“I fear I ot do exactly what you wish, but… There is an option. It will entail not just a graft, but also further brain surgery, and it likely will not allow you to simply ehat state at will. If I were to guess, it will make it easier to enter and maintain it,” the grafter said.
“There’s a catch. What is it?” Krahe asked.
Firminus smiled.
“We don’t have the parts,” he shrugged. “The truth is, I was not able to ceive of a mao directly trigger your bat trance. I only pared it with past graft-saints who had simir abilities and looked at the grafts they had. What you want will likely have to be sourced from a particur soulbeast, and will likely be something like an adrenal gnd. Finding and killing the right beast is the first step, and there is no guarahat it will have the exact an you need based on its known abilities. You will need an individual with strong soulbeast appraisal abilities, both of the system and non-system sort. Once you do have the an, it will be up to me to somehow cut it down to size and fashion the necessary trol unit. At least you have an easy and clear goal now, no?”
He tossed her a memste. Krahe loaded it up and looked through it. There was no siype of soulbeast. It, in fact, recorded numerous distinct soulbeasts, all sharing some simirities, especially the fact they had been sin and used for parts by a graft-saint some time i 400 or so years. It also taihe exact locations where those beasts had been found and a colle of intel on how exactly one would go about trag down a soulbeast and the procedures of a hunt. Optioailed paying a rao track down a beast within the rancher’s territory, which was expensive and would often involve forfeiting most of the materials to the rancher as part of the payment. However, it guarahat you would only have to fight the beast, and would thus be in peak ditio came down to the fight. The alternative was to go directly to the Beyond Frontier. In the case of the Beyond Frontier, it was undeveloped wilderness, and trag a soulbeast was a matter of one’s own skills, hiring a tracker, joining a hunting caravan, or any of many other options.
Owenty-fourth day of the seonth, her Tsetse-pattern duit lines arrived, and the operation proceeded without any further dey. They resembled an anic version of typical syierve fibre repts, with tral duits and sub-duits brang off. Only her left arm was left unmodified.
Finally, finally, she could harhe Atomica’s full output without it tearing her apart from the inside. And the moment she did, the moment she unleashed that power, the moment Lasher’s gossamer-threads ripped into a target dummy, she felt it click. The Atomica’s immeput surged through her, spiraling through her duits. A single cast left a five-pronged spiral embedded in the supernaturally resilient wood making up the dummy. For the first time in actual reality, she went through the full kata she had watched engram-Sauer perform so many times, that she had herself replicated in the dream. Until now, Afterburner had been out of her grasp — Anathema’s unique properties simply couldn’t facilitate it. But now that she had full reign of the Atomica, it came to her like sed nature. Without Razormind it was demanding, that was true, but it didn’t matter in Krahe’s head.
Three days ter, the green-eyed demon would desd upon Audunpoint once again.
Bd.
That name, once a newly-spreading myth, had grown into a true urban legend over the st two months.
It was known that, following the Sughterhouse 9 I, Semzar Hashem had made a great effort to hunt her down, pg a substantal bounty on her head and even hiring her than Crest Jezail, twice.
And then, before the month was out, Semzar was dead. Sughtered in the middle of a ba, right in the middle of the Mirzaii Subdistrict. The survivors of that iold the tale openly, throwing gasoline-soaked logs onto the fire with their exaggerated ats.
The church readily spread rumors about the direvolvement of an inquisitor, whose activity iy following the raid spun the rumor mill even faster.
And if that were not suffit, Brizogia Rasug al-Imuzat, an administrator of the Silverswend the owner of Mirzaii 2, lodged a formal pint with the church for damage to the property, demandiution. The church, iurn, demanded proof that whomever rehe mansion didn’t know it was beied to Semzar Hashem, which smothered the case in the crib.
One survivor in particur, a man with a pretentious mustache and yellow graft-eyes too small for their sockets, built upon the urban lege further. He insistently cimed that Bd just had to be some veteran upper-mid-ranker, if not higher, merely using lower-order equipment for some unknown reason — in his own words, “Nothing else expin how she fought.”
The fact this didn’t truly line up with reality didn’t matter. Audunpoint, like any other city, loved urban legends. Bd was just one more among the ranks of many. One more spectre that many knew of, but only few ko be real.
Krahe’s return to the city took pce by way of a high-speed subterraramlihe tunnel possessing several enormous bulkheads and lined by statues that she was certain were disguised automata — everam car was built like a tank, and erated by an automaton. From the journey, she surmised two things: First, the pound was at least thirty kilometers outside Audunpoint. Sed, it wasn’t the only one ected to this tunnel. As much as she would have liked to simply tinue where she had left off in her iigation, her absence meant that things had ged, and she had to catch up — despite her allies’ best efforts to keep her up to date on goings-on duriay at the pound. Allies. That word still felt like it didn’t quite fit. Like the grip of someone else’s gun.
Akaso
