To say it took the rest of the day for the gangsters to reach their hideout wasn’t quite true, Yuriko decided. They headed towards the mountain, but really, pick any direction to go and technically, one would be headed towards the mountain wall surrounding Dragon Fall City’s perimeter. It looked like a perfect sphere according to the map, but even three-dimensional recreations didn’t do justice to how majestic they looked, and how steep and jagged the slopes were.
Anyway, it was midafternoon when the gangsters stopped by an abandoned farmstead. Well, she only assumed it was a farm considering that the land around it was divided into plots. The land laid fallow, however, and there was little sign of actual growth.
She was actually about a longstride away from the pack, and while it had been difficult to tail them since the Bladedancer was a bit loud, she managed it by going low throttle. Now, she and Fluffington were hidden behind a ridge, peeking over it every few minutes for the first hour, before she eventually settled down. At the very least they hadn't brought out the captives but left them locked up in the trailer of the hauler—or rather, the truck, which was what they called that type of vehicle meant for carrying heavy loads or cargo. She overheard a few men calling it a lorry though, so she probably should just refer to the things as a hauler. Hmmm, even though they didn’t look identical to the Empire’s haulers, right? The general shape and purpose were the same, so that worked.
“Keep an eye out for me, Fluff,” Yuriko said and the pupper nodded solemnly. Then she settled into a seated meditation pose and started work on refining her Anima. The growth had not slowed down, which was nice. How many more days before she reached a thousand paces? That had been the threshold, she remembered. Well, technically, she could already advance with her current reach, but why would she do that? Come to think of it, maybe it was Damien who was the perfectionist, not just her. It was only a couple of weeks ago that she unearthed memories that included advancement requirements for the Ancient’s Way, and it had been surprising.
Anima reach requirements to advance to the next Stage was only about a tenth of what she thought. So she only needed a hundred paces to advance to Manifestation.
But she would be foolish to do so. Although Damien’s memories had not stated it clearly, advancing at such a low point meant that it would be that much harder to advance to the next Stage. Plus, there was a sort of inherent strengthening effect every time she advanced. Her Anima would become denser, purer, tougher, more flexible, and so on, but it would only affect the reach she had upon advancing. And, the process of going up a Stage also increased her reach by a multiple of what she had.
That wasn’t to say that it was impossible to catch up. It was. Anima refinement and purification did just that. It simply was easier to purify and refine by advancing than to do it after everything was done. So the more she had, the closer she was to the theoretical threshold, the easier it was to move to the stage beyond.
But…she was unaging, and she was sure that was true for any Ancient. So really, the factor was all about how much time she was willing to hold off advancing to accrue greater power immediately after doing so, or if she wanted to advance soon and work on catching up for a subjectively longer time later.
She had not perfectly advanced last time anyway, and she used up a lot of Ambrosia to accelerate her progress. It was enough to make a difference in the war, but then again, what war iss she fighting now?
Oh. The need to return home before everyone she knew died of old age?
Yeah, that was a bit pressing, wasn’t it? But the problem could not be solved by her reaching Manifestation sooner. It might, but she wasn’t sure, so she wouldn’t.
Sighing, Yuriko spent the next few hours meditating to purify her Anima. Come to think of it, if she stripped down the novelty, and the feeling of slowly growing stronger, purification and refinement was tedious work. She didn’t even need to put her full focus on it as half of her consciousness strands were enough to get the job done. The other half of her consciousness strands, woven together to allow her autonomous thinking, was basically just staring from behind her closed eyelids.
She could also stare at the terrain, but it was drab and dreary, with little of interest, especially while they were hidden. She could examine her Kanegawa Bladedancer, but she’d already done that soon after she bought it. It was an amazing piece of tech that didn’t rely on any kind of runescript enchantment or formation. It was the sheer poetry of natural reactions and mechanical movement. She learned more from examining the bike at work than she did reading all those books in Bresia, or even the information freely available through REI-space here.
‘Who knew that the engine worked by exploding neo-petrol inside a sealed cylinder that pushes a piston up and down?’ Yuriko mused as she wondered how knowing that would apply to herself. Well, it wasn’t as if she could make explosions easily. Containing and directing the force of an explosion was something she already knew, sorta, though the concept became clearer now that she saw a working model. Thinking back to the vehicles back home, or even those in Bresia…
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Landcraft was powered by Animus, which made the wheels turn through the runescript formations. Visually, it was just a line of runescript going from the jade cartridges to the wheels, and another line from the Animus input from the pilot to the storage.
Bresia’s was a bit more complicated in a sense. They used a captured spirit, or perhaps a better term would be a fragment of a spirit, a remnant found in a beast core. They harnessed that spirit’s instincts to a crafted golem body, the Steelds, and enchanted everything with runescript formations. That, in essence, created a beast of burden, with the advantage of having untiring bodies that could feed on ambient Elemental energies.
