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.
Diomedes was traveling on the scorpion road, after his recent breakthrough to fifth stage qi condensation it was decided that he and his squad of fellow trainees were advanced enough
to allow them to patrol and guard the safer parts of the road.
"Rather exciting isn't it? our first real mission I cant wait to face some enemies " exclaimed Augustus.
Augustus was one of Diomede's fellow legionnaire a tan tall man whose skill with his spears was outmatched only by his skill in throwing them at his foes surprised faces.
"Quiet!" Called out Feng "there is smoke ahead"
Feng was their squad leader a powerful cultivator at the peak of qi condensation who was getting near the breakthrough to pillar establishment.
As they advanced swiftly alongside the road they encountered a horrible sight, a burning caravan was laid on the roadside it's people butchered and strewn around.
"Who would do such a thing, was it a spirit beast attack" murmured Augustus horrified as they drew closer.
"Bandits" grimly Answered Feng "look at the cargo, a beast would not steal the crates"
At his words, Diomedes noticed that while the wagons were burning and smashed there were indeed no damaged crates or smashed goods as they all seemed to be missing from the area.
"it seems that our culprits tried to cover their tracks by burning the evidence hoping that the brutality of the attack would make us think that it was a beast attack," said Feng "sloppy"
"sloppy?" queried Diomedes "They managed to circumvent the alarm formations long enough to attack this caravan and steal all of its cargo, how does that make them sloppy?"
Feng smiled a terrible toothy grin" because now that we know they exist and we can track them down and crush them".
"and for us? it time to hunt".
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As the night descended the trio arrived at the base of the mountains Feng leading the way with his superior senses allowing him to easily follow the bandit's tracks.
He then gestured for them to stop pointing ahead, below them hidden by the rock faces was a ramshackle fort made out of wood.
Diomedes could easily see many holes in the walls, it's inhabitants clearly not knowing much about the art of building at all.
As for its inhabitants, Diomedes could see they numbered at around three dozen mortals with only 2 of them being cultivators one at the eight heaven stage and the other at the first step of pillar establishment
"We should retreat and call for reinforcements" Augustus whispered as he paled at the sight of the bandit leader.
Diomedes found himself shakily agreeing with him fear rising as there were only three of them and none at pillar establishment themself he felt that fighting was far too dangerous.
" too late, it seems we have been detected"Feng let out a bitter laugh as he drew his sword, "I shall deal with the leader while you two take out the second cultivator"
Diomedes and Augustus glanced and each other before drawing their weapons and charging at their target.
As they drew closer the fort became chaotic with a swirl of activity as the mortals scattered in all directions abandoning the cultivators to remain on their own.
The leader Diomedes noticed drew a sword while his own target drew a bow and nocked an arrow aiming towards them.
"so the dogs of the Golden devil clan dare attack us with so few numbers you are courting death" exclaimed the bow wielder as he shot at Diomedes.
Diomedes instincts screamed at him as he barely dodged the shot as it continued before pulverizing the wall behind him.
As more shots came his way Augustus and Diomedes continued their twisted dance barely dodging the shots coming their way.
"We cannot continue this way " spoke Augustus "eventually well tire and get hit and I don't like our chance of surviving one of those shots"
"what option do we have we cannot get closer without getting hit"snarled Diomedes as he dodged a blow that passed through where his head was mere moments earlier.
"I have a method to slay him"Augustus began as he dodged an incoming shot "but he must be distracted or he would notice my action and stop me"
Diomedes hands shook in a moment of fear before his resolve firmed "than you shall have your distraction brother"
As he charged at his cackling enemy Diomedes knew that his enemy could shoot three shots at him before hell manages to close the distance.
eighty meters
he leaped to the right barely dodging the first shot he had to move faster
40 meters
Diomedes thought as he raised his sword to parry to arrow coming to him shattering both and sending him into a spin.
he rose again and continued to run must move faster.
10 meters
Diomedes instinct screamed at him as he attempted to twist out of the way only for the arrow to hit him shattering his armor and sending him tumbling to the ground.
Diomedes lifted his head from the ground and saw the bandit nock and aim an arrow at his face
well I guess this is the end for me, I'm sorry Augustus it seems I couldn't buy you the time you needed, Diomedes thought as he closed his eyes.
suddenly he heard something pass over his head and the sound of a body hitting the floor
opening his eyes he saw the bandit headless body tumble to the ground and Augustus slowly walking over
"had to use all of my qi but I managed to activate a treasure spear granted to me by an elder to slay him" Grinned Augustus as helped Diomedes up.
"good job"Diomedes and Augustus turned to see Feng returning bloodied holding a pair of arms and some papers
"The other one escaped but he left behind these"Feng gestured at the papers "it seems one of the officials in the are in charge of maintaining the road has specifically left some areas in the formation weak so that those bandits could rob the caravans"
"Shouldn't we go after them "Augustus asked?
"no we shall return to the camp and report back, the clan has its own ways to deal with traitors like that"Feng answered.
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Hours later the Diomedes was sitting in his room resting
after they reported back to the centurion in charge of the fort troops were sent to hunt down both the traitor and the escaped bandit
The three of them were sent to the healers and after being given a few healing pills were rewarded for their contribution.
Feng was given some of he resources he needed for a breakthrough
Augustus was taught a new art so that he may use his spears for greater potential
Diomedes was given a new armor to replace the shattered one.
"catch boy " Diomedes heard as he barely managed to grab the armor that was thrown at him,"since you apparently like suicidal charges so much take this , it will make sure you survive long enough to actually reach your enemy."
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while I'm not completely happy with how this one came out this is my first try at writing a fight scene
any way this omake adds the first Life saving treasure for Diomedes
The Five elements armor- it contains the power of the five phases to enhance the wearer capabilities within qi condensation or channel it all block a single attack from a foundation establishment expert. @occipitallobe
Ooh, new omakes. Time for me to get to threadmarking, then.
EDIT: Almost done. Just got two more to do. @moon-llama, what title do you want for your new omake?
EDIT2: Same for you, @kalugin. What do you want the title to be? Or, I guess I could make something myself. Now that I look at your earlier ones, it seems like occipitallobe just made a fitting one, so I probably should just do that. That being said, I may as well ask to be safe. (EDIT4: Turns out kalugin is fine for me to make the title myself. Good to know. Well, that's dealt with now.)
Just noticed this bit on a reread. I guess for this instance, quoting counts as the ping. I threadmarked all of the omakes on the this page and the last two, btw. Now that I think about it, it'll probably be less messy if I made it a PM instead of an edit to my earlier post, so I'll do that in the future.
Fierce Fang really regretted taking the South Pigeon City ghost subjugation mission. He had thought it would be an easy mission despite his lack of techniques able to even touch immaterial entities such as vengeful wraiths because the mission provided him with Underworld Sentencing Talismans which could instantly banish any undead of the Qi Condensation rank.
Normally Fang would be very worried about that later part since having his only way of attack completely fail against a stronger than expected enemy would be a death sentence. But he was assured that mere mortal killing ghost was no threat to 7th Heaven Stage Qi Condenser even if the ghost had been preying on the city for ten years now. This was especially true since it only killed one person a night and while it would grow more powerful with each taken soul it would take tens of thousands of mortal souls for a mere ghost to reach Foundation Building strength.
Of course as Fate would have it the murderous ghost haunting South Pigeon City wasn't a mere remnant of a grudge filled mortal killer like the notice said. It was Wraith escaped from the Underworld itself due to being 'small' enough to fit through a crack between this world and the next while somehow avoiding notice of its jailers. Fang learned this when the Underworld Escaping Wraith mocked him for using the Underworld Sentencing Talisman bragging that the Underworld had no power over it despite its cultivation still being in the Qi Condensation stage.
And so after having his only weapon rendered useless Fierce Fang could only do one thing, run away. The chase was difficult with Fang having to constantly change direction and trick the ghost in order to escape the city alive as the Wraith passed through walls and seemed to teleport in front of him several times. Even after leaving South Pigeon City and its maze of roads the Wraith still followed Fierce Fang knowing that an actual cultivator would be worth more than a hundred mortal souls.
Fierce Fang ran for miles always just barely ahead of the Wraith until he was gasping for breath and could barely move. Just as he was about to collapse while resigned for his death Fierce Fang crossed some unseen boundary and ended somewhere else where the wraith couldn't follow him.
Where before there was nothing but more yellow sand dunes as far as the eyes could see there was now a lake surrounded by white grains. Looking at the waters Fang's first thought was how thirsty he was after running so long in the desert but as he opened his mouth he instantly closed it. For just that brief opening led a flood of salty air into his body which dried him out even more which while thankfully not a deadly concern to a cultivator was still uncomfortable. Just as he was wondering what to do and whether the Wraith could follow he saw someone else near the lake.
It appeared to be a wizened old man the very ideal of a sage complete with yellow flowing robes and a long twirling, white beard. He seemed to be concentrating on a simple wooden fishing rod is his hands apparently not noticing Fang at all. Just as he was wondering how to introduce himself the sage spoke first showing that Fang's entrance wasn't unnoticed.
"Well well well what's a youngster like you doing in this Mirage Salt Lake? It isn't every century that one enters one after all" the old man spoke with his back still to Fang seeming to focus more on fishing than the young man.
Fang was a bit surprised that the old man continued to pretend to ignore him despite being the one to speak first. It made him seem desperate for conversation but wanting to maintain the face of a wise sage. Fang almost wanted to ask what his issue was but he stopped himself since while he couldn't sense any cultivation aura from the old man one didn't get that far as a cultivator disrespecting the elderly.
So instead Fierce Fang asked "Mirage Salt Lake? Forgive this junior honored senior but I do not recognize that term. I was just escaping from an Underworld Escaping Wraith before I suddenly found myself here. I didn't mean to disturb a Sage such as you" Fang didn't hesitate to lay down some compliments in hopes of improving the old man's opinion of him.
"No need to worry junior about not knowing what a Mirage Salt Lake is offhand since even Nascent Souls would have to be lucky for one to appear during their lifetime much less actually enter one. To be honest even this Elder doesn't fully understand it despite spending centuries mediating on it. All you need to know that this is a natural illusionary formation not unlike a secret realm where time and space are... strange so to say. So don't worry about whatever is going on outside if you listen this senior's instructions you'll be able to exit here at around the same time and area you entered from. All I ask is you accompany this old man for a while telling me what's going on in the outside world since while I cannot return to it hearing some news helps relieve the boredom. Maybe if you tell me something interesting I'll even give you something to help with that ghost that chased you"
Fierce Fang once again thought he must be lucky to have such a chance fall into his lap not only had he stumbled across a supremely rare formation he also met an benevolent expert who would help him safely leave and beat the Wraith that tried to kill him. All that for just telling the sage about what's going on which is a bargain by any stretch of the imagination. So Fierce Fang told the old man all he knew about recent events and even bits of ancient history since the senior had been out of the loop for a long time apparently going by how he needed to explain about the origins of the Demonic Altar Sect to give context for the recent Ninth Demon-Annihilating War.
Of course Fang didn't tell absolutely everything about himself to the Sage no matter how benevolent he seemed. For many 'Righteous' cultivators would easily turn on him if he admitted to being a Wandering Cultivator working for a 'Demonic' group much less the Heaven Dammed Gold Devils. Not that he expected Senior to be like those others but it didn't hurt to be a bit cautious especially since the old man was more concerned with the world overall than the story of a mere Qi Condensation cultivator.
Finally after talking for what felt like an entire day the Sage was satisfied with what little information Fang had. He then gave Fang a bag of Ghost-Banishing Mirage Salt to deal with the Underworld Escaping Wraith before sending Fang on his way. His last words to Fang were if they were to meet again it would be up to fate but if such a thing were to occur than he might share some more with him provided Fang cultivated to a higher realm. Fang wasn't certain to think about that but decided to focus on the wraith he would definitely meet again hopefully for the last time.
Taking the path the Sage directed towards Fierce Fang found himself in familiar place just a few feet away from where he entered with the Wraith in plain sight. In fact Fang almost swore he saw trailing end of his own clothes disappearing in the split second he appeared. While the ghost was distracted by past Fang's sudden disappearance the current Fang reached into the bag of banishing salt and took out a mere 8 grains of it, one for each heavenstage of the ghost, as the senior instructed. Fang then taunted the wraith to get its attention now that he was properly prepared.
"Where are you looking you Old Ghost? I see now that I was naïve to think that you would accept my mercy of not instantly destroying you. Even after chasing me for all these miles you still hunger for my soul. I feel sorry for you since it would had been a much kinder fate if you had just let my Underworld Sentencing Talismans work their magic but no you just had to do this the hard way"
The Wraith was enraged by Fang's shameless taunting and angrily charged at the confident cultivator. The wraith was confident of easily killing the unmoving Fang no matter his sudden disappearance and reappearance. Fang meanwhile just grinned and thrust the palm holding the salt into the ghost. While the palm strike just harmlessly passed through the wraith the salt when it made contact with the spirt started glowing with an intense light. The light quickly reached blinding levels and so Fang was forced to look away and when he could open his eyes again the wraith was gone with only an echo of its scream remaining.
Fang then returned to South Pigeon City to inform them of the ghost's banishment and stayed there for a night as the town threw a festival in celebration before returning back to the Golden Devil's for his actual reward as well as the insurance payment for almost being sent to his death. A mercenary had to make sure he was properly paid after all!
A/N: Here's an omake for what I imagine happened during turn 3. I feel like I started off okay but sort of fell apart at the end especially with the dialogue which I haven't used in an omake before. Hopefully it isn't too bad. Meant to have this done for turn 4 but things happened but at least its done now.
@occipitallobe For my boon I would like a treasure to fix my freaky fishman-ness. Hopefully I'll have another omake or two for this turn describing my preferred way of fixing it.
Xiao Yi 14 - [The Legend of Hell-Sender and The Dammed] Pt 1
Xiao Yi [The Legend of Hell-Sender and The Dammed] Pt 1
So, you want to hear about Hell-Sender? That's a interesting name. Most cultivators never heard of it before, it wielders and it's long and bloody history have been buried by the dust of eons.. But considering all the effort you put in to find me, I can tell you what i know.
