GxG 27
Nine tails swished.
Two tails swayed.
"Ah, I see you've met Gregory." Kunou had gone ahead to my forest base while I was spending time with Hana in the morning.
We are coming on the final days of healing our mystery stray, just some checks that are more a formality than anything, and Kunou likes spending time at my base because the leyline shenanigans remind her of home.
"Nathan. What the hell did you do to this cat?" She paused her staring contest to turn her bewildered face to me. "It's like some sort of proto-yokai, only it has none of the faith that yokai do."
"Wait, you can sense faith?" That was news to me. I know that yokai can be born from parents or from the environment, part of Japan's whole 'Land of 8 Million Gods' thing they got going on.
Their mythos lends to easy generation of weaker spirits, many of which became modern yokai in some fashion.
"I have been raised since birth to be the new Head Priestess once Mama retires, but I can't actually sense faith all that well yet." Kunou waved her hand in a so-so motion. "Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi's blessings have helped, but in this case the lack of faith is what really stands out."
"Is that going to hurt him? I've had him for almost ten years now." I asked.
"Nah, it's just really jarring to me. When I focus on sensing he reads 60% similar to a Neko type yokai, but without the faith basis that I'm now only noticing they had due to Gregory lacking one altogether." She explained while scratching his ears, leading to a rather loud purr.
"Hmm, that makes sense. He was just a random stray cat that I practiced my senjutsu on." Kunou's disbelieving look made me feel a touch embarrassed. "It kind of turned into a thing, y'know? I wanted to see how much I could enhance my best bud with senjutsu."
"That is a mundane housecat?" Kunou pointed at Gregory before taking a moment to center herself. "No. This is ok. I shouldn't be surprised anymore. Ascending creatures is totally normal."
"Hey, I don't think it's that big of a deal. It took almost 10 years of constant senjutsu therapies that I had to develop and test on many a mouse. It's not like I just pulled it out of nowhere." I pouted at Kunou's exaggerated reaction, but she just rolled her eyes.
"Nathan, if it was so easy to produce even low-class creatures, the world stage would look very different."
"Nobody told me what wasn't possible so I just did it." I stuck my tongue out at her.
"Whatever, nerd. Let's do today's work on the stray devil and then I have a date with your mom." Kunou waved her hand at me as she started walking towards the basement.
"A date with my mom?" I asked in mock shock. "Should I be worried?"
"I don't know. You have so much fun with Mama, so I thought I should see what all the hype is about." She teased as she dashed away, laughing as I followed.
[LINE BREAK]
"I'm removing the Evil Piece now. Say if you notice anything." I ordered while putting all my focus on the silver haired woman in front of me.
Senjutsu and Soul have been singing during the time I've been healing the Stray, and even my Mana motes have picked up some new tricks to train from observing Demonic Power up close.
"Yeah, yeah. We have spent weeks preparing for this. Nothing will happen, I believe in you." Kunou totally waved off my concerns, but she was also focusing pretty hard.
Years of work keeping her stable, months of studying in Japan and the last two months of actually healing have all led to this moment.
"Starting now."
I've only been home for about 2 months, and most of that has been dedicated to healing the Stray Devil. Figuring out how to remove the Piece without hurting her, as well as removing the Demonic taint took most of my time.
Placing my hand on her sternum I began to concentrate, ramping my senses to their max. Lifeforce Sense was the heavyweight for this operation but even Mana Sense was adding valuable contributions. I wasn't wrong to just let my Mana motes cook on foundational exercises instead of rushing ahead.
The woman's body unfolded in my mind's eye.
Her physical body, nearly completely reverted to its original state, was the least of my concerns. I had done what I could there, and any further progress would be incremental at best.
Next was her Ki. Even though the Evil Piece was in her soul, ensuring her Ki flow was steady would never be a wrong decision.
Once I was satisfied that there were no hidden issues in her Ki, I went even deeper. Deep enough to touch upon the essence of her Self.
Her soul.
My sample size for what a soul should be like is pretty small, limited to what I learned in Japan and my family, but the woman's soul was clearly an outlier.
Between the Demonic taint staining her soul from the Evil Piece, and the spark of Divinity nestled deep within, her soul was unlike any I had ever seen.
Part of me was entranced by the divinity, another was annoyed I had yet to unlock any new motes from it. This was the Soul situation all over again, except this time I was staring straight at a fragment of Divinity.
I guess godliness takes more than a glance to understand, and understanding is the condition to unlock new motes.
After spending a moment observing her soul and reviewing my mental checklist, I began.
The first part is removing the Evil Piece. From what I've gathered from observation, an Evil Piece essentially 'infects' a person's soul with 'devilness'. It only stains the surface of the soul, insomuch that a metaphysical concept can have surface.
The tricky part of removing the Evil Piece is being careful not to tear the connections it has made with the soul. Tendrils made of some weird pseudo-demonic soul stuff that I have no basis for comparison.
Some kind of in-between of Demonic Power and Soul Matter, acting as a bridge between the two.
I slowly used Senjutsu to envelop the Piece and began tracing the tendrils one at a time. Once I reached the end of a tendril it was only a matter of finesse to slowly dislodge it. Lifeforce Manipulation coming in clutch as usual.
