62_Mathemagician

"Get him, get him!" The mechanoid shouted as the possessed mule headed for the stable exit.

╰((◣︵ ◢))╯ Hiss!!! ╰((◣︵ ◢))╯

╰((◣︵ ◢))╯Kral ka dur ZARMMM !!! ╰((◣︵ ◢))╯

The mule snarled in the incomprehensible eldritch tongue. Tiny neon purple equational formulas appearing in thin air, hovering around the mule's head, then shooting towards the unprotected ears of the machines trying to subdue the eldritch mule.

"Gaaarhh!" A sharp cry of pain shot out from the newer member of Fencetown's Void Buster team, falling on his knees and clutching his heads in agony.

"Put your helm on! How many times did I tell you to never take it off!!!" The leader of the squad shouted at his green recruit.

"B..but they a..are so..l-l-l-LAME!" The new recruit managed to mutter between convulsions of pain.

"Goddamned younglings!" The chief grumbled as he stomped towards his fallen idiotic apprentice and forcefully slammed the Howdy Kitty pink helmet atop his foolish apprentice's head.

The convulsions and agony immediately dulled, but didn’t vanish. Even the helmet wasn't powerful enough to completely nullify the effects of Void Speech, but it was enough to dull the pain and cease the convulsions.

"Get up, you doofus! I swear to Cthulhu, in my 70 years on the job, I have never had such a hopeless apprentice such as yourself."

"Argh..." The apprentice groaned, getting up on his feet with difficulty. "I just don't understand why these things have to look so... goofy. All our gear is the same way." The apprentice waved at his master's and his own gear with disgust. The Howdy Kitty theme and its pink cheerful aura contrasting sharply with the idea of the ancient order of eldritch hunters they belonged to.

"I just wished we looked cooler damn it! I want to wear black leather gear, a long dark coat, and a black cowboy hat. A flintlock pistol and a rapier strapped to my belt to impress all the ladies."

"Clank!"

"Ouch!" The apprentice cried out as his master cuffed him at the back of the head. "This helmet and all the equipment is specially designed by the Void Busters Order to combat the eldritch abominations and their nefarious nature. Don't argue with tradition and do your goddamned job!"

"But I don't get why we have to wear pink all the time!" The apprentice shot back, apparently willing to die on this particular metaphorical hill.

"I am your master, don't argue with me!" The Chief Void Buster shot back, pulling his gaze off their target and sparing full attention at his foolish disciple.

"I have been fighting Void monstrosities before you were even a thought in your dad's dongle. Don't you dare lecture me how to do my own job!"

“Do you even know what you are doing, or are you just blindly following tradition? Do you have the slightest idea why we use pink and not any other color for our clothes and equipment?”

“Why do we have to carry those damnable calculus books on our backs as some sort of shields? These things weigh a ton! And that weight is nothing compared to the pain and torture we endure by reading the damnable thing three times a day.”

"I swear if I have to chant yet another math formula, I am going to burn that damn book to ashes!" The apprentice shouted at his master, months of bottled-up frustration blazing out.

"You will read your calculus equations and like it! It is not our place to question tradition! Do what you are told, or else!" The master shot back, unwilling to concede on this. He had followed the ancient scripts for his entire life. They were his entire life, and they had saved him countless times in the hunt for the eldritch. He wouldn't let some young wannabe fashion designer lecture him.

While the two voidbusters bickered with each other, the mule hadn't stood idle and had taken full advantage of the opportunity.

Grand equational arrays of purple energy menacingly loomed over the two hunters. The mere air around them shivered with energy and raw mathematical power. Meanwhile, the chants of eldritch language got louder and louder until even the two void hunters took notice.

"Oh, fuck..." The apprentice murmured weakly, only now noticing the danger and reaching for his bulky math book, unstrapping it from his back and placing it between himself and the danger. All the while, whispering quiet math prayers to the God of the Void Realm.

"Cthulhu won't save you now, especially one who only follows his teachings out of convenience rather than faith," the master darkly said, holding his sci-fi shock staff in both hands and preparing to try his best, even though he knew that both of them were going to die.

