Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

“So most of this requires visualisation and imagination? What, you just imagine you get stronger and you suddenly do?”

Scarlett's voice was filled with doubt and Yuriko couldn't help but chuckle.

“It is that simple…and complex.”

Scarlett's side eye only made her laugh louder, though she was mindful of preventing the sound from escaping their immediate vicinity.

“You're suddenly the mysterious teacher, huh?” She tilted her head. “Was it from that role in the movie?”

“Not at all,” Yuriko said mildly. At Scar’s pointed glare, she continued, “Imagination and visualisation are key, but knowledge, understanding, and insight play a big part, too. Easy enough to think you want to be strong, but you have to know how to do it. Now, you can experiment and find out that way,” she paused, then sighed, “that's actually how I learned. But knowing how things work, and research makes it, er, better?”

Scarlett’s eyebrows rose as if asking why Yuriko was asking her, which prompted another giggle.

“And you've had your power for only a few cycles, right? A season?”

For this incarnation body, that was true. But since the beginning, it had been a bit more than five years, six if she counted the time she spent in Irvalla, which flowed twice as fast as back home.

“How come you're so good at it, then?” Scarlett asked idly while she practiced with her Animakinesis. Five inches of reach wasn't much, but she could carry and move an object twenty-five Jin in weight at about a pace per second. It wasn't much of a boost if she applied it to her physique, but every little bit counted. Practically speaking, she was better off working out to bring herself to peak mortal fitness.

Yuriko shrugged, “Talent?”

At Scarlett's flat stare, Yuriko devolved into giggles. “Oh, haha. You should diversify into being a stand up comedian, too.”

“No, thanks. Being an actress and model is busy enough.”

Scar nodded at that, then continued her training. That they were doing this in the midst of hostile territory couldn't be helped since it was only recently that her Anima reach expanded.

She watched Scarlett with a single strand of consciousness while the others focused on her flying swords. Aside from the cannons she wrecked earlier, the other four swords had not encountered more artillery. Instead, she used them to spy on the encampment. It was larger than she expected.

Despite destroying one set of cannons, fiery shells continued to hammer the plains and forests surrounding the camp. None were directed at her, however, so she didn't do anything about it now.

‘Who’re they fighting with?’ she wondered, as she sent a single sunblade to track the assault. The cannons could hit a target over three leagues away, probably up to five or six, but with a corresponding loss of accuracy.

It had been a few minutes since Dee brushed off her communication attempt, and while she felt mildly worried, she trusted her Chaos Lord’s strength.

Ok instead, she was really curious on who — or what — was attacking, so she set the rest of her blades into a search pattern and soon enough…

“Huh…” She huffed.

It was the Unfettered. Of course.

Her limited view caught a bunch of humanoid lionesses at the Forest's edge, as well as the regenerator, and another man. The latter sported a white doctor’s coat, and was probably as tall as she was. He held some kind of contraption pointed towards the camp's walls. Hmm, perhaps the better term was fortress rather than encampment considering how built up it was.

Of greater import, and the reason she hadn't moved to strike them down, was the steady stream of humanoid creations that emerged from Labcoat’s shadow.

A couple of such creatures crawled out every second, then lurched towards the walls. She sent another sunblade along that path and quickly found that those things gathered in groups of twenty roughly ten paces away from Labcoat, before they charged the walls. They were twice as fast as a mortal — a physically fit mortal — could run, and they moved relentlessly, despite being shelled at the halfway point, before being cut down by a fusillade of bullets not fifty paces from the wall.

That had been going on long enough that there were piles of corpses along the path, which provided cover for the reinforcements. The things only looked human, but with several hundred samples, it wasn't difficult to examine their internals. The list glaring tell was that their blood was not red, but a dark bluish grey. None of the things actually reached the walls, nor have they tangled with the army’s daemon corps.

Come to think of it, why hadn't they shelled the Unfettered directly? She couldn't detect anything through her sword's perception field and she was half tempted to head there personally. But she restrained herself due to the need to wait for Dee and the hopefully freed prisoners.

While she was at it, she should work out how to see using her swords rather than rely entirely on Anima perception. Perhaps if she made an eye from Animus? She was sure it was possible but had no clue how to do it.

Alternatively, she had anchored a scrying spell on her swords before, though it was by no means integrated into the sword conjuration.

But the annoying thing about it now was that she simply forgot to turn the sunblades into a scrying sensor. Even if the spell would only allow her to view the area around the blade through another medium — a mirror or a pool of still water was commonly used in Brescia — and it didn't even have as much range as her perception… which only cemented why it wasn't something she did automatically.

