would get there. Vergil pulled a fighter stone from his baggage train leading up the mountain and absorbed it.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The fire was immaterial, but the fighter energy was very physical; it was exactly what Vergil needed for an abstract idea to take shape. An obvious evolution of his natural telekinesis that took his weaknesses into account took form.
He dodged behind a boulder away, more ice spears, but he had made progress. Every stone he absorbed added a new facet to his body. Each type of stone helped him in a small way. If the Natal realm created the node to place his foundation, then the elemental stones were the ingredients he needed to mix the concrete and lay his foundation. The best part was it was only his body cultivation.
Wealth was power; he crushed six more firestones, and suddenly the cold from Regice was only skin deep. Add his new fighting-type aura, and he felt his body step on the road to recovery.
“What will you do when your greatest defensive power is no longer effective?” The pokémon floated higher into the blizzard. Vergil bent his knees viciously while glaring up at the pokémon. “You can’t escape.”
The Sect Master bet it all that his jump speed was faster than Regice’s levitation.
Vergil launched himself like a ground-to-air missile. A blizzard erupted around its body as ice spears erupted like a porcupine’s spines. The Sect Master raised his hand and unleashed a flamethrower.
Flames enveloped the pokémon while his aura continued to heat up. More firestones floated up from his baggage train, and he crushed them, adding more of their potent fire element to his body. The temperature increased until his clothes burned away, concentrated around his body, much like the legendary’s power. Unfortunately, it would take time to control it; he needed more elemental stones. Fortunately, he had a dungeon full of them that he could farm.
The pokémon crashed into the side of the mountain, unable to continue its flight, while Vergil melted its body. Frigid blizzard winds failed to reach him, so he formed a fist with his left hand and pummeled the pokémon. Fighting-type energy radiated from his body as he punched the pokémon repeatedly, shattering its numerous icy layers.
It broke on the mountain like shattering glass while the cold from the blizzard struggled to heal the legendary. Vergil bombarded it with blows to stay ahead of the damage while he covered it in flames from his flamethrower.
The pokémon raised its colossal hands and struck down slow and telegraphed. He avoided the attack by jumping off the pokémon’s chest. It took that moment to struggle while the winds from the blizzard began healing its icy body. The layers of damage Vergil managed to leave quickly healed, even under his flamethrower. A legendary in its element wasn’t something easily defeated.
Vergil dug deeper into his reserves of wealth taken from the dungeon.
He crushed 25 stones of various elemental types, some even ice. They merged into the mix of his foundation, and his body had the fuel to continue tempering. Vergil felt the fire raging through his body, temper from water, which tempered from grass, and so many other elements. From his foundation, he branched out into every element he could imagine to build the best foundation. It was the only way to move forward and grow stronger without the ki mutation of Dragonball or magic from dxd.
This act of tempering was to deal with his cabin fever by exploring the unknown dungeon. He wanted to be free; this dungeon was the closest he could reach.
He grabbed it with telekinesis laced with his new fire aura and pulled. It wasn’t a move but an application of power. The Regice had only begun to hover again when it tumbled back to the ground. Fists of telekinesis attached to long arms attached to his body to maximize his telekinetic strength clung to his back.
A cracking sensation blasted through his mind, and suddenly he had taken half a step into foundation-building mind refinement.
The further away an object, the harder it was to affect with psychic power. So Vergil used a loophole that made sense after stealing it from a sad anime.
He could only make two fists, but they were easily 4 meters long and hotter than his flamethrower. The first one struck a blow melting and shattering a piece of the pokémon’s arm. It shrieked, and Vergil struck again. Again, Arctic ice shattered, and the plus sign that was the pokémon’s face went dark.
The pokémon soon vanished, and in its place were a quarter-sphere chunk of ice stone, 3,000,000 zenni, and the ability ice body.
The Sect Master rested on the mountain for a time, using heal pulse to see to his wounds as his body recovered from frostbite. Body cultivation allowed superhuman regeneration all the way to the muscle. However, he couldn’t heal a limp until a few realms higher. That was the way of things.
Calling it quits while he was ahead would have been the actions of a careful man with a perspective of centuries. His body refinement would be in the foundation-building realm with enough time and resources. His mind refinement would fully enter it with experimentation with his new technique. At any time his Sect could face a disaster, it would be foolish to rest on his gains without completing his goal. Vergil wasn’t tired and could keep fighting, so he stepped forward confident that he could adapt to any situation.
That’s when the dragons attacked.
