Rupegia Novel Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu – Part 2

Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu – Part 2

The trip through the urban islands is fairly calm as we spend our ti observing them. The higher class buildings are made out of marble, while the lower class ones are made of concrete. The Chiric architecture style follows minimalism; they prefer to use paint instead of carving details, so most of the houses are either straight-up stone boxes or, at the most, have a slanted roof and a veranda.

Although their shapes are simple, the entire town is a rainbow of color, with each building choosing a different, vibrant color to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. Walls are considered a public canvas, too, so you can see all kinds of art, from abstract, to geotric, to realism, to impressionism, to surrealism, to erotic, to historical, to landscapes, to far-eastern, to portraits, to even what I think are proto-billboards.

"A bit tiring for the eyes," Alissa comnts.

"On Earth, we call that visual pollution," I say.

"Pollution…?" She repeats the word in English and cutely tilts her head.

I guess that's a rather modern use for the word.

"Is there a word for 'contaminating the environnt with sothing bad for living beings'?"

"There's the 'corruption' that the undead cause."

"That sounds too extre. What about the slums? They're dirty, and there's always a bad sll there from feces or trash. They can be 'cleaned' of their dirt, which could be said to be 'pollution.'"

She frowns. "Hm… can't you just use 'filth' or 'trash'?"

"Well, those words have specific connotations. 'Pollution' specifically ans sothing that's dirtying the environnt, but in a more abstract sense so that it includes sothing like this visual pollution or excessive, continuous noise that would disrupt daily life."

"What about 'contamination'?"

"Too much like a disease. You won't get sick from visual pollution, just a little annoyed."

"'Defiling'?"

"Too sexual."

She smiles wryly. "'Soiling'?"

"I guess it could fit… but there's also the connotation about soiling your own pants."

"'Soiling your environnt' does sound similar to 'soiling your pants,'" she says with a cheeky smile.

I shrug. "Heh, I guess this is the closest that we'll get."

The Hollys search the islands for living beings but don't find anything. The towns seem empty of anything interesting to us, too. They look like they've been abandoned for a while since all of their food stocks have rotted away, but there's no overgrowth present, so they feel more like ghost towns instead of abandoned ruins.

Suddenly, a Holly takes damage without anything physically touching her.

Argh… spirits…

I warn the girls and give everyone one point in [Spirit Magic] so that we can all cast [Spirit Eyes], but only Yunia can reliably fight them. I summon four spirit elentals to establish a periter, but I'm not confident in their combat capabilities.

It takes a good while, but we eventually start seeing spirits flying towards us. Their glowing light blue forms have odd shapes, vaguely resembling humanoids. I recognize wings and a goat head on one of them, so I think that they're actual Chiras this ti. We only see a few dozen of them, but their numbers are quickly increasing.

Yunia casts [Spirit Blade] and [Spirit Shield], then a spiritual arm holding a shortsword and another arm holding a large shield grow out of her shoulders. The blade is the only way to safely harm another spirit without the danger of an instant counter, and the shield actually repels spirits, so it's not as simple as it seems. It's possible to fight spirits without spells, but it's like getting into a knife fight, it'll be "bloody" for both sides.

The spirits start to intercept us, waiting for us in the middle of the Looping Winds, but the ship flies too fast for them to catch up to it, so we keep Yunia and the spirit elentals in the front. There, they can deal with any of the spirits that might get on a collision course with us. We have to protect the golems since they're the most vulnerable to spirit damage.

I unassign so of my Physical skill points and put them in [Spirit Magic] instead so that I can use [Spirit Touch] and fend off the spirits that might co our way.

"They aren't humanoids, but they also aren't monsters," Alissa says.

"It would be very creepy if they were humanoids," I respond, and she nods.

After a few minutes, the spirits adapt and begin to accelerate along the sky road. They eventually catch up, and we have to resort to fighting them.

The Chiras' bodies are a mix of body parts from different races, but there's always at least one part of them that's human, and the pairs of limbs always belong to the sa race. Their heads, chests, arms, and legs are all a mix-and-match that seems rather random. I start to see a few patterns though, like: goat head, human torso, ape arms, and bull legs.

Yunia casts [Spirit Link] and starts "talking" with them as she fights. They might not fully comprehend her exact words, but with the spell, they'll at least understand what she ans.

"If you want us gone, then let us pass!" She yells as her spirit arm cuts down a Chiric spirit.

The other girls start randomly casting area spells, which cause a strong enough disturbance to block the spirits from approaching and lightly damage them.

An angry Chira lion/zebra mix enters the left side of the bridge, his arms reaching out for Alissa's head. With my extra arm, I grab his wrist and throw him towards Yunia.

