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Unintended Cultivator Vol 10: Bloopers
🕑 Added 2024-12-21 07:22:49 +0000 UTC“What is that?” Sen asked as he peered skyward.
“That’s my big bird, Papa!” exclaimed Ai from her perch on his arm.
“Well,” said Sen thoughtfully, “it certainly is big.”
He kept starting up and trying to make sense of the thing. It didn’t look like a bird so much as a hodgepodge of animal parts that were thrown together into the general shape of a bird. He was pretty sure he saw some kind of shell on its back. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think those were fins instead of tail feathers, thought Sen. He’d never seen anything like it before. He’d never even heard of anything like it before. He finally turned to look at Uncle Kho.
“Do you know what that thing is?”
Uncle Kho glanced up from the scroll he’d been reading before letting his gaze wander skyward.
“Hmmm? Oh, yes, that’s a Death Phoenix. The heavens only know where she found it, though. I thought they were extinct.”
“Is it safe?” asked Sen expressing his deepest concern.
It had been one thing when a flock of birds was chasing after his daughter and eating insects on command. This… This was something else entirely. That thing was big enough to swallow Ai whole in the blink of an eye. If it was dangerous, he might have to do something about it regardless of how much Ai seemed to love the bizarre flying creature.
“Safe?” asked Uncle Kho, giving Sen a stunned look. “Did you not hear the name Death Phoenix? What about that sounds safe to you?”
“Fair,” replied Sen after a moment. “Perhaps I should have said, is it safe for Ai?”
Uncle Kho looked from the little girl to the massive bird in the sky and then shrugged.
“Well, it hasn’t eaten her yet. That’s usually a good sign.”
***
“Patriarch?” asked someone in an uncertain voice.
Sen glanced up and found a young man standing there. He was one of the townspeople’s children. One of those brave souls who had stood and fought against those spirit beasts what seemed like a very long time ago. Child, thought Sen. He’s nearly a grown man. He just seems young to you. When did that start happening? Sen remembered the young man, vaguely. He was a little embarrassed that the only thing he really remembered was that the young man had not been particularly gifted with the spear.
“Yes?” asked Sen.
“Will the spirit beasts really come here?”
It was an earnest question with a hint of desperation at the edges. The young man wanted to know the answer, but he desperately wanted the answer to be no. A sentiment that Sen found it difficult to fault. He even wanted to tell the young man a comforting lie, but it would be a foolish thing to do. Sen turned and stood next to the young man, staring out into the distance. He could have been that young man in some other life. He wouldn’t have called it a kinder life, since life didn’t seem to be preparing any kindness for this young man. Sen had read enough history to know that war was kind to no one. Sen had certainly doled out more than his fair share of unkindness when he’d declared war on the Twisted Blade Sect and left nothing in his wake.
“Oh yeah,” said Sen. “They’re definitely going to come. There will be hordes and waves of the damn things just hurling themselves at the walls. Then, we’ll also have to deal with the flying ones, which will probably blacken the sky there’ll be so many of them—"
There was a sharp intake of breath that brought him up short. Sen wondered if the news had somehow hit harder because he had said it, rather than a parent or a town elder. He glanced at the young man who was visibly shaking. Maybe I shared a little too much information, thought Sen.
“Then, there’s no hope,” said the young man in a muted tone.
“Hope?” asked Sen a little blankly. “Son, hope is for blind dates. Oh, and the lottery.”
***
The sensation of nothing where there had been something before unnerved Sen more than a little, but he couldn’t focus on that. While the technique had killed the waiting fighters and the trailing edge of the fleeing spirit beasts, the bulk of them had managed to get beyond its range. As the darkness of the technique dispersed, Sen did pause to look down at what he had wrought. It was chilling. It was like some great hand had reached down and simply scooped part of the world away. There was a crater-like shape in the land below that stretched out to nearly a quarter mile in every direction from the point of impact. Seeing that destruction drove home to him that mortals were right to fear cultivators, and that cultivators were not truly part of this world. It’s too much power, he thought. How could we ever be anything but visitors in this place?
Shaking off that grim thought, he turned his attention to the spirit beasts that had escaped his initial wrath. Where there had been at least a semblance of order in their retreat before, now it was outright panic. Spirit beasts were scattering in every direction with only one group of perhaps twenty-five moving together. Once again drawing on past experience, Sen began fusing qi types and thrusting them up into the sky. A great mass of cloud, shadow, fire, lightning, metal, and Sen’s own untempered killing intent began to swirl into life. As the technique formed and grew, Sen felt the spirit beasts draw to a stop. He could imagine them looking up at the sky. He could imagine their sense of futility as his killing intent began to permeate the air.
