Hey I didn't post but somehow I knew it'd be her!
I really did.
Hey I didn't post but somehow I knew it'd be her!
I really did.
Oh, I believe you. For sure.
Well, actually, I do. I like to think I didn't pull it straight from my arse, what, with having Li Ming appear several chapters ago. Plus, there really just wasn't a more suitable opponent for her. Keiko gets to show growth, they have a heated discussion over how rulership works and it'll just be all around fun times.
Seeeee, that was my line of logic. Except at the end I forgot her name fully so I went "That bitch that gave Kei and Johann trouble forever chapters ago!"Originally Posted by Xaeris
Or something.
I like this chapter. It's one of those rare chapters that I hit my stride while writing and think, "I could totally do this for living." But, I'll let you decide if my hubris is deserved.
Chapter 46: The Art of Rulership
Somehow, I had managed to make myself authoritative, but the truth was, I was not happy about that matchup at all. I mean, even when you put aside how stupidly powerful she was, I just really hated her personality. We had completely opposite points of view, and she treated me like a child. Okay, sure, I was a child at the time, but talking to her, you might have thought I was some sheltered naive princess that wasn’t good for anything but cheerleading. What was worse, talking to her made me conscious of all the worst things I’d ever thought about myself and seriously made me consider if there was any truth to them. Was I weak? Had I really been born with unattainable privilege? Did I put all my burdens on Johann’s back? All those kind of questions, and then some flooded my mind when I looked at her.
”Hmm...” she said, putting the back of her hand on her hip. “I do have to admit, you do look quite different, Seisha. I really do like that look in your eyes. It’s so much...fiercer.” She pulled the hilt of her okarod from her waist and lit up the photon cage, filling up the dim silhouette with glowing red light. “Not to mention, you’ve filled out much more nicely than I ever would have thought you were capable of.”
Seriously, I would have liked to have met at least one person who didn’t feel the need to say something about my growth spurt. Anyone at all. “You should talk. You’re the most well preserved zombie I’ve ever seen,” I said.
”Let’s not delay the inevitable any longer,” she said. With that, she pointed at me and set off a rafoie. No fanfare, no charging; she pointed at me, and just like that, I was in the middle of a mushroom cloud of fire. Just as you’d expect from Neudaiz’s first empress, it was white hot; just breathing felt like I was scorching my lungs. I stumbled out, smoky and coughing, but otherwise okay; my line shield took most of the damage. “Oh. You’re standing. That’s surprising, honestly,” she said.
”What are you talking about?” I asked as I sucked down gobs of nice cool air. “A little summer breeze won’t get you anywhere.” Then, I waved my hand in front of me to cast Rentis. It was careless of me to have not had it active to begin with; I was lucky I got such a light punishment for that mistake.
”Oh, that’s going to be troublesome for me, isn’t it?” she asked as she pointedly raised an eyebrow at the lucent feathers surrounding me. “I was hoping to do this with some grace, but if you’re going to leave me with no choice but to beat you to death, I’ll happily oblige.” She sprung off her toes and shot herself into the air at me. She was definitely fast; if I had blinked, I would have been too slow to react. Just as she was about to land on me with a sweep of her staff, I tucked myself into the light and vanished out of sight. Just a few Rp away, I rolled out and shot an arrow at Qin Shi once I managed to brace my crouch.
It hit her and I’m sure I saw her wince with pain as it pierced a hex on her belly. It didn’t do much in the way of lasting damage, but it did wonders for my hopes for the battle. I didn’t get time to get smug about it though, since she stepped forward to thrust with the butt of her okarod. I vanished again and that time, I decided to go forward and reappear just behind her, diving into another roll. It was awkward that time, since I had to turn myself around, but I managed to shoot her out of that roll too and land an arrow in her back.
”It’s like trying to hit a fly,” she muttered as she pulled my bullet out and snapped it in half as she turned to face me.
”Flies are a corpse’s natural predator,” I said.
