Raika wakes up, pulling back the “center” of her attention from the freshly reformed inner world and back out into proper reality, to find two cultivators currently attacking two of her closest friends and allies.

  Well. Attacking might be a bit of a strong word, but still.

  Jin is currently running for his life against a series of slashing attacks, slabs of metallic swords materializing out of thin air and swinging violently against him as he pushes his cultivation to its utmost to stay just ahead. Every now and then a blade gets a bit too close, ready to cut him open, and a wispy figure will briefly pop into existence long enough to pull him out of the way, only to vanish again as Jin resumes running around the lake.

  Ko, to his credit, identified a glaring flaw in Jin’s cultivation- her student has very nearly no physical modification techniques, and very little experience improving his body with Qi. Even a cultivator focused entirely on mental or illusory techniques can, and almost certainly should, have some way to modify their movement, increase their strength and speed, or otherwise give them a higher chance of surviving a direct hit (or, ideally, avoiding it). While Jin’s application of his visions and unique cultivation has allowed him to begin to manifest semi-”living” constructs in the form of Echoes, something much more advanced than a Foundational realm cultivator should be capable of, he’s simply never tried or managed to use his unique Qi and comprehension to empower himself directly.

  Ko decided that the best way to rectify this was to show him the very basics of how to push Qi into one’s muscles and bones- and then start swinging swords at him very hard.

  With Raika’s Overclocking technique able to push her processing speed to a level where she can literally watch bullets move through the air, she’s not particularly worried that anything will happen faster than she’ll be able to intervene. On top of that, Ko has been… remarkably honest about his intentions with her and the training regime he’s implemented. Frankly, she’s about as certain as she reliably can be that he’d rather cut off his own arm than actually hurt Jin (or, quite frankly, his chances of getting a peek at her inner world again). She’s not surprised he got in trouble back at his sect, though- the man is honest to a fault, and to say he’s blunt would be to put it mildly. He’s worse than she was, back in her own sect, and that’s really saying something. There’s a chance that he’s some sort of neurodivergent- when it comes to strength training and cultivation techniques, he has a single-minded focus that makes it easy to understand how he made it to the Nascent Soul realm at his age, but when it comes to communication or anything outside of those interests, he tends to have to work to focus or understand the nuances of things. At times, he’ll lapse into weird and prosaic proclamations, many of them seeming rehearsed, but the rest of the time he is intensely direct.

  Aria, on the other hand, falls more into the category of a jade beauty, which begs the question of why she got put on the same punishment detail as Ko in the first place. She’s savvy, clever, and clearly accustomed to dealing with people whose egos far outweigh their common sense, and it’s been interesting watching her adjust out of that mindset with Raika and Li Shu. Neither one has much patience for flowery language, though for different reasons; Raika just doesn’t particularly like it obfuscates things at times, while she’s pretty sure that Li Shu just prefers practical statements, especially when it comes to learning things. Currently, the two of them are working on refining Li Shu’s telekinesis, one of her strengths as a cultivator, even at the Core Formation realm. Her Sacrifice has been getting progressively larger, its shapes and concepts better defined, but her orthodox cultivation, something she basically tricked her way into maintaining, has fallen behind in some ways.

  Aria is rectifying this by teaching some techniques for visualization and Qi circulation, patterns to try and use that they might improve different aspects of Li Shu’s cultivation at different times. The fact that Li Shu’s cultivation somehow exists both inside her body and her Sacrifice at the same time complicates issues just the tiiiiiniest bit, but the exercise is good nonetheless, and getting aid from someone a full realm above her has already had impressive results.

  In this case, that primarily means that Li Shu is floating on a massive boulder about ten feet off the ground, her Sacrifice arranged as sharp lines and curving keratin to form an Array to boost the Qi moving through it. Each individual piece of her Sacrifice holds its own orbit of smaller stones, slowly raining down dust as they are shaped, one by one, and carved by her telekinesis.

  She’s sweating enough to change the colors of her robes, and has a thin trickle of blood coming out of one nostril, but Aria seems pleased, and Raika can’t detect any potentially lethal stresses in her friend’s body, so things are going great!

