No Need For A Core?
286: Prismatic

During the challenge round where Moriko fought as one of the einherjar, Mordecai had been worried. If she'd been simply going all out as herself, there would have been less to be concerned about, but she was effectively handicapped by the restriction of using the less familiar fighting style.

Moriko had never experienced a death, and Kazue's experience was somewhat hazed by the effects of sake. Mordecai would prefer to keep things that way.

It was somewhat selfish of him, he acknowledged that, but he was also fine with that bit of selfishness. He wanted to keep both of his wives from having what might be traumatic experiences, just as he wanted to shelter Fuyuko and Carmilla from the same.

As for himself and the inhabitants, well, almost no one ever wanted to die, but the instincts that came from his core made bodily death more of a very unpleasant inconvenience rather than a terrifying event. For the inhabitants, this also came with a partially muted pain response; while minor injuries were felt at about the same intensity, the amount of pain they felt past that point accumulated much slower than for most people, and was capped at a level where they were able to think and act despite the pain.

This even included Carmilla to an extent, at least, while she was inside nexus territory. Awakening to her former faerie life somewhat mitigated the nexus’s benefits there, and unlike most inhabitants she would not retain that extra pain tolerance.

Avatars didn't come with the pain reduction automatically, that was something Mordecai had managed to work out independently, but as it was still the same mind, he'd never felt the fear of bodily death that most felt. After all, it was his core that was his truest self, and thus the only true death he could experience.

Mordecai's resilience here did not leave him unempathetic to the pain and suffering that others could suffer, especially those who were close to him. So watching Moriko fight when he was sitting there doing nothing was difficult.

Then she shattered the faerie lord's sword, and her own blade sliced through his neck. Mordecai started to rise to leap into the arena to heal him, but it was too late. Too much blood had emptied out from his brain and Kazue's boon kicked in.

Mordecai sighed and sat back down as he signaled the end of the match. He might have been able to get there fast enough to revive the faerie lord before he'd completely died, but when possible the boon defaulted to healing a person before they actually died. Making the boon act only after the mercenaries died had taken a fair amount of work by both Mordecai and Kazue.

There was some time before the next challenge match began as the arena was cleaned up. This also created a break in action, which Mordecai felt was good for the spectators. It both gave them time to think and talk about other things and take care of any needs, and built up anticipation for the next match. Which was all a bonus compared to the most important thing; they were able to discreetly swap Betty back out for Moriko in a private room, and Mordecai had a chance to make sure she was alright while Kazue got Moriko's clothes ready. The pampering was brief, but it was a nice spot of respite from the noise of the arena.

The next match turned out to be quite interesting, though the most interesting parts for him were not what most people saw.

Rapier and cloak was a fine fighting style for duels, but should have fared poorly when delving. The specialized alchemical powders clearly made up the difference, but Mordecai felt the need to start querying their inhabitants and bosses to find out more about what had gone on.

This is when he discovered that Kazue had been keeping a close eye on the man, and been playing favorites on behalf of Betty.

That was, well, not quite fair for everyone else, and he did want this tournament to be fair for everyone. But he decided that this was also not something he wanted to comment on, especially with more bosses having gotten their personal lives entangled with the man. He trusted Kazue to keep their people safe, and interfering now would suggest otherwise. So he was going to stay out of it, including not prying about things he didn't need to know.

The feedback Mordecai got from their inhabitants gave him the impression that the man had grown in power at an impressive rate, though not enough to be immediately noticeable unless one was already looking.

Naturally, Mordecai found this suspicious, but he also tended to trust his inhabitants' character judgment. So he decided to not do anything rash; there was plenty of time to simply observe the man's skills, which were suitably impressive. The fine traces of mana and will used to guide the powders were masterfully controlled; even his avatar couldn't detect them directly. It was only with the focused attention of his core than he could see the faint signatures.

Well, that implied that the man was not as young as he seemed. Fine control at that level was a difficult skill to master and usually only started to develop when one's direct growth in power began to slow down.

Few people had that happen at a young age, and this unusual delver didn't seem nearly powerful enough to have had that happen anyway.

Mordecai had not puzzled out the man's secrets during his fight against the einherjar, but he had plenty of time to gather more information. During the fight against the elven spell-sword, Mordecai's core and avatar were fully focused on analyzing what was happening.

Starting with that first sharp jump in power, which was immediately used with masterful proficiency.

That confirmed one of his suspicions; the rapier wielder was hiding his power somehow. The question was, how? Suppressing one's aura was doable, but it took a certain amount of maintained effort and was unreliable for such a prolonged period. Also, a suppressed aura shouldn't affect durability and endurance, as feedback from others suggested had happened here.

Over the course of the fight, there were three more power increases along with further demonstrations of skill, such as recognizing a far step in time to counter it. Shortly after that last jump in power, the fight came to a nearly lethal end.

