by Nikita Thorn
Seiki laughed. “Yeah. It’s…” He shook his head as he gave up on trying to find the right word. “So this is where you get your fix.”
“Yeah,” said Ippei, his eyes sparkling. “Right at the brink of the noumenal realm.”
Seiki did not bother asking what that meant.
Ippei quickly checked his golden pocket watch. “And, enjoy it while it lasts, since we now have less than eight minutes.”
They now appeared to be out of the Sorcerer’s range, and the Rank 5 Demon had turned his attention back to the West Defenders army in front of the gate. With the whirlwind gone, and the temple returned to its former state of foreboding silence, for some reason it was no longer intimidating.
“Eight minutes is plenty of time to map this thing twice over,” said Seiki.
Ippei laughed. “Cue monster ambush.”
Luckily, no such thing immediately came into effect. They continued across the open courtyard deeper into the instance, their footsteps echoing in the stillness of the temple now that they were going for speed and not stealth. Steering clear of the Main Hall and its potentially deadly barrier, they stuck to the far edge of the northward path, looking around as much as possible to fill the mental map with details. Seiki’s mind was soon loaded with knowledge of metal fences, side yards, residential buildings and other strangely-shaped statues that were too deep in the dark to make out, tiled walkways, low dead bushes, and other things he had no time to parse. The gigantic Main Hall towered on their left up like a small cliff, inspiring both awe and inexplicable dread at the same time, and Seiki could not help feeling as if he was lost in a strange, fantastical nightmare.
The path brought them to an intersection. On the corner opposite them was a small three-storied pagoda, whose top roof was missing, making it look more like a fort tower. Going straight would lead them deeper into the instance. Turning left would loop them around the back of the Main Hall toward the middle of the temple.
Ippei checked his watch again. “Six minutes.”
“Keep going straight?” Seiki suggested. Knowing the layout of temples in general, he guessed both sides would be fairly symmetrical, and pushing deeper in would perhaps give them more information about the instance.
Ippei nodded and waved to his troops to follow them across the intersection.
The first few seconds down the path were uneventful, until a patch of tiles in front of them burst upward, several joining corners pushed into a pyramid-shaped bulge. They stopped to stare at the ill omen, and a second of silence fell before the tiles exploded.
Leaping back, they reached for their swords.
From the midst of the debris, a scrawny arm shot up, groping for the ground, its fingers dug into the dirt for leverage as it pulled itself up.
The rest of it quickly followed, first the head, bald, humanoid, but with all its features spread too far apart to be natural. Then its shoulders emerged, robed in black. It was similar to the undead monks they had encountered outside the gate, although Seiki could swear this one was larger. Its red-glowing eyes locked onto the intruders and its mouth twisted in a snarl.
Fallen Dai-souzu [Level 28]. HP 14875/14875.
This was the long overdue cued monster attack. His eyes fixed on their opponent, Seiki took an unconscious step backward. “Uh… is a Fallen Dai-souzu nastier than a Fallen Rishi?”
“No idea,” said Ippei as they both drew their swords. “But it has the word ‘dai’. Anything ‘dai’ is mostly bad.”
They continued to back away as the monster freed itself from the ground. Like its undead brethren out the front gate, it had for a weapon a ringed metal staff, which jangled noisily as the monk yanked it out from under the dirt, ripping off another row of tiles in the process.
Without further ado, the Fallen Dai-souzu lunged at them.
Seiki cursed and lifted his Hikari to Parry. The impact rang bright and clear, and the blade shone silver as it blocked off the blow. As expected, the move drained all his energy. Given the level difference, he was lucky that was all it did.
“We need to start fighting level-appropriate things,” he muttered as he glanced at Ippei. “Okay, how about you go ahead and map some more? I don’t think that—”
Seiki leapt aside as the Fallen Dai-souzu followed up with a downward swing, and Ippei took this chance to run up and hit it with a Sweeping Blade before the monk finished its attack. The demon did not even stagger, and its health hardly took a hit.