He added his new loot to the baggage train controlled by his telekinesis and continued climbing the mountain. Dragon ice-type Baxcailbur burst from the snow, and Vergil pulled out dragon claws to deal with them. They were strong but slow; their typing didn’t make them resistant to fire-fighting like his new nameless technique. Vergil grabbed them with his extra hands and dragged them from the air before dealing with them with dragon claws. Compared to the much more powerful Regice, they were easier to deal with for him.
Vergil had done it after slaughtering his way up the mountain with a baggage train; he had taken his first step onto the mountain’s peak. It was like a lone cowboy entering a lawless town when he stepped on the peak. The peak was a graveyard. Swords covered the landscape of the peak, each a different vibrant color of blues, reds, and silver. Ghost pokémon of all kinds filled the peak, some of them living within the blades stuck in ancient desiccated bodies. The bodies were left alone despite the blizzard pouring snow on the mountain. He kicked a pebble into a nearby tombstone, and only when it hit did he recognize it as a fallen shard of the structure.
The ghosts hadn’t floated up to face him or moved from their gravestones. So he looked on beyond the ghost pokémon to the courtyard's center.
Hundred of alola ninetails waited around the courtyard leading to a snow white pokémon. The pokémon in the courtyard kept the snow from touching the bodies or the ghosts that congregated. Its power was great enough for the powerful alolan ninetails to congregate around it. Some of those ninetails were towering freaks of their breed, easily standing 12ft tall from paws to head each tail looked ready to snap Vergil’s neck at the first opportunity.
Poison and ice stones were the two most plentiful stones besides normal stones. So he tried altering his fire-fighting type spectral arms to a poison type to deal with the partial faires, but they wouldn’t change. He didn’t think he would have to deal with that issue. Each set of his nameless spectral arm technique was permanent once formed. In the future, he would need to inform disciples of the limitation of his newly created technique.
Vergil struck out with his spectral arms as he moved forward as the swords rose from the bodies they had been buried in and stuck out. He punched them, feeling the steel melt and shatter against his newly formed spectral arms. Every victory increased their power by a slight amount. Was it EV training?
Every kill made his spectral arm feel stronger conceptually and physically. It was a type of gain he hadn’t expected. He dodged hex, sacred sword, night slash, and one head smash. Vergil wasn’t sure if the pokémon he fought were Aegislash because they looked nothing like the pokémon besides an eye in the pommel. He grabbed two by the handle with spectral arms and channeled his power through them. The pokémon he captured fought him as he used them to cut down the ghost types arrayed against him.
When he thought he was hot shit and the fight was figured out, a haunter stabbed itself with a needle. Something got to him. That was the only way he could describe the sensation of being cursed by a ghost type. He felt something sneak in through his mental defenses and stain his mind like ink on paper. More of the ghosts unleashed their curses on him.
He gripped his head as a presence appeared in front of him. It was dark and covered in hundreds of pitch-black bodies wiggling around in a sac of skin too small for them all. The face of the monster morphed until it looked like his wife.
“Why did you forget me.” The face became his wife smiling at him as the sword Pokémon attacked him. “Am I an embarrassment? Do you hate me?” The woman said as she became clearer.
Vergil gripped his head. “I did my time. This is my reward, not you; I don’t get to return; that was the deal.” A blade cut into him, stopping on his ribs and spilling his blood on the stone ground. “You are a distraction; you aren’t real.”
He felt her blackened dead hand wrap around his neck, and Vergil choked. All his body enhancements from items and cultivation were worthless, and he couldn’t breathe. It was humiliating that even an image of her could do something like that to him. She unmanned him in one life and was doing the same in the next.
“What are you going to do? Hit me, and I will call the police.” She gripped his throat tighter. “Do something I dare you. Be a man for once.”
A sense of deja vu stopped him, and he took a breath. She couldn’t stop him. More slashes opened his skin, and he bled on the ground. This was an illusion, but it felt real.
Vergil hugged the illusion. “We will never be together again; a hundred years have passed, and Jacob’s grandchildren might have died already.”
“You think that makes it ok.” The shade of his wife said.
For a moment, the curse vanished, and he turned on the ghosts. They had shown him an image of his ultimate regret and an old goal he would never reach. Yet, it was the reason for his journey, something he kept close to his heart. He wanted to go back home. When the reward vanished, so did his drive to continue working for the miniature hunters. He was tired of working for multiversal gods.
