Firstly, if you have questions about Good Seeds and the like please read here. If that doesn't answer your question please ping me in thread, or on Discord.
If you write a new Good Seed, or write an omake, please update the spreadsheet if you have access.
If you do not have access, please ping a collaborator (Swordomatic, Alectai, Quest, TehChron, Insane-Not-Crazy, Humbaba, ReaderOfFate, Kaboomatic, no., BungieONI) letting them know what you want and they will update the spreadsheet here. To gain access, you will need a gmail account of some kind. Throwaway emails are fine (I'm using one for the spreadsheet), but to gain access it's as simple as sending me either your email via PM, via DM in Discord, or just in Discord's #spreadsheet-requests channel.
This is mandatory. If a Good Seed does not record their omake by pinging collabs (or just requesting access and editing things themselves - this is the preferred option), I won't give out awards. If a new Good Seed is not recorded here, they won't advance. By doing this it makes the whole thing manageable for me - it's gotten pretty unwieldy!
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Omake Writer Instructions:
There are four fields you need to fill out.
Omake Link, which is just a link to your first omake for the turn. This makes it easier for me to read them as I do the update - without this it's tough to know off the bat which omake were written this turn, and to properly
Requested Bonus, which is your requested bonus for your omake. You can leave it up to me if you like. You can see more info in the Good Seed infopost here.
Cultivation Aims. For those following unorthodox paths - higher than 9th Heavenstage or later than 7th Dao Pillar paths. Please put in what you are aiming for before you break through. I have left it as 'default'. If you do not edit it, I'll go with that.
Turn Notes - Do you want to do something specific? Enter a Secret Realm? Help the Clan out in some way? If you have something specific you want to accomplish on this turn, put it in turn notes so I can adjust your Fate around it.
All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
Take command is good because we just baited out the Devil Bees one big gimmick which would've made things potentially dangerous for Manuel should he have taken the field sooner.
Plus, Manuel as a proper Old Monster himself can most assuredly play things cleverly enough in prepared ground to ensure that should things escalate with a Devil Bees Nascent Soul that it wont really get the drop on him as it would've potentially been had we sent him out from the start.
The 14 Wealth as well is straight up comparable to what we made from ganking Child Corpse Gulper as well. Losing our Military Elder right now is a pretty huge blow, but its one we can recover from if we go all in on raising ourselves back up next turn.
Provided we try to end this now.
That 14 Wealth is a massive boon for us. More than sufficient to go ham for a couple of turns to prep for the Trials and then recover from them in good order.
Lifesaving Treasures are a out-of-character mechanic that allow omake writers to ensure they don't lose characters they've invested a lot into.
They're very far from infallible in-character - mostly they work very well against attacks at your level when you're beaten down - treasures capable of avoiding or defending against Nascent Souls, for instance, are so rare and powerful they're invariably owned by Nascent Souls.
Aikaterine had lifesaving treasures, but if you throw ~50,000 cultivators including 10 Core Formation cultivators worth of Qi into a single strike to kill you once your Formation is broken, you're dying unless you have some really good stuff.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
And here I was hoping Ioannes would make a last stand before he expires. He had only few years to live, but I'm guessing he is dead now.
That is a loss of two Protostrator in a row, just before our Trials. That is problematic.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
[X] Take Command - This will replace your Action for the turn and risk escalating the matter, as well as weaken you elsewhere. Still, you are the best commander in the Clan bar none, and you are confident that with your personal intervention the war will be easily won. Don't take the field directly, though - keep yourself off the field for a potential counterstrike against enemy Nascent Souls.
More reinforcements wouldn't have saved Aikaterine.
If you'd taken the field and successfully avoided being opposed by another Nascent Soul, the invasion would be mostly mopped up - the Devil Bees would have lost a significant portion of their forces during minor engagements, and they never would've attempted a decisive battle. They likely would've retreated back into the mountains, waiting to see if you stuck around.
[X] Take the Field - As Take Command, but do take the Field. If no Nascent Soul comes to oppose you, you can wrap this war up neatly and quickly. Very high risks of escalating to Nascent Soul combat, though.
I'm going to have go with this, rather then "Take Command". I thought about it quite a bit, especially wondering if they *want* to draw us out, but in the end I decided to go with it.
One of the principles of Nuclear Deterrence is that you actually have to be willing to fire the nukes if pressed, and while this is a great deal more complex than RL, that principle remains. And quite frankly, I don't think/feel we can afford the further losses either other option presents. We're getting close to the Trial, we've lost about 2% of our forces, and our military leadership, without even any mentorship to ensure a transition period.
[X] Take the Field - As Take Command, but do take the Field. If no Nascent Soul comes to oppose you, you can wrap this war up neatly and quickly. Very high risks of escalating to Nascent Soul combat, though.
[X] Draft a new Protostrator - There are no true excellent candidates, but plenty who could be well-tempered. Get the best Core Formation Elder and raise them to Protostrator. You'll need to do this eventually, and this will give them plenty of experience. It is likely to draw out the war, though, and command will be difficult as they will need to accustom themselves to their new position mid-war.
