As a race that woke and slept with the sun, the bremetan world suffered from myths and beliefs about things that went bump in the night. Some were exactly that— superstitions and armchair theories crafted by people with nothing better to do. Rumors spreading from outbursts of vivid imagination that found their way into the greater population through nothing more than persistent word of mouth.

But sometimes, peeling back the layers revealed a hint of truth within.

Like with the Reiki.

What the Reiki truly were was subject to interpretation. The common masses believed them to be vengeful spirits of the dead, intent on haunting their murderers into insanity. Others thought them to be acolytes of dead Gods of the past, possessing birds and beasts alike to take revenge upon the victors. The more superstitious lot referred to them as demons, ghosts, and even demon-ghosts, if such an inexplicable existence made sense. And yet for some, they were curses accumulated by society, manifesting in a terrifying form to collect their due.

It was why all houses in towns of the Llaisy Kingdom, Haviskali included, were constructed keeping the concept of spiritual gates and the four cardinal directions in mind. Feng shui, they called it— a system that employed the natural energies of the environment, manipulating them in specific ways to create a spiritual barrier around the property to ward away the vengeful spirits when the sun was down.

Zuken, like his father, and his father before him, followed such practices with extreme diligence, though not because he personally believed in the existence of these spirits. When you were heir to a conglomerate worth a fortune and striving to own it all, some public niceties were unavoidable..

To him, those spirits were figments of an untethered imagination. The contents of a children’s fantasy.

But then what the hell were these monsters their group was facing?

Elena and Tanya stood further ahead, holding back a pair of hounds with buffalo-horns and two pairs of gleaming eyes breathing fire from their snouts. And from the way Tanya was sweating, reflecting one flamethrower after another with blades of wind, it was clear she was in a tight spot.

And yet, the cynical part of his mind couldn’t help but notice, she’s holding back. Why?

“WATCH OUT!”

Zuken didn’t question the outburst. He immediately crouched low and rolled to the side, just in time to avoid getting halved by an enormous bear. Or what could have been a bear, if not for its six legs and a pair of curling ram’s horns wrapped around the sides of its head. Not to mention the extra pair of eyes and a body gleaming with an otherworldly, ethereal luminescence.

It was a demon from those silly books he read as a child.

A reiki.

And when several hundred pounds of angry monster came charging at him, four of its limbs raised and claws poised to slash at his throat, Zuken swallowed and did the only reasonable thing he could.

He dodged, turned around, and ran like hell.

This was getting better and better.

Say what you would about yokai, but there was no denying their sheer effectiveness against Asukan powers. Of course, that didn’t mean they were anything more than degenerates; but as tools acting under the command of a superior being, they were outstanding weapons. And now that Olfric had witnessed their power with his own eyes, it was only a matter of time before he took complete ownership of it.

As soon as he got past the little blood curse placed upon him, that was.

Coming across the Banksi and his team of wretched companions was a stroke of luck. Doubly lucky was the fact that this portion of the anomaly was a giant underground forest of sorts, with enough obstacles to prevent his prey from escaping and for him to hide and observe the situation at hand. The two pairs of reiki under his command— he still had trouble believing they were actually real —had engaged Zuken Banksi and that high-string, uppity bitch Tanya. And by the looks of it, the duo was having a hard time.

Olfric winced as one of the giant bears shattered through Zuken’s hastily raised defenses, flinging the man towards the fern-coated walls on the corner.

A very hard time.

If this went on, he’d be able to claim his victory without even bringing his kami into the mix.

He glanced at the third girl, a brunette he had observed hanging around Banksi over the past few months. At first, he’d thought of the girl as a secretary of sorts, or perhaps a mistress. Banksi, for all his eccentricities, was a noble, and clearly one with a good eye for beauty. No matter the girl’s skills, she was definitely a looker.

But to bring his bed warmer to an anomaly exploration mission? Either Banksi was too confident in her abilities to survive and actually contribute to his rag-tag team…

Or he was just that sex-starved.

Frankly, Olfric didn’t know which was more demeaning, nor did he care. Either way, he was going to take that girl captive. On the off chance, Banksi really did care about her, she would make a valuable trump card to ensure his obedience. The alternative was having one of his yokai to possess Banksi, something he certainly did not prefer.

Opponent or not, the man was an Asukan. A noble.

There were lines even he wouldn’t cross.

No, it was better to hold the brunette captive to ensure his cooperation. And since Banksi commanded that bitch Tanya and her admittedly powerful skills, that meant getting two valuable spiritists for the price of one. A good arsenal to have in his back pocket, considering who— or what —he was going up against.

The bear-reiki’s furious roar attracted his attention once more.

Olfric whipped his neck to the left, just in time to see the demon bear— a pair of its eyes now punctured and bleeding —let out another roar, this one deeper and pained, as it trudged towards the fallen form of Zuken Banksi. Snarling in fury, it rose on its hind legs and lunged towards him.

