"Is there literally anything around here that isn't meat or seems like it's poisonous?" Aki questioned in a murmur, holding a small fruit that looked like a cyan grape on silver chopsticks with carvings on them. He honestly didn't feel like eating in specific, but they were now having tea on one of the emperor's palaces, the architecture of the whole thing even more ridiculous than a western tipe of castle from his point of view.
"We do have pastries, but those are generally only served later. You can ask the servants for it thought." Explained Chang Ying. She'd been rather mortified at the beginning, but seeing as the man in front of her was trying so hard to be considerate despite his power and anger, she decided to also do her best and treat this as a rather stiff negotiation.
He looked at the sole attendant in the room and then instead popped the fruit in his mouth. It was basically a super grape, meaning he hated it. Super pears were incredibly disgusting to his tongue too, but turns out super peaches were delicious, so he relaxed quite a bit. It was one thing to loath your conversational partner, and another to be unprofessional in an already awkward setting.
"No, i'm fine, please keep to your costumes." He turned to tell the maid, who was slightly confused, but he ignored that. "So, your highness, i believe we have began with the wrong foot. I will not be so crass as to say that you did something bothersome, but i do believe you understand why both me and your father emperor remain open to a cooperation at this point now. Whatever you see when you look at me, i assure you, it's likely the very truth of my being or it's surface." He nodded, somehow making the young woman twitch with her whole body. "And while i don't know what you see, i assume it is shaped as a humanoid as it's base. The reason for that is that i do not consider myself a monster in any way, but something others would call monstrous." His explanation, however, made the princess seem enlightened. As if she'd just realised something about her powers.
Both he and the maid had a few bored stare contests and awkward smiles as the young woman seemed to have actually reached some kind of epiphany lasting some fifteen minutes.
"Oh, i am so sorry, it was just..." When she came to herself, the princess seemed lost for words and immediately embarrassed by her lack of manners and such. Any normal cultivator would have been happy for her really, but neither had she advanced in energy quality and quantity nor did Aki much care.
"It's understandable, you have a power you don't fully understand, and i'm honestly not too interested in going in yet another tangent in this conversation." He interrupted, raising a hand as he put more tea on his cup, drinking the equivalent of black tea they had very slowly, which he guessed was a pretty universal action to show he was trying to have his host speak more.
*Cough*
"While i understand we are to have a future cooperations, i need to admit i do not see why you insist in having this meeting between us. From what i understand you will be deployed the next morning, so certainly there are better ways to relax and ready yourself?" She probed, really wishing to get away from the place full of eyes sprouting from the walls.
"You missunderstand princess, you are my last preparation. I need to make sure you won't be whispering terrible truths about how i need to be put down towards his majesty, however i cannot seduce or threaten you, which leaves the resolution of a peaceful negotiation." He said, reigning in his perception, then his hatred, bloodlust and joy, leaving only his will to live. It was hard, and he was guessing at the process, but the princess showed obvious distress and shock. "What do you see now?"
"...A young man with brown hair and eyes, taller than me, full of energy and impatience." She gulped. He was now the tenth 'person' she had actually seen in her whole life, the first to so easily change their form
"Good. Then you should be able to understand princess, i am not JUST a beast. Your power is not absolute" He explained, the young woman seeming to absorb his every word. "There is much i have to offer as a friend and as a person, maybe just as much as a soldier. There are many worth less even in your own court, i am sure you are aware." She was frowning, but he didn't need some kind of skill to know that she was thinking of specific names and faces. "As a token, please, ask away any doubts you may have about the soul while we chat. I am in lack of partners to discuss any normal topics anyway, so we may as well exchange some understanding."
And so she took the bait, eyes practically shining as he demonstrated several of his own theories and helped her with her own.
Aki did not have the luxury of pretending he was a clueless man with amnesia anymore, so he'd use the chance, slowly reveal more details on things he was allowed to say, form an understanding over a story he thought to be true.
He was an entity sent into the body of someone similar to him after their deaths because a higher entity wanted to play with him, so now he had to solve the problems of this former self. This just so happened to coincide with the problems of the royal family because they were the governing body, meaning that extreme caos and/or a revolution were not things they could simply ignore either, specially when it had so many monsters behind it.
Their conversation ended lasting for several hours however, going through the night even as the princess' handmaid tried several times to have the girl go to sleep or attend other duties he quite doubted she actually much cared about.
