Stopping the blade between his knee and elbow, crimson fire infiltrated the structure of the sword, spreading cracks in its physical body and damaging it's enchantments to the point of uselessness.
As the sword emperor let go of the third broken sword, he frowned and took a holy sword, a piece of orichalcum sharpened and blessed by the gods. He didn't know which dark god these people served, but they were clearly sent to mess with him.
A space mage able to dodge his attacks and teleport him away and a martial artist capable of deflecting his swords while regenerating any damage he might cause. Both should have been characters he'd know of, yet these two didn't match the description of any powerhouse he could think of.
Worst, it seemed like the man in front if him was learning his sword stiles and getting better at each exchange.
Just how long had these attacks been planned for? He didn't know, but it'd not matter for long.
*****
Aki couldn't stop his grin from under his mask while seeing the futile efforts of his enemy. While he didn't have any god's sacred protection or the like, holy magic would cause almost no damage to him, nevermind in a situation like this. Had the man taken out a fell sword instead, he might've had a chance to cause damage, but then he'd also be beaten black and blue.
It was then, however, that he felt that everything was coming into place. His new dungeon had been born for a while now, but he'd not received the all clear report. That was a good sign, because he'd made sure the centurion understood that he should only send any message to him in case of extreme danger to the mission.
No, he was refering to the trap the other S-rank guy had set up for him. As someone that usually played main or sup tanker, he was quite experienced in disruption tactics.
Taking out a grand sword he'd forged himself, Aki threw it at the ground with enough force to sheath it's whole blade in the dirt, damaging the blade and creating a crater as he broke the delicate work of the sealing technic that'd been hidden from him, the curse on the thing flaring and setting the great magical construct aflame with a black fire and making a man far away spit blood as he suffered the backlash of stopping such spell to escape whatever the ominous thing reaching for the source of the magic it'd come in contact with, him.
Even as he bled from all eight holes, the man still rolled on the ground, dodging a kick to the head as the battle moved to his location while beginning to try and heal himself with no-attribute magic.
At the same time as the sword emperor came to the mountain peek, a big and screaming man fell towards Aki, who'd been standing still in front of the two middle aged man.
Instead of just tanking it, he changed places with the swordman at the last moment, kicking the mage on the side after breaking his barriers. His companions were just a moment too late to save the man from entering an inventory space, his body, mana signature and soul disappearing.
Doing his best villainous smile, Aki took the moment of shock of his opponents to pass through a portal and disappear.
Now inside a dungeon he'd owned, it was easy to take out the dying mage who barely survived the vacuum and latch him full of manacles. While it may have seemed like an effortless endeavour, someone with lesser soul strength would be screaming on the ground, the pain of the attacks from inside his inventory worse than being repeatedly stabbed for hours.
His opponent was also quite impressive however. Being in a place like that was similar to exiting a planet. There was no heat, light or sound but himself, plus the mana problem. Without an irradiating star around there was hardly any ether in actual space, though that would also kill most mages for a different reason, the inventory actively sucked his mana to fill itself.
The man was basically hemorrhaging in every way possible if you consider his lungs would have ruptured had he tried to breath the void in there.
The technic would not work on enemies that were both magically and phisically strong, like dragons or some species of demons, but otherwise, there was no real way to survive and get out.
Teleporting the grizzled wizard to Duran, Aki went back to the insides of the factory. Seeing there was almost no one remaining, he nodded to the orc centurion and appeared outside the factory, stoping a sword chop between his hands and lighting the holy sword on fire. The serious looking old man with curly brown hair didn't let it go though.
Instead he pushed forward as his arms burned inside his armor, fighting over each centimeter to reach the skull of his enemy. There was a sudden boom and suddenly there was no more resistance, a decepated arm all that remained in front of him as he had to hurriedly dash away as well so as to avoid his ally's charge.
While the 'Moving fortress' wasn't completely helpless on the air and could change direction, but he wasn't so good as to completely redirect his force when so absurdly close. Being relatively famous for being so silent even though he was a hulking metal wall suddenly wasn't as good a thing though.
Both dodged successfully, but when they saw their enemy back above the factory, they had a bad feeling.
As Aki disappeared again, the screams began, leaving the two old man to deal with the undead horde and blight exploding out of nowhere.
*****
Finally finishing his last task over dealing with the new refugees, Jackass was quite happy over having caused so much trouble that the enemy's heavy hitters only reached his operation on the second to last factory. Though he'd not believed the rumors over their party's ranger being dead, he certainly didn't expect her to instantly defect upon seeing him either, basically screaming her reluctance at working this job against something so dangerous again.
