u/Zagaroth

Now with it's own subreddit: r/NoNeedForACore !

Also to be found on Royal Road and Scribble Hub.

u/Zagaroth — 4 days ago

[No Need For A Core?] — 384: Shamir

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GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Svetlana’s mind bounced to all sorts of scenarios in the mere moments it took for the Azeria cores to feel and respond to her panic, ranging from the improbable to the impossible, many of them involving the Puritasi, though there were some scenarios where the northern witch was to blame. Deidre had seen her close to Svetlana’s nexus shortly after Svetlana had been freed.

As she reflexively shifted her avatar to where her core rested, she felt the other three cores focus on the monstrous something that had moved. Knowing that they were they to support her helped Svetlana calm down and realize how outlandish her fearful imagination had been.

It was also ridiculous in another way. She still had five more zones than the Azeria nexus did; her strongest zone bosses were more powerful than Azeria’s raid bosses at this point and she shouldn’t feel so dependent on them for protection. Though she didn’t have any new raid bosses yet — she didn’t know who or what she wanted for those roles.

But those were thoughts for another time; for now, she needed to focus on the thing breaching across part of her territory.

Whatever the creature was, it was truly massive. The initial analysis quickly determined that the slightly curved, wall-like mass was just a small portion of the actual creature. Larger than even the northern witch could order about. At least she was pretty sure. The only part that was inside Svetlana’s territory was the dense, rock-like carapace, wrapped around the living creature, which was why Svetlana had not noticed it before it moved.

Mordecai’s attention quickly moved off once they verified the creature was not going to move further into the nexus, so that he could look into his stored memories to see if he could find a match. Kazue’s attention remained long enough to check in on Svetlana before she too moved her attention. This time to search the information they’d gathered in their library.

Moriko’s core remained with her so that they could gain additional clues that they could pass on to Mordecai and Kazue.

The curve jutting out of her wall suggested a barrel shape, whereas the curve maintained the same shape and width along its length. It seemed to be more of a cylinder since it didn’t seem to jut out into a fat center. Assuming a perfectly circular cross-section, they estimated it to be over a mile in diameter. The length couldn’t be estimated, but even a stubby body would have to be several miles long to have that kind of diameter.

The segmented carapace appeared to not be just rock-like; it was made of a mix of minerals and rock that had been compressed into a material denser than lead, nearly as hard as diamond, and far tougher than any normal rock. And that was before taking into account that it was infused with condensed mana that rendered it even stronger, much like how mana particles altered the base substances of mithril and adamantine.

This same material coated and infused the surrounding rock — the creature was slowly secreting a thick, liquid version of it, which reinforced the tunnel it was moving through and presumably making. When they passed that information on, to Mordecai, he thought that this seemed like an adaptation meant for moving through much deeper ground, and he used that to narrow down his search even more.

The creature had no draconic aspect to its aura, but it was strongly infused with elemental earth energy, which explained how it could manipulate the rock and minerals to such an extreme degree. This information caused Kazue’s core to mutter with frustration and complain that all this wasn’t helping her search any, but she still continued to look though there information, and her concern was clear.

It wasn’t too much longer when Mordecai found the answer, and everyone relaxed with his announcement, ‘I know what it is, and it is very passive. The only danger is if you stand directly in front of it, or are touching it at the wrong time. Its size suggests that it is very old and at this late stage of its life, it only moves in surges, and it takes a while to gather itself for each surge. What Svetlana had sensed was the ripple of its movement along its length.’

That made sense to Svetlana once she thought about it. She had grown her territory into a sphere very suddenly in the heat of battle, and hadn’t really considered it after. Since then, she’d been so busy reconstructing her early zones that she hadn’t explored the huge amount of territory that she’d claimed when she’d expanded her zones into spheres. The bottom of her outermost zone was twice as deep as her core was, for now. So it was not that the creature had invaded her territory, but that she had invaded its tunnel.

She felt like she had only just come to grips with this information when Mordecai was already declaring that he wanted to bring family, near-family, and close friends of near-family on a day-trip to see and learn about the creature. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to jump so quickly from battle-ready to learning holiday, nor include so many people as her nearest and dearest. It was experiences like this that had divided her from Deidre.