The unpopular option, but one I would prefer. I want to see what Manuel devoted to making money can do. I also would like to gamble on raising someone up in this mess, to save us an action slot later.
[x] Draft a new Protostrator - There are no true excellent candidates, but plenty who could be well-tempered. Get the best Core Formation Elder and raise them to Protostrator. You'll need to do this eventually, and this will give them plenty of experience. It is likely to draw out the war, though, and command will be difficult as they will need to accustom themselves to their new position mid-war.
[x] Draft a new Protostrator - There are no true excellent candidates, but plenty who could be well-tempered. Get the best Core Formation Elder and raise them to Protostrator. You'll need to do this eventually, and this will give them plenty of experience. It is likely to draw out the war, though, and command will be difficult as they will need to accustom themselves to their new position mid-war.
This might not be a popular opinion, but - with both the seasoned Protostrator and the protege dead, with the Trials coming up, we need to make a choice - either we pick a commander now and have them properly bloodied in time for the Hundred Year Trials, or we pick the commander later and have a less than best Protostrator during the Hundred Year Trials.
[x] Draft a new Protostrator - There are no true excellent candidates, but plenty who could be well-tempered. Get the best Core Formation Elder and raise them to Protostrator. You'll need to do this eventually, and this will give them plenty of experience. It is likely to draw out the war, though, and command will be difficult as they will need to accustom themselves to their new position mid-war.
More reinforcements wouldn't have saved Aikaterine.
If you'd taken the field and successfully avoided being opposed by another Nascent Soul, the invasion would be mostly mopped up - the Devil Bees would have lost a significant portion of their forces during minor engagements, and they never would've attempted a decisive battle. They likely would've retreated back into the mountains, waiting to see if you stuck around.
What about if we had chosen to risk adding "build engines of war" cost to the turn plan? Would the extra armaments in development have changed the outcome, or still been this bad?
The calculus hasn't changed much regarding whether we should enter combat ourselves or not. Taking the field injects a level of risk into an engagement that should have little, as with the current force commitment we are reasonably certain of victory. It changes if they send out a Nascent Soul, as then we can/have to use our home field advantage to counter them. Taking the field also renders the 'command' part of the action somewhat obsolete, because if they don't reinforce with their own NS then we take out a significant portion of their army in one swoop, and the rest retreats, leaving little to command. If they reinforce, then we'll be occupied with duking it out with the enemy NS, the result of that engagement deciding the fate of the overall battle (while still having no one to command the lower-level mass combat).
The question is then -- do we assume command or field promote a new marshal? Considering that a capable Protostrator is a valuable asset that requires a full personal action's worth of investment (and thus costs us a converted wealth action), this is a tougher choice than it seems. But if we consider the numbers -- we have lost 2% of our troops in this war, we will lose about 30% guaranteed in thirty years time -- and the fact that one of the bigger factors that contribute to our 'survival' in the Trials is having a capable commander (as Manuel will be holed up in Dawn Fortress alone), the calculus is in favor of promoting a new one now, so he/she gets valuable combat experience for when the real bloodbath starts. That we conserve our wealth action (and save ourselves a future recruitment action for a new Protostrator) is accessory to this, but still nice to have.
Uh, to be fair, I failed to read a single rule regarding good seeds and kind of just wrote a half-assed omake so you might want to ping occipitallobe to put that request somewhere visible. I didn't even know the index was a thing until earlier today when reading your post.
Also, they call Keiros crooked because his thinking is crooked, not his body.
Essentially, it's fine for one character to use the Hoplite in a weird way personally. You might see cultivators modifying personal versions of the spells a little to fit their use on occasion. To draw a line - you won't see them do it en masse where everyone needs to be on the same page and casting the same spell-as-formation, but on a personal level 'slightly weird version of the Clan's core technique' is fine.
Ok, based on this it looks like the line between Formations and Qi Spells is thinner then i thought. I'm assuming that any Qi Spells being elevated into Formations for the Clan will go through the same submission process ?
Can we also do it vice versa? As in breaking down a Formation concept into a Qi Spells and made it known to all ? Honestly, i'm not a big fan of this interpretation because it was stated that our unique clan gimmick was being great at working together to cast. Having the rules changed so that the mechanical benefits of the Formations can be so easily replicated by a sole cultivator even as a unique thing seems to go against the point of Formations being it's own art and not lumped under Qi spells.
Admittedly, i am slightly salty because my Good Seed's entire unique thing was the ability to cast Formations soleishy via using his Spirit Beast as a node to initiate the Formation so kinda skirting the rules on Formations. This just kinda makes my Good Seed into a untalented hack since he needs a companion to cast the solo Qi spell version.
A formation. A great spinning, whirling thing, Qi pouring from the many bees and their riders into something else. A crude thing, but if you did not know it was coming...
man who described himself only as 'The Coward of the Fortress' led an impossible defense of Shuhu De, throwing back superior forces six times, and driving them off completely on the seventh.
Oh wow! Looks like An Shan made it as a canonish character and not a token NPC! Nice to see him living up somewhat to the original Regnak.
