Chapter 221: 219 – Awaken, Unholy One, the Wanderer, Unchained

As this went on Zel stockpiled Fulgur in her second stomach, though not in an effort to gain the upper hand in the opening clash. She waited and bided her time until the man with the aetherwave perked up, until she heard voices saying something in Kargarian in his headphones, until he raised a hand and gave her a thumbs-up. It was time.

Zelsys stood up, focused on two things - walking with as much swagger as conceivable for a living thing, and keeping the payload of Fulgur in her second stomach under control until it was time to set it loose.

Left. Right. Left. Right. 

She heard the aetherwave operator behind her give the signal.

The music began.

Varied, fast-paced drums to form the skeleton. Crunching, rhythmic growl of a guitar distorted through essentech, rendered through the same essentech so loud as to shake the scaffolds that the stands stood on, forming the meat of the song. A similarly powerful bassline underpinned it, unnaturally low-pitched gurgling that served as a highlight between riffs, still carrying the signature twangy flair of Ezaryl’s instrument. The sinew. 

Then the vocals, that which dominated the song and gave it identity, its soul by any other name. Not from Ezaryl of Strolvath, but the band’s existing male vocalist, belting every lyric with ironclad clarity while still maintaining the growl-like vocal fry of his earlier screaming performances.

Out through the door. 

“Second coming with the eyes of a stranger, resurrected to fire and flames, no mercy!”

Zel had to chuckle at those lyrics already, as she came up to the edge of the oval and had her stamp applied. A sting when it was placed, an intense thrumming afterwards, and then Vitae-like comforting warmth washing over her when she stepped over the oval’s precipice and her stamp lit up.

“Unleashed dominator, arise, tear the veil of cruel deception; there lies a soul of unrelenting power, a true desire, untold!”

“Storm Engine Breathing Method: Spark Plug!” she called out in a jovial tone as she strode forward, starting up her breathing method properly. In the same breath, she begun burning her breath, funneling all of the resultant Fulgur towards the surface of her body and her extremities. 

With each step, tendrils of lightning stretched between her boots and the ground. 

Likewise, lightning slithered about her skin, tracing and lighting up the silver conduits closest to her skin’s surface. Zel stopped suppressing the toothy grin which had been creeping onto her face, allowing it to entirely take over as she spread her arms wide and turned to face the crowd. Strolvath was on the stage, just as she’d expected. 

The singer belted out his final line with such volume she could easily hear his actual voice even through all the noise: “Awaken, unholy one, the wanderer, unchained!”

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Ezaryl took over at that point, exuberantly announcing Zel’s entrance: “...And on the right-hand side, Zelsys Newman, Beast-slayer, Locust Exterminator, and a bonafide implausibility of nature! Towering at two-hundred and three centimeters, this woman is one-hundred and thirty-nine kilograms of muscle, the inventor and currently sole representative of Sturmblitz Kunst!”

“Despite the heretofore clandestine nature of her achievements, after clearing it with the local government, we’ve been given official permission to disclose that she personally played a pivotal part in exterminating a major terrorist cell of Pateirian extremists who had forced entry into a Three Kings Era dungeon and intended to leverage it towards the destruction of this fair city!”

Not quite all of the details, and not quite correct, but Zelsys was impressed by the fact it was close to reality at all. Now was time for her to show off for real.

All that Fulgur, all that output - all the energy otherwise dedicated to combat, she now dedicated to producing the most dazzling light show her body could muster. 

Intentionally exhaling far more Fog than she otherwise would, she expelled lungful after lungful’s worth of Fulgur into thin air, serpent-like tendrils of lightning whipping around and trailing short-lived fireflies. Meanwhile, she Thundercharged numerous muscle groups, and with them began striking a series of flexing poses that she’d seen in her efforts to better understand muscle groups from an anatomical perspective.

One after another she struck pose after pose, eagerly showing off just how ridiculously defined her arms, abs, and back muscles could really get, doubly so emphasized by the fact they glowed under her skin when she flexed. Nobody else could lay claim to that, even if the light was a mere side effect.

Then, as she flexed with both arms up and back turned to the crowd to display both her biceps and back muscles, she made use of all that Fulgur she’d stockpiled.

Its sole purpose was to be regurgitated without any intent to do harm, but with the sole intent to form an approximation of the same beast Thundercannon tended to form. Even if it failed to do that, it would still fulfill its purpose… But it didn’t.

Focused as she was and with the Primordial Self’s full cooperation, Zelsys turned her face skyward and opened her mouth wide - at the tip of her tongue a hair-thin thread holding a bead of Fog, and from her throat, there poured a white-burning deluge. It wrapped around the bead and grew into a tangled knot, until at last she whipped it away with her tongue. Though she herself couldn’t see it, the unstable lightning-sphere that burst forth from the tip of her tongue zipped upward before it unfurled into a serpent-like, snarling beast wrought of lightning, soaring into the sky and exploding into a glittering arrangement of sparks about a hundred meters above-ground.

---

To the vast majority of the audience, what unfolded before them wasn’t new. It instead roused powerful nostalgia for the times before the war, for the short-lived golden age just after the Great Industrialization.

Even those who had seen her out and about had never seen this. At most, they may have been witness to the Town Hall Attack, and even then most of her carnage was heard, rather than seen. In the eyes of the spectators, Newman hearkened back to the archetypal Barbaric Savant, the egotistical but good-natured foreign warrior without any formal training that popular novels from decades prior had thoroughly baked into the popular consciousness.

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