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Author’s note: Due to RL circumstances, I will not be posting again until March 29, so I will not be unlocking chapters either. Next unlock will be next Monday.
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Training simulations for a Servant are tricky, due to the Bond. The Servant and her Mistress have a connection that the scenario cannot simulate.
The bond itself isn’t interrupted via travel to other worlds. The link passes through the Spirit Realm, which connects all worlds. But I faced a serious problem with Chiara if I were to go outside the mountain while she stayed inside. The sheer quantity of mana she needed to draw from me during her five days of life for every minute I lived would be impossible for me to support.
Even at smaller ratios it’s still difficult. But the main problem is, the flow is just different. It diminishes the value of the training. That’s why, when a Servant does any form of training in which she might need to draw mana, she has to enter with her mistress present. For that reason, Servant candidates normally completed their basic and intermediate training prior to their bonding.
But if I was the big, strong Elder who could protect her, it would affect the training, right?
Chiara looked down with a perplexed frown at the doll-sized figure with bird wings perched near her.
“A pixie?”
Unlike the chaos of Ryuu’s first scenario, Chiara sat on a limestone ledge over a blue hole filled with clear sea water. A mangrove forest surrounded both us and the hole. Our ledge was at the edge of a small island in this sea of foliage, a hummock barely an acre wide. This was a high-difficulty survival scenario, so Chiara and I had both arrived on it naked and without tools. Mine was Barbie Doll nudity though.
I was dealing with the trainees one at a time. While two stayed in time dilation, their subjective times flowing at nearly zero speed, I would concentrate on the third, and right now, it was Chiara’s turn.
A few other hummocks could be seen around the perimeter of the hole, but the rest of that perimeter was mangrove trees, except for a wide shallows thick with corals on the opposite side of the hole. Beyond those shallows were yet more mangroves, and we weren’t high enough to see over the trees to the open sea that must lay beyond them.
To be precise, Chiara saw a naked sea pixie with seagull wings. Something about her befuddled gaze tickled me, so I took off and fluttered around her while saying, “Sea pixie, Big Sis!”
I flew a couple quick circles around her.
“Big Sis?” she echoed.
“Big Sis needs to get off ledge, quick-quick!” I urged her. “Hunters hunt-hunt!”
“Hunt-… hunt?” she asked, tipping her head sideways, completely baffled now.
Unable to keep up my Kiki impression, I broke out into a laugh.
It’s me, My Lady, I told her in my spirit voice. If I kept using this avatar’s tiny pixie voice, I would lose the ability to speak without giggling.
“Tiana?” She actually sounded more baffled instead of less.
Sorry. I was imitating a pixie friend. Like I said, you need to get off this islet, quick. The hunters are looking for you.
After hearing the urgency in my spirit voice, she nodded and looked around. The options divided between diving into the deep water before us, heading into the mangrove branches, or into the swamp between the trees.
“Why are we completely naked?” she demanded as she gingerly picked her way down the sloped knob to the edge of the swamp.
In the scenario, you’ve escaped from wild merrow, and you’ve lost everything. Part of the challenge is to improvise tools.
As she waded into the water, setting a course between mangrove root clusters, she shot me a perplexed glance. “Wild merrow?”
For the merrow, the Elder Age is the Age of Legend. The one from the stories you probably heard from your mother.
“The stories that start, ‘Long ago, before the Great Law of the Seas’?”
Exactly. That time really existed. Right now, the merrow divide between the coastal merrow who interact with the land, and the wild merrow who spread out across the far reaches of the sea. A deep sea tribe has captured you and your female companions, and your companions are still in their clutches.
“What am I supposed to do with just this?” she asked, gesturing at her naked body.
You have to figure that out. There’s no right or wrong answer. If you’re to get out of this, you have to survive. Maybe you need to find a way to summon help. Maybe your trapped companions can be of use, or maybe it’s a mistake to try to rescue them and you’ll only end up recaptured. You need to stay free, find clues, improvise weapons and magic items, use what you can find.
“You’re not going to help?”
That’s why I’m a pixie, I answered. You have to do this yourself. I’m in the scenario so you can draw mana from me. I can use this form to join you, but I’m not very strong this way. I can only coach and cast a few magic spells.
Pixies have existed since long before fairies and even elders. The way that Kiki came to be isn’t a normal origin for a pixie. They are either one of the creations of the primordial gods, or they evolved naturally from spirits and magic beasts. We don’t know which, because the history of primordial Huade, of the origin of humans and creatures, was largely lost with the exit of the old gods.
“Why would you put me into a situation like this?” she wailed, sounding a bit frustrated.