No no no no no—

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. He didn’t want to kill Banksi. That was completely counterproductive to his goals. He needed him alive. He needed—

In a moment of knee-jerked panic, his hand moved up, and his kami Mesciel answered his call. Before he knew it, an ultra-thin stream of water whipped towards the demon-bear, striking it just at the neck. Thick, dark blood spurted out of the beast like a fountain as it tried to twist and evade the attack at the last second.

The water whip, one of Mesciel’s most lethal attacks, was powerful enough to pierce through thick flesh and come out the other end— ultra-thin, pressurized water was a dangerous thing, after all.

But it hadn’t.

As the reiki twisted away, the whip slashed against its nape before continuing to draw blood along the back of its neck, its thick mass of fur preventing decapitation. But the sudden movement had cost the reiki its momentum, as it tumbled onto the floor like a sack of potatoes with a great Thud!

The clearing was silent as the rest of the demon beasts and enthralled Cyffnarian soldiers met his gaze.

“…Crap.”

It was way too big to fight.

There was a common belief about how size wasn’t everything. The larger an enemy was, the harder they fell. It was a nice, uplifting sentiment for those on the smaller side, but in reality, things were a little different.

Size mattered. Especially when it came to defense.

Just ask a mammoth.

But luckily for Zuken, the reiki wasn’t being defensive. It was attacking. And therein lay the difference.

So long as that status quo was maintained, he could use his smaller size coupled with his agility to extract himself from any precarious situation and stay out of his reach. From afar, he could use the environment against the beast, slowly whittling away at its power. Avriel wasn’t terribly powerful, not by a long shot. In fact, as far as kami went, it would probably rank somewhere in the upper-middle tier in terms of sheer destructive potential.

But its true strengths were in versatility and using the earth element to its maximum potential.

A characteristic shared between spiritist and kami. Which probably explained why they worked so well together.

“Earth Spear!” Zuken bellowed, and a jagged piece of rock erupted from the floor, twisted in shape and sharpened at the tip, ready to impale through the reiki’s hide. It pierced right below the creature’s knee, drawing blood all over the floor. Letting out a pained roar, the bear-reiki slashed at him again, not that it was an issue.

As always, he’d simply dodge backwards and—

Tripped on a rock.

He cursed as he lost his balance and landed on his ass, almost perfectly in position for a predator to tear out his throat. Cautiously looking up, he saw the reiki open its jaws and let out a furious roar.

Zuken flinched.

Stop behaving like prey, he chastised himself.

Fashioning a chain from the very floor itself, Zuken pushed it upwards to grab onto the reiki’s legs. Despite how safe and dexterous it seemed, leaping around was a bad fighting style all around. Most of your momentum came from pushing against the ground, which translated into the power behind attacks. But the moment you were in mid-air, you were vulnerable to all kinds of attacks.

Which was undoubtedly bad, because he had to lunge into the air whenever the reiki came for him. And this bear had shown the propensity to lunge quite often.

As always, the bear leapt towards him.

The stone chain flung upwards, while another earth spear began to form in front of him, ready to impale the beast through its belly in the middle of its trajectory.

Zuken sharply inhaled.

SNICKTT!

Something monstrously fast blurred towards the beast, and Zuken watched on with surprise as blood spurted from its neck. The reiki had managed to twist its humongous form mid-flight— a surprising feat for something so heavy —and avoided getting its head cut off, but it was at the cost of its own control.

The bear-reiki dropped down to the ground with a loud thud.

“Crap,” a familiar voice muttered.

Exasperated, Zuken pinched the bridge of his nose before meeting the stunned gaze of Olfric Bergott.

The bottom fell out of Olfric’s stomach.

He had just attacked a reiki— one of the crazy powerful beasts he’d been given command over to win against his foes and conquer the anomaly. And now, to save one of the very people he’d been sent out to eliminate in the first place, he ordered his kami to slice his ally’s neck.

The reiki-hounds remained in a confused stupor for a few disoriented seconds, before ignoring the bitch they were fighting and turning towards him with a guttural snarl. Olfric glanced at the beast he’d attacked, which looked pained and absolutely betrayed, while the remaining beasts dropped all pretense before rushing towards him with the clear intent to kill.

And he thought his life was already in danger, with the maledictus and everything.

“Bergott?”

Olfric faintly registered Tanya’s confused whisper as he raised his hands and commanded his kami to ready a second attack. He took a moment to curse this underground anomaly for being such a dry existence. Had he been fighting in a river valley, or even better, a water body, he could’ve drawn upon gallons of water to attack with frightening ease and ability.

But here? It took him thrice the amount of mana to fuel his standard spell.

Gulping, Olfric shook his head, cleared his mind, and did what he did best.

He attacked.

Olfric could hear the snap and crackle of cartilage tearing and bones breaking as another ultra-thin layer of water propelled outwards towards the nearest reiki. The creature emitted a monotone, high-pitched scream that went on and on, growing rougher and rougher, until it completely erupted into a small fountain of gore.

The reiki was dead before it touched the ground.

“Whoa,” Banksi’s woman breathed. Somehow, that felt more surreal to him than anything else in this bizarre situation.

Naturally, that was when everything went to hell.