The hunter-between-layers doesn’t stick around long. Like a cat, it bats at the annoying sand all around, kicks a clump of it back like shrapnel at Raika, and then runs off, disappearing behind an invisible wall the instant it leaves its seating place. If she had to guess, it’s probably not the last time the creature will try to harass her, but it seems that with its initial desire to play mollified, it’s just… lost interest in her. She had questions she wanted to ask, things she wanted explained, anything at all that it might be able to tell her about the “Pack” she’s heard mentioned- but no. That would be much too convenient. Whatever it has transformed into, whether or not it held a similar form at birth, it certainly seems to have embraced feline instincts enough to mimic their total and absolute disinterest in anything that doesn’t entertain or feed them.
Raika looks at herself through a half-melted panopticon crown, most of her own biomass now spread out all over thin, sharpened limbs in a great tangle of branches. Both are being eaten away rapidly by the sands once again, a thousand tiny bursts of sharp destruction and crawling death making themselves known in a feeding frenzy. Stealth is only useful until it’s broken, and the rich, vibrant purple blood splattered all over the nearby dunes has enough Qi in it to match the trio she’s picked up a dozen times over.
So that whole experience was… enlightening.
Half her techniques never had a chance to even make an appearance. The techniques of Supreme Body Art were useful, but Overclocking is too expensive to use at will, Gigant is nearly always on nowadays anyways, more for keeping her body functional than for combat utility, and both Full-Body Transformation and Specialized Enhancement take time. If she’d pulled out all the stops, the fight would have gone very differently, even with her damage options limited, but she… probably would still have lost. Or at least wasted too much energy.
She looks inside at the strange, ephemeral barrier between her Body and her inner world. Veins of pure Qi run through the inner world, sustaining it and empowering her if need be, and inside the vast space of her biology, she has set up patterns of circulation, musculature and organs that mimic natural formations, following the guidance of her Heart’s instincts. Her Qi generation is, at this point, likely above that of a Nascent Soul cultivator. With her Truths, she can fuel her transformation of Qi into materials with minimal waste.
But it’s expensive.
On top of that, the fight made one thing very clear; if she had unleashed everything she had, it would only have become a longer battle of attrition. The Dao helped, but considering that the killing intent (something else she doesn’t know how to use) didn’t even appear throughout the fight until the end, it likely wouldn’t have gotten a true win either. Faced with the spatial warping of the cyclopean lion, equipped with Dao of its own, it wouldn’t have bridged the gap. She needs better offensive options, and she needs to keep refining her ability to use Qi, keep improving the variation, utility, and foundations of her Supreme Body Art.
Slowly, she shifts away from the tangle of limbs, returning to her desert-strider form. Spatial alteration and Supreme Body Art: Gigant ensure that her biology doesn’t collapse, a series of lattices, architecture and reinforcement ensuring that her body can sustain its mass within her inner altered space. Miles of veins pump and cycle Qi through them, creating more through the patterns of its movement and interaction with itself, refilling her vast reserves at a decent pace. In an hour, she’ll be back to full. Looking inside her biology, she sees that the inner rooms are undisturbed, the actual location and mass of them kept static despite all the exterior movement.
So. The fight… wasn’t the worst thing. Better to face a genuine threat when it’s not trying to kill you than when it is. Slaying Nascent Soul cultivators is a hell of an accomplishment, and she slew four at a time, but there’s a difference between soldiers and talents, and despite her passengers, the likelihood of more esoteric forms of power and higher levels of it remain likely here in the fourth ring.
So far from the start. So much further to go.
She spits out bits of carnivorous bone-sand, digging through her outer muscles and trying to enact war and death unto her body. Her Heart briefly sends her a feeling like a sad puppy, but even the thought of absorbing the Dao in them makes the headband around her inner world hurt.
And… despite her disgust at what was done, she is aware that there might be a blessing in disguise in the restriction.
She’s been creative, yes, but for the most part, her victories have come from cleverness, surprise, and the ability to constantly, endlessly grow. Without consuming the Dao of the fortress city’s attacks, she would not have been able to fight back nearly so easily against its stronger champions. Without consuming the Qi of her enemies to regenerate, she’d have lost long ago. It’s one thing to win, another to win easily or effectively, and it’s clear that despite her relative strength, she’s still using tools that need refining, that haven’t been properly explored. There’s certainly more to discover if she were to study flesh-crafting techniques like the empire uses for their bio-constructs, more refinements to be made, but the Supreme Body Art and the use of explosive energies isn’t going to let her really win. Without the band restricting her, she could probably eat, heal and grow her way out of anything still a threat to her, consume Domains and Souls piece by piece- not enough to guarantee victory, but enough to keep victory a clear possibility. Without that… well, it reminds her of Taran’s lesson, politely reminding her with a shotgun to the face about how she used her body in a way that neglected any and all martial arts that she could have been using.
Mmh. Work to be done. More to learn. And in spite of the added challenge, of the loss of surety… she can’t help it. It’s sort of exciting.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Though she will absolutely still be removing it and telling the Emperor to go fuck itself the second she finds out how. Using the same willpower that allowed her to do and survive the impossible to do so again is one thing, purposefully limiting her own potential for the sake of her ego is another.
She staggers to one side, two of her limbs cracking under the strain of constant wear-and-tear that the Daos of the dead desert force on her. The blood spilled has been nearly all subsumed by this point, and the sands are only getting more active.
Time to go, then.
