.
I will confess I allowed a ‘pfft’ to escape my lips. Ryuu shot a lethal glare in my direction, but he couldn’t leave his attention off the threat for more than a moment. It immediately returned to the flame in Kanon’s hand, and his eyes narrowed.
“So I have to defeat you?”
“As long as the Commander doesn’t overrule me, I control this place,” she noted with a friendly tone. “You can’t defeat me, so it would be counterproductive to require you to do so. Instead, you must attack the sphere with sufficient strength to destroy it, but also sufficient speed that I cannot parry it.”
Ryuu can occasionally think pretty fast. He immediately turned and burst past me, running hard in an arc to chase down the giant seven elements sphere while putting extra distance between himself and Kanon.
It was probably a habit formed during the many reruns of “Ryuu gets himself killed”, but I automatically followed, just like when I was doing my Kiki imitation. I didn’t feel like running, so I took to the air once more, with my toes barely above the white surface. I even folded my hands behind my butt the way she does.
The ball sped up, and Kanon began sending out salvos of Fire. Ryuu’s frown deepened, then his body flared with Earth mana and he executed the [Strength Enhancement] skill. He leaped to avoid the first shots, then accelerated forward with supernatural speed.
Perhaps it couldn’t accelerate that fast– although, frankly, Kanon could choose the performance stats for the object, so it was her choice whether it could– but Ryuu finally managed to gain on it, closing to within a couple paces of it…
A massive flamethrower blast burst across his path from the left, forcing him to break off the attack. He turned to see the threat, which was of course Kanon, still seated on her d12 perch, having flown a parallel course to keep up with him.
In a single move he unlimbered his greatsword and brought it around with a yell of “[Spirit Shot!]”.
The Wind attack blasted the gout of flame away for a moment, deflecting it to open a path forward for him to dash around the sphere, disappearing from Kanon’s line of sight. Of course, she had already reacted, sending spinning vortices of Aether after him.
I immediately ascended to a safe altitude to avoid stray Wind or Fire attacks. For some reason, I was beginning to feel a bit annoyed.
No, not ‘for some reason’. I knew the reason.
Do you want me to coach him? I sent to Kanon after a while.
Not yet, Commander, she replied. He’s resolved to win, but he hasn’t yet let go of his inclinations. I’ll need several days to wear him down. Why don’t you leave this to me for now?
It wasn’t a satisfactory answer. I didn’t want to just leave things to her and walk off. That being said, I already recognized why she had assumed it would work this way. In the old days, I did not handle the training myself. I would delegate this work to either a Servant or my proxy… and ultimately, Kanon still saw herself as my proxy.
The reason for that, however, was that I would have been too busy with other matters to attend to it. Unlike now.
So your plan is to just keep him running and dodging while he goes after the goal? I wondered as Ryuu fought off another salvo of vortices
Until it occurs to him to consider methods other than frontal attack, yes, she replied.
Ryuu dodged around them and parried the [Fireball] that followed them, then blasted a powerful [Earth Bullet] at the sphere.
Boring, I judged. But I stopped myself from deciding it was the wrong plan.
A divot was dug from the sphere’s surface where it struck. It was damage hardly worth mentioning.
Indeed, Kanon agreed. Hopefully, he is not as stubborn as you’ve described.
I’ll leave this part to you, I stated.
I thought you might, Kanon replied as she began driving Ryuu away from the sphere with a flurry of [Water Bullet]s. He began facing her instead of the sphere, attacking the attack with his sword and rushing at her, possibly hoping to drive her back.
Still feeling dissatisfied, I extracted myself from the scenario without giving a destination. This act left me standing in the ‘background’ of the art gallery, which was a sort of wireframe world fashioned in its likeness. The artworks themselves had the same appearance as in real life, but the rest was light blue glowing lines against a black background.
I kept my time compression at the 100x setting and willed myself through the maze of rooms to the central room. There, I ascended to the third floor, then proceeded through the maze once more to a particular vertical wall-hanging in the corner of a room near the end of the building. The depiction on it resembled an old-fashioned Asian print of a pavilion built on a cloud, set in a skyscape of fluffy clouds.
On the verge of entering, I paused, noticing the external time elapsed since we entered the gallery, then focused my mind on a call to the administrator.
Curator, is Little Jia waiting to speak to me?
Curator’s voice came back. She is, indeed, Commander.
I’m here, Commander! Jia chimed in. I could imagine her tail wagging as she replied.
Have you completed your preparations?
All three subjects have transferred into simulation space, Commander.
The subjects in question were Durandal, Lucy, and Dilorè’s contracted spirit. I had been uncertain we could convince the third, but Jia had a large community of spirits working for her in this place. She had been certain they would be able to coax it into cooperating.