No touch! Those ears are mine!

My will overpowers the spirit's, and it flies away, then sinks past the ship's deck. Spirits can't be "thrown," but you can still "will" them to be thrown if you get a hold on them.

"We're not here to loot anything!" Yunia lies.

The spirit elentals are doing pretty well. The hostile spirits aren't fighting very hard, they're almost like zombies, just trying to grasp and harm our souls. Lina's [Befuddle] and [Demoralize] make them even dumber and slower.

The number of spirits keeps increasing, so we start maneuvering to avoid them because of how slow they are to adapt. The spirits can catch up to us, but they don't last long, and eventually tire out.

"We'll be gone if you let us pass!" Yunia continues trying to reason with them.

As we get more competent in dealing with them, they change their tactics. A glowing, light blue tunnel forms as the spirits start to surround us.

I cast [Discharge] ahead of us, and Yunia raises her sword into the tunnel's ceiling while she charges up her [Spirit Shield]. The spirits are stunned for a second, then they get ripped apart by her sword and blown away by the shield, opening up a hole out of the tunnel.

A spirit cos from below and clutches my right foot. I feel like my skin is getting burned and my bones are getting crushed at the sa ti from its ethereal grip.

I force my spirit arm down, and a naked, spirit "" bends down to grab the spirit's arm. It's a very odd sensation to have so much of my spirit actually "detach" from . I feel like my upper body is naked while getting bitten by the winter wind.

My spirit "" grabs the arm of the spirit, and I squeeze it with all of my strength. The spirit yells in anger and pain as its arm becos blurry and loses cohesion, releasing my foot.

Now free from the spirit's grip, I throw it to Yunia again, and she cuts it in half with her [Spirit Blade]. I imdiately use my spirit arm to grab my wounded leg and gently massage it, helping it heal.

"Fuck this!" I yell, then we pull the ship up out of the Looping Winds and quickly fly upwards.

The spirits all continue forward and slowly try to stop, bunching up into a sea of blue far ahead of us. The spirits that were getting left behind have enough ti to veer upwards, but they're already exhausted and don't manage to get close enough to us to matter.

Then we slowly level off the ship a few hundred ters above the Looping Winds.

Once the glowing blue sea below us is left behind, we point the ship down, straighten out the wings, and fly downwards.

We quickly reach terminal velocity, so I deactivate the ship's power.

Then [Piloting] triggers, so we slowly level off the ship again, gliding forward at full speed. We level out when we enter the Looping Winds, so I tilt the wings downwards again, using the sky river to push us forward.

The sea of spirits resus chasing after us, and when they start to encircle us again, I repeat the maneuver.

"Deal with this, suckers!" I cheer and laugh.

After a few of these maneuvers, we spot the largest urban island that we've ever seen ahead of us. It's a huge and imposing conical hill, entirely covered with colorful square house after colorful square house.

At various parts of the town, the Holly scouting it sees hanging piers where small delta wing aircraft are parked. There's even a large blimp.

"That looks ominous," Roxanne says through [Bind].

"If you have the ti to admire the environnt, then you can fight harder," Alissa chastises her.

"He~y…! I'm just firing [Firestorm] at random, I don't even need to aim!" Roxanne moans in response.

"Hmph…"

A few minutes later, Roxanne's words echo in my mind as the Holly scouting ahead sees movent on the huge, mountainous island, but this ti, they aren't spirits, they're real Chiras.

She sees the usual bustle of everyday life inside a mountain town with people flying up and down the levels all the ti. The Chiras seem to have an aversion to clothing, preferring to leave their large, toned, delicious bodies exposed for all to see.

In a small green space, a couple of male Chiras enjoy jerking each other off in public, and a group of young-looking female Chiras watches them intently while giggling. In another green space, the Holly finds a bull-horse man with a huge horse cock pounding the shit out of a small, cat-bird woman, also in public, and then the inverse pairing is seen a few ters away from them.

It seems that the Chiras enjoy exposing themselves more than the elves, and have sex in public more than the beastfolk. This could be an interesting town.

Soon after, a Holly scouting down the Looping Winds detects twenty unidentified bogies flying towards us. Suddenly, multiple blue beams of light burst out from them and hit the spirits behind us. From the mana signature of the spell, I think that it's probably a spirit version of [Beam].

The super-long beams of light last for around twenty seconds, and when they snuff out, huge holes are left in the sea of spirits chasing behind us. The girls look warily towards the source of the beams. They fired towards us from such a long distance that even I didn't see it coming.

