Depthless Hunger

Kai wasn't ultimately clear on the fundamental limits on the elven hunt, other than it had something to do with migration patterns. Based on information the women gathered, the event seemed to peter out as the valuable hunts ended. So even if they hadn't been impatient to move on, there was no reason to delay.

He no longer returned to the pavilion and instead ventured further out into the Elven Wilds. That might have been risky normally, but he had Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena in the diamond star overhead, gathering information and occasionally guiding him. It was a little unclear whether or not the elves approved of this, but since he was only competing for the hardest targets and leaving the majority alone, it seemed to pass without condemnation.

Still, this alone wouldn't be enough to catch a unicorn. After another close call, Kai sat down, crossed his legs, and began considering his monstrous abilities again. Aerial speed alone wasn't enough, since the unicorns stayed close to the ground, and it was clearly premature to use the Thunderbird.

However... he didn't need to fully crystallize its power to draw on it, at least not in theory. Kai took a deep breath and cautiously drew the Thunderbird essence into the center of his soul island. It didn't appear like a statue in his mind's eye and he didn't feel the same rush of power... but there was something present, locking into his soul.

When Kai got up again, he could feel a generalized power rushing into him. The Thunderbird's essence could potentially be involved with speed, flight, thunder, lightning, and probably more. Right now it was just potential stored in his soul, so it only slightly boosted him in small ways. After some testing, he was fairly confident that he would never be able to draw out monstrous essence in "pure" form that granted him tons of abilities at once.

In a sense, that was a relief. If it had been possible, then he'd have kicked himself for not getting more abilities from the Void Witness. But instead everything still operated according to the rules he knew: his soul only had a limited capacity for discrete abilities.

That didn't mean that he couldn't test out the essence in new ways. Kai ran into the wastelands again, getting a feel for the slight edge to his new speed. This wasn't an effective form of power, but it was a good way to figure out the exact shape of new essence.

Occasionally Kai chased some of the wild horses, just to test his new speed. The Thunderbird was definitely a potent source of that, the question was how much he could work it into a general mobility skill. He felt fairly certain that it would be a huge mistake to try to draw on the thunder or lightning aspects - maybe if he'd had a lightning Class, or other abilities that invoked the elements, but right now it was just too unrelated to the rest of his power.

As he ran, Kai realized the real potential: not his own speed, but his perceptions. The fastest elven horses had been blurs before, but now he could see their legs pumping as they ran, even feel the chakra that flowed through their bodies. Of course it made sense that the Thunderbird needed to be able to perceive quickly, if it could move so fast.

If he'd just blundered forward and gone with a generic speed ability, he might have missed that entirely. Kai grinned and threw himself into the hunt.

.

..

.

Teleportation was a civilized way to travel, but Zae Zin Nim still preferred to fly. Kai could run around on the ground if he wanted, as a condition of participating in the hunt, but she was glad to float overhead. They had been warned that they couldn't act directly in the hunt, which was tacit approval of their new strategy.

At the moment they'd lost sight of him, however. If they constantly hovered just overhead it would scare some of the animals, plus they needed to scout. Zae Zin Nim searched around the edges of the craft, trying to locate his qi again. He might not have stealth abilities, but he could hide himself when need be.

"Over there," Omilaena said after a moment. She propped her goggles back up on her head. "Looks like he's chasing another unicorn, so we should keep our distance."

"Could we fly ahead and try to herd them?" Zae Zin Nim asked.

"We'd better not. They didn't rule that out, but it would probably be stretching the spirit of the law."

They floated for a time, but Zae Zin Nim found herself staring at the other woman's goggles. She nearly reached up to grab them before remembering herself and hesitating. "May I see those?"

"Sure, but they won't be that useful to you." Omilaena handed them over and Zae Zin Nim carefully put them over her eyes, which cast the world in strange sapphire shades.

At first they seemed completely useless, not even magnifying anything like she'd imagined. Naturally they would protect her eyes, but not as much as her Physique and other techniques could. Presumably the other features were more complex and she just couldn't figure them out.

"You have to reach here and..." Omilaena started to lean across her and could easily have taken advantage of the position, but instead she only tapped on the side of the goggles. "It's chakra-based. Previously I would have said you couldn't use it, but now that you have some chakra built up in your soul... try to flow just a little chakra through the mechanism."

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Zae Zin Nim tried futilely at first, then drew on her frustration to make the chakra move. The reaction was almost immediate, the world in her vision suddenly expanding. It let her see further away except when she saw part of their ship, which was violently disorienting. She didn't want to turn around and have the goggles be filled with Omilaena, so she just tried to get the magnification under control.

"That's right, dial it back... I made them for myself, not really for general use, so they're particular to me. There's no reason that anyone else with chakra can't use them, though."

"You could make a lot of money selling these," Zae Zin Nim said. As she adjusted, she began to search the surrounding territory for Kai.

"Only relatively. As an artisan it's easy to get trapped in drudgery, being basically just a skill slave. Not a literal one, I mean, but you get caught up in business and never get out. I could make thousands of Crests, maybe tens of thousands, but not a million Crests like we earned for the Thunderbird."

