Part of the problem is I (and likely many other voters) am honestly not sure what the components of FDS are?
I've heard something about a Monster-Defeating Stance, but we have no blurb for that. I have no idea what the other two component stances even are. It's hard to say "OK we're buying these two 7-Arete stances" when we don't know what the stances even are. Foe-Defeating Stance, OTOH, we know exists and is good at fighting big stuff.
Perhaps ADS, HDS, and two other 7-Arete stances might be better then just FDS, but that's impossible to guess without more information.
The FDS voters are mostly just desperation-voting for "Shit we need more power, this thing is an option right?" I don't understand where the voters were when Call Up vs Hold the Line was going on, but whatever.
...idea that probably doesn't work: the all-defeating stance is such that 'nothing that oppose(s you) c(an)not be ruined, even an ontological lack'. So what if we enter the all-defeating stance and metaphorically punch the time-restriction on when you start Pillars of Creation in the face(making it once per lmonth but not at a specific part of said lmonth?)? Like, yeah, you probably can't gain arbitrary powers by using the All-defeating Stance, but this isn't gaining an arbitrary power, this is destroying a specific restriction on one.
and also use the ADS to punch rihaku in the face to get him to return that one pick he stole.
The FDS voters are mostly just desperation-voting for "Shit we need more power, this thing is an option right?" I don't understand where the voters were when Call Up vs Hold the Line was going on, but whatever.
I wasn't watching closely enough to really follow where the extra Hold the Line votes came from. But now that we're here, a desperation vote for more power seems like the correct play... dying with Arete in the tank is gonna be really depressing
We are more than likely to blow it here, though, together with all of our rerolls. And then get hit with a catastrophic injury or something, to add the insult to the injury.
BTW, Rihaku mentioned that tactics and particularly omakes with tactics considerably boost our chances here. If people are feeling that they could squueeze something out, now is the time.
As you might know from constant boasting on Discord, I'm making a (very shitty) anime opening for AST; a parody based on Naruto Shippudden's 8th Opening, "Diver." Here's the question to thread. Please, review the clip below at the marked timestamp and answer the question:
The metaphor is naturally that someone is drowning in an "ocean," and Hunger/Naruto who'd been drowning in that same ocean but healed and escaped is leaping right back in to save them. Who do you think it should be/fits best? My money's personally on Catherine, but I want to hear what the thread has to say.
For additional reference, here is the entire opening as a gif (70-80% complete; still needs 20-40 frames at the end, plus processing & editing.)
[X] Follow Through - You talk a big game, but when it comes down to the wire, can you truly follow through? As per His Shroud Was Down, but also use The Shattering Blow. Not even the lineage of the Forebear in his place of power could withstand that uttermost strike, and that was from a Hunger vastly lesser than today's. If even this supreme assault cannot bring forth a conclusion, then he never had any chance at all. +Recklessness, +++Willpower, +3 Haeliel Points, +1 Haeliel Favor.
Here's a new tactic, then, in omake form! including also non-tactical parts because it's omake-y.
Hunger shot out from the Walls. But... not towards the Plenary Armament. Rather, he shot almost straight towards the ground inwards. As Hunger neared the ground within the walls, as the fragmentary Refinement of Quickness needed to cast Artful Thorn finished, as he began his sword swing, he activated Nightmare Flight, the power of the Evening Sky still accessible even with the cloak solidified into armor bar none. Instantly, he was transported somewhere else under the same sky.
More specifically... he was instantly transported to directly next to the Armament. But not just next to it. Maintaining his downwards momentum, he began only centimeters from it, wind screaming past as he swung. But, though Hunger began mere centimeters from the Armament, he was so positioned midswing that the Forebearers Blade was lower still, and closer still. Not centimeters away, nor milimeters, nor nanometers; No, the Blade began already within the Armament, for this flight of a Nightmare is the power of the Empyreal Signs, a powerset only modestly below the Royal Praxis, and so leagues beyond Astral Rank, and it can teleport the user Anywhere under the same sky, anywhere at all and even if warded by lesser magics, and while transport into an object would normally invoke a risk, this was Hunger, Garbed in armor beyond any pear and with the Blade of the Forebearer, which was the instrument for his Cut and, more recently and lesserly, Hungers, and elevated thereby. So the first Artful Thorn landed without any possibility for avoidance whatsoever, because Rank was a lesser magic then the Nightmare Flight that led Hunger to be within Procyon in an instant.
