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Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

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New Good Seed and Omake Rule Updates
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    • Good Seed and Omake Spreadsheet Rules:

    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.
     
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    • Just a warning to people - I'm sitting exams atm and thus any index updates will wait until the weekend when I am not exhausted beyond measure.
     
    LordEdric said:
    Yet another person sucked into the good seed system
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    The Clan conquering the 4th wall over the Turtle World
    Humbaba said:
    Eurgh, my creative juices seem to have run completely dry this turn. Which is very concerning considering the war happened and how close we're getting to the trials.

    Guess I'll try to struggle out something basic and hope my ideas pick up next turn.
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    Not sure if it helps, but maybe try working backwards ? Like decide on a boon this turn and build the omake around it ? Wild Fang with Snaga is still a pretty cool idea to me!
    occipitallobe said:
    Ultimately the reason they don't is that high-power Formations that are easy to disrupt and difficult to set up can be really good once, but are thereafter relegated to uselessness. The Clan Formations have remained useful for millennia.
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    I mean, this really emphasizes the fact that the Devil Bees very much a patsy. Literally given this one-shot formation to wreck havoc
     
    It's still irregular for a Clan that's this shitty at Formations to come up with one capable of up-punching that hard, even with the compromises that came with it. If it were this easy to create a one-shot battle Formation that could threaten a Nascent Soul without committing your own super experts, we'd be seeing a "No questions asked, coalition everyone who's willing to join hands to put these fuckers in the dirt now" situation.

    Because--to be blunt--if they could make this in house. It means they can keep doing it. If the Devil Bees lose ten battles to get one big win, given the nature of Blood Path, that one win will easily make good the ten losses.

    And that's something even the most rudimentary calculation would see is untenable for everyone in the same patch of land that the Bees occupy. Near inassailable homeland, ridiculous numbers, and the ability to convert those numbers into power capable of threatening the peak? That's a pants browning moment for the Southern Plains, and we'd be seeing some tentative outreach--Saber Palace be damned--if it meant stopping this shit before it could be institutionalized.
     
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    Alectai said:
    It's still irregular for a Clan that's this shitty at Formations to come up with one capable of up-punching that hard, even with the compromises that came with it. If it were this easy to create a one-shot battle Formation that could threaten a Nascent Soul without committing your own super experts, we'd be seeing a "No questions asked, coalition everyone who's willing to join hands to put these fuckers in the dirt now" situation.

    Because--to be blunt--if they could make this in house. It means they can keep doing it. If the Devil Bees lose ten battles to get one big win, given the nature of Blood Path, that one win will easily make good the ten losses.
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    Yeah, i agree with that. I'm more on the belief that it was given to them and not as a full fledged formation with all the kinks worked out. I get the impression that it's a pretty raw formation focusing on power and relying on the fact that the Devil Bees are not known for Formations to allow them to generate success.

    My guess is that it's more the element of surprise that is wining the battles for them, once its known then there are ways to just stop it from happening based on the past few updates. I doubt it's something they came up on their own because i doubt the environment of the Devil Bees can produce a Formation Expert, any such expertise would have been long taken out and used on the South.

    No reason to keep it hidden all the way to launch it just at us when it makes more sense to use the formation during their Saber Palace raid as a example. Hence my suspicion on it being given to them by a backer who intentionally left in the flaws of it only really being viable as a surprise weapon. They won't want to change the power balance that drastically
     
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    Mochinator said:
    Yeah, i agree with that. I'm more on the belief that it was given to them and not as a full fledged formation with all the kinks worked out. I get the impression that it's a pretty raw formation focusing on power and relying on the fact that the Devil Bees are not known for Formations to allow them to generate success.

    My guess is that it's more the element of surprise that is wining the battles for them, once its known then there are ways to just stop it from happening based on the past few updates. I doubt it's something they came up on their own because i doubt the environment of the Devil Bees can produce a Formation Expert, any such expertise would have been long taken out and used on the South.

    No reason to keep it hidden all the way to launch it just at us when it makes more sense to use the formation during their Saber Palace raid as a example. Hence my suspicion on it being given to them by a backer who intentionally left in the flaws of it only really being viable as a surprise weapon. They won't want to change the power balance that drastically
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    My own thinking lies towards the idea that this is an attempt to change the balance of power, but not in the Demonic Powers favor, see how the Demonic groups have been having the Righteous ones coming down on their faces.