She let out a little huff through her nostrils, but then she relaxed her posture. ”And so much more confidence since the last time I saw you. I may despise you, but I’m happy to see being empress agrees with you. Now that you’ve had some experience, do you still believe in the words you spoke during our final encounter?”
What I had said to Qin Shi was, basically, that burdens are meant to be shared. A ruler’s right...no, her duty, is to challenge her people to come together to fight a nation’s problems. And I don’t mean in that stupid, vague way you hear Colony politicians say ‘we must come together.’ I implemented specific programs that drafted our able bodied youth into rebuilding vital infrastructure. I caught a lot of flak for that; even Johann questioned my reasoning there, but see, I believe no one alive in our world got to where they are without help. Everyone alive that’s enjoying a nice life is able to do that because of all of society’s struggles and triumphs. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of teenagers with their heads up their butts who think otherwise, so, I made them help. And I’d do it again.
On the other hand, Qin Shi believed...well, I’ll just tell you what she said. I’ll probably just mess it up if I try to paraphrase. First, I replied, “I do. More than ever.”
”Idiocy. People cannot be trusted to be the architects of their own prosperity, Seisha,” she said. She tucked her hands behind her waist, holding her rod there too, and started pacing back and forth across me. “You can’t seriously ask them to contribute to the welfare of a nation. They’re children, and should be regarded as such.”
”That’s not true!” I yelled as I lowered my bow. Not too far, just enough so that my arms wouldn’t get sore holding it up. “When everyone sacrifices, when everyone’s done something to make someone else’s life better, they...they understand.”
”Understand what?” she asked with a sneer.
”Understand what it takes to make community work! They understand it, and work that much harder because they appreciate it!”
She stopped and took up her fighting stance again. She snapped her fingers and just like that, I got hit by a bunch of lightning bolts from all directions. Rentis absorbed the zondes, naturally, but I lost four feathers for it as I scrambled to get out of the crossfire. I could only maintain seven at a time, but it wasn’t a problem to just restore the missing feathers. Sort of. The real problem though was that she took advantage of my confusion to dash in and take a swing at me. I used mirage elusion again to back up.
”They might understand it for a short while. But what do you suppose will happen when this crisis passes?” she asked as she followed after me and thrust at me. She got to me before I could get a shot off, so I had to use mirage elusion again.
”What?”
She ignited another rafoie under my feet, which ate two feathers, which I had to restore. “Tch, that thing over your shoulder must have an impressive PP capacity if you’re so willing to recklessly cast Rentis over and over. Did Sebby make it?” she asked, pointing to my Shato.
”Yeah...” I said. I was bothered by what she said. It was true: Rentis ate a lot of PP and I could only cast it so many times. I was definitely going to run out before I could beat her if the battle kept up the way it was going. Oh, and Sebby is Johann. That was her pet name for him. Because his middle name is Sebastian. Yeah.
”As I was saying...” Before she went on, she raised a radiga under my feet. Even from the mossy plant we were fighting on, she managed to pull out a sturdy block of bark that would have thrown me prone into the air if I hadn’t caught my balance on it and used it as a springboard instead. I dropped a rain of grenades on her from the air, all of which blew up reasonably close to her and scratched her hexes.
”When the crisis passes, they’ll forget the desperation that forged their unity!” she said, raising her voice over the grenades. “They’ll go right back to quibbling over their petty differences once they’ve lost their enemy!”
I landed and she was ready for me, jumping over to try and hit me with her staff. I used, surprise, mirage elusion to slow my fall for a few seconds. When I reappeared, her staff was in mid swing beneath me and I stepped my foot on it, shoving it into the ground. Then, I shot an arrow in her face. It definitely hurt her, but she had enough focus to swing her rod in an arc and toss me off.
She was still gritting her teeth, even after I landed again, but that didn’t stop her from yapping. “And then, they’ll want a new enemy. They’ll turn on you. They’ll resent you. And the hilarious thing is that the thing they’ll resent you for is the responsibility you entrusted them with.”