Besides which, the Refinement of quickness elevates one to speeds not so much numerical as simply Sufficient for any task, and so Hunger would be fast enough; but better to avoid that full exertion another moment, by wit and thought, and so Hunger pulled the Forebearer's Blade free as his legs impacted the back of the Armament, leaving a great wound in the Armament no less severe then the loss of a hand would be to him. But even if the Armament had spasmed with great force at that moment to throw him off, he would have been held strong to it; For he was wielding the Forebearer's Blade one-handed, as strength of swing meant nothing during the Artful Thorn, and his free hand had been held forwards so it, too, had been superimposed on the Armaments metal chasis, and so the Armament would need to rip itself apart, or rend his armor through sheer shockwaves, to tear him free. So he used Artful Thorn again only micromoments after the first, carving the needed runes into the firmament with the Forebearers blade, and then had a choice: to deliver the second slash through the nigh-infinitely durable armoured Arm whose superimposition held him to the Armaments back, and tear himself free of the twice-crippled foe? or to risk that the Armament, with a second or two to think, would be able to locate a way to attack him with such close range, even though he was on its back, perhaps raise its shroud? In any case at some point before his Praxis was exhausted he would tear himself free, and when he did he would simultaneously unleash the Deathly Star into one of the great rents he had formed in the Armor-plating of the Armament, bypassing a good portion of its defenses through the wound he targeted from point-blank range. And then... Well, he would simply have to hope that an Armament, as inconvenienced as a person suddenly struck blind and legless would be and then struck by immense energies besides, would lack the force and accuracy to slay him twofold through his Armor of Midnight and through the healing powers of the Ring, Hunger, from which his not-quite-name originated, higher-Rank that they are. Then, once he had torn free and gone flying- well, he would likely wait a time to recover his energies, Praxis being so draining as it was, but not the full eight hours of his armor; A man inconvenienced such as to be eyeless and legless would scarcely be able to defend himself, after all, so Hunger would return at some point thereafter to continue the tiring, but not gruesome, work of bringing down and neutering the Plenary Armament, if its pilot had not surrendered already.
English Summary of the tactics:
Jump off the walls in the opposite direction from what's implied, and then teleport to Procyon with Nightmare Flight once you reach terminal velocity or nearly-reach the ground.
when teleporting to Procyon, teleport so your sword is Already inside Procyon, because Empyreal beats Rank, we're too durable(and regeneratable) to worry about being telefragged, there's no real difference between solid and air for teleports like this, and the teleport doesn't say you can't overlap objects, making the first Artful Thorn completely guaranteed.
also when teleporting to Procyon, teleport so one hand is also inside Procyon so you can't get thrown off until at least the second Artful Thorn (deliver the last Thorn in the first set deliver with that hand because Artful Thorn explicitly cares not for the applicability of the weapon, freeing the hand.).
Whenever done with the first set of Thorns and falling off/jumping off/escaping Procyons back, use Deathly Star point blank at one of the Artful Thorn wounds. Also, make at least 2 thorn wounds equivalent to the loss of an eye to blind Procyon.
If Procyon's still alive after all that come back once Praxis is sorta recharged to land a few more thorns. also obviously deal with Procyons entourage in case they can rejuvenate it somehow.
also I agree that [ ] Catherine makes the most sense, since Verschlengorge hasn't primarily had trouble with things Hunger has already overcome/escaped, while Catherine is presumably having issues with/trapped by the hidden ones which Hunger is sorta free from/ has escaped. I don't think Gisena really had any trouble with things Hunger has escaped, nor has much trouble in general...