Nobody knows how Hell-Sender came to be. Some rumors say it was forged by a mortal blacksmith to allow him to strike down the cultivator that stole his wife, some rumors say that it was a demon bound by a True Immortal into an axe to prevent it from destroying the world and some rumors say that it was normal battleaxe that was twisted into a Demonic axe via the blood and death Qi of the thousands of cultivators slain by in battle.
Regardless of how it came to be, the first recorded tale of Hell-Sender was from a report of an Outer sect disciple massacring his entire sect. The entire sect of mortals, Qi Condensation cultivators, Inner disciples with the cultivation of Foundation Establishment and Core Foundation Sect Master all died to the Mortal Outer Disciple. The report was written by Allies of the sect who came and found him clad in blood qi as he hacked down the Sect Leader, and upon seeing them he launched into a wild attack. It was recorded that the Madman fought without ever becoming exhausted, his blows striking relentlessly, his Qi being used without end and constantly recovering from any and all blows that strike him. The fight with him lasted over 7 days and 7 nights, and at the end the Madman just dropped dead without warning. Examination of his body revealed that it was mummified, it's Qi meridians torn beyond repair and it's appearance that of an old man instead of the young man that first confronted the Allies.
But before the report could be written, Hell-Sender disappeared without a trace. The next time it popped up again, the same thing happen a cycle of Madmen clad in blood Qi striking all around them before suddenly dropping dead and the disappearance of the demonic axe. The similarities in how the Madmen attack using the same wild berserker style regardless of their cultivation path lead to the revelation that the Axe granted the user the ability to always fight as if they were fresh, just like when they first picked it up. But such ability has a price to pay, and it was paid by the user's future. Their Future youth, lifespan and Qi were all given to the Axe, earning it the name Hell-Sender.
Ah, but the cultivation world soon got used to Hell-Sender and it's wielders. Any prepared cultivator of Foundation Establishment and up found it no threat and were more then willing to wait till the wielder drop dead. Oh there were still victims, for each and everyone of it's wielders thought that they were the one who could master this Demonic Axe.
And so, Hell-Sender first faded from history, it's wielders deemed a joke and a easily subdued threat. The next time it appears however, was when everything changed, for it almost single-handily lead to the Blood Path and it's arts conquering the Cultivation World.
Of the wielder of Hell-Sender who caused this, nothing is known. All records of him, his history or his past appeared to have been utterly wiped out and destroyed, all we know of him is that his foes called him " The Dammed ". Like I said, we know nothing of him and his past, all we have all records of the actions he took to earn his epitaph.
His existence was first recorded as a eyewitness account from a Mortal hunter who saw him launch a lone attack on a Merchant convoy despite the fact that the guards escorting it were Qi Condensation Cultivators lead by a Foundation Establishment Cultivator. The Mortal mentioned how The Dammed attacked while clad in Blood Qi and despite the attempts of the guards to stay away from him till Hell-Sender killed him, while one and all hunted down and beheaded. Instead of going into a indiscriminate rampage like all past wielders of the demonic axe, the mortal reported that The Dammed was able to force the Blood Qi coating him into away and into Hell-Sender before robbing the valuable items on the convoy and fleeing.
How he was able to control Hell-Sender sparked rumors of course. One of the more interesting ones i gathered mentioned that he was able to control it because he was so vicious and cruel that the Axe submitted to him in awe and served as a faithful servant. Others suggested that he practiced a rare cultivation art that allowed him to control Hell-Sender with ease, a rumor that gained strength the moment he started revealing abilities that were never recorded from past wielders of it. And there are others who suggest that The Dammed was not a cultivator at all, but is instead Hell-Sender taking full control of it's wielder unlike the past wild and bloodthirsty state it forced it's past wielders into.
Regardless of how it happened, it cannot be doubt that there was now a Cultivator wielding Hell-Sender without any drawbacks. That lead to a enormous manhunt from the Righteous Cultivators of the era, cultivators ranging from Foundation building to Nascent souls vowing to hunt him in the name of justice. It was obvious to all that these cultivators were making the attempt in a bid to earn honor and glory for taking down a known threat, and their sheer greed lead to the second incident that earned the Damned his name.
The greed of this cultivators lead to almost all of them leaving the Alliance Headquarters for their hunt. All that remain in the Headquarters and City it was located in were Qi Condensation Cultivators and a sole Core Foundation Cultivator assigned to manage the City as City Lord. It was to this piece of soft and tasty meat that The Dammed launched his retaliatory strike for the bounty put on him.
Survivors of the attack mentioned that he came openly in the day and without any attempt to hide his identity. When confronted by the cultivators guarding the gate, he just replied that he was here to thank them for the gifts that lead him to Foundation Establishment and with a single blow hacked them down. The City Lord was quick and immediately activated the City's defensive arrays to prevent him from getting into the City and hunting down it's populace. But it was all for naught, the survivors mentioned that The Dammed appeared to call forth from Hell-Sender enormous amounts of Blood Qi that were formed into an array that appeared in the shape of a mountain sized axe. Each swing of Hell-Sender by The Dammed caused the Array Axe to swing as well hacking into the defensive arrays of the city.
None of the defensive arrays of the city could do anything, the arrays launching attacks at The Dammed found the Array Axe following his motions and parrying it away while the wall-like arrays found itself weakening with every strike. It took just the span of a single day for all the Array defenses to be shattered and for the Dammed to launch his attack on the populace of the town. It was then that he showed what he meant by the gifts that the Alliance sent him, with each person slain, the blood and Death Qi that flowed out from their body were swallowed with relish by The Dammed, his strength growing and growing as he slaughtered his way towards the City Lord.
By the time he reached the City Lord, his strength had grown from Foundation Establishment to Mid-Core Foundation, enough Strength to allow him to go toe to toe with the City Lord. And yet one of the few mortals who survived the onslaught and witnessed the duel reported that The Dammed did not move to attack the City Lord at all. All he did was to call forth blood red copies of Hell-Sender, each one striking as if it was wielded by a master warrior with the strength of a Early Core Cultivator.
The sheer numbers of these copies took their toll on the City Lord, they hacked down any defenses he put up, parried any attacks he launched and like a pack of wolves, ripped him into shreds slowly and painfully. At the demise of the City Lord, The Dammed just called forth the Mountain Sized Array Axe one more time and hacked down the Alliance Headquarters before leaving the ruined and bloodied city behind him.
Such a bold and ruthless attack galvanized all the Blood Path Cultivators who in that era were living in hiding, the sheer might of the Alliance forcing them to hide all traces of themselves for fear of being killed. But with this attack, they threw off their guises and made their way to The Dammed, pledging themselves to his service and offering him ruler-ship over them. Records indicate that within a year of taking the position, The Dammed led his men into a Great War against the Alliance bring the Demonic and Righteous Cultivators conflict away from the backstreets and alleys and out in the open.
Despite starting from a weaker position, the Demonic cultivators soon forced the war into a stalemate. The ease of ascending for Blood Path Cultivators given enough carnage and The Dammed's sheer strength ensured that even if they did not win a battle, they would only at most make it a draw. And as the War raged forth, The Dammed grew and grew in strength and Hell-Sender seemed to reveal more and more abilities. At this point, all i have to go on are tales for actual records of this period appeared to have been destroyed for all i can find are records confirming their destruction.
Some of the tales i gathered indicate that upon hitting Nascent Soul, The Dammed was able to use Hell-Sender to call forth demons. These Demons were unlike the copies of Hell-Sender in that they could be dispatch far and out, allowing The Dammed to send them as reinforcements for his men allowing them to overwhelm the Righteous Cultivators with a wave of bodies. Personally, i suspect that The Dammed used Blood Qi to force a fusion of Mortals and Spirit Beasts to create these demons, for there are records of such experiments done by other Blood Path cultivators.
But like all Demonic Organisations, the moment they appeared to be achieving victory infighting and backstabbing told root among them. There are stories on how these acts caused such a reversal of the War situation that The Dammed lost his temper and took an iron grip on the Demonic Path Cultivators, slaying and absorbing the Blood and Qi of those who objected to what he did.
That appeared to have sown the roots of The Dammed's fall, but for centuries no such hints were shown with all those of the Demonic Path bowing and obeying his whims. Perhaps The Dammed got complacent and forgot that he ruled by Might and Fear and not by approval, for he choose to undergo his ascension to Severing Soul without laying down none but the most basic of defensive arrays.
The Betrayers choose their moment well, for when they made the attempt, The Dammed had just crossed into the Severing Soul Stage and was in the process of stabilizing his soul from the changes ascension bought. Any moment later and their plot would have failed, this we know without a doubt. There is an ancient song about the betrayal, and in it it tells of how despite being surprised and wounded by the first blow, The Dammed was still able to raise Hell-Sender and strike at his assassins cutting them all down like grass despite their numbers of thousands and their Nascent Soul Cultivation.
In the end, what killed The Dammed wasn't the assassin, but was instead the effort of fighting such a battle without stabilizing his soul. As the battle came to an end, the song concludes saying that his unstablized soul burst forth and set his body ablaze, turning it to dust in a matter of seconds. And no one knows of the reason, but at the moment of The Dammed's death, Hell-Sender let off a mournful wail and shattered into pieces, leaving behind fragments of it's blade.
Ah, i see you perking up now that i got to the part that you know of. Yes, the fragments were sized by some of The Dammed's loyal cultivators who fled far and wide due to their belief of the last words The Dammed left of returning and rewarding those who guard Hell-Sender. Nobody knows if he knew if Hell-Sender would shatter because of his death, but it cannot be denied that even the Fragments of Hell-Sender have powers of their own.
Most records of it indicate that each fragment have a slip of Hell-Sender's powers, with some allowing the holder to call forth copies of it to fight, some manifesting a gigantic Array Axe that can break down defenses and some that allows the Holder to fight without rest till the foe is dead or till they flee beyond the foe's reach.
And here, here is what you want to know. I've heard that there is a Temple in the Qiguai Secret Realm that contains a Fragment of Hell-Sender. No one knows what this Fragment could do, but all know that the road to it is perilous. If you're still interested in making the attempt, i can draw you a map to it provide you can pay my price. What say you ?
Shaking his head slightly at the memories of the mysterious information broker he met on his way to the Qiguai Secret Realm, Xiao Yi looked down once more at the map held in his hand as he directed Qing Yun according to the directions laid out on it.
It had been about a month since he entered the Qiguai Secret realm and start following the path laid out in the map. The journey had not been a easy one, with the duo facing perilous events one after another, any lack of attention could have led to either one of them being wounded badly. Despite the danger, Xiao Yi couldn't help but let a slight smile appear. The dangerous encounters and incidents where one false move could lead to a disaster had re-awoke the sense of danger and pressure that drove him as a Mortal to undergo a perilous journey lasting years for the minuscule chance of being a Cultivator.
This sixth sense for danger had served the duo well as they make their way through the Secret Realm. Patting Qing Yun reassuringly, Xiao Yi remembered their most recent encounter where if it wasn't for their instincts letting out a warning, they would have fallen victim to the vicious trap laid out by some of the other Secret Realm Participants who choose to treat killing and harvesting a Golden Devil clansman as part of their Good Fortune withing the Secret Realm.
The smile on his lips changing into a vicious smirk, Xiao Yi remembered how the ambush attempt had played out. The group of cultivators were of the 9th Heavenstage like him, and had choose to lay out a Trap Array with the intent of using the Qi wafting through the air of the Secret Realm to hide the small amount of Qi the trap array they used gave out. Unfortunately for them, while the Trap Array was laid out perfectly, the hiding skills of the Ambushers were not.
Within just moments of stepping into the glade the Trap Array was set in, the unnatural swaying of the tree branches and the sound of wind rustling metal gave their position away despite the many many Array tailsmans they used in an attempt to suppress the presence of their Qi. Rolling his eyes at the ambushers utterly lack of attempt to prevent detection via " Mortal " methods, Xiao Yi had reached out to QIng Yun's Qi with the ease of long practice and drew out the natural lighting within it. Holding the rollicking power with his Qi as it sparked and flash with little rumbles of thunder, Xiao Yi channeled the power through his Ji, lashing them with bolts of lighting that drove them all out of their perch.
Before they could react to their foiled ambush, Xiao Yi gave a slight nudge to Qing Yun who easily took the cue to dash towards the nearest foe, easily leaping over the prepared trap so that the Ji in XIao YI's hands could hit him hard enough that his left arm and head were bisected by that single swipe. Taking advantage of the shocked silence, Xiao Yi had leapt off Qing Yun aiming his Ji at another enemy while Qing Yun charged towards the foe stationed the furthest away from the trap.
In an almost simultaneous motion, Xiao Yi's JI and Qing Yun's horn took on a Golden glow before driving clean through their targets. As the last surviving enemy turned around and attempted to flee, Xiao Yi used the momentum of his strike and the flexibility of his Ji to spring himself towards the runner. His palm landing squarely on the man's back and sending the gathered Qi bursting through the man's chest in a shower of blood.
Unfortunately, none of the ambushers had anything worthwhile beyond Spirit Stones and common pills. Even now, Xiao Yi believed that it was the right decision to take the items and leave despite QIng Yun's hints on searching the bodies more thoroughly.
A sudden shake by Qing Yun woke Xiao Yi from his woolgathering. Looking up, Xiao Yi found himself confronted by a sealed temple. As the duo got closer and closer, the temple also seemed to grow bigger and bigger until by the time they reached the sealed doors, the temple's roof was lost from sight. Dismounting from his seat on Qing Yun, Xiao Yi gripped his Ji tight and pushed the door lightly.
To his surprise, despite the size of the door the light push was enough to open it. Staring at the yawning darkness before him, Xiao Yi stepped into the temple with Ji held at the ready while Qing Yun guarded his back.
" Whoosh. "
" Whoosh. "
" Whoosh. "
" Whoosh. "
The moment the duo crossed the doors' threshold, the unnoticed torches built into the Temple's walls burst to life. The blue flame lending a eerie illumination to the contents of the temple, highlighting what seemed to be pictographs chiseled into the pillars of the temple. Approaching the nearest pillar, Xiao Yi couldn't help but find something familiar at the scene being depicted. As he tried to figure out what was so familiar about the scene, Qing Yun gave him a slight nudge catching his attention before raising one claw and striking a nearby rock into two.
The sensation of ice flowing on his spine hit Xiao Yi as he realized what Qing Yun had conveyed to him and why the scene in question felt so familiar. Looking once more at the pictograph, it was exactly the scene mentioned by the Information broker of The Dammed splitting a tower into two.
