Lily
Melina appeared not long after Missy had left me alone with my thoughts, looking just as mildly interested as she usually was. “You agreeing to defend a world seems strange. Do you really believe that it is so valuable?”
“Not at all.” I answered immediately. “The world itself is immensely useful and the abilities in it even more so but I could abandon this iteration of it. Dealing with a mildly hostile Akatosh wouldn’t be worth the effort had it been me who’d stumbled upon this version of Nirn.”
“But your sister found it instead and she’s unlikely to be fine with that approach, I assume.” Melina concluded, having done a good job at observing if she’d figured it out with such accuracy.
I paused for a moment to figure out how to continue. “Missy cares. I don’t. Even if I were to lose everything other than myself and my powers, I would still have an eternity to replace it all. Missy, however, feels this bothersome emotion called guilt. She blames herself for messing things up in Nirn so she’s going to put effort into fixing them regardless and I’m unwilling to let her die in that world. So, if I’m going to help either way, I’ll at least get as much as I can out of it.”
The abilities of a Dovahkiin alone were worth a very vague promise to assist against the dragons. I never claimed I’d protect Skyrim perfectly, I merely claimed that I’d help. To that end, I’d probably end up creating doors to my Traveling Home in Skyrim but I had no need to fight against every dragon that’d return. If Akatosh were to demand that, I’d happily tell him that that was an impossible task for us as well as the original Dragonborn.
Missy might not be happy with me if it came down to that but Alduin would soon resurrect all the dragons he could get his claws on and I didn’t have the ability to exist in every corner of Skyrim at once.
If Akatosh was so unreasonable as to demand for us to fight in multiple places at once, then Nirn was not worth it. Its magic, its treasures, its secrets – none of it could match the value of an eternal life.
That was the simple truth. Nirn was like Elden Ring in that parts of it were absurdly dangerous only, Nirn had gods that were more active. Aedra, Daedric Princes – the distinction didn’t matter. Both were gods and both could bother me to varying degrees.
And dragons were basically demigods over there. Each one was a Godrick at minimum only with the ability to bend reality added to them. Some were weaker, lesser. Others were ancient and powerful and those were what I hoped I wouldn’t encounter.
Each word of the Thu’um could, upon comprehending it to a sufficient degree, allow one to command reality itself and each and every dragon wielded that language as their mother tongue.
If not for the promise of gaining that ability myself upon consuming their souls, the deal would never have been worth it.
And I already had the ability to consume dragon souls now. Something that should, thanks to Naturalized Foreigner, extend to even the souls of dragons not native to Nirn.
“I believe it’s time for me to return to the Lands Between, Melina. There’s two battles I must have tonight.” I decided, idly musing which fights to have in order to grow as best as I could. Especially since I still had to attend my Hoho lesson tonight, too.
As I rose, I heard something, some sound I couldn’t make out and yet couldn’t just put out of my mind either. At my side my zanpakuto rested, ready to slice through my enemies and maybe impart its name onto me.
Melina
I was not too surprised to find that Lilian and I had appeared on a bridge after her announcement, a Godskin Noble standing vigil on it.
Ignoring my own feelings on the matter, I understood why we were here. Fighting Astel had made Lilian’s mastery of gravity sorceries grow to an extent nothing else could quite match. Fighting a Godskin Noble would let her do the same with Black Flame. The only difference was that Godskin Nobles couldn’t naturally wield Black Flame.
Once upon a time, merely seeing someone else appearing before them, tarnished or not, would not have resulted in a fight beginning. The Shattering had ended that bit of civility in most who still adhered to it. All who came too close were assumed to be enemies and, as such, were to be slain.
The Lands Between had, perhaps, never been a truly peaceful place but, before the Shattering, things had been the best they had ever been. There had been flaws, of course, but there hadn’t been an active war in a while back then.
And then Godwyn the Golden had been assassinated and the Lands Between had fallen to chaos as Marika shattered the Elden Ring in response, never leaving the Erdtree again afterwards.
Morgott had returned from the sewers to enforce order upon the city while hiding his entire body so that none of his subjects would know him to be more than the wielder of a Great Rune come to protect Leyndell as best he could.
Mohg had arrived with promises of bloodshed and flame in the embrace of the Outer God he followed, twisting many in the process and sending them after tarnished.
Each and every demigod barring Malenia led their own faction, twisted things around in the pursuit of their personal goals. Order was lost and all who weren’t known allies were assumed to be enemies.
Somehow, someway, I wished for things to improve and, yet, I couldn’t see a path forwards. Few tarnished had yet to return and those present in the Lands Between, be they tarnished or not, lacked either the strength, the mind or the will to become Elden Lord.
The chaos wouldn’t end now if it hadn’t ended over the millenia.
Maybe removing the Great Runes, having Lilian take them all, would eventually let things stabilize without the pillars the factions of the Lands Between were built around.
And yet, several of said pillars would eventually return. Mohg and Morgott, as Omens, were denied such a thing but the others, though it’d take centuries or even millenia, would come back to life one day and, even without their Great Runes, most of them were powerful enough that the conflict they once started might just resume afterwards.