Here's a tactic. Just fuck it and spam artful thorn. Have Gisena launch us in a shell of nullity at Procyon and as soon as we hit take advantage and use Artful Thorn 12 times. Against the Rotbeast 3 or 4 Artful Thorns was enough for us to carve through it effectively at our leisure and that was a creature that had no weak points like arms or eyes unlike Procyon. In addition we know from Versch that taking enough damage makes an armament lose rank as they ablate it to mantain structural integrity so if we can injure Procyon to the point where it can't access its shroud or ultimate then we should be good.
I have been thinking about my promise of 2015 10k omakes. If Rihaku can try to kill us and also take our rightfully earned picks, I don't see a point of honoring any promise I did. The GM's corruption is enough to alienate any feeling of obligation I felt. So fuck that promise, I could write some other omake but honestly I don't care anymore.
Remember that Artful Thorn costs increase exponentially each time it's used in a fight! Adorie's cost reduction is substantial, but least useful in this application.
I don't have clever tactics, but I think threatening the mooks will just give up our alpha strike. We have to open with our mega lazer and spam artful thorn. We can duck behind the walls after that and make him waste power breaking them down, then just Artful Thorn until we're out of juice and hope we end up with enough rank advantage to wear it down after that.
We could also try to summon a buddy? Does combat guy want to take up that guard duty trade?
Making your reader drop the book and look for the meaning of words because the author has a fetish for appearing "intellectual" for using old and obscure words (found by the usage of thesaurus) is not good writing. Also writing in the most shitty prose imaginable where if you don't cram 50 adjectives for a description you are not a real YA author, where a simple ones would suffice: they are "humid prepossessing homo sapiens with full-sized aortic pumps" vs they had big hearts.
Also 50x word count means you will have a trilogy where the heroine will meet boy 1 in the first book. In book 2 she will break with boy 1 and hook up with boy 2 and in the final book she will be back to boy 1 (and they would bang in the climax).
Like YA, love it, I don't care, but deny it is bottom of the barrel trash that no self respecting human being above the age of 18 should read is just denying reality. I like shitty things as well, but I have the self awareness to know that they are shit.
EDIT: I might have been a little extreme with my last sentence. Let me change it a bit. 99% of YA is crap. 100% of YA where the MC is a heroine with unique powers and a love triangle is crap. There are some good YA novels. Recently I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and I liked it. Give it a go if you have time
Like YA, love it, I don't care, but deny it is bottom of the barrel trash that no self respecting human being above the age of 18 should read is just denying reality. I like shitty things as well, but I have the self awareness to know that they are shit.
Your post describes a very specific sub-genre that is popular but certainly not representative of the entire corpus of work. Like, obviously romance between YA protagonists is going to be clumsy... but are you willing to say that contemporary romance novels for grown ups are much better?
There are YA novels that focus on adventure / friendship that lack the flaws you're complaining about. And the Ur-example of your critique, The Hunger Games, introduced the love triangle elements over the objections of the author!
See my edit. I was a bit too radical but basically 90% of literature is trash.
What I don't like about YA is the absolute naivety of the plot. Hunger Games is YA version of Battle Royale with a very weird dystopia thrown in.
EDIT: You want to know the sad reality - Fifty shades of grey was a fanfic of Twillight and turned into 100 millon plus bestseller,
If you want to read good dystopian stuff, read Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New world, fahrenheit 451. If you still want your dystopia YA read Litte Brother. Usually YA would never be original (rather just a mish mash of old books) so I prefer to spend my time reading actually good shit.
but... we've all read those books already? Expounding about how the seminal works in a genre are also the peak of its implementation is such a lazy smoothbrain take that I'm embarrassed for you. Yeah, Brave New World was great, and the influence of 1984 can be seen in lots of other works across genres. But that doesn't mean it is the only worthwhile book of its type. I remember reading Cloud Atlas and getting to the part where where the servant class gets turned into ration bars for themselves. Just because this is a nod to Soylent Green doesn't mean that Cloud Atlas should be tossed out.
(Note: There are other reasons to critique Cloud Atlas, of course...)