There was another spell called Magus’ Eye that created a spell construct, a replica of a human eye. This one she learned the existence of in Shangria. She didn't know how to cast it, yet. Hmm, she should ask Carina…

At the moment, her true body was wandering around their base camp biome, as well as the couple of biomes attached to it that didn't lead back to the road chain or to the supply biome. The rest of her companions were in other biomes hunting shards for credits.

It seemed that she had underestimated the supply biome’s use in extending a stay into Shangria, especially considering how small her party was compared to the usual expedition sizes.

It had taken several days of watching how Carina fought the monsters to realise that she had grossly overestimated the delvers that regularly went through the planetary labyrinth. Simply put, most of the day labourers were nowhere near a Knight’s level. They were closer to Journeymen, or the upper bounds of Apprentice, by Imperial reckoning.

The expeditions that tried to delve beyond the third layer contained the Knight level combatants, but we're composed mostly of Journeymen. That meant the supply biomes in the second layer were mostly unoccupied, and especially since the group camped two biomes away, there was little forbidding them from staying as I

long as they liked.

Each supply biome provided a bounty rich enough to feed a couple of hundred people a day, and Ilvarra told her that not even a quarter of that number actually partook. It simply meant that they could stay here until they gathered enough funds to purchase everything they needed to delve all the way to the bottommost layer. A good thing too, since she didn't want to repeat doing this. The monsters were too weak to provide any sort of challenge, and only if she restrained herself to fighting with a simple blade, and not use any Anima armour or physique boost was there any meaning to the hunt. She did that a few days ago already.

The monsters, she quickly found, had a predetermined set of responses. They were varied enough that it wasn't all that apparent, but when she fought them with naught but an arming sword, they always reacted in an identical manner to the same sword stance. It was the same for different members of the species, and really, they were clearly artificial, but she'd hoped for more. The exercise would actually weaken her foundations considering the lack of creative response. No, it was better to annihilate them from a distance and practice control over a multitude of flying swords.

Anyway, her true body traced her connection to Carina and found the greenette was hunting four biomes away, accompanied by Gwendith. So she simply sent a message to her lover, ‘Gwen, could you ask Carina if she knows the Magus' Eye spell?’

Gwen replied a minute later, ‘She doesn't. But the spell structure could be purchased back at the station.’

‘Alright, thanks.’

Yuriko sighed as she strolled towards a freshly spawned monster. She cut it down with a casual swing that released an Arclight Crescent. The slash wasn't infused with anything other than the force of her attack transmitted through the air. The critter was so weak that its exoskeleton barely resisted before it was cleft in twain.

She supposed she could work on Arclight Crescents, to augment her Invisible Edges. Her Crescents flew in too straight a path, and they weren't undetectable by any means. The shimmer of compressed air was rather obvious… or perhaps only to those with good senses.

She had initially thought to join the Martial Tournament in the coming Season, then discarded it when she found that they didn't need to join an expedition to reach the bottom layer, but it might be a good way to hone her Truths. Heron enjoyed his stint in the arenas back in Xotha after all. Hmmm. By the time they collected enough shards the tournament would just be a few weeks away. Worth waiting for, perhaps?

Her attention was once again drawn to Astoria. The ground shuddered in a different way from falling cannon shells.

Scarlett opened her eyes from her meditation. “Wha—?”

Yuriko shook her head. They were in a clearing roughly a hundred paces from the plains. The canopy wasn't that thick but enough that only a flier directly overhead would be able to spot them. She flew up and carefully peeked from cover.

The camp in the distance didn't look worse for wear. There were thin trails of Drake alike, but she wasn't sure if those hadn't been there before. She squinted at the direction Dee was at, and it wasn't much of a surprise to find a smoke column there.

Was the smoke glittery?

The Interstitial Space trembled, then settled after a couple of seconds, only to repeat a few seconds later. The connection to Dee was still shut tight and she didn't want to press. Worry gnawed at her guts, despite knowing that her Chaos Lord should remain unharmed no matter what happened.

The tremors devolved into earthquakes and Yuriko descended back to the forest floor when she heard Scarlett's yelp of distress.

Her friend had fallen on her bottom and couldn't get up with how severe the quakes were. She landed next to the smol woman and held her arm.

“What's happening?” Scarlett cried.

“I’m not sure…” Yuriko said, then paused when she finally received Dee’s communication.

‘A mixed success, Master,’ the Chaos Lord's voice was tinged with frustration. ‘I’ve secured nineteen prisoners, but there were more held in the past. They were more than enough to enact the Irvallan ritual. In that, I've failed. My deepest apologies.’

‘Not your fault,’ Yuriko immediately sent back, ‘but what was the purpose of the ritual?’

‘They’ve torn open holes into the veil. There are now multiple passages from this Bridge into Astoria.’

Well. That was troubling. Whether it was weal or woe remained to be seen.