[x] Draft a new Protostrator - There are no true excellent candidates, but plenty who could be well-tempered. Get the best Core Formation Elder and raise them to Protostrator. You'll need to do this eventually, and this will give them plenty of experience. It is likely to draw out the war, though, and command will be difficult as they will need to accustom themselves to their new position mid-war.
I agree with all the stated points about training up a new one before the Trials and the same reason for not escalating the situation. I don't think it will be that bad since things are descending into a straight attrition fight. Whatever greater losses we get via choosing this can hopefully be covered by the excess wealth Manuel will earn.
We can't let everything rest on Manuel shoulders since that screams of overworking to me.
Things were uneventful for a while as Rina set into a pattern--exploring the map segments granted by the Ancient One, And finding most of them looted down to the floor tiles unfortunately because it's been the better part of a million years and that's actually a really long time!
But even with that in mind, legacy sites are legacy sites, and even though most of them had been plundered once many of them were still reasonably well hidden, and over the course of tens of thousands of years, many of the spirit herbs had a chance to regrow--which when offered to the Official Qiguai Clan Assessors at the Base Camp, put her back in the black with regards to her obligations to repay a portion of her findings!
Apparently eighty years of cultivation is expensive!
Fortunately, most herbs that grow here would be ineffective at her current level of cultivation--which meant she could turn them into credit. Simple, easy, and went a long way to keeping good relations with the owners of this place.
Because charging in and trying to invade later when this was the best opportunity she knew of was… Sketchy, and risky, and probably suicidal until she was strong enough not to require such an opportunity anymore.
So she made sure to keep her taxes straight while continuing her exploration! At the very least, the next spot was probably not taken by now!
…
Probably because reaching it was shockingly counter-intuitive.
To wit, a Secret Realm is only loosely attached to space as is recognized by most people. Sure you can look around in the distance and see an endless horizon in all directions, and it looks like it might just be in some other chunk of the world? Not so! People who seek to travel beyond the borders of a Secret Realm invariably find themselves caught up in some kind of medium at the edges. Usually dependent on the nature of the Realm!
In this case, one who gets too far from the edge of the Realm ends up submerged in an infinite ocean, probably to be torn limb from limb by the notoriously overpopulated sea demons that lose their minds and tear to shreds any human who approaches their territory.
How does that even work anyway? Cultivation is supposed to be hard! The ocean is big yeah, but the sheer density of sea monsters of considerable power violates every other rule commonly understood. Was there some secret? Or was it just the Heavens cheating again to encourage conflict by ensuring that the greatest source of resources was forever barred to humans, forcing them to compete over the scraps that remained on land?
(However big those scraps were, they're still peanuts compared to the Ocean! Or even the islands in the ocean! Like this secret realm.)
Knowing all this--for the people who stumbled upon the Sky Vaulting Raft, being launched into the Ocean Border was a terrifying moment for most. Those who froze would inevitably be set upon by hundreds of sea beasts--while the more clever would immediately reverse course and accept the risk of harm from falling back to the surface of the Secret Realm rather than dare the ocean.
However, Rina's map had a secret--it spoke that one of the Ancient One's attackers was a sorceress of great cunning, and sought to construct her legacy site within the liminal area of the Ocean Border. The idea was that a clever aspirant would see the random platform in the Secret Realm that launches people into an apparent death zone, and identify the path left within while the ocean beasts attacked.
Because this close to the Secret Realm? As numerous as the Ocean Demons are, they are still subject to the limitations on Realm! One with enough power--or at least good defensive techniques--could most certainly navigate the route!
The likelihood of this place being exploited by now was low, because it required someone to both be cool-headed, lucky enough to stumble upon the Sky Launching Raft, and then clever enough to identify the route to life in the face of apparently certain death!
Of course, the experience of being punted up into the sky, and splashing down into water was a fun one at least! There was little risk for Rina--with her Essence flowing as strongly as it did now and with such pressure in it, the normal risk of harm was neutralized. It took only a moment for her to re-orient herself to the new, reduced gravity of the sea, and identify the first of the Breathstones on the route, swimming over into its shell, and taking a deep breath once within its bubble of air.
That was step one!
The test--evidently--was for someone to identify the Breathstone path, climbing up closer and closer to that liminal region, where the Ocean Border begins to fuzz into whichever speck of sea that the Secret Realm's physical location was centered on and one would find themselves ejected from the Secret Realm into a certain death zone.
Based on the screams of anger and hate she heard after a moment--this also had to be done under a great deal of opposition. Rina flicked her wrist and expanded her blade to its full size. She hadn't had any seafood before! There's like, one fishing harbor in the lands held by the Clan and most of what it pulls out of the sea is garbage quality anyway.
Sea Demons? Probably much more delicious! She licked her lips and flung herself into the air, sheathed in a corona of Essence that carved through the surrounding sea, giving her enough room to move and fight as required, while pushing herself to the next breathstone.
