.
Gugrenar rose into the air, finally fleeing the torture, and the trumpeters blasted out a loud chord, followed by a series of mini fanfares. I flew up to rejoin them and then the announcer declared their victory.
The roaring of the stands had decidedly dimmed. The home team had just lost, after all. They wanted retribution, but this land was under the law of Gugrenar, their dragon god. He enforced unbreakable rules regarding this competition.
“Now say you, she who commands three, shall you continue?” the announcer asked in his strange rendition of Dorian. “Three have triumphed, but one must also prove your worth. Say you now your intent, oh foreign warrior, and the name by which we shall call you!”
The stands had a nervous energy about them. This event was a means by which foreigners could enter this land’s nobility, rather than leading armies in to conquer. In ancient times, the dragon that they worshipped had instituted this system as a means to prevent barbarian harassment of his human allies, by inviting warlords to directly experience the power of the kingdom’s protector without requiring him to incinerate armies of barbarian soldiers with his dragon flames.
I, as was standard for instructors who entered with their students, had been in the ‘king’ role, the place of the person waiting in the background while the vanguard fought. I now had a particular formula to follow. According to the scenario, my team had just earned me the right, with their assistance, to challenge for a seat in the noble court of this land.
I strode forward, spreading my wings in full while drawing my sword and holding it high, and announced the moniker I had used in the past in this role, as loudly as I could manage, using the insulting tone that guaranteed to us the toughest of the three routes, the one that had the greatest benefits.
“I am Sen the Wanderer! Show me, oh city, whether you are worthy of me as your ruler!”
Instant, loud booing, worthy of the best ‘bad guy’ pro wrestler, just as I had planned. I couldn’t help grinning.
A loud drumming began, like thirty large men beating on thirty large taiko drums. At the end of the stadium, a grand gate opened, and a float dragged by a team of twelve rhinoceros-like dinosaurs advanced into the stadium. I waved for my trio to follow and began walking toward it.
It stopped, and the announcer declared, “Sen the Wanderer, leave you now and bear only honor and receive only respect, as pass you back to your land in peace. None shall bear any enmity against you in this city. Else take you up the Seal of the Challenger! From then and onward, you and your retainers shall fight, until die you or triumph! Against each challenge, fight you for life and live only should you defeat nine! This is the terms of the Warrior’s Challenge! How say you?”
The float was just an enormous flat-bed trailer carrying a shrine, atop which stood a woman holding a bracelet.
Rather than make the long walk around the team of draft animals to climb up onto the float and then onto the shrine, I simply flapped my wings a few times as I bounded directly over the draft animals to her. And rather than meekly hold my hand out to let her close the manacle-like bracelet on my wrist, I took it from her and put it on my left wrist myself.
I raised my fist, and rays of light came out of the bracelet, striking my three ‘retainers’. The booing and yelling continued, so I shook my fist just to piss them off worse.
I motioned for the trio to walk past the float, then hopped down to wait for them. As they joined me, I simply said, “Let’s go,” and walked out of the stadium through the open doors.
A pedestal stood at the other end of the yard where the float had waited for its entrance. It had a glowing handprint on the side. I walked through that space, heading directly for it.
“This is a save point?” Ryuu asked as we reached it.
“Correct,” I said as the rest joined us inside the effective perimeter. As I pressed my hand against the handprint, I added, “The NPCs never interact or touch them, as if they don’t see them, so save points can be in some very open locations like this.”
Looking at the observation sphere, I commanded, “Exit.”
After a moment of blurring, we appeared in the art gallery, with Curator waiting for us.
Welcome back, Commander, she said with a bow.
“Thank you, Curator. We will be going out for now. Keep all our save points, please.”
As you wish, Commander.
Little Jia reported as I led my trio out of the building, Total Sky Ocean world time since entry to simulation circuit, fifty two point five percent of the daylight period. In Huadean terms, six hours, seventeen minutes, forty four seconds.
So it’s already past time for lunch, I concluded. Have it served in the Mountain Pavilion of the North Island. I trust it is still there?
I anticipated you would want it and had it recreated. You will perceive no differences from the Mountain Pavilion of the Elder Age, Commander!
Excellent, I nodded. I shall transport my friends there, myself.
I told the others, “We shall go take lunch. It’s early afternoon.”
“How many days has it been?” Chiara asked.
“None. It’s the same day we entered. We were in for a little over six hours.”
Chiara heaved a sigh and shook her head. Ryuu smiled and patted her on the back.
“It’s just difficult to imagine as a reality, Your Highness,” Dilorè noted apologetically.
I sighed, then said, “Lady Chiara, you’ve seen viewing glass images, and you’ve probably at least heard that it is possible to keep recordings of them.”
“We use such things in the Royal Knights, Your Highness,” Chiara nodded, “For evidence gathering.”
“Have you watched one replayed at very high speed? While attempting to find a particular moment in the recording?”
“Yes.”
“Just imagine the world inside the simulation is the image playing at high speed. Now imagine, to those inside that image, time still moves normally, and to them, those outside are practically frozen, almost unmoving. Ponder that idea for a while, and you should understand it.”