I'd been surprising that the woman had actually avoided capture without looking back once, but the S-rank rogue was too much of a pain to let him do as he pleased and just as slippery. After the first encounter where they were basically crushed, the men had pulled off all stops and although they were cursing their fleeing team mate, they still kept their distance and slowly pulled one dangerous move after the other, even decapitating their enemy once, which actually ended with the rogue getting a cursed bruise to the spine that basically paralysed the old man while sending immense pain through his body when he tried to move.
Aki himself didn't actually have any kind of break down over questioning his humanity at this point, in fact happy to disassociate himself and get 'critical resistance' tested.
One might have already noticed at this point that he had avoided killing the sword emperor and any of his party members, since with his magical abilities it'd not matter how good they actually were, they'd fall for a surprise or the other at one point.
This could be boiled down to two reasons.
Besides being the military backbone of the nation, all but the ranger had the highest responsibilities in managing the country, so just killing them was not the best idea. The mage himself was the minister of magical development, responsible for locking himself up and researching, so no real damage there, but otherwise...
And two, now that there was a huge undead area in the country while all their powerhouses were weakened, they could not avoid a crusade led by an S-rank mage who had a reputation of being a pious believer of Ark's justice, allowing Aki to directly infiltrate the country which normally kept people out of their borders and sow doubts on the minds of those living under what was essentially fantasy nazism.
The second great war didn't end just because Hitler was killed, but also because the main pillar of the nazifacism was forced into suicide after an overwhelming take down of both their own territory and that of their allies, an army hell bent on taking him down at his doorstep.
The people he rescued on the other hand, were in quite the opposite situation however.
While it was sad that so many had died for so long, but it was certainly a much better result than if those he'd saved were a closed doors population bred for under a rule of internal strife. It was also reassuring knowing that great part of whatever profit they made with mana batteries and enchanting spells were fueled back into obtaining more slaves to keep the production at demand.
Considering the empire was the place that exported enchanted goods the most, there was just no knowing what they'd have done with the funds if they'd succeeded in implementing a better method to acquire resources.
Looking at the long line of people registering themselves after eating, Aki couldn't help but wonder what he would have achieved with the tens of thousands of batteries and specialized facilities.
Sighing, he quickly cut that line of thought. He'd never do something like that unless he was extremely helpless, finding no other way. Even if he somehow found a technique to delay the soul strain, it'd still be there, and he'd be forcing fate worse than death upon innocent people. It was better to keep to those that deserved it.
A hundred dammed would not be missed on the 'realm keeping efforts'.
This was exactly the kind of practice that everyone considered a heinous crime. Thousands of souls being burdened like that was bound to cause trouble for everyone later on. Even breaking souls would cause less damage to the system itself, though it was even more frowned upon for several reasons involving politics.
With some luck, these people would all come to be guided by him. Their numbers were certainly good enough, so letting them just waste away would be just sad, and he didn't really know how many years they would take to recover by themselves.
Taking out a guqin, Aki decided he shouldn't be thinking too much into these things. He was already doing his best anyway. Looking at the pitch black instrument with the silver strings, he picked a song and as he was about to begin singing, he looked up. One song wouldn't be nearly enough.
He'd already sitten on a bench some time ago, not much to do before enough of a crowd was gathered, so as he leaned against a building's wall, he could only breath in deeply and slowly let it out as he started to think more on the subject. His wives would be there. His daughters would be there. Yet he was stuck with ussing the white scerimonial kimono and fox mask because of his own ideas.
Songs he always wanted to sing. Words he wanted to say. Feelings he wanted to gift. Focusing his magic he tried to start again.
As his claw tipped glove stroked the line, his palms began to flow, a graceful sound reverberated through the block and the people in it, getting the attention of almost everyone as the complex melody of several instruments filled the whole central square.
Bass, guitar, electric piano and Guqin, he played all four through a combination of mana and wave manipulation, no cords needing to be thuned as the the hands playing the instrument simply did one thing each, the sound produced multiplied and amplified till a band would seem to be playing.
Not like Aki knew how to play any of those instruments, so why not do it the hard way and invent magic for it? Not like it'd be any less fun. Imagine his surprise when the system told him he was the creator of a new skill, {Bardic magic}?
He quickly recovered by telling himself that he'd likely been the first on the planet to have integrated the skill into a way that the system could reconise and support. There were as many schools of magic as there were stars after all, so he could only be happy to be the connection of this planet to the skill, the unique skill granted already being enough of a reward.
His music had not stopped during the internal debate, but it was time to start singing, so he did exactly that.
He sang of how he'd be there for them, how he'd love them if allowed, and of how it was all going to be alright. Simple concepts for all, but each one taken to the extreme and allowed to wreak havoc in the hearts and minds of the listeners, the resonating feeling of familiarity and honesty in those words too much for the the ussualy sullen souls of the former captives, the influence of the Guider seeping in bit by bit as they listened.