As the dome faded from the stormy darkness of night to another gray sunrise, CPA agents and emergency healer teams crawled over the disaster area that had once been a neat and orderly warehouse district. Bodies were pulled from the rubble, identified, and either rushed to the Pearl City’s Healer Sect Headquarters or sent quietly to the morgue in the City Council Building.

  The Violet Shogun, as the Death cultivator had called her, had been thrown well outside that radius of destruction by the Relentless Justice cultivator’s attack. Her organitech body now lay two streets away, in a rarely-traversed narrow alley between the glass of the dome and a cinderbrick wall. Due to the massive physical damage sustained, the system had gone offline until the restoration was complete. The body sprawled motionless, eyes staring sightlessly, while it repaired itself according to its original specifications of height, weight, and appearance. Backups restored damaged information banks for objectives, personality, and Spirit abilities.

  A drifting cloud of dense, nearly solid Miasma, flowed down the alley to cover the Violet Shogun’s limp form. It curled into the organitech nose and mouth, and seeped into the artificially created Spirit sea, spreading from there to the manufactured Spirit rivers throughout the unnatural body.

  With the application of a massive amount of Death Spirit, the extensive repairs were completed in mere seconds. The personality bank fired up for a nanosecond before being completely wiped clean. New data flowed in to match the invading consciousness.

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  A revised command went out through the body, shifting the original specifications drastically. The organitech morphed to obey. Blonde hair darkened to black. Violet eyes shifted to steely gray. Olive skin deepened to a sunburnt red brown. The jawline squared. Feminine curves melted into masculine angles. The purple pants suit shimmered into the fine silk robes of a warlord.

  As the finishing touches were put on the form, the body stood. A device on its wrist beeped. The Death cultivator had worn one similar to this, but older, scratched, dented, and shabby. A HUD, the Death cultivator had called it.

  The HUD beeped again, and its screen flashed. Organitech eyes locked on the screen, focusing too closely at first, picking out a plasma of billions of tiny crystals aligned and ordered by energy. The eyes pulled their focus out a bit, allowing the solution of crystals to resolve, first into shapes and colors, then into readable script.

  Updating Hand-worn Utility Device for New User…

  Name: Khan Daichi

  Spirit: Ravenous Death

  Height: 5'10"

  Weight: 141 lbs

  Age: ???? Selken years (Current Location), ???? Universal years

  The bottom line of script was marked for measuring the Spirit Reserve, but the screen seemed to be having trouble quantifying the amount. The digits displayed in that line jumped and rolled, from millions to billions to quintillions. More and more places were added to accommodate the Miasma swelling the organitech Spirit sea.

  Abruptly, the reeling numbers stopped.

  Spirit Reserve: ||||||ERROR||||||

  Hungry Ghost smiled and left the alleyway.

  Death Cultivator 5: Prince of Hell will start posting on Tuesday March 3rd, and follow the usual Tues-Thurs-Sat schedule from there.

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