So I've got a pretty ambitious omake started, and after that I should be able to put out Population Nine (my next subquest update), but I don't expect to manage either by Wednesday. So for the moment, Gisena omake!
Triggerfinger
She'd had to prioritize. While truthfully, her Graces were quite intuitive - one rune of singularity, to provide the power source, and one to three runes more, to give it purpose and shape - aside from the first, the runes had proven difficult to connotate. Truthfully, she had been... not lucky, but blessed, to discern the singularity's necessary shape in the Lathe of Heaven. Was it a blade and purpose offered to any who would take it up? Even now, with her much greater vision, she wasn't sure.
But she had managed a few, works of art and craft and parsing. A refinement of the structures in her spirit, to speed her mind further and allow her more margin to work with. A comprehensive attack structure, incorporating all of Augustine's manifold maledictions - including her ultimate exertion. (This, she could reset with less than an hour's work, but she had not yet cracked the compartmentalization needed to manifest several at once.) A conceptual armor of Nullity, suitable to survive that attack, unwarned, perhaps one and a half times before reinforcement.
And a link, from the ring on her finger to the ring that was its' master, by which she might always be in its' proximity.
Adorie Miriyellan's bloodline was too useful to leave behind, and too complex for even Augustine's mother to mimic well - in other words, weeks or months beyond Gisena's present level. Hunger's Abduction of the crown jewels had already left as strong an exospatial proximity as Gisena could craft. But it was the nature of princesses to be powerful when seen, and it was in the nature of artificers to send others to the battlefield, armed with strange and terrible wonders, while the artificer continued to toil out of sight.
That was what she was doing now. Nilfel's Legions might be of limited use against an Armament in direct contest, but their collective Pressure was ample fuel for the Ring Azure, Jewel of Artifice. While weaker than the Walls, the mythos-infused trenches, spike-fields, and firemoats they were erecting should delay even an Armament for a time - time in which she might charge another Foremost Strike, evacuate its' pathway, blast portals to the Astral to tie it down further, and a dozen other gambits.
But this moment was crucial. Hunger was about to engage, and she had to know whether to take her shot as he did so. Staring from the jewel of his ring through the jewel of her own, she made ready to fire. And waited.
And waited.
but... we've all read those books already? Expounding about how the seminal works in a genre are also the peak of its implementation is such a lazy smoothbrain take that I'm embarrassed for you
Then expand with different takes, you can try the russian literature:
We (russian novel) from the 1921 and was the influence on Huxley and Orwell
Strugatsky brothers are good take - Hard to be God, Prisoners of Power. (also Roadside Picnic is dystopian as shit)
Metro series is relatively good - only read 2033 and 2035 though
Other:
Camp of saints
Darkness at noon
Lord of the flies ( a bit iffy on that one but it is still good read)
Lathe of heaven ( guy dreams reality)
A scanner darkly
The dispossesed
A canticle for leibowitz
Man in the high castle
Do android dream of electric sheep
(there are more but this is from the top of my head)
Read those before going into the garbage bin of YA.
Actually don't go:
Let's see what I can recommend for dystopian stuff:
Neuromancer (the whole trilogy is good)
Windup girl
Clockwork orange
Stand on zansibar
Iron dream
Forever war
Running man
Daemon + Freedom
Little brother is YA but still good
Naked sun
Minority report
Harrison Bergeron
Alas babylon
(you have to look for more but please don't go the YA route)
EDIT: I am from eastern europe so I read a lot of russian literature which is quite good. Also communism has given russian authors a real view on what dystopia really means so you should check them.
We've got precise control over Deathly Star; does that extend to the focus of its attack? For example, rather than the full gradient of Procyon's existence, could we specify its spirit/soul and try to weaken its Rank like that, boosting with Artful Thorn if need be?
