by Nikita Thorn
Fight! How are you going to fend for yourself in this realm of strife?
Seiki wanted to say that there was little he could do against things he could not even hit and attacks he could not block, but the smoke ninja was once again closing in, the expression on his face hellbent on landing a killing blow. Seiki grunted as he forced himself awkwardly to his feet. Two-thirds of his health were already missing from that one Shadow Strike, and he could barely feel his arms. The ninja disappeared, and Seiki broke out into another Slide that put him out of range of any possible attack, but also out of resources to spend. The next attack he would have to block with his Crimsonfire Tekko charge, but he doubted if that would work either.
Too bad, Commander Asaji. This one won’t make it.
Taking a deep breath, Seiki wondered what else he could do. Perhaps, the trick was striking it at a certain spot, although he could not see where that would be. He would have to hope that the Crimsonfire Tekko would block the attack and go in for one last trade, but against the unknown, any strategy was a bad one.
Commendable attempt, Seiki.
The Enenra struck, and Seiki pushed energy through his Tekko to activate the shield. Out of the corner of his eyes, the old Commander suddenly moved. With a grunt, the man cast something into the fire, and a silent flash went through the grass ledge, like silver lightning.
The atmosphere has been now touched by the light of an enchanted takibi bonfire. Your actions now affect beings made of smoke.
Seiki’s Crimsonfire Tekko burst out to block the ninja’s dagger thrust, and his left hand twisted to join his right in clasping the hilt of his Hikari, providing enough contact points to complete the Upslash.
The blade found flesh this time, and the smoke ninja staggered backward from the force of the diagonal slash, looking a little surprised. Then it glanced back at the old man, its human form dispersed, transforming into a column of smoke again, and Seiki thought he saw a brief glimpse of a smile from the rapidly changing faces.
Just in time, Commander Asaji.
“Oh.” Seiki lowered his sword. “It wasn’t a test for me. It was a test for you.”
Yes and no, Seiki. But time for something more sensible, then.
The smoke column transformed again, shrinking close to the ground and expanding sideways, soon taking the shape of a giant reptile.
Enenra Cursed Gecko [Level 16]. HP 18790/18790.
Of all possible things, Seiki had not expected that. “A Cursed Gecko?”
The first monster he had ever seen in the game was one of these. That one was the size of a dog. The one in his first War Event was as big as a car. This smoky one was somewhere in between. The lizard snapped its jaw at him as it leapt forward. Slightly puzzled by the basic monster but currently out of resources to spend, Seiki backed away. “Are potions legal?”
Yes.
Seiki quickly reached for one and replenished both his health and energy. The Level 16 monster was attuned to his level, and was not an Elite, and should therefore be perfectly manageable.
A thought occurred to him. “Are troops legal?”
Do what you have to do to win this.
The Enenra gecko lunged at him, and Seiki struck it with Sweeping Blade to keep it at a distance. That alone took about a tenth of its health, and Seiki breathed a sigh of relief as he summoned his troops.
As always, the unit of four appeared from the edge of the instance. Seiki had not seen them since the Hitsu Temple, but they bore no sign of fatigue or injury.
“Chief!” Genta greeted him warmly.
“You’re… fighting something weird again, Chief?” Saburo had a wary look on his face as he eyed the lizard.
Seiki grinned. “Yeah, but something feel-good for once.”
“Nice,” said the boy.
“First let’s get a demonstration.”
Turning back toward the lizard, Seiki waited for it to lunge again, before side stepping it and stabbing his sword onto the ground next to it, locking it in his Vertical Spike stun.
“Now, do that… Something,” he said to his troops, hoping the ambiguity would not throw them off.
The command fortunately did not rely on language but intent, and the mental guide allowed him to draw a haphazard line around the lizard. The troops snapped into action, swords drawn as they rushed at the monster. Seiki closely observed their movements, and he saw them Slide across the last few feet of grass before their target, and ending it in a leap, lifting their swords up in what looked like a Parry. Halfway through, however, they swept out their sword to the side, linking into Sweeping Blade.
The smoke lizard was coming out of the stun lock, and snapped at the approaching troops. Only Ojisan was in the correct position right in front of the creature, and his short sword blocked its attempted bite, while his subsequent Sweeping Blade caught it below the jaw. The creature jerked its head up from the impact. Ojisan was launched backward in the opposite direction.
“That was it!” cried Seiki. “So it has to connect with an attack.” He noted as he took two steps in retreat to try it out himself: pushing energy into a Slide, canceling at the last second to jump, before doing a short Parry and Sweeping Blade.
Since his abilities were more powerful than what his single troop member could do, the creature was knocked back a few feet. The combination, however, did not fire, and Seiki shook his head as he chided himself. “It needs to be one flow.”
Saburo was grinning. “Need another demonstration, Chief?”
“Saburo!” cried Rumi in horror.
Seiki laughed. “Hey, it’s not automatic for me.”
He tried again, concentrating on maintaining a connected flow through all three moves. The first two attempts linked only Slide and Parry, and triggered save prompts, which he said no to. Two more tries and he could still not manage to link them all without messing up one of the contact points, causing the combination to fizzle, and he had to occasionally keep using energy-less normal attacks and stuns to keep the smoke lizard alive and at bay. What was stumping him was that he needed a contact point on his right foot, which needed to be touching the ground.
