.
Lunch was Dorian cuisine again. The main dish was ginger pork and rice. The sides were a croquette and a mix pickled daikon, burdock root and carrot. Ryuu was genuinely surprised to find an umeboshi tucked into the rice, although I noticed a slight tinge of disappointment when he ate it. Something must have been different.
Ryuu had been testy, grumpy and moody toward me ever since I switched back from Fan Li’s incarnation. Although Fan Li had noticed during our trip to the North Island that his mood softened once he perceived that the personality had shifted, it returned once he realized that I was back.
It wasn’t just his usual attitude toward me, though. I could tell something was eating him, and now I knew it related specifically to me.
“Mr. Kowa,” I finally stated, “You seem to be angry with me about something.”
His mouth twisted, but his eyes went immediately to Chiara. So it was related to her…
I sighed at his continued silence, then hazarded a guess. “Do you not like how I order Chiara around?”
“I don’t like how you treat her like a thing you can use however you want!” he shot back.
I pooched out my lips as I thought, then corrected my face. It had been a Robert expression that suddenly came out, and didn’t really suit my current sense of self. That was probably a symptom of switching personalities too often.
“I will admit, I cannot forgive Chiara for what she did to Amelia,” I answered. “So I’m probably not terribly charitable toward her. But I do not intend to treat her roughly. Is there something in particular you would like me to change?”
His eyes grew wide, then he slammed his chopsticks down on his bento and yelled, “Don’t send her into a game to be butchered like an animal and torn apart by monsters!”
Ah, some patient voice in the back of my mind metaphorically nodded. You haven’t fully explained that to him.
His jaw was trembling with anger, and I suspected he had been fighting the temptation to act out physically at me.
I nodded, then reached over and took Chiara’s hand. She was looking a bit uncertain.
“I’m sorry, My Lady. My plan to increase his motivation was a little too effective. Have you two not discussed this?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered. “Is this about that scenario with the coastal villagers?”
I nodded again, then told Ryuu, “You haven’t asked her what her experience was, I take it.”
“Of course not! Why would I want to make her remember something like that?” he demanded.
“Well, the good news is, she remembers nothing,” I stated, then patted Chiara’s hand and told her, “I suppose you can imagine what happened to your body after your memories ended, on each run?”
“It was pretty obvious I would become a human sacrifice,” she nodded. “Did…”
Her eyes flicked toward Ryuu, then she asked, “Did Ryuu see me getting killed?”
I nodded and patted her hand once more. “I’m afraid so.”
Letting her go, I turned back to Ryuu. “Mr. Kowa, the scenario you saw was for your training, as the rescuer, not the sacrifice’s training. Normally, a spirit would have operated an NPC in that role, and spirit operators don’t really experience such things in first person. Or, more accurately, their perspective is similar to the experience of someone playing a role playing video game on your world’s game systems. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a trainee actually play the victim in that scenario before. I would have to ask Curator, but I doubt it. It was rather obviously of no value for training to play that role.”
“Obviously!” he yelled again.
“So Chiara was only present in that role for her interactions with you, as you rescued her,” I stated. “Before the actual sacrifice began, we switched her into time dilation and the normal spirit operator took her simulated body over to finish the round. I don’t think there’s any benefit in describing to her what happened to that body after she switched out, so you should probably just leave it to her imagination.”
He glared at me, sorting through his suspicions. For a person that had to watch her be ripped apart multiple times, it probably was a little hard to swallow at first blush.
I dropped my head and stated, “I do apologize for neglecting to explain after you completed the scenario, but I won’t apologize for the scenario itself.”
Lady Chiara grabbed his hand and told him, “Ryuu, I’m fine. Whatever you saw, I was fine. Lady Tiana promised me at the beginning I would be safe. I admit, I was scared the first time, but she kept her promise.”
His jaw and his arms began relaxing, but he still had a dour look for me.
“So you were just playing with my emotions…”
“I will admit to that, fully,” I stated. “Motivation is everything in training. An unmotivated student isn’t fit to be called a student.”
His mouth twisted, then he looked away.
“This is good food, Mr. Kowa. Don’t waste it.”
His eyes shot back at me. “What am I supposed to do with all this anger, then? She might not have experienced it, but I still saw it!”
I contemplated his question for a while, not feeling terribly obligated to soothe his feelings, but willing to give him an answer. Then, it occurred to me that I had one.
“I was planning to let you two relax here until tomorrow,” I answered. “This pavilion is actually quite a pleasant place to spend the night. You can catch up with each other, maybe soak up some spiritual energy together, or do whatever else comes to mind. Dilorè could go find her spirit beast friend. I’m planning to take care of something outside the mountain overnight. But you and I can do a little more training first, one on one.”
His eyes filled with suspicion again. “What kind of game are you planning to play with me, this time?”
