.
My doppelgänger let Ryuu respawn at the save point and run desperately to his death twice, before appearing in front of him on the third try. She had the same raiment and wings as when I first saw her.
The wind was still blowing and the rain was still falling, although not with the same intensity as before. Ente-Agerak’s fury was still high, but he was running out of steam.
Naturally, Ryuu was immediately on his guard.
“Who are you?!”
“Please be at ease,” she told him gently, although raising her voice a bit to be heard.
“At ease?! There’s a murder-happy god chasing me!”
“Yes, and he will catch you very soon,” she predicted. “So why are you running away?”
His eyes bulged. “Because I don’t want to die!”
“Then you must overcome his advantage over you,” she stated, still as calm as before.
The storm god was audibly coming closer. Ryuu growled something unintelligible, then let out a huff and took off running.
She stood and watched as the god passed us by, catching up to Ryuu and once more crushing him, this time with his foot.
We watched the drama of the goddess of peace calming her husband and her rainbow dress lighting the sky. Finally, the operator reported, “The trainee has expired.”
Ryuu respawned at the stone pillar.
He glared at her. “No break?”
“Not this time,” she answered, as gentle as ever.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?”
She hesitated, pursed her lips in a way I suspected was identical to my own, then declared “I’m Commander Senhion’s younger sister. You may call me Kanon.”
“Kanon?” he echoed, looking a little baffled. His reaction was natural, since he definitely hadn’t expected a Japanese name.
… although it was a coincidence. In Xa-ne, Kanon means simply “Young On.” In other words, “Miss On.”
It was only two syllables, so it lacked the adulthood character, but I decided that I would call her that until she chose an actual name for herself.
His eyes narrowed. “I heard that Tiana and that guy were the only Elders still alive.”
“They are,” she agreed. “I’m not alive in the sense that you mean. Are you going to run again or listen to my advice?”
The sound of Ente-Agerak crashing through the forest was getting closer. He looked over his shoulder, cursed, then took off again.
She looked into the observation sphere and asked, “Is he always this stubborn?”
“Yup,” I answered.
“I suggest you enter the scenario as a pixie,” she said. “Perhaps you can speak to him while he runs.”
“Should I speak as myself, or as a random pixie?”
“A random pixie,” she answered. “You said he has a certain amount of hostility toward you, right?”
“I don’t think he’s hostile anymore, but he’s still stiff and uncomfortable with me.”
“My answer remains the same, then. He might respond more favorably to someone not related to you.”
I nodded. “Alright. Let’s do that.”
She didn’t waste any time. The next moment, I found myself mid-air and miniaturized. Hastily, I began beating my wings to hover.
Looking down, I saw Barbie-doll nudity, again.
I sighed. “Can I have some clothes, please?”
I winced at the tinny, piccolo voice and reminded myself to switch to spirit voice.
“We all saw the images of your raiment,” she answered with twinkling eyes. “Why not use that?”
You all saw…
My pointy pixie ears instantly burned.
“It was very popular,” she teased. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, with this body, so why not?”
Will everyone see this too? I wondered.
“Almost certainly,” she said happily.
You guys remind me of my fairy family, I grumbled, then concentrated on creating the raiment. It wasn’t as easy, without the high-voltage spiritual energy of my small world, but having the process now in my memory, I could manage it. Which meant I could probably do it in real life, on Huade. A filmy, translucent dress formed around me. The shape had a somewhat Tinkerbell vibe.
She was right. Without the naughty bits, this actually wasn’t too bad.
“You should catch up to him,” she advised.
I took off after the sprinting hero. He was using [Strength Enhancement] to move himself through the forest, so he had put a long distance behind himself by this time.
Rising above the trees, I requested, Operator, please give me target information on the trainee.
A sort of heads-up display overlaid my vision. I discovered that he had veered off to the right, and corrected my course. Behind me and to one side, the lumbering storm god was also closing in on him. For a while, before the save point, Ryuu had somehow escaped his attention, throwing off the pursuit, but he was now locked on.
The ‘display’ vanished as I caught up to Ryuu. I circled him a couple times while he eyed me with suspicion.
My ‘sea pixie’ form is not based upon my real appearance, so, just like Chiara, Ryuu didn’t recognize me.
“Big Brother, why run run?” I asked, channeling Kiki again.
Ryuu was nearing the hills that had been his goal for some time. Perhaps he thought they would slow the god down.
“I don’t have time for you!” he snapped.
He had left the safety of the forest and the god was drawing his bow. He was right about not having time.
“Dodge!” I yelled as the god was about to let the lightning bolt fly.
“What?” he yelled back, just before the bolt hit him.
Ryuu’s constitution is a bit unrealistic. He stumbled and fell, but he wasn’t dead from the strike. Probably he had used [Body Fortification] on top of [Strength Enhancement], despite the pneuma fatigue cost of using two skills simultaneously. He wobbled back to his feet and turned his head to see the oncoming god.
The wave of spiritual pressure that Ente-Agerak was pushing on him was as heavy as the strongest level used by the dragon. Ryuu gritted his teeth, almost losing his balance, then willed himself to start running again.
