"Oh, it varies!" Nuzres chirped, resuming her skip. "Some want a specific emotion, like your joy or your fear. Others want a physical attribute—the color of your hair, the sound of your voice. And the very greedy ones? They want a permanent residence in your shadow, watching everything you do."
Kamiya's lips twitched, the idea of a creature stalking him or taking away something from him greatly unnerved him but out of the other paths, this one seems less severe or weak but he also thought about Awakening which sounded very overpowered but the 30% rate of surviving seemed a bit depressing.
"That sounds like a better option than awakening." It seemed he would have to give up on such an op path.
Nuzres chuckled. "Little King, do not worry you can attempt awakening after you become a bit stronger, you can still awaken after signing a contract with an Otherworldly beast or even find a legendary class stone and use it, these three paths do not clash with one another as they are all not from this world."
"So I can get all three of those paths?." Kamiya asked with apprehension in his voice.
Nuzres held his arm and looked at his eyes intensely. "Yes but it will be incredibly difficult little King."
Kamiya stared at his hand and couldn't help but shudder at her touch, holding arms with someone like Nuzres made him feel strange but at the same time it felt unique.
He couldn't really explain the feeling by mere words but it felt like wearing a clean sock from the inside, it feels wrong and also at the same time, right. He didn't let go and instead answered her as they continued walking. "Well, it's better than nothing, so how do we open an Otherworldly channel."
"Well simple, we just need to wait until night arrives and draw a magic circle and I'll send your soul consciousness into the Otherworldly passage." She replied after a short thought.
Kamiya turned towards her with a blank expression and then turned back to where he was facing, he did not want to ask another question from her, things like sending his 'soul Consciousness' coming out of her mouth sounded ominous.
After a long while of walking, they two finally arrived near the starting of a wooden bridge, it was over a large flowing river with countless rocks shown above the surface.
The water was a crystal clear blue and even from a high height, Kamiya could smell the scent of nature entering his nose and refreshing his lungs and body.
Kamiya felt energetic.
"Little King, do not let such a petty illusion fool you, this is the land of a Spirit, specifically a group of water spirits who lure their victim into the river and drowned them deep within, once they fail that, they'd wait for you at the other side of the bridge in the form of someone needing help." Nuzres warned pinching her nose as if she caught the whiff of something unpleasant.
Kamiya's shoulders dropped, he let out a sigh. "So we would have to fight them...wait how am I even supposed to kill spirits?."
"A spirit is just an ethereal being that embodies a specific element so as long as they are near that element, they are practically immortal but If you have some skill to attack the soul then they can easily die, currently you can not do that but you can stall them using your authority." Nuzres explained as she pulled Kamiya towards the bridge.
Kamiyas face paled, did he really need to fight a group of sentient water ghosts who are after his life? Well the answer is obvious but I was not a pleasant one. He of course would not underestimate the spirits because they were made from water, nope in fact, he would overestimate them.
A good chunk of the human body is composed of water so does that mean the water spirit could enter his body or control the water inside?. The thought was a terrifying one and Kamiya soon decided not to Underestimate not Overestimate them, he didn't really want to make himself feel dejected and make a mistake that would cost him his life.
Why did he have to be transmigrated into this dark fantasy world anyway...
The two began walking across the bridge, Nuzres took the lead with her arms behind her back, their steps made the bridge move little by little, wobbling with their weights, it almost seemed as if they would fall with a single mistake.
Once they reached the middle of the bridge, Kamiya shivered as he smelt something foul in the air. It smelled like spoilt meat and discarded blood.
When he looked down, he saw the once running river still, the water seemed dirty, filled with colours like brown and blank, he could see small chunks of what he has assumed to be human and animal flesh floating on the surface of the water.
Seeing the river, Kamiya had a single thought. Did the pieces of those who were blasted away by Shibgensha also looked like that, his breath began to quicken as he realised he was responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people.
It was his fault that Shingensha even appeared in the first place, of course it was the one that killed everyone he was the one who stole its phenomena and made her attack everybody.
Kamiyas heart began to accelerate and a feeling if suffocation began to draw him in.
Kamiya's vision tunneled. The smell of the river—the rot, the iron, the waste—seemed to pour into his mouth, choking him. The faces of the people he had seen in the marketplace for those brief few minutes flashed before his eyes: the cat girl with the sharp gaze, the vendors, the children. All of them were now likely part of the sludge floating beneath this bridge.
His grip on the bridge railing tightened until his knuckles turned white.
I used magic to burn a forest. I drew her out. I stole her power.
The "King" Nuzres kept talking about didn't feel like a ruler; he felt like a plague.
"Little King," a voice sliced through his panic. It wasn't Nuzres' usual chirp. It was cold.
He felt a sharp, stinging pain on his cheek. Nuzres had slapped him. Her jade eyes were no longer playful; they were dark, reflecting the murky water below.