Speaking of, Deidre would be one of the people visiting along with Fuyuko, Amrydor, and Satsuki. And with them would be Carmilla, Mavialeko, Galan, Derek, and Gemeti, all of whom she’d be meeting for the first time, though she had Deidre’s memories of most of them. Svet would be amongst them as well, so she could speak to and learn more about them. She wasn’t sure if the creature or the people would be more interesting and strange.

Mordecai also had some directions to prepare for this field trip. ‘Svetlana, would you create a cavern as close as you can to the tunnel? I’ll send Enki and Cimbu to help dig out the rest, but we’ll need your light-zone dragon as well, and any others whom you think will be useful. Breaking through the concretion of the tunnel wall is going to take a lot of work.’

It had been early afternoon when Svetlana had detected the movement — by the time the cavern was prepared, and Krystraeliv had directed some of her roots that deeply, it was well into the evening, and dinner had been delayed to focus on the project, though snacks had been made available lest the younger folk get too restless. Or Kazue, for that matter.

In the end, it had been Zushi who had proven key in breaking through the tunnel beyond Svetlana’s territory for a better view of the creature: he could simply press himself against the reinforced stone and focus on absorbing the material. It was much slower than with a normal object, but he was able to make steady progress.

When everything was ready, Krystraeliv transported the group to a ledge that had a good view of the wall-like stretch of segmented carapace.

Mordecai beamed in pleasure at seeing the gigantic creature. “Isn’t it magnificent? It’s called a shamir, but there are a few other names for them, depending on how you translate various species’ preferred terms. Deep tunneler, ground bearer, and world builder cover most translations, though that ignores some nuance of language and culture. Wait here a moment — it should be safe to approach, but I want to make sure first.”

He jumped down from the ledge instead of using the path Svetlana had made on one side and strode toward the enormous worm to place a hand on the carapace. After several seconds of silence as he felt for even the faintest vibration from the shamir, Mordecai nodded. “Alright, feel free to come check it out — there’s no hint of it moving.” Svetlana did notice, however, that he did not remove his hand from the shamir.

Fuyuko was the first to move, leaping off the ledge the same way Mordecai had. Moriko, however, could fly, so beat her daughter to the carapace to touch its cool side.

Svet shook her head as to how much alike their adopted daughter was to her parents. It obviously wasn’t trauma that had made her cleave so strongly to them. She just seemed to be lucky enough to find the right place at the right time.

Everybody else walked down the sloped path instead, with Mavi riding on Amrydor’s shoulders, chattering away with Gemeti, while Carmilla walked behind them looking like one of Svetlana’s faeries when they were making plans. The boy named Galan said something about someone named Shizo while poking Derek in the side, who instantly turned red. And at the back, Satsuki walked close beside Deidre, holding her arm as if in support.

Svet watched them all as she walked along an extension of the ledge that followed the wall, staying above where the rest of them were gathering — in order to get a good angle to walk up to the shamir, it had been necessary to dig beyond Svetlana’s borders, so the internal avatar couldn’t come all the way down. Just being so close to the edge pulled at her mana, threatening to unravel her.

“So what’s it do?” Mavi asked as she patted the creature. “Why’s it called a world builder? It doesn’t look like it builds anything other than itself.”

Mordecai smiled. “Well, that’s a matter of perspective. Remember the sort of people who gave it that name. They live deep underground, where there are large caverns and big tunnels that maintain their shape for a long time. Those tunnels were left behind by these creatures. So the shamir literally built the world those people live in.”

“It’s very old,” Amrydor said softly. “And I think it’s close to dying, but it’s so old that I don’t really know what ‘close to death’ means. It could be thousands of years away.” He sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t know I could feel the age of something like that.”

“You’re probably correct,” Mordecai replied in a somber tone. “This creature is the oldest mortal thing you will likely ever see, and one of the last of its kind on this world.”

Kazue glanced up at him. “On this world? And why are they so rare?”

“Allow me to answer this,” Satsuki said. “I have some information from my travels that I do not think Mordecai has, and it all comes down to their life cycle. Newly hatched shamir have an instinctive drive to move away from other shamir, and this instinct is stronger around larger shamir. If there is a sufficiently large shamir nearby, it becomes enough of a push that their affinity for earth allows them to, well, ‘earth step’, but to an entirely different world. One without much else other than rock for them to eat. They are very simple but very resilient and adaptable, and do not require air or liquid water. Whatever is bound inside of rock is enough for them. Their ability to find other worlds and move to them is impressive, and no one has been able to mimic that power using spells. Though I should note that they appear to lose that ability within a month of hatching, and none have ever been tracked as using it more than once.”

