.
Goals and progress are important, but so is downtime. My plan for the afternoon for those three had been to let them decompress. Since we had held our fight in the time compression of the simulation system, and had used up essentially none of the afternoon, that plan was still on.
Ryuu and Chiara returned to the pavilion by the lake, which they would have to themselves, with a call button to summon an attendant when they needed to call for service. Dilorè went off on her own, to reunite with some spirit beast friends she had made.
I blushed a bit when she said so, remembering the interaction I had witnessed between her and one of those friends, but she flew off without showing any sign that she noticed it.
My plan for myself was entirely different. I flew back to the Art Gallery.
Curator greeted me with a smile in the central atrium and asked, “Are you diving again?”
I nodded. “Is there a direct entrance to the Garden Pavilion?”
“Actually, we have been working on a gift for you. Kanon wanted to return her pavilion to its original form. Your painting depicts your mother’s rest house, after all. So we fashioned a replacement for you.”
With a smile, I shrugged. “It’s her place, so it’s her decision.”
Curator’s eyes grew slightly perplexed. “Commander, other than personal possession of the residents, everything here ultimately belongs to you.”
I frowned at that. It was probably true, and Kanon was more-or-less a prisoner of this small world until she cultivated a sufficient immortal vessel to ascend, but at the very least, she had sufficient sweat equity in this world to deserve to own some share.
It was a question I would have to work out eventually. I had a lot of questions to work on, actually.
What was going through Ryuu’s head when he insisted on battling me was one of them. I was still worrying about whether I had done the right thing, agreeing to use full force. He had acted as if it had cleared something up in his mind, but I wasn’t sure what.
What to do about Amelia was another, now that I understood exactly why the demons were targeting her.
But the pressing question of the moment remained.
“So this gift you mentioned…”
“It’s the equivalent, except she has tailored it more to your water-dwelling nature.”
“You built an entire new sim world the same size? The radius of the world she’s using to harvest the power for that pavilion is quite large, isn’t it?”
In order to harvest enough spiritual energy under heavy time compression to make a space the size of the pavilion similar to the Fundamental Realm, the simulated world itself was huge, far bigger than most of the simulations. All the spiritual energy in the greater space was being redirected into one spot, like a lens focusing sunlight on a pinpoint.
“It was indeed one of the largest in our system when we created it,” Curator agreed. “But we’ve grown considerably since then. This new one is nearly a hundred times the radius.”
My eyes bulged a bit as I stared at her.
“That’s a rather extravagant gift, isn’t it?”
Curator gave me a patient smile. “Commander, we’ve become a very popular vacation spot for Spirit Beasts and Immortals. Of those places in the Mortal Realm that are reasonably accessible to them, this one has become one of the most attractive destinations. Which we have translated into an extremely lucrative business. We’ve made you quite a wealthy woman in the Immortal Realms. We can easily afford this. And we can put it into time dilation so that it doesn’t take a lot of effort to maintain when you aren’t using it.”
That left me just blinking at her. Concepts of wealth, resources and even property have considerably different forms in the Immortal Realms, but in the broad view, they work out to the same bottom line. The kind of resources that a Spirit Realm construct of the level required to host the sim she just described were the Immortal parallel to a billionaire’s estate. My immortal mother might be a person with that kind of wealth, but she’s over a half-billion years old.
After politely showing her amusement at my reaction, Curator led me through the Art Gallery, bringing me to the third floor. In a room near the central atrium, an unfamiliar painting graced the side of an entry archway opposite where Senhion’s ancient painting of her mother’s pavilion hung. It was a three dimensional work with animated elements, done with a very well-practiced hand.
A pavilion of smaller dimensions but similar architecture to the ‘Garden Pavilion’ sat at the edge of a small lake with water as clear as glass. It was possible, in the nearest parts, to see fish swimming lazily just beneath the surface. Parts of the lake were open water, but in the shallows near the pavilion the water was festooned with lotuses that reminded me of Monet’s “water lilies”.
“Kanon painted this?” I guessed, a little awed. It reminded me of Senhion’s best work back then.
Curator nodded. “She’s quite talented, yes? She completed this work centuries ago, but we decided it was the ideal model for your meditation room.”
Unlike the giant painting of the Dragon Stage, or the stone ring at the top of North Peak, places that one can step into, this was an expert level sim, requiring the skill to transfer oneself in. I reached into the picture and triggered the transfer, and my body was transported.
Standing at the edge of the pavilion, where the steps led directly into the water, I admired the scene for a bit. Then I dismissed my outfit and descended. Once I was deep enough, I dove in, growing my flukes and swimming idly beneath the surface, then laying on the bottom a while and meditating while soaking in the thick energy.
Once I relaxed for a few hours, I summoned Durandal and we departed to explore the training system together, spending the kind of quality time together that a sword would appreciate. We were in time compression for twelve days, or about three hours of Sky Ocean time.
Dragon slain and a tropical island chain explored (complete with a kraken subjugation), I brought him to my newly-christened Lotus Pavilion for a chat with Kanon and Little Jia about his future. Little Jia served tea as the three of us gathered in the middle of the pavilion, with Durandal resting on his own cushion, inside his scabbard.
