'Alright, enough side chatter,' Zhen Liu eventually interrupted his Kaijin,'I am going to assign y'all to your groups and I expect you to either act as troubleshooters or scouts as the needs arise. Understand?'

[Crystal clear.]

[Understood.]

[Just don't assign us to anyone boring.]

'Alright, first off: Porcelain Doll and Corpse Doll, you're coming with me and Blazejudicator.'

[As you wish,] Porcelain Doll complied.

[But hanging around a stuffy auction house sounds so boring,] Corpse Doll complained. [Can't we go and follow around Bellona and the others when they go shopping? This is the first time we've been around people that aren't dead inside.]

'That...sounded rude, but I can't argue against that,' Zhen Liu capitulated on the latter statement. 'However, I can argue that as proto-kaijin, you two need a chaperone at least. I suppose I can send Blazejudicator with you and have someone else stick around inside my head in case things get dicey…'

[Oh! I have an idea! Let me act as their chaperone!] Hurricroak suggested. [There's nobody who's better than handling people than me!]

[I mildly doubt that,] Nepherage countered.

[I don't regularly threaten to eat people.]

[Doubt retracted.]

'Okay, sure. Hurricroak, you take the Doll twins with you as you follow Bellona, Taurna, Leona, Olstenna, and Antonio as they walk the city streets. Mysticlassic, you guys follow Alicia to the materials auction. Meanwhile, Blazejudicator is with me for obvious reasons, and Frosttusk and Nepherage, you're coming along with me as well. All good?'

[No complaints.]

[Agreed.]

[Let's get going already!]

'Excellent.'

[...]

'...'

[...]

'What?'

[Isn't this the part where you hope that nothing weird or terrible happens?] Razorstella asked for the group.

'At this point, I've learned that it's probably going to happen regardless of my personal wishes. So I might as well roll with it and deal with any issues as they come.'

[Ah…in that case, the curators mentioned a bunch of your old enemies showed up here, right? Who do you think is going to show up?]

'Fucked if I know.'

___________________________________

*Bing-Bong*

We interrupt your regularly scheduled chapter to inform the reader that we're going to be…not doing the multiple perspective thing yet? What the fuck?

| Keep reading. |

Okay… before following the protagonists and their shenanigans, we're going to be focusing on the antagonists for this arc for a bit.

The reason being is to help establish the opposition each of the groups are going to face.

To be more precise, why they're going to be dealing with what they're dealing with, not who.

We now return to your regularly scheduled chapter, with a touch of introduction, thank you.

…

Seriously? What the fuck?

|Trying something here.|

I swear you did this before?

| Not impossible; it's been a thousand-plus chapters. |

Seriously?!

*Bing-Bong*

______________________________________________

In the animal kingdom, it is a known fact that male lions will fight each other for the sake of claiming a pride of their own without waiting around and waiting for others to join them naturally.

In a polite, moral society, the act of stealing one's property and life was deeply frowned upon and would result in punishment from the law.

Of course, such things were barely applicable to those who live in the underworld of society and those who are more powerful than the local authorities.

Which is why, in the catacombs and tunnels of Rainbowden, a dangerous force of newcomers had started to make a name for themselves by violently taking over the territories that had once belonged to organizations that had spent years establishing roots in the city's underground.

Normally, such a task would be borderline impossible for even the hardiest of aether warriors.

For someone who just so happened to be the living fragment of a foreign god, though, such a feat was...routine.

...

[You know, for an organization that boasted having aether puppets that were both beautiful and powerful, I am...mildly disappointed.]

Standing in the middle of the now conquered fortress of the Beautiful Marionette Society, Smoking Mirror had a look of abject boredom plain on his face.

The divine fragment given life had found it mildly entertaining fighting so many different aether puppets at once, what with their body plans and attack patterns being so wildly different from one another.

But all six of their Aether Lords and their dozens of Gold-tiered aether puppets amounted to only a minute or so of distraction at best.