    Jingshen making moves to poke us, someone feeding things to the Battle Bloods and Abyssal Devil Bees that resulted in us beating them back soundly and in the case of the Cannibals seriously weakening them. The Demonic Altar sect setting off/being involved in a Ninth-Demon Annihilating War. The siege being pushed on the Noble Knowledge sect and them losing several Core Formation elders.

    To me it looks like someone is mucking about and trying to weaken the Demonic powers across the board in this Ninth Annihilation War. Seems unlikely they're aiming for destruction outright since that's impractical, but these moves look like set up to put them in weaker positions than they were.
     
    Yeah, it almost feels like a new power's building up in the shadows here?

    That being said, I wouldn't say this has been entirely good for the Righteous Path, the Verdant South got wrecked by the Devil Bees to the point of being mostly combat-ineffectual in time for the Ninth-Demon Annihilating War, and the Strength Purity Sect relies heavily on the manpower they get from the Verdant South to keep up. We have virtually no penetration on what's going on in the Great Battlefield, and the Quiet Peaks are virtually non-entities save for the Devil Bees, as they're almost all universally focused on forting up over power projection. Righteous Path is also not doing too hot, what with the warning we got that our allied Sect just lost their Nascent Soul against the Demonic Altar.

    Jingshen poking around too is not good for the Righteous Path as a whole, because their motivation for wanting to dominate the Desert is to gain a monopoly on the spirit stone trade, and being able to demand higher fees from the righteous powers as a capitive audience who can't just tell them to fuck off without losing to the Demonic Powers. It's why the Strength Purity Sect would generally prefer us not to be destroyed--because our fees are consistent and reliable, which means they can plan for it and not have to worry about us jacking the price up just because they're at war and can't afford to push back. And we occasionally come up with valuable trade goods that are well tailored to fuck up their primary enemy (Like what just happened this turn with our gangbusters roll).

    If you look at the whole picture, it looks like the entire Virtuous Flipper Region is subject to an overall campaign of crippling--which is usually the first step before a new power rolls in and makes a bid for hegemony.
     
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    Ah Xianxia/Wuxia. Where even a bad roll can generate all this theories!
    BungieONI said:
    My own thinking lies towards the idea that this is an attempt to change the balance of power, but not in the Demonic Powers favor, see how the Demonic groups have been having the Righteous ones coming down on their faces.

    Jingshen making moves to poke us, someone feeding things to the Battle Bloods and Abyssal Devil Bees that resulted in us beating them back soundly and in the case of the Cannibals seriously weakening them. The Demonic Altar sect setting off/being involved in a Ninth-Demon Annihilating War. The siege being pushed on the Noble Knowledge sect and them losing several Core Formation elders.

    To me it looks like someone is mucking about and trying to weaken the Demonic powers across the board in this Ninth Annihilation War. Seems unlikely they're aiming for destruction outright since that's impractical, but these moves look like set up to put them in weaker positions than they were.
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    Next 5 turns after the Trials, The Great Demonic War arc :D Cus you know, it's about that time in a Xianxia novel where a major war breaks out

    Alectai said:
    If you look at the whole picture, it looks like the entire Virtuous Flipper Region is subject to an overall campaign of crippling--which is usually the first step before a new power rolls in and makes a bid for hegemony.
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    I give major props if it's a buildup to the return of Demon Soup chef or that Demonic Altar dude that fled overseas. Realm Invasion would be pretty interesting
     
    Alectai said:
    It's still irregular for a Clan that's this shitty at Formations to come up with one capable of up-punching that hard, even with the compromises that came with it. If it were this easy to create a one-shot battle Formation that could threaten a Nascent Soul without committing your own super experts, we'd be seeing a "No questions asked, coalition everyone who's willing to join hands to put these fuckers in the dirt now" situation.

    Because--to be blunt--if they could make this in house. It means they can keep doing it. If the Devil Bees lose ten battles to get one big win, given the nature of Blood Path, that one win will easily make good the ten losses.

    And that's something even the most rudimentary calculation would see is untenable for everyone in the same patch of land that the Bees occupy. Near inassailable homeland, ridiculous numbers, and the ability to convert those numbers into power capable of threatening the peak? That's a pants browning moment for the Southern Plains, and we'd be seeing some tentative outreach--Saber Palace be damned--if it meant stopping this shit before it could be institutionalized.
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    I'm more inclined to think it was given to them by whoever instigated them into attacking us, and has already achieved it's goal of catching us off guard and killing or injuring one of our top cultivators. Like Manuel said, it was potent, but that was all it had going for it. It was slow, costly in terms of the number of cultivators needed to use it, and easily avoided once it was known about. It was certainly effective for a surprise attack from a clan not known for their skill with Formations, but that's about it. Rather then being made in-house, it seems likely that the instigators were just using the Devil Bees as a proxy to deliver an attack against us, in the form of the Formation.
     