Once the tendril was dislodged it was time to apply all that Soul Lore I learned in Kyoto, doing my best to clean the taint and heal any lingering injuries. I got most of it, but small areas were difficult to tell if they were tainted or if that was just what their soul looked like after such a traumatizing experience.
Rinse and repeat until every tendril was free, and it was time to remove the physical Piece.
I was so focused that I didn't even notice Kunou had moved until she started to wipe away the sweat that was building up. I haven't actually exerted myself like this in a long time, especially since I became a proper Sage, but it makes sense.
You think open heart surgery is stressful? Try open soul surgery. One wrong twitch and my Ultimate-Class power might shatter something irreplaceable.
No pressure.
I gave Kunou a quick nod as a thanks then prepared for the final maneuver.
With the Evil Piece no longer lodged in her soul, and nothing else standing out, I began the extraction.
It was utterly anticlimactic.
I barely applied any force and the Piece appeared above her chest with a pop.
A single pawn floated in the air, dim from the earlier suppression formation I had applied years ago.
Kunou moved with haste, placing the piece in the container we had prepared beforehand. It had much heavier formations on it, as we had no idea if the Piece was tracked, and what method was being used to track it.
At times like this I was thankful for Yasaka's library once again. While their systematic learning sometimes dulls them to the possibilities of their own powers at times, it was also really nice to have examples of all manners of anti-tracking formations on hand.
"Man, that was stressful." I groaned as all the stress I was carrying bled out of my body. Kunou moving to give some nice shoulder rubs helped a million percent as well.
"So it's done now? Just the last healing sweep and she can wake up?" Kunou asked with barely contained excitement, even though her hands never stopped moving.
"'Last healing sweep' as if that doesn't mean going over her whole soul to triple check I healed everything right. I had to split my focus while dealing with the Piece, and now I have to make sure she won't be in agony once she wakes up." I leaned back to snuggle into her as I just took a moment to breathe.
"Hn, take your time." Kunou conceded calmly. I knew how excited she was for this though, as it was widely known that the devils claimed getting pieced was irreversible. It was one of their main points for not returning people pieced under dubious circumstances, saying it was safer for devils to stay with devils.
In that moment there were no devils, no future political storm, no people begging me to save their friends. There was only me enjoying Kunou's peaceful shoulder rub.
But the moment eventually passed, and it was time to finish the job.
The first thing I noticed was that the Divinity was much more noticeable now that the Evil Piece and most of the Demonic Taint was gone. The Divine and the Demonic don't play well, who would have thought.
The second thing I noticed was that the spark of Divinity was doing... something to clean some of the Taint and miniscule cracks I missed on my first pass. I couldn't tell what was actually happening though, Divinity was beyond me at this point.
Within minutes her soul was nearly healed without any input from me. I wouldn't dare say it was pristine by any measure, but it was leagues healthier than it started. The kind of healing the soul needed now was the slow kind, not the kind you can just wave your hand and magic away. No matter how skilled you were, it was a matter of simply living life.
The soul had to heal from trauma like that through time.
I withdrew my senses just in time to watch the woman's eyes slowly flutter open.
At first her eyes were totally blank which had me worried for a moment, but after a particularly slow blink they seemed to focus.
Which is when the freakout started.
Her pupils dilated and her breathing quickened before she shot out of the operating table we had cobbled together for this single operation.
Her sudden movement caused the thin sheet covering her to fall away, which only furthered her panic.
"Gotta run gotta run don't get caught gottarungottarrun." She was spiraling hard, and I had no idea what to do.
It was at this moment that my personal angel descended. Kunou practically threw me out of the room while giving me a look that said 'let me deal with this'.
I'm like 90% sure it was out of concern for the woman and to let me rest after all that work, and about 10% sure she didn't want me to see the naked chick bouncing around in her panic.
Sometimes the weirdest thoughts happen at the most inappropriate times. I should be ecstatic that I had done what the world deemed impossible. I had healed a stray devil. I had divorced someone from a power people thought absolute.
Instead all I could think was that Kunou was hot when she took charge and that my base has surprisingly good soundproofing. It's odd to think that when I personally laid the soundproofing formations, but it's jarring to go from hearing a total panic attack in one room and then stepping into another room to utter silence.
I took the grace I was given to simply rest. Mentally review how the surgery had gone, and what could have gone better. There were times where I applied the wrong amount of force to a tendril, but I was learning as I went so I'm not too upset.
I had a few minutes respite before Kunou appeared to drag me back into the room. The woman was sitting on the table, wrapped in the sheet she had thrown off before.
"How are you feeling? Any aches? Pains? Feel like your soul is going to split apart?" I started running through the checklist once we made eye contact.
"Split my soul?" The woman's eyes widened for a moment before her whole body sagged. "No, I feel fine. Just tired." She trailed off.
"Then the operation was a success. You are no longer a Devil, much less a Stray Devil. Miss...?" I led, wanting to get a name for the mystery woman who I've kept in my secret basement for a few years.
"Ah, my apologies." She began before her posture shifted into something obviously practiced.
"On behalf of the Norse Pantheon, I thank you for your rescue and healing. My name is Hrist."