She shifts, altering the brain she’s been using for her outer perception. She reinforces the patterns that form when she’s focused, single-minded, and navigating the terrain, reducing the energy and synapses between the others. It’s imperfect, but it makes for a mind that can deal with the stress and boredom of the trek without losing focus, and it reduces the chemical needs, and thus the Qi requirements, to keep it running. She’s got others.
So modified, she starts walking, shifting the focus of her gestalt over more towards her interior.
She reforms a body and clothes next to Li Shu once again, forming the same doorway and alcove to manifest in as she did her new visitors. No reason not to provide even the illusion of space.
Li Shu is busy studying, as she often does when stressed. The manual that the Imperial healer offered Raika to give to her is on the small table in front of her, its pages already annotated and a fresh notebook open beside her. For all her genius, she too needs a little bit of guidance to make connections, and an official manual of medicine from the Empire’s own vaults is going to have a lot more information in it, written much more practically, than most conventional healers. The changes to education and information that the Empire has fostered pretty much ensure it, and stand as some of its more impactful and meaningful accomplishments. If anyone can find hidden issues in it, or use it simply as a jumping off point, it’s Li Shu.
Raika knocks politely on the frame of the freshly-made doorway.
“Alright if I come in?” she asks.
Li Shu meets her eye… and nods.
She comes in, taking a seat across the table. It’s pretty cluttered, but, well… it’s not very hard to just have the table extend itself out a few more inches to make room.
“I… want to apologize,” Li Shu says. “I don’t know the context of your escape. Our escape. And for however impressive you are… I was pretty out of it, but you didn’t come in from the direction of most of the wounded. And you’d have to be some kind of Emperor-realm prodigy to suppress an entire fortress on your own to escape, especially with Jin and I. Not even counting what they did to you. I’m not… I don’t ever want to kill someone. Ever again. But I have. And… harm is often the cost of healing. I could not and would not act as you did in your situation, but we are not the same people. And… despite what I would like, the world we live in is not so kind as for me to believe that we can move through it without ever hurting others. I… I spoke harshly. Naively. I trust you, and I believe that you would only act in such a way if you truly believed it was the best possible choice. I will continue to try and ensure that the least amount of people die as I can possibly reach… but I also know that the world is not perfect, and that violence and death are a part of it, and that sometimes they are inevitable in the path of change and betterment.”
Raika says nothing for a while. Then she sighs, long and quiet.
“Apology accepted.”
Li Shu gives a sigh of relief, and Raika grins back at her. “Thank you for saying that, but I never took offense. I don’t have nearly the issues that you do with killing, but it’s never been my first choice, or something I do for pleasure. There are… there are some people in the world whose death, I think, would be a good thing, and I would find little burden in delivering it. There are times when I have and will weigh the lives of those against me and my objectives and find that objective heavier on the scales. There are even some people I think I’d like to kill. I don’t think that makes me evil, but it certainly leaves me closer than you, but I have never once taken it lightly, and it’s never been something I’ve done on a whim. But… well, I’m am no perfect person, and when I fail to doubt myself, it can still be a good thing to have someone I trust call me on my actions. I am honored that you choose to be such a person, and gratefully accept your apology.”
Li Shu giggles, her breath hitching a bit with the release of anxiety brought on by Raika’s words. “Gods, so prim and proper. Hardly like you at all.”
Raika just shrugs. “I guess. I’m… trying to say things more sincerely. Honest, direct… but not everything has to be aggressive or a joke. Some things are and need to be, and I’m happy to rub that in anyone’s face that asks, but considering I’d be dead at least three times over without you, I’m pretty satisfied with just telling you things true.
Li Shu cocks an eyebrow. “Wow. Really getting something from all that extra brain matter, huh?”
“Rude! I’ll have you know my original brain was gift enough, and all that’s come since is a bonus.
“Though I am impressed; how’d you find out about the brains?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think it’s possible for literally anyone to control a body of your size consciously, nevermind all the time. Not with a human brain, anyways. Since I know you never got your hands on a special mental technique, and most techniques could take decades to properly master, way slower than your rate of growth, I figured you had to be adding and modifying neural mass. I only figured it out yesterday, by which point concerns about you being ‘yourself’ felt moot; you still act like you, and your Truth probably helps a lot on that front.”
Raika snorts. “They would have wasted you in that infirmary.”
“Maybe. It was nice though, in its own way. Like a more dramatic version of what happened back in the village, sort of sideways. Harder to heal, but the patients needed less in a lot of ways. I do think it would have drained me, staying there, but it was worthwhile.”
“You’ll find chances to do it again. You’re nothing if not proactive in your passions.”
“Heh. I guess so. It… it was simple. A body on the table, a fix, and away we go. This is engaging in a very different way, but the experience was good, for me and for the people I helped. I’m looking forward to using this manual and some of the techniques I used.”
Originally, the plan had been just to check in. Then, to ask for her input on a few different ideas, both to engage with her and try to develop something new. But… seeing her sitting there, looking almost happy with the ideas and mechanics laid out in front of her… it feels wrong to ask for something selfish.
So Raika smiles gently, and ignores the outside world, and plans for the future, and theories about what new technique or power she might learn to manifest. She comes forward over the table, leaning on it with her elbow.
“Do you… mind telling me about it? You can use me as a chalk slate, bounce your thoughts off me.”
Li Shu looks up from her papers, a drop of surprise blending into a look of thanks.
“I’d like that.”
They talk for hours longer as the sun squirms across the sky and their room walks, long and steady, across bright white dunes.