Chapter 39: Puppet
"I thought Ran or Zhu Jin would be the next ones to show up. I didn't expect it to be you. Where's Gabimaru?"
His body wrapped in what looked like a cloak of roaring flames, Takatsuki looked up at the purple-haired figure standing before him.
It possessed the same face and voice as the other Tensen. If not for the differences in outfit, expression, and hair color, anyone would have believed this was the exact same person.
"You mean that human? He is still alive."
Rien's voice echoed, completely devoid of emotion: "I didn't expect you people to actually cure Mei. But that changes nothing. That said... your existence is far too abnormal."
"Abnormal or not, it doesn't matter. I'll just speak plainly."
Faced with Rien's hostile attitude, Takatsuki couldn't care less. After all, strictly speaking, Takatsuki was the burglar breaking into someone else's home.
"I want the Tan Flowers."
The single eye hidden beneath her hair narrowed slightly: "I don't know how you found out about them, but do you truly think you can leave here alive?"
Withdrawing a hand from her sleeve, Rien stared at Takatsuki: "Though, you will make a fine raw material."
She lightly clenched her fist toward Takatsuki. The space where Takatsuki had been standing blew apart in an instant as if crushed by an invisible hand.
Yet what Rien destroyed was merely empty air and a patch of ground—Takatsuki had already closed the distance and appeared right before her face.
He thrust his right palm straight toward her face.
His Tao is of the Fire attribute; it doesn't counter mine, so it cannot inflict a fatal wound. Besides, he isn't even targeting my Tanden.
In a fraction of a second, Rien made her calculation. Though Takatsuki was aiming for her head, she made no attempt to dodge. Instead, she seized the opening, raising a finger to thrust it straight into Takatsuki's chest.
Though it was just a single finger, in front of a strike concentrated with Tao, even a solid steel plate would be pierced without question.
And yet...
"Ugh!"
An immense, irresistible force hit her like a tidal wave as Rien felt her body launched backward in an instant.
Grabbing Rien by the face, Takatsuki slammed her into the wall like a runaway dump truck.
Who on earth fights like this?!
Rien could not comprehend it. She wasn't specialized in physical combat, but that didn't mean she was ignorant. At their level of power, grabbing someone by the face and smashing them into walls and floors was far less effective than a direct, power-infused punch.
Whenever they wanted to, walls and ground were things that could be shattered at will.
Yet Takatsuki held Rien by the face and slammed her straight into the stone floor, plowing her forward through the ground like a heavy combine.
The physical damage was minimal, but the insult was absolute, and her movements were completely pinned down.
If not... if not for her lack of physical combat proficiency, how could she be subjected to such humiliation?!
Had it been Ran, this move would have been utterly useless, as Ran could have relied purely on instinct to break free from Takatsuki's grip.
Rien, however, could not.
Just as Rien was enduring the humiliation, waiting for Takatsuki to come to a stop, an emotionless voice rang out above her.
"Whitesnake!"
Rien instantly felt an unyielding, irresistible power invade her body, seemingly attempting to rip her consciousness away.
"How could..."
Looking at Whitesnake's reaching hand, Takatsuki realized that Whitesnake's ability had actually failed.
No... not a failure, but rather...
It couldn't extract a Disc from Rien?!
When a Stand ability failed to trigger, the only reason Takatsuki had ever encountered was that the target's scale and tier were overwhelmingly vast compared to his own. However, the Rien in front of him clearly didn't fit that description.
"You! What did you do?!"
After a brief moment of disorientation, Rien reacted instantly. Her male form shifted into her female form in a split second.
The male form was far better suited for physical exertion, while the female form allowed for more precise, concentrated control over Tao.
A tidal surge of Tao erupted all at once, blasting Takatsuki backward.
"I underestimated you. There's no need to care about balance anymore—let us return to my primordial form."
A completely altered Rien materialized before Takatsuki.
Unlike the horrifying Kishikai transformations of the other Tensen, Rien's Kishikai form still closely resembled a human, save for three eyes and two extra pairs of arms.
Her aura was night and day compared to the other Tensen.
Yet Takatsuki paid no attention to it. Or rather, compared to this transformation, there was something far more noteworthy to him.
"You..." Takatsuki stared at the strongest Tensen before him and spoke: "Who on earth are you?!"
Unable to extract a Disc?
Takatsuki also possessed the ability to craft Memory Fragments, acquired from the Stellaron.
Yet in that brief moment when he tried to slice into Rien's memories, he discovered that there were no memories inside her body at all.
That was impossible. Even as a Tensen, she should still possess memories.
The only possible explanation for this situation was:
"The Rien standing before me is just your puppet, isn't she? Who are you really?"
To have even someone as powerful as Rien controlled as a puppet? Just how powerful is the mastermind behind the scenes?
Takatsuki hadn't forgotten what Mei had mentioned before—about how Rien had suddenly undergone a drastic personality shift, pursuing immortality by any means necessary.
Perhaps starting from that very moment, Rien had already been reduced to a puppet for that shadowy mastermind.
"Human, you know..."
Rien spoke slowly. But as her words fell, she was already standing behind Takatsuki, her remaining sentence drifting casually from behind: "...far too much."
Pfft!
Just as Rien stood with her back turned to Takatsuki, her body was instantly impaled by several projected blades.
"You talk too much garbage. What are you trying to flex?"
Takatsuki looked speechlessly at Rien, who had her back turned to him, and shoved the projected swords deeper into her body.
"You... how could you..."
Staring at the completely unharmed Takatsuki, Rien was utterly dumbfounded.
Yet Takatsuki could easily guess why she was so shocked.
Because just a second ago, she had likely used a direct, instant-kill ability to strike him down.
And in that exact fraction of a second, the effect of the Dog Talisman had activated.
The Dog Talisman granted absolute immunity to fatal, instant-kill attacks. Because that strike was meant to directly cause Takatsuki's death rather than merely inflict wounds or maiming, the attack was completely negated.
To Takatsuki, it was as if nothing had happened at all—not even his clothes were torn.
Rien, supremely confident in her strike, had positioned herself just barely behind him, leaving herself wide open to Takatsuki's zero-distance ambush.
"Well, whoever you actually are, since you aren't really Rien, I won't hold back."
Strike while the iron is hot—Takatsuki adhered to this core principle to perfection.
Earlier, he had wanted to extract Rien's memories to gain her experience in cultivating Tao. Although he mocked the Tensen for being complacent and obsessing over balance, their centuries of experience and research still held value.
Now that he was certain the Rien before him offered zero benefits and only trouble, Takatsuki no longer pulled a single punch.