Seiki hastily traded half his health for energy, aimed for the monk’s wrist as he struck it with Sweeping Blade, hoping it would disarm. There was no such luck. The ability knocked the arm back a few inches and interrupted its next immediate attack, but he might as well have been trying to cut wood with a kitchen knife. “I really don’t think both of us can kill this thing. Maybe you can map a bit more.”
Ippei drew a breath. “No...”
“There’s no point in—”
“No.... I mean, kite!” said Ippei suddenly. “Kite it around the pagoda.”
“What pagoda?” Seiki winced as he dodged another close attack.
Ippei was already waving to his unit to run back the way they had come. “That one!” He pointed. “Go around it and meet me on the other side.”
The pagoda in question was the one they had run past at the corner of the intersection. Even without fully comprehending his friend’s plan, Seiki ran up and landed a full Upslash across the monk’s torso as soon as he saw an opening, using his biggest damage ability to ensure he got its full attention while Ippei broke off toward his unit. The Hikari’s cut was much shallower than he expected, and seemed to have passed through thick jelly, most likely because the monk had some magical defense around its body.
The attack achieved what he wanted to do, however. The Fallen Dai-souzu snarled and raised its arms high to aim the metal staff in his direction.
Seiki cursed. He had seen the same motion before when the group of Fallen Rishi outside the gate enacted it as a Formation. Even with this lone demon monk, there was no doubt the attack was as deadly. As he turned and sprinted away, a loud whish sounded behind him while the staff cut through the atmosphere. Seiki threw himself aside, feeling a straight shot of energy burst past him. The air next to him bristled, icy cold, chilling the whole right side of his body. As he hit the ground, he felt a strange water-like sensation around him, and after a split second he realized he had managed to cast the Protection shield on himself.
That had apparently saved him. The damage, even from the graze, was slightly more than two-thirds his health, which would have been more than he could afford to take at the point of impact. Seiki knew he was still not out of trouble, as the delayed damage hung at the back of his mind like a predator in wait. Wasting no more of his borrowed time, he scrambled to his feet and burst into a run, following Ippei back along the path. His left hand grabbed for a potion to replenish his resources.
He found himself quickly learning how to rely on the purple dot on his mental map to see where the monster was without turning back to look as he chugged down the refreshing drop of liquid that filled his health and energy at once.
“Kite it where?” he cried as he smashed the bottle behind him, not that it did anything to distract the Fallen Dai-souzu as it burst under the monster’s feet.
“Around the back.” Ippei pointed toward the three-storied roofless pagoda to their left. On the ground, between the samurai’s three surviving soldiers, a bamboo ladder had materialized, and Ippei was guiding his men to prop it up on the side of the pagoda.
Seiki glanced up. The top roof of the building was missing, leaving an opening they could reach.
“Oh, good thinking,” said Seiki as he turned to his left to wrap around the structure.
At that very moment, the purple dot behind him stopped moving. The Fallen Dai-souzu had once again paused to unleash its deadly Formation attack.
“Watch out!” Seiki frantically waved Ippei out o
f the way.
Cursing, the samurai dashed aside, and Seiki broke out in a sharp Slide in the other direction toward the pagoda. The Formation burst shot straight through the space between them, shattering the tiles in a straight line. Having been prepared for it in advance, this attack luckily missed both of them, but immediately killed one more of Ippei’s men.
“Go! I’ve got this!” Seiki continued to run, looping around the pagoda, cutting very close to the corners. He was not sure what he said was entirely true, but he still had several tools at his disposal that he could try out.
Ippei hesitated for a moment, but then sheathed his sword and rushed to the ladder. “Tell me when you need the Shout.”
Seiki had been keeping track of the passing seconds, and he knew exactly when his borrowed time was ending. “Now!” he cried.
Ippei’s Battle Shout edged all his stats up by a few helpful points, just in time as the delayed damage came crashing down all around, dropping over him like a collapsing roof and taking three quarters of his health. Seiki staggered, his legs suddenly felt like lead.
