Among the vast multitudes of mankind, there was an equally vast degree of variation when it came to the manifestations of higher evolutionary potential — these were Delta-Phenotypes. A little less than a quarter of the population possessed a Delta-Phenotype, and of those, one-fifth would awaken it naturally in their early years, without any external trigger, and out of that one-fifth, an even smaller minority of one-tenth would ever do anything of substance with their potential. Some, of course, were more common than others. The most common, at least in the lands of Zanma’s origin, was a third eye, and a laundry list of other “Ocular Aberrations” popped up in every corner of the wider world, or so he'd read. Second most common were hair anomalies, known as “Capillary Aberrations.” The subject’s hair would usually grow to a specific length very quickly when cut, often forming abnormal shapes or exhibiting weight abnormalities. Various patterns on the skin more or less shared the second place with hair aberrations.
Such physiques, uniquely suited to psionic practice, would enhance one’s psionic capabilities in one aspect or another, or make certain avenues of advancement easier. In the absence of a Delta-Phenotype, one could be introduced artificially. Countless methods existed, of course — one could have an artificial third eye physically carved into their skull and forcibly awakened with psychoactive drugs. One could turn to fully synthetic augmentation, be it through implants or transmutive relics that restructured one’s existence on a fundamental level. Either way, there were countless paths one could take to step onto the long road of evolution; if the will was there, the desperation to take a leap of faith, then the wind would lift you at least high enough that you wouldn’t smash against the rocks below. Whether you would eventually fly above the clouds, that was up to your own efforts and fortune.
This inherent potential was the way in which Zanma was exceptional: He possessed a double Delta-Phenotype, both Ocular and Capillary, which was already rare enough, but his Delta-Phenotypes had conjoined into a new, distinct Composite Delta-Phenotype. However, this “one in a billion” talent didn’t amount to much, because both his Delta-Phenotypes were, individually, abnormally weak, which was the reason they could conjoin at all — otherwise, under normal circumstances, at best they could’ve coexisted, or one would gradually fade, becoming recessive.
As a result of his truly, unbelievably aberrant physiology, Zanma had been able to manifest rudimentary psionic abilities at an early age, and his well of stamina was far deeper than most, but his burst power output was well below average. When one looked at the sum total of it all, all his extreme traits canceled each other out so that he was just somewhat above average.
Even this modest advantage held within it a cruel curse: His unique phenotype was exceedingly stable. This was, in some ways, an advantage, but it cut off his path to “improving his talent.” According to Taisei, the vast number of procedures, objects, techniques, and places of power that could enhance one’s natural phenotype or transform it entirely was only matched by their rarity. But so long as there was some degree of instability within the phenotype, that instability could be used as the entry point for an agent of change, both good and bad. Zanma’s condition meant he more or less didn’t need to worry about underhanded attempts to cripple him, but it also meant he was forever stuck as being “merely above average,” condemned to always walk the cruel path, never to skip ahead by leaps and bounds without the dearest of prices paid: Perseverance.
If nothing else, at least his meagre talent was suited to that purpose.
He still remembered the first test. How could he not?