Is the story told to me by the Information Broker about Hell-Sender and The Dammed true? Does this means the map he sold to me was accurate and that one of the fragments of Hell-Sender lie within this temple?
Knowing that the only way he could confirm the truth of the matter would be to go deeper into the temple, Xiao Yi let out a slight whistle at Qing Yun warning him to be ready for any sudden attacks and pushed open the doors leading to the inner regions of the temple.
With each step he took, Xiao Yi found himself more and more creeped out by the temple. The torches on the wall kept lighting up as if it were keeping pace with his footsteps, and the pictographs on the pillars started to show more and more brutal scenes of The Dammed fighting and killing. After perhaps a half hour of travel, Xiao Yi found his next step forcefully halted by Qing Yun as the Qilin pulled him back before his foot could hit the ground.
Hitting the spot in question with the butt of his Ji, flares of reddish Qi were launched from the walls, each blast taking the shape of a red array axe that hacked at the spot from all four directions.
" Thanks, Qing Yun. I'll be more careful now "
Now moving at a cautious pace, Xiao Yi made sure to test each and every suspicious spot he encounter on his way. His newfound caution saving him from the many Trap arrays and the flying Array Axes they launched. Reaching what would have been the main hall in a normal temple, Xiao Yi pushed the door opened after disabling a particularly nasty Trap array placed just before the doors.
Opening the door fully revealed a main hall that instead of a Buddha, had a statue of a muscular masked man clutching a battleaxe with both hands. After waiting a moment of so and having nothing happen, Xiao Yi and Qing Yun stepped fully in to the hall.
" SLAM "
Turning around at the sudden slam, the duo found that the door they had just entered had just slammed shut, trapping them within the hall. Letting out a curse at the expected trap, Xiao Yi leapt at the door, swinging his Ji with all the strength he could muster. As his first strike just bounced off the now sealed doors, Xiao Yi reached out to Qing Yun and summoned the Kataphraktoi Formation over himself, borrowing the might of it's Lance charge to enhance his second strike.
Unfortunately, despite the boost the second strike produced exactly the first effect as the first. Letting out another curse, Xiao Yi turned his attention once more to the glaring statue, and for lack of a better option, made his way closer to it.
" Thou has gone through death and danger to make your way here, bow in supplication to your lord and I shall grant you power "
The sudden voice ringing in his head gave Xiao Yi a start, looking around he soon spotted a prayer cushion just in front of the Statue. As he got closer to the cushion, Xiao Yi felt a force attempting to make him kneel, with it getting stronger and stronger as he got closer.
" KNEEL TO ME "
" KNEEL "
Doing his best to ignore the clamor in his head as he approached, Xiao Yi forced himself forward with unsteady steps and raised his Ji over the prayer cushion, the unseen force making it felt as if it was made of Ten Ton Steel.
" I do not bow to Blood Path. This is what i think of your offer. "
With that line, Xiao Yi drove his Ji into the cushion before releasing the purifying lightning he had borrowed from Qing Yun. As the lighting raged within the cushion, Xiao Yi felt the force start to weaken and the commands to kneel start to die off.
Just as he started to let out a breath of relief at overcoming this Mental attack, the voice rang out once more.
" If you would not kneel to me, then DIE "
As the last echoes of " Die " start to fade, the battleaxe held in the statue's hands start to glow a bloodish red before copies of it started to appear and surround Xiao Yi. The sight of the copies of Hell-Sender bought to mind the words of the information Broker on what they could do
call forth blood red copies of Hell-Sender, each one striking as if it was wielded by a master warrior with the strength of a Early Core Cultivator.
Holding his JI at the ready, XIao Yi braced himself for the incoming blows, praying that he would be able to take at least one blow so that Qing Yun could use the distraction to make an attempt to flee. As the first Axe flung itself at his face, Xiao Yi thrust his Ji outwards to intercept it, bracing himself for the recoil. To his surprise, the strike while strong was still at a level he could handle, before he could ponder his good fortune, the second and third axes started to make their way to him.
What could be handled coming from One axe turned into a risk of death from Two, Three axes turned death into an almost certainty. And with more along the way, Xiao Yi channeled his Qi as quickly as he could and called forth a layer of green scales as he channeled the rest of his attention towards deflecting the axes instead of absorbing their hits. Thankfully, like the strength of their strike, the skill they were wielded with had decreased as well..
Everything soon fell into a blur of parrying and dodging the copies of Hell-Sender. Clenching his teeth and forcing himself to move despite the pain and exhaustion, Xiao Yi put his trust in Qing Yun on figuring out a way to stop the attack. Out of the corner of his eye, Xiao Yi was able to see Qing Yun using his horn to gore at the statue, inch by inch piercing the blood red shield that was slowing the horn down.
Pushing himself pass his limits could only do so much, and just as Xiao Yi was about to succumb to a blow, a resounding crack filled the air as Qing Yun finally pieced through the shield and shattered the glowing battleaxe held by the Statue of The Dammed. Panting slightly from exhaustion, Xiao Yi used his Ji as a walking stick and hobbled to Qing Yun.
Looking down at the shattered remnants of the clay axe, a glint of light caught his eye. Bending down and brushing away the clay shards, Xiao Yi found himself holding onto a metal shard about 1 chi in length. Feeling a unnatural chill while holding it, Xiao Yi couldn't help but wonder if this was an actual fragment of Hell-Sender, the treasure that he made his way into this temple for?
Gripping it tightly, and channeling his Qi towards it, Xiao Yi felt that sense of chilliness spread before PAIN! PAIN! PAIN! hit him like a hammer.
Cocky brat. I knew you won't be able to resist. For all your claims, you too seek the fragment out for power.
As the voice rang out in his head, Xiao Yi felt a tugging sensation coming from the Fragment, the sensation appearing to pull him away.
" Qing Yun! Guard this place and give me a month! If i'm not out by then, return to the Clan! "
His last words given to Qing Yun, Xiao Yi felt the sensation intensify and suck him entirely into the Fragment.
I was going to try finish the Qiguai Secret Realm in 1 shot but i'm too tired, so bedtime for now! I had a plan to set the whole thing like a Ghost of Tsushima Mystic Tale, the Legend, the platforming and then the duel.
I guess right now i still have half the platforming left + the climax duel. @occipitallobe this will be for Fate Bonus!
For anyone interested, i did Hell-Sender and The Dammed as a kind of what if Druss wasn't the wielder of Snaga, hence the whole Bloodpath + Demonic Boss thingy. I think i have more i wanted to say but i literally can't think straight at the moment so lol, sleep now.
Grievous injuries and descriptions of destroyed internal organs, dismembered limbs and pieces spread around rooms
Ferenike 13 - Terror or Horror? Part 2
Boom!
An enormous impact rocked the tunnels and chambers of Wuo Go and dust rained down from the ceiling above their heads as the spirit firefly lights flickered in distress. The crowd of mortals Ferenike was walking through flinched and a child screamed beside her, clinging to her father's arm as he stared at the ceiling warily.
"Shhh shhh Merena, its fine. Just another stupid bee." She whispered as she rested her good hand on the girl child's head, giving her a soft pat.
The girl sniffled, not more than five. "I just want them to go away!" She shouted as she rubbed at her face, eyes glistening wetly.
Ferenike smirked. "I do too, I really do too." She said.
Boom!
Another impact, bringing more dust down on the merchant's street she was walking down. Merena and the others flinched again, eyes darting around the ceiling. But there was only silence, for several long minutes. Would this be the time they had a breach? Would she have to shepherd these mortals to an evacuation tunnel?
Silence. She sighed in brief relief.
"Alright people, return to business. Looks like that's it for this hour!" She said loudly as she started walking. Tension eased, slightly. They'd have the rest of the hour before they started again.
The Abyssal Devil Bees had started this a month ago, about three weeks after her arrival, throwing bees at the towers and reinforced walls with what should be suicidal speed for days at a time before stopping seemingly at random for days more before starting up again. They used bees sent to frothing insanity without a bound rider, which survived their impact with the cliff or tower faces because of a technique which made their fronts as hard as spirit bronze. Then they crawled around until they ran into a fortification and tried to eat the people defending it, forcing them to have double shifts on the scorpion crews, which took them from other defenses and made it harder to do other things like maintain the defense arrays or maintain the underground farms, and so on and so forth.
Her and Jin Nu'er, the overall commander for the Wuo Go forces and a Sixth Heavenstage cultivator, thought it might be a new group that had arrived to mix with the others already encamped outside their walls. Wasn't much they could do beyond sticking their heads out and taking a count though, and that was vastly inaccurate with such a mobile enemy that was constantly bombarding them.
She reached Jin Nu'er's office and entered to find her there, as she expected.
Jin waved her over as she leaned over the desk she was using as a planning table, small maps and reports dotted across it.
Ferenike paced forward to stand across from her. The poor woman looked tired. Ferenike wasn't entirely sure what she looked like, but 'good' was not one of them, with her arm bound up in a sling and the faint scent of burning blood that constantly followed it. She also knew her face and hair were pale, almost wan with weariness and ground in dust.
"I had another update from the Legion. Their relief column is about five days away. How are they doing out there?" Jin asked her quietly, the lamps hanging around the room dim, to ease the pain of tired eyes.
Ferenike sighed, rolling her injured shoulder with a wince, it liked to lock up now as her joint wiggled. "Same as before. They're clinging close to each other and staying near the escape tunnels, sharing friends' houses and the like. Lots of worry, and with people so close tensions are high. No fights today, but that won't last."
Jin nodded, rubbing a hand through her brownish hair. "I know. We need to step up our evacuation plans."
Ferenike tilted her head. "What did you see?" She asked. The other woman had a talent for picking out the patterns of enemy movement that surpassed Ferenike's already considerable skill.
"Possibly nothing, but my gut's telling me no. The bombardments have been closer together and there's more of them out there now, a lot more, I'm sure of it. They must be slowly tearing each other apart with hunger, and the hawkwasp banner they have now is much fancier than the ones they had been using. I think someone important and powerful has arrived. And in here we're drawn down to less than a hundred defenders, including your juniors and ourselves for roughly two thousand mortals. I want to send some of your juniors along with fifteen of my veterans with the rest of the mortals down the tunnels toward Leaning River Town to try and meet up with the relief column. My communications man told me they'll be there in about three days or so."
Those tunnels opened out into secret doors in a cliff face nearly three hundred li west from here, and then there'd be a run of another hundred li before they reached the town. Their slow trickle of evacuations had worked because they had the men and women to keep the Devil Bees busy and focused on the city, along with only sending people away in small groups hidden under arrays with gaps of days in between. It was what they had to work with to keep the Bees from sniffing them out.
Ferenike went to cross her arms then hissed as her hand brushed against her raw bicep. They didn't have the facilities to keep it anything better than stable here. Her hand went instead to rub her neck as she stared down at the reports on supplies. They were down to the rat grain at the bottom of the barrels, strained by months of siege and rationing for a town of more than ten thousand. Most of the food was for those who had left, who had to have heavy guard. If they sent anyone else away those who were left would be fighting basically on what they'd eaten the day before, it was that tight. Jin knew that.
Ferenike bowed her head in thought. Those sent away would probably be able to survive until the relief column could meet them, if the defenders held for long enough.
"When did you want to send them away?" She asked, looking back up. This big a group would be very hard to hide so they had limited options.
Jin nodded. "Tonight." She said, tone certain.
Ferenike winced. That'd be cutting it extremely close in terms of prep time, a little more would be a blessing. But she could see the logic and didn't like how it added up either.
"Give me some time to pick some people to go." She said quietly. "Also, get a fucking drink and take a nap woman, you look like a hopping corpse." She grumbled at Jin as she left.
She hoped she lived.
Ferenike looked down at her disabled arm. She clenched her fist, bone grinding against bare bone. Just a bit longer, a little bit more and they'd be safe.
The halls to the barrack where her trainees kept their bunks were quiet, soft Legion marching songs echoing off the walls. At the door to the long rectangular room Ferenike stood and looked in for a moment.
Agha Kleikos and Dana Pavlidis were leading the four squads into a impromptu drinking game, passing around a bottle as they sat on their bunks and singing the song as their feet thumped on the stone floor.
When Pleminon Augustes too the bottle and looked up towards the door across the room, he noticed her standing there with her arms crossed and nearly choked. "Commander!" He said as he hastily hid the bottle behind his back.
"Not that bad. Could be better, but so could a lot of things." She said as she stepped into the circle and made a grabbing motion towards the bottle. It appeared in her hand almost as if by magic. She took a drink as she looked at them.
"Good stuff." She said with a content sigh.
"I just got done talking to Commander Jin. We're moving the rest of the mortals into the evac tunnels to attempt to meet up with the relief column in Leaning River Town. You will have two days to get there." She told them, watching their faces from her place next to Pleminon.
Some looked worried, but more looked determined, along with a dawning comprehension. Furrowed brows and serious expressions on tired faces. Good.
"I'm picking two squads from amongst you to accompany fifteen of the Wuo Go veterans with those mortals. The remaining people will stay with me and defend the city until the mortals and our fellows are clear and then retreat ourselves, sealing the tunnels behind us." She said as she passed the drink back to Pleminon. Realization seemed to pass through the circle as they understood the stakes laid out in front of them.
"But... You're..." Pleminon said as he looked up at her, other objections coming out of the others in a wave.
Her uninjured hand chopped through the air, silencing them. "No. Even wounded my efforts are necessary to safeguard our retreat." She said firmly. She looked around, meeting the eyes of the nineteen kids in front of her. They were all frowning, fearful and afraid, but under her gaze their spines firmed.
"Squad three, Agha, Dana, Regas and Agrippa you're going." She listed out their names, and in her heart she sent her hopes with them. Agha's face fell, but she nodded and saluted and the others followed.
"We'll see you with the relief column commander." She said, determination steeling her young voice.
"Squad two, Eugenius, Diocletianus, Haraldr, Huan and An you're going." She said, watching the lanky An straighten up and run a hand through his black hair, his green eyes almost like green leaves.
"Agha is in command, then Agrippa, then Dana, then Regas, then An, then Eugenius, then the rest of squad two in descending rank." She listed off their order of command.
"Understood Commander." Agha responded.