“Just some basic PvP,” I answered. “I haven’t swung my sword enough lately.”
“Basic what?” Chiara wondered. Naturally, I had used the English letter names. I was guessing that Japanese used the same term.
It looked like he might bite, but was wary of tricks. I promised him, “There is no hidden agenda, Mr. Kowa. I’m seriously just offering to let you work off some of your anger.”
“Where?” he asked. “We’re not in simulation here, right? Are we fighting here?”
I shook my head. “We’ll use a simulation. A fight between you and I would destroy a lot of landscape. I don’t want to cause the beasts taking care of the landscape any trouble. In simulation, we can rampage as much as we want. Hang on a second.”
I bowed my head and folded my hands, like I was praying. When I thought about it later, I was a little surprised that I did this. It was etiquette that had come back to me from all the way back during my life as Senhion. One did this when one was together with others, but having a spiritual voice conversation with someone remote. The point was to those around you know not to disturb you.
Jia, send me the current location to the training facility on North Island, please, I requested.
Since the purpose of the outer islands was large scale IRL events, most facilities would be shifted around on a regular basis, moved here and there according to need. This pavilion was one of the few relatively stable locations.
We now have four, Commander! she immediately replied. Is there a particular function desired?
I hadn’t expected that. After resetting, I replied, I just need a good spot for a large-scale one-on-one contest. Elder versus Elder scale. Also, I’ll want Curator’s assistance.
In that case, the nearest is a simulation of North Island itself, which is accessible at its exact center.
Which meant the summit of the North Peak. It was the closest due to this pavilion being located on its slope.
If they had simply simulated the entire island, perhaps it was a way to cut down on damage control.
Does it have exit conditions?
We had many different types of scenarios. The ‘exit conditions’, accomplishments required to clear the stage, were a characteristic of programmed training scenarios and entertainments similar to video games, but other types of scenarios existed.
It has no exit conditions, Commander. It’s a general-purpose simulation.
I nodded. Thanks, Jia. We’ll head there once we finish eating.
I smiled at him. “Alright, we’re all set.”
He still looked distrusting. I rolled my eyes and said, “If I consider switching scenarios, I will discuss it with you first. We’re going there to spar, not to run a training series.”
Originally, I had considered telling Ryuu the troublesome truth about his summoning during lunch, but now I decided to postpone it until a later date. He still had a lot of anger, and I couldn’t see any reason to make it worse.
After lunch, we headed up the mountain. Chiara wanted to come along, but I told Jia to guide her and Dilorè to one of the other facilities so they could watch us from a safe location at the same time compression.
“Why don’t you see how quickly you can reach the top?” I suggested to Ryuu.
Using [strength enhancement], both his running and his jumping are superhuman. But it comes at a cost.
“Getting me to wear myself out before the fight?” he wondered, looking at the climb ahead.
“That would be useless, Mr. Kowa. You’ll be restored to full strength when we enter the sim anyway,” I noted while growing my wings. I sprang into the air and flew ahead.
I wasn’t racing him, since it wouldn’t be a race. Superhuman or not, he can’t run at the speeds I’m capable of flying. So I just watched him as I ascended the mountain. His running speed really was better now, confirming that the improvements he had made in the simulation had transferred to his real world body.
Of course, very little physical change could have been made for most humans in the less than two weeks that Ryuu spent overall in simulation. Even with his growth cheat, muscle growth and such would have been minimal in this short time, but strengthening his pneuma in the spiritual conditions of the Seven Elements Six Geometries Tapestry was another matter. Combining the high spiritual levels with his growth cheat had a real and noticeable effect on his pneuma. It had also boosted his spiritual strength to new highs.
At that moment, Ryuu Kowa had the spiritual accumulation of about thirty normal human lifetimes on Earth, or perhaps ten on Huade. That was perhaps five times what he’d accumulated in his entire life up until he entered the mountain.
Growth cheats rock, don’t they?
Of course, he had gone through the same ballooning effect that I did, when he first arrived, soaking it up like a dry sponge. Chiara and Dilorè would have experienced the same thing. Likely, he was no longer growing at such an extreme pace but… well, I was willing to bet the growth cheat was still giving significant results.
I made up my mind at that moment. No matter what path Ryuu Kowa followed in the end, he was going to stay in this place and get a lot more training first. When I left this place to handle matters outside, I wouldn’t be taking him with me.
He reached the top a bit winded, but no human had a right to be merely breathing hard after climbing five hundred paces (in a linear distance of probably ten times that) in five minutes. No, actually, no human had a right to even accomplish such a thing. Two and a half miles in five minutes would normally be impossible, even running downhill.
By the way, he was running with that ginormous sword on his back, too.
I had already located the simulation point. It was a stone circle made of eight hip-high standing stones. I was standing in the middle.
Once he entered the circle, I asked, “Ready?”