My feathers started to tremble, which confused me for a second before I realized that they were shaking in the same way hexes that had had regrant cast on them did. Each of them exploded, one by one. I would have gotten away, but the first explosion knocked me off my feet, and the others just followed too quickly for me to react. Worse, all my feathers were gone, leaving me open to another technic.
”Or maybe I’m wrong? Maybe it’s already started?” she asked as she wove a finger through the air and conjured up a bluish streak of mist. “Has the Communion already come sniffing?” Nosbarta got its momentum and came flying at me in that lazy way it does. Still, I knew it was going to turn into a total mess of sharp icicles if it got too close, so I shot it out of the air with ensei-sou. What I really wanted to do was recast Rentis, but she intent to make sure her opening stayed open.
”That’s not...” I was going to yell that wasn’t true and that I had everyone behind me, but then I remembered that ugly man that approached me earlier. It was just so much like she said it would happen, that I’m sure I didn’t sound convincing when I said, “that’s not true...”
”They have, haven’t they?!” she asked as she sent another nosbarta after me. It was following an even lazier path than the first so I thought it was going to be a good chance to put Rentis back up, but she was baiting me. Lucky for me, she sprung the trap too soon and cast a huge foie before I tried to cast Rentis. So, I got the heck out of the way while it scorched the ground under its path and shot by me. I was still close enough to the heat to take a nasty burn though.
“So how is it that you don’t understand? If its their happiness you desire, you must rule them benevolently, but firmly. Take away the stress of having to manage the infinite possibilites of a life, and they find a blissful existence in short order,” she said.
”That’s not true!” I yelled.
”Oh? And why not?”
”I don’t know! I might not be smart like everyone else is, but I know when something’s wrong when I hear it!” I yelled.
”Truly, the logic of the heavens...” she said with a roll of her eyes. She hit me with another rafoie, and without Rentis active, that one hurt. A lot. It threw me into the air, burned away a good chunk of my gown’s drape, leaving my legs bare and singed, and melted a load of my hexes. And just like the first one, the air was painful to breathe that it was like inhaling fire. I landed on my back, without any chance of salvaging that fall, and groaned in pain from my burns.
”Maybe I was wrong. Your growth has turned out to be insignificant,” she said.
”Ungh...” I moaned. It was real lucky that she was happy to gloat rather than finish me off. “Hey you guys...” I muttered into my comm, “where’s the banter?”
”We’re on the edge of our seats here! We don’t want to distract you!” Stacy said.
”I’m not sure if it matters...this fight is impossible...” I said.
”Fuck that noise! You didn’t pick us up off the ground of Gurhal and dust us off to get killed there!” Sable screamed. Like, really, she screamed. It hurt.
”Please get up,” Zoe said. This was one of those rare times she spoke...well, normally. “I hate everything that person you’re fighting just said. Just because she can put what she’s thinking into a lot of fancy words doesn’t make her right.” There was a short pause, and her voice got really quiet as she said, “also...I don’t never want to see you again.”
”Sorry, I turned off my comm to take a bathroom break. What’d I miss?” Johann said.
No one said anything for a few seconds. Then, Stacy said, “you have got to be joking.”
”What? I’ve been here for like three hours.”
”Keiko’s fighting your ex. You have got to stop dating women we end up having to kill,” Sable said. When you think about it, it’s scary how many of Johann’s girlfriends he’s had to kill, or at least fight. There was Raina, Luchs, Yui, Qin Shi, and of course, Gwen.
”I’m attracted to strong and passionate women. Sue me.”
”Listen Jo-sei, if you want to turn on the cheat code for this fight, I wouldn’t be offended,” I said.
”Eh...fine, I’ll give you a bit of help. Put me on speaker.” I did. “Hello Feng Jie.”
”Sebby!” she said. I swear she blushed. “I didn’t expect to be able to speak with you again.”