Mordecai was able to act swiftly enough this time, in large part because the rapier remained in the neck wound, rather than slicing open the major arteries and veins. He did notice that this was thanks to the man's deliberate and immediate reaction, which suggested both awareness and confidence that healing would be arriving shortly.

He also overheard Kazue's warning to the rapier wielder, but once more decided to stay out of it unless called upon. In many ways it was a separate issue from the secrets being kept and he rather hoped it would stay that way.

Analysis of the blood and flesh that was left behind yielded little information, which was much the same as his attempts to analyze the alchemy involved in these powders. There appeared to be a key ingredient in all the powders that was completely consumed at some point, and the information to be found in the blood was distorted.

It certainly appeared to be human flesh at first, but a closer analysis suggested a transmutation of some sort. Mordecai's shapeshifting powers didn't change the information encoded in his flesh, but that came from a mastery and hybridization of several different types of shape shifting and was what enabled him to flow so freely between forms.

Spells and many other magical abilities tended to work at a deeper level as they fundamentally changed how the target's body worked, though the original information was always encoded somewhere. While dispelling or removing the magic restored the original code, this didn't always work properly where flesh from a wound was concerned. Combined with the spiritual signature being suppressed, all that Mordecai was able to pick up was something that looked like it might be draconic in origin.

That was, well, not terribly helpful. Still, it was a piece of the puzzle and Mordecai filed it away while he played his part as a host.

Mordecai didn't have to feign his congratulations or willingness to throw a small celebratory feast; he felt more intrigued than threatened or deceived. If this was someone who wanted to harm them then losing during the preliminaries would have been the optimal choice. The rest of the tournament would not get him any closer to the core.

The message he received the next morning supported that feeling. Interesting. This was someone who had demonstrated a very thorough understanding of how a dungeon worked and seemed familiar with Mordecai as well. Familiar enough to not want to talk with Mordecai, lest he give himself away. The man hadn't even said Mordecai's name once during this delve. So this was probably someone Mordecai knew well.

This was going to be fun, and it meant Mordecai was going to be able to push himself, though his victory was less than assured. It seemed rather unlikely that anyone he knew that well from before his sealing would somehow still be less powerful than Theodoric, who had been a very tough fight.

Now, what sort of gear might he want to use? While he preferred hand to hand combat, the right weapons could be useful tools beyond just being weapons.

Creating items on the fly for himself would be cheating, but mana crafting items before the battle that he wore into battle was an appropriate response to this sort of challenge, and he did know of quite a few unusual items he could create with dungeon magic.

The battle was as fun as Mordecai had anticipated and provided plenty of clues for him to analyze.

Mordecai's opponent was not surprised by much and was quick to react to the few things that did surprise him. He used a combination of chromatic light and elemental techniques in addition to his powders. No, in conjunction with them, his true technique was slowly being revealed.

The peculiar explosion when their cyclones canceled each other was difficult to analyze, but it did tell Mordecai that the cloak was a stand in of some sort if his opponent was willing to sacrifice it like that. Also, the man's aura had shifted and strengthened, though Mordecai felt certain that it wasn't fully released yet.

Hmm. Multi-colored light, hints of draconic power, toxic and enchanted powders that were guided by faint traces of power, and now a dual-wielding style that felt similar to his own. His core had enough to start searching through his catalog of compressed memories, and in the meantime Mordecai needed to offset the increase in his opponents power.

The multi-hued duplicates took Mordecai off guard, but he almost managed to parry them all. Each strike felt just as heavy as any other strike, until the one attack bit into his shoulder. Then all the other duplicates were no longer there, almost like they'd never been.

Mordecai leapt back to create temporary distance and partially took on his battle form while he called upon his blessings as a priest of Ozuran to enhance his strength and speed. It also gave him a moment to think. That technique required a bit of analysis, but Mordecai was fairly certain that every duplicate had been equally real until their reality had collapsed into the one that struck true.

Being able to cast magic with little regard to his mana reserves helped offset the increasing power and spiritual pressure of his opponent, but the battle was getting harder to keep up with. Wait, where was that new powder coming from? The remaining gauntlet should be empty. He exhaled a gout of charged, super heated plasma, certain that he'd not do too much damage to Hajime. That wasn't the point, he wanted to clear the air.

It mostly worked, but the new powder seemed sturdier than the old ones, and it glittered like tiny crystals now that the rest of the dust had been cleared.

Then the false covering over one of the rapiers shattered, revealing an orichalum blade coated in flowing ripples of rainbow light.

No, rainbow wasn't quite right.

Prismatic light. Like the prismatic 'dust' floating everywhere. Mordecai's core found a match.

Prism dragon. Specifically, one who had mastered using his wing scales as alchemical ingredients, could change their properties at will, and incorporate those properties into the magic that came naturally to his kind; and wielded a rather unique rapier.

