‘This kind of situation has the unfortunate side-effect of bringing out the serial killer in me.’

-Paradox Zauberer

Perry managed to give himself more of a half-starved, stranded appearance by using his own life-force to fuel the last bit of healing on his wounded arm, making him look slightly emaciated. A bit of subtle charcoal smudges to bring out the starvation really did wonders.

Gotta thank Heather for accidentally infusing me with a bit of makeup theory through osmosis.

Thinking of Heather led to thoughts of Nat and his life at home and how irritated he was at the delay. He was already in a situation where he’d have to outpace a dragon with nearly limitless funding and researchers. And now he was on the back foot, which meant not only would the dragon probably beat him, Perry had less time to spend with his new family as well.

He was proving many of his theories in the field though, so there was a silver lining. The brute-force ritual cracker was a smashing success, his Essence wavelength theory was advancing and once he had some time, Perry was fairly sure he could plot them out on a 3-D map.

He summoned the second quarter of the facility today, creating the Squid-marine production facility. I never thought I’d be designing fake genitals the size of houses, but here we are.

Once the designs were done, the production facility began working on them, running into a constant supply shortage of rarer materials.

The first squid was birthed out of a gigantic tube straight into the water. The entire thing was about fifty feet long, plus another eighty feet of tentacles. It was surprisingly realistic, despite being entirely fabricated. Perry hoped he didn’t wind up catfishing some sentient species that was identical.

Perry sent it down into the trench to look for big chunks of steel, which should help locate the remains of the facility while he worked on the bullet-hopper essence.

It wasn’t bad. Perry had figured out that the bullet-hoppers did three primary things with their essence.

1: they reinforced their internal organs so they didn’t turn to jelly.

2: they strengthened their legs so they could jump with the force of a bullet.

3: they immobilized whatever they were standing on so 100% of the force of the jump went forwards. You can’t jump with the force of a bullet off a twig or blade of grass without some kind of gimmick. They could even freeze the air and jump in midair.

All these things were excellent traits that could be spun into other spells, for a normal wizard.

Except Perry wasn’t normal.

1: His internal organs were already pretty damn tough because of his Body stat.

2: His legs were already pretty damn strong because of his Body stat.

3: The freezing effect was on the surface more interesting than the other two, but it was largely made redundant by Dragor’s Kinesis and Paradox’s Sluggish Paralysis.

Hmm. Maybe I can….

After some theory-crafting, Perry made ‘Paradox’s Time-Out’:

It was a modification of Paradox’s Sluggish Paralysis that applied the freezing effect and internal organ reinforcement, making the spell able to preserve living things more effectively without endangering them. Safe for use on pets and the elderly.

Perry sure as hell wasn’t going to use it on Charles, this one was just for arresting people. the Sluggish Paralysis allowed the user to follow the spell up with a coup de grace, in exchange for being slightly less powerful.

After doing even more work, Perry found that he could polarize the particles composing the pressed handle of Paradox’s Second blade, forcing the blade to manifest in a specific ‘safe’ zone, eliminating the need for mirrored cloud-giant eye, but necessitating the use of a specific high-tech chamber to bombard the curing handle with pulses of Essence to align it’s poles.

Perry had one of his human leaps of logic when he remembered Daxer’s Faux teleportation and remembered how it could be used to make multiple illusions based on the number of facets in the diamond that was used as the renewable ingredient.

Perry pried a gaudy diamond out of a skeleton’s wedding ring and tossed it into a ‘Paradoxed’ pressure chamber, adding carbon and growing the diamond like a pearl, from the size of a pea to something he could use as a crossguard.

Once he got it out, he cut it with sixteen facets and affixed it to the front of the handle, cutting a notch for the tang.

Perry inspected his sword with its diamond crossguard and pale green glass blade.

Too pretentious?

Well, if it worked, it wouldn’t matter.