His skills had been interrupted, and for some reason he wasn’t restarting them. Perhaps his pneuma state was too low, or perhaps he just couldn’t, under the pressure.
“Fight, Big Brother!” I called from a safe distance, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Fight-Fight!”
Perhaps he did, in his mind, but his body never showed it. He wobbled as he ran, and the roaring god caught up, choosing this time to lean down and scoop him up.
After clenching tightly, Ente-Agerak opened his fist and dropped the crushed hero back to the ground. He bared his teeth and growled while staring down at his broken body, then stomped away, to be joined soon by his wife. Although the death aura was visible this time as soon as Ryuu hit the ground, he had to watch through the whole bad end cutscene again before the operator once more announced, “The trainee has expired.”
I experienced the ‘cut to commercial’ moment of darkness, then found myself again hovering next to Kanon.
“Hide on the edge of the clearing,” she advised me. “Join him right away if he starts running again.”
I thought, then asked, Should I pretend I haven’t seen him before?
Really, I can’t talk normally in that toy voice.
She thought, then shook her head. “Be a random wandering trainer. Let him notice you’re trying to help him get through this.”
I wondered, Did we have wandering trainers before?
“Not in the old days. But there are spirit beasts and spirit realm entities who have taken to wandering through our scenarios on their own. They can be a problem sometimes, but mostly, they’re helpful to the trainees.”
In that sentence, I came to realize that the population of my small world had become a lot more organic and a lot less regimented after I left. Random beings were just doing whatever they wanted in my precious training hall?
I would have to ask Curator about it later. I flew out to the edge of the clearing, around where Ryuu would appear, and waited.
He appeared again, in the same pose with his hand against the save spot. He spotted Kanon and frowned. “You again.”
“Will you hear me out this time?” she asked.
“I got caught last time because I waited!” he snapped, and took off running in my direction. After he passed me, I began flying behind him. I let him put a few hundred paces behind us before pulling up next to him. I was tempted to land on his shoulder, but decided against it.
“Big Brother!” I greeted him cheerily, waving. I flew a circle around him as he bounded along. Thanks to [Strength Enhancement], he was running three to four times faster than he should have been able, but that was nothing compared to my top speed.
“No good, Big Brother! Same thing before!”
“Before?” he yelled. “You remember me?”
“Big Brother is Big Brother!” I declared, using basic Kiki-logic.
“She’s not an NPC?” he wondered to himself.
“Pixie is Pixie!” I announced, zipping around him once again to check for Ente-Agerak’s position. He was definitely catching up. “Bad guy catch-catch! Turn, Big Brother!”
“I need to get to the hills!”
I began flying parallel to him, a bit ahead so he could see me.
“No good! No good! No trees!”
“You have a better idea?” he demanded.
“Yup yup!” I declared. “Big Brother stop, run back!”
“You’re crazy!”
“Make head strong! Pixie help!”
I never talked him into it. We had to watch the same cutscene yet again.
On the next try, I flew up, took note of Ente-Agerak’s position, then caught up with Ryuu.
“Run this way, Big Brother!”
“The hills are that way!” he argued.
“Bad guy catch too soon! This way! This way!”
I managed to get him to turn about thirty degrees and run in a direction that would keep him in the woods longer.
“Do you know how to beat this guy?” he asked finally.
“Yup yup! Pixie teach!”
“Tell me!”
“Make head strong, stay strong, big lady help!”
“What does that mean, make head strong?”
This was the number one reason I had meditated overnight, actually. I had to dig up my memory of how to impart the first steps of spirit training.
“Pixie teach!” I told him, then flew up behind him and landed on his head, sprawling on my belly. It was a really weird feeling, lying on a human head.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, reaching up and trying to grab me.
“Ow! Stop!” I yelled, whacking his forehead with my tiny hand as I fluttered my wings to fend off the hand. “Pixie teach!”
“Don’t just land on me like that!”
“Pixie show! Big Brother feel!” I told him, then summoned my spiritual strength and projected energy onto him. Not pressure, but the actual raw energy.
“Big Brother feel?”
“… Maybe?”
We had to go through two more cycles before he became able to summon the energy on his own. And it took three more tries before he actually began holding up– just a bit– against the massive god.
While we were waiting through the cutscene again, I hovered next to him and told him, “Next time, Big Brother run straight at bad guy! No more run away!”
He couldn’t respond, of course, since he was dead at the time. But the next time he revived, he did as I instructed, and ran straight toward the god.
“Fight-fight, Big Brother!” I called. I saw the determination in his face, and he let out a howl worthy of the best Shounen anime as he streaked past Ente-Agerak’s feet. The spiritual strength he could wield at this point was hardly more than a kitten punch, but it was just enough to prop up the mountain of willpower he was putting into his resistance against the storm god’s onslaught.
I thought we would need a couple more tries, but he was rewarded on the first shot. The goddess Ente-Ahama, “Brings Peace”, appeared before him, scooping him up into her bosom. She stared down her husband while placing an imperious palm against his chest. For the first and only time, Ryuu got to experience the end of the storm while breathing.
He transitioned to the recovery room to find me sitting there, sipping a glass of water.
“Congratulations, Mr. Kowa,” I greeted him. “You’ve cleared the Storm Bringer stage.”
