Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

In Shangria, the entirety of the party gathered around the camp. Over the past dozen days or so, Yuriko had puttered around base camp and made improvements here and there. She used her Animus to create constructed scaffolding, then moulded earth and stone to fill things out. Hence, they had numerous chairs, benches, privacy walls, and tables arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner centred on the cooking fire.

She’d also done most of the cooking since the others had been busy collecting shards across several biomes. The ease of battle had been off putting and it was perhaps a silver lining to the darkest of storm clouds — and it was an interesting phenomenon that her true body’s dedicated strands of consciousness made use of idioms and other such expressions that originated from Astoria — that she discovered a bit of dissonance between the strands of consciousness dedicated to her incarnation body. The temporal dissonance had quite discombobulated her, and in the pursuit of survival, she had done something instinctively that she wasn’t quite sure was the entirely right thing.

The time distortion meant that keeping her two minds in sync was more trouble than it was worth. Both of her bodies suffered a migraine and it nearly cost Scarlett her life. So she had to partition her strands of consciousness and allow the incarnation body to run on its own.

She was Yuriko, the one and only. But during that time, it felt as if there were two of her. Memory was shared between the bodies even through the partition, and their Anima was the same. But the bandwidth between the two had been throttled, and during the three days of separation, things had diverged. It was only when she exited Interstitial space did proper mirroring return, and the minute changes blended together.

She normally didn’t notice, but her vocabulary…the turns of phrase she used in her innermost thoughts, had been affected. She was using a bit more idioms using Astorian knowledge, and language. Astoria used a version of Wojan as their primary language. It was different enough from every other version of Wojan that it might as well be an entirely different language, except the rules of grammar and some root words were the same. If not for Lilibeth’s residual memories, she wouldn’t have been able to effectively communicate there.

Her normal thoughts were in Verdanian, though they were slowly shifting to Old Imperial — Dawn Speak — over time. It helped that she didn’t get headaches when she read information in Dawn Speak compared to Verdanian, Wojan, or whatever language the place she currently resided in used. Shangria used runescript to communicate, which was really the proper written form of Dawn Speak rather than Old Imperial text which was used in the Empire. The latter was done so that books and other written material — such as signages — didn’t invoke esoteric effects and other powers. She suspected her fluency came from Damien’s memories, though she had trouble reading long before her Atavism Ritual.

So she was unsure if she should seek out the changes and attempt to undo them, or simply accept them as part of growing up.

She was really too early in using incarnations. She had to be at least at Manifestation to be able to properly use them, though only at the True Incarnation Stage would they be perfectly in use. She caught a glimpse of what that stage could accomplish with incarnations, and she had the idea that she could spawn as many as she wanted as long as she had the strands of consciousness to control each body. That must be the key to advancing there, but she hadn’t had much growth in that aspect of her training. And more importantly, she didn’t know how to train to create more strands of consciousness. She could certainly use more. The Tower of Eternity had aided her in splitting off an incarnation, and that also allowed her to grow a few more strands of consciousness to cope. Not as much as what she had forcibly split, but she got back half of what she invested.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as if she could stop using her incarnation body. Aside from the fact that she’d leave friends she made in Astoria behind, the body already existed. Unless she committed suicide, it was there to stay. She couldn’t even pull back the strands of consciousness dedicated to it, though that might have been a good way to go about it. There was one way to remove the incarnation from play and that was for that body to meet up with her true body and merge with it.

She didn’t know what that would accomplish other that fuel her growth, probably, but after contemplating it for a long while, having another body was just the better choice. It had already proved the point by allowing her to touch a different Swordsmanship Ennoia…

Oh. Maybe she needed to merge bodies to merge the Ennoias? That was troubling, but was a possibility. On the other hand, that could just be a shortcut to the process and usually, the longer, more thorough way often proved better. Unless she needed power in the immediate future, anyway.

A moot point, though, considering she didn’t know how either body could meet.

Progress on converting her incarnation body’s Radiant Physique was slow, but there was some result. She’d managed to shift the ratio between storage volume and regeneration by a slight margin. Just a single percent actually, but it was there.

Now she just had to figure out how to get it the rest of the way. Yuriko sighed. It didn’t help that the ratios didn’t adjust in a linear fashion, and changed every other percentage point adjustment. It was as if one way only worked up to a certain point, then it accomplished the entirely opposite thing once it was past that point, only to revert once it was back. Every milestone changed the parameters and she couldn’t discern a pattern on how those changes occurred. This led to a lot of experimentation to get it right, and she suspected that some other thing would happen that would bottleneck her progress later on. It… might be better not to focus on this project otherwise she might spend weeks on it while forgetting everything else.

‘Haah, time to add it to the training rotation then.’

“Penny for your thoughts?” Gwendith poked Yuriko on the side and made her jump a little. Gwen giggled at her reaction, “Deep, deep thoughts, huh?”

“A bit, yeah.” Yuriko sighed. Dinner today was a stew composed of what they foraged in the supply biome, some of the dried meat, and assorted spices from their own supplies. She’d had it simmering on the campfire since morning.