You’re taking quite a bit of time. The Enenra sounded a little impatient.
“Sorry,” said Seiki. He was sure if he needed to end the encounter, a quick burst from both him and his troops at the same time would easily finish the monster off. “If there’s a time limit, give me a ten-second warning, okay?”
Reaching for energy once again, he took a deep breath and focused on splitting the same flow to activate the Slide and Parry at the same time, pushing more through his right arm to prepare for Sweeping Blade, and then splitting that again to reach his right foot just as he consciously lifted his left off the ground.
Once again, the blade hit the smoke lizard on the bottom of its jaw, sending it jerking backward. Seiki took notice of the impact, then followed up with the immediate Sweeping Blade, maintaining focus as the energy flowed down his arm and right leg. He could feel the contact point activating just before the leap.
Just as the move finished, a violent force launched him back, as if he had been grabbed and thrown by an invisible hand.
Seiki let out a cry of both surprise and delight, as what followed was the satisfying sense of completion that signaled to him he had pulled off a combination. There was no way to properly land after he was sent sailing through the air, several feet off the ground, and Seiki pushed energy down in a Slide as he tried to counter the momentum, but it only served to trip him. He finally fell, laughing, onto the grass.
Ten seconds, Seiki. The smoke lizard tossed its head. It seemed the Enenra had finally run out of patience.
“Upslash,” Seiki called to his troops as he bolted up and drew the mental guide for them. With the trials and errors chipping away at its health, the lizard was down to less than a third, and the troops had no problem finishing it off with the ability and a few quick normal sword slashes.
Enenra Cursed Gecko defeated.
The gecko dispersed and a smokey column once again appeared over the Field Officer’s dying fire.
Congratulations! You have unlocked a new feature for your Renkan East Base.
Seiki gasped. He had been expecting something to happen, but perhaps not such an obvious breakthrough, and he could not fumble for his mental menu fast enough.
Renkan East Base [Ronin]
General features:
>> Pigeon Perch (Basic)
Post birds will perch here and wait to be collected, allowing you to manage and train your troops without interruption. [Next rank: Pigeon Perch (Standard). Allows the sending of messages from within the instance. Purchasable from your Field Officer for 25 War Coins]
Troops features:
>> Enenra Bonfire (Unlocked)
[Next rank: Enenra Bonfire (Basic). Allows you to summon a random enemy once every 30 minutes as a target for you and your troops to train with. The summoned enemy is adjusted to the level and number of your troops. You may increase the pool of available enemies by burning a monster part in the bonfire. Purchasable from your Field Officer for 50 War Coins]
Travel features:
(None) [Speak to your Field Officer to unlock]
Although not exactly a training dummy, it was much better than he thought it would be. “Every thirty minutes?” he said breathlessly, reading from the description.
“Not until you give me quite a bit of War Coins,” said the Field Officer. “The takibi enchantment I burned was a temporary one. A permanent one will cost higher grade materials.”
“A… sorry, what?”
The old Commander frowned. “An old enchantment I learned. A binding charm that allows interaction between entities in this world and those beyond. It costs precious metal to make, which is why I need your War Coins.”
Seiki nodded, even when he was not sure what the man meant. He supposed this was another way to avoid a straight purchase.
“So I give you fifty War Coins and I can summon monsters to practice with?” Seiki asked just to make sure, even when the description already specified so.
Yes. The Enenra seemed a little amused by his excitement.
“And there are higher ranks, presumably for more Coins?”
With more powerful takibi binding charms, Commander Asaji can provide me with the skills to take on more powerful monsters as well as split into multiple forms at once.
Seiki took that to mean he would be able to specify the level and the number of summoned monsters as well.
“Maybe this is better than a training dummy for now,” he said aloud to himself, assuming that being able to try things out against a moving enemy was probably much more intuitive for him than calculating numbers for his abilities.
“Thanks.” He turned to the Enenra, then the old Field Officer. “And thank you, Commander. This is really helpful. I was only expecting to be able to stop calling you nameless officer, but this...”
Once again, the old man winced at the term of address, but said nothing to contradict it. He heaved a deep sigh and turned back to stare at the pile of firewood. The Enenra wove gracefully back to its position over the dying fire.
Seiki looked at the old man for a moment, before sheathing his sword. His troops had taken no damage, and were in their usual jovial spirit. He nodded to them as a signal to take a break, before walking over to join the old Commander by the fire.
The old man poked at the embers, his expression grave, and they sat in silence for a while. The Enenra continued to shift, watching them from fast-disappearing phantom faces.
“I’m sorry if you’ve lost someone,” Seiki finally said. “It’s rough.”
The old man shook his head and muttered something unintelligible.
“Even when things are really bad, they can get… better. I’m not sure how to say this. This will make no sense to you, but I’m sure there’s a quest somewhere down the line where it all gets… better.” He met the old man’s eyes and gave him a smile. “I’ll do my best when we get there.”