“He should stay here,” Kanon declared from the start. “He can cultivate his spirit between jobs tutoring swordsmanship. His spiritual vessel remains embryonic because he has never learned to nourish it.”
I had suspected his makeup must have included something like that from the beginning, since there is no biological life involved in his construction. The spirits from which Grandmother forged him have a similar nature to the spiritual vessels of cultivators.
I nodded. “I don’t disagree, but…”
I’m going with My Lady when she goes out, Durandal stated bluntly, exactly as I expected he would. She needs a good sword at her side.
Pooching my lips in thought, I considered my own feelings on the subject. Right now, in this spirit-rich environment, with all my mental powers running at full power, I could see the wisdom of leaving him here. In fact, I wanted to track down and purify the remaining cursed Holy weapons and bring them here as well.
But this was a long term priority. In the short term, my young self, when not supported by all this spiritual energy, remained a vulnerable juvenile who lacked much when it came to defensive power. Durandal compensated for my deficiencies. Without him, I might not have accomplished most of the things I had done.
So, I sided with him. “For now, at least until I have learned more defensive magic, I need his help. I’m not strong enough without him.”
Kanon resisted for a while, but she finally agreed. We went on to discuss a wide range of other issues, mostly involving what I wanted them to do with the other three while I was gone.
“I’m not clear why you’re leaving, though…” Little Jia said, sounding a bit moody.
When I heard her pouting voice, I realized I was not spending enough time with her, either. I made a mental note to fix that, too.
“I have to speak with Mother, and report to the King. Gaia warned me of a serious threat to his daughter’s safety,” I told them, then filled them in on that portion of my discussion with Gaia.
We discussed the possibility of simply hiding her here in Sky Ocean.
“I think the main factor in making that decision would be how the princess feels about the idea,” Kanon pointed out.
“And also how the hero feels,” Little Jia giggled. “She’s his fiancée, but his mistress is here right now.”
I let out a ‘pfft’, having not considered that, yet. Then grew serious as I realized an important detail. “And the mistress is the knight who betrayed her.”
I drew in a long breath while considering it, then blew it out and shook my head. “That’s Mr. Kowa’s problem, not ours. He’s the one who doesn’t restrain himself.”
“How are you bringing that princess here, Commander? Are you going to carry her?” Kanon asked.
“I’m going to take that airboat we came in,” I stated. “I’ll be carrying the princess back, probably, and possibly others. I need to consult several people outside before I can say exactly whom, but…”
I stopped, then frowned at Kanon’s expression. I demanded, “What?”
“Commander…” Kanon began, hesitantly, then gave an apologetic smile. “We all saw that landing you made.”
I felt a bit of heat creeping into my face, then frowned, “I didn’t break anything.”
She pressed her lips tight, then asked, “How many times have you landed that aircraft? Or one similar to it?”
Willing my blush back with sheer willpower, I admitted, “That was my one and only landing. And Dilorè is the one who took off.”
“And you’re proposing to not only fly it again, but carry other people, including your precious princess?” she asked, cross-examining me like a lawyer.
I hesitated, then sighed. “You’re right. That wouldn’t be very smart.”
“I already have a solution for the problem, Commander!” Little Jia informed me with a bright smile. If she were in doggo form, her tail would have been wagging like mad.
A random thought passed through my mind. Maybe I could get Jia to cultivate a dog girl version of herself. Huade has fox girls and wolf girls, but no dog girls…
Forcing the stupid thought out of my head, I made myself focus on the subject at hand. I had a spirit beast pet just begging me to ask her what she had come up with, after all.
With a fond smile, I said, “I’m sure it’s excellent, Jia. What’s your solution?”
“You can practice flying in a general purpose simulation!” she declared proudly. “We’ve already recreated your craft! While we were reverse engineering it, we also found a few minor maintenance issues and addressed them.”
If my landing had caused any of those issues, she tactfully avoided mentioning it, although I was suspicious that my hard landing had been the real motive for them going over the craft.
I considered the idea and nodded. In a short while, I was summoning Dilorè back from her break to act as my flight instructor, and within the hour, I was back in simulation, receiving my first lesson on how to get the good ship Reia off the ground.
Flying lessons took up another fifteen (simulation) days. And it was a good thing it was a simulation, because I destroyed the craft and nearly got both of us killed multiple times. Probably, if we had been human and the accidents were in real life, they really would have been fatal.
The reason for the intensive training was simple; Kanon was not content with me just mastering fair weather flight. I had to deal with thunderstorms, night time, mountains… I had become a fully-qualified airboat pilot by the time they let me go.
Once I was finally out, Dilorè went off on her own once again, and Ryuu and Chiara were content to spend the night having some couple time in the Mountain Pavilion, so I spent the rest of the day with Little Jia. Which actually involved heading yet again back into the Art Gallery to dive into a few scenarios for some long overdue bonding (about half a month worth of it, frankly, most of it spent with Jia in pupper version.)
I spent the last few hours of the Sky Ocean nocturnal period in the Lotus Pavilion, meditating and soaking up as much spiritual energy as I could… when I wasn’t playing or napping with my dog. And at daybreak, I headed back out into the spiritual desert of Huade.