I had no real plan in mind for the two spirits. I simply believed they would receive benefits in the special venues that Jia operated for their kind. After all, the spirits in this training hall and other facilities participated in exchange for using those venues, even though it is difficult to describe in human terms what value those venues had for spirits.
Durandal was a different matter. Ever since Grandmother suggested letting him rest at the bottom of her pool, presumably for the rest of Time, I had been bothered by the idea that he had worked all those years for that and nothing more in the end. I wanted the spirit beasts to have a look at him and determine whether it was possible to give him some more satisfactory retirement here.
Although they had been forged out of spirits, the holy weapons were an existence with their own nature, different from mortals, or Elders, or fairies, or spirit beasts or spirits, so I couldn’t assume anything. But if it turned out they could enjoy a freer existence in this place, then I intended to retire all of them here someday.
Does Durandal have the ability to separate his awareness from his blade, yet?
We are still studying him, Commander, Jia replied, and I am awaiting a reply from an expert in the Immortal Realms who may be of assistance. At this time, I can only give him full function and substance in his current nature.
I worried slightly at that last bit. Although exchanges don’t involve a mortal concept like money, immortals have their own way of charging fees for services rendered. What would that assistance cost us?
The expert in question often helps out of simple curiosity, Commander, Jia assured me. She is quite fascinated with the things we have been doing here.
I decided to trust my friend and leave it to her. Even so, I had a suspicion that Little Jia may have run up some kind of tab with this expert, over the millennia, and it would be mine to pay, one immortal to another, when my time in the Mortal Realm had run its course.
Having heard what I needed, I focused my attention on the wall-hanging in front of me and entered the little simulation that it represented…
After taking in the scene before me, my face began blazing bright red, and I exited.
Laughter came to my mind a short while later, followed by the fumbling call of Dilorè’s spirit voice.
…am I doing this right? Can you hear me, Your Highness?
I hear you just fine, I replied, fighting embarrassment. Please tell me that you aren’t… continuing while you talk?
More laughter, then the confession, I was planning on it, but we’ve stopped for the moment. The poor dear lost his vigor, over worry that he offended the Commander somehow.
…I’ll come back later, I decided.
No, just give me a few moments to sort things out with him, she told me, to my frustration. Now, I was obliged to wait and enter once the coast was clear, when I wanted to run away and avoid the extreme awkward.
Although the majority of my spirit beasts were female, I had included a few male beasts in my world. The uneven ratio wasn’t due to any prejudice on my part, but due to the nature of masculine beings in the Immortal Realms. They were simply less likely to have any interest in what we were doing, down here in the Mortal Realm. It was similar to why the original Elders had all been Celestial Maidens, with no male immortals joining them. Male immortals tend to have less interest in even maintaining their identification with the Human clade, much less care about what happens to their mortal relatives.
But a handful of male spirit beasts had found the idea attractive, and, based upon the very graphic evidence I had just confronted, at least one of those had cultivated a very masculine human form while living in this place.
A little bit later, she told me to enter. She was still nude and sweaty, but lying all alone in the middle of the pavilion floor, propped up on her elbow. She saw my continuing chagrin and replied to it with a smug smile.
“I’ve been around enough non-fairies to get it, but you do understand that I consider your reaction quite silly, Your Highness?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded. Then I asked, “Could you… fix yourself up or something?”
After all, it was just her mussed hair, her wings and herself. Every square inch of herself. But she misunderstood and simply sat up prettily in seiza and cast a chantless spell to clean herself. She did nothing about her lack of clothing or raiment when she finished the spell. She just began straightening her hair with her fingers. Considering her body was quite enticing for a girl with my inclinations, and I still had the image burnt into my retinas of that body writhing and jiggling in a state of arousal, I really wanted her to hide it.
I sighed, mentally constructed a comb in my hand and materialized it, then went around behind her and began combing her hair. I could see a lot less of her from that angle.
I would have been just fine with her avoiding the subject, but if Dilorè knew that, she ignored it. Or maybe she was seizing on the opportunity to tease me.
“You should stay and watch, next time that happens,” she suggested. “It would be educational for you.”
“I don’t need education!” I retorted as I began combing. “And I thought fairies usually preferred women? Aren’t men only for when you want children?”
She let out an amused puff through her lips. “That’s true for some fairy girls, I suppose. It isn’t true for all of us. I like men just fine. I’m just not fond of mortal men. That fellow you chased away does it better than some fairy men I’ve had.”
My face blazed again. I complained, “You were supposed to be cultivating!”
“I have done quite a lot of that, too,” she stated primly. “A fairy girl needs a break, now and then. How you go, day after day and month after month without sex, I shall never understand.”
Letting out a sigh, I decided to change the subject. In the process, I wound up describing everything we had been doing with Ryuu.
In the middle of my rant, I finished combing her hair, and we switched positions. After listening and combing in silence to the end, my cousin had only one question.
“You look and sound quite unhappy, Your Highness. Why?”