The journey was as epic as one might expect! As expected, the Ocean Demons swarmed in her path, screaming challenge at the intruder to their realm. Some she fled--shoals of carnivorous fish beyond what she could easily cut down without breaking her momentum. Others she fought--sharks that thought to test their teeth against the Blood of Bronze (They tasted surprisingly savory!)), great shrimp with sharp pincers (Crunchy and sweet!), and great shelled creatures with tough armor and mighty claws (It's like a chewier version of scorpion!).
Towards the end of the trip though, she found herself finally meeting her match, a great sea serpent, fattened on the abundance of food and lack of greater predators in this place. It hissed in challenge and gave chase--and while Rina was tempted to see if giant snake would mean delicious rations for the rest of her trip here…
Well, it was really nimble and pretty big, she'd be fighting it for days if it came down to it, and she didn't want to get pulled off the path either. She contented herself by scaring it off with a fierce set of attacks and retreating while it reeled back wounded. Maybe some other time--or maybe not.
All things considered, she'd call her adventure through this little patch of the Ocean to be a success. If she ever had a say in things, in the event she got to some dizzying height of power and talent? The Ocean could stay, it was full of such delicious food! It just needed to be maybe a tiny bit less omnicidal.
The final destination was a shard of the land making up the Secret Realm, separated from the rest of it with the sorceress' remaining strength and bound to the edge of the Secret Realm's space, an upside-down island in the ocean sky, with its own gravity and power! Within was a modest pavilion, the area dotted with…
Okay, dead plants for the most part--apparently the Essence here wasn't rich enough to meet the needs of the growing herbs as their age and cultivation increased, they murdered each other in a fit of greed, and the survivor ultimately starved to death hundreds of thousands of years ago. All that remained was a brittle, desolate landscape surrounding a battered old building.
But the building stood--its preservation runes holding, if not at full strength. The Legacy here was intact
There was a barrier at the front, with a dusty symbol engraved on the front. Rina considered things for a moment, but added a wisp of her Essence into it.
The seal glowed bright, and an image filled the space before Rina, a wizened, wrinkled lady, still standing tall, with harsh features and a cold expression--one that disdained all things in the world.
"Congratulations, disciple who found my legacy" She spoke in the tongue of the Barbarians. "To reach this place shows great insight, cleverness, and might beyond the normal. You are suitable to receive the instruction and inheritance of the Ninefall Medicinal Saint."
Seemed pretty typical… Rina hadn't learned much more than the basics of medicine--but this site was a place for rookies of Qi Condensation--those who weren't yet following a true Path of their own. There was time enough to change specialty here and now--and an expert like this passing on their legacy? Who wouldn't take the chance!
"However, you have shown only suitability, and not yet aptitude" The Saint gestured sharply, and the seal opened, revealing the inside of the chamber--withered and rotten medicinal ingredients dotting the shelves, and in the center was a great cauldron, black and shiny with the grease of continued alchemy baked into its very structure.
"What you see before you is Muqin Guo, a cauldron I used when I was young." The Saint explains. "A suitable piece for an apprentice--beyond its value as a refining cauldron, it can serve to protect your life. When attuned to your Qi, it can change in size, and resist any amount of attack from a realm equal to your own. Furthermore, while not suited for travelling long distances, it does have properties permitting it to float and carry passengers all the while. Any without a flying treasure beneath Nascent Soul can be escaped should you be strong enough to survive their counterattacks."
She called this an apprentice piece? A treasure like this would be the envy of a minor Sect! Rina advanced upwards and put a hand on one of the Cauldron's handles.
"It is your reward for making it to this place" The Saint continued--and Rina felt the remaining owner's marker upon the Cauldron fizzle out in tune with her probe. "If you would receive my Legacy however, I would demand an oath, enforced by the Heavens."
Rina turned around to face the Saint once again--who had moved up to her and stared her in the eyes, hands gasping the side of her face as her bloodshot eyes burned into hers.
"Kill them all, refine every last foreign drop of blood from the realm. That beast severed my path to immortality! He had no right judging us, looking down upon us for what we did! Our way is the way of the Heavens, and to let their legacy continue while mine is severed… Unacceptable. That Heaven brought you to this place is your good fortune, But as long as a single drop of the Blood of Bronze exists, my ghost will have no peace. Swear to cleanse the Third Sea of their taint, and everything I have learned--every technique I have mastered--every treasure I have kept in my twenty-three thousand years of life will belong to you. Deny me, and I will see it burn then surrender it to a craven who would see my foes exist under a sky that would deny me!"
What. That was… Legitimately insane!
Rina shook her head. The Saint's image leaned in closer.
"Think of this! I do not even care if you possess that foul taint yourself! The techniques I can teach you will let you burn it out of yourself without consequence--even gaining from it! My legacy is one that reaches to true Immortality itself!"
"No, I won't do that" Rina shook her head again. "After all they've done for me, I won't turn them aside just for an opportunity."
"I ask you once more" The voice snarled. "One of my treasures is the Lightning Banishing Parasol--it can shed the malice of any Tribulation beneath Nascent Soul. You can seek even the highest points of Cultivation without fear with it. My arts can extend life to the limit of mortality, you will assuredly become a peak expert with it. I will not offer this again!"