Ippei was waving to his men to throw themselves between Seiki and the enemy, but Seiki shouted, “Wait!” as he caught his balance and spun around to face the demon monk.
The Fallen Dai-souzu was raising the metal staff in preparation of another swing, and Seiki pushed energy through his Crimsonfire Tekko and threw himself at it. The fiery shield warded off the strike, and Seiki kicked out his leg to sweep the demon’s feet off the ground.
The monk fell on his back, and Seiki stretched out his arm to stop himself from landing directly on it. His other hand drew his Kohagane dagger as he recovered some balance, and he stabbed the blade down next to the monk’s torso, activating a two-second Vertical Spike stun. “Okay, now!”
“Assist!” cried Ippei, and Seiki pushed himself away and scrambled toward the ladder with his two more seconds of borrowed time, while Ippei’s two men ran in and stabbed haphazardly at the fallen monk.
Within seconds, Seiki was more than a third of the way up the wobbly ladder, his palms cold with sweat, his heart pounding. It felt flimsier than the first one that had gotten them over the wall, perhaps because of the lower number of troop members. A loud thwack sounded from below as the monk killed one of the soldiers, but Ippei had managed to shout another command, and the last remaining man pulled off a Parry formation, buying himself slightly more time.
Seiki kept scaling up the side of the pagoda, noticing that the wavy tiles on the slanting roofs were not doing a very successful job in supporting the ladder. Above him, the metal hooks screeched on the slippery tiles every time he took a step.
Ippei finally managed to reach the top, making the last few feet across the bare slanted roof onto the highest floor, whose collapsed roof left it open to the dark sky above. Then he turned back and crouched down on one knee. It was too dark to see his expression, but he suddenly let out a warning cry.
Blunt force struck the ladder from underneath. Seiki held on, feeling a nauseous second of vertigo as one leg of the ladder swung off the ground. He managed to catch a brief glimpse of Ippei’s dead unit members and the Fallen Dai-souzu’s dark figure at the bottom of the stairs, its staff raised in preparation for another strike. Grunting, Seiki threw his weight to the side, and the ladder swung back into place, the top hooks clanking noisily on tiles, breaking off a bit of the edge of the roof. Ippei stretched down and grabbed hold of one of them, groaning as the weight of the ladder nearly pulled him off balance.
Seiki rushed through the last leg of the climb. A sharp whish sounded from below again; this time the staff broke the ladder clean through. The bamboo rungs fell away from under him, and Seiki grunted and lunged for the cold roof tiles. Ippei’s firm grip closed around his forearm, and the samurai threw himself backward, dragging him over onto solid floor.
For a moment, they lay panting on the cold stone floor of the roofless pagoda. It was deathly quiet, and all Seiki could hear was his own breathing. Then tiny rhythmic vibrations started to come through the floor as the demon monk, unable to follow them up, started whacking its weapon against the base of the building.
“It’ll hold, right?” Seiki said. Then, whether because of the absurdity of his own question or the bubbling euphoria from having once again escaped death, he started laughing and could not stop. “You know what, Ippei? I was wrong about level-appropriate. You’re supposed to fight things way above your level. It… pushes you… and it’s not just about your class abilities. No, it’s... everything.”
What he meant was that it was the first time he had used the Crimsonfire Tekko offensively, and that perhaps would open many more avenues of possibilities, and he had no idea why it had never occurred to him until now, although he was laughing too hard to make much sense.
The samurai chuckled in amusement, but probably decided it best to leave the discission to another time as he glanced at his watch again. “Another… one minute and twenty-eight seconds. I bet we can map some more of the instance from here.” He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the edge to look deeper into the temple.
“Good idea,” said Seiki breathlessly as he recollected himself. More information from the mental map was already trickling through as Ippei gazed about: side yards, gates, study halls and gardens, even another metal incense burner further away in the middle of another courtyard, but whatever it all meant was perhaps for another day.
As Seiki forced himself off the ground, a clear crash sounded from below. The demon monk had most likely broken through something.