Mordecai gave her a skeptical look. “This doesn’t seem like the sort of information you would have memorized.”

“A lady must have a few secrets,” she replied demurely. “It would be awful of a man to strip away all of her mystery, don’t you think?”

Somehow, that sounded like a pointed invitation to search for her secrets by stripping her. Given the face that Fuyuko just made, Svetlana was pretty certain she and everyone else had gotten the same implication. In a teasing tone, Mordecai answered, “I think Kazue would appreciate knowing the secrets of her knight and lady-in-waiting, but that is a conversation for later.”

Watching Satsuki twitch and glance nervously at Kazue was entertaining, and given that the nine-tail had sworn to be Kazue’s knight and lady-in-waiting, Svetlana suspected that it would be difficult for Satsuki to hide any secrets if Kazue pressed her for them.

Svetlana was also reminded of the distraction and confusion spell Kazue had used in battle. It had momentarily distracted Dimitri too, though the illusions had not had any magical effect on him.

This had made him even angrier when he realized he was staring at the images Kazue had created, but it had wonderfully entertained Svetlana. She had kept the memory of the lewd illusions, and her faeries now used versions of it to entrance her delvers.

Carmilla had ignored their byplay while she studied the shamir, and she now asked, “It’s not supposed to be this close to the surface, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Mordecai said. “This is incredibly shallow for a shamir, or at least, one this old, as smaller tunnels can sometimes be found closer to the surface. My guess is that it was going around an underground lake or a magma plume. Neither would be particularly harmful, but either one would be an unpleasant experience. Based on how level it is, we are probably at the upper end of its curve before it begins to dive back down to a more comfortable depth.”

“Wait,” Svet said from the ledge above. “Does that mean there may be a potential volcano beneath us?”

Mordecai shook his head. “While it might be possible, that is not something to worry about. Any magma entering your territory would become yours to claim and convert into mana if you needed to.”

Fuyuko rapped her knuckles on the shamir’s carapace. “Is this thing strong enough to fend off Gil?” Moriko looked pretty curious too, while Satsuki rolled her eyes with a disgusted expression.

Svet, on the other hand, wondered who this Gil was.

“Hmm.” Mordecai thought about it briefly, then shrugged. “Sort of. It wouldn’t be able to fight back, but it would twist and surge forward as much as it could until it exhausted itself. This would make it harder for Gil to keep attacking the same location. I am not sure how long it would take Gil to cut his way through the carapace, but it wouldn’t be easy. So, given enough time, yes, Gil could cut through. Not that this would necessarily kill the shamir — much like normal worms, it’s possible for both halves to survive.”

The idea of a single person being able to cut through such a massive creature was outlandish, but Mordecai seemed serious, so Svetlana sent, ‘Who is this Gil? How strong is he?’

Mordecai replied, ‘He’s an immortal older than Satsuki and myself combined, and at least as strong as that age implies. He escorted Fuyuko to Azeria after saving her from bleeding out. She’d killed a peryton by herself after it ambushed her, though it nearly had its revenge. Here’s Gil playing with me during his visit.’

The images Mordecai sent over of the ‘game’ that had played out in Azeria’s wetland zone were incredible, and Azeria had only seven zones at the time! There was also no way for Mordecai and Kazue to give detailed instructions that fast — all of that coordination had to have been from their inhabitants already knowing and understanding their roles, and just being told when to act.

Svetlana’s felt even more enlightened about how valuable the sort of training Azeria did with its inhabitants was. The way they had defeated her under-trained inhabitants was one thing, but for their inhabitants to put on such a display against a person as powerful as this Gil… she shook off her awe and wandering thoughts to focus on the rest of the conversation.

There were a few more questions, but as fascinating as it initially was to encounter such a creature, the shamir was also not doing anything, so interest soon began to fade. When everyone seemed ready to go back, Mordecai said, “Mavi, could you let Krystraeliv know that trusted guests and family are allowed to ask to be transported here? Let’s keep it to them and inhabitants for now, though we might want to allow some researchers or scholars eventually.”

Svet crossed her arms in thought. How would she create a space for researchers and scholars when much of what they would be here to study would be outside the reach of her nexus? Well, perhaps she could borrow more help from Enki and Cimbu to shape the rock nearby.