Then expand with different takes, you can try the russian literature:
We (russian novel) from the 1921 and was the influence on Huxley and Orwell
Strugatsky brothers are good take - Hard to be God, Prisoners of Power. (also Roadside Picnic is dystopian as shit)
Metro series is relatively good - only read 2033 and 2035 though
Other:
Camp of saints
Darkness at noon
Lord of the flies ( a bit iffy on that one but it is still good read)
Lathe of heaven ( guy dreams reality)
A scanner darkly
The dispossesed
A canticle for leibowitz
Man in the high castle
Do android dream of electric sheep
(there are more but this is from the top of my head)
Read those before going into the garbage bin of YA.
Actually don't go:
Let's see what I can recommend for dystopian stuff:
Neuromancer (the whole trilogy is good)
Windup girl
Clockwork orange
Stand on zansibar
Iron dream
Forever war
Running man
Daemon + Freedom
Little brother is YA but still good
Naked sun
Minority report
Harrison Bergeron
Alas babylon
(you have to look for more but please don't go the YA route)
EDIT: I am from eastern europe so I read a lot of russian literature which is quite good. Also communism has given russian authors a real view on what dystopia really means so you should check them.
Russian books and fanfiction are the shit. I'm fluent in the language because I'm a slav and I recommend anything from the Strugatskys. Roadside Picnic was pretty darn good and inspired the STALKER games. Hard to be God is also incredible and got several adaptations and I think a tabletop based on it.
I can recommend a really good Harry Potter/WoD fanfiction in Russian, although I don't think there's a translation so unless you can read/learn to read Cyrillic you're screwed.
Tactics using Artful Thorn mechanics
#853 Words after stripping out Quotes
I would like to propose five tactics. They are based on details from the three fights where we've seen the Artful Thorn used. Those passages are quoted below the tactics.
First: It might be possible to time the activation of Deathly Star to fire during the instant when Hunger is in the Realm of Forms. Deathly Star attacks its target using many different vectors, applying the damage to an opponent's conceptual integrity might be a dramatic powerup.
Second: Casting Nightmare Flight while in the middle of the jailbroken Refinement of Quickness that initiates Artful Thorn might allow Hunger to short-circuit the Praxis Rune's return to mundane physicality. If Artful Thorn allows Hunger to move through the boundary of the Realm of Forms, then he is briefly under a sky that is not merely physical. Nightmare Flight would allow him to arrive at a destination inside this liminal Realm, instead of merely passing through the boundary and immediately returning to mundane physics. This would dramatically increase the time in which our attacks strike at the conceptual nature of our enemy.
Third: Even if we cannot stay in the Realm of Forms by using Nightmare Flight, we might be able to launch a more effective attack by pairing it with the Refinement of Quickness that initiates each Artful Thorn attack. Augustine was able to reduce the effect of our sword attack by manipulating space so we had to move further before doing any damage. I conclude that the damage done from Artful Thorn depends somewhat on the amount of time our sword spends in the Realm of Forms. Nightmare Flight could maximize that amount of time (once).
Fourth: Casting a full and unedited Refinement of Quickness in conjunction with the Cut Through technique may lead to a much more powerful application of Artful Thorn. The Rotbeast fight says that the effort of using both Praxis techniques simultaneously would leave Hunger insensate if unmitigated. Adorie's bloodline dramatically reduces the amount of Praxis exertion from each technique. (If her good for nothing Bloodline would hurry up and awaken then maybe this tactic would be more effective.)
The benefits of this modification to Artful Thorn are hard to overstate: launching an entire slice while in the Realm of Forms might be able to cut through an opponent, rather than being aborted in the middle of a stroke.
Fifth: Even if we cannot modify our Praxis techniques on the fly, it's worth mentioning a game plan for the times when we are not actually using Artful Thorn. The strike on the Armament Fish suggests that Artful Thorn aims attacks at weakpoints in the target: Hunger can draw conclusions about where he should be attacking Procyon by paying attention to where each of his Artful Thorn strikes land. Following up with the power of Ruin would be an effective way to amplify our damage output.
Remember that Artful Thorn costs increase exponentially each time it's used in a fight! Adorie's cost reduction is substantial, but least useful in this application.