The water was getting too deep to wade, so Chiara bent over and became waterborne, swimming with her head above water as she looked for some clue as to what to do next.
The enemies would be on their way, and she might very well be killed or captured within a half-hour. At the current settings, if captured, she would only get sexually harassed a little bit before the scenario cut off. Nothing really nasty would befall her, but it would be bad enough for her to want to avoid a repeat.
I wasn’t ready to answer her question yet, and she would be in reconnaissance mode for a while, so this was a good moment to switch trainees. I flew over to the observer ball and told it, Return me to the instructor booth, then place this scenario into time dilation until I return.
# # #
Dilorè surveyed the landscape with enormous eyes, if landscape was the right word for her surroundings. The ground wasn’t ground, per se. It was a vast jungle that slowly rolled like ocean swells beneath the perfect blue sky and the blazing sun.
A line of hills was approaching her from the direction she faced, with the treetops on the slopes before her slowly rising as those at the top of the ridge sank and disappeared. She surely could feel that the tree limb where she sat was also slowly falling. The valley bottom would reach her position soon.
The swells moved slower than on Huade’s oceans. As I watched, I wondered if this were how an ocean of molasses would act.
After scanning around a bit longer, she turned and looked my direction– or rather, the direction of the observer sphere– and asked, “Exactly where is this supposed to be?”
That surprised me slightly. The observer sphere had been present on the Dragon Stage, but I hadn’t interacted with it in any obvious way.
“Not on Huade,” I said into the speaking tube. “It simulates a place in the universe connected to my small world. We trained Elder children in this scenario, so it should work well for a fairy. You figured out I was watching you?”
“I figured you had a means to observe us,” she said. “This crystal ball thing was the only anomaly I could sense. Although this entire scene could be considered an anomaly. I thought you only trained your servants?”
“I probably worded it badly. I trained not only my own Servants, but also the Servants of all the Elders in the Third Legion and many from other legions. In addition, many Elders brought their children to me. The scenarios for them and for spirit beasts are on the third floor of my art gallery.”
“And what shall I learn here?”
The answer to that was, how to deal with the nasty spiritual pressure that gave you trouble while fighting the dragon. But just like with Chiara, I would wait to tell her.
“Before we talk about that, you have to meet your biggest problem here.”
“My biggest problem is that I have nothing but my raiment! You didn’t give me any weapons or tools!”
“Well, that’s astute of you,” I noted. “I wouldn’t consider it the biggest, but it certainly is one of your larger problems.”
I saw her eyes grow as something behind the sphere caught her attention. I rotated my viewpoint to see what she was looking at.
Imagine something that looks like a cross between a pancake and a fried egg, except with tendrils like a jellyfish hanging from it. Now imagine that it is a half-mile or more wide. Then, imagine that it is airborne.
Finally, imagine that it is moving straight at you.
“Is it dangerous?”she wondered. “Should I fly away, Your Highness?”
“It’s dangerous, but it isn’t a good idea to fly at all,” I told her. “And even when it isn’t close, I strongly suggest you stay lower than the treetops at all times. Even being this high up is a little risky. It would be safer to head down soon.”
Especially considering that the trough had reached Dilorè’s position, and her tree would be rising soon. The swells were currently around a hundred paces tall. In other words, a hundred paces closer to the approaching menace.
She looked down past her feet, into the depth of the forest. Naturally, it grew darker, although, like a mana-rich subterranean forest on Huade, the dim light never reached real darkness. Phosphorescent sources cast a constant glow.
Dropping off the limb, she grew her wings and glided downward. I just told her not to fly…
I had set the observer sphere to follow her automatically. Without that, I would have to constantly maneuver up and down to stay with her through the ocean swells. So, I now flew alongside her without any effort.
“Stay close to the foliage if you fly,” I warned her, and, as if on cue, an enormous mass like the tongue of a titanic chameleon came flying out at her from nowhere. She dodged while letting out a yelp, then dove into a mass of leaves like weeping willow fronds nearby.
Once she was again perched on a limb, she turned her eyes toward the sphere and demanded, “What in heaven was that?”
“A local predator,” I replied. “We don’t have names for most of the wildlife in this world, but the Elder kids nick-named that one ‘The Tongue’.”
“I only sensed it at the very last moment!” she protested. “Wild animals are that stealthy here?”
“They are,” I replied plainly.
After the ramifications of that news had a chance to set in, I continued, “Now that you have acquired a proper sense of danger, I will explain. The spiritual energy here is dense enough for even common animals to utilize it. They are practically spirit beasts themselves. You are a pathetic weakling compared to them. Your fairy sense is actually a fairly strong spiritual sense, but you have no spiritual strength. So now, you can guess what you’re here to train.”