After that, it was time to head back home for a late dinner, to which they also invited Svet. With the shamir fresh in everyone’s mind, conversation readily turned to questions about other deep-dwelling species that were rarely heard of on the surface.

Mavi seemed to be thrilled about being ‘terrified’ by all the ‘scary’ creatures that lived in the world far beneath them, while Fuyuko and Moriko seemed more interested in which ones would make for interesting fights.

The conversation kept everyone up later than normal, but eventually Fuyuko and the others dragged themselves off to bed. Kazue had fallen asleep already, curled up in a large, comfy chair, and Mordecai scooped her up to carry her to their bedroom.

Moriko grumbled about him poaching the cute fox, and he just smirked. Svet laughed as she took her leave. What interesting people she had found her way amongst.

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u/Zagaroth — 11 days ago

▲ 3 r/Writeresearch+1 crossposts

[Any Mythology] Are there any positive-themed earth/sand/[X]-worm myths?

I have a creature in my mind for a fantasy series I am writing, but having trouble with figuring out a name, so I was hoping mythology might help. Maybe something along the lines of world-creation myths? My creature is responsible to helping certain aspects of a planet form before normal life develops.

These are magical worms that populate rocky planets long before normal life evolves (thanks to a find-and-teleport instinct/ability shortly after they hatch). There, they burrow into / eat the rocky crust and in the process leave behind tunnels that are reinforced by a secretion that creates a concrete-like material when it bonds with the surrounding rock and soil. They start at normal earthworm size, and over very long time periods, grow to be much bigger than even Dune's sandworms.

As they grow older/bigger, their magic grows stronger, and this in turn means that their secretion is imbued with more magic. Additionally, the secretion is their waste product, so all rock mass that they eat that does not become part of their body is made part of this dense concrete. Especially as they start moving very slowly when they get large enough, meaning that an area of tunnel gets more saturated with their secretion.

The reason that I want positive themed ideas for names is that this process effectively makes the outer crust 'puffy', and the larger worms burrow very deeply, which is how you get stable caverns and tunnels at depths where the weight of the planet above would crush a normal cave. So any sapient species that lives in the deep and has had a chance to understand these giant creatures would tend to feel positively about them, and they'd be the ones to name the worms.

My search so far has brought up worm-like monsters and dragons. Not exactly what I am going for.

I probably won't use a mythological name directly, but as a starting point to tweak and modify.

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u/Zagaroth — 12 days ago

[No Need For a Core?] — CH 383: Starting Fresh

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

SNAP!

Svetlana mentally recoiled as her connection to Deidre broke; she then had to restrain herself from trying to reach across that sudden void to reconnect with that suddenly lost part of her spirit.

No, that would be awful for both of them; the original connection that united them as one was gone, and no new connection would ever feel right. Deidre could never even be a contractor for her now.

It hurt, but not nearly so much as it clearly hurt Deidre. Unfortunately, there was little Svetlana could do but watch and pray. Yes, she could send in some of her strongest inhabitants, but Satsuki was far more powerful anyway, and only so many people could help restrain Deidre’s thrashing body. Adding more people now would only make things worse.

All she could do to help was provide information. Most of it the Azeria cores could have gleaned for themselves, but they also had other matters to attend to while Svetlana’s nexus was relatively quiet. Trionea did not hold her in as much trust as others — especially Kuiccihan — held Azeria, but given the circumstances, that was understandable.

Eventually the process was done and Deidre began to recover. Svetlana wished she could do more for this former piece of herself, but she had already given Deidre what was possibly the most valuable gift within Svetlana’s power. A core could always edit what memories its external avatar would retain outside of the nexus’s territory, or in this case, would retain when the connection was cut. It was a necessary ability, given the limitations of organic brains of finite size that did not grow.

In this case, Svetlana had removed all direct memories of sexual assault and other degradation from Deidre. Svetlana still had those memories, still had to deal with remembering every detail of what had been done to her, but there was no reason for Deidre to be burdened by as much trauma.

After the Azeria cores made sure Svetlana was alright and passed that information on to Deidre, the group left, though Svetlana could feel the lingering attention of Kazue's core. Svetlana had to gently push Kazue away with reassurances that she was alright, and even with that, Kazue said she and the others were going to still be checking in on her.