Ferenike nodded at her and the juniors gathering around her. "The rest of you in squads one and four will be under Pleminon, and will be with me. Evacuation force, set about helping the mortals and the forces of Wuo Go with their evacuation preparations. Dismissed."
They saluted and Agha led them out of the room, to go deliver themselves to Jin Nu'er.
"As for the rest of you, we're heading to the wall and lending ourselves to preparing the defenses in case the Bees catch wind of this." She said.
The rest stood and saluted, then followed her out.
It was late that night, the mortals moving ahead of schedule as the sense of urgency pervaded them. Ferenike could easily imagine the purposeful shouts and calls echoing through the tunnels deep beneath her feet, along with the squawks and cries of small farm and house animals as they were packed away on wagons. Many would already be on their way down the tunnels.
Up here in the defensive spires though, she could only hear the distant buzzing of her enemy.
The sun had set an hour ago and the last lights were gone completely. The dim red light in the tower provided enough to navigate through the defense tunnels without ruining night vision.
She stood in a small room near the middle of the spire, a little room emptied of its scorpion ballistae with a nest of brass voice tubes on one wall. She'd taken station here where she could make use of her bloodline and from which she could move anywhere in the tower.
She stood clad in her lamellar, scored but still whole, her helmet and hat upon her head and flowing robes under her armor. Her left hand she held free and in her right hand, black and red scabrous glass wrapped around ivory bones replacing flesh and muscle, she held her spear. She was slower, weaker, but she could still wield a spear and could store her shield to switch hands if needed.
For now though she listened to the desert wind and waited.
"ATTACK! ITS AN ATTACK! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" Pleminon cried suddenly from his post at the top of the tower, his squad manning a pair of scorpions, his voice quiet and distorted by distance. Her hands clenched and she looked out the window as his voice rang down the brass tubes this time.
Out there in the night, she peered through the scorpion slit, and she saw it. Membranous and gossamer wings flickering in the moonlight. The thick droning buzz getting almost imperceptibly louder.
"Fire flares! Ready scorpions!" Jin's voice shouted through the tubes and Ferenike heard the clank and grind of great machinery shifting as she raised her arm and sighted down on a likely flicker in the dark.
Green and yellow light flared, night becoming day, illuminating their enemies in a swooping cloud swallowing the sky as they flew towards them.
"Fire!" Came the command.
Ferenike released the pent up Qi in her raised left arm and glass spears flew from it in a rain.
Under their bombardment, dozens upon dozens of shimmering bolts, the scorpions firing fiery blasts and Ferenike her spears, the enemy force withered.
And yet they kept coming, undeterred. Hundreds seeming, shadows in the dark obscuring their numbers.
Quickly the sounds of their wings became a thunder and impacts started to rain down on the tower walls, transforming it into a massive bell, deafeningly loud.
Through the cacophony, Ferenike kept flinging her spears, each one bringing down an enemy as they drew closer and closer. Bang! A bee and its rider slammed into the side of the tower right in front of her, completely unable to squeeze anything more than a few spiky legs into the hole. Her spear stabbed forward and severed the rider and bee's bodies in one blow, and they fell. Outside it was nothing but the darkness of writhing bodies and clicking legs now. From high above in the tower she heard a scream and then a massive head-splitting boom! Massive stones fell out of the ceiling as cracks ran down the walls.
"BREACH! WE HAVE A BREACH!" A voice screamed from down the stairs and from the brass tubes.
With a stab of her spear and an explosion of sharp edged glass to seal the gap she leapt out of her room as the tower rocked on its foundations. She landed on the stairs as the entire tower tilted and more dust and stones fell down the stairs, keeping her footing easily.
A blur of movement and thirty seconds later she was at what was left of the top of the tower and beheld devastation. The stone had been cracked open like an egg and now it burned with vicious pale blue fire as the room was crammed with writhing bodies. Desiccated pieces of her trainees were strewn about the floor as Devil Bees and their scimitar wielding riders crammed into the space, crushed to dust and paste under their pounding feet.
Two immediately turned to her and hissed, as swords screamed for her head. Her own furnace scream answered and her spear flashed out in a two handed grip. The enemies before her almost exploded, a hundred strikes lashing out in an eyeblink as Ferenike charged through the red cloud with a snarl on her face, yellow hair turning pink from the blood and glass closing around her.
As she stepped into the room, she saw Pleminon fallen to the ground, his body up to his collarbones swallowed by a Devil Bee as the mass of the army wheeled above his head. In his hand he held a fiercely glowing array attached to their demolished scorpion. Before Ferenike could scream, it detonated, her shield coming up on instinct as she was thrown back through the corpses of her enemies and down the stairs.
She caught her self on a wall as the tower tilted even more and the top entirely collapsed inward as she raced away from the bow wave of destruction. When it stopped dust floating everywhere, she saw that the breach was sealed.
"Fucking..." She hissed, staring at the stones in front of her. She could hear the buzzing and the shrieking of the bees as they started to tunnel through the stone.
Hatred bubbled and she turned, screaming down the stairs at a sprint.
She nearly ran into another squad of soldiers, leaping over them as she shouted. "Sound the retreat! Get out of the tower!"
"Yes ma'am!" They shouted and one dipped into an intact room for half a second to shout her message into the speaking tubes.
Then she heard them chase after her as she roared her commands.
They'd had a plan. Now they had to accelerate it massively because the Bees had breached early.
Dammit.
She hit the plaza at the base of a tower like a falling star, cracking stone under her feet as her aura of heat and red light lashed around her. Already soldiers were streaming for the inner gates. Ferenike turned as the squad of Wuo Go soldiers followed her and bodily chucked the last man towards the inner gate.
With a kiai of effort a mass of thorny glass and spikes sealed the doorway they'd emerged from. The halls were too narrow for the bees, but there were techniques around that limitation, even things as simple as brute force.
"Ferenike! Report!" Jin yelled at her from where she was directing soldiers to the inner gate. Among them were squad four, Honoria, Xanthippos, Markos, Spyridon and Kleopatra.
"They tore the top of the tower off! My junior detonated a scorpion array to seal it temporarily, we need to move!" She shouted back as she dashed across the plaza and into the inner gates. The outer gates were already shuddering under a horrific assault and ringing like temple gongs.
"I hear you! I'm going ahead with the rest!" Jin told her.
"I'll hold these gates long enough to close them and then follow!" Ferenike shouted back. She reached the gates and started hauling them closed. Everyone was already racing down the tunnel behind her.
With a crash she saw her temporary seal shatter into shards that flew across the room and a horrific black and red wave of Devil Bees skittered across the floor. Then she pulled the gates closed and slapped the locking array. She was already running after the others when it locked with a heavy clang.
What followed was a freakish chase through dark red lit tunnels while they were pursued by monsters, almost pitch black city galleries and halls with Bees appearing out of rooms and the shadows seemingly from nowhere. Dozens of defenders died, Ferenike's Hoplite saving some others, but overall they were getting ravaged as they fought a fighting retreat that lasted for an interminable period.
Minutes stretched into hours, hours seemingly into days. They led a harrowing defense of the evacuation tunnel entrances and their chokepoint before eventually being pushed back with terrible losses to the enemy, their bodies piled to the ceiling of the small fort before they retreated and detonated pre-prepared explosives to cave them in.
Now, Ferenike and her beleaguered squad four were exhaustedly marching down one of the evac tunnels. She walked next to Jin Nu'er, her spears butt clanking on the stone as the roof loomed thrice her height above her head. The other woman seemed wasted, hollow and pale, with days old blood splattered on her face and chest. She had wounds of her own now, a long seeping gash from her hip to almost her neck, hastily bound.
"How many days do you think we bought Jin?" Ferenike asked, voice a rasp.
Around them her squad and the dozen or so defenders that remained huddled close to the two of them.
The other woman didn't respond. "Jin?" She asked again.
Then she blinked, seeming to come out of her daze and register the question. "I think... the evacuation gate battle... that was about four, maybe five hours ago?" She murmured, voice uncertain.
It felt like four or so to Ferenike. Putting that together with the rest, her mosaic mind shifting and building upon itself, she felt that they'd delayed the enemy for almost two days. Possibly enough time with the head start she'd given her trainees. But they had no idea what was happening up on the surface and they had to keep moving. Once they met the relief column her trainees and Jin's veterans would then lead some of them back down the tunnel to help.
They just had to keep walking.
Clank clank.
Clank clank.
Their boots and spears rang quietly on the stone floor.
Clank clank -
A sound, almost unheard.
Clank clank -zz.
Ferenike stopped dead, looking up at the ceiling sharply and listening with all her might, the aches in her arm and the rest of her body pushed aside.
Clank -zzzzz.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Dust fell into her eye and she blinked.
"They're digging through the ceiling! Jin brac--!" Ferenike tried to warn them, then the ceiling collapsed with a mighty thunder of heavy stones and dust. Ferenike adroitly dodged out of the way, wounded arm screaming at her as she landed on it.
"Squad four! Hoplite!" She shouted, coughing in the dust. Two weak flutters of Qi came to her and the bronze began to form. She saw them then, two survivors huddled under a rock that had landed against a wall and stuck. Xanthippos and Kleopatra. Blood splatters under the rocks told the stories of the other three in painfully clear crimson.
Xanthippos was cradling a broken arm as he reached out towards her, blood running from his bald head while Kleopatra helped him stand. She seemed unharmed, her blonde braids swinging as she towed her comrade to her commander.
The Hoplite surged into being completely as they came in arms reach, plugging the tunnel with its height as shadows fell out of the hole upon them in a wave.
Ferenike couldn't see or sense any of Jin's forces in the dust and rubble and rampant Blood Qi screaming around her. So she fought, stepping back again and again as she fought down the tunnel and more and more of the ceiling caved in revealing searingly bright sunlight and above them a small cloud of bees. Through the chaos Ferenike saw a tattered white banner with a blood red hawkwasp on it, flying amongst the enemy and she felt the power of an Early Foundation Building expert.
As the tunnel collapsed into an open pit the full might of the enemy swallowed them. And unlike they Protostrator they were too weak.
Under the sheer weight of Qi Condensation cultivators bolstered by a Foundation Building Expert, their spear was weighed down with corpses, their shield torn from their hands. Her vision became only bodies and meat and stabbing legs as all sound was lost under the scream of battle and her mouth filled with her enemy's blood. But she felt it when the lives of her two trainees were ripped from her, the Hoplite shattering and a massive force slamming her down to the ground as her enemies trampled her. Her face felt like it was on fire as bones cracked in its right side and her hat fell from her head, torn to shreds.
Flashing fangs tried to dig into Ferenike as she screamed and howled in fury and a flashing scimitar cut through her right eye, tearing down her side and leaving a glowing magmatic rent in her torso and face. With a scream of pain and hatred she threw away half a dozen giant bees from her in retaliation and in that brief breath of freedom, lying flat on her back, she took in a great breath. The sand of the Desert above rushed down, red hot as blinding red light erupted from the pit like a volcano.
She smiled as her enemies screamed in pain and fell away from her might, and clad in crimson glass she rose up to her feet a towering crimson demon of fire. Pushing through them like a red tide she rose higher and higher, until she was free. And then she danced.
She danced upon her enemy's skulls with blood soaked feet and a lashing tongue of fire, her single eye a bleeding red star. Cloaked in gore covered glass, a mass of spikes and thorns cladding a skeleton whose bones were shining with blinding light.
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!" She shrieked, the Legion tongue and her parent's native tongue mixing into a nonsensical curse of hatred.
They fell before her sweeping spears, dozens, hundreds springing up around her as she sailed over their lines and impaling them on horrific barbs. Ahead she could see Wuo Go forces, a handful of men led by Jin Nu'er fighting off another wave of enemies, on the other side of the woman who must be the Foundation Building expert.
A pale woman with red hair and red taloned hands she was clad in white and red armor, her tattered banner's pole was chained to her back. Her mount was a massive two headed bee with mouths full of a forest of red fangs. She turned to Ferenike, her green eyes looking on and narrowing at the raging devil carving through her forces.
"Kill her you imbeciles!" She ordered, voice high and regal.
Another massive wave descended onto Ferenike. They hit and then they died.
With a hell-rending roar a massive plume of fire, violet hot swept across them and rendered them into ash, her spear piercing through the flames as Ferenike rose to challenge the expert. Her spear lashed for the two headed bee and before the expert could react its heads were ripped open and it fell with a crash to the ground atop the corpses of its lesser kin. The hawkmoth woman's face twisted in anger as she screamed and she knocked aside Ferenike's spear with an incredible blow from her scimitar, a wicked thing of green jade and ivory. Then before Ferenike could react her other hand flashed out and buried itself in her gut, glass parting like water around her fingers and there was a crack.
Horrible pain enveloped her mind as she felt her enemy grab her spine through her stomach and then pull. Ferenike shrieked, an explosion of heat and molten glass fountaining up from her mouth and guts as her veins, her many soldiers pulled back their bows and fired. Dozens of glass spears erupted from the explosion and her enemy was forced to let her go.
Ferenike fell and bounced off a body, crushing it with her spiky shell as her hand tried to hold her ravaged guts in. She couldn't move her fucking legs.
Her little glass soldiers marched, building bridges and restoring walls in the blink of an eye, veins wiggling and glass threads diving through her body to move her legs even without her spine. Sealing over the hole in her guts with a plate of glass Ferenike launched upward with Qi falling low, and cut her way through the lackeys in front of her.
They with a sweep of her spear, and with a ungainly rush she charged forward, blood and pieces of muscle leaking out around the patch in her guts as her legs jerked strangely.
The Foundation Building expert looked afraid as she saw Ferenike still living, her scimitar raised defensively. Ferenike didn't care, leaping and dancing over the corpses of her enemy's soldiers. She could still hear Jin fighting and she wanted to kill the bitch in front of her.
Ferenike landed on the enemy's bee and in her fury her spear became a golden blur as it clanged again and again against her enemy's weapon. Eye to eye they dueled until the moment broke with a scream.
The Foundation Building expert wailed like a ghost as a dagger sprouted from her kidney, held in the hands of Jin Nu'er. She must have leapt up here while they were distracted, the bee lashing and hissing as it bucked.
"For Wuo Go!" Jin screamed as she shoved the knife deeper and Ferenike saw hissing green and black smoke race from the wound as skin blackened and rotted. Poison.
The expert screamed and in a crazed struggle her fist met Jin's head and pulped it instantly.
