Kaijin Fighter: So I Have to Make Monsters, So What?-Chapter 1566: Weird Little Poker

<You were honest about there not being anything sealed away, right?>

=I confirmed that the moment our Lord entered this temple. Not going to lie, I figured our presence alone would piss of some ancient bastard down here.=

<Yeah, me...wait...did we make sure that whatever sealing array is implemented, it also included the possibility of the fire poker itself being sealed?>

=...fuck.=

...Now back to Zhen Liu...

"Simple enough. Approach the hearth, grab the poker and the hope it doesn’t magically explode into a giant fireball," Zhen Liu told himself as he entered the cold hearth and approached the burning fire poker.

Evidently, the sight of this particular set-up stirred up memories of a game series Zhen Liu used to play when he was Thomas Lee. A game that now seemed rather quaint when compared to some of the things he had fought as of late.

’I really hope that this fire poker doesn’t consume souls to power itself...oh shit, that might actually be a possibility.’

Regardless, once Zhen Liu got right next to the fire poker he realized that the curators were technically wrong.

Surrounding the poker, Zhen Liu could see the telltale markings of a sealing array being active. However, he also noticed that the target of the sealing array was the fire poker itself. Needless to say, this revelation made him even more curious.

’Wait...this temple seems to be dedicated to a fire goddess...and yet the thing that would probably be considered sacred by said goddess is sealed... something ain’t right...’

Realizing this odd discrepancy, Zhen Liu dropped to the ground and took a closer look at the sealing array. It was upon this closer inspection, though, that he realized the true nature of the array.

’Wait a minute...I recognize this writing style...this is Tide Script...’

In the same way different cultures and countries had different names for the same object, there were a ton of different arrays that performed the same function, but used different continental alphabets for their foundations.

As such, it wasn’t that weird to see a sealing array made by a warrior from one continent apply to an opponent from another continent, especially when international warfare was involved. That stated, the fact that such an array was located inside of a buried meteor structure temple was suspicious.

’Okay, I’m just going to make a mental note and hope that Logos and Pathos took pictures of this moment,’ Zhen Liu concluded. ’For now, let’s just pull this thing out.’

Grabbing on to the fire poker, Zhen Liu first felt a great amount of resistance coming from the sealing array beneath his feet.

’Holy—!’

At that moment, Zhen Liu felt as if the weight of the entire ocean was pressing down on him and attempting to crush him into a fine powder...for about ten seconds.

Before the weight became too much for him to endure, Zhen Liu circulated his [Chaos] and dispersed the sealing array’s defensive measures. However, unbeknownst to him, the moment his [Chaos] started circulating, the fire poker in his hands started glowing a little brighter...

"Ha! Now with that out of the way, I just need to...wait a minute, what?"

...and he had already extracted the fire poker from it’s resting place.

"Huh..."

Holding the fire poker in his hands, Zhen Liu felt...absolutely nothing.

There was no weird sense of overwhelming power, no wave of cursed regrets, not even a gentle tug that maybe this poker had something extra to it. All he felt in this moment was that he was holding a regular fire poker.

"Huh...wait, is this the part where something breaks out of the temple grounds and tries to kill me now?" Zhen Liu asked aloud, realizing that he wasn’t being interrupted.

"Huh."

The fact that nothing happened despite all of that buildup was...oddly disappointing.

Well, not nothing; the temple did become noticeably colder once he removed the fire poker from the hearth, but it was one of those modest changes nobody really notices until someone points it out to them.

And Zhen Liu didn’t have anyone point this out to him.

"I guess...I should just go."

As Zhen Liu walked out, the fire poker in his hands began to undergo a subtle transformation.

One he wouldn’t notice until the time was just right.

...

...

"Has anyone seen Xiao Liu?"

"Hey."

"Oh, there you are!"

Zhen Liu’s impromptu excursion with Antonio and Olstenna had taken all of about ten minutes, which was long enough for people to notice the absence but not long enough for those same people to worry.