Once she had shooed Kazue off, Svetlana collected the remaining tools and potions, then Krystraeliv withdrew the roots that had formed Deidre’s operating table.

Now it was time for her next task.

Though it would be a year before she could form a new awakened avatar, within that year she would have plenty of opportunity to experiment with her internal avatar. The simplest option would be to craft a body as powerful as any of her raid bosses, but that would be shortsighted, barring an emergency. Doing that would not help her learn, and she was looking forward to finally be able to freely learn again.

Instead, she was going to design and occasionally modify an avatar with far less innate power.

Mordecai had been helping her with the design process, and had shared much more information and guidance than he was intending to give Kazue and Moriko. His reasoning was simple: she already knew how to build complex avatars in general and didn’t need to learn the process, plus they all agreed it would probably be good for her to have a flexible avatar to learn normal life through.

Moriko and Kazue had copies of their original bodies for their avatars, and they both agreed that learning how to actually design their own future avatars with minimal guidance would be a good idea.

Svetlana’s first decision about her avatar’s appearance was to make an extremely androgynous young woman, who appeared to be human and was just a little shorter than Moriko, with hazel-green eyes and short but neatly styled hair. One side of her hair was pink, and the other was a pastel blue. Her facial features were on the delicate and pretty side without being decidedly feminine.

As long as she wore somewhat loose clothing, it would be difficult to tell the gender of her avatar, which was very much the point. For one thing, female was simply the avatar’s default, as shape-changing abilities would be built in. Svetlana would have gone for physically genderless if feasible, but healthy mammals, sapient bipeds or not, weren’t compatible with having no physical gender. Hermaphroditic was also possible, but came with its own health obstacles to overcome. So she had settled for female, with an innate ability to shift to male.

This took the place of other forms a young adult of a shapeshifting species might be able to take, such as a kitsune being able to appear as a human or a fox in addition to their in-between forms. However, her future shape-changing potential was similar to the flexibility of Mordecai’s avatar, with the biggest difference being that she was going to have to spend a lot of time and effort developing every stage of every new form.

‘Potential’ described a lot about this avatar. She was healthy and of average strength, but could become very strong and fit. She could learn almost any type of magic with a fair amount of ease, but would have to work hard to master any particular type of magic, let alone master multiple disciplines. This avatar could learn to do or be just about anything, but was starting from zero in almost every skill beyond basic social ones.

Svetlana didn’t know what she wanted her next avatar to be, and this seemed the best way to figure it out. Experiment with everything, and see what seemed to fit best.

The next morning, Svetlana’s new avatar awoke in her recently redesigned bedroom near her core. Instead of the very basic barracks design she’d stored her avatar in previously, she took inspiration from what Deidre had seen of Azeria’s suites, even though she didn’t truly need them yet. But she wanted to know what it felt like anyhow. The only things she didn’t include were the scented soaps and oils, as she didn’t yet know what she was going to like.

She rose slowly from the bed and began testing how her new body felt. Weak and slow described her initial findings, but that was in comparison to Deidre. This was a new self, and such expectations were far too high.

The body worked, did not protest movement within a normal range, and could perform basic exercises tolerably well. This was the starting point she had wanted.

When she was done testing how her body felt, she got dressed in a simple dark tunic that fell down to her knees, black hose, and soft leather boots. Then she shifted her avatar to a discreet location in Azeria, near where the starting zone bosses tested new delvers. There were definitely some advantages to being a subsidiary nexus, and having her internal avatar be able to exist inside of Azeria’s territory was certainly a perk.

She asked them to train her when they had the time, and maybe they could also find some visitors to the nexus to help her too. After she introduced herself as Svetlana’s avatar, she asked to be called ‘Svet’; while she did tend to think of herself as female, it seemed best to start with as neutral a default as possible.

The four small bosses were happy to each help in their area of specialization when they had time available, though they did still need to examine several of the new visitors over the course of the day.

The carakin Ubasti had the most free time, as not many people needed to be quizzed about their knowledge of various gods, and Svet found religion to be an excellent starting point. Previously, Svetlana hadn’t paid much attention to religious matters, given her feelings about her situation, but this provided a chance for Svet to rectify Svetlana’s lack of knowledge.

While her avatar learned and trained, her core had other work to focus on: continuing to rebuild all of her zones.