[ ] Artful Thorn (2 Praxis + 1 ordinary pick) - When this rune is executed, briefly afterwards the practitioner's attack is guaranteed to cause a truly meaningful wound if it lands, no matter the scale of the enemy or the inapplicability of his weapon. Even a beast the size of a multiverse will be equivalently impaired to a human's losing of an eye or hand. At this level, only works on coherent enemies (can target the Rotbeast, but not "all Rotspawn"). Increasingly draining.
*Useful if one intends to hunt epic beasts in the quest for greater Rank.
Off the top of my head, we've seen Artful Thorn three times so far:
Against Augustine, he hits her with his sword and she is maimed horribly. Gisena's point of view does not give us much other information, and does not confirm whether the Thorn was used against the mooks:
Hunger growled, a spine-raising rumble of exertion as he pressed forth, blade lined with Praxis blue as he struck down Augustine's phantasmal servants. One by one the monsters fell, revealing behind them the innermost chamber, where the Lady Protector had prepared her final stand. Power coiled in sinuous drifts about the sanctum, magic like an onrushing river, all chained and channeled by runes of screaming iron. Here also was Verschlengorge, restrained by edicts of Foremost magic. Countless layers of protection and augmentation shrouded the Lady Protector like a mantle, enhancing all elements of her protoplasm-flesh to the very limits of her magic.
Swift as flashing sunlight Hunger closed the distance, the Praxis lending him speed like a messenger-god as he delivered the writ of Augustine's execution. But for this and more the Lady Protector was already prepared, space like an infinite treadmill expanding between them, and though Hunger's stroke still landed it was not a lethal blow. She was maimed horribly, but now came her retaliation, a blast of transcendental magic from runes freshly - and brutally - carved into her own flesh, raggedly infused with blood and marrow. Augustine marshaled such force as to reduce entire worlds to ash, a pantheon-slaying strike of truly foremost malice.
Against the Armament Fish, Hunger's first attack was strong enough to cut through the outer shell into the cavern where Ber was cultivating, and Hunger's second attack was aimed at Ber's brainstem:
There was a great ripping sound, a tearing as if through vast layers of flesh. It was followed by a dull roar from the Fish around him, sound so immense that seemed to engulf his entire world. He marshaled the Blue, casting it as a mantle about him, and tore free from the cocoon of brine to face this interloper who had wounded his home.
No one was there.
He looked up. Through the fathomless mountains-deep flesh he could see the faint line of the open sky above, a cut that had penetrated all that fearsome musculature to stop finally at this esophagus-cave within.
[...]
Ber scrambled up the interior walls of the Fish and peeked his head out of the cut their attacker had made. He moved with utmost speed, scarcely a blur to the senses of magi, utterly invisible to the unaided eye.
And yet, as soon as he broke the surface, he was flying, spinning, plunging into the sky, spray of blood half-obscuring his vision as he tried to turn and found his neck unresponsive. Finally he saw his headless body fallen limply below, arterial spray rapidly discoloring the form.
The Hungering One stopped next to his corpse, nose wrinkled in distaste, and looked curiously up at him. There was faint recognition in that golden, glistening eye.
It had two arms now, its sword unbroken, shining with a colder, more-piercing shade of Blue. The shock of its unfurled Pressure was like nothing he'd experienced before, a bomb-blast of abrupt terror as sudden and total as a child's first peal of thunder. He summoned his Color about him, hoping wildly that it could transport him downwards, somehow stitch him back onto his body - but it could barely exist in the wake of that Pressure, let alone exert his will.
Note: The blurb for Cut Through against the fist specified that Hunger's first strike would be an Artful Thorn, and I conclude that the strike against Bearic was an Artful Thorn based on the bolded sentence: the Forebear's Blade was shining with cold blue light after decapitating him.
Against the Rotbeast, we get the most comprehensive description of how Artful Thorn works. I'm going to quote the entire chapter, because in retrospect that fight is a lot more metal than I appreciated at the time. I've bolded the most relevant passages and will copy them below:
Hunger repelled another wave of stifling, noxious poison and adjusted his grip. The path the Forebear would have taken was clear. If he could not find a path, he would simply have to cut one. The natural evolution of the Forebear's technique. The purpose of his cut was to murder; if he could not murder simply by slicing through what lay before him, then that was a failure of execution, not of the path itself... For surely the Forebear had faced foes more terrible and esoteric than merely this.