Ryoko ladled the stew into bowls and passed it around. Heron settled on Yuriko’s left while Gwendith cuddled up on her right. Carina glanced at the three of them with a somewhat reddened face, while Ilvarra smirked at the greenette’s expression. Devotee picked at his food, and ate sparingly.

“How is Desire?” The Chaos Lord asked. “Master mentioned her in passing, but nothing too concrete.”

Yuriko shrugged. “I’m not sure what to say. She arrived in Astoria all of a sudden, but kept herself underneath the main layer of reality from the dearth of absorbable Chaos.”

“Has she…” Devotee swallowed his question and just grumbled when Yuriko arched an eyebrow at him.

“She’s quite clever, actually. Dee’s presence in Astoria is a contradiction to my incarnation’s identity, but she managed to create a Chaos construct that convinced people that she’s Lilibeth’s butler.”

“When did that happen?” Gwendith asked.

“Yesterday.” Yuriko giggled. “She found some reference books and made a costume for herself. Even Lilibeth’s family was affected.”

“How’d she do it?” Devotee demanded.

“She built the structure on that world’s Network…the equivalent of Dragon Fall City’s REI-space.” Yuriko tilted her head, “Shangria Station’s, too, for that matter.”

“Ah, it created a cognitohazard? She sent messages to Lilibeth’s family, I suppose.”

“I think so,” Yuriko shrugged, “I didn’t ask.”

“Were you affected?”

“Slightly. I could feel it attempt to adjust my incarnation’s memories, but since my Anima is awakened, it doesn’t really affect me. Hmm, I wonder if Scarlett is affected, too.”

“Your little pet project?” Gwendith said in a flat tone.

Yuriko chuckled and patted her lover’s head. Gwen leaned into it and purred.

“You must be bored there,” Heron observed.

“I’m bored here,” Yuriko retorted.

He nodded, “True, but it won’t be for much longer. Although…” He nodded to Carina. “She said it won’t be as simple as buying a caravan vehicle as we expected.”

When they all looked at the latest addition to the party, Carina coughed, “Ah, yeah. Ahahaha…”

“Elaborate please?” Yuriko said.

“Oh, uhm, yes.” Carina’s complexion was tan, but her blush was still quite evident even if it would have taken sharp eyes to notice it. “Mobile HQs that can survive going below the third layer means that it can’t be made out of common materials.”

“Oh Ancestors!” Yuriko grumbled, “More delays?”

“Ah, not necessarily. I didn’t think you lot were serious about delving all the way to the ninth as a small group.”

“So what are our options?” Yuriko cut in.

“Well, there is that Martial Tournament being organised next Season. Those who place well can join that combined expedition of the five factions.”

“That’s just a waste of time.” Yuriko grunted. “I alone could ensure our group’s safety. Too many people and it will just make things more annoying.”

“I guess I don’t doubt that.” Carina said, “in that case the Mobile HQ we buy would have to be the modular kind. One that can be upgraded easily with materials from the appropriate layer. It would make our journey a bit longer but we wouldn’t be dependent on the larger group.”

“And it will cost more credits, I suppose?”

“It would, but discounts can be made if we provide the materials ourselves.”

“From this layer?”

“From the third would be best.”

“So, I suppose we should move there then.” Yuriko said decisively.

Carina looked nervous and she cuddled Sir Blue while she tapped her fingers on the stone table. “Do we have enough supplies? And, uhm, are you sure we can—no, no. If you’re confident enough in yourselves to reach the ninth layer, the third would hardly be a challenge.”

“Believe in us, Carina,” Yuriko said soothingly, “We’ll keep you safe.”

Trepidation faded away from the greenette’s countenance and she nodded in agreement.

“You have the skills to tend to the upgrades?”

“It shouldn’t be that hard, ahahaha.”

Yuriko and Gwendith exchanged glances, then turned to look at Ilvarra, who nodded confidently. “I can attend to it,” the silverette said.

“Very well. That will do.”

So the next day was used to fill up on supplies. The biome had enough to feed an expedition numbering in the hundreds. There were about twenty groups that were stationed around that biome, and it was simple enough to pay the others to cede the supply to her for the day. With that, they managed to gather enough to last them the journey to the third layer and to a supply biome there. She estimated another ten days or so to get there, so they packed for twenty, just in case. What they carried wasn’t enough to bring them back to the first layer if they needed to turn back, but then again, all of them — aside from Carina, Ilvarra, and Ryoko — were at the Knight level at least. More than strong enough to survive short rations for a while.

The journey to the transitional floor would take another five days, and there wasn’t anything too exciting that happened during that time. At least until they reached the last biome to the gate.

The transition biome between the first layer to the second was a caldera with lava monsters in defense. This biome was a forest of obsidian pillars, and even when she stretched her perception as far as it could go, she couldn’t find the bottom of the pillars. And what connected the top of each pillar were flimsy looking rope bridges that were barely wide enough for a person to cross.

Huh.

If they brought a Mobile HQ, how would they have crossed this biome?