Allowing my attention to return to the battle for a moment as I pondered just what path I could take to allow the Lands Between to improve once more, I was not surprised to see that Lilian was playing with her opponent.
Godrick had been weak in comparison to other demigods but a Godskin Noble, now that Destined Death was sealed, would’ve struggled to defeat him even without the dragon head he had attached to his arm towards the end of his battle with Lilian.
Lilian had improved by leaps and bounds since then. It did not matter that Black Flame was infused into the Noble’s very flesh, burning all that would harm him. It did not matter that he was strong and quick. Lilian was faster and stronger and her blade never even touched his without a protective coating of Black Flame covering it to protect it from his flames.
Once upon a time, this person had brought Destined Death to gods. Now, they were merely a tool Lilian used to learn.
In some ways, perhaps it was a kinder fate than to leave them here without purpose, without a goal beyond clinging to ideals inherited from a leader that was long dead and which couldn’t be made reality for as long as Destined Death was sealed.
Still, as Lilian began to conjure Black Flame with growing ease, I forced myself to remain attentive solely to the fight before me. If nothing else, I wished to bear witness to the Noble’s final moments. It was the least I could do to honour them.
Lily
Black Flame was fascinating but the fanaticism attached to it disgusted me beyond belief. Flames that were meant to burn everything up to and including the soul were beautiful and dangerous and useful and the Godskin Noble had been infused with them without dying.
‘The Apostles were all embraced by the Gloam-Eyed Queen, and the black flame was their armour within.’ The description of Black Flame’s Protection had said and I now understood what it had meant and that, apparently, Nobles also carried it.
Within them and even on top of their skins, Black Flame burned with the simple goal to eliminate all that was foreign to their bodies. Their clothes likely only survived because they were resistant to flame in the first place.
Part of me wished I could’ve experimented with it more after finally getting the hang of conjuring the deadly fire but I really didn’t have that much time tonight and I still had something else to kill. Said something being the dragon that chose to roar at me as though to intimidate the one who’d kill it.
Agheel was just about the weakest named dragon in Elden Ring but I couldn’t be sure of that now. After all, this was no longer a game in which the earlier areas had to be somewhat easier than the later ones. And the dragon certainly felt powerful, possessing immense amounts of mana.
A single step with Shunpo saw me near its head as it lowered it, a swipe of my arm saw my zanpakuto carve a deep line through part of its head, including its right eye. A second step as the dragon screeched and tried to scorch me saw me move a decent distance away.
“Carriage of thunder, bridge of a spinning wheel. With light, divide this into six." The Kidou chant was one I’d practiced and one I’d deemed necessary because I had yet to actually attempt a Kidou as difficult as this one.
Kidou had levels to them. 1 was the simplest that anyone with meagre control over their reiatsu could cast. Everything higher was progressively more difficult and generally had longer, edgier chants.
“Bakudou #61: Rikujokoro.” As soon as I finished speaking, my reiatsu finished forming into six rods that pierced the dragon’s stomach area as it finished breathing fire all around it.
I could feel its mana trying to resist but it was the equivalent of a wild beast thrashing around while my spell had been borne of an incredibly efficient usage of my reiatsu.
Rather than rushing to finish off the beast and finish the fight, I spent some time observing its mana and noticing its peculiarities. Looking at it with my eyes, I saw that it moved in a way that reminded me of fire while sensing it made me feel like I was right next to Mars’ magic.
Of all the dragons in the game, Agheel was the only one who ‘specialized’ in fire. Agheel’s Flame was one of the strongest fire incantation in the game. At least, it was certainly capable of eviscerating Scadutree Avatar with greater ease than any other incantation, though I couldn’t be certain that that wasn’t just due to some of them being terrible moves to use against the damn plant.
So it wasn’t surprising to me that its mana was the way it was but it was still worth noting.
It was also interesting that its mana wasn’t just wildly thrashing around as I’d initially assumed, it was actively burning the reiatsu that my spell was made out of.
Still, I’d allowed Agheel to resist for long enough now. I had an appointment to keep and, while there wasn’t an exact time at which I should be there, I wanted to learn Hoho more than I wanted to see this dragon fight me.
I pointed my right palm towards Agheel’s head before beginning to chant, "Sprinkled on the bones of the beast! Sharp tower, red crystal, steel ring. Move and become the wind, stop and become the calm. The sound of warring spears fills the empty castle! Hadou #63: Raikoho!” An orb of lightning formed before my hand as I spoke and, at the end, all the lightning reiatsu within it shot towards Agheel at extreme speeds.
Durable as it was, the dragon was still alive after all that, if just barely, its head scorched and displaying lichtenberg figures all over it while its remaining eye didn’t seem to be functioning anymore.
A single Shunpo followed by a stab of my sword through the wound I’d initially inflicted was enough to finish it off. Not even a moment later, golden light began to flow from Agheel’s corpse and into me.
Maybe if I hadn’t had aura or reiryoku, I wouldn’t have been quite so aware of the way my soul reached out and devoured the light that was Agheel’s soul. I would still certainly have noticed the way my body grew stronger, my mana greater and I definitely couldn’t have missed the memories, most of which were about burning people but some of which were simply about soaring through the skies on wings I lacked, enjoying the way some of the ants on the ground below ran away at the mere sight of me.