He gathered it once more, the despair, rage and sorrow of his long and ruinous path, the barely-kindled hope of his new life as a Cursebearer, and most of all his unswerving determination to avenge all who had suffered at the hands of the Hidden Ones. The Blade sang true; there was no foe in all the wide breadth and span of this universe, that could resist the Forebear's Cut placed properly. All that barred him from the realm of that strike were the simple matters of aim and reach.
It was not a concept he was unfamiliar with. If one could not aim at the body, then target the mind. If one could not aim at the mind, then target the spirit. He'd done just that against the Tiller Wurm, and had entered this monster with the intention to do so as well. Would he be stymied by a mere lack of nerve clusters?
The Light of the Praxis had opened his eyes to new levels of endeavor, speed that could elude the unerring and race the untouchable, speed to match or exceed Vanreir's inescapable strike. His initial epiphany against the Prime Rotspawn had already elevated the offensive techniques of his blade to that level, but without the means to travel beyond mere space his Cut had been trapped within its coordinate plane. The Refinement of Quickness provided the solution, movement elevated to a conceptual level, power enough to slip the bounds of physicality, to intrude upon deeper realities for an action's fleeting span.
Long enough to dodge one strike, or to perform one.
All he had to do was use those techniques in unison.
Hunger scoffed. The drain of such an exertion might well kill him if unmitigated. The Forebear's Cut demanded enormous conviction; the Refinement of Quickness depleted him on a fundamental level. In combination they could render him an insensate vegetable. He could not allow irrational exuberance to dominate practicality, not utterly.
He'd not been idle as he thought, steadily plunging deeper into the Rotbeast's unchanging core. But neither had his opponent, the virulence and density of its poisons ever-increasing, now an opaque fog that bore down upon every inch of him with terrible ferocity, not just his extremities but his body entire a gruesome weeping sore. Even the protection of the Outer Shadow was steadily wearing away, though it'd outlasted the Evening Sky by many long seconds.
Time was running out. He wracked his mind for a solution, firing a pillar of Edeldross into which he curtly stepped, outputting as much of the element as he could possibly withstand. The strain was enormous, his reserves quickly depleting; he would pay for it later, but later he'd be dead if things did not change. Too much depended on him. He absolutely could not fail now.
Cut through, even if it cannot be cut. Cut away all that was extraneous, strip the Refinement of Quickness of all components except those necessary for a single attack, committing forthrightly as the Forebear's Cut demanded, technique matching intent in form, then in function...
He blurred, blade twisting sparsely, executing just a fragment of the Refinement, less than one-fourth the entire invocation, and felt the world shift into the chasm of speed that portended its activation. He stepped forward just so, destination already in mind, not an act of movement but the opening step of an offense, a charge whose purpose was not any transition of space but merely to meet the enemy.
Yes. In this place, halfway to the Realm of Forms, the Rotbeast was not just its physical morass but all-that-was-the-Rotbeast, its form and essence, its mind and spirit, and further 'beneath' the fuzzily-coherent mass of its core concept and ontological basis. No time to gawk; only to strike, blade cleaving indiscriminately at mind and form and essence, fading back to physicality halfway through the stroke, sinking softly into mere flesh once more.
Beneath him the titan shuddered, trembling slowly. The ground its flesh began to list, ever so slightly off-balance.
Hunger braced himself again and gripped the hilt firmly with both hands, again performing the truncated rune, again barely managing a cut. The Rotbeast's listing worsened, tipping like a ship in rough seas.
Each repetition was exhausting. To be safe, he could do no more than three in total; until he had a chance to rest, the damage to his own essence would scale up exponentially with each performance.
Again. And that was three. The Rotbeast paused, density of poison beginning to dissipate, the gray morass around him slowly melting away. But instinct told him this was only a feint, so he clenched his grip and forced himself to cut...