Old Taisei had stamped each of them with two-symbol combinations in an obscure language, on the back of the neck. Their first task was to use psionic abilities to observe the symbols and draw them. The next task was to extract their pronunciation through psychometry, a kind of extrasensory perception, and the next after that was to determine the meaning of the phrase by parsing the deeper intent within the stamp. The only reason a bunch of children could do it was that Old Taisei had used specially formulated ink in which he had deliberately embedded both the pronunciation and the meaning. Just the “First Degree” of success was sufficient to qualify for apprenticeship; if you accepted, the mark’s pronunciation would become your new name under Taisei. The mark would be made permanent, leaving it for you to decipher over the coming years. Achieving the Second Degree meant that Old Taisei would acknowledge you as a direct disciple, which meant two things. First, special tutoring. Second, the old man would leverage his personal Access Level to register you with the Soltern as a Zero Phase evolver under his tutelage, delegating some of his own authority and energy resources to you until you became a First Phase evolver. This didn’t mean a great deal in material terms besides the ability to occasionally requisition luxury items or use passageways that were otherwise restricted, but it carried enormous prestige, enough to ripple out and elevate the status of one’s family in the secular world. It instantly changed someone’s rank in society. Zanma didn’t particularly care, having come from a mediocre background in a mediocre town in a mediocre region. Had he not awakened his Delta-Phenotype, he expected to have become an engineer of some sort.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
As for the Third Degree of success… Besides the benefits of the Second Degree, achieving the Third Degree would immediately make you Old Taisei’s live-in personal disciple, on the spot. Nobody reached the third degree. Out of thirty candidates that year, only eight achieved the First Degree. Three achieved the Second. One candidate, whose symbols were read as Houkou, came closest; he figured out the meaning of the first symbol, which was the act of roaring or howling. Unsurprisingly, he overtook Zanma within the second year.
Zanma’s symbols were 斬魔.
Houkou’s symbols were 咆吼. By his third year he had deciphered both, revealing a mildly redundant name that essentially doubled the sense of “roaring” or “bellowing with overwhelming power.”
Old Taisei never showed any of them the back of his neck, but his symbols were right there on the school’s placard: — 大聖. Zanma could never see through the specific meaning, he only ever discerned a sense of greatness and holiness. He knew, with certainty, that Taisei was not a puppetmaster in the same way his students were, in the way Zanma was. He had never seen the old man directly operate a puppet. His talent, his skills, and his craft were not those of puppetry, but of creating puppetmasters. He was not “a puppetmaster” but “the man who founded the puppet theatre.”
Zanma wanted to be bitter about the fact that Houkou had been more or less guaranteed to become the future live-in disciple from day one, but he simply didn’t have it in him. Houkou had worked even harder than Zanma, he just happened to have a monstrously powerful third eye that amplified his hard work even further. He didn’t even have a nasty personality, the three-eyed, white-haired boy was always calm and pleasant to all those around him — Zanma supposed it was easy to be nice when one was already secure in one’s position. The core reason Zanma couldn’t truly bring himself to resent his situation, however, was the knowledge that things would have turned out the same even if he and Houkou had been exactly equal in raw talent. The reason was that, unlike Zanma, Houkou suffered from Critical Mass Syndrome, which risked causing his monstrous psionic strength to rampage out of control every time he underwent serious mental strain whilst using a substantial portion of his psionic power. As Zanma understood it, it was some malformation that caused the source of Houkou’s psionic power, his psychoid, to bleed together with his physical body too readily. Where a normal psionic would only ever use his psychoid to pull power down from the higher dimensions through great effort, Houkou barely had to reach out and it would flow. Thus, the ease of causing a psionic flood if he ever got upset.
Old Taisei had made it fairly obvious years in advance that Zanma would likely end up being this generation’s “Itinerant Disciple,” and Zanma had never felt opposed to the idea, so this was how things played out. Looking back, it was somewhat obvious that the old man had expected him to be the best-suited for this role from the very start, considering the meaning of his evolver name. He had deciphered it well before his departure, but it was only in his last weeks at the school that he revealed it openly to the old man.
“Don’t take it as a dictate of what path you ought to follow — the names were merely guesses on my part. Some turned out more accurate than others, but they are guesses all the same. The same goes for your position as traveling disciple. If it comes down to it, once you’ve had your fill of traveling, settle down, start your own school, your own puppet theatre,” Taisei had said.
“Who ever heard of a demon slayer who doesn’t travel?” Zanma had jokingly said back then. It wasn’t much of a joke anymore. He certainly didn’t intend on openly calling himself a demon slayer for a while yet; not until the gore of at least three or four bastards of Shellhead’s tenacity stained the feet of his puppets. He was idealistic, not stupid.
Read ahead on ! Five advance chapters now available! More to come!
Please consider rating and reviewing. It really does help a great deal.