Then the Holly finally identifies them. The twenty bogies are Chiras clad in glowing white armor and ard with golden spears just like Ciel's. With their white wings, they look like angels that ca to save us.

The [Spirit Beam]s fire off a few more tis, leaving only a handful of light blue clumps of spirits.

"Actual Chiras are coming!" I yell.

"What?! Humanoids?!" Ciel exclaims, confused.

"I don't think so. They could be monsters, or they might be constructs of the dungeon," Yunia says.

"Using a part of the Core is one thing, but how can it make so many Chiras?" I question.

Ciel's expression becos somber, and she shares a look with Yunia, who sighs and nods. "[Trap Soul]," Ciel says.

Lina's Trivia: One of the few system spells banned by the temple, this level seventy spell traps a soul inside sothing, generally a gem. This prevents a spirit from reincarnating, so it's considered a Wicked thing to do, leading to its ban, but even before the empire, using this spell was frowned upon.

"But they look like they're made of flesh," I say.

"Your custom [Materialization] spell isn't exactly novel," Yunia says.

"Gih!" Gify agrees.

"Well, then… we'll see what Alissa's senses say once they get closer," I say, and Alissa nods.

The girls get ready on the deck to receive our winged guests, forming a line in front of the bridge's tower. I unsummon the spirit elentals and summon five wind elentals. The nearly naked green Alissas blow

kisses, then turn serious and glare at the glowing angels coming our way.

With our preparations complete, we all bite the bullet and use [Redirect Mana] to top off our MP.

I pull us out of the Looping Winds and park the ship in the sky. The Chiras lower their glaives, pointing their blades downwards, in what I assu is a non-aggression gesture.

A minute or so later, five armored Chiras stop in front of the ship while the rest of them surround us.

They're each over two ters tall and as buff as a bull. Their long, vertical horns peek out from under their closed helts, leading

to believe that they're all either a bull or a goat mix. Those horns look a bit impractical, though.

The one in the middle has a long golden plu affixed to their helt, so I assu that they're the leader.

"They aren't humanoids or monsters," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Their Threads of Fate have been cut, they aren't alive. They're so sort of spirit," Yunia whispers to Hana, who relays the information to the others and Ciel.

So, it is [Trap Soul], then.

They slowly float down to the deck, their large wings spread wide and their glaives still pointing down. Their glowing white armor makes them look truly divine. Then they land, and the plud Chira lifts their visor.

I see a long face of a black bull staring at us intently with its blood-red eyes, then they say in a strong, female voice that resounds through the air, "Tonu kia rere whakamua."

"Uh… we don't speak your language," Yunia says, then repeats it in Ingua.

"Go, fly," The horned cow lady says in Andraste, with a heavy accent.

I hurriedly put on so points in [Reo Language].

"Sorry, can you repeat that?" I ask in Reo.

The leader snorts, then says, "E rere tonu."

"I think she wants us to keep flying forward," I say through [Bind].

"Let's do it slowly," Alissa suggests.

We gently push the levers again and aim the ship towards the Looping Winds.

"Tere! Tere!" The leader yells in an impatient tone.

She wants us to go faster.

We re-enter the sky river and increase our speed to the max. The leader looks at the wings tilting down, then smiles in satisfaction, showing pearly white teeth. Her four bodyguards remain unmoving, and the Chiras surrounding us follow the ship.

I look back and understand why she wanted us to fly: the spirits were catching up.

I finish putting enough points in Reo just as the cow lady speaks again.

"Who are you guys?" She asks in a demanding tone.

"We are adventurers, explorers," I reply.

She narrows her eyes in confusion and chews on sothing as she thinks. "Why would you co here?" She questions.

"What's the problem?" I return the question.

"Passing through wild Looping Winds with a cargo ship is insanity!"

"So, they don't know that they're inside a dungeon," I say to the girls.

"Sohow, the Dungeon Master trapped these spirits here," Alissa says.

"Well, we did go through quite a lot," I say and give the cow woman a stiff smile.

"Lina, tell

everything you know about the Broken Skies," I hurriedly say through [Bind].

The woman stares at

in disbelief, then she sighs and facepalms. She quickly regains her composure, and her expression becos stern. "What's your na, human pilot?"

"Wolf Ryder, and these are all my wives," I respond with a proud smile.

She eyes Aoi, who's gripping her tal halberd and shield, and the golems in confusion, then her mask almost slips. "I'm Oritiki, platoon commander of the Celestial Horns," she says, managing to keep a serious tone.

The girls also introduce themselves, but the bodyguards don't say a word.

"'Celestial' was commonly used before the first emperor Ascended. They must be from before the empire," Lina says.