Again. Now the dissolution accelerated, vast swathes of grey flesh peeling away like a discarded rind, tissue become air like frost at dawn's coming. The Rotbeast was reeling, but even this it could survive, if it left, if it escaped to recuperate-
He did not strike again, though it would have been the fatal blow.
Instead he rushed backwards and outwards to the Rotbeast's surface, where the poison was thin and clear enough to see through, and from there began methodically to hack away at the monster, separating great chunks of its mass and steadily destroying them. It wriggled helplessly, furiously beneath him as he destroyed it, hounding it to the last, but was powerless to escape, powerless to resist, incapable even of a final suicidal thrust against the Sovereignty as he prioritized those pieces of it closest to the line of defense.
He was drained, and bitterly so, but even operating at half strength he was more than capable of dismantling this hapless prey. Some flicker of reassurance curled up from the Forebear's Blade, half-remembered instinct of the Forebear himself who had pushed this far in countless battles without hint of fatigue or hesitation. If he'd made the fifth Cut things would not have been so easy, but he'd refrained from that exertion and preserved the vast majority of his power.
As the final fleeting dregs of grey fell to the Power of Ruin embedded in his Blade, his Ring kindled bright and blinding with crimson light, a victory-flare over the battlefield as the shadow of the Rotbeast was wiped away at last.
Alright, so in case you don't want to re-read the entire fight, the bolded sections go like this:
there was no foe in all the wide breadth and span of this universe, that could resist the Forebear's Cut placed properly. All that barred him from the realm of that strike were the simple matters of aim and reach.
It was not a concept he was unfamiliar with. If one could not aim at the body, then target the mind. If one could not aim at the mind, then target the spirit.
without the means to travel beyond mere space his Cut had been trapped within its coordinate plane. The Refinement of Quickness provided the solution, movement elevated to a conceptual level, power enough to slip the bounds of physicality, to intrude upon deeper realities for an action's fleeting span.
Long enough to dodge one strike, or to perform one.
All he had to do was use those techniques in unison.
Hunger scoffed. The drain of such an exertion might well kill him if unmitigated. The Forebear's Cut demanded enormous conviction; the Refinement of Quickness depleted him on a fundamental level. In combination they could render him an insensate vegetable.
Cut away all that was extraneous, strip the Refinement of Quickness of all components except those necessary for a single attack
He blurred, blade twisting sparsely, executing just a fragment of the Refinement, less than one-fourth the entire invocation, and felt the world shift into the chasm of speed that portended its activation. He stepped forward just so, destination already in mind, not an act of movement but the opening step of an offense, a charge whose purpose was not any transition of space but merely to meet the enemy.
Yes. In this place, halfway to the Realm of Forms
No time to gawk; only to strike, blade cleaving indiscriminately at mind and form and essence, fading back to physicality halfway through the stroke, sinking softly into mere flesh once more.
Hunger braced himself again and gripped the hilt firmly with both hands, again performing the truncated rune, again barely managing a cut.
Each repetition was exhausting.
Instead he rushed backwards and outwards to the Rotbeast's surface, where the poison was thin and clear enough to see through, and from there began methodically to hack away at the monster, separating great chunks of its mass and steadily destroying them.
I'm going to argue that there are a few things that we can learn from the diagetic explanation of how Hunger engineered the Artful Thorn.
First, the Thorn operates by jailbreaking an existing Praxis Rune, "stripped" of all components except the parts needed for a single attack. This was needed because without mitigation, an attempt to use both Refinement of Quickness and Cut Through simultaneously would have been enough to leave Hunger insensate from Praxis exhaustion
Second, the Thorn is effective because it launches an attack while Hunger has physically moved to a place halfway inside the Realm of Forms. The fact that it is described as a place that he moved to seems very important. The way he arrives at this place is by leaving the target coordinates blank when executing Refinement of Quickness, instead specifying that he will "meet the enemy".
Third, this (partial) transition into the realm of Forms is fleeting: it wears off before Hunger has even had time to swing his sword. He gets about half of a slice off on his first attempt.