"I won't" Rina met her gaze. "It doesn't matter if you could give me immortality right here and there, I won't betray my people just for a promise of power"
The echo screeched at that. "Then so be it! My Legacy is lost to you! My treasures forever banished!" It spat at Rina--but it was an immaterial gesture. "May Heaven curse your craven heart! One who is unwilling to slaughter your foes is one who's Path will end in slaughter itself!" The image detonates in a puff of pyrotechnics and impotent rage, with the quiet puffing of other seals triggering sympathetically throughout the island.
Rina sighed at that, turning around--even the ruined medicine blew up… But the cauldron at least was okay.
She supposed that even an angry old ghost can't just take away something they intended as the hook to get someone to hear them out in the first place. Not with the power they had left after the Ancient One played his hand.
Well, it was something.
Even if the lady wasn't telling her to commit genocide on her kinsmen, she'd not get involved--she just didn't understand it. War is bad and all that, but when the war's done, you're supposed to build a peace afterwards.
Her legacy was one that could save how many lives? And yet she demanded butchery as the price to claim it? How did that make sense? Was living forever that much of a draw? That otherwise kind and noble people become violent lunatics when it was threatened?
It was… The dead are dead, any you should certainly try to avenge them if they died unjustly… But it was a straight battle, and they lost due to a sacrifice. How did it make sense that the priority afterwards is "Make sure I can get revenge?" instead of "Make sure at least something of mine survives?"
Rina didn't understand any of this--but she supposed that's why the Golden Devils weren't welcome in this place.
She sent her Essence into the cauldron, seeking to put her own marking onto it. It was definitely a magic treasure of considerable power if she wasn't mistaken… And her own Essence--purified as it was--was just barely enough to light the first rune.
She heard a loud yawn.
"Morning~~" The voice singsonged, a soft, matronly voice as the pot shined with light and began to lift off. "Oh? You'll be my new master then?"
Was this a pot with a living item spirit?
"Oh my goodness!" Rina gasped. "Umm.. I mean… I think so? The ghost did say you were the prize for getting here--even if she got really mad afterwards and blew up."
"Ah, poor Nana" The pot--Muqin Guo--seemed to dip. "She was a good girl once, you know? But then she got involved in that big war and just got rotten. She wasn't even talking to me at the end--just too occupied with that Saint Treasure they offered her for actively fighting." It seemed to perk up at that. "But it is what it is, at least I got a good long nap in the meantime. Besides! I got a nice cute new master to protect now!"
"Umm. I'm flattered?" Rina added. "I'm not really an alchemist though if that's something you do too…"
"Oh nonsense, sure, I'm a superlative cauldron after all--and I certainly love the process of doing so. But how many people pick it up as a side path? Plenty! It's just the process of throwing all kinds of shady materials together and cooking it up at temperatures most would consider unnatural!"
"The fact you describe it that way causes me some concern…" Rina muses, but giggles a bit. "If you'll follow me then, my name is Rina Callista"
"Oooh, that's a new naming scheme!" Muqin Guo mused. "I guess you poor folk got settled in eventually? Good! Everyone deserves a nice home of their own to enjoy, and people were just so nasty when you showed up! It'd be nicer if everyone could get along--but there's just so many bruised egos. I hope you won't be doing that yourself!"
"I mean… I don't try to cause offense." Rina explains. "But… We're kind of the favored kicking post for most of the universe, problems just kind of… Show up and we have to either kick back or get mauled."
"Oh dear…" Muqin Guo deflated. "Well, as long as you're careful and safe, you can jtake your time and do things proper then!"
"I'll do my best--I'm ambitious but that's not the same as just grabbing for anything shiny that might help." Rina smiled, but paused.
"... Incidentally, you are a little big… How am I supposed to carry you out?"
"You don't have a storage ring?" Muqin Guo asked. Rina shook her head. "How strange, one of your talent would easily be able to get a small one."
"We're lucky to see Core Formation get a storage treasure of their own, I'm good but I'm not that good" Rina shrugged. "Anything else?"
"Well… I can be resized" Muqin Guo replies after a moment to chew that over. "I'll teach you the mnemonic--it's too slow to use in battle at your current level, but that should buff right out by the time you reach Foundation Establishment!"
"Thanks." Rina nodded, and got to work.
She followed the guide her ancestor had given her, jumping upwards into a great whorl of reversed gravity, into a deep sea in the sky. Bubbles of air constantly moved through it due to the peculiar gravity, allowing her to swim through and breathe air at need. Escaping Spirit Beasts as diverse as sharks, lobsters, crabs, shrimp, carnivorous giant fish, and even a massive sea snake, she eventually reached a hidden island that was above the sea - or below it, depending on your perspective.
Here one of her ancestors enemies had died, and hidden part of her legacy there. A magical Cauldron, the spirit of whom was named Muqin Guo, which one could ride around in, flying through the sky in a great black greasy pot. It could be infused with the cultivator's Qi and used as a defensive tool, allowing one to resist endless against those in the same realm, simply by hiding within it. It speaks, however, and is a wary magical cauldron, constantly urging Rina to be more careful and avoid danger in motherly tones. It can be shrunk down to the size of a small pot and hung from the waist, though resizing it takes a few minutes due to Rina being a mere Qi Condensation cultivator.