"Stop it," she commanded. "Whatever you're thinking of that's making you act like this, I would advise you to not think too deeply about it, the inherent nature of water spirits make then drench their victims in sorrow before they devour them, they are simply just adding salt to their meal and if you want to be their meal and if you want to add the salt, I cannot let my future master succumb to it!! And these spirits sensed you were a Divine King so they didn't wait for you to get to the end of the bridge, Kamiya snap out of your guilt stricken state and prove you are not weak willed."
Kamiya stood there, stunned not by the painful slap given to him by such a small girl but by her words instead, he touched where she slapped him and turned to look at her, a small smile on his lips. "You didn't have to slap him that hardly though, you know before I came here I was an ordinary boy so things like these can shake me up a bit, thanks for breaking out of that."
The slap seemed to linger, a stinging reminder of the reality he was now tethered to. Kamiya took a shaky breath, forcing his lungs to filter out the stench of the river. Nuzres was right—the guilt wasn't just his own; it was being amplified, weaponized by the very things lurking beneath them.
"Ordinary boys don't carry the weight of fallen gods, Kamiya," Nuzres said, her voice softening just a fraction as she retracted her hand. "The world won't wait for you to mourn. Look."
She pointed toward the far end of the bridge.
There the headless and rather rotten bodies of humans and Demi Humans stood, their skin a pale blue, their nails twisted into long and black sharp claws and they were many of them, numerous enough to drown a single person.
"Those are the drowned, beings who have been killed by water spirits and turned into Undead by using black magic. Unlike water spirits, they are easier to kill, do not worry about the bridge collapsing, i shall create a foothold for us just get rid of those poor corpses little king."
Kamiya's heart hammered against his ribs, but this time, the "violent energy" in his chest didn't feel like a cough—it felt like a weapon. He looked at the staggering wall of blue-fleshed corpses, their joints clicking and snapping as they moved with a jerky, aquatic rhythm.
"Right," Kamiya muttered, his eyes narrowing. "Single words. I can do this."
One of the Drowned with a head screamed as they began to run towards Kamiya and Nuzres, the others didn't wait for their comrades as they rushed passed them, flinging them away and pushing some into the stagnant river.
The sight of it was enough to induce nausea upon a single being but Kamiya stilled his heart and took a deep breath. He pointed a single finger at them and spoke a single word. :Explode:
The word left his lips not as a sound, but as a physical impact.
The "violent energy" in Kamiya's chest surged through his arm and erupted from his fingertip. For a split second, the air between him and the lead corpse rippled like a heat haze. Then, the chest cavity of the screaming Drowned simply ceased to exist.
BOOM.
A concussive blast of localized pressure detonated inside the creature. It didn't just fall; it disintegrated into a spray of cold, blue ichor and bone fragments. The shockwave was so tight and precise that it blew the three corpses directly behind it off the bridge, sending them tumbling into the murky depths below.
Kamiya staggered, his finger throbbing with a dull heat. His chest felt lighter, as if he'd finally vented a high-pressure valve.
"Good! But don't just stand there admiring the mess!" Nuzres shouted. She slammed her foot onto the wooden planks of the bridge. "Residue: Reinforce!"
Black dust swirled from her sash, coating the swaying ropes and rotting wood in a layer of shimmering, metallic soot. The bridge stopped wobbling instantly, becoming as rigid as stone beneath their feet.
The Drowned didn't feel fear. Seeing their comrade atomized only made them quicken their pace. They climbed over one another, a literal wave of rotting, water-logged meat rushing toward the center of the bridge.
Kamiya raised his palm this time and concentrated.
:Compress:
Five drowned who were in the proximity of each other collided and began to be crushed by a seemingly invisible force. Kamiya did not wait to watch what would happen as they were still enemies rapidly approaching.
He said another decree but this time it was something he said when he got his powers.
:Cinder:
The flames didn't not appear on the drowned but was floating his palm, a deep red flame that seemed to be infused with strange power, he waved his arms forward and the flame that was floating atop his palm spread out into a fan shape and collided with the remaining drowned.
The drowned did not have resistance to such a violent flame and they immediately turned into burning and charred statues of coal that soon for dissipated by the wind into fine ash.
For some reason, when he said Cinders the energy in his chest didn't react. "Right...I somehow stole one of Shibgensha's phenomena's." But that did not explain why there was no energy expenditure to it.
Maybe it was because a Phenomena is a natural aspect of the world? But that also makes little sense, the universe is not unfair as to every action taken something else must be consumed or a reaction must happen.
All the drowned had now disappeared and the bridge remained quiet, well if one were to ignore the burning wood.
He turned to Nuzres but she was not staring at the bridge, instead she was looking at the violent movement of the river as steam rose up from it.
Kamiya also stared and found what was consumed to create the Cinders. It didn't make sense but it was surprisingly just moisture or simply the oxygen inside the water.