”I didn’t either. And I didn’t expect it would be under such poor circumstances.”
”It’s unfortuante, but I hate her more than I love you.”
”Is that right? And why do you hate her so much?”
”You should know! She’s a descendant of that damn family! A spoiled and naive brat whose sheltered upbringing leaves her blind to what people truly are. She’s exactly the type of person whose hands shouldn’t wield power, yet, she has the most of it in this entire system!” Her face was twisted with anger and I was actually worried she was going to act on it and finish me off, but she just stood there, smoldering in place. I guess she really just wanted to talk to Johann.
”Mm. Let me ask you something. You respect me, yes?”
”Of course.”
”Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why it is I’m Keiko’s knight?”
”Obviously, you’re a Launcher-”
”Please. You really think something like tradition can compel me to do something I don’t want to do?”
”...No, you’re right. I suppose it is a curiosity, then. Why do you serve her?”
”Because, she’s talented.” Everyone made just barely audible stutters of disblief at that. Everyone knows how Johann feels about ‘talent.’ No one ever would have expected him to say something like that. “Well, rather, she grew up talented. You see Feng Jie, the thing about growing up privlieged, is that everyone takes everything you do for granted. Nothing you do is impressive, nothing you do is worthwhile, and everyone salves their egos telling themselves they could do anything you could if they were born with as much talent.”
”I don’t understand-”
”Shh, I’m speaking. I have to confess, I fell into that mindset for a while myself. But can you imagine what it’s like, living life without any of the encouragement and approval that the rest of take for granted? Yet I never once heard her complain. In fact, she’s probably astonished that I even know this about her.” I was. “It took me a long time to come to terms with that resentment and discard it. Serving her is just my penance.”
”That’s...sweet. But I don’t understand what that has to do with the subject at hand.”
”Hell if I should know, I was in the porter potty during your chat. I was just babbling whatever nonsense came to mind while Keiko healed herself. I figured you’d fixate on listening to me talk long enough. Why you’d take your eyes off someone you know is an expert healer...really now.” Like he said, I had been casting resta on myself the whole time. A subdued version so that it wouldn’t cause a bunch of light and radiance that’d tip Qin Shi off, but a resta all the same. I stood up, good as new and smiled.
”You tricked me!”
”Yeah, well...I did love you once, Feng Jie, so I’ll dispense one morsel of advice for your sake: treat the empress as your equal.”
”...Once?” she asked, her voice clearly cracking.
”Yes. Obviously, there’s no love in my heart now, for someone who’d raise a hand against my empress. This is the last time we’ll speak, Qin Shi. Leave a beautiful corpse.” Even I had to wince on Qin Shi’s behalf. That was just cold. I turned off the speaker and finally put my Rentis back up.
”No one dumps a bitch like Hahn...” Sable said.
Looking at Qin Shi then...you know how everything is eeriely quiet right before the storm? The birds stop chirping, the air is still and the horizon before you is an ominous sight? Yeah, this was that. I didn’t want to say anything because I was sure anything more than breathing from me was going to set her off.
”You...you....you....you....” she muttered, more loudly with each utterance. Everytime she said it, her body trembled more and more and her eyes twitched faster and faster. Finally, she hit her peak and screamed, “YOU! It’s not enough you usurp my empire, that you slay me, that you hand over my planet to a theocratic cult, that you slay me once more, but you deny me my love on top of it all?!”
And right about then, my fight got hard. The water surrounding the island we were fighting on rose into surging pillars, and then floated to merge into snaking tendrils. It was the same technique, Taiyi Shengshui, that she had used the last time, but its power was nothing like it was back then. “Enough! I’ll drown you and this miserable planet!”
On top of that, her SEED infection burst out from underneath her qipao and stretched over her upper body and arms like a black snake skin. With that, I felt her radiance turn black; whatever serenity and purity was there when she first showed up was long gone. So yeah, thanks for pissing her off for me, Johann.