"Oh! Before we go…" Muqin Guo chimed in, as Rina buckled the much reduced--now pot sized--cauldron to her belt. "There's someone I'd like to pick up."
"The Saint didn't destroy everything?" Rina wondered, and got a negatory feeling back. "She shouldn't have, because she didn't consider this valuable. It was something she threw together to prepare the other tools, and not something she put any real thought together. I just feel it would be so rotten to leave the poor fellow alone here!"
The pot hovered up, and bobbed in the direction of a hut just a short ways down--a bit run down, with a chimney on top.
Upon entry, she saw a rudimentary forgeworks, the sort of casual thing an itinerant might throw together if they needed to do some steelworking but didn't intend to stick around someplace very long.
"They should be…" Muqin Guo mumbled, and then jingled. "There! In the hearth!" Rina turned her gaze there, and saw the crackling embers of a mystical flame there.
"Is that an alchemist's flame?" Rina whispers down to the pot--which shakes quietly. "Not a true one, but Nana was always a perfectionist, even a fire she pieced together from ordinary material would be influenced by her flame controlling talents. No, this is a little forge spirit that manifested over the years since she left the fire burning here."
"Huh, it would be mean to just leave them behind." Rina agrees, and kneels over the fire--which shrunk back a little. She frowns, and says. "I'm not going to hurt you! I promise!"
It stays shrunk back at first, but slowly inches forward. It licks at Rina's fingers--extended towards it, and seems surprised when they don't catch fire.
"Aww, you're such a nice girl!" Muqin Guo gushes. "It seems to like you!"
"I'd be a bit more spooked if my blood didn't have a bit of a connection to fire, and wasn't so strong" Rina smiled as the flame hopped up onto her fingers and curled up on her hand. "Also, I'm pretty tough! I don't burn very easily, especially from a little guy like this!"
"It'll be valuable friend to have!" Muqin Guo confirms. "Forging's a kind of alchemy when you get down to it, if you just toss any metal or other useful material in once we've got him set up, he'll be able to make new things for you. Nothing really special unless your luck is really good--but it'll be a nice source of income and tools to help keep you safe!"
"They're a good fellow then, aren't they?" Rina tickles the flame. "How do we carry them with us?"
"Oh! Just toss him in here! I used to carry Nana's old pill flames when she wasn't using them, it's the same idea" Rina gestured over, the forge spirit seeming to sniff the pot, before leaping inside and making itself comfortable.
"Plus, it'll help you if all else is lost" Muqin Guo adds. "If you can trap someone inside, he'll be able to help suppress them enough for you to be able to clinch a win. You shouldn't take such chances of course, but if you're in a pinch…"
"I'll keep it in mind" Rina smiles, nods, and allows herself to think for a minute that she cleaned up.
…
But she's going to be deeply in the red again.
There was going to be a lot more herb collecting in her future, wasn't there?
As she was leaving, she encountered an abandoned forge, in which sat a magical Forge Spirit. With some enticing it agreed to live inside the cauldron with Muqin Guo, and could be used to allow the Cauldron to forge things put inside it - trapping an enemy inside the cauldron, even one in early Foundation Building would allow Rina to kill them, though it would be a tremendously risky endeavor to do so. If she caught such an enemy by surprise, though...
It took near to the end of the Secret Realm's opening period to collect all of the other materials needed to pay off the Qiguai Clan's entry quorta, but Rina pulled it off right in the nick of time!
Which did, of course, still end up meaning that she was leaving the Secret Realm at the same time everyone else was--and the sound of clashing steel and Qi emissions filled the air as she marched towards the exit portal. Eyes looked up to acknowledge her--and she could almost feel the attention focusing on the miniature cauldron hanging from her belt.
"Oh dear… I thought this kind of thing was just a sign of the times…" Muqin Guo muttered.
"Hah! It's my lucky day!" An arrogant voice bellowed, a ray of light flickering as one fighter leapt from the sidelines, interposing himself in Rina's way, a great warblade casually propped against his shoulder. He was giving out the emanations of a Ninth Heavenstage Qi Cultivation expert--and if Rina wasn't mistaken, a strong one who could reliably win battles on his level.
"A great treasure and a devil to exterminate!" He laughs, and slouches low, his warblade shouldered. "Li Chan, Seven Divine Saber Palace" He introduces himself. "I'll bring justice in the Heavens stead against you!"
Rina sighed--because of course she couldn't be low key on the way out. She reached for her side and drew a shining ebonstone truncheon--a replacement for her old one. "Rina Callista, Golden Devil Clan" She explained. "This really isn't the best idea on your part though."
"I disagree!" Li Chan bellowed. "You devils keep hiding like a turtle in your desert, now that one of you are in reach, I can put a fine climax on this trip!" Power pulses through him, and Rina's eyes narrow slightly as she feels his Essence concentrate at the edge of his blade--was it a treasure he found in this place?