Ferenike roared in anger and misery and jammed her spear into her enemy's gut.
Blood rushed from her enemy's mouth in a river as she grasped the spear's haft. Ferenike let go and then in a mirror of her enemy her hand raced forward and crimson glass parted white and red armor and wrapped around her weakened enemy's heart.
With a yank it came free in a splash of caustic blood and something lurched in Ferenike's guts.
Her Qi guttered low and she collapsed atop her enemy and the river of bodies that had been her soldiers, the sun shining down onto her back.
Nan Fuxi was in the leading edge of the relief column under Optio Kafatos as they raced toward the cliffside exit of the evacuation tunnels. They'd been riding for more than two hours now at a full gallop from the town of Leaning River, guided by nine of Ferenike's juniors and veterans from Wuo Go. Urgency sped their way as her Twin-Tailed Thunder Hawk had spotted a battle near the cliff. It had reported red light.
Her stubborn friend better be alive.
They raced through the tunnel entrances, the column compressing down to ten men wide and it was only a handful of minutes before they saw the first bodies. Stabbed, crushed, burnt, dozens upon dozens with glass spears sprouting from them.
Their way was almost blocked by the river of corpses so Fuxi dismounted in a flutter of cloth and raced over them on light feet, spear in hand as the rest followed her.
A massive pit nearly a li wide opened up ahead, the day's light displaying the carnage in horrible detail. And there atop a massive bee knelt a person of glinting crimson glass.
"Ferenike!" She shouted as she leapt up to her. Her friend was a horrific sight. Her entire right side was more glass than skin and muscle, her ribs visible through a terrible blackened rent in her chest and torso. There was a massive hole through her guts where her spine was visible as a white curve behind a cracked patch of crimson glass. Tracing her eyes back up her friend's body as she carefully supported her body in her arms she saw the cut continued up her neck and over her right eye, with most of the right side of her face a mass of glass and blood, yellow hair clinging to her ruined cheek. She was more skeleton than meat now!
On the left side she found her friend clutching in a ruined left hand, acid burns having eaten away the skin and into the glass infused bone, a bright red heart.
Then she heard the most wonderful sound in the world as breath hissed between her friend's teeth and her bruised left eye blinked.
"I need a medic!" Fuxi shouted. Somehow, somehow, Ferenike was still alive.
Ferenike looked around her room in the Legion medical train. It reminded her of home, with its white painted wooden walls and swinging lamps and the sound of massive clanking wheels and the snorts of giant spirit oxen.
The biggest thing out of place was her place of rest, a frame of thin bronze and silver carved with arrays which arced around her and supported her as she rested in an artificial Qi Oasis, the entire assembly set into the floor of the wagon. She looked down at her ruined hands, wrapped in linen and small bronze rivets where they had had to nail bones back together. Her guts were all in place and sealed under a proper patch while her spine was braced. She was missing most of the skin on her torso and face, a grinning skull of glass with a slowly healing edge of skin.
She'd live but she could only barely fight in this condition.
She sighed. Fuxi slept in a cot beside Ferenike's pool, having refused any other accommodation. Ferenike appreciated it more than she could express to herself clearly, feeling uncommonly vulnerable in being barely able to move. And even more than that neither of them wanted to remember the mass funeral of their fallen comrades and the thousands of Legionnaires that had died, a great celebration and feast in their honor, where prayers to the Imperator had rung under the vault of Heaven.
As it had every time she awoke, her mind instead went back to what she had been told when she first arrived in the medical wards.
The Grand Elder had taken command and he was coming here. That atill brought a smile to her face, fierce and toothy. Let the Bees try to get a bite out of Old Gold if they wanted. He'd break their teeth with a laugh.
More confusing news were her rewards for her deeds. First, she'd been promoted permanently to Second Tessarian just like Fuxi had been promoted to First Tessarian, both of them under Centurion Kafatos. She'd also been gifted a house and some land north of the Dawn Fortress and a generous injury stipend. Apparently she'd be able to have some servants to maintain her manor now, some of which would be provided by the Legion if she desired. She also had a mindbogglingly massive stack of Contribution Points and Spirit Stones.
But she was mostly stuck on the thought that she had a house of all things. She was used to the Legion Barracks and mess hall, decades spent living amongst the mass of her fellows.
It left her unsettled, her mind and its mosaics shifting uncomfortably with blurry and sad thoughts and plans.
Time passed and her confusion fell somewhat to the wayside, those considerations pushed were aside for later as she focused on healing. The lingering venoms in her bloodstream and tissues would take her more than fifty years to heal according to the doctors without some kind of Treasure or something of similar power. A significant period for a cultivator, especially one of the Clan with the Trials so close, when she could barely cultivate enough to maintain her place.
She wasn't sure what she wanted to do and so as she laid in her pool, she spent her time thinking. Feeling how the flows of its coils shaped her own Qi, to keep her alive, ease her pain to a dull murmur, and sustain her life long enough for her own natural vitality to stabilize her. With nothing to do but heal and talk to Fuxi about their good memories she meditated upon her Oasis, shaping it from chips of red glass in her mind, painstakingly arranged.
Into it she poured her memories. Of the Salviati training array, a flicker of an idle fancy one day before she left for the war. Of the trick she had pulled against Zu Jing, sending the Qi of the Sun and Desert spiraling around her to feed her preparations. Of the feeling of the pools of the City of Golden Bells. Of the greenery of the Dawn Fortress, and all the way at the beginning, how the wagon of her family felt as a young girl.
The motion of the Qi stuck in her mind driving her onward as concepts of sustaining life, the sun, and how water sprung up in the desert mixed in the field of her mind. What was an Oasis? Really? That thought plagued her for many months.
She didn't know the answer by the time she was released from medical to see her manor and lands, but she had some ideas, the small seeds she had planted beginning to germinate within the glass soil of her dantian.
As her mind spun on her work, gears of fire and glass turning, she looked at her lands from the vantage of the carriage that carried her out here, pain thudding at her temples and in her chest. About forty li from the Dawn Fortress it was tucked in a lee of three dunes that had calcified into sandstone rises a hundred meters high millennia in the past. Around a small gourd shaped pool a thick field of purple flowers grew. She knew them from a brief memory, a caravan they had saved from Blood Path cultivators decades ago. A cousin of the Dawn Cry, these were Ten-Year Indigo Cry flowers.
Through them a white path just wide enough for her small carriage wound along the right hand bank of the pond and at the end of it was a small plaza of white stone, with a fountain in the middle. Three columns rose from its middle, inscribed with the Old Tongue words of 'Unity' 'Duty' 'Clan' arranged in a triangle. Water bubbled from their base, drawn from the air and underground rivers deep below via arrays.
Beyond the plaza was a small home, a rectangular edifice carved from the sandstone at the base of a ridge. Tall columns in the Clan style held up a peaked roof above a porch of stone. The front wall was decorated with golden and bronze embossing of the Legions at marching, and the doors were two pieces of dark wood twice her height.
Fitting for her she thought, though a bit blunt. She'd... maybe she could change it?
She'd think about it later. Carefully she dismounted from the carriage and stumped forward across the plaza and up the three steps, trying her best and failing to ignore the pain of her hands and back as damaged muscles twisted and pulled wrecked bones. Pausing a moment to catch her breath on her porch and cough quietly she saw the door open as stood at the top of the stairs.
On the other side of it was an old man, hair and beard green and thin, surrounding golden face wrinkled like crags. Blue eyes twinkled in his face over a happy white smile. His aura spoke of simple age and third Heavenstage cultivation.
He stepped out and bowed deeply. "My Lady Ferenike, I am Ales Ioannides. It is a pleasure to meet you. Will my service be acceptable?" He asked in a gentle voice that reminded her strongly of her grandfather, deep and soothing. This must be the man the Legions provided at her request.
"Yes Ioannides, I think it will. Are there others with you?" She croaked curiously as she walked, spine.
He seemed to assess her patient pace, which did not need help, and then nodded as he turned, gesturing into her home. "Yes, two guards and a cook and two gardeners and cleaners."
He showed her around the place, a small home of two floors and a basement. Through the door was a receiving chamber and defensive post. And then beyond it a hall with a long carpet of golden fabric proceeding down it, to a spiral stairway at the far end. To either side were rooms. One was a sitting room and beyond it a study, to the left of the front doors. On the right was a training room and equipment storage for herself and her guards.
At the far end of the hall on the left was a kitchen. Beyond there were the servants wing of quarters. Up the stairway were her rooms, bedroom and a bath and taking up almost one half of the floor was a space she could devote to whatever she wanted according to Ales.
Below was a basement workshop, warded and locked behind a Spirit Iron door as thick as her hand was long which could be chained and barred shut from the inside, a veritable bunker for someone on her level.
As strange as this all was and as odd as she found having a staff, actually being here... helped. Gave her an anchor for thoughts that were more wild, rampant nowadays, driven down strange paths by constant pain.
In the days that followed she quickly devoted the upper floor to a herb solar of sorts, where she could rest in the sun and drink in its heat. Below in her workshop it quickly became a library of notes and texts and a mindboggling array of diagrams and tools for Formation development. Dummies which reacted to qi, treated needles, Qi sensitive inks and dyes and more. Everything she needed to get to work.
It was the eve of the eightieth year of Grand Elder Konstantinos's reign as Archegetes.
Ferenike coughed, great wracking heaves that shook her shoulders under her robes. When she lowered her hand, molten glass coated her fingers, hissing and steaming in the air as it rapidly cooled. Dammit. Dammit. She looked at the scrawled papers and scrolls that littered her desk, spotted with dark holes where flecks of glass and embers had caught fire in them, and she clenched her wounded hands. She couldn't even focus through this fucking pain, most of this stuff didn't even make sense.
She leaned back and rubbed her face with a hand. Through the faint whisper of sensation she could still feel the scarred brassy flesh around her left cheek felt like old pitted metal, while the rest was smooth and faceted, a glass skull with writhing vessels covering it. She was better after nearly a decade and a half of healing smoothing out some of the rough edges. But as much as she had the patience and passion for her work to get to this point even with the pain that wracked her constantly, she was stymied if she did not spend the resources she had saved and the massive amount she had earned from the Golden Bee War on more in depth experimentation and testing. No amount of thinking and notes would help anymore.
But a dilemma tore at her. She glanced at some of the product catalogs resting on a shelf to her right, a little nook in her workspace. On them was a listing for a Seven Venoms Serpent Coffin. A terrifying looking thing with an equally horrifying result. A coffin that produced special diluted venoms which could cleanse lingering poison and regenerate lost tissue if one slept within it for a year, once. Further uses had increasingly harmful effects on one's sanity and cultivation, rendering it rather useless, even if one did not consider the exorbitant amount of Spirit Stones needed to power it once.
That activation cost, plus the price to purchase the thing would clean out most of her resources, but it would ensure she was hale and hearty to face the Trials.
And yet, she thought, her work here was equally important to her. With it she could create a Formation for first and second Heavenstage cultivators, the weakest and perhaps most vulnerable prey in the Trials, a beautiful Oasis that would mean so many less would have to die as their life was sustained by shared Qi and the Desert enabling them to heal quicker and flee longer for much fewer spirit stones than they might expend healing normally. Allowing them to outlast their opponents in the final phase of the trials. Hundreds of seeds, grains of sand, given a greater chance to grow. Perhaps she could even carry it further, strengthening it for use by greater members of the Clan before they arrived in twenty years.
But she didn't actually know. She sighed. Fuxi and her had already had arguments that shook dust from her rafters about it, the girl earnestly trying to convince her that she should get the damned coffin. And she was sort of right, but it hurt Ferenike to have to... give up like that. The entire mess confused her. Which was why she was waiting. She'd recently heard that her letter friend Xiao Yi had returned from the Qiguai Secret Realm when a selection of soothing drinks and Ice Peach Wine that had arrived at her doorstep earlier today. She had sent him a communique and invitation to come meet her here at her home in response. If he wasn't already on his way here he should be getting that letter right about now and she'd only have a little while to wait before he arrived.
She got up from her work table, stretching with agonizing shifts of her spine and stomped her way over the flagstone floors and up to her sitting room where she found Ales and one of the cleaners dusting the mantle. "Ah greetings My Lady. You're just in time. Shall we prepare tea for when Master Xiao Yi arrives?" Ales relayed to her.
She nodded respectfully to the elderly man. "Yes please Ales. I'll receive him in here." She rasped at him.
"Very good." Ales said with a bow and then with a gesture to the cleaner they both left as Ferenike situated herself upon one of her lounges which dominated the center of the room. There were four of them and she took the one by the hearth, visible from the entrance and close to the fire which started at a snap of pained fingers. The other three were arranged in a loose circle nearby and she settled into the lounge with a sigh, her robes rustling. They were gold with white scorpions along the hem, and covered everything but her arms, face and some of her neck. Both her hands were still glassy claws, her face and neck scarred severely, while red light glowed faintly through the fabric of her robe on her chest where she had been struck with a sword. Scarred, tired, but unbent and that was how she preferred it.
Now she waited for her hopeful friend, one of the very few she had left, to arrive.
As Ferenike's attendant brought him to the lounge, Xiao Yi couldn't help but let a trace of horror cross his face as he gazed on his wounded friend. Looking at the wounds that crossed her face and the bandaged hands that welcomed him in with grace, he couldn't help but clench his fist feeling once more that burst of shame and regret at the evidence of how badly he failed his Clan.
"Ferenike, please sit. Don't strain your wounds on my account." Feeling slightly at a loss on what to do, Xiao Yi reached into his waist pouch and took out the gift he hastily bought upon receiving Ferenike's invitation.
"I'm not sure how much help these will be, but the merchant i bought this from assured me that these Cool Spirit Recovery Pills will help with the recovery from burns. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your Juniors, from our letters I could tell that they were a great bunch." Xiao Yi said.
Sitting awkwardly on one of the seats present, Xiao Yi found that despite his best efforts, his eyes kept creeping to Ferenike's misshapen hands. Tearing his eyes away hurriedly, his attention was soon captured by a open catalog for Contribution Points, his now enhanced eyes allowing him to easily spot the listed product.
Seven Venoms Serpent Coffin. Able to cleanse lingering poison and regenerate lost tissue if one slept within it for a year. Recommended to use in small doses as prolonged uses have increasingly harmful effects on one's sanity and cultivation.