    I disagree on the likelihood of this being a new power. My own bet is that the Saber palace had a number of plans in place to make their own bid for hegemony over the Verdant South, but the Devil Bee sacking fucked them up enough that theyve burned many of those cards returning things there into something resembling the previous status quo in terms of powe balance.

    Ultimately, the other powers cant let the Golden Devils get too comfortable, otherwise they're liable to snowball again and potentially get around to crushing them and pushing back into the Mountains. For a lot of powers in the region, a Golden devil clan that's arrested its downward spiral is a genuinely terrifying prospect.
     
    Alectai said:
    Yeah, it almost feels like a new power's building up in the shadows here?

    That being said, I wouldn't say this has been entirely good for the Righteous Path, the Verdant South got wrecked by the Devil Bees to the point of being mostly combat-ineffectual in time for the Ninth-Demon Annihilating War, and the Strength Purity Sect relies heavily on the manpower they get from the Verdant South to keep up. We have virtually no penetration on what's going on in the Great Battlefield, and the Quiet Peaks are virtually non-entities save for the Devil Bees, as they're almost all universally focused on forting up over power projection. Righteous Path is also not doing too hot, what with the warning we got that our allied Sect just lost their Nascent Soul against the Demonic Altar.

    Jingshen poking around too is not good for the Righteous Path as a whole, because their motivation for wanting to dominate the Desert is to gain a monopoly on the spirit stone trade, and being able to demand higher fees from the righteous powers as a capitive audience who can't just tell them to fuck off without losing to the Demonic Powers. It's why the Strength Purity Sect would generally prefer us not to be destroyed--because our fees are consistent and reliable, which means they can plan for it and not have to worry about us jacking the price up just because they're at war and can't afford to push back. And we occasionally come up with valuable trade goods that are well tailored to fuck up their primary enemy (Like what just happened this turn with our gangbusters roll).

    If you look at the whole picture, it looks like the entire Virtuous Flipper Region is subject to an overall campaign of crippling--which is usually the first step before a new power rolls in and makes a bid for hegemony.
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    Another option instead of another power moving in, which is made very difficult by the regional barriers, is that there were basically two-three things happening at once.

    First, there was someone fucking about with the Battle Blood Cannibal Sects in order to weaken all of the Demonic Desert powers.

    Second, the Devil Bees did a Thing and fucked over the Verdant South. This caused them to be redirected into us by someone.

    Third, bad fucking luck happened to the Flood Dragons and that was that, the response caused the Ninth War.

    So now you have this Xanatos pileup.
     
    TehChron said:
    I disagree on the likelihood of this being a new power. My own bet is that the Saber palace had a number of plans in place to make their own bid for hegemony over the Verdant South, but the Devil Bee sacking fucked them up enough that theyve burned many of those cards returning things there into something resembling the previous status quo in terms of powe balance.

    Ultimately, the other powers cant let the Golden Devils get too comfortable, otherwise they're liable to snowball again and potentially get around to crushing them and pushing back into the Mountains. For a lot of powers in the region, a Golden devil clan that's arrested its downward spiral is a genuinely terrifying prospect.
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    Their style and Dao aren't really especially suited for this though? Like, the culture they've apparently got going is something that seriously does not generally like schemers on the scale we're talking about here. Their advantage is that they're beasts in direct combat, probably one of the top Righteous Sects behind the Strength Purity Sect, and it comes because they focus entirely on grabbing big-assed dao blades and mastering the art of apply sharp side to mans. Military grade stuff, scheming, and tactics are explicitly dismissed in favor of having a sharp sword and mastering the Sanctioned Action.
     
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    Alectai said:
    Their style and Dao aren't really especially suited for this though? Like, the culture they've apparently got going is something that seriously does not generally like schemers on the scale we're talking about here. Their advantage is that they're beasts in direct combat, probably one of the top Righteous Sects behind the Strength Purity Sect, and it comes because they focus entirely on grabbing big-assed dao blades and mastering the art of apply sharp side to mans. Military grade stuff, scheming, and tactics are explicitly dismissed in favor of having a sharp sword and mastering the Principle Art of Cutting.
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    And yet.

