Book 17-15.1: Encounters
The day was quite warm and Yuriko was taking advantage of it. The Grand Regency Hotel had two different areas for amenities and the one she was on was on the eight floor, in between the two towers that comprised the rest of the structure. It was open to the skies and consisted of varied outdoor activity areas including a large swimming pool and a tanning area.
She was clad only in a skimpy two piece swimsuit—a generous name to call the narrow strips of fabric tied to her body in an attempt to cover her nipples and protect her modesty. Her hair was spread out on the lounge chair and spilled onto the tiled surface, and her hands and arms were flung up overhead. Her eyes were half lidded, uncovered, and practically staring at the noon day sun. Her irises had turned golden with barely suppressed Radiant energy, and her tresses would be noticeably glowing gold if not for the brightness of the day.
A couple of days had passed since she and the other three arrived in Naradon City, and while she initially wanted to return to Neo Prism as soon as she could, her Pixel Fairy agent and Scarlett convinced her otherwise. It helped that her grandfather, through whatever arrangements he made, had booked the hotel stay for a week, and only scheduled the aeroplane trip home on the twentieth. It was the fifteenth day of Earth, Low Earth according to the Astorian calendar, but the number matched up to the Imperial method either way. It was a couple of weeks since the end of the Season of Water, which would have the climate warm up and it was the Season for planting crops. Being lower in latitude compared to Neo Prism City, Naradon didn’t actually have a snowy Season of Water, and now, the weather was almost as hot as the Season of Fire compared to Faron’s Crossing. So her being in a swimsuit was perfectly justified.
Well, there weren’t really any downsides except for the fact that she was in her civilian identity. But then again, grandpa managed to finagle a way to conceal her three-day absence, both from school and from work.
Apparently, she had taken a vacation with friends.
It happened to coincide with the upcoming school break that usually happened mid Low Earth to Mid Earth, but the timing had been too early by a couple of weeks. When she returned, she would have to catch up on missed exams and final projects.
Hmmm, not that she had many. Most of her classes were general education courses and she was actually in flux on whether she wanted to change her major courses or if she’d stick around to journalism.
She wasn’t alone, of course, and she could feel the weight of everyone’s stares. Not that she minded. She could feel connections forming through her Mien, and if she went into the dreamscape, which she needed to do soonish, the threads would be pregnant with Quintessence. Enough to wrangle a couple of drops of Ambrosia, probably. She hadn’t done so simply because she was unsure with body needed it more. The liquid of infinite potential was useful for more than personal growth after all, and she was still considering whether she should use it to awaken Brilliance and Speedrun’s Anima.
Other than that, she wanted to experiment with the effects of Swordlight and Ambrosia, and what it would do to speed up the formation of her Ennoia core. A droplet had formed several strands of Swordlight when she tried it with her true body, but since she wasn’t forming an Ennoia core for the Bladeless Sword in Shangria, she didn’t know all of the effects.
At the moment, she was simply absorbing as much Radiant energy as she could from the Radiant Sun’s pale Astorian reflection, in an effort to restructure her incarnation body’s Radiant Physique.
Her true body’s Radiant Physique focused on volume, and her incarnation body followed suit. The difference in Anima level was also a factor in how strong her physique was, and couple with the fact that she didn’t have the Radiant Flying Swords Ennoia in her incarnation body meant that the amount of Radiant energy she could store in that body didn’t really help as much as she thought.
Hmmm, if she compared storage levels between her true and incarnation bodies, she could roughly estimate it at about a thousandfold? She didn’t want to waste time counting how many motes of Radiant energy her true body stored in her cells compared to the Radiance core, especially since she regenerated whatever she used up faster than she could actually use it up. Most of her true body’s Radiant energy expenditure was in forming the sunblades, and the limit to that number was how many she could control at once. If she kept them tethered, they would renew their reserves as needed. Even with three thousand sunblades active, they couldn’t match how much Radiant energy she regenerated. In her true body.
Her incarnation body couldn’t do the same thing. Forming a single sunblade consumed about a tenth of her reserves, and since she didn’t have a Radiant core here, those reserves were purely from her physique. The pale reflection of the Radiant Sun meant that what she could draw from sunbathing was meagre too, and most of that was also used to regenerate Animus.
She’d already spent most of the morning studying how her Radiant Physique improved her body. Volume was all well and good if her regeneration could fill it up with no trouble. As she was, it took about five or six seconds to refill the amount a single sunblade consumed. And just like her Intent and Will pools, it took longer to refill the tank if there was less in it, though it wasn’t as bad as the latter. Not that she ever experienced a full drain on her Intent and Will, and she only knew about it because of Damien’s memories. If she was drained fully, it would take seven days to recharge ten percent of the tank, and then six and a half days to fill up the next ten percent. Four days to get up to thirty percent, a single day afterwards to reach forty percent, then another twelve hours to reach half. It only took an hour to reach sixty percent from half, then forty five minutes to reach seventy percent. Fifteen minutes to reach eighty percent, and another five to reach ninety percent. From there, it only took a single minute to recover to full.
