OK now I've been busy the past few days, on top of catching up with a few other things that updated, so I haven't really been able to be active anywhere, having started this post like two or three times without being able to finish before something else came up
... You know I wrote that, then my niece came down and I got dragged away from the computer for a few hours again
anyway:
I was originally starting this post with comments from "the beginning" update, and so shall do so even though two more posts have gone up since then XD
You'd heard that it was supposedly being reinforced, though you didn't know why. Still, it should take them at least a month before they can actually do that, seeing the vast amount of distance that it covers. If you move quickly you should be able to cross without issue.
Ok now we have a time limit to keep in mind for any future side quests
"It was... amazing. You were just there. It felt like you were hugging me and keeping me warm and protecting me from everything." She takes a long breath. "I knew what you were thinking and how you felt. It was... special."
The words took a weight off of your back instantly. Una would never lie to you and she had always kept her word whenever she made it.
That certainly explains why she was so insistent on it, and good to know that that is dealt with for now
(Cerys Health: 99 + 10 Sleep + 5 Magic = 100100)
I like our new health total, can we keep it
It sends back feelings of enjoyment, perhaps for the company? And it sends you images of you leaving the forest, then setting it on fire? It wants you to set it on fire after you leave?
It sends back feelings of conformation, and when you inquire about any people who are still inside the forest it replied with assurance. You have no reason to doubt that the spirit was capable of keeping anyone who wandered in safe, so you grab your things and start moving north.
Ok now, a bit more seriously, we need to weigh the pros and cons of this as an action:
This is a request by the one being besides our sister who actually seems benevolent, and helpful towards us simply because it
can. The being that taught us about demons, that
sheltered us and saved our lives from the military. It wants us to burn down the forest not as a force of destruction or evil, but instead of renewal, a natural life cycle of the forest.
It will make sure no humans get caught up in it, as well. Strictly an action that is beneficial for the land in the long run, with no one getting hurt, and is a request made by the one who saved our lives when we had hit a dead end on our own and was almost undoubtedly be captured by the US military who thinks we our terroists, when while not guilty of terroism per say, we are guilty of being the cause of the fires that are being pinned on us and probably have a high death toll because of.
On one side: Lighting the forest on
fire will almost certainly be attributed to us even if they don't see it. We are noted as the person who probably started the mall fire, who almost certainly started the house fire that spread, and were last seen running into the forest.
While we are running to a different country, assuming our identity or image isn't also given to Canada, or that they would be fine with a mega arsonist being in the country, is a bit… hazardous. Also since most of the world doesn't know about magic, it is not like saying "the spirit of the land wanted me to do it to renew the forest, and ensured me that no one would be harmed" is going to fly until the demons start coming out en masse, and magical girls and other supernatural phenomena have to stand up to defend the world.
There is also the fact that we need to consider as one of the first magical girls (apparently the third, according to posts above mine apparently XD) and that our actions define how the world will view magical girls in the future. The world isn't aware that we would be doing this for a "good reason", and increasing the negative cast on us could very well increase the negative cast on
all magical girls in the future if we aren't careful. There might not
be a golden age of magical girls like in Crystal watcher's quest before the fall of Hope.
Of course the idea that our actions have a bigger effect than they would appear to was kind of apparently spoiled by posts made when I was pulled away from the computer in the middle of responding to this
again so…
(edit: all that said, even knowing the potential consequences I am very much tempted, and have a high chance of voting to burn down the forest anyway because we owe forest bro
)
You create a small sphere of cold, then start compressing it as you did with the fire. It acts... differently to the fire. It doesn't really drastically change temperature, though it does a little. It feels a lot more solid than your ball of plasma and once you get a good look you understand why.
In your hands is a solid ball of ice, though you can't feel the cold coming from it. You are confused as to where the ice came from, seeing as there isn't any water nearby to be frozen. You ask your sister and she rummages through her bag for the encyclopedia. You spend the next ten minutes playing with the ball of ice as you walk, while you sister skips through the book before coming onto an entry that makes her go 'Aha!'
Apparently air has little molecules of water in it, it must have been those that froze when you compressed the air. Still, you aren't quite sure what would happen if you detonated the ball of cold, it doesn't really seem to be combat worthy. Though you might think of some use for it beyond making your enemies suffer a cold breeze. Maybe you could try freezing the air? You don't actually know if air can freeze, though you do know water turns into a gas so maybe?
You know I had this quoted specifically as it was the moment I went "oh right on the run we wouldn't have gone to school and we are probably even more clueless on science than a person a few years younger than us because we have probably started forgetting some things learned the last time we are in school" but in the next story post Rukia basically said it outright.
That said, we should get into another discussion on that matter.
Should we
really try to fix this problem. One one side, knowing things like there is water in the air is good, and knowing that there is nitrogen in the area and being able to play with liquid nitrogen would be even
better, but on the other hand, I suspect some of the laws of the universe are easier to break when you haven't internalized them and started to think "this isn't possible".
Hahaha.
You don't even begin to understand how pleased I am with us gaining this super ability (it is revealed to be a super ability because it is bolded on the character sheet for those who haven't read Crystalwatcher's quest).
Honestly my plans for this character's skill main offensive set:
work on thermo kinesis
Work on magical force spell and a few other spells to make learning telekinesis easier.
Learn telekinesis
use telekinesis and some other spells to really grind that control stat even farther while getting fine control of telekinesis
Start learning some lightning abilities now that we have higher control (lightning, being tied to heat and destruction should fall under the purview of our abilities nicely while having the main damaging component not actually be the heat.)
eventually move on to electrokinesis.