    We specifically have knowledge that they assassinated a Demon Bee Nascent soul in recent memory. Arranged to bankroll this Incursion near immediately afterward, and were responsible for backing Child corpse Gulper including providing him with covert support on and off.the battlefield with intel and resources.

    Like it or not, the Saber Palace engaging in skulduggery is already what happened

    Their Grand Elder likely practices some kind of Dao of the Assassins Blade, or Dao of the Indirect Strike to set up all these moves. Something awful in terms of direct combat (hence the sacking) but godly in terms of setting up patsies and indirect fuckery (hence Corpse Gulper and the Bees raiding us)
     
    Alectai said:
    Their style and Dao aren't really especially suited for this though? Like, the culture they've apparently got going is something that seriously does not generally like schemers on the scale we're talking about here. Their advantage is that they're beasts in direct combat, probably one of the top Righteous Sects behind the Strength Purity Sect, and it comes because they focus entirely on grabbing big-assed dao blades and mastering the art of apply sharp side to mans. Military grade stuff, scheming, and tactics are explicitly dismissed in favor of having a sharp sword and mastering the Sanctioned Action.
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    This is probably true of most of the sect, admittedly. But in groups like these all you really need is one schemer to direct all that steel in the right direction. Even if most of their sect is full of meatheads, just one strategist with a good head on their shoulders could turn them into a threat.
     
    Hrm, just realized I have no idea what to choose as a bonus for my second omake. Don't suppose there's any good ideas abounding? I suppose I could just ask for another secret weapon to install on Pollux, but I probably want to intersperse my acquiring of those a bit more, I think.
     
    TheDuke said:
    This is probably true of most of the sect, admittedly. But in groups like these all you really need is one schemer to direct all that steel in the right direction. Even if most of their sect is full of meatheads, just one strategist with a good head on their shoulders could turn them into a threat.
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    Personally, i'm of this thought as well. The moment I saw that they attempted to use Child Gulper as a borrowed Knife, i knew that we're dealing with a Xianxia faction with all the cliches listed in the genre.

    After all it is a staple that regardless of how direct or honorable the sect is, the Top tier are always schemers. It's the reason they got so far and how they survive their peers.
    occipitallobe said:
    Not sure. Expect the Good Seed Report out probably tomorrow, maaaybe today.
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    Well. Time to decide my Good Seed's Life Or Death!
    BungieONI said:
    *eyes burn with red fire*

    I MUST WORK FASTER THEN!
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    Aiii, Ferenike going to WAAARRR!!! i am ready to read about the crushing of our foes and the lamentations of their Bees!

    TheDuke said:
    Hrm, just realized I have no idea what to choose as a bonus for my second omake. Don't suppose there's any good ideas abounding? I suppose I could just ask for another secret weapon to install on Pollux, but I probably want to intersperse my acquiring of those a bit more, I think.
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    So erm, technically speaking. Your 2nd omake onwards just grants a Fate Roll to your Good Seed's fate. The Omake Boons are only applicable to 1 omake per turn to prevent just stacking Omake boons.
     
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    Achille Adephos 7 - A world of Death and Desolation
  • Sidestory
    • Achille Adephos VII
    A world of Death and Desolation

    Achille Adephos [1 turn from breaking through]. Remains at 9th Heaven stage. Fortuitous encounter, meeting a Snow-Eyed Desert Fox. Such creatures are known for their powerful dream realms, in which cultivators often waste and die, dreaming forever under their glare. Achille managed to survive and used the subjective century of time within the dream realm as experience to solidify his Dao. He is close to breaking through.
    ---

    In the windy desert, Achille Adepho walked, storms of sand whirling around him. A small bubble of air surrounded him, deflecting the sand, a formation courtesy of his direct commander, Senior Mechanikos Caius.

    Ever since Grand Mechanikos Chu Yuzi had fashioned and sold a Vile Blood Array, the budget allocated to the Array-Engineers had been increased significantly. Senior Mechanikos Caius had immediately gotten a grant to purchase enough Star-Magnet Sand to fashion Air Bubble Arrays for all four of his subordinates.

    The mobile Battlefield Array would create a sand repelling bubble of air around the head, protecting one's face and eyes from the sand of the desert, even during a sand storm.

