Monarch of Darkness, Arsene

She fell into my arms, her expression so flushed and bashful, carrying such intensity, I felt my willpower temper by chaos cycles, battle, torture, and the Abyss stir. “I haven’t seen you so assertive, so calm, even when faced with a being who could kill you with a snap.” She stopped, her pupils contracting and expanding so much they began to distort like water without a container. “Sene… Lili wants you to fuck her so hard you break her. So hard that Lili will need a wheelchair just to stand with her broken pussy for the years to come. Devour me.”

“My-My-My!” An aged voice suddenly came as a cinnamon-skinned elder staggered forward on a cane. Hair a disheveled ashen, with eyes hollowed by time. Her wrinkled skin was like aged plastic, tender and weak. Yet there was an unmistakable smile plastered over her face. “Y’all two are nasty. Especially you, young woman. In all my eighty-two years, Why I’ve never heard such a vulgar thing? Not even within closed doors, yet… Young Woman. Have you no shame?”

“But… But…” Lilith said, blushing so hard I could visibly see steam.

“Awe, to be young. Young woman, at least have the decency to pull your man away in private. And show him rather than tell him.” She said, arching her lips. “Not to mention, aren’t you pregnant? I know it’s none of my business, but please be careful. Now… Eh? What was I… Oh, Hello. Where’d you two come from?”

Huh?

“Young people today shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the street.” The old woman said in a scolding tone. “Care to move aside for an old woman?”

We did, silently watching as she made her way past us. Lilith suddenly reached out and tapped her on the head, smiling as she pulled me away.

“You cured her dementia? I’ve never seen you so warm towards another that wasn’t me.” I expressed, running my fingers through her hair and over her ear. She smiled.

“I… my reward to her, for her wisdom. It seems … while her mind has taken her, her wisdom seemed to have deepened.”

… Deepened, eh?

I turned, taking one last glance as her image faded when Tenebrae’s influx of infinite knowledge suddenly awakened something within my soul.

“She seems happy… for all its worth. What a horrid way to go. A truly bad deal.”

… Deal…

“Sene, are you… your nose.”

Something clicked within me, and my eyes just glowed as I stared down at Lilith, wiping away my blood. “Hey… What would happen if… I set limitations on myself?”

“You’re going to have to explain a little more.” She remarked.

“A deal… a contract. If, let’s say, I was to reforge my techniques, what would happen if I restricted various concepts? Like… My attacks never hurt a mortal or nature. But rather, it kills Gods.”

Lilith lowered her palm, gripping a bloodstained handkerchief she’d created out of thin air, and stared at me strangely. “I don’t think that form of combat is for you. It’s more of Mephisto’s fighting style.”

Scarlet liquid continued down my nose as my mind entered a different sort… of enlightenment. This one felt cold, harder than the previous ones. Almost like this knowledge I was coveting was too dangerous.

“Lilith.” I sternly said. It was rare I ever asked for help from Lilith, but… I was on to something. I was onto something that could change everything.

Hesitation spang over her amethyst eyes as she glanced around.” fine. Do you remember what the mirrored world is?”

I nodded. It was a high-level domain Monsters like myself used in order not to destroy the universe around us without anything happening in the real world. It was a simple spell.

“I call it Spatial Isolation, but my point. How can one barrier withstand two monsters like you and me if we fought? It’s a low-level spell. No hiding that. But my point is, how does this work?”

She was right. Then again, a loss of spells indirectly draws power from concepts I don’t even know about, like darkness. That comes from Tene.

“Tell me.” I hungrily demanded.

“When you make a Spatial Isolation Barrier, you essentially forge a temporary contract with the God of Order and Chaos, Zariel, if you didn’t know. It’s used to keep the chaos in check. You see the contradiction, don’t you? Order and chaos don’t mix, but both of them grant power.”

“But I’ve seen those barriers break before,” I told her, standing in some eerie alleyway.

“Nothing is perfect, and it’s based on a scale of your power. But the more parameters you set. The stronger they become. So let’s say you focus your power on killing only Gods and Gods alone. You might double your power.” She said, sending waves of excitement jumping off my skin. “Think about it. Not only will your attack be more focused in every regard, but the Qi you use will be so condensed to a level beyond anything you could imagine.”

“How! Is Zariels power so…”

“It’s not his power, and Zariel can’t stop those from using this ability. OK, with the Weave, he could. But any other God of Order would be defenseless to stop what you are doing or anyone else. Arsene, you got to understand. You are not a Dao. They can be integrated into your being. You could create one. But you aren’t one. There are still things that even I don’t understand about Dao. But we can still keep making it stronger and Stronger.”

My arms grew folded. “So creating these simple changes. I could increase my power without actually increasing it?” 𝘣𝘦𝘥𝑛𝘰𝘷𝘦𝑙．𝘯𝘦𝘵

“Yes. But it’s a tricky thing. The more you sacrifice, the stronger your attack will get. But it comes at a risk. If you don’t optimize it per battle, your attack might backfire and get you killed if you’re fighting people above your level. This little technique is used daily, allowing lowly gods or mortals to fight one another on equal terms. Techniques are forged out of them. A good example is using a sword to cut through paper. They say you can cut through anything if your razor-sharp sword fails to sever the paper in half.

I lowkey feel that was in an anime. But what Lilith says does make sense. But I understand the drawbacks pretty well. And I now know why few people ever master techniques like Ren-Shii…. It requires a little something else. Does that mean… Mephisto has created techniques based on everyone’s weaknesses and strengths.