Opening his eyes fully as what the product represented hit him, Xiao Yi turned back towards Ferenike and offered his help.
"Do you need more contribution points to be able to use it? I'm more then glad to give or loan you any amount of Contribution Points you need! This is excellent news! With this you should be healed just before the Hundred Year Trials." He said animatedly.
Ferenike watched Xiao Yi as he sat uncomfortably across from her. Guilt radiated from the set of his wide shoulders, and in the downcast set of his dark eyes. Even as his eyes leapt to one of those catalogs Fuxi had left out last time she was here, ugh.
She grimaced. "Tch, I didn't take you to be so bold Xiao Yi. I'm not a pauper." She sighed as the tea was brought out. "Thank you Ales." She said as the man disappeared out of sight after serving it.
"That is in fact part of my dilemma." She said after taking a drink of her tea, the soothing liquid slipping over her tongue and past her exposed teeth.
"I'm afraid i don't understand? Why do you not wish for healing? You know as well as I that despite the best efforts of the Clan to keep the geniuses safe, all run the risk of being hunted by the Trial Hunters." Xiao Yi asked her.
Ferenike sighed as she set down her tea. "I need drink for this. Ales!" She shouted, at which point the man appeared as if from thin air with her first bottle of Ice Peach Wine, half full.
She poured drinks for them both and after passing Xiao Yi his small cup, slammed back her own.
She sighed. "The fact that all run the risk of being hunted is in fact the problem." She leaned back in her seat with a creak of straining glass.
"Out there under the boot of Heaven, I see little flames, swallowed by shadows appearing from no where. But each of those is a seed, a little grain of sand that with patience and care could become a part of a greater sandstorm." She poured herself another drink, taking the bottle from its frozen spot on the table.
"I am working on a formation. That Oasis I have told you about in our letters. The purpose is to enable them to heal quicker and flee longer for much fewer spirit stones than they might expend healing normally. Allowing them to outlast their opponents in the final phase of the trials. All of our juniors in the first and second Heavenstages, the most vulnerable to annihilation." She said as she contemplated her drink.
Slamming the contents of the offered cup back, Xiao Yi let the words of his friend hit him. As she started to explain the problem leading to the dilemma she faced, he couldn't help but wonder.
Does she not realize her worth to the clan and what heights should could reach if only given time?
As he remembered the background of the Junior before him, Xiao Yi realized that perhaps she truly did not know of her value.
"Ferenike. I think you do not understand your value to the Clan. Just look at your proposed formation. You came up with an approach that no one in the Tatika bureau has considered from perhaps forever. And you did it with only some inspiration from the little experiences I shared with you on my attempts.
If this is what you can do now in a mere 20 years and as a Qi Condensation Cultivator, what could you achieve as Foundation Establishment or Core Foundation cultivator? Considering the rate you're progressing, you might even make it to the Nascent soul stage!"
Reaching out to the open bottle on the table and pouring himself another cup, Xiao Yi gulped down another shot before continuing his attempt to convince her.
"Even ignoring the Formation, let's look at what you've done. As a Qi Condensation Cultivator, you held out against a Foundation Establishment Cultivator on one of your first missions. With the aid of Gong Rencao, you killed Zu Jing! You were given command of a unit with only 40 Years of service and you did you job as a leader for it well.
The Clan needs your talents. As much as I hate to say it, the 1st and 2nd Heavenstage cultivators you might save with the Formation will not contribute as much as a Ferenike at the Foundation Establishment stage."
Ferenike slumped, expression falling as red light bloomed in her eye.
"And I lost half of that fucking unit... because we weren't strong enough..." She muttered at him, hands clenching on her cup.
She snorted and then started to laugh, a grating horrific rasp of a laugh, her feet kicking slightly. "It's really quite funny how Heaven has us under its foot. I would have worth in the Foundation Building realm, much like you yourself. But Heaven's gears turn slowly..." Ferenike blinked, the red light dimming as she looked back up at him. "Have you seen the casualty numbers Xiao Yi?"
"Before the Golden Bee War we were less than we were for the last Trials. We were building up in response to them, to return to greater strength, but now we've lost thousands. Sure we have the Golden Eye Array, and others but... its bleeding us slowly Xiao Yi. Playing the game like Heaven plays it will slowly kill us."
She shook her head. "I don't know what the right path to spite Heaven is, but by the gods do I want to. I don't know..."
She sighed. "Maybe Heaven is being too patient. Maybe there lies opportunity."
The sheer despair in Ferenike's voice and the survivors guilt prevalent in her expression reminded Xiao Yi of himself. Of the Him who left the saferoom to find a shattered clan and himself and his brother the only living souls.
"I'll tell you now. Even if your unit was utterly made up of Foundation Establishment cultivators, they still won't have been strong enough to survive the Formation.
I did my research after Magnus told me the situation. The Formation the Devil Bees choose to use on us traded away every aspect for raw power. I consulted Strategos Parmenion and he agreed, this was a failure on the strategic and tactical scale. The Formation was so tuned for power that just killing one of the Anchors they had spread out among the Formation would be enough to destabilize it and cause it to implode. The only reason it work was because no one expected the Devil Bees to use a Formation and the overall strategy laid out did not consider what would happen if the Clan was routed.
I think sometimes that we perhaps treat the idea of Returning with your shield or On it too seriously."
Pouring himself another cup of wine, Xiao Yi took a sip before continuing.
"Our casualty numbers are bad aye, but I tell you what i see. I see cultivators that would have been just as dead in the trials. It's known to us that the Trial hunters are better then us cultivator to cultivator, the few that survive each Trial are the Good and the lucky.
For our weak to survive, we need champions, exemplars and paragons that can stand toe to toe and challenge the hunters. They come to hunt us for Karma, that means that like when we hunt Spirit Beasts, the strongest are worth the most value. The more our strongest can take out, the more out weak will survive from having less hunters to hunt them. I will say this, aye. We are weaker now because of the Devil Bee war, but we are not out! Remember that our Clan has just undergo a project to repopulate our new lands!
As long as we survive this Trial, our chance will come at the next. So Survive this one and refine your formation for the next. Dying now to it sentences all these future clansmen to even worse fates when the Trials come again.
Do you think we can find another genius like you?" Feeling slightly better after getting the rant of his chest, Xiao Yi continued in a softer tone.
"I will confess. I do not believe the Heaven is intentionally targeting us. I feel that Heaven just does not care. I believe that the Trial and those who come to hunt us do so via the efforts of some unknown cultivator who deemed us worthy of harvest.
Perhaps it is from my past, but in my experience. Heaven is just there. It does not care about any of us. Not until we reach the stage where we can challenge it. Of mortal efforts are we targeted, and so of mortal efforts shall we resolve it."
Ferenike looked thoughtful, taking another shot of the ice cold wine, a pleasant ache in her teeth.
"Hmmm... there is something there, in what you said Xiao Yi..." She tilted her head, eyes roving over half-seen ideas in her mind.
"Fuxi tried to convince me that my life was worth living for the sake of it. Which... it is, she and everyone else I've lost is right in that regard. They'd be sad if I met them again after an unpeaceful death. And I think your words have shown me something more."
She got up, pacing around the room, the waves of heat from the fire following her as her voice rose to a rasping growl. "Heaven is too patient. I have time to heal before the Trials, to grow strong and protect others with my power. How much that compares to the gift of the Oasis is uncertain. But I can be certain that its Heaven making a mistake. An attempt to stymie me."
She wheeled on him and laughed, a happy rasp now as flames licked from between her glass teeth. "If I live, I could form the Oasis and then I would have as much as a century to make it stronger. Far, far stronger than I could in a rushed twenty years. The rulers of Heaven are fools."
"If I die Xiao Yi I'd ask you to continue my work, as a friend." She filled both their drinks again, energy seeming to fill her as a weight lifted and she sat again, raising her cup.
"I think a toast, and a drink to those we've lost, and those we'll save in the years to come." She said with a smile.
"Yes, it is a bit late, but here a Toast! For the completion of your quest, for the Oasis formation from the next 100 years and for our comrades who gave their life for the Clan." Lifting the offered cup and clinking it to Ferenike's offered one, Xiao Yi drained it without pause and poured out another cup for the both of them.
"Come, another! I'll continue your work if you should fall and ask that you do the same for mine! And if it ever comes to a situation where I fall but Qing Yun lives, I'll count on you to look after my brother."
"Cheers!" They roared together.
@occipitallobe another omake for you from me and @Mochinator! I had a ton of fun writing the ending of this with Mochi. Not sure what they want right now, couldn't catch them before they collapsed into slumber lol they'll have to tell you later.
For myself I'd like to spend my fat stacks of contribution points and my Omake Bonus on getting a Seven Venoms Serpent Coffin Healing Treasure to cure my Badly Wounded state entirely. Also wanted to double check for writing purposes of my future omakes for this turn, a Healing Treasure cures all of your Wounds, or downgrades a Crippling into Wounds right?
I'm actually hoping to collaborate with other super omake writers when the time comes for THE TRIALS. Get some payoff of the tiny monster that's been spawned from my efforts reflecting off and helping others.
I'll probably invite the people involved to my Discord and set up a special room to joint write it even.
Demetrius Ceres 5 – Snippets from the “wonderful trip.”
Had an interesting idea on how I could include a snippet from Demetrius looking into that temple Xiao Yi went to. That project snowballed, and then I heard about Hell-Sender and understood. That was a really cool idea, and now what I had written looked like garbage and needs an overhaul. Anyway, the rest of the snippets could be posted
Disclaimer: These events did not happen in this order
We were almost at the portal out of this horrible realm. A huge group of cultivators was waiting in lines around us, all waiting on their turn to exit. At my side, Julius was squealing like a little girl. Well, this was embarrassing. I would have acted like I didn't know him if he wasn't already leaning on me for support. A seven feet tall man acting like a maiden. He was shuffling his feet. Now he was attempting to hide behind me. Why? His shoulders were twice as wide as mine.
"Did you see that? That was The Rina Callista" He said in a high pitched tone. "Did you see what she did? Did you hear what she said? She is amazing". Ah right, his celebrity complex. I had forgotten about that. Time to tune him out.
~
In front of me, there was a rabbit. A red rabbit. A rabbit with twelve eyes. A twelve feet tall rabbit who stank of death screamed like a banshee and had three sets of sharp teeth. It was nothing we couldn't beat, and by we I meant me and the 3 other cultivators I had found loitering around. Julius had fallen in a hole and dissipated. He would probably pop up at some point acting like nothing was wrong. I had already given him two eulogies. An effort that was not worth the embarrassment when death does not stick so I had chosen to not give him the third one.
"Get ready" I barked "Surround it and attack you see an opportunity".
I turned around when I received no response. I could see their backs. Far of in the distance. Running at an impressive speed. Bastards. If I had worked with the Golden Devils, they wouldn't have fled. I turned around to face the demon rabbit from the abyss. Time to get this party started I suppose. I brandished my ax and started stretching.
~
One day I saw a golden apple hanging from a tall tree. I have now been a cultivator for over 40 years, and as every cultivator knows. If you find a mysterious fruit in the wild, you eat it. No questions asked. That doubles If something grabs your leg and smashes you into a tree. Guarded things are more valuable. That is the law. The heavens are fair like that. Two-tenths fairness, eight-tenths spite. It would be so until I was strong enough to fix it.
Some might ask. Why am I walking through a forest alone when experience has told you this is a poor idea. People who know of me would I say I was putting in an effort in investigating the enemy. People who know me would say I had gotten lost due to every tree looking exactly the same.
I projected an ax head that shot downward to sever the root grabbing my leg, cutting it in half. As I obtained a foothold I kicked the ground and launched myself backward to obtain some breathing room and get a look at my enemy. A black and purple apple tree. Large trunk, many apples. This being was old. Time to rid this world of this abomination. It had existed for far too long.
I kicked off again and launched myself at another tree, pausing as my legs hit its trunk, leaned in, and kicked off again. A footprint remained where I had kicked off. I launched myself at another tree and did the same. Speed was the key. The fallen leaves were dragged behind me by the traction. It wasn't long before the opening I was looking for appeared. With its root being unable to catch me, and the apples being unable to hit me I saw an opportunity to hit its body. I empowered my Ax, kicked off, and felt the Qi move through me and into my legs and my weapon. Eleven ax heads struck at the same time as my ax and eleven branches fell as I slashed halfway into its body.
I had hurt it, but it was still in fighting shape. It still had the apples, and the roots to continue this fight. I channeled the Qi into my legs and kicked off. There was no reason for me to change my gameplan. They never learn.
As I ate the golden apple, I felt the Qi in my body replenish. My vitally increased, and I could feel the years being added to my lifespan. I felt younger, my skin smoother, and a sharp pain as a root drilled into my back. My vision started fading, and I spotted purple lines where my veins used to be, and my black leather armor started working as intended. It sucked the poison out of my body and sealed up the wound.
I fell down on my knees, still dizzy, and looked down. My leather armor was falling apart.
My Armour... MY ARMOUR. HOW DARE IT.
BURN
I launched the skull upwards. The skull twirling around in a spinning motion as flames were breathed out if its teeth, hurling fire and changing this hellish landscape to a hellish landscape of my choosing.
The core of that tree attempted to flee. A strange wooden apple seed thing using its roots to grab hold of the trees around it to launch itself away. There would be no fleeing. I empowered my ax with the newfound energy inhabiting my body. I swung it down, and 15 trees were cleaved in two. I ADVANCED. The seed attempted to launch new roots forwards, but the surrounding heat dried its pitiful roots, and it was unable to grab anything. I lifted it up and cut it open. Its lifeblood, if you can call it that poured into the vial I had prepared. Like everything else, it would serve our needs.
I looked at the ashes. I was exhausted. My arms and legs felt heavy. The Qi in my body was suppressed. The force I had become so used to was dampened by the poison still remaining in my blood. There is no more progress to be made in this place. Its time to leave.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Omake Bonus
Cool thing: A Rare Ax technique from the technique palace.
I have already decided what the three first pillars Demetrius was going to create would be if he gets that far. As you can guess. The second one is going to be the Pillar of Destruction. Out with the old and all that. No worries. No other humans died in the fire. Some might be a little terrified of him thought.