We exited the building into the brightness of Sky Ocean day. It generally rains only at night in this place, so the daytime is always a pleasant spring day.
I thought I might be able to do the next step, but found that I couldn’t quite make the spiritual form, so I took a breath, and switched my mind to that of Fan Li.
Naturally, Tiana’s body did not change. We were in the physical world, not the world of simulation, so it was not possible to change physical form. Her Elder body simply now hosted this small one’s mind. The technique of spatial manipulation in the physics of this universe still had not revealed itself to me, so I executed the Heavenly Lotus Blossom Platform technique that Tiana had summoned me to perform.
A massive amethyst-hued lotus blossom in its late stage of blooming spread before me. I stepped onto it, treading the flattened petals cautiously to reach the central portion. I had created a larger blossom this time, big enough for four. Turning, I saw three people hesitating to follow.
“Lady Chiara, you must ride with me,” I stated firmly. “It is your duty as my Servant to obey me. I suppose Lady Dilorè can fly alongside, but unless Mr. Kowa can persuade her to carry him, my lotus blossom is the only means he has in order to go where we are going.”
Lady Chiara took ginger steps on the unevenly distributed petals, walking forward to join me. After a moment, Mr. Kowa followed, unwilling to let her face the risk alone.
With a sardonic smirk, Lady Dilorè shrugged and followed, boarding last. Once everyone had joined me in a circle around the center parts of the flower, we took off.
The convenient part about the technique is the lack of a sense of motion. I was moving not only the flower, but everyone standing on it, so they did not feel the acceleration in the same way as on a vehicle. The breeze did tell them that they were moving, but that was all.
Lady Dilorè looked at me with her eyes slightly narrow. “You… are not Tiana right now.”
My lip curled a bit. “You can tell?”
“Your aura is unchanged, but your mannerisms are different.”
I bowed. “You are correct, My Lady. This small one is Fan Li once again. Tiana switched with me in order to use this technique to bring you to the place we are going.”
“We’re over the… water?” Lady Chiara said nervously as she realized we had passed beyond the edge of the Central Island. The North Island, a small, triple-peaked mountain, was a half-mile ahead of us, but below us was the appearance of open sky.
“We are not very high up, My Lady. If you fell off, you would hit the Water-mana layer barely two paces below us. You could then swim to land, so you are in no danger.”
She nodded, but still looked pale. I smiled and reached out my hand, which she took, allowing me to send her a calming technique.
“You should use this technique on Huade, Your Highness,” Lady Dilorè said. “It would amaze everyone.”
“It would,” I agreed, “But Huade’s spiritual environment cannot provide sufficient power to perform the technique at my level of competence. Flight on Huade is better achieved through the use of mana. Perhaps I can do it after my spiritual vessel has grown more.”
“So you really are doing this without mana,” Mr. Kowa muttered.
I brightened. “You can tell?”
“Lately, I’ve … started sensing when mana is flowing,” he admitted.
I nodded. As expected, he was beginning to develop a spiritual sense.
“It will be a long time before you can use it like a fairy, but you should keep practicing that sense of mana, Mr. Kowa,” I advised. “It may serve you very well, someday.”
Tiana still had not spoken to him about the troubling problem of his summoning. I considered speaking about it, then recognized why she was keeping the news to herself. It had been her intuition guiding her, but I could see the wisdom in her belief that he should learn about it after his training here was complete… and after she had worked out a plan for him to fulfill a hero’s role. Otherwise, her mother’s very act of summoning him, and her king’s order to do it, would become immoral. Even though she had only rudimentary understanding of the concept, her filial piety had strongly influenced her decision, and I could not disapprove.
Ultimately, she wanted to turn him into the being that could receive the heroic destiny. Destinies are not things which stick to one person like glue, once received. Chaos, luck and happenstance bend all things in the Mortal Realm, and the whorls in the Spirit Realm called destinies, that attach themselves to mortals almost at random unless Magic, Will or Wizardry force them onto specific individuals, can be moved, or shared.
Tiana’s judgment– and my judgment– was also that Mr. Kowa, even without a destiny, should achieve the goal that Mother summoned him to achieve. As much as she hated the idea of Amelia marrying him, a human hero with a princess at his side would muster far more political and popular support for the effort against the demons than a suspicious fairy vampire princess.
In addition, although he had arrived decades too early, the Hero Summoning had equipped Mr. Kowa with a growth cheat, and Astaroth’s gambit had unwittingly given our hero decades to grow. As Gaia had noted, he only had to surpass the ravages of age.
We were approaching a graceful Elder Age structure, a roof on columns nestled beneath the largest peak. The other two peaks lay to the west and south of the main peak, and the triangle that the three formed held a little mountain lake. If this were natural landscape, this lake would have silted in and disappeared millennia ago, but of course, Little Jia and her crew had either maintained it as is, or restored it to the condition I remembered. The pavilion ahead of us sat on its shore. Under its roof, a trio of Spirit Beasts, two of them in human form, stood ready to receive us.
The blossom landed and faded into the ground beneath, leaving us behind at the foot of the entry steps. The personality named Fan Li faded in the same moment, leaving behind the young Elder named Tiana.
“We’ll have lunch, then discuss our next steps,” I promised my companions.