"Well, if you want to do this, come on then" Rina shrugged. The thug standing before her licked his lips--and exploded into motion. He clearly had rich combat experience, given the series of mysterious feints the preceded his actual killing blow.
CRASH!
A blow that never landed--as a thunderous blow from Rina's truncheon landed at his side, the sound of bones splintering and organs shifting filled the air, and he spat out a mouthful of blood, before stumbling to the ground at her side.
"H… How?!" He managed to spit out, writhing on the ground. Rina sighed, and shouldered her truncheon. "You're not supposed to be this strong! We're… We're supposed to be the strongest!"
"You don't become strong by just picking fights at random" Rina sighed. "Or by just killing people, or fighting people. You become strong by always being ready to learn, and by not backing down when some thug tries to shake you down. It's about adversity, not violence."
She puts her truncheon away. "Any beast can spill blood and murder those weaker. But I wouldn't call them strong. It's a lot harder to do things properly and diligently, even when it doesn't get you very much in the short term."
She walks past him, leaving the bleeding cultivator behind her. She glances through the crowd, trying to see if anyone else wanted to take a poke.
But nobody did--good!
"Good on you!" Muqin Guo applauded in a whisper. "Most would have just killed him on the spot!"
"Fighting may be necessary--even killing--but that doesn't mean it should be the first resort." Rina shrugged. "Who knows, he might even learn something from the experience."
"Or he might tell his senior brothers who set out on a mission to avenge his loss by ganging up on you and murdering you" Muqin Guo warned. Rina tilted her head in acknowledgement of the point. "Even so, remember what I said about adversity?"
"Oh dear… You're just a regular troublemaker, aren't you?" Muqin Guo seemed to realize what was going on, but Rina bashfully grinned and shook her head.
She stepped out of the Secret Realm--unscathed and far richer than when she had begun.
The complementary stamp on her access badge proving that she had repaid the Qiguai Clan in full, and they eagerly await her next appearance was just icing on the cake after all.
After this, she simply left. No-one under Qi Condensation could face her, and years of trials had been enough. The door out opened, and even though other cultivators looked at her cauldron greedily, only one poor junior in the 9th Heavenstage thought to seize it from her, and was quickly dissuaded.
Keiros walked, his dark robes fluttering behind him.
The basalt corridors, decorated with the imposingly faceless visages of hoplite statuary, shone with a soft, uniform golden light, broken only by his passing shadow. They had been carved out of the rock itself, an alcove hollowed around them, feet one with the ground.
Five thousand and forty-three lined the underground corridors and walls of the Emendator holdings. He had counted.
Legend had it that they would come to life when the need of the Clan was at its most pressing.
It was, like so much else in the world, nonsense. He had broken one apart after ascending to first Heavenstage only to find it made of normal, ordinary stone - not a single array to be found, or sign of life as might be found in a silicate-based beast, or even a single, solitary spirit stone. It was a silly little legend to make the Emendator line feel special, protected from the Curse in a way that none others were.
The reprisal for his action had been harsh and swift. Thirty lashes. To destroy property was to waste it, to waste it to damage the resources of the Clan, to damage the resources of the Clan to damage its people, to damage its people to spit in the face of uncounted generations of sacrifice and toil.
Again, nonsense.
Well-meaning nonsense to be sure, but still nonsense. The logic was, on its face, incoherent.
The light that emanated, sourceless and ceaseless from the corridors came from a Dawn Time Brazier which ran on spirit stones for fuel. Wasteful, when real torchlight would suffice, the inconvenience of the smell and inferior lighting barely worth mentioning. Compared to that, a lone statue was barely a rounding error on the expense sheet of the Emendator budget.
Keiros took a deep breath. The frivolous expenditure and even the self-evident contradiction was not his concern.
Tavi was.
He could still picture it in his head: the delicate interface array cracked, a hundred seams of weakness threatening the integrity of the main array, the lurid orange of spirit stones close to exhaustion - a month of work or more, wasted. All because an idiot chose to dally instead of work.
Keiros ground his teeth. His fists clenched and he heard a knuckle pop.
Calm, he told himself, relaxing his fist. Tavi was an idiot.Allowances needed to be made for idiots. He didn't understand the reasoning, but he could not deny its validity: he owed his life to a troop of idiots and would not forget the debt.
However. When it came to Tavi. The thing was. On the surface, his cousin didn't seem to be an idiot - glib of tongue, quick of wit, charming as only a born philanderer could be, he looked every inch a proper Emendator.
Keiros himself has been taken in by his grace and graciousness; his cunning as well as his strength. One would think keeping watch over a simple measuring array would not be beyond his meager powers of intellect. A child could do it. A child had done it.
And yet. Here they were.
And here he was, arrived at his destination at last.
The doors to the Third Workshop exploded open as the force of his rage bowed them inwards. Father had had the animating arrays carved after the last... couple of incidents.