There would be other fun stuff (like the fire sword constructs are things I was planning to eventually make launchable and to explode once it stabs into something, putting all that explosive force into the tip that had penetrated the enemy, hopefully bypassing certain types of defense), but the key point of it was to make an effective "kill aura" around us.
Enter a certain distance from us and you are in range of our thermo, electro, and telekinesis, and unless are immune to at least two of the three have a good chance of being screwed.
That we actually got a "kill aura" as our first super ability makes me giddy XD. That it actually feeds us even more power the more it destroys is even
better.
Though of course we absolutely have to get it mastered to the point where only what we want to be effected by it is effected, or at the very least to a point where we can key other people or things to not be effected and remove that "key" at will, in case of sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Also the Darkfire's idea of being able to limit this to heat and combining it with thermokinesis is
great, just saying. Something to definitely work on.
All this said, I am not for practicing
Alpha and Omega while on the land the spirit seems to be a part of, personally, so I'd avoid using it again until we are out of the forest at least.
A feelings seems to be transmitted from the barrier to you at one side, you take a look over to find your sister lobbing little stones at the barrier, only to have them rapidly degrade into nothing on contact.
That is… much faster than what happened inside the aura, so I guess the edges have the effect amplified by an insane degree.
I wonder if the barrier would disintegrate any non-magical bullets fired from outside of it before they hit us?-
Well, not testing that out unless absolutely required (inb4 Una uses gun to test this, rolls a 1, breaks her wrist on recoil and instead of shooting to the side of us like intended hits us straight in the chest).
Fucking, double crit on the most important rolls. Why
Because the quest decided to answer my prayers just this once
.
You try and compress the barrier back into you, and it does collapse back into you, though it is still running.
We might want to consider, once we have better control of it doing this all the time seeing how that would affectedly remove the initial fatigue casting this causes since after the spell is cast it costs nothing to maintain.
The barrier at it's current level cannot even harm normal humans. Their residual magic resists it's effects. If it's levelled up though...
Also note: It is probably because of this that Una wasn't harmed, so we definitely need to never use it with her in it while training until we got the exclusion thing down pat or else we might find that we
just hit the level it works on humans far too late
Luckily the next chapter is somewhat of a breather chapter besides being able to create light, which is fun though:
You really weren't sure what the normal response was to be being told to set someone or something on fire, but according to your sister it was perfectly normal to have urges to set things on fire and want to destroy the world. You are pretty sure that had something to do with something she's read, you've never heard anyone else describe their urge to set things on fire or destroy the world... Maybe it was just a private thing you didn't share? Man, teenagers were weird. It was a good thing you had kept Una away from them, who knew what they would do.
I half way wonder if the reason Una thinks it is perfectly normal to have urges to set things on fire and want to destroy the world is because
Una also has those thoughts sometimes.
When she and Cerys was abused, the world turned away from them and ignored their pain. The only one who has done good for her is her sister, who sullied herself, potentially killing their father when she stabbed him (though I suspect that he is alive personally just for all the
plot that can come from it if he ever finds them again), and condemned herself to a life on the run, doing shady business,
for Una's sake.
Lets not forget that Una also has read pretty dark things (Berserk was mentioned as something she read I believe?), and has an overactive imagination. The fact that Cerys tries to keep Una away from the shadier side of the world and keep her pure without telling her everything that Cerys did, might actually make her imagine Cerys doing
worse things than she actually has done, again for the sake of providing for Una, because the rest of the world was incapable and looked away when she needed it most. Heck she already knows without a doubt that we killed at least one person, the looter, who she might have saw the body of before we finished covering it with towels seeing how she was standing behind us the moment it was done. For all Una knows we might have done such acts before, to protect her.
she's doing that frowning thing she does when she's sleeping for really bad injuries.
She recognizes the frown we have when sleeping with really bad injures, pretty easily, makes me wonder how much times we slept while having bad injuries around her.
the loud noise only prevented by you making an awesome combat roll that sis taught you
We taught her a combat roll. Why would we know "awesome" combat stuff if we didn't get into fights regularly.
sis had always told you to leave anything like that for her to deal with, and apart from showing you how to use a gun in case you were in a tight situation you know that they were really dangerous and that you should leave them well alone for sis to death with.
We taught her to use a gun, and to leave the alone for
us to deal (also you spelt deal wrong there if you didn't notice
) with. Does she know how we learned how to use a gun? What could a child with an over active imagination be thinking of that fact? What narrative could she have constructed for Cerys?
Since she also spent a lot of time alone, and probably wouldn't have mentioned any of these thoughts to Cerys
if she did think them…
It isn't like
Cerys would ever imagine her cute little sister ever having such thoughts
.
I now have the picture of Una joining the darkness if we died in a way that wasn't to them or herself, to get revenge on the world that ruined everything for her
.
Of course, she could also just be a ball of fluff, with trust issues, but loves her sister, and the world despite her father and mother.
Certainly I doubt that if she does have such thoughts that she would have them all the time. Maybe not even often. She definitely didn't seem to be having them at the time that we were controlling her, but it is not like most people think their worst thoughts all the time
.
Now onto the last update:
Mysterious probably magical invitation given to one of the leading scientists in the world. Interesting but I think I am missing context to actually put everything in perspective.
The Commonwealth is doing
really well it seems, though it is worrying that they see America and Europe as "enemies".
Rule Britannia indeed. I just hope that things don't break into war
before the demons attack
As for the last part of the update: not enough context to say either way, but if it is bad, it is
really bad, if it is good than it depends on who it is good
for, specifically.
Though with the fact that this had come right after the sentence "Next, would come the resurgence of the empire." and this is the Britannia interlude, I wonder if this is waking up specifically because the empire is being reformed.