The influence of those memories was fleeting and bothersome but definitely worth it when I noticed the most important of the changes: Both my aura and reiryoku massively improved from consuming this singular dragon soul. In fact, looking at my aura, what was once pure purple now held specks of red that gleamed like stars in the night sky.
And, focusing my mana in a way that was as instinctive as my Grimoire abilities usually were, I easily manifested Agheel’s head and part of its neck to breathe fire straight into the sky. Then, I manifested his wings in a way dragon communion should not have permitted.
I had suspected that the two ways of gaining draconic powers would have some synergy between each other. I hadn’t thought that I’d be able to manifest any part of Agheel that I wanted to manifest by consuming his soul rather than his heart. If I were willing to burn through mana rapidly even with my level of efficiency, I could manifest all of Agheel’s body with myself at its core.
From what I could guess, consuming Agheel’s soul had triggered whichever part of this reality allowed people to eat dragon hearts and gain some of the dragon’s powers from it. Only, said method was suddenly faced with the question of what to do when someone ate the very essence of a dragon. If a heart alone could grant immense power, the soul gave more still.
In essence, I now held all that Agheel had once been. I wasn’t Agheel but all of Agheel was now merely a subsumed part of myself, one that held no influence on me.
A mere flex of my will saw my mana replicating the traits of Agheel’s, becoming ‘flaming mana’. Filling it with Black Flame’s Protection was trivial and, if I were to turn only part of my mana into flaming mana, I could probably indefinitely keep up Black Flame’s Protection without even paying attention to it.
“I suppose I’ll have to free these lands of their dragon population.” I muttered to myself, smiling. I knew Melina had heard me but my ghostly companion said nothing in response. So, after storing away Agheel’s corpse – which, interestingly enough, didn’t turn into a mere skeleton – I left to make my way to my Hoho lesson.
Urahara
What was a genius? The short answer was that a genius was someone who learnt things far faster than others but that answer lacked quite a bit of detail.
I had completed my Bankai training within three days. Some would look at that and call me a genius without looking at how I’d done it. In my opinion, the biggest difference between a genius and the average person was the methods through which they progressed.
Back then, it was my invention of something that was, essentially, a gigai, an artificial body, for a zanpakuto spirit which let me achieve Bankai without properly learning how to manifest Benihime. It’s not that I couldn’t have figured it out without using that method but I saw a faster path towards the goal and wondered if I couldn’t turn it into reality.
I did similar things wherever I could, experimenting with new methods just because I felt like it and I wholeheartedly believed that being able to figure out better ways to progress was the hallmark of a genius. One could say that a genius was one who was unbound by conventional logic and therefore reached further than those who were held back by said conventions because, after all, they were made for average people.
That said, one could also claim that to be a genius was to be insane. I had certainly been called mad quite often in the past and it was true that each and every genius very clearly thought differently from the norm in some way.
Would Yoruichi have reached so far if she hadn’t been somewhat obsessed with becoming better? Would she have developed Shunko if she hadn’t thought about somehow safely confining and utilizing Kidou to enhance her Hakuda?
And, whether one was a genius or average, struggle made one grow the fastest. The main difference there was how far you could push. With a genius, one could generally push quite far. It’s why I had chosen to push Ichigo to the point where he had to awaken his Shikai. Sure, I hadn’t utilized my Bankai or even tried all that hard but me not trying could’ve crushed many shinigami.
Meanwhile Yoruichi’s chosen method was infuriating Lilian until she lost that strange restraint with which she moved. If we weren’t worried about Lilian potentially choosing to aid Aizen, too, she might have even actively fought the teenager to bring out as much of her potential as possible.
Lilian was certainly a genius capable of handling it, too. She had picked up Shunpo faster than anyone I had ever seen, Yoruichi and myself included, and her efficiency with a supernatural energy she hadn’t even had for two weeks yet was incredible. Aura might’ve played a part in it but that didn’t make the feat all that much less impressive. I certainly knew Ichigo still struggled with control sometimes despite Lilian having taught him a bit and him possessing aura.
She was still unable to catch up to Yoruichi at the moment but another night would almost certainly fix that if she continued to progress as she did.
“Urahara-san,” Lilian called out after her training for the night was over, seemingly wishing to speak to me.
“How can I help you?” I replied, curious. Even if she was a wildcard, she certainly kept things interesting and I appreciated that.
“I wanted to exchange knowledge with you again.” She explained.
I hummed in response. “And what is it you wanted to exchange?” I was aware that Lilian had an advantage here simply because she knew what to ask for. I didn’t really mind it, though. I enjoyed learning new things either way.
“I’d like to trade you the knowledge of how to turn buildings into pocket dimensions in exchange for your knowledge on gigai.” Lilian told me, making me wonder about the potential of such an ability.
“Deal.” I decided after thinking it over for a bit. Pocket dimensions sounded nice and having the ability to create them out of buildings would be useful, I was sure.
It was worth my knowledge on how to create artificial bodies, at least, I was sure.
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