Last edited by Xaeris; Jun 10, 2012 at 02:37 PM.
That's got to be in the running for "worst cheat code ever."
Great, as usual.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
This (and the past few) have been great. That was pretty cold on Hahn's part, but Qin Shi's more than earned it. Too bad it enabled Keiko Must Die mode (I like your term better than the "he just enabled Hard mode" I came up with).
I look forward to seeing what Keiko comes up with on this one.
Grammar in the title is intentional, thank you.
Episode 47: Embodiment of Ebon Devil
I felt sorry for her. Not that sorry of course, her trying to kill me and all. But sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your glory days so far in the past behind you and only live so long to be turned in a nasty, wicked thing. My own fear, all these years, has been that through all the years of ruling, compromises might turn me into someone that my sixteen year old self not only wouldn’t recognize, but look on with revulsion.
She pointed a finger at me and the tendrils of water floating overhead heeded her command and rushed out at me. It was dangerous, sure, but it wasn’t going all that fast, so I got out of the way without much trouble. The water hit the ground where I was standing and splashed just like you would expect. What I wasn’t expecting was what happened when I caught a spritz of the splash on my cheek. It was as if the blood in my cheeks made a needle and gorged its way out. I put a finger there to seal the cut before it lost more blood than it already did and then scrambled to understand what the hell just happened.
Well, lucky for me, she did like to hear herself talk. “Any water that comes into contact with the ones I bless becomes mine to manipulate. And unfortunately for you, there’s so much more water here than there was last time.” The water that splashed rose up from the ground in droplets and flew back into a creation of swirling tendrils above her head. Then, the water from the ocean surrounding the island also rushed to join the tendrils. “Don’t let even a drop hit you, Seisha,” she said.
”Waaa...” And then, it began. She wasn’t even aiming for me, she was just shooting all over. And I don’t mean firing randomly here and there. No, I mean she was literally spraying water all over. The first form of her attack was simple, compared to what was on the way. The tendrils kept swirling and fired off bursts of water pellets in every imaginable direction. Well, it looked overwhelming, but I immediately saw that they’d be flying in straight lines, so, all I had to do was find myself a nice gap to park myself in.
I rolled into the gap between two streams and started firing arrows. I also set Shato to autofire. I wanted to save its PP for technics, but I could see that an all out offense was my only shot of beating that thing. Between its stream of bullets and my arrows, I could tell I was cutting Qin Shin’s hex field down at a slow, but steady clip. Just when I thought that it might not be too bad a fight, she had to go and make it complicated; she moved. She took a few steps to the right with her palm under her chin, moving the streams along with her. So, I had to scramble to move with the gap.
”Problems, Seisha?”
”Doing great!” I said as I unloaded another chousei-sou into her head. She didn’t flinch, but I just had to trust that her shield would break eventually.
”Good. If you understand what you’re up against, let’s advance,” she said. She stopped firing, and the water that was already airborne reversed direction and got sucked up back into her swirl. I was dumb enough to think I was actually getting a breather and almost relaxed too much when she started the second form of her art. She thrust her arm forward and her waters responded and shot forward like a beam. Naturally, I miraged out of the way. When I landed, I was a little surprised to see that the water hadn’t dissipated. It was just sitting there like a solid object. I would have stopped to admire how beautifully eerie it was if just touching it wasn’t enough to kill me.
Then, like she was using a whip, she waved her arm in the air. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen and started running away from the water wall to get a head start. Just like I thought, it moved with the motion of her hand and rushed after me, giving me nowhere to run except ahead of it. That, by itself, would not have been a big problem. It wasn’t all that fast. No, the problem was when she started firing the droplets again while moving the wall at the same time. Not only did I have to keep ahead of the thing, I had to weave from one gap to the next while I was running.
”Keiko, how the hell are you doing this?” Sable asked.