The first snippet was in response to seeing the Rina Callista Omake. Rina Callista is a fascinating character. The Golden Girl. The up and coming talent. The pint-sized powerhouse. Demetrius does not care much since he is not a clan member. Julius on the other hand is, and to him, Rina is the legend in the making and the golden start of his generation. I always find it funny when the mooks have an over-the-top reaction to the protagonist showing off while being casual.
The second one is having fun with the fact that other cultivators are generally lousy teammates.
This third one is about punishing that blasted tree for wrecking my cool stuff bonus.
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Magnus Centenius 9 - How did I get promoted and how can I use this?
Magnus Pt. 9 - How did I get promoted and how can I use this?
Magnus had been sent to the border with the reinforcements Aikaterine requested. His cultivation level allowed him to be placed in command of a squad of 10 men. As a bonding exercise for the first night at the fortress and a final toast in case they don't make it, he provided some of his personally made Fire Wine and some of his. While many of the men were cultivators of the 6th Qi heaven stage, they are ended up so drunk many could not find their equipment in the morning. Somehow, a bottle of the wine ended up in the hands of Aikaterine who then promoted Magnus on the spot to Wine Quartermaster.
He was suppose to control the wine ration, and make sure there was enough wine for the troops to enjoy when the commanders determined it was time to celebrate. To this end, Magnus received access to several types on spiritual plants to make more wine for when the fortress loss access to the outside. The death of the Protostrator changed all that as mass confusion gripped everyone. Magnus took it upon himself to find a way to help the fight rather than just make wine.
He use a special honey and parts from a devil bee to change his Bacterial Smoke Bomb into a chitin eating bomb. The new strain of bacteria was too slow to really eat through the armor, but it did wonders in making large noticeable holes in the wings. Thousands of the new bombs covered the sky is a golden hazy as hundreds of bees and their riders crashed to their dooms.
Just as Magnus was given glory and a treasure to help with his tribulation, Minervina came and outdid him again. Her Hive Killing Powder directly killed the bees in the thousands eclipsing his contributions. Magnus would have been jealous of someone who started on the Path of Cultivation after him leaving him in the dust if not for her help in refine his first Dao Pillar.
Upon returning home, Magnus found that a young array expert named Castor has completed the work on the puppets he asked for. Castor had made a dozen of each 5 types of puppets based on the elements as prototypes. These puppets were not made for direct combat so the energy use for them is rather low. Magnus quickly5 got to work seeing what were the best poisons to work inside the puppets.
First were the most fragile puppets in the shape of Ospray representing Water, Magnus thinks that Castor was making a joke somewhere, These bird puppets were given a special liquid poison that would become a colorless mist when released into the air. They can fly over enemies and poison them without anyone even knowing they have been poisoned. The puppet after some testing proved to be able to fly to high for most normal Qi attacks to reach, of course range specialist can still hit it.
Next was the Cactus puppet representing wood. It was given a special blend of plant toxins. This puppet is made to sit in the desert out in the open where enemies will pass it by without a second look. Then the puppet's arms would spray out the toxins in the enemy faces. Inside the puppet are several pressurized containers so even destroying the puppet will cause the toxins to spray. It is also good for surprising spirit beasts in the desert.
Then, there is the large Earth Scorpion puppet. It can tunnel through the group relatively quickly and carries a poison powder that is light enough that a simple step will cause a good amount to float into the air. It is about the size of an actual Earth Scorpion or a small horse and carries enough poison to kill 100 men. It is also the most durable of the puppets, able to take a few hits before braking, making enemies think they are fighting a normal combat puppet.
The Fire Puppet is shaped like a Hedgehog and the size of a dog. Magnus had the hardest time working on the design of this puppet. The main body of the puppet was filled with an explosive poison that would devastate a large area when exposed to fire and push out a wave of poisoned air even farther, not to mention the Bronze quills on its back. The head of the puppet is filled with Magnus's signature Fire Wine that would light itself on fire in open air. The hedgehog puppet would open its mouth to light the wine before swallowing it to blow itself up. Magnus destroyed nearly all the prototypes before getting the amount of fire wine just right to light the explosives at the right time.
Finally, the Steel Spike Spine Snake puppet and the only true combat puppet. This puppet is the size of a Boa Constrictor with Steel Spine clusters on its back and a pair of large fangs in its mouth. This puppet used the metallic poison quicksilver also know as mercury. The skin of the snake is not actually steel but a coating of mercury. This poison does not kill on its own, but does mess with coordination and cause confusion. The fact that this puppet is actually made to fight a decent amount of time means it is the most expensive puppet to use.
Magnus stood proudly in front of his new works, ready to bring them before Manuel himself so the clan can put them to use in the coming trials.
@occipitallobe I finally moved and got internet hooked up. I can finally type on my computer. My way to help the clan in the coming trials is ready, I think its time for the spread sheet for turn 5 to be set up
@Katana1515@TheDuke I think my guy is getting really jealous of Minervina, and I have Castor make my puppets
The Fire Puppet is shaped like a Hedgehog and the size of a dog. Magnus had the hardest time working on the design of this puppet. The main body of the puppet was filled with an explosive poison that would devastate a large area when exposed to fire and push out a wave of poisoned air even farther, not to mention the Bronze quills on its back. The head of the puppet is filled with Magnus's signature Fire Wine that would light itself on fire in open air. The hedgehog puppet would open its mouth to light the wine before swallowing it to blow itself up. Magnus destroyed nearly all the prototypes before getting the amount of fire wine just right to light the explosives at the right time.
I already had a thought of how Savvas' parents will fall in the trials.
They use items that make them look like Core Formation/Foundation establishment cultivators.. Meaning that when they get ganked they force a teleport back.
An enormous impact rocked the tunnels and chambers of Wuo Go and dust rained down from the ceiling above their heads as the spirit firefly lights flickered in distress. The crowd of mortals Ferenike was walking through flinched and a child screamed beside her, clinging to her father's arm as he stared at the ceiling warily.
"Shhh shhh Merena, its fine. Just another stupid bee." She whispered as she rested her good hand on the girl child's head, giving her a soft pat.
The girl sniffled, not more than five. "I just want them to go away!" She shouted as she rubbed at her face, eyes glistening wetly.
Ferenike smirked. "I do too, I really do too." She said.
Boom!
Another impact, bringing more dust down on the merchant's street she was walking down. Merena and the others flinched again, eyes darting around the ceiling. But there was only silence, for several long minutes. Would this be the time they had a breach? Would she have to shepherd these mortals to an evacuation tunnel?
Silence. She sighed in brief relief.
"Alright people, return to business. Looks like that's it for this hour!" She said loudly as she started walking. Tension eased, slightly. They'd have the rest of the hour before they started again.
"Squad three, Agha, Dana, Regas and Agrippa you're going." She listed out their names, and in her heart she sent her hopes with them. Agha's face fell, but she nodded and saluted and the others followed.
I think this speaks really well of the training Ferenike did with her group, feeling downcasted due to having to leave comrades over being glad for being one of the chosen that will survive.
"Fire flares! Ready scorpions!" Jin's voice shouted through the tubes and Ferenike heard the clank and grind of great machinery shifting as she raised her arm and sighted down on a likely flicker in the dark.
Green and yellow light flared, night becoming day, illuminating their enemies in a swooping cloud swallowing the sky as they flew towards them.
"Fire!" Came the command.
Ferenike released the pent up Qi in her raised left arm and glass spears flew from it in a rain.
Under their bombardment, dozens upon dozens of shimmering bolts, the scorpions firing fiery blasts and Ferenike her spears, the enemy force withered.
And yet they kept coming, undeterred. Hundreds seeming, shadows in the dark obscuring their numbers.
Quickly the sounds of their wings became a thunder and impacts started to rain down on the tower walls, transforming it into a massive bell, deafeningly loud.
Through the cacophony, Ferenike kept flinging her spears, each one bringing down an enemy as they drew closer and closer. Bang! A bee and its rider slammed into the side of the tower right in front of her, completely unable to squeeze anything more than a few spiky legs into the hole. Her spear stabbed forward and severed the rider and bee's bodies in one blow, and they fell. Outside it was nothing but the darkness of writhing bodies and clicking legs now. From high above in the tower she heard a scream and then a massive head-splitting boom! Massive stones fell out of the ceiling as cracks ran down the walls.
"BREACH! WE HAVE A BREACH!" A voice screamed from down the stairs and from the brass tubes.
Picturing the scene definitely brings to mind the Siege of Minas Trith for me! The sheer chaos of fending off the besiegers and the whole situation of how even if you defend your spot on the wall, it won't matter if it's breached in another place was excellently conveyed.
Desiccated pieces of her trainees were strewn about the floor as Devil Bees and their scimitar wielding riders crammed into the space, crushed to dust and paste under their pounding feet.
Two immediately turned to her and hissed, as swords screamed for her head. Her own furnace scream answered and her spear flashed out in a two handed grip. The enemies before her almost exploded, a hundred strikes lashing out in an eyeblink as Ferenike charged through the red cloud with a snarl on her face, yellow hair turning pink from the blood and glass closing around her.
As she stepped into the room, she saw Pleminon fallen to the ground, his body up to his collarbones swallowed by a Devil Bee as the mass of the army wheeled above his head. In his hand he held a fiercely glowing array attached to their demolished scorpion. Before Ferenike could scream, it detonated, her shield coming up on instinct as she was thrown back through the corpses of her enemies and down the stairs.
"I'll hold these gates long enough to close them and then follow!" Ferenike shouted back. She reached the gates and started hauling them closed. Everyone was already racing down the tunnel behind her.
With a crash she saw her temporary seal shatter into shards that flew across the room and a horrific black and red wave of Devil Bees skittered across the floor. Then she pulled the gates closed and slapped the locking array. She was already running after the others when it locked with a heavy clang.
What followed was a freakish chase through dark red lit tunnels while they were pursued by monsters, almost pitch black city galleries and halls with Bees appearing out of rooms and the shadows seemingly from nowhere. Dozens of defenders died, Ferenike's Hoplite saving some others, but overall they were getting ravaged as they fought a fighting retreat that lasted for an interminable period.
Minutes stretched into hours, hours seemingly into days. They led a harrowing defense of the evacuation tunnel entrances and their chokepoint before eventually being pushed back with terrible losses to the enemy, their bodies piled to the ceiling of the small fort before they retreated and detonated pre-prepared explosives to cave them in.
Now, Ferenike and her beleaguered squad four were exhaustedly marching down one of the evac tunnels.
Another excellent scene of the aftermath of a siege succeeding from the perspective of the Defenders! I can definitely feel the sense of exhaustion that was conveyed about their rearguard actions.
Xanthippos was cradling a broken arm as he reached out towards her, blood running from his bald head while Kleopatra helped him stand. She seemed unharmed, her blonde braids swinging as she towed her comrade to her commander.
The Hoplite surged into being completely as they came in arms reach, plugging the tunnel with its height as shadows fell out of the hole upon them in a wave.
Ferenike couldn't see or sense any of Jin's forces in the dust and rubble and rampant Blood Qi screaming around her. So she fought, stepping back again and again as she fought down the tunnel and more and more of the ceiling caved in revealing searingly bright sunlight and above them a small cloud of bees. Through the chaos Ferenike saw a tattered white banner with a blood red hawkwasp on it, flying amongst the enemy and she felt the power of an Early Foundation Building expert.
As the tunnel collapsed into an open pit the full might of the enemy swallowed them. And unlike they Protostrator they were too weak.
Under the sheer weight of Qi Condensation cultivators bolstered by a Foundation Building Expert, their spear was weighed down with corpses, their shield torn from their hands. Her vision became only bodies and meat and stabbing legs as all sound was lost under the scream of battle and her mouth filled with her enemy's blood. But she felt it when the lives of her two trainees were ripped from her, the Hoplite shattering and a massive force slamming her down to the ground as her enemies trampled her. Her face felt like it was on fire as bones cracked in its right side and her hat fell from her head, torn to shreds.
Ah.. i honestly missed their deaths on the first read. The mention of their deaths as the " trainees " in contrast to the names in the earlier portion really give to me the impression that despite them being a character to Ferenike, they're just weaklings to wipeout to the foe.
She smiled as her enemies screamed in pain and fell away from her might, and clad in crimson glass she rose up to her feet a towering crimson demon of fire. Pushing through them like a red tide she rose higher and higher, until she was free. And then she danced.
She danced upon her enemy's skulls with blood soaked feet and a lashing tongue of fire, her single eye a bleeding red star. Cloaked in gore covered glass, a mass of spikes and thorns cladding a skeleton whose bones were shining with blinding light.
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!" She shrieked, the Legion tongue and her parent's native tongue mixing into a nonsensical curse of hatred.
They fell before her sweeping spears, dozens, hundreds springing up around her as she sailed over their lines and impaling them on horrific barbs. Ahead she could see Wuo Go forces, a handful of men led by Jin Nu'er fighting off another wave of enemies, on the other side of the woman who must be the Foundation Building expert.
Another massive wave descended onto Ferenike. They hit and then they died.
With a hell-rending roar a massive plume of fire, violet hot swept across them and rendered them into ash, her spear piercing through the flames as Ferenike rose to challenge the expert. Her spear lashed for the two headed bee and before the expert could react its heads were ripped open and it fell with a crash to the ground atop the corpses of its lesser kin. The hawkmoth woman's face twisted in anger as she screamed and she knocked aside Ferenike's spear with an incredible blow from her scimitar, a wicked thing of green jade and ivory. Then before Ferenike could react her other hand flashed out and buried itself in her gut, glass parting like water around her fingers and there was a crack.
Horrible pain enveloped her mind as she felt her enemy grab her spine through her stomach and then pull. Ferenike shrieked, an explosion of heat and molten glass fountaining up from her mouth and guts as her veins, her many soldiers pulled back their bows and fired. Dozens of glass spears erupted from the explosion and her enemy was forced to let her go.
In keeping with the above, here we have the Pro showing the noobs how it's done. But sadly, the Raid Boss ain't that easy! Also again, that imagery of what happens when she shoots the glass shards is perfecto!
Her little glass soldiers marched, building bridges and restoring walls in the blink of an eye, veins wiggling and glass threads diving through her body to move her legs even without her spine. Sealing over the hole in her guts with a plate of glass Ferenike launched upward with Qi falling low, and cut her way through the lackeys in front of her.
They with a sweep of her spear, and with a ungainly rush she charged forward, blood and pieces of muscle leaking out around the patch in her guts as her legs jerked strangely.
