So what level of injury do you think we will get? If the assassin knife was a heavy injury, then my guess is light to moderate. One degree of failure would be almost no injury. Two degrees would be an obvious injury, but not a severe or impairing one.
My guess is moderate~heavy injury for Ling Qi and Su Ling, and the ghost children amalgam isn't rescued, since the Fox is at least 4th realm. Might get off lighter depending on how her dream skills are, but I doubt they are inferior to ours
Still, the most important part was making the choice to try.
If they hadn't even tried, I think the experience would hang over them for a long time.
Trying and failing because you weren't strong enough, fast enough, clever enough?
Thats a tangible thing you could work towards improving.
I thought in early Forge, it was said Su Ling's mom was 5th realm. But I've now been hearing a lot of people been saying she's 4th. So idk.
Either way though, I think we can be certain though we won't get the child out of there, Su Ling will have a new goal from now on. Saving and ensuring the wellbeing of her little sibling. It should be interesting to see as the story continues...What will become more important to her? Exacting vengeful justice on her mom or her new family?
Losing every once in a while is good for the narrative. Ling Qi already has huge protagonist energy and this just humanizes her a bit. Plus it's a running trend to have a bad time with Su Ling (success-wise, they're always fun chapters). I made a comment in the Discord earlier that we should try and get Su Ling and Yu Nuan to hang out together casually so that they can be super confused at each other when they start talking about the luck they've had with Ling Qi.
May we live in interesting times. I'm a fan of success as much as the next guy, but there's a special something in everything going horribly wrong, that primal terror of suddenly finding yourself overextended, vulnerable and under attack.
That moment when your thoughts shift, when you stop thinking about what you were trying to achieve and start thinking about how to survive trying? When the thought 'how bad is this gonna hurt?' flashes through your head? Honestly, it's vigorous like nobody's business, so in its own way it'll be enjoyable to see.
I mean, strictly speaking, you should be surprised. Victory was distinctly more likely than defeat here. Not very surprised, but, you know, the kind of surprised you'd feel about getting a 1/3 chance on the first go.
Yeah, the Omake Gang pushed this from a severe failure to a relatively minor one, the consequences outside of narrative should be equally at nuisance level.
Yeah, the Omake Gang pushed this from a severe failure to a relatively minor one, the consequences outside of narrative should be equally at nuisance level.
I wouldn't go that far. This was always a high-danger adventure. I expect injuries that take time (or maybe a noticeable amount of money) to heal, etc.
I wouldn't go that far. This was always a high-danger adventure. I expect injuries that take time (or maybe a noticeable amount of money) to heal, etc.
I wouldn't go that far. This was always a high-danger adventure. I expect injuries that take time (or maybe a noticeable amount of money) to heal, etc.
Well, it's true that if there is a moment when it is understandable to fail and get hurt, that is trying to flee a 4/5th spirit dream hunting grounds while attempting to rescue a child-amalgam sacrifice.
It still sucks, but we did take the high-risk option of a high-risk adventure.
One of the appeals of a quest over a ligth novel is that the MC can indeed fail, and those failures have consequences.
I mean... I suspect that any injuries incurred in dream will be less physical than we might prefer. Having a few chunks of flesh replaced is likely a lot easier than having chunks of your self identity torn away and having whatever ambient dream stuff happens to be around pour in to infect the voids.
I think it's worth noting a few things:
1.) Su Ling doesn't have an active Spiritual Defense Art. Injuries sustained here will probably be worst for Su Ling
2.) Su Ling has a history of harming herself because of her spirit blood. Having her mother doing the same, and seeing the humans fueling her mother by doing the same, will likely stop that habit
3.) I think that Su Ling will be getting interesting insights, especially in her ability to break through her own self hatred. A Monster is something that chooses to be monstrous. Su Ling doesn't have to be a monstrous human, nor a monstrous foxblood. She can choose to be better.
4.) With the failure, not only can she choose to be better. She needs to be able to have the strength to succeed in her convictions.
5.) Without a spiritual defense art, she'll need to rely on Ling Qi. Ling Qi found strength in connection, and so has Su Ling. We went bigger, and much harder on the diplomatic contacts. Yet it's not too late for Su Ling to join us.