”Can’t talk!” I sputtered. Well, I guess I can talk now. I guess I owe a large part of my survival in that fight to ossan. The thing he constantly reinforced in me, and Johann too, was to think beyond the moment. It was a really good lesson there; Qin Shi’s attacks were overwhelming, but predictable. Once I found the rhythm to each gimmick, it was actually almost easy to counter it. But when all it takes is one slip to kill you, you’re kinda sitting on needles no matter how easy something is.
I didn’t get many arrows off during that. Here and there, I’d find a good shot, but I left most of the shooting there to Shato. It was a problem, because like I said, it was going to be an all out offensive that was going to win the fight for me, but Taiyi Shengshui was keeping me on the defensive and it didn’t look as if Qin Shi would run out of steam anytime soon. I knew I had to do something to open up a shot. I even had something in mind, but I wasn’t sure if it would work.
”Yes, cling desperately to your life! Let me watch that hope turn slowly into desperation!” she said.
I decided to take my chances. While running, I plucked one of Rentis’ feathers and held up it in my fingers. Up until then, Rentis couldn’t absorb the water because it wasn’t actually photons; it was just being manipulated by photons. I figured if I could take ownership of Taiyi Shengshui, even if just for a moment, I could halt everything in progress for that moment. My feather twinkled as I amplified its absorption power and miracle of miracles, sparkling lights from each bit of water in the air came pouring out and into my feather. Without anything controlling it, all the water dropped to the ground like harmless rain.
”Tch, you only have so many feathers, Seisha. I have the entire ocean,” she said as she raised her hands and sucked water from the sea to reform Taiyi Shengshui. It might have only bought me a couple seconds time, but it also charged a feather. If what I was looking for was an offensive, that was the best thing I could ask for. Still, I knew a single feather C’s Grace wasn’t going to do the job, so I held off.
”An ocean you can’t hit me with!”
Water came up around the island in a ring. Then it started to converge, getting smaller and closer, threatening to catch me by leaving me nowhere to run. That was simple enough, I just jumped over it. So, she had to go and make it hard by shooting droplets again. Oh, and the moving wall too. So, I had three moving parts to dodge.
”Keiko...” Zoe said.
”Don’t talk Zoe. You don’t want Keiko to get wet, right?”
”Ugh, Johann...that was...” Stacy said...
”My best work.” At the time, if I could have spared the thought, I would have wondered why he was so calm. It was as if he knew my victory was guaranteed. Of course, it turned out that’s exactly what he knew, this being his second run of that day. Personally, I think he was scared senseless for me the first time around, but he denies it.
”I can maintain this indefinitely, because of the SEED influence, Seisha. You’re little more than a rat struggling against the river.”
”Rats are really great swimmers!” I was just saying that. I had no idea it was actually true. Anyway, once she got a good amount of photons into the air, I used another feather. It was satisfying in a way, clearing the field like that in one swoop.
”Was that too difficult a dance? Or are you getting tired?” she asked.
”I can keep this up all day.” I really couldn’t. I might have healed up that burn, but it was still tender. My body was getting sore and my lungs were aching painfully.
”Lovely to hear,” she said. Again, she reformed her art. What happened that time was that a stream, a little stream, shot across me on the ground. I backed up a little, but it didn’t look all that threatening. Then, more streams ran through the island, making a whole criss cross of them everywhere. Still, not all that threatening since the streams themselves were tiny. Then, with a flash, they rose up into walls of ice , making a maze spring up out of nowhere and I was caught in a chamber.
”This doesn’t seem so bad...” I said. The maze was more impressive than the streams, but still, it was just ice; it wasn’t moving like the water. Then, I heard the sound of a foie being charged from beyond the walls. I ducked and sure enough, a fireball came crashing through the wall in front of me, melting it into a soaking mess of slush and water that was falling on me. Understanding, I said, “oh.”
So that was how that worked; me navigating an ice maze where the walls would randomly come crashing down on my head. I couldn’t really use a feather. Because of the walls, I didn’t know when a foie was airborne, and even if I had sucked Qin Shi’s photons from the ice, they would have remained, since they were ice. So I just had to deal with the maze.