The machines here in Dragon Fall, extracted energy locked within the neo-petrol by igniting it with a spark of lightning, which then pushed the piston, which then turned the crankshaft, which then turned the wheels.
Yuriko pursed her lips as she pondered. It was all energy, really. Or more specifically, energy of one sort being transformed into another sort that was more useful to someone. Hhu, it really boiled down to that, right? Just like how she breathed in ambient Elemental energies that she converted to Radiant, which she then turned into Animus. That in turn could be changed into any kind of energy she needed, or simply utilised to power some of her old techniques. The only one she really used it for was to make sure her Adamant Guardian Seal was primed. Did she actually have to use Animus for it? Why not Radiant?
Would that mean she could use it more often? No, the bottleneck to using Adamant Guardian Seal was how long it took to form its mandalas and how many she could hold in her Anima. Objectively, she used about a pace of reach to hold on to a mandala, which precluded it from being used in her kinesis, restricting her body, or as armour. She could layer the mandalas to hold more instances of using the technique, which was part of what she learned from that obsidian obelisk so long ago, and the limit was about three. She had pushed it to five by imitation and mimicry, but that had resulted in more of her reach, and Animus, being occupied.
Could she form the mandalas with Radiant energy or Elemental energy?
And she should probably revisit that when she wasn’t stalking people, right? Heh?
For that matter…
Yuriko opened her eyes. Her consciousness was in the dreamscape, or what passed for it here. Not in REI-space since she didn’t want to go into the reflection of Dragon Fall City. Here, all the threads connecting her to others were visible, though the myriad numbers could obscure everything if she wasn’t careful.
She looked at Kato’s thread, observed the severed end. It was slowly disintegrating, and she had assumed he died, but with what she felt and saw when she drank daemonfyre whiskey—perhaps she was wrong. The colours of the aura, the feel of the aura, couldn’t be a coincidence.
Hmmm?
‘Why is there so much green?’ Yuriko muttered to herself. She wasn’t referring to the threads but a strange film that seemed to have formed around her dreamscape self. It wasn’t exactly touching her…but some of it was coming from threads. She couldn’t tell which threads were the source since they were all clumped up together…
She glared at a bundle while that green filmy, smoky, thing oozed out of it. It looked like liquid, but as soon as it got free of the entanglement, it vaporised into fog. Well, it was thinner than fog, and almost felt like water? Syrup? She wasn’t sure.
The feeling…
She reached out to touch it, but most of the green simply floated away. But they still lingered around her though.
She poked and prodded at the green film, and it almost reminded her of ambient Chaos. It was close to the same shade, but it didn’t feel like Chaos. It wasn’t endless potential locked into a tiny dust mote. The film felt more…cloying? Well, it didn’t exactly bother her, and she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been bored while waiting.
She directed a bit of pure Radiant energy at it, but the green film just avoided the motes. But when she cornered it, the Radiant consumed it like any other energy source. The golden light took on a tinge of green for a long moment, though. Yuriko frowned as she watched the golden green light burn for longer than it should have after she cut off the source. It took nearly three times as long before the Radiant mote burned out, and it retained the greenish tinge the entire time. But thankfully, the tinge did not spread to the nearby motes and simply tainted the ones it came into contact with. She pulled the burnt out mote and observed it, but found little that was different from any other ambient Chaos mote. Shrugging, she was about to continue experimenting when
“Woof!”
She felt Fluffer’s tiny teeth nip at her fingers, followed by his tongue caressing her knuckles. She pulled her consciousness, the strands she devoted to the dreamscape anyway, back into her body and opened her eyes. Fluffers panted next to her hand and he turned his head to the side several times.
“What is it, Fluff?” Yuriko asked.
‘Movement. People coming.’
“Eh?”
Yuriko frowned as she expanded her perceptive aura. She immediately found several human shaped void spaces, the nearest one not more than fifty paces away.
“Hmmm. Hide, run, or fight?” she mused.
She was indecisive enough that the choice had been taken from her when the first ‘chronian walked around the ridge, assault rifle leading. He was followed quickly by half a dozen more armed ‘chronians.
“Well, well, well. Looks like there was a rat after all.”
The man smirked, but paused when Yuriko turned to face him. His expression turned quickly from mocking to lascivious. It made sense though, since she wasn’t restraining her Mien.
Yuriko smiled, her gaze sweeping through all seven gunmen. Each of them stiffened, and all of them looked at her with lustful eyes. She gave a little teasing smirk and she could hear their hearts skipping a beat.
“Now, now. That’s rude,” she said in a low voice. “Why don’t we get comfortable and you can tell me what your gang is up to.”
Her Mien tangled them up, and unlike her Anima perception, their ‘chronian gear proved no impediment.
“Of course, mistress,” all seven said in unison.