"Where did you run off to?" Jinju Ren asked while holding what appeared to be a coconut-like fruit in her hands. "We were just about to have dessert when you...what’s that in your hands?"

"Huh? Oh, I forgot I was carrying this thing..."

In Zhen Liu’s left hand was a two-foot-long bronze stick that had a little hook at the end, while the handle itself was made of polished pine wood.

He had honestly forgotten that he was holding it his entire walk back.

"I think it’s a fire poker," Zhen Liu answered. "I got it from this meteor structure that Olstenna and Antonio led me to."

"I see..."

Jinju Ren paused for a bit after hearing Zhen Liu’s answer, expecting him to elaborate on some absurd encounter that occurred after he had grabbed this bronze spike.

"What?" Zhen Liu asked.

"Nothing, it’s just...you would normally be mentioning that that poker was connected to a predecessor of yours or it led to you getting almost eaten by some giant monster by now," Jinju Ren explained. "Did nothing happen when you pulled out that poker?"

"Uh...yeah. Nothing happened."

"Really? Nothing at all?"

"Nope, nothing I could think of." Zhen Liu shrugged while still holding the fire poker. "Oh, wait, the poker itself was in the center of a Roaring Tide-style sealing array that almost crushed me with the force of an ocean, but that didn’t do much against my [Chaos]-based defenses."

"Really?" Jinju Ren asked in an intrigued voice. "Did you recognize the dialect used?"

"I can show you later." Zhen Liu waved his hand in dismissal. "For now, let’s focus on the coconut in your hand. You want to try roasting it?"

"Really? You know a recipe?"

"Oh yeah," Zhen Liu said confidently as he rested the fire poker on his shoulder. "Especially with this thing. Let’s make some toasted fruit!"

...Meanwhile, at the Library of Nowhere...

<=...=>

Logos and Pathos were silent as they watched their charge cook some coconuts for his friends and family through the monitor in their observation room, all while using the fire poker from the Fallen Temple of Tabiti. Evidently, they were just as confused as their lord and everyone else who saw that fire poker.

<Huh.>

=Really? Nothing?=

As soon as Logos verbalized this confusion, Pathos waved their hand and summoned several long scrolls that were so ancient that the scrolls were full of hieroglyphics rather than actual letters or words.

In the eyes of most people, these scrolls would be indecipherable.

Through the eyes of the curators, though, they told a very clear and concise treasure map of a story...that didn’t fucking deliver!

<Did we miss something? > Pathos asked aloud while re-examining the scroll. <Was there a missed step or a hidden switch? >

=Maybe we grabbed the wrong set of records, = Logos suggested. =Could it be that we retrieved the scrolls on Tabithi instead of Tabiti? Did we grab the literature related to some other hearth goddess? =

<Nope, these are the right ones,> Pathos confirmed.

=Fuck.=

The scrolls in question told the story of how a primordial fire goddess named Tabiti burned away the ancient darkness and created the heavens and earth before shedding her ancient power of primordial fire millennia later to marry a mortal king and becoming the goddess of the hearth instead.

The story detailed that the process of shedding this power wasn’t as simple as snuffing out a regular candle and that the primordial fire goddess had condensed her power in the form of several bonfires that had to be constantly tended to. Otherwise, the ancient flame would return to the hearth goddess and cause a conflagration that would burn the universe back into its original darkness, forcing the goddess to recreate everything she had destroyed in an imperfect manner.

At least, that’s what the legends told.

What is known is that these bonfires contained a portion of that ancient power and could be theoretically used to tap into the power of true creation...and true destruction.

In other words, Logos and Pathos were fully expecting a chunk of primordial fire to leap out of that temple hearth and wriggle its way into their lord’s soul by now, but it wasn’t fucking there.

Meaning that this primordial flame of creation had somehow burned away...or that someone else had already taken it.

The fact that Logos and Pathos weren’t addressing that latter elephant in the room indicated that that was the case. This was especially true when combined with the photo evidence of a sealing array.

<=Fuck...we already know who has it, don’t we?=>