6.) If a Monster is something you choose to be, perhaps a Sister is too. Just like Yu Nuan's reasoning, Su Ling would be freer and stronger with us than without us. Embrace us, and we'll join strength to strength! We broke through to Renxiang! We'll break through to Su Ling too! LESSGO BOND 4!!
I mean... I suspect that any injuries incurred in dream will be less physical than we might prefer. Having a few chunks of flesh replaced is likely a lot easier than having chunks of your self identity torn away and having whatever ambient dream stuff happens to be around pour in to infect the voids.
Ling Qi met Su Ling's eyes. For that single moment, it is as if she can see the thoughts turning in her friend's mind.
"Like-" Ling Qi began.
"-Hell," Su Ling growled.
"Eh?" said the ghost, expression twisted in confusion, flickering between a half dozen faces of cruelty and death as Su Ling's arms wrap around them, and she is tossed over Su Ling's shoulders like an unruly sack of rice.
"Bitch is fat enough already. Ling Qi, what do we do?"
Sixiang shimmers and vanishes, not a mote of attention can be spared for frivolous manifestation as they both gaze out of Ling Qi's eyes, observing the flow of the dream. Wooden walls groan as if under the force of a gale, tar bubbles, and the mists weep with the the grief and pain of the forsaken.
"This should remind you of something," Sixiang whispered.
Ling Qi swallowed and her hand knifed forward, splitting apart rotted wood like soft clay, not cutting or breaking material but merely finding a seam and opening it. She was not the same girl that had fled blind through the house of her mentor, the belly of a hungry high realm spirit. "Take my hand and don't let go!"
Su Ling grasped the hand she threw out in a crushing grip and Linq Qi leapt through the gash in the shrine, through the veil of scintillating color and unshaped dream. The rush of motion came like the wind screaming past her ears and the ground blurring away beneath her feet, wrapped she was at once one with the chaos of shifting colors and stubbornly separate from it anchored by will and love for a friend who would not take submergence in the formless chaos of the liminal realm half as well.
But there was something wrong. A chain, a binding, a terrible weight, grudges and pain and sadness, the terrible aching loneliness of children born and dying without the most meager scrap of love, more hollow than the belly of a streetrat who'd not eaten in a week.
The realm of dream made these chains as real as any steel. And the beast they were bound too felt their tug.
Ling Qi stumbled as her feet touched grass.
"No, no, no," Sixiang murmured frantically in her head.
Ling Qi did not need the reminder to run, to flee as fast as her feet could carry her. She tried for her wings, but they did not answer, her dress was still.
Little children couldn't fly, little beggars did not have fine dresses. What fairy tale did she dream?
Ling Qi's heart thundered in her chest, her bare feet cold on the frost touched grass. The trees seemed so tall now, their shadows so deep. Her lungs burned, her breaths rasped, tears filled her eyes. Because she was alone, save for the one who hunted behind. Just a ragged beggar girl who had wandered too far, never to be missed, never to be found.
Except, except. Wasn't there a hand in hers?
At Ling Qi's core was darkness, a want so deep that she knew in her heart of hearts, would never be filled. It was desperation and hunger and privation, the desolation of the soul, the death of higher thought and all the things that made a person more than a thing. If a single petty human word could be applied, it was Isolation.
But she had wrapped herself in so many other things. Most of all the grasping, yearning wind. Hers was not the open blue sky of limitless freedom, the emptiness that accepted no chains. Hers was the blizzard howl, tugging at shutters, begging to be let in.
Her wind was the wind of Want. A greedy, grasping wind for a greedy, grasping girl.
Desire, the desire for more, the desire for the aching to stop, to be warm by the fire for just a little while. Want was the soul reaching out, the impetus of connection, the abrogation of Isolation, the seed of Community and Home.
Ling Qi is not the little beggar girl. She holds her friend's hand in hers. She does not die alone in the snow, cherishing a warmth she can never hold. Her dream asserts itself.
A blizzard erupts, mist and snow and cold, and a lightless fire burns at the core, rejecting the dream of desolation.