Even their leader, an Aether Emperor with a Platinum-tier aether puppet, only amounted to three minutes of entertainment.

Then again, the fact that none of these warriors were able to overcome the power of [Chaos] was probably a decent indicator of how much entertainment could be derived from this moment.

[Oh, how I wish there was someone worth a damn down here to fight,] Smoking Mirror lamented. [Perhaps I should try and fight those obvious powers that be…then again, perhaps I should wait until destiny comes calling.]

As Smoking Mirror mused about what battles the future would bring and what glories there were to claim, one of his subordinates deigned it necessary to disturb him.

To be more precise, it was one of the monks that served under his subordinate, Abbot Longhorn.

"Lord Smoking Mirror, apologies for disturbing you," the monk began while bowing their head in subservience. "But we have finished processing all of the gains from your conquest."

"Oh? And what have we gained from this little tryst of mine?"

"It is written on his scroll here."

Bowing even deeper, the monk presented Smoking Mirror a hastily written yet neat scroll for him to peruse.

Using a touch of [Chaos], Smoking Mirror brought the scroll to eye level and began to look through their spoils of war with critical eyes.

As expected there were several entries dedicated to unique aether puppers, rare materials that were to be processed, and several chest worths of gold and other miscellaneous valuables.

However, out of everything on this list there were two entries that stuck out to the fragment of a war god.

[These last two entries...they appear to be the corpses of recently poisoned Aether Lords and a King? Why?] Smoking Mirror asked the subordinate monk.

"From what we extracted from the defeated, they had recently taken out some rivals of their and planned to use them as the basis for their next batch of aether puppets,"the monk explained. "They were just waiting for a shipment of [Malevolent Gold] before getting to work."

[Malevolent Gold?] Smoking Mirror repeated. [Now that is a name I haven't heard since....hmmm.]

The mentioning of this ancient, cursed metal, brought memories back to the humanoid fragment.

To be more precise, it brought back memories of the originating source.

Smoking Mirror recalled how his source ,and his brothers, once nailed the great crocodile down to form the earth and sea.

However, the ancient monster would not be satisfied in such a state and would demand blood sacrifices in exchange for obedience and compliance.

If not enough blood was spilled to appease it's hunger, the great beast would...encourage the humans living upon it to provide more through a set of [Desires] it understood better than most: Greed, Hunger and Violence.

By channeling its divine might into blistering its own stretched out body, it could produce special ores of gold that enflamed that these desires in humans and draw them into conflict with one another.

The resulting bloodshed did wonders in appeasing her ravenous hunger.

However, this was only one facet of [Malevolent Gold].

Despite its evil nature, [Malevolent Gold] still carried a touch of the divine and if processed in just the right way, it could be used to make weapons that could harm man and god alike.

Or in some cases, could be used as an avatar for the divine to channel their might.

[I wonder...]

As this last thought raced through Smoking Mirror's mind, he eventually came to a conclusion that required some external information.

[That shipment of Malevolent Gold,] Smoking Mirror began. [Do we happen to know who was tasked to handle such a precious metal?]

"Actually...yes," the monk nodded. "Yes, we do."

[Oh?]

"Do you remember those two warriors who tried to intervene and save their defeated leader? One of them summoned an aether puppet that had hammers for hands while the other had a buzzsaw in its chest?"

[Oh yes, those two....] Smoking Mirror trailed off as he tried to remember the state he left the two of them in. [I do believe they were still breathing last I checked. Are they in any condition to talk?]

"If we send one of our most skilled healers and use some of our aether medicine stocks, they should be able to talk in a matter of minutes," the monk assured his superior.

[Do that, then,] Smoking Mirror said as he moved to leave the room that had once belonged to the leader of the Beautiful Marionette Society. [In the mean time, I believe that it would be wise to handle the other businesses that these fellows had planned prior to our hostile takeover.]

"Okay...why?"

[Because it would be foolish to leave money on the table, that's why.]