Svetlana had decided to reinforce the fae theming, and once past the outer faerie forest zone, delvers who entered the hill would find themselves in a different type of faerie forest.

It was much more closed-in and densely packed, with shaded glades and sun-dappled meadows spread throughout, and meandering streams winding through the trees. This was a place where it was easy to get lost, and Svetlana took advantage of that to pull off a fun trick.

The trick began with creating effectively identical locations, which she made in sets of three. There was one important difference though: these locations were rotated relative to their matching counterparts.

With those locations in place, the pixies could take part in the trick by simply creating mushroom rings. Through these, it was possible for a delver to be transported to a different location without realizing it, though naturally, stronger delvers would be able to feel the magic happening.

Of course, this required that a mushroom circle had been formed at both locations. If there was only the ring around the delvers and the magic tried to transport them, it would fizzle out. That, too, could be useful; for the delvers strong enough to feel the magic attempting to transport them might not be able to tell that the magic failed, leaving them to believe that they had been transported when they were, in fact, still at the same location.

Svetlana didn’t have to coordinate any of this; she merely needed to communicate the idea of the game to the pixies, and they took care of all the rest, even though it took a lot of pixies to form the two separate mushroom rings. Which was a good thing, because Svetlana had too many pixies to deal with.

It seemed that being a subsidiary core to Azeria brought with it the mixed blessing — or curse — of the pixies not being bound by the normal constraints of inhabitant capacity, and more had just started appearing over time. At least some of them were new pixies from Kazue’s puzzles that had wandered off, as Svetlana and the Azeria cores had managed to track a few doing just that, and noted when one of them either shifted to the Other Side and made their way along the corridor between the territories, or somehow used Krystraeliv’s connection to simply move to Svetlana’s territory directly.

This did not, however, account for how many of them Svetlana was now dealing with.

Maybe she shouldn’t have selected a theming of fey creatures, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In addition to dealing with pixie pranks and getting lost, delvers had to navigate between potential social, skill, and combat challenges in grand fairytale style. There were feasts and dances aplenty, and the occasional lone fae creature, and one had to understand how to navigate dealing with the fae in order to not commit a social mistake that would provoke them into attacking instead of being mostly-benign hosts.

Non-social skills came into play when dealing with flora, fauna, and the land itself, as telling what was safe to touch or harvest could be difficult. For example, a random plant might be a useful medicinal herb, or it might be a sprout from the cap of some sort of earth or plant fae that was taking a nap. Telling the difference was important.

When a delver finally managed to make their way through this disorienting forest, they would arrive at what appeared to be the outer fortifications of a massive castle or walled city, which entirely blocked the way forward. This was Svetlana’s third zone.

Entering the fortifications meant first dealing with whoever was guarding the particular entrance a delver found and approached. Initiating an attack was futile unless one had the strength to batter down the reinforced doors or gate.

This left most people with choices of subterfuge, bribery, or diplomacy of some sort. Not that there was any actual fooling of the fae guards here, but they knew the roles they were playing.

Once inside, delvers discovered that there were several political factions at play, and given the chance, they would embroil the delvers in various schemes aimed at each other. These factions mimicked some of the major court alliances, namely Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, Wet, Dry, Shadow, Light, and Celestial (or Star, depending on one’s preferred terminology).

Not that Svetlana had a perfect understanding of how each of these factions worked, but Deidre had promised to talk with some of the more approachable fae roaming through Azeria’s Other Side to see if they wanted to help populate Svetlana’s court, while the cores would check with the fae presently populating their hot springs resort.

The Wet and Dry season-themed courts were less well known in temperate climates, but many places had only two seasons, and the fey in those regions often formed into matching themed alliances. As far as Svetlana knew, this was an instinctive reaction, rather than a conscious choice, for most courts.

Svetlana was also careful to leave room for more potential court affiliations in the future, but she could only deal with creating so many options at a time.

Successfully dealing with the harrowing experience of faerie politics meant gaining enough favor with a faction that they were willing to send the delvers on to a secret, though naturally dangerous, path that led deeper into the 'kingdom'. These paths were, of course, themed to match the faction who the delvers had won the favor of.

The passageways were laid out in a loose spiral to take maximum advantage of Svetlana’s large territory, and were filled with a variety of different challenges. There were ‘wild monsters’, scouting parties of opposing factions, dangerous terrain (including natural traps like rock slides), magical wards that needed to be broken, and so on. All the adventurous highlights one would expect to find in a storybook.