After a hundred years, he decided to turn in his hunter points and leave while he could. He purchased the Sect System, lost all the techniques and boons as a miniature hunter, and decided to find a new life.
Vergil began consuming carbos to raise his speed rapidly. In moments his spectral arms gained incredible striking speed. He shot forward, and they tore the ghosts apart. A bounty of dusk, ghost, fairy, and steel stones fell along with various techniques.
The shattered remains of countless ghosts fell around him as even the ghost blades in his hands shattered.
Vergil walked past the graves towards the courtyard on the mountain. The ninetails rose and charged at him; he began their destruction with his 4x effect fire and fighting type spectral arms.
As he killed his way forward and threw a pokéball at the strongest of the ninetails, Vergil struggled to put away the past as he made his way to the legendary’s pedestal. But, in its presence, he felt despair as the shade of his wife reappeared, and he saw her grin.
“Didn’t you say you wanted children?”
…
As the door to the drab eagle-covered dojo of ill repute, Riser had his girls toss flower petals in front of him to show the peasant the great Riser Phenex was above the plebians joining to learn combat. Riser smirked at the angry gazes of disciples within the Sect as the lobby secretary glanced up from her manga. He had made preparations and even had Sirzech’s queen trailing behind him in her maid uniform.
“I’m sorry, sir and ma’am, we aren’t hiring any fools or maids now.” The secretary Cammy said.
Riser felt like he had bumped a hornet’s nest. Fortunately, they lacked tact or anyone strong enough to fight him, let alone the strongest queen.
“I am here to collect Rias Gremory and ascertain the state of her virginity,” Grayfia said.
Riser smirked as the tattooed woman behind the counter narrowed her eyes. All it would take was a little rudeness, and Grayfia would come down on this Sect.
“I am here to challenge the filthy cowardly bastard who dared to take what is rightfully mine. He shall know the torment of the underworld, and all his allies will join in his suffering.” Riser said with a smirk.
The secretary laughed. “Perhaps I was hasty, and a fool is just what we need to liven things up around here. So what do you think about joining the Sect? We can start you out as an outer disciple, and the Outer Sect dungeon apocalypse ponies recently opened. A cocky guy like you would fit in well on a team.” The woman leaned back, showing off her cleavage and toned body. Riser gulped at the sight of her swirling tattoos, tanned skin, perky breasts, and unstoppable ass.” We have many benefits, especially if you join to explore the dungeon. Any technique that drops will be yours as a part of your finder’s fee. They can be sold to the Sect for generous contribution points, especially if it’s the first technique found of its kind. Rias said you, Devils like to add strong people to your peerages. Well, become a disciple, and you can add your brother and sister disciples to your peerage.” Cammy said.
He glared at the beautiful woman before turning back to the strongest queen. Grayfia appeared thoughtful for a moment.
“I had requested a meeting with the Sect Master beforehand, but it had been rescheduled; why was that?” Grayfia asked.
“A Sect secret only shared among the inner court disciples. Therefore, I would ask that you cease your interrogation attempts. As an outer court member of human resources, I am not informed of anything our Sect master does.” Cammy said.
He didn’t care what the woman said through her lying mouth. This place had over a thousand members with an average range of strength around the mid-class.
“Is Rias a member of the Sect?” Grayfia asked.
“Yes, Cammy signed her up,” Cammy said.
“The great Riser understands your need to seem important, or was it another Cammy. But, unfortunately, you humans often share the same dull name.” Riser said.
“I’m Tammy, Cammy doesn’t have tattoos, but I understand how you can make that mistake,” Tammy said.
Riser pointed to her shirt. “Your name tag.”
The tanned skin blond stared at her chest and sighed. “I grabbed Cammy’s vest again. I’m sure everyone is calling her Tammy like they did yesterday.” Tammy said.
“So your Sect does not discriminate against the other races. That could get complicated. Would you have a problem allowing fallen and angels into your Sect? What are the requirements to join?” Grayfia asked.
“We do not discriminate on race, only the willingness to learn and serve the Sect,” Tammy said.
“What constitutes serving the Sect?” Grayfia said.
The woman blinked. “Learning everything the Sect can teach and inviting others to learn.” Tammy smiled gently and placed her hands on the counter. “We are a Sect that believes in freedom through the will to gain power. We will give you every chance if you want to join and become strong.” Tammy said.
“This is something that can not be tolerated. I want to speak with your Sect Master immediately and bring Rias here now.” The room froze over as the strongest queen’s ire rose.
Check out my patreon for more chapters