"From the sa ti as God-King Arreira," I respond, and feel her nod.

"So, Da Oritiki, I assu that that island is your ho?" I ask and point to the huge island ahead of us.

She nods solemnly. "Exactly. That's our ho, Whakamutu Mutu. I firmly request that you land there and wait in port while I talk to High Command. I apologize if we seem rude, but it's been such a long ti since we've had any visitors that we've never been trained in how to treat you."

"How about with love and perhaps so snu snu?" I joke in my soul space and get a few chuckles in response.

"I can understand your references better through [Bind]," Alissa says.

"Well, in any case, we're just travelers, and we have our own supplies. We won't bother anyone if you prefer that we continue on our journey," I say with a cordial tone.

She shakes her head, "We've been isolated from the rest of our nation for a generation already. It'd be foolish of us to send away the first visitor we receive with news from the outside."

She makes a signal with her hand, and her bodyguards store their glaives inside their [Item Box]es, then they all take off their helts. We see three cows/bulls and two goats. Their fur colors and patterns are quite varied. I see Oritiki's pure black, a brown bovine, a white goat, a blue goat, and a white bovine with black spots.

With a nod from , the girls also relax and store their weapons, then we all remove our helts. The elentals relax and start to curiously look around, drawn to the glowing angels flying around us.

"I'll give everyone a few points in [Reo Language] so that we can understand each other a little better," I say to the girls. Hana and Yunia don't have enough spare points to fully learn Reo, so they'll talk through the others.

"Why are you isolated?" Lina asks.

Oritiki frowns, and the faces of her bodyguards twitch. Her voice softens a little as it gains a note of sadness, "Ever since the Petrification Calamity, the Looping Winds have gone out of control and the islands all around us have been overrun with monsters and elentals. We've gathered a few farm islands, but we still don't have the population to reclaim any more of them."

"Petrification Event?" Ciel asks.

Oritiki is taken aback, and her voice gains a tinge of bewildernt as she asks, "Haven't you land-dwellers ever heard about our nation? Has the tragedy of the death of millions gone unnoticed by the rest of the realm?"

"A-apologies," Lina imdiately responds and hastily bows. "W-we aren't scholars, but by nation, do you an the Ranta… gauhina… nation?"

"Rangatuhinga o mua Hauhuri," a brown bull bodyguard corrects her, a little offended that she butchered the na so badly.

"So you've heard of us?" Oritiki solemnly asks.

"That's the nation that fell to the Symbol of Envy," Lina says in my soul space.

"Oh, right!" I exclaim, taking the intense gaze of the Chiras away from my shy little Lina. "We've heard about your nation. We just didn't know what exactly happened to it."

"Neither do we…" Oritiki admits, and the Chiras all look down in sadness.

"We've heard that the High Forest aids the Sky Lands with expeditions to Ranga, but we don't know much else," Ciel tactfully relays Yunia's words.

"Sky Lands?" Oritiki questions.

"The Chiric lands closest to the Gillios Continent," Lina answers.

"Ah, you an the Lower Frontier… Well, at least sothing survived, and yet, a rchant ship is the first to find us…" Oritiki comnts with a little suspicion.

"We've had a lot of luck in getting through the storms, then we found a Looping Winds Station and managed to get it running again," I say.

"So, you're the ones who reactivated this Looping Winds?"

We all nod.

"Where does it lead?"

"Ozymandias. We saw nurous references to it within the surviving records at the Station, so we chose that as the next target for our expedition," I answer.

She holds her chin and nods in thought as she looks away. "That's a town beyond Void's End…"-

Wait, town? All we saw in the Scanner was a vertical disk.

-"but now that the Looping Winds is active, you have a chance of crossing it if you've set the anchors correctly. Your only problem will be getting past the Gaping Maw." She returns her gaze to us and pays attention to our reactions.

"Gaping Maw…? You an the ginormous sky serpent that makes this boat look like an ant?" I question.

She nods, seeming rather amused by my description. "Exactly. The Symbol of Gluttony, the Gaping Maw. An Aberrant Cloud Snake that eats islands."

We go quiet, feeling a little apprehensive at the na of the monster. Our encounters with anything nad as a Symbol have never been easy. Even Yunia, who's never t any wild Symbols or Aberrants, knows what these two words combined must represent.

Oritiki chuckles, then she smiles at us as she says, "Well, you've traversed the wild Looping Winds in a cargo ship, reclaid an abandoned Station, and managed to outrun the Vengeful Spirits. I'll be eagerly waiting to see how you deal with that one."

Announcent

Hall of Fa of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their nas sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their nas are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew yers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Pe??a Goz.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.