"Hey, you there! Yes, you, the one in the mule!"

"Do you know how many interdimensional laws you are violating by being here? Do you?!"

The authoritative voice cut through the commotion, moments before the coalesced energy could explode and disintegrate the two void hunters, the stable, and everyone unfortunate enough to be there.

The mule, if it could even be called that anymore, considering its body had mutated with purple tentacles, scales, and arrays of eyes with square pupils sprinkled around its body. So, the 'mule' tilted its head to regard the tiny creature standing before him.

It appeared to be some sort of green digital paper, wearing a tiny golden crown. The creature placing his tiny stickman arms at his hips, his expression that of outrage.

"Slippy! Get out of there!" Topo shouted as he struggled to restrain his wife from attacking the mule and risking her life once again. It is not like they couldn't respawn after death, but there were far worse fates than death inside Generica. Corruption of your base code, torture, poison, kidnapping, or imprisoning were always an option, and void creatures in general were incredibly unpredictable and lacking in morals.

"Oh no, I am not done with this creepozoid here," Slippy said.

"Well? Nothing to say about yourself?" The slip barked at the confused abomination.

Finally, after a few seconds of contemplation, the mule seemed to have made up his mind and shifted all the energy looming over the two hunters to encircle the seemingly harmless form of the digital slip.

"Using raw eldritch energy inside a non-integrated solar system: 50 years in solitary confinement," The slip confidently stated, completely uncaring at the looming threat.

╰((◣︵ ◢))╯"Ksa kra gruumm!"╰((◣︵ ◢))╯ The mule snarled, making his distaste of the law clear.

"Insulting a licensed eldritch deputy: 10 years in solitary confinement," The slip confidently stated, showing a tiny rectangular metal badge, the inscriptions complex, ever-moving equational scripts in the native eldritch language, signaling without a doubt that the owner of this badge was one of the official representatives of the Void Realm's enforcers.

╰((o︵ o))╯

The mule made a few involuntary steps back, his hooves scraping on the stable floor, his eyes wide with fear.

╮((.__.))╭"Krim shal dul, dul shal na..."╮((.__.))╭ The mule pleaded, dismissing the concentrated energy away, the oppressive, dangerous atmosphere vanishing in an instant, the hostile equations fizzling out of existence, and letting the mechanoids around them take a sigh of relief as the dull pain in their heads vanished.

*Nudge nudge*

The mule, now placated, down on his front hooves and knees, carefully nudged a small box filled with tiny cubes, glowing with soft magenta energy. They appeared as big as sugar cubes, but the raw energy stored within them was undeniable. Even one of these could sustain a mechanoid or AI for months or years.

Slippy eyed the bri...gift with a serious, unamused expression.

"I would hope that you aren't trying to bribe an officer of the law, are you, Mister...?" Slippy let the last part hanging.

╮((.__.))╭"Slush'krok"╮((.__.))╭

The mule added, hastily pulling the bribe back into his storage and pretending it was never offered in the first place.

"Well, Mister Slush'krok, you just avoided another 200 years of solitary confinement to your sentence, which now totals at... 60 years."

The mule screeched in panic. All sorts of incomprehensible alien clacks and high-pitched screeches ran around the stable, making the people and animals there wince with pain.

"Silence!" Slippy squeek barked, cutting the lamentations of the eldritch being.

“I see that you show true remorse for your actions, so in this case and this case alone I will be merciful and let you out with a warning. You just have to get back to your own dimension and never come back here again.”

The eldritch mule twitched at the sound of the word... Mercy... Mercy was for the weak, mercy was an opportunity to take advantage and stab the giver in the back.

The tentacles of the eldritch mule instinctively coiled themselves, poised to snap and unleash their fury at the tiny digital slip.

Perhaps he had judged this void agent wrongly. They never showed weakness, they were never merciful. Their will was absolute and undeniable, and this tiny little being, while having their badge, did not seem to truly possess their mentality...

The tentacles lashed out, striking with a mighty sonic boom, striking the unsuspecting digital slip... and going right through it.

The slip stood frozen in place, its image still, flickering with digital holographic distortions.

The mule looked at the hologram, tilting its head in confusion, .