The old Commander once again said nothing.
Seiki let out a small chuckle. “Maybe there’s just no script for this.”
He sat with the old man for a while, until the familiar fluttering of wings sounded behind him. Seiki glanced over and saw that a bird had entered the instance and was now waiting docilely on the pigeon perch, with a message tied to its leg. “That’s probably my friends saying they’re back.” He grinned as he got to his feet. “So I guess it’s time for me to go back and stop being idle. I’m sure you’ll approve now.”
The old man let out an annoyed grunt and waved his hand without looking up from the fire. “Yes! And stay gone for a long time!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Seiki flipped through the pages of Collected Beta Arts Volume III, loosely put together by someone called Miu with no clan affiliation. The volume was one of the many art-themed documents strewn out around them. Having gone through a few, he was starting to think that art was indeed a very broad term.
They were on the top floor of the Shishioka Scientific Society’s Main Office, which now looked a little different. During his brief visit to the ronin instance, shoji partitions had been added to break the audience hall into smaller rooms. Seiki had been surprised to learn that it was the results of Mairin’s newest hobby.
“Ikumi let me try it out, since I had nothing to do while you guys were doing all your War stuff,” the kitsune had explained. “She said she needed to change the whole floor into something else to host their Wilderness clan, allegedly their… independent sub-branch.”
What that meant Seiki had not asked further. All he knew was that Mairin had now turned the top floor of the building into a less complicated version of the top floor of the White Crane Hall. The street-side half had been divided into two reception rooms, the larger of which Seiki and his friends were using as their study hall at the moment. The back-side half was now in even smaller units for the future use of the Society’s sister clan. There was a straight corridor down the middle, immediately accessible from the staircase.
Territory-holding clans could apparently sub out design tasks the same way they did mercenary deals, as long as an invited player was given the correct permissions. The designer could propose blueprints, which could then be accepted by clan members, after which the system automated workers to turn it into reality.
The change had already taken place by the time Seiki arrived back from his West Plains territory. Mairin had told him that adding shoji partitions was one of the simplest tasks. After Ikumi’s final approval, NPC workers had appeared with the necessary panels and got the redesigns done within fifteen minutes.
“The funny thing is adding stuff requires NPC workers,” Mairin had explained. “Removing stuff doesn’t. So they either fade away on their own in a couple of minutes or you can actually destroy them if you’re in a hurry. Ikumi says it’s a satisfying way to let off steam without having to kill anything.”
Ippei had noted that the Society seemed to be going out of their way to exhibit trust. That, to Seiki, was perhaps not too surprising, since Kazuki seemed to believe collaboration would lead to solving the mystery surrounding the disappearance of one of their clan members.
Friendship with the Society came with its benefits. Instead of having to sit in the ground floor lobby, Seiki and his friends were allowed to use the top-floor room while they waited for Kazuki to return. There seemed to be an unspoken consensus that they needed some downtime from the last Inner Palace encounter, and no one suggested using their free hour to cram in any Festival-related activities.
Now, Seiki found himself in a strange rabbit hole that was multiple volumes of Beta records.
“What is this supposed to be?” Seiki put the bound document down in front of him on the tatami floor. On the page was a crude drawing of something diamond-shaped, with legs, or arms, or tentacles coming out of its side th
at could perhaps be depiction of hair. There were also two different-sized marks in the middle of the shape that could be either eyes or ink blots. It was drawn by someone [unknown], who had labeled the piece with the word ‘kamikiri’, which meant nothing to him.
Mairin turned her head sideways to look at it. “Well, that’s definitely not a mask. Or an Insignia.”
“Could be a badly drawn mask?” Seiki looked at it again, then decided to put it on top of his ‘maybe’ pile. At least it had a keyword, which he could then ask the NPC librarian about later. “Or is art not the right way to go about it?”
Having exhausted the obvious keywords like keys or masks or insignias and emblems without coming across anything significant, their research had reached very obscure territories. Seiki had tried looking up things on Commander Asaji, too, and found nothing, although he did not try very hard. The old man had been uncomfortable with his past, and Seiki felt it was somehow wrong to pry too much, lest he ventured into spoiler territory.
Nearly an hour into their research, the group was perhaps now on a curiosity trip more than anything. Some of those labeled ‘Drafts’ Seiki was sure were simply someone’s attempt at fiction.
“Even I can do better than this zero-effort one.” Ippei chuckled as he flipped his Volume IV around to show a page covered almost entirely with black ink, except for something that vaguely looked like a mouth with fangs inside.
Mairin giggled. “It’s expressionistic, meant to inspire fear and despair. This was the last thing they saw before they got eaten by the blob monster.” A thought flashed through her mind and her eyes widened. “You know what? I’ve got an awesome idea for the Society’s next exhibition: Beta’s Worst Art.”
Seiki laughed. “I’ve got lots of candidates here.”
Apparently, the compiler had thought every bit of low-quality scribbling by any random nobodies was worth saving as long as it depicted something from the Beta version. After going through so many of the Society’s records, Seiki was starting to feel that there was a small number of Beta players who still clung onto the idea of Beta as if it was a lost holy land.