"Merchant problems." Zae Zin Nim pulled off the goggles and immediately understood why it was so easy to prop them on her forehead. "Cultivators never touch that sort of thing for the same reason. But given what I've seen here, I can understand why there's more overlap."

"You see people go the other way, too. If a merchant sells enough chakra-imbued materials, they might try to gain power themselves, and they can even be successful."

Zae Zin Nim hesitated, wondering if Omilaena was getting close to saying anything about her past. She had seemed to just pop into existence in Krysal and Zae Zin Nim hadn't particularly thought about her life before that moment. Omilaena had never mentioned a family or a homeland or anything before... was there a reason for that, or had she simply wanted to leave it all behind?

"Wait, over there!" Omilaena grabbed her shoulder and pointed into the distance. "Is that another one?"

It would have made more sense to hand over the goggles, but Zae Zin Nim instinctively tugged them down and struggled with the chakra controls. Back to the hunt.

.

..

.

The more Kai grew accustomed to the Thunderbird essence, the more sure he was that he didn't want to waste it. If he fed enough powerful abilities into it that matched elements of its power, he could create an ability matching Behemoth's Heart that would stick with him for the long term. One of those would definitely be a unicorn, so he needed to catch one without the benefits of speed.

With his allies scouting overhead, he was able to make attempts more frequently than the others. He'd tested some trap methods and the unicorns always seemed too wary of them, so he rejected those. There was no point going overboard with something like the adrenaline injection.

Instead he stayed simple: he found a powerful unicorn that was running next to a river and crept as close as he could. He'd seen other unicorns struggle to leap rivers that large, but they could, then mocked the hunters from the other side. Hopefully he could make that work for him.

He couldn't get very close before the unicorn sensed him and jerked its head upward. Like the others, it regarded him briefly as if considering whether to kill him, then it cantered away. That was when Kai started running as fast as he could.

His path kept the unicorn between himself and the river, so that it couldn't veer away without shortening the distance between them. Every time he tried to push it further in, it twisted away, but it lost a little ground each time. Soon, soon...

Eventually it leapt, clearing the river in a single bound. The unicorn landed on the other side and tossed its head, snorting as if in mockery.

Kai leapt after it and his aerial abilities sent him soaring over the river. The unicorn saw and turned before he landed, but he willed himself back to the ground faster with wing-like currents. As soon as his feet hit the rock he began pounding over the ground as fast as he could, pushing himself forward with all the stamina he had left.

Just when he thought he couldn't run any further, the unicorn's unnatural grace finally failed. It was just a brief stumble, barely a pause to most runners, but it was enough. Kai caught up and leapt onto the beast's back. Though it tried to buck him off, that was woefully inadequate for this predator: Kai had already whipped the syringe from his spatial ring and injected the monstrous essence.

The unicorn fell and plowed into the ground, horn-first. He waited nearby until he felt its flesh begin to shift, then finally opened his jaws to consume it. Instead of struggling to consume the sacred beast meat, it was actually easy. Too easy, as if his hunger was growing. It could easily grow out of control if he didn't keep an eye on it, but for now he felt the new essence in his soul.

Unicorn (???)

>

Another powerful essence with some flexibility, though he knew that he would definitely be using this one for its speed instead of any other attribute. This was what he had been working toward from the beginning they entered the Elven Wilds, even if he hadn't originally been planning to work on a mobility skill. With that accomplished, he felt like he could leave in peace.

If they were leaving. The other two flew the diamond star down beside him, so they'd have much to talk about.

"Congratulations," Omilaena said lightly. "All that throwing yourself into a puddle was worth it, huh?"

"Maybe so." Kai wiped his mouth, but there wasn't much else to do because he'd eaten the entire unicorn, horn and all. "Uh... do we need to go back to the pavilion?"

"That depends on how our cultivator friend feels. Are you sick of elves yet?"

"They have been fair to us," Zae Zin Nim said. "They let me use their qi for months and we're only closer allies thanks to what you did with the Thunderbird. We shouldn't just leave without saying goodbye."

"I can get behind saying goodbye, but we need to discuss what we do next. Rosemount is more than just the Elven Wilds."

Kai hopped into the diamond star and they discussed their plans as they flew back. He sort of expected Heruul or someone else to attack them, but everything seemed to be on the level. Some elves might not like their presence, but they'd gone through the proper channels. The Bludshard faction even seemed complimentary, which he supposed wasn't surprising.

Once they got back to the tunnels they decided to take at least a day to think about it. Zae Zin Nim appeared energized by her advancement and wanted both of them to cultivate as well using elven sources. It seemed more tempting when thinking about her huge boost in power than when thinking about all the cultivation that had been required to reach that point.

The next day they sat down to discuss their plans for real in one of the central caverns. It seemed like they had an invitation to visit the school, plus a new invitation from the Bludshard elves to stay longer. There wasn't much word about the Commonwealth or the demons governing it. Omilaena pitched crazier ideas, like going around the eastern ocean to visit the Flaeren Dominion.

Before they could come to any conclusion, they heard the rush of teleportation winds and then sounds of alarm. The guards in the caverns were usually so calm, all three of them were on their feet immediately. It didn't feel like an attack, but someone was running toward them at high speed.

Ceryyn stumbled into the room, one of her arms hanging limply and covered in blood. "Please," she sobbed out, "help..."