”Enough,” I heard her say. I heard walls coming down and splashing in the distance behind me, but I wouldn’t see what was happening until the ring of water itself broke through the remaining maze and made me jump over it like before. When she was through, she had cleared the island of all the walls and was carrying a gigantic ball of water on her palms. “Sometimes, the simplest way is the best way,” she said as she unleashed a flood at me.
It was true, I had absolutely no way to dodge a giant tidal wave, so, I used a feather. I still got hit by the flood, but at least it wasn’t instant death. The wave took me to the shore and dumped me, half submerged, in the tide. Before I could start getting up, Qin Shi leapt on her chance and used the water on the shore to cut my leg apart. I don’t want to describe it too graphically, so I’ll just say that even though it was in one piece, it was a bloody wreck. I consider myself tough for a woman. Or anyone, really. I don’t cry...much. I can take a hit. But that, that was some of the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. I’d rather give birth to Kaiyo a dozen more times than deal with even a fraction of that.
”And so, the empress comes to her end,” she said, sauntering up.
”N-not...not yet...” I said. I tried to level my bow at her, but she kicked it out of my hands before I could get it steady. Not that she was cutting it close; the blood loss was making me dizzy.
”There’s nothing left for you to do,” she said as she grabbed some of my hair and picked me up off the ground. “But don’t think I’m going to make this quick or merciful.”
I, like every Seisha, was called a prodigy. And you know, I had a hard time understanding why. I mean, I thought I worked hard like everyone else. I had problems like everyone else. But still, I was different somehow and I just didn’t get it. It’s moments like what came next that make it very clear for me. I had been intending to use the feathers I charged to make an arrow to shoot Qin Shi with. That, obviously, wasn’t going to happen, but I made the arrow anyway.
She looked at, clutched in my hand, and laughed at me, “oh, and just what are you going to do with an arrow and no bow?”
I’d never experimented with what I was about to do before. I hadn’t considered the theory, or even thought up the concept. It just occured to me right there, in that moment, and I knew it that making it work was my only chance. There were about a hundred ways it could go wrong and I only had a few seconds to decide how I was going to do it. Anyone else, even Johann, would have screwed this up. He’s a fantastic techer, but that’s because of practice and preparation.
”It’s not for you,” I said as I shoved it into my heart. The arrow was suffused with the power of her photons. Usually, I would shoot that arrow into the enemy and overwhelm them with the massive influx of their own radiance and temporarily burn out their filament. But, there is a chance, a small chance, that the power can be contained and properly absorbed. Like I said, this was something I whipped up right there on the spot, so I had no idea if it would work or if I wouldn’t even kill myself trying. The potential was definitely there.
But, I’m telling this story, so obviously, it worked, right? As with any experimental technic, there were a lot of kinks I had to iron out, but I survived, and how. Qin Shi let me go and hopped back, probably sensing the massive increase in my radiance. “What on...what did you do...?”
What I did was take all the photons Qin Shi had been throwing at me and made them my own. I guess you could call it a level hack. But, she was probably more in awe of the ethereal wings on my back. It wasn’t safe to store the photons in my body, so I had to create an external appendage. I figured, wings are awesome, so why not?
Even with all that power, I felt an odd peace. Or maybe it was because of all that power, that security that came with knowing that it was going to all be all right, even in the middle of that storm. “Let’s take it from the top, Qin Shi.”
QED「Ripples of 495 Years」
If I could remember (if it was stated) the amount of years Qin Shi has been around I'd rename the spellcard to that.
Oh snapple.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
I never stated an explicit age, but if we go back to Renaissance, we can use the info there to make a good approximation using the dates I put down in the chapter detailing Neudaiz's history. I get 1055 years since she first became empress. Add on, say, twenty years to account for childhood, and we get...
QED「Ripples of 1075 Years」
Shoot through the galaxy, Keiko!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Connect With Us