The result was quite good if Aki could say so himself. While he didn't do anything to make the girl go head over heels for him or the like, the were becoming friendly acquaintances. The important part was that he was influencing one of the royal councilors, because that's obviously what she was, her talent, which he now figured could not be turned 'off', being quite literally perfect for such job if used together with the teachings of a true queen.
Having the same problems as the emperor was a happy coincidence, but he was honestly not stupid enough to believe someone had not pressured the man into recruiting him so they could get rid of him on the battle field, though he doubted they would see the mess he put himself at thanks to the princess anyway, nor did he think the royals in question would simply allow him to remain free, nevermind alive, after things were solved, so he had to make himself seem more scared and desperate to cury favor.
He didn't have either the conditions or time to keep training like a maniac after all, so combat was still the best option, though he had gained four points while in his cell, it was simply incomparable to the ridicule he pushed his body through when fighting an army alone. Luckily he'd kept track of the one opening portals and kept breaking him down until it could only wiggle on the ground in pain as it regenerated. There was no point in allowing monsters to pass through if a true leviathan or god got anywhere near after all, he'd simply die.
And so he should... he should... probably go to bed and relax his brain. His lines of thought were getting more convoluted, and the social interaction had been tiring. He deserved some rest.
*****
*Puck, thuck, thud*
Waking up to his rather reserved quarters and a dead woman he'd just decapitated with his hand, Aki frowned a bit and removed the dagger on his throat, willing his muddled mind to force the blood back on the wound and closing the thing with all his irritation. Turning to the corpse, he stored it and was about to go back to sleep, but he forgot the weapon was obviously poisoned.
Grumbling, the young man got up and held himself againt the wall before lifting one of his legs and cutting his thigh, manipulating his blood to gather the poison before it could kill of him. Storing the black blob that left him, he then allowed the wound to close.
While he may still look rather human, throwing away three or four liters of blood wasn't something very harmful anymore. He was already awake though, and it was hours before his dispatch. Necromancy seemed like a good course to take right about now, even if just to get more information out of the person that'd attacked him. Aki wasn't versed on the craft however, because it was actually just as hard as arcane magic if he wanted to do it right and safe, specially since he didn't have a master.
Luckily he had an unused ring that allowed him to raise undead once a week.
The process was actually quite daunting, his mind waking up as he reinforced it before he had some kind of brain burn or the like. While his only part in the process was theorically to shove energy at the problem, that didn't mean he didn't want to observe a process he'd read so much about in fantasy and fiction. Turns out that the amount of rune work that can be naturally formed was ridiculous for even his mind however.
After he'd made the body reattach the head properly, things went on easily, the soul of a very unrelenting woman quickly being chained down to the ring and him, a pseudo system forming to replace her nerves, musculature, cartilage and such that allowed for movement. When it was done, he felt he could just stop and a basic shade would be raised despite it only costing him fifteen units of mana. So he kept going.
When actual runes he could only interpret as 'shadow' and 'bond' started forming all around, he guessed through some tiring logic jumps that her soul was being linked to her shadow flesh and him with another level of intensity. It cost seventy five points and he didn't stop.
With several meanings being infused into the corpse, he could feel several blood vesels popping in his head, vision going red as the thing in front of him stopped becoming a gelatinous shadow and instead reformed into the same body, this time becoming more and more 'real', independent of the reality around them and instead relying on the realm of shadows. It cost three hundred seventy five points, which he took from the castle, but he didn't stop, slowly looking towards his hand as he could feel the ring becoming strained.
It was not supposed to make anything past the 'third tier'.
Following the math, Aki prepared a thousand, eight hundred and seventy five points for the fourth tier, then he took a lot more to reinforce the ring. If spiritual reinforcement allowed a car to burn through gasoline much more faster and still remain intact, then arcane magic would fucking use whatever it is the system is offering and have his equipment survive the process of evolution.
His mind went numb, he ignored the shadow fetters piercing him and the new shade together, he ignored the veins surging to his paling skin, he just smiled at the small dark band of would be metal, fully focused on integrating the 'golden resplandecense' into it as he forced it to fix itself too, though his intention was mostly on reinforcing and strengthening the whole magic construct that made it special, sight long gone as his eyes had poped on his skull from the mere strain of understanding what lay in front of him.