    As for why Achille was so deep in the desert, the reason was his cultivation. Twenty years of his life had been wasted while he was injured, and only now was he fully recovered,

    The now sixty-year-old was at the peak of the Ninth Heaven Stage, only a hair's breadth away from breaking through. He had come to the depths desert to find a nice, secluded space where he could cultivate.

    Achille's eyes scanned across the dunes, finding a rocky cave carved out of a tall orange cliff face, no doubt battered into existence by untold millennia of sand storms.

    Achille approached the cave, striding along the shifting course sand of the desert floor. He strode into the cave entrance, his eyes rapidly blinking as he adjusted to the deep darkness.

    Achille reached into his bag, grabbing a thin sheet of metal. It was covered in dozens of tiny green gemstones. A burst of Qi poured out of his hands and the Array-Plate whirred to life, shedding bright green light.

    Suddenly Achille flew backwards, shadows slamming into his gut. He looked up to see a snarling fox with pure white fur and blood-red eyes. The fox roared loudly, it's body rippling with muscles.

    Achille rapidly jumped back. It seemed this cave was the den of the fox and he had just made it angry.

    The fox glared at him, a strange red light flowing out of its eyes towards Achille. The moment the red light hit his retinas, Achille stiffed, unable to look away. He felt his body shut down falling into the ground as darkness filled him.

    ---
    Achille Adephos yawned, rolling over. He immediately regretted the decision feeling sharp rocks and twigs stabbed into the flesh of his back.

    The golden devil stood up, pushing himself off the ground with his elbows and opening his eyes.

    A cruel vista greeted him, vast jagged pillars of rock stabbing into the sky like fangs arising from the earth to devour the sun. Harsh astral winds blew black clouds across the crimson sky in which hung a massive red eye that illuminated the earth with a dark blood-like glow. Blood dripped from the eye to the ground, the fluid slow and thick, like a waterfall of honey dripping from a wound in the sky.

    A dark jungle stretched out across the surface, towering trees of unimaginable rights stretching their branches across the horizon to greedily drink in the red glow.

    A thick mist filled the air, obstructing Achille's vision and obstructing him from seeing how far the jungle stretched outwards.

    An unnatural silence filled the air, devoid of even the most simply of buzzing. It was unsettling how loud the silence was. Achille had never truly considered it, but in life, one is nearly always surrounded by noises. The cleaning of steel on steel, the chirping of birds or even simply the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind.

    Yet, here the air was silent, the world still. He could see branches of the massive trees swaying slightly in the wind, yet no noise o rustling leaves or creaking wood escaped them.

    Achille shivered slightly.

    'Where am I?'

    The question broke through the terror that had unwittingly settled in his mind. Now was not the time to give in to hysteria. If he wanted to survive, he would need to figure out what was going on in the first place.

    Achille closed his eyes reaching for the Qi, the force of life and power that resided in his body... and felt nothing.

    For, perhaps the first time Achille felt true terror. It was almost numbing, the shock. The incomprehension. Then the panic set in.

    "W-What? My- my Qi!" the boy gasped, his vision seeming to blacken around the edges.

    Qi was the power that fueled cultivators, the lifeblood of all cultivation. It was their entire life, their entire world. To remove one's Qi was more cruel fo a punishment than even death or torture, then ripping or libs or tearing out eyes.

    In this foreboding and desolate realm where the sky was red and black and the world was ever so still, even the Qi that Achille valued as much as his own life had been stolen from him.

    Yet the blood-red eye still stared down at him from the sky, grim yet indifferent. As if The Eye was not bothered by his presence, as if, to it, he was merely inconsequential, an ant who would disappear in a blink of an eye.

    Achille shakily stood up, gasping for air, his desperate breaths the only noise in that filled the world.

    "Screw this!" Achille shouted. "I don't know where the hell I am, but I'm gonna get out of here, and when I do, I'll fucking kill you!"

    The pain left Achille as fast as it had set on, replaced only by a powerful, spiteful rage. He didn't care where this place was, or who had made it. The only thing that mattered was that he would not give in, would not die here. He would rebel with all his might, and drag it down with him even if he died.

    Achille surveyed his surroundings. He stood atop a small outcrop from the one the tall, curved fang mountains. It was only a few feet from the ground, and Achille was sure ven a mortal like him, without access could survive the fall uninjured.

    Achille narrowed his eyes, took a deep breath, then without hesitation he jumped off the rock, and into the unknown world, he had just found himself in.
    ---
    @occipitallobe
    Took your advice and released it, even though It was so short.
     
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