Radiant energy regeneration didn’t take that long, at least. An hour to recover from a full drain, without any exposure to the sun, probably. Astorian sunlight cut the process by half? Either way, as long as she paced herself, she could have ten or so sunblade a minute, but only if she had the Animus reserves to fuel it. It took about the same amount of Animus as Radiant energy to form a full sized sunblade nowadays, and she could make three blades in less than a second. Probably more than that if she pushed herself and focused more strands of consciousness in the process.
Now…what she needed was to increase her Radiant energy regeneration, preferably without need for sunlight exposure. Her physique already had little furnaces within every cell in her body, but about seventy five percent of the available space was taken up by Radiant energy storage.
Over the last couple of hours, she had been experimenting with new configurations of the Radiant Physique. It was more than the furnace and battery, it was just that the other parts were minuscule compared to the two functions. Anyway, she didn’t need to bother with those. Or at least, that’s what she initially thought. So, it turned out that the ratios were far more important than she expected, and since she didn’t want to mess up her true body’s physique, and since that one didn’t need tuning anyway, only her incarnation body could do what she needed to do. And so far, limited success.
Anyway, working while under the sun was pleasurable in its own way, and perhaps she needed the break as well. The increase in connections to her Mien was just as welcome even if the numbers didn’t go up too much. At least until someone posted her picture on the Network anyway.
Aaand, somebody has. She felt the rush of connections form, though by now, they were easily lost in the mass. It felt more like a feathery touch than anything else, and lasted for less than an instant. She only noticed since her true body was paying attention.
“Miss, you shouldn’t stare up at the sun. That will damage your eyes!”
The high-pitched, concerned voice interrupted her musing and she turned her head to her left, and glanced at the girl child in a nice pink one piece swimsuit who’d addressed her with such concern.
Yuriko smiled and said, “I’m not really bothered, and I’m not looking directly.” She hadn’t been since she had to keep her eyes half lidded to conceal the golden glow. She blinked and pulled back the Radiant energy dancing beneath her skin back into her centre. It would take a while for the agitated Radiance to settle down, but her eyes returned back to its usual ice blue.
“Oh.” The girl nodded, then said, “You’re very pretty. Are you an engel?”
“Hmmm, no, I don’t think so.” Yuriko chuckled as she stretched languidly. Well, her introspection and experimentation was done for the day. She stretched her Anima perception outwards and yawned while she chatted with the kid about inane matters for a few minutes before the girl child skipped towards the children’s pool.
Scarlett, who had been lounging on the chair next to Yuriko muttered, “What’s the point of sunbathing if you use that much sunblock?”
The smol woman had taken on a light tan before she retreated under a parasol, then covered up.
“No sunblock, Scar. I don’t tan easily.” Yuriko smiled. Well, she would have if she didn’t absorb all of the Radiant energy from the sun. Even so, her skin returned to its usual pale complexion after a short while. Less than an afternoon in most cases.
Scarlett’s wounds had healed, and there wouldn’t be any scarring provided she continued to use Recovery over the next few days or so. And she needed to eat half of her body weight in meat every day. Desire had remained in the interstitial space to preserve her Chaos, but she popped back into the material plane every now and then. As for Brilliance and Speedrun, they’ve been entangled in Protectorate business even after what they endured.
Yuriko lazily dipped into the pool and swam towards the edge. It overlooked the area and the water seemed to spill over the side of the building with clever perspective of the designers. She crossed her arms over the barrier and rested her head while she gazed out into the city. Naradon never truly slept. At the very least, all of the casinos, resorts, and other entertainment venues remained open all day and all night. The bright lights of the evening weren’t present at noon, but then again, they were overshadowed by the reflective, and glittery mirror finish of other ornaments. It was a good thing she didn’t mind the light.
Unfortunately, she could smell the daemon stink even from up here. Over the past couple of days, more rifts had appeared across the city, and the creatures that marched out were mostly the apes and the lizards. The pentapods were notably absent, but perhaps they were acting in stealth. Either way, the daemon incursions had made the news, and she listened with half an ear to someone playing a newsreel on their smartphone.
“...happening across many cities, and the gods only know if it's happening across the countryside. What’s the government doing? They should stamp down on this before it ruins everything!...”
All over the Republic of Astoria flowed news of daemon attacks, and not a word on the Irvallans. Whatever those cretins were planning, it wasn’t the time to act yet. But oh, did she ache to fight. If only it wasn’t the boring foes that are the only ones available.