The passages also had the occasional branching path, and it was very difficult to tell if a given direction was leading along the same court’s route, or if it led to a different court’s area of control.

The part Svetlana liked best about this was that the theme worked for several consecutive zones, allowing her to simply create increasingly harder challenges without having to change the basic concept. Given how fast she was reshaping all of her zones, not having to spend time making new design concepts was very useful.

Having the passages lead to a giant courtyard, or perhaps one of several not-as-large courtyards, seemed like a thematically solid concept, but she wasn’t sure what she should do with it. Perhaps a tournament of some sort?

While she was pondering this decision, deep underground and near the very bottom edge of her outermost zone, something too titanically massive for her senses to properly comprehend moved.

Svetlana panicked.

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u/Zagaroth — 18 days ago

▲ 3 r/Romantasy

Semi-cozy Fantasy Romance (MFF) — "No Need For A Core?"

Seven full books / over 1 million words of semi-cozy romantic fantasy; "No Need For A Core?" is free to read online until December, when book 1 will be publishing in physical, ePub, and Audiobook formats.

>An ancient, dreadfully powerful entity that had once been sealed away to slowly fade into oblivion is revived by a chance encounter, though in a much reduced state.

>A temple monk on her way home for a vacation is distracted into exploring a newly formed Spiritual Nexus due to the cuteness of its rabbit monsters, leading to an entirely unexpected chain of events.

>A kitsune whose death caused a goddess to pity her fate and revive her as a reincarnated Nexus Core, a land spirit of endless potential but whose life is tied to a crystal sphere that must be carefully guarded.

>Thrown together by a twist of luck, these three navigate a complex relationship and build their own rules to live by. But there are those who are not pleased to see the return of this ancient being.

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The primary romantic relationship is poly and mutual.

Mild content warning: Occasional swearing, "fade to black", Public Displays of Affection, typical fantasy violence (no unnecessary gore), rare instances of "disturbing content", and never in detail.

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Note: There is character art if you swipe right on the cover art

Image 1:
Three characters standing on stairs leading to enchanted doors.
Left: Moriko, half-elven warrior monk.
Center/Front: Kazue, kitsune and former shrine maiden.
Right: Mordecai, ancient spiritual nexus in his current avatar's form.

Images 2-3: Detailed character art of each character listed above.

u/Zagaroth — 25 days ago

▲ 7 r/redditserials

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 382: Gotta Keep 'Em Separated...

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Earlier on the day of Gemeti's arrival...

Deidre mentally reviewed the plan for the upcoming procedure while checking over the setup and materials carefully. An empty ‘table’ grown from Krystraeliv’s roots stood beside Svetlana’s core, along with a second table that held a few potions and a set of surgical tools, along with the pieces of core matrix that had been rewarded to Deidre before she had become a temporary contractor for Azeria. Nearby was another small table that held a change of clothes for later.

It was a pointless mental exercise; Svetlana had already checked everything, and Deidre couldn’t imagine the core version of herself missing anything. The process simply helped calm her nerves, similar to one of the many moving meditations Satsuki had previously led her through in their time together.

“Are you alright?” Satsuki asked from behind her.

Deidre nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” said Paine, from where she rode on Deidre’s shoulder.

“As much as I can be. Everything is ready, and everyone is here. We should just get started.” Mordecai, Moriko, and Kazue were all here to lend their assistance when needed. She told herself that she had confidence that they had fully memorized their parts. After all, she entirely trusted them. They had liberated her and then given her into the safety of Satsuki’s care.

Svetlana was there too, of course. She was always there, which was part of their mutual problem. Deidre shouldn’t find it so easy to think of Svetlana as another person, and part of her rejected that idea still, even as the rest of her recognized the truth of the matter. They were no longer of one mind, one sense of self, and to Deidre, being ‘retired’ to become part of Svetlana once more sounded more like death.

But they were still similar, had still experienced much of the same life with the same memories, and neither wished the other an ounce of ill will. More than sisters; perhaps conjoined twins would be a similar level of intimacy of a shared self. The solution to their mutual problem was also similar: surgery.

She shrugged off her short robe, leaving herself in only a loose skirt, and unsettling Paine in the process. The pixie made an annoyed noise, but she also took the