Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1149: Resolutions



The nerve...

Replicus was quite triggered.

One would have thought that seeing the picturesque view of Aigas' likeness activated again would have pleased the Nullmancer, but it did not, not after the verbal exchange he had had with Suzamete. While bathed in the replenishing Ju`wtte of [Ju`wtta Resounding

Restoration], he gave out a deep sigh to relax himself.

It almost seemed repulsive to Replicus that he had considered talking to the Sky Deitess about repairing Aigas before she and her minions quickly appeared on the scene. In order to save

Yuyui and the others, he had been willing to stomach Suzamete's arrogance.

"Thank goodness I didn't have to..." Replicus said aloud.

Serenity kept looking where the crack in space had been and she scoffed.

"Indeed," she said.

Ju`wtte streaked from Replicus' Ju`wtta and created a thick sled under his feet which whisked him away at tremendous speed towards Edagon. Serenity followed sharply after him. On the way, Replicus checked to make sure if everything was back to normal, and it seemed so. All the Rules that gathered to ensure that Aigas wasn't some black space cordoned off from the real Void, had been repaired and the flow of time and all its other complements was freshly renewed.

This was reassuring, but Replicus didn't relax just yet.

He soon reached Edagon and his sights immediately hurtled towards where he had last seen the battle between Benzard, Yuyui and the BoneTender. There, he only noticed two figures above the mountain where the shrine Sause had used as a ruse was.

His eyes quickly scanned the nearby surroundings and then...

"There!"

Replicus instantly darted down as a thick, yellowish-red lightning bolt to the ground, landing a few dozen meters away from two figures... or perhaps three?

With shocking speed, and a blaze that consistently coated him - healing him - and assaulted the surroundings with so much violence that Replicus immediately leapt up to float back in the sky so as to not harm or kill the individuals he was looking towards, the Progeny approached.

"Master!" Yuyui screamed over the shrieking and cackling of Ju`wtte, looking at Replicus with a semi-pleased face. She motioned towards something in her arms.

Replicus looked at her intently and then stared at what she was holding.

It was a soul. It was Stylla's soul.

"Beyrmir."

At the call, the Mercurian Long-Snout, understanding its master's intent, manifested a massive section of its scaled, scorching torso. It drooped from Replicus like a large water droplet and sagged before Yuyui. A great scale on it opened, revealing a solemn, vast space beyond it. Serenity descended and floated beside Yuyui.

Yuyui couldn't see the femininely-shaped flame, and she also couldn't feel her reach in to touch her hands and softly scoop up Stylla's soul.

At first, Yuyui was alarmed, but she quickly relaxed after seeing - or rather noticing - that Replicus didn't react in a hostile fashion. This must have been his doing then.

Stylla's soul was ushered into Beyrmir's Storage Unit by Serenity and soon, the scale acting as a door to the space closed in on it.

It was strange how soul extraction worked in Aigas.

Once a soul lost a body, how long it took for it to dissipate depended on the strength and awareness of its user as well as outside factors influencing it.

However, there was also a Rule that dictated that all souls liberated after the destruction of their body - a common death - were to be sent to the Yormuness.

Curiously, what tied these two circumstances together, making them make sense in their relevant contexts, was a simple fact - possession.

Barring individuals like Actuass who didn't really belong to Aigas in the first place, and thus were exempt from a one-way trip to the Yormuness after death, those who did - even if they had no awareness of their soul whatsoever - could suspend their sentence to the Yormuness if they were cradled by another powerful individual with powers that could handle the soul.

Yuyui's knowledge and appreciation of the soul because of recent events, for instance, allowed for Stylla's soul to remain on Aigas for a short while.

Of course, this possession didn't last forever, but in this case, Serenity taking Stylla and giving her to Beyrmir changed the Bryne Family heiress' fate.

After safely stowing away Stylla's soul, Beyrmir returned to his master who then spoke to Yuyui.

"I'm glad I could count on you for this, Yuyui," Replicus said from the livid lightning. Yuyui beamed.

It felt good for her to hear these words from Replicus. She had expressed her concern about allowing Stylla to be stolen from her by the BoneTender after all. Now, she felt as though as she had redeemed herself and the greatest reward she could get was receiving Replicus' reassurance and gratitude.

She nodded at her master, but her smile seemed to dim.

"Master!" she yelled over the noise. "That thing... the fake... I... I don't know where he is! He just disappeared out of nowhere!"

Replicus narrowed his eyes.

"I see," he said quietly.

It seemed to him that the shattering of Rules didn't quite register with Yuyui and Benzard. As he suspected, the Bone Tender was not affected by the effects of Caxellac's Serene Grace, likely because he was not sustained by the Rules that made up Aigas like Replicus. So, when the Rules were forcibly broken, he was not unravelled like the rest and when they were wound again into their original shapes, they found him gone.

The BoneTender had escaped.

However...

"Skullius," Serenity called out to the Warmoth's Progeny and she pointed in a certain direction.

At once, Replicus stormed where she pointed.

Serenity had just shown him towards where the BoneTender was. He didn't seem to have cast himself far.

Soon enough, Replicus was floating over the long, robed figure. He was slouched against a large rock, his glowing ball of a head facing the direction Replicus had come from after the

Rules had been mended.

There was a sigh of resignation from the figure.

"You are here..." he said, and his head seemed to scroll around Replicus, "Yet she is not. I

really mean very little to her, don't I?"

Indeed, Serenity had not followed after Replicus.

The Warmoth's Progeny said nothing to the BoneTender's sulking.

He instead focused on the long robes of the BoneTender. They were fragmenting,

disappearing little by little.

"You prevailed even against the Null Devil King. Hmph. I would never have guessed. I truly believed you were nothing more than an unworthy replacement when we first met. You've gone out of your way to prove me wrong," the BoneTender said bitterly.

Again, Replicus said nothing.

As the robes of the BoneTender disappeared little by little, replaced by something else, he realised that the moment the BoneTender had been expelled from Caxellac's body, he had

been finished.

The reason he had bothered to summon the Null Devil King to Aigas and take his body was so that he could delay his inevitable transformation back into what originally stood in his place. And now, the great figure of the Null Terror vanished, and in its place, the body of Replicus' second Apostle showed itself; it had once again been returned to its master.