"OCTAVIAN ATTICUS EMENDATOR," he roared, voice echoing in the sudden pin-drop silence, the man himself caught mid-word and suppressing a wince as Keiros strode past the softly vibrating hinges, "I NAME YOU FECKLESS AND FAITHLESS. YOU DESERTED YOUR POST DESPITE MAKING AN OATH TO HOLD FAST. I DEMAND THE RESTITUTION OF HONORABLE COMBAT."
The silence rang with his words, until a small, papery sigh broke it.
"Again?" it ventured, but no one listened to Mistress Xu, she was not Clan and kept on a short leash, allowed so far only due to her sterling ability and many accomplishments and injuries in defending their lands.
Of all present, she was ironically the most tolerable, but only just.
"Yes," he snarled and she rolled the glass beads she called eyes heavenwards and whispered something about heathen eggs in her barbarian tongue.
Tavi, like a man finding a chicken bone lodged in his throat and not expecting it there, stared at him, wide-eyed. A dozen eyes followed Keiros as he paced forwards, black robes billowing ominously behind him, the more delicate instruments and stoppered liquids left shuddering in his wake.
"What say you, Octavian Atticus Emendator?" he asked.
Octavian Atticus Emendator blinked, still gobsmacked.
It was satisfying, slightly.
Then the idiot's train of thought, once stalled, started up again, sluggishly, and his attempt at deflection was so transparent Keiros thought he might crack a tooth gtimacingvat how unutterably, buffoonishly annoying it was.
"Cuz, cuz, look, stop, calm down," Tavi said, hands up, palms outward, fingers spread in surrender, stepping backward in small, halting steps- towards the project of his rival, Keiros' idly noted, whether on purpose, or coincidence he couldn't really come to care, either way, it would not be affected by the events taking place here, "I - I took my eyes off of it for one second to tend to the purifying arrays and then it stopped working and I figured-"
"What say you, Octavian Atticus Emendator?" he repeated, drawing closer.
The small workshop - one of many of the Emendators, as suggested by its name - held its breath. Among members of the main Emendator bloodline, a challenge given thrice, could not be refused. But thrice given, and the challenger gave away the right to name the where, the when and the how of the duel. A potent sacrifice in exchange for mere satisfaction.
A sign of arrogance - or ability.
"Will you just shut up and listen?" Tavi squawked, his voice pitched such that anyone not better informed would have thought it breaking like a mortal child's. "Your array isn't even that complicated, it's like half a day of progress at most, we can-"
You can die, he thought viciously, but, in a moment of supreme self-control, did not act on his darker fantasies.
"What say you, Octavian Atticus Emendator?" he repeated, a final time, looming over Tavi, staring down the bridge of his large, hooked nose at the shorter man.
His cousin was nearly two years his senior, and, according to the standards of the Clan, talented, having reached Second Heavenstage at the mere age of eighteen. The purity of his blood was undeniable: although he disdained the beard that older generations put such attention into maintaining, his jaw purposefully bare, his scalp overflowed with curly, bronzen locks and his face had the classic, aquiline nose, square jaw and strong, symmetrical cheekbones associated with strength, virility and good looks. The rest of his body helped with that association.
In comparison, well, if Tavi was a stallion, Keiros was a giraffe: tall, lanky and strange to look at, his features seeming to work at cross-purposes. He had also taken but his first step into Heaven, and at a clear disadvantage.
"You're seriously going to offer me a three-fold challenge over fourteen seconds of inattention?" Tavi asked incredulously, head craned upwards.
Keiros said nothing.
The silence stretched.
Tavi nodded, breathing out. His hunch straightened and his panicked expression veered subtly towards a small, one might even go so far as to call crafty, grin, that flickered before going out.
"You know, you always did have a perplexing reputation, cuz. Fine. I accept your challenge."
He looked around, apparently trying to gauge the effect of his words.
"I shall allow you to name the place and time as well as your weapon," Keiros said frostily.
A knife dropped into Tavi's palm.
"Here and n-"
He might have mentioned it before, but.
Tavi was an idiot.
Mistress Xu rapped the ground with her cane, qi rippling out before forming beautifully precise projections of force that blew Tavi backwards, and brought Keiros up short. "Not here, you headstrong idiots." She jerked a thumb. "Outside."
Tavi flipped to his feet, incensed. His knives had vanished. A second later, he had collected himself enough to banish the anger that should have left with his weapons. "My apologies, Mistress Xu."
She flicked a contemptuous hand at them both.
"Out."
They outed.
-----
Author's Note: @occipitallobe sorry, my Omake was still a wip, if you could sticky this one instead that'd be great. As for the cool thing, could this go towards a Keiros-developed array of some sort? I'm not too fussed as to the details though the thing I had in mind was an array that repaired fortifications. It hence requires an interface that monitors the condition of the actual fortification and then a main array which activates to seal gaps with materials generated by spirit stone or beast core. That's a bit of a longer-term project for him, so his initial array night only be the successful development of an accurate monitoring array that could double as a sort of early warning detection system.
Sorry, I'm... not sure if I'm asking for the right Cool Things at this point. I can't tell if I'm asking for too much or too little.
Considering speculation it's what allowed them stomp the Verdant South, I'm guessing no, and they either spent a lot of time, or go very lucky getting what they just used.