  She morphs an avatar out of her Body, which currently is crouched next to the aforementioned lake they’ve taken a stop at. She’s got a long tube plugged into the lake itself, drinking in as much water as she can fit into her stomachs (which, even compared with her weird inner dimensions, are impressively larger on the inside, Qi saturation pushing its intended purpose to an illogical extreme). While she could just transform away any dehydrated parts, which technically means that she can just CHANGE herself into water, if it can be avoided, there’s no need to waste resources on the transformation. Her strider-form, still shaped like a courtyard with spider-limbs and a massive panopticon-head at its peak, is casting a decent amount of shade over the clearing they’ve found. Useful, too- this particular patch of the Overgrowth is glowing with heat, the sunlight above refracted over and over and imbuing solar energy and heat into the local plants. It makes for gorgeous flowers, glowing with variations of sunlight and auroras of plasma- and also for wicked sunburns, and outright third-degree harm if you touch them.

  She lands, cracking her neck at the feeling of the needles in her. She doesn’t have to manifest as one of her limited avatars, but… well, it doesn’t really feel like training if it doesn’t hurt at least a little.

  …That’s probably fine.

  Ko and Aria both stop what they’re doing and turn to her, bowing.

  She rolls her eyes. “Don’t do that. No one told you to stop training just cause I’m walking around on two legs instead of ten, assholes.”

  “Yes, honored great one!”

  She sighs, rolling her eyes. “Jin, you doing alright?”

  “Yes, master!” he says, his breath coming in harsh as he sweats through his training robes. “Senior Ko has been diligently training me within an inch of my life!”

  She smiles, tousling his hair. “You’re not even bleeding, quit your whining. You were working way harder back at the shooting range.”

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  “Only because of your talent at shooting unarmed targets, master!”

  She playfully shoves his head, and he lets himself tumble into the lake, falling in the cool water with a splash.

  “Ko, why hold back the way you are? It’s obvious that you’re not good at summoning weapons like you are, and I’d rather not have to dig a summoned blade out of my student’s limbs.”

  “I’m too fast,” he replies with a shrug. “If I did things the usual way, I’d kill him.”

  “Sounds like something you should work on, then. That teleport-movement you had is clearly designed to be used with your sword-summoning- wielding them separately could not more clearly be outside your skillset.”

  He nods. “Yes, but if I go as fast as I can, he’ll die.”

  “But if you go faster, then you can stop the cuts on purpose rather than waste time with a technique you don’t like and don’t intend to use.”

  “I… guess. Are you sure that it’s-”

  “Nothing bad will happen to my student. This, I guarantee. Your best efforts couldn’t change that, even if you try.”

  “Hmm.”

  Jin comes out of the water, and the instant his neck clears the waves, there is a sword there, aiming for his jugular.

  And it stops exactly there, as a hand made of Blacksteel and indigo flesh takes hold of it. She moves so fast, so efficiently, that it doesn’t so much as spark. Architecture in her arm, optimized to reduce the shock of the impact to as close to nothing as possible, rings as Radiant Metal absorbs the shock and transfers it deep into her body, where it dissipates across pylons of further shock-absorption into nothing.

  Ko nods. “Alright then. I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. And Jin?”

  Jin lets out a long, exhausted sigh. “Yeah?”

  “Good work. Keep it up. Whenever you feel ready to take a break, I’ve got some more materials for you to carve, if you want.”

  His head plops back against the water. “You see how lucky you are, Senior Ko? You get to abuse your juniors with all the heights of your strength, meanwhile I get work even after I stop being beaten up by my senior. Truly, the heavens are cruel to the just.”

  “The heavens ain’t here, kid,” she says, nudging him with a foot (which, with her strength, tosses him a good few feet to the left and into a splash of water). “I, on the other hand, while sincerely unfair and more than a little unjust, am not nearly as cruel as they are. For example, I am gifting you the beautiful opportunity to train and not die at the hands of a Nascent Soul cultivator. You’re welcome, ya brat.”

  He spits out a spray of water at her. “Thank you ever so kindly, oh generous master. I shall endeavor to impress you with my gumption and genius talent.”

  “I’ll take hard work over either, and you’ve got that in spades. Ko? Another two hours should do the trick, and then we’ll take a break.”