Again, i really really like the imagery of the Bloodline acting as a legion within Ferenike. Well Cells at Works! Congratulations, the first crossover between Xianxia and Cells at Work!
The Foundation Building expert wailed like a ghost as a dagger sprouted from her kidney, held in the hands of Jin Nu'er. She must have leapt up here while they were distracted, the bee lashing and hissing as it bucked.
"For Wuo Go!" Jin screamed as she shoved the knife deeper and Ferenike saw hissing green and black smoke race from the wound as skin blackened and rotted. Poison.
The expert screamed and in a crazed struggle her fist met Jin's head and pulped it instantly.
Ferenike roared in anger and misery and jammed her spear into her enemy's gut.
Blood rushed from her enemy's mouth in a river as she grasped the spear's haft. Ferenike let go and then in a mirror of her enemy her hand raced forward and crimson glass parted white and red armor and wrapped around her weakened enemy's heart.
With a yank it came free in a splash of caustic blood and something lurched in Ferenike's guts.
Her Qi guttered low and she collapsed atop her enemy and the river of bodies that had been her soldiers, the sun shining down onto her back.
"Ferenike!" She shouted as she leapt up to her. Her friend was a horrific sight. Her entire right side was more glass than skin and muscle, her ribs visible through a terrible blackened rent in her chest and torso. There was a massive hole through her guts where her spine was visible as a white curve behind a cracked patch of crimson glass. Tracing her eyes back up her friend's body as she carefully supported her body in her arms she saw the cut continued up her neck and over her right eye, with most of the right side of her face a mass of glass and blood, yellow hair clinging to her ruined cheek. She was more skeleton than meat now!
On the left side she found her friend clutching in a ruined left hand, acid burns having eaten away the skin and into the glass infused bone, a bright red heart.
Then she heard the most wonderful sound in the world as breath hissed between her friend's teeth and her bruised left eye blinked.
"I need a medic!" Fuxi shouted. Somehow, somehow, Ferenike was still alive.
Yeeaah, that was brutal! Luckily Xiao Yi only saw Ferenike after she was treated, if he saw her like this, he'll probably try to counter-raid the Devil Bees!
I LIVE! @occipitallobe I like a Fate bonus for this! I'm going to try my best to stack the bonuses so that it can hopefully artificially inflate the Fate Roll to a Crit so Xiao Yi gets a kickass weap to use in the Trials!
Also, some stuff that came up while collaborating with @BungieONI is the idea that Xiao Yi is literally a Atheist Cultivator. He doesn't believe in there being a Heaven Will that maliciously strikes down or targets the Clan. Instead, he sees it as the Clan being targetted because they're currently weak and unable to defend themselves.
The Trial hunters? Just some punks who had a Supreme Cultivator helping them prep a hunting ground + a way to turn it's contents into tangible rewards through Dao manipulations.
The increased danger during Tribulations? Might be because Tribulation lighting and a blood consisting of a metal substance makes it more dangerous.
And so on. I mean Metawise we know that yeah, there is a Will oppressing us. But looking from Xiao Yi's perspective, the lack of anything dramatically bad or good happening to him so far gave him the idea that everything was due to his efforts, both the good and the bad. Perhaps for the geniuses, setting Heaven as the end-goal is possible, but for average cultivators like Xiao Yi the focus is on dealing with defending the Clan from the coming threats.
For the next couple of turns, yes. But the Blood Arrays are more like hardware, and the 'who is easily able to access them' is more like a set of software logins. Old Cannibal has root access, so he'll need to go around resetting things, but you can expect your access to rapidly diminish over 2-3 turns down to nothing before the truce is up.
Just putting this out there as a personal reminder so that I don't forget, but there's a very strong case for burning that final turn of back door access to the Blood Arrays on Turn 6 on sabotaging the Blood Cannibals to the point where they decidedly can't afford to risk breaking themselves on our newly risen defenses in the Uncast Molds and Burnished Crags.
Old Cannibal isn't a fool.
Right after dealing with Child Corpse Gulper, the Clan immediately pivoted into very solidly repulsing a significant invasion from the Abyssal Demonic Bees Clan with very minimal losses. Combo that with the Golden Eye once it comes online to play spotter for the Glass Spear Array, and things will become significantly more dangerous for anything beneath a Nascent Soul leading an invasion into Golden Devil Clan territory.
There's just no way to justify that level of attrition, not when Jiangshen Clan will present a far less powerful border with far more wealthy lands for the taking.
Lands that we can spend the rest of that period working towards taking and absorbing for ourselves.
Once again, this is less a plan being laid out, and more a reminder for myself to keep in mind going forward once the time to discuss this option comes up. I'm very well aware of what this type of speculation represents, so please, I literally beg of you all, don't actually jinx us by pointing it out.
Just, like
Consider it, ruminate on it, and hopefully come up with your own takes and ideas on the subject at the appropriate time.
Just for the love of God keep them to yourselves until then. Please.
I already had a thought of how Savvas' parents will fall in the trials.
They use items that make them look like Core Formation/Foundation establishment cultivators.. Meaning that when they get ganked they force a teleport back.
Had an interesting idea on how I could include a snippet from Demetrius looking into that temple Xiao Yi went to. That project snowballed, and then I heard about Hell-Sender and understood. That was a really cool idea, and now what I had written looked like garbage and needs an overhaul.
Thankee kindly for the praise! I'm gonna try to finish the 2nd part today. But yeah for Hell-Sender i kinda took stuff Druss did in the David Gemmell novels, gave it a Xianxia whirl and then changed it so that the Wielder isn't a good man, instead he's the kind of person the Demon in Snaga would be glad to work with, where a partnership with him will achieve more then driving him mad.
"Did you see that? That was The Rina Callista" He said in a high pitched tone. "Did you see what she did? Did you hear what she said? She is amazing". Ah right, his celebrity complex. I had forgotten about that. Time to tune him out.
This is pretty hilarious, just the mental image of this burly Golden Devil going all fanboy is awesome! It could only be better if he asked if Demetrius could come with him so that he can ask for a autograph.
Julius had fallen in a hole and dissipated. He would probably pop up at some point acting like nothing was wrong. I had already given him two eulogies. An effort that was not worth the embarrassment when death does not stick so I had chosen to not give him the third one.
I looked at the ashes. I was exhausted. My arms and legs felt heavy. The Qi in my body was suppressed. The force I had become so used to was dampened by the poison still remaining in my blood. There is no more progress to be made in this place. Its time to leave.
While many of the men were cultivators of the 6th Qi heaven stage, they are ended up so drunk many could not find their equipment in the morning. Somehow, a bottle of the wine ended up in the hands of Aikaterine who then promoted Magnus on the spot to Wine Quartermaster.
Magnus took it upon himself to find a way to help the fight rather than just make wine.
He use a special honey and parts from a devil bee to change his Bacterial Smoke Bomb into a chitin eating bomb. The new strain of bacteria was too slow to really eat through the armor, but it did wonders in making large noticeable holes in the wings.
Just as Magnus was given glory and a treasure to help with his tribulation, Minervina came and outdid him again. Her Hive Killing Powder directly killed the bees in the thousands eclipsing his contributions. Magnus would have been jealous of someone who started on the Path of Cultivation after him leaving him in the dust if not for her help in refine his first Dao Pillar.
I like the subtle rivalry mentioned here! I can't wait the Clan to develop two schools of thought about poisions. One is about manmade poisions, the other would be about refining the poisons found in nature.
Finally, the Steel Spike Spine Snake puppet and the only true combat puppet. This puppet is the size of a Boa Constrictor with Steel Spine clusters on its back and a pair of large fangs in its mouth. This puppet used the metallic poison quicksilver also know as mercury. The skin of the snake is not actually steel but a coating of mercury. This poison does not kill on its own, but does mess with coordination and cause confusion. The fact that this puppet is actually made to fight a decent amount of time means it is the most expensive puppet to use.
This is pretty cool sounding, and honestly the first thing that came to my mind is the Amphistaff from Star Wars Legends. Brief summary of it, is that it was a living snake that was used as both a staff and a spear, with the wielder able to also command it to act as a snake and inject poision.
Such a version of this puppet will be interesting since each attack will deal slight poison as well as the sudden punch of it suddenly biting in melee combat and injecting the mercury into the veins of the enemy.
Ah Life under siege! I enjoy the emphasis on how this is the new normal and how the mortals are trying to cope with the hand they're dealt.
I think this speaks really well of the training Ferenike did with her group, feeling downcasted due to having to leave comrades over being glad for being one of the chosen that will survive.
Like the above, except i love the understatement here of how each remaining cultivator just accepts the decision and resolves to do their duty.
Picturing the scene definitely brings to mind the Siege of Minas Trith for me! The sheer chaos of fending off the besiegers and the whole situation of how even if you defend your spot on the wall, it won't matter if it's breached in another place was excellently conveyed.
Oh ouch. And the courage of Pleminon who chose to gave his life to ensure his comrades stand a better chance.
Another excellent scene of the aftermath of a siege succeeding from the perspective of the Defenders! I can definitely feel the sense of exhaustion that was conveyed about their rearguard actions.
Ah.. i honestly missed their deaths on the first read. The mention of their deaths as the " trainees " in contrast to the names in the earlier portion really give to me the impression that despite them being a character to Ferenike, they're just weaklings to wipeout to the foe.
OH YEAH! Asura Mode! I can totally see the scene of the pubs confronting the Raid Boss that just wipes them out with swing after swing.
In keeping with the above, here we have the Pro showing the noobs how it's done. But sadly, the Raid Boss ain't that easy! Also again, that imagery of what happens when she shoots the glass shards is perfecto!
Again, i really really like the imagery of the Bloodline acting as a legion within Ferenike. Well Cells at Works! Congratulations, the first crossover between Xianxia and Cells at Work!
HA YES! It is so like the Blood Path and Cultivators as a whole to disregard the weak. Glad to see she paid the price for that!
Yeeaah, that was brutal! Luckily Xiao Yi only saw Ferenike after she was treated, if he saw her like this, he'll probably try to counter-raid the Devil Bees!
I LIVE! @occipitallobe I like a Fate bonus for this! I'm going to try my best to stack the bonuses so that it can hopefully artificially inflate the Fate Roll to a Crit so Xiao Yi gets a kickass weap to use in the Trials!
Also, some stuff that came up while collaborating with @BungieONI is the idea that Xiao Yi is literally a Atheist Cultivator. He doesn't believe in there being a Heaven Will that maliciously strikes down or targets the Clan. Instead, he sees it as the Clan being targetted because they're currently weak and unable to defend themselves.
The Trial hunters? Just some punks who had a Supreme Cultivator helping them prep a hunting ground + a way to turn it's contents into tangible rewards through Dao manipulations.
The increased danger during Tribulations? Might be because Tribulation lighting and a blood consisting of a metal substance makes it more dangerous.
And so on. I mean Metawise we know that yeah, there is a Will oppressing us. But looking from Xiao Yi's perspective, the lack of anything dramatically bad or good happening to him so far gave him the idea that everything was due to his efforts, both the good and the bad. Perhaps for the geniuses, setting Heaven as the end-goal is possible, but for average cultivators like Xiao Yi the focus is on dealing with defending the Clan from the coming threats.
I had a lot of fun remembering the scenes from the very first opening ten minutes or so of the first Terminator, the entirety of Screamers, and bits and pieces of military movies I'd seen and scenes in games. Tired, weary and worn out people, dust falling from the ceiling as bombardment shakes the roof is very good for evoking a sense of looming dread and terror even as it becomes the new oppressive normal. Both of these parts were about showing off the dichotomy between a feeling of terror, the anticipation of horrible dreadful things, and horror, the immediate reaction to dreadful things.
A lot of the discussion with Jin in the beginning was a little hard to sort out how I wanted it done but I'm happy with what I have, and could move on to the siege which was rather fun to write due to how I could find interesting ways to kill off characters of importance. And while I'm a little sad about it being missable, it is on the one hand kind of supposed to be a case of backdrop setting up for Ferenike's rip roaring killing spree.
Cells at Work is a great anime I need to sit down and actually watch at some point goddammit.
Ferenike would help him counter raid the Devil Bees! And yeah for Ferenike's appearance, imagine like Arnold after he got most of his skin ripped off or burnt away. She's got a very strong Terminator aesthetic going for her.
Hmm. Might be fun to raid someone at some point. Two Foundation Building experts wrecking some face. Anyway!
I'm also kinda fascinated to see where you take Xiao Yi's opinion on things and how it might shift if he has an exceptional Fate roll in either direction. (A bad result need not necessarily lead to hatred of Heaven is one thing that comes to mind, depending on how the bad luck manifests)
Ferenike would help him counter raid the Devil Bees! And yeah for Ferenike's appearance, imagine like Arnold after he got most of his skin ripped off or burnt away. She's got a very strong Terminator aesthetic going for her.
O.O! That would be a sight to behold! But yeah, unlike the Cannibals we have no treaty, so depending on Turn 5 and Turn 6 it might be interesting to set a goal of counter-raiding the Devil Bees.
I'm also kinda fascinated to see where you take Xiao Yi's opinion on things and how it might shift if he has an exceptional Fate roll in either direction. (A bad result need not necessarily lead to hatred of Heaven is one thing that comes to mind, depending on how the bad luck manifests)
Yeah, i'm kinda of two minds on it. On one hand i can go the confirmation bias route of Xiao Yi trying to rationalize everything as done without Heaven moving in the background, which could lead to hilarious scenes of people telling him " no, it's heaven's will that XX got trapped for you " and him going " No no, it's cus XX didn't check the terrain "
On the other hand, i could also go the route of as XIao Yi advances in cultivation, more and more of the underlying mechanics behind ascension is made known to him. It'll have to see!
The results of the Fate Roll also play a factor i guess, because if the Fate Roll effect is mentioned as something that should be inconceivable happening, then his reaction would be more blagh??
And so on. I mean Metawise we know that yeah, there is a Will oppressing us. But looking from Xiao Yi's perspective, the lack of anything dramatically bad or good happening to him so far gave him the idea that everything was due to his efforts, both the good and the bad. Perhaps for the geniuses, setting Heaven as the end-goal is possible, but for average cultivators like Xiao Yi the focus is on dealing with defending the Clan from the coming threats.