Perry squared up on his target, making sure he was wearing the Ethereal Dodge and his armor, and he was surrounded by living things he could drain with the Pernicious Prison to reattach his head, if necessary…as long as his brain didn’t get bisected…

Perry equipped an extra big helmet.

Magic is fun.

His target dummy was one of his suits of carbon armor, fresh outta the vat. A top-of-the-line piece of protective gear, better than anything that existed on Manita, and most things on Earth.

Perry took a hard slash at the armor, and sixteen blades of red energy manifested in a sphere around the armor and minced it instantly, leaving nothing but tiny smoldering chunks of carbon.

Yikes.

Perry patted himself down to make sure he was still alive and had all his parts, before tossing the sword aside in frustration.

“Now I have to make better armor!” Perry said with a groan. And how the hell was he supposed to use that sword for anything but brutally murdering things in one hit? He couldn’t test someone’s defenses with light thrusts and slashes while convincing them to give up. He might be able to defend, but the damn thing ramped from 0 to 100 so fast it’d make your head spin. There was no fight.

Perry seriously considering wiping it from his notes for being simply too mean-spirited and aggressive.

Maybe it just needs an on-off switch…Nah.

Perry decided to simply make it a weapon that did what it was meant to do: Kill. He would only draw it when the situation called for someone to get chunked.

The next day, Perry was working on improving the armor by tinkering with incorporating the Ethereal Dodge and Body-strengthening effects of Bullet-hoppers, when Squid#1 reported it’d found a large chunk of ferrous metal.

Excellent.

The next three days were a frenzy of preparation, finding a suitable offshoot island just out of sight of the mainland, setting up his ‘ekeing out a living’ barebones survival.

Maybe Charles would see through the deception. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, Perry would get what he wanted:

Charles would never underestimate him again.

The final day arrived and Perry ‘discovered’ Charles’ mannequin protruding partially out of the water.

Perry acted surprised and grateful for the company, his best approximation of someone who gave two shits about having other people nearby. He nattered at Charles for hours with carefully calculated word-vomit that appeared to be stream-of-conciousness, but deeply implied weakness and childish insecurities to further reinforce Charles’ subconscious assessment of his nephew’s pathetic nature.

With a brain that functioned on a higher level than Charles could dream of, it was easy. Effortless deception poured out of his mouth like the thrumming of an idling engine.

I’m weak, I’m starving, soft and sheltered. Don’t think about the astronomical impossibility of you landing on my doorstep after only six days, don’t think about how I escaped in the first place, or survived the pressure of the deep, or how long it takes to actually starve. Focus on how weak and undeserving I am, how childish I am, how much you despise me for my weaknesses. How much it enrages you.

Perry could tell that showing weakness to his uncle made him reflexively angry. It was a fairly common attitude among people raised by backstabbing psychopaths.

It made it easier for this backstabbing psychopath to cloud his uncle’s critical thinking with scorn and anger.

When Perry felt like he’d properly convinced his uncle that he was desperate for human contact, he smashed the rock open, his eyes glittering with faux innocence.

He put on a shocked expression when his uncle killed himself, until he was sure the marionette was gone.

Then his expression fell flat.

Start the timer. Deploy the sensors. Deploy the armor.

A suit of armor shot down from above, growing from a grain of sand to a full-sized suit of power-armor before it encased Perry in comfortable darkness.

Perry proceeded to eat lunch on top of his factory, draining the local flora to recover from his emaciated condition.

Once that was done, he lay on the roof, fully armored with his hands behind his head and a dozen murderbots surrounding the portal landing point.

Life is good. I should probably set my Attunement back to normal when I get home. I wonder what they named the babies.

…I wonder if uncle Charles is stupid enough to fall for this obvious bait.

About half an hour into his reverie, Perry got an unusual ping from the sensors. Something funky going on half a mile away and five hundred feet in the air.

The answer: yes, but he still thinks he’s clever.

His uncle must’ve suspected something was amiss, but wasn’t able to decipher his unconscious perception that Perry was weak, so he wound up coming anyway.

So close.