  “Yes, honored one.”

  “And Aria?”

  Aria, who at that point had been very studiously avoiding looking at Ko or jumping into the conversation, turns to bow again at Raika, going lower this time.

  “Yes, honored one?”

  “I don’t know much about arrays, but I do know a lot about people, and a surprising amount about how a brain tastes when it’s lying. If Li Shu is asking for something more difficult, you should add additional penalties, or just… demand something more difficult. That’s the point. You’re not going to get on my good side by being a sycophant.”

  “I… am genuinely distressed to be following Ko in my statements, but I’m not sure that’s wise, honored one. Your students are advancing at a drastic pace- to push them further would only-”

  “Li Shu isn’t my student, she’s my friend, and senior sister if we’re really getting technical about it. And Li Shu!”

  The levitating figure opens an eye, the rivulet of blood leaving her nose crusted nearly dry at this point. “Yes?”

  “If you manage to find a way to make more than squiggles on those stones, I’ll give you three whole brains to dissect tonight.”

  “Oh! That’s great, I really wanted to test-”

  “Don’t tell me, it’ll be a surprise.”

  Raika gives Aria a smug look, to which the prim and proper cultivator, much to her own frustration, can only sigh.

  “I understand, honored one. I… suppose I could add some resistance with my own techniques.”

  “Great! If you figure out something new, I’ll let you eat me a bit. That goes for both of you! I may not know your techniques, but I can taste when you’re lying!”

  Leaving Aria appropriately flustered by the phrasing, and Ko already picking up the pace with constant teleportation (stopping the blade at just nicks and scratches rather than body-rending blows), Raika reabsorbs her body, bringing the particular brain she’s using (and its acupuncture-enforced limitations), back into herself.

  And then…

  Well. Since she’s talking to everyone anyways.

  A tendril extends out from one of her strider-legs, winding through about a mile of Overgrowth and radiation-rich flora to reach the only people in their group she’s not entirely sure she could defeat.

  Aurick looks up as the tendril arrives, before giving a polite nod to Raika’s avatar as she emerges. She comes through as her truer self, discarding the human illusion for the antlers and radiant biology she feels more comfortable in, a long, sinuous tail winding behind her and keeping her connected to the rest of her Body.

  She doesn’t need it anymore, technically, but it’s always better to hide a few cards close to the chest when it comes to keeping your enemies close. They know she can split off parts of herself- they don’t need to know just how little difference that makes.

  “Greetings,” Aurick says, lowering his head very slightly. It’s a bit harder to read him than most people she’s familiar with, if only for the lack of eyes and tantalizingly unique biology, but for the most part, his brain tastes at least similar enough to what she considers herself familiar with. He seems… mildly pleased to see her, and a lot less impatient than she expected. For all his talk of loyalty to the Pack and their advance, he doesn’t ever seem to be in much of a hurry.

  “Greetings. We’re going to be ready to move in about two hours. How much further do you think we’ll need to go?”

  He shrugs, the movement doing interesting things with his physiology and the way that it connects to his lower half. “Shouldn’t be more than a few days. Faster, if we can push. You seem in a remarkable hurry for one who is doing so much at once.”

  “I like things to go fast if possible, it’s why I fire myself like a gun sometimes. I just need to know- has the course changed at all?”

  He cocks his head to one side, and then tilts it back, as if sniffing something… and then nods. “It remains as it was. To the east, and a bit to the northern side, now. Before the Kingdom, but near the edge of the Overgrowth. Why?”

  “No reason. If it’s alright, please let the Pale Thresher know we’ll be leaving soon. Would be such a shame to leave the thing behind, hmm?”

  Aurick laughs, shaking his head. “Yes, indeed. A true shame, though one I may on occasion bear. I shall see you once more in two hours.”

  She nods, vanishing back into her Body.

  She’s asked more than once, which has been… interesting. It’s weird to do, but it’s even weirder to need to do. It started a few days ago at this point.

  If Aurick is leading her to his Apex, as he claims, then he’s leading them almost directly to the place she feels tugging at her. For some reason, he’s taking them directly to the place that a Heart of godflesh, weeks ago, begged her to visit.

  Interesting times ahead.

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