By the time Mordecai knew his opponent's name, Hajime was in the air and Mordecai gathered himself to follow. But it was too late. Reality fractured under that assault, stretching Mordecai across multiple possibilities and somehow forcing him to take many forms simultaneously, but with each form a facet leading to a different reality.

The assault would have literally ripped weaker opponents to shreds, and not all of those shreds would have still existed when reality reasserted itself. That was a much more powerful technique than the prismatic breath he'd experienced before.

"HAJIME!" Mordecai shouted as he recovered from the disorienting attack and launched himself into the air. By the time he reached Hajime, Mordecai had taken on his full battle form and size, and two dragons now fought above the arena sands in a furious exchange of magic and physical might.

He held nothing back now and attacked as if he was truly trying to kill his opponent. Nothing less would do to keep up with the power he now faced, and he needed to start consuming the potions stored in his upper arm bands to help offset Hajime's strength. Mordecai couldn't afford the concentration to cast healing spells while locked into such an intense fight.

The battle still ended up with him literally pinned to the arena floor by dozens of shafts of solidified light, another new technique. The boy had certainly grown. Mordecai let out a brief laugh and conceded the fight.

Learning that Hajime's mother was alive as well was a joy, while learning that Hajime's father was dead hurt deeper than Mordecai had anticipated. There was a difference between abstractly knowing that many of your old friends were probably dead and finding out that a specific one was definitely dead. Especially when it was your fault.

Oh hells. Satsuki had noticed the boy and was in the arena. Mordecai was extremely grateful that Kazue and Moriko arrived so swiftly, he was not in the condition to deal with Satsuki right now.

"What's up with those two, and who is he?" Moriko asked as she and Kazue started healing him. Kazue was a bit distracted by the dust floating around them, which caused her to sneeze. She was at least able to suppress the reflex while she was casting a healing spell.

The healing technically wasn't necessary, but Mordecai would rather not be lying on the sand any longer than needed. The wounds left by those light spears were not healing quickly on their own, and it was interfering with his ability to shift.

Mordecai put his curiosity about how that worked aside for the moment and answered Moriko's question. "Hajime and his parents were some of my former inhabitants. In fact, his mother was a raid boss. I never understood why, but his mother always disliked Satsuki, and Hajime picked it up from her."

Kazue and Moriko exchanged glances that carried messages Mordecai failed to read, though that exchange ended with another sneeze from Kazue.

"What was that look about?" he asked.

Kazue sighed and said, "Mordecai, you are one of the cleverest, smartest people I know and I absolutely love and adore you. But sometimes, just sometimes, you are an oblivious idiot."

That exchange caught Satsuki's attention and broke the staring contest between her and Hajime. She came over while Mordecai was shifting back to human form and stared down at him. "Do you really not know? Still?"

Hajime had warily followed, and he looked just as confused and curious as Mordecai felt. "What are you talking about? She didn't trust you, which seems well founded given what kept happening between you and Mordecai."

Satsuki started laughing and it took a few moments for her to regain control of herself. "Oh, Hajime. There's a reason your mother always felt so conflicted about you being so close to Norumi, especially when you two started calling each other brother and sister. How should I put it... ah, I know. See, while you mother almost certainly did love your father, part of her always wished that Mordecai had been your father instead. That is why she disliked me; I had what she could never have and knew better than to pursue. Mordecai would never have bedded one of his inhabitants, or anyone else he had that much power and influence over." Satsuki shrugged and added, "Not that she was alone in that amongst his inhabitants, man and woman alike, but there are always people who are attracted to those with power over them. Almost every ruler of any sort has to deal with that."

Mordecai stared for a moment and then glanced at Kazue and Moriko, who both looked unsurprised.

There was so much to unpack there. But this wasn't the time, so he changed the subject after slowly getting to his feet with the help of Kazue and Moriko. "That can wait. It's time to plan a celebratory feast for our champion here, and I need to figure out appropriate prizes. Satsuki, please don't harass him. Hajime, I am very glad to see you again and I have much to ask you, but we both need to get cleaned up, and it appears you have some company."

He nodded to where Dhamini had entered the arena. She was walking toward them, but slowly, as if unsure of her reception. Hajime's expression brightened, which Mordecai took as a good sign, but he still felt obliged to say, "Hajime, you're used to most inhabitants being centuries old. I think you've figured this out, but things are very different here. Whatever the long-term outcome, you need to be careful."

Hajime looked chagrined, but nodded. "I understand, sir. I've already had some conversations about this. Don't worry, we're working things out."

Mordecai was going to have to be satisfied with that for now. Now, what the heck was he going to give Hajime as proper rewards? The weight of the reward that the dungeon owed him was larger than Mordecai had anticipated, thanks to that final fight.

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