Perry blasted off at full speed, the Bullet-hopper enchantment preventing it from drawing on his HP to keep the G’s from rendering him into soup.

By the time Charles’s slow ass stepped through, Perry was already waiting for him.

***Charles***

“Hello Charles,” A deeply modulated voice spoke in his ear as cold fingers tightened around his neck. “Did you enjoy being a squid’s dildo?”

Charles’ skin went cold as he realized the depth that the stupid weak CHILD had-

He brutally cut off that line of thinking. This was not a child. This was a killer. With his hand around Charles’s neck.

There was only one thing to do.

Confax’s Lightning cloak

An aura of living, tangible lightning exploded outward from where Paradox was touching his neck, sending the suit tumbling away from him as the lightning elemental shoved the aggressor away from its master.

“Infernus!” Charles shouted as he spun around, uttering the codeword he’d used to compartmentalize this particular one of his more dangerous symbiotic spirits.

His wrists ached as beams of hellfire sprang from his fingertips and spattered off the suit’s black surface, leaving streaks of glowing carbon, but not accomplishing much besides knocking the boy a bit further back.

He just needed to buy himself enough time to dive into the weave of fate and win this fight before it began.

Michela’s Hindrance and Brethor’s Dominion.

Charles slowed the battlefield down with Michela’s Hindrance and engaged Brethor’s Dominion to isolate and suppress Paradox’s Fate.

True mages wrestled over the concept of winning. Once that was seized, nothing the other mage did could make any difference…

…Where the hell is he?

Charles should see the boy’s Fate like a candle in the darkness, and without any formal training, he should be able to snuff it out like one, too.

But there was nothing but more darkness around him.

Over his shoulder, he could see the Fate of his cohorts, radiating outward from the suits of armor they were encased in.

So that’s where they are. WHERE IS PARADOX?

A lightning whip seemingly made of spider’s silk emerged from the suit’s wrist.

“Something occurred to me, uncle.” The armor said in it’s eerily modulated voice as it lazily retracted the whip. “I don’t owe you a climactic battle with me.”

Charles let out a roar and cast Weathering Blast.

An imperceptible pulse of force shot out and caught the suit in the chest, locking it up as everything that could degrade from use, did. The suit froze up and fell away towards the

It was a plebian spell, but it was more than adequate for the technology dependant boy trying to-

“This is a hunt, after all.” One of the suits of armor trapping his compatriots said as it stepped forward, the faceplate opening to show Edgard Holland’s terrified face.

“Sire, I can’t stop it!” Edgard shrieked as the armor forced him forward, deploying wickedly sharp glass blades from it’s arms.

In a fraction of a second, Charles made a plan. This wasn’t his first battle. The blades were likely nonmagical, and even if they were, his defensive enchantments could probably handle it. it was worth the risk to even the odds a bit.

Charles waited for the suit to lunge closer before beginning his cast.

Weathering Blast.

The impact as the suit hit him nearly drove the wind out of his lungs, but his defensive enchantments held strong, and he was able to muster the wherewithal to cast the follow-up.

Oliver’s Universal Unlocking

The disabled suit popped open and Charles yanked his vassal out of the infernal machine.

“Thank you sire!” Edgard half-bawled, throwing his arms around Charles.

“Edgard! Focus and watch my b-“

Edgard jerked suddenly as half a dozen barbed needles of purest black darted in and stabbed themselves into the young man’s back, tearing him away from Charles’ grip and dragging him screaming toward the depths of the ocean below.

Charles tapped into Fenrald’s Kinesis to crush the offending spikes, but a flicker of movement forced him to dodge instead as the armor housing Stella Germaine attacked with an oversized greatsword.

“Let’s see how many of your friends you watch die before you abandon them.” The armor said, gesturing towards the portal showing the calm glade they’d just left.

The assembled armors deliberately flew out of the way, circling around to give him a clean escape route. Safety on one side, his political power on the other.

Each of the suits of armor bore one of his vassals. Watching his every move.

…he’s not bluffing.