SLAM!

“Skreee!”

SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!!!

“Kreeghrgrhhhh....”

The mule collapsed as the young void hunter that had been sneaking behind it chose that moment to bash the void beast with his heavy-duty math book. The acolyte continued to swing the oversized book, its armored metal cover and hefty weight serving as an improvised weapon.

Finally, the beast stilled as he lost the battle with the power of math.

The acolyte breathed heavily, kneeling down above the eldritch mule and tightly clutching the math book, looking down at the mangled corpse of the void beast.

"Tsk tsk tsk... Sloppy... Very sloppy..." The void hunter master mumbled, shaking his head in disapproval.

"You are supposed to read the holy book of Cthulhu, not use it as a fucking club!"

"It worked, didn't it?" The apprentice challenged, trying to wipe the purple blood that covered him from head to toe, but achieving nothing more than smearing it across his body...

"Sigh... Stand back and watch what the power of math is truly capable of." The master said, tossing his foolish apprentice a clean rag.

The acolyte stood next to his master and wiped his faceplate from the blood. In the meantime, the master unstrapped the book from the harness at his back with practiced ease. He reverently hefed the book and placed one palm at its cover, as if caressing a lover rather than an inanimate object.

Suddenly the book hovered in the air in front of the master, opening itself and flipping its countless metal pages to the desired destination.

The master nodded with approval, pressed one finger to the page, sorting through the holy scriptures and various equations and functions.

In a few heartbeats, his finger settled on the correct verse. The master took a deep breath, then began to chant.

The atmosphere grew heavy, the air felt oppressive and threatening as numerous mathematical formulas appeared, each line sliding through the surrounding space, dancing in the air as if having a mind of their own.

That is when the master began to wave his hands as a grand virtuoso directing a symphony, each slight movement, each gesture, directed the purpose and direction of the script. After getting a handle on all the floating lines around them, the master, still chanting seemingly random numbers, directed all the lines of code towards the corpse of the fallen beast.

The purple lines quickly formed into an equational vortex swirling around the body. The apprentice's eyes widened as he saw the eldritch corruption subside, the mathematical equations reverting the mutations away from the host, burning, changing, restoring, until eventually all signs of corruption were gone. Then the master prepared for the final step. It wasn't strictly necessary to do that, but he wanted to instill in his young apprentice's mind what the power of math could truly do.

Hands shaking, batteries nearly depleted, and suppressing a painful groan, the master's voice boomed. The chant had completely transformed. If it was a small trickle before, it was now a full-fledged torrent of information.

The body of the uncorrupted mule flew in the air, being assaulted from all sides by a vortex of dimensional equations too complex for any mortal mind to fully understand. They had a life of their own, defying understanding. They only let themselves be directed by the truly worthy.

The stunned apprentice watched with both eyes and sensors as the mule was restored cell by cell, pixel by pixel in real time. Finally, with a blast of energy and a cry of pain from the mechanoid master, the spell came to its end. The final shockwave pushed everyone back and dropped the mule on the ground.

Instead of collapsing lifelessly on the floor, though, the mule effortlessly hopped on its four hooves, tilting its head, its eyes flopping in the air in confusion as to what had happened. Then it happily trotted at the back of the stables to take a snack from the automated feeders. The rhythmic clacking of hooves following in its wake.

"T-that, I never suspected... that was amazing!" The apprentice muttered with shock, still not fully recovered from the spectacle.

"Gargh!" The master coughed a blob of dark machine oil and collapsed. Both his mental and electrical energy depleted. His metal sci-fi staff clanged on the floor next to him, while the math book gently lowered itself and softly landed on the ground next to the old bot.

"Master!" The apprentice cried out, rushing for the mechanoid's aid, a bottle of battery acid in hand, his hands fumbling with uncorking the top in his panic.

"I am here master, don't worry, I am here!"

Cough cough, argh... The master painfully groaned. Instead of panicking, he firmly clasped the hand of the apprentice, halting him from tilting the vial to his mouth. Instead, he spoke:

"D-do you see now... the true power of math," the old man said with zeal before blazing into unconsciousness.