“Let’s hope there’s no stairs leading up here,” Ippei chuckled. “Not that it matters.”
The third floor of the pagoda was bare, and the only place that could hide a stairwell was covered with a large pile of debris, most likely of what had once been part of the roof.
Seiki shook his head. “I don’t think it can get through this—”
He paused as he noticed a line of purple light glowing under the broken roof tiles. Surprised, he swept part of the rubble away with his foot, revealing several more curved symbols. “Look at this.”
They exchanged a puzzled look. Without another word, Ippei rushed over to help him clear away the wreckage that covered it.
There was no stairwell. Underneath the broken tiles, seemingly carved into the top of the structure, was a square of squiggly runes about three feet across. The messy lines looked like writings in a foreign language, and after a moment Seiki recognized it as the script of the Demonic Clan.
In the middle of the busy symbols was a small, circular depression, less than an inch in diameter and about two inches deep.
“This looks like…” Seiki drew a short breath as he realized exactly what it looked like.
Producing the unlabeled Shadow Seal from his inventory, he exchanged another bewildered look with Ippei. The samurai nodded, and neither of them said anything as Seiki slid the Seal into the cavity.
It fit perfectly, with a clean, clear shink, and Seiki’s heart almost stopped.
The runes started to glow brighter. From the edges of the writings, colors began to fill the lines, angry red and dark violet, and unnatural shadows started sweeping across the ground, like multiple hands reaching inward toward the Shadow Seal. Seiki held his breath as the first of the shadows reached the edge of the unlabeled item, and the runes in the middle glowed increasingly bright.
Then it stopped.
Wrong key inserted for the Yamikai Door.
A burst of force threw both of them backward onto the floor, at the same time ejecting the Shadow Seal from the slot, sending it flying into the air. Seiki caught himself and looked up just in time to see the Seal drop onto the floor with a sharp clink, and he grabbed it before it could roll off the building. The glowing runes were quickly fizzling out, returning the shape to its previous state of dimness.
Still too confused to say anything, they looked at each other again, eyes wide, as they tried t
o figure out what this meant.
Ippei finally looked as if he was going to say something, but at that moment a low, metallic note rang through the instance. Seiki heard it as much as he felt it, vibrating out from within the Main Hall and dissolving everything around into emptiness.
The Ceremonial Gong has been struck. You have failed to liberate the enslaved souls within the Ruins of Hitsu Temple.
Everything after that was a blur. They revived to a crowd of battered but cheery West Defenders, who were very eager to discuss what Seiki and Ippei had found within the instance. Immediately they were swept into excited conversations about whirlwinds and demons and the instructions around the incense burner, as well as how Yoshitsune, at one point, amusingly engaged in an awkward hand-to-hand combat with a Fallen Rishi. They discussed the overall temple layout, which all the West Defenders now had access to from the mental map, and could not agree on whether they should try to push forward during the busy schedule of the Festival Week or grind up some more resources first. Umiko finally offered to assign troops to escort Seiki and Ippei back to the City, and promised to keep them updated on reruns and the possibility of more Civil Officers’ Seals.
As thrilling as it sounded, it all passed in a strangely surreal fog, as Seiki’s mind was on something else entirely. At a quiet moment while the West Defenders moved onto discussing their Festival plans, he and Ippei finally managed to exchange a furtive look.
“You noticed it too, right?” said Ippei, keeping his voice low.
Now that he had sorted out his knowledge of the instance and could tell what was information from the mental tool and what was his own memory, Seiki nodded. “The runes on top of the pagoda didn’t register on the map.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Shinshioka Scientific Society office was located in a rather inconspicuous four-storied building just off the middle of Trade Street, nestled between two lower shop houses, one of which Seiki remembered having once bought basic healing potions from before, back when he had no idea they were a rip-off. Unlike most other public territories, there was no overt sign to mark the building as a clan hall, although its front was quite distinctive, if one were to pay attention. No other building in Shinshioka had dark wood double doors fixed with glass panes, and Seiki was surprised he had never really noticed them until now.