They likely assumed that they would all die. They were wrong. There would be a survivor. This would all be pointless if there wasn’t at least one spirit beast to spread the tale of terror. The technique was starting to gain momentum and life of its own. It all but blotted out the sun for miles in every direction. I’d better use it now, while I still have control over it, thought Sen. He lifted his hand again and brought it down as though he meant to strike the world. All around him, tiny, mewling creatures the color of hate fell from the clouds in a storm of Ruination Kittens. Sen had to avert his gaze as the creatures extended their tiny claws and darted back and forth, savaging… Well, they savaged pretty much everything. The plants, the ground, the spirit beasts, nothing escaped their miniscule wrath.
He shuddered at the sight and muttered, “I’m never letting Ai get a cat.”
***
The world turned white.
If not for his many centuries of advancement and reinforcement, Boulder’s shadow wouldn’t have seen what happened. He wished that he had been struck blind. Iridescent bolts of lightning that felt like they had the touch of divine qi in them fell from the sky by the thousands. One wave. Another. A third. It was as though Lu Sen had conjured his own tribulations for every spirit beast on open ground. Some were burned away entirely. Others were left as charred masses on the ground. Tens of thousands of spirit beasts struck down in the blink of an eye.
A comparative few, perhaps a thousand, had survived the onslaught. None of them were unscathed. They stumbled, scrambled, or simply crawled toward what they foolishly imagined would be the safety of the trees. If they only knew that their brethren in those trees were running for their lives, futile though the effort would be. More lightning fell from the sky. Except, this time, it was black and held the shadow of oblivion. The last spirit beasts in the open were…The only word that Boulder’s Shadow could think of to describe that carnage was unmade. Some part of him wondered if that technique did more than simple kill the body. He couldn’t help but wonder, Is Lu Sen’s wrath so monstrous that he’s destroying their souls?
There was no way to be sure. He desperately hoped that he was imagining it because the aura of that black lightning was just so unsettling. The transformed ghost panther wasn’t one to pray. He had concluded long ago that attracting the attention of the heavens was something that only the deeply unwise would do. On that day, in the shadow of Lu Sen’s massacre, he prayed that it would be enough and that the vengeful boy would let the rest flee. He knew that prayer would go unanswered, but he made it anyway. Then, he felt the shift in the storm. Boulder’s Shadow turned his eyes skyward and tried to make sense of what he was seeing, even as he felt like the eyes of death had passed over him yet again.
The clouds had changed. Overhead the misty shapelessness of the storm had solidified into thousands and thousands of small, black disks. They still gave off that terrible aura oblivious, but he remained baffled about what they were until the voice of Judgement’s Gale rolled across the land.
“Hockey Puck Apocalypse!”
***
Misty Peak nodded as she thought it over.
“We are ideal for that kind of work, but how does that protect us?”
“Before, if you were just working for me, it wouldn’t have. Not beyond whatever fear my name instilled. Now, I’m in charge of everything including the bureaucracy. I can do things like create an organization that gives you an official status. We’ll call it the Bureau of Seed Management or something equally dull. I can also pass laws that make it a monumentally bad decision to kill any of you. Granted, we’ll want to keep it mostly quiet, but accidentally let word slip to the right people, meaning people who might want to make examples of you, that it will mean unmitigated disaster for them.”
“You know that you’ll almost certainly have to follow through on those threats at least a few times, don’t you?”
Sen sighed and said, “I do. I expect that there’s going to be more of that than I’d like in the immediate future. I don’t see a way to avoid it without undermining myself.”
“Well, I guess you’ve hired yourself a bunch of spies.”
“Huzzah,” said Sen without much enthusiasm.
“So, about this spying,” said Misty Peak.
“What about it?”
“Will it involve things like seduction?”
Sen blinked and said, “I have no idea. Maybe. Why?”
“Well, I might have neglected those skills these last few years. You should probably let me practice on you. You know, while we have the chance.”
“Oh, by the thousand hells.”
“You wouldn’t want me to die just because I’m out of practice, would you?” she asked with a smoldering look in her eyes.
Sen just gave her a blank look. He was so tired. Banter was just… It was exhausting. He finally shook his head.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But be quick about it.”
The fox-woman tilted her head to one side and asked, “Seriously?”
“Chop, chop,” said Sen snapping his fingers a few times for emphasis. “We don’t have all day.”
***
This concludes Unintended Cultivator, Volume Ten. Sen and company will return in Unintended Cultivator, Volume 11.
Comments
Eric Dontigney
He summoned a ruination kitten once before. I thought it was a fun callback.
Emily Gurnavage
Ruination Kittens, lol. Didn't Sen summon kittens in at least one previous blooper as well? Love it, lol.
Emily Gurnavage
Tbh, I totally expected a Sesame Street Big Bird as well lol.
BelligerentGnu
https://static.sluggy.com/comics/900/021204d.png.pagespeed.ce.OdNd7D5MYa.png Just something you reminded me of.
Eric Dontigney
Not that I recall.
BelligerentGnu
Also: "He's Big Bird!" said Ai. Sen took in the enormous, yellow, humanoid looking thing. "Hello!" It said. "Would you like to learn about the character 'Plum'?"
BelligerentGnu
Eric, are you a Sluggy Freelance reader?
