Hmm. The seals don't work because they aren't real seals. They aren't drained or deactivated... they were created by whatever forces create anything in the afterlife to mimic our state before our death, but are ultimately just dysfunctional copies. Like somebody took a photograph, we're just holding onto pictures of seals.
The same might be true of other equipment. Kunai and the like. Are they even metal? Are they sharp, useable?
I'm sure we've speculated about the possibility of, say, slitting your throat right next to an afterlife rift and then walking back out to double all the equipment we carry at once. We've never had a real chance to test these sorts of questions. This might be an answer of sorts.
Even if we had the dog scroll on us, I expect it would just be a fake copy, in the end. We might even be able to read it without shenanigans, though if the shenanigans are integral to the scroll's existence, then we might have had an inaccurate, flawed copy that teaches us nothing.
But there's an interesting question about what gets preserved and what isn't. I assume 'chakra' can't be a comprehensive answer to that question, because Hazo himself still has an amount of chakra in him.
Is cloth still cloth? Do clothes function as clothes? Presumably yes.
Is metal still metal? Is it still hard, strong, sharp, functional as tools or armor?
What about chakra metal?
Is Hazo even still flesh as he knows it, or is he some sort of construct made of afterlife particles made to mimic flesh? Because that's what he expects of himself, and as we just learned, expectations in the afterlife can affect reality around us.
I'm tempted to call this effect Chaos. Not the 40k version, not a corrupting force. Just unordered, malleable. Reality here can be bent to our will, we are Order.
[X] Action plan: Science and Civilization.
- Take a full inventory of our clothes and possessions. How accurately does this match what we had before our death?
- In particular, if the seals are no longer seals, is everything else the same? Does metal still act as metal, and cloth as cloth? Is the sealing paper still paper? Look closely for any differences.
- Hazo had several thought experiments back when he was alive about how things might work. If his flesh and blood is still on the human path, then what is he really made of, now? What is this place, where the land itself can apparently move or change from one glance to the next?
- From what Daiji said, things might just be the way they are because of expectation or memory or something. Can Hazo alter anything? Does this possibly explain his enhanced Iron Nerve movements?
- Poke around for any easy answers, but accept that proper testing might have to wait.
- Priority 1 is information. We need to create a map of the afterlife, we need to find the people we care about, and we need to find or create a way home.
- There's likely plenty of experiments we could run and things we can learn by ourselves, but it would likely be faster and more efficient to just ask somebody. Head to town.
- Priority 2 is capability. Having information only matters to the extent that you can act upon it. In this case, that means we need chakra. Keep an eye out for shimmers.
- If there are any shimmers we can reach without significantly delaying our journey to town, grab them.
- This might include activities like climbing trees or backtracking while we travel, to ensure good visual coverage... though currently standing on a mountain should be enough to start with.
- This should ultimately be determined by Hazopilot; Getting to the shimmers and restoring his chakra is important, but we would like to end the update in town, preferably. Time might not be as reliable as it used to be, so what qualifies as a 'significant' delay is hard to determine.