Want advances to III
Want III- Want is the soul reaching out, the impetus of connection, the abrogation of Isolation, the seed of Community and Home.
Home advances to I
Home I: Home is is a binding, woven with each breath
Effect added to Domain
Spiritual Defense Potency is increased by 2 against Isolation effects
And yet, still she runs, grasping that calloused hand in hers even tighter, because though she had thrown off those chains, she knows it is only the edge of the beasts awareness, not it's true strength. But she can also sense that the beast is a languid thing, slow to wake, slow to rouse.
Behind her, she hears Su Ling murmuring under her breath, between breaths.
"...no truth but what you carve. No justice but what you hold, no meaning but what you make. Reject oneness, reject enlightenment, be one of many, accept the world's bounty."
Something sparks in her meridians, something heavy and coarse and solid, and Ling Qi can feel its conflict with the realm they now stand in. The qi she is trying to cycle struggles to even maintain form.
"What happened," she rasps a moment later as they soar, leaving the rough ground to dart among the trees of the grim fairytale forest as something old, and awful and hollow stirs in its heart.
Ling Qi understands at that moment why those shadows frighten her, when she has long been their kin. This darkness does not want to be filled, it is a hunger without end, a stomach with no bottom, it is something beyond her greed, it was born wrong, with a wasting rot in its soul. It suffers and this has made it cruel. "Something dragged us back, like a chain, I couldn't jump us out of this little dream realm."
She doesn't need to say what it is. Su Ling's eyes narrow. "Can you-"
"She can't, I belong here. Silly sister, and you do too now. You shoulda just been happy to get away," says the child sadly. "Now you really are gonna be eaten too."
"You don't belong here. You don't belong to her, or them, or anyone else who hurt you," Su Ling hissed over the rushing wind. "None of you ever did. Fuck I miss my Gran."
Ling Qi grimaces, preferring to pretend she hadn't heard the hoarse whisper her friends voice had dropped into. I don't know if i-" she mumbled thoughts racing. Some application of the Opened Vault technique maybe? The concept was there, the theft of a precious thing, no matter the vault, but she had only just begun to master the technique, to do something so far beyond its purview was-
"Not likely to work," Sixiang whispered voice tinged with fear. "I dunno, maybe I can help, I could try to dig my hands in fray the connection, but-"
Time, time, precious time. Did they have time to play and experiment and try?
"Set us down a second," Su Ling said grimly.
She glanced back at her friend, a frantic question in her eyes.
"I may not be good for much, but I know how to Cut," Su Ling said, the last word spat like a curse that splits a branch from a passing tree. "Sometimes that's all you need to solve a problem."
Something in her, an echo of an echo screams to leave the broken ghost, that it would be easy, and simple, and save them both. That it wasn't a person, just a dream, only a dream.
Her heartbeat thunders in her ears, and Ling Qi's feet touch down on the grass.
"Please hurry Su Ling," Ling Qi said tersely, releasing her hand to scan the darkness.
"Don't need to tell me," Su Ling mutters, swiftly setting down the ghost girl, who looks up in confusion.
Su Ling's saber appears in her hand, unsheathed, the crimson cloth tassel that hangs from its hilt flutters in the wind. "Look… Xisheng, just hold still, alright, we'll get going againin a second."
The ghosts head tilts blood welling up around her neck to stain dirty clothes. "Oh. I don't like this part. But I like you better than Momma, okay!"
Su Ling grits her teeth so hard Ling Qi swears she hears something crack, but there is no time for a back and forth and she knows it. Su Ling's moves into a stance, one even Ling Qi recognizes as one for overhead strikes, having had Renxiang's saber crash down on her head enough times.
"You don't belong here, or to her," Su Ling says, and her qi surges, sharp edged, metallic. Ling Qi sees her eyes mist over, becoming pools of liquid steel. "My blade is Truth."
Air parts around the edge with a soft sigh, the earth splits, and Ling Qi feels an invisible chain sever with an angry shriek.
Xisheng blinks, looking down at themselves in curious wonder, their features a blur of a dozen faces.
But far away, eyes open in the darkness, and it pains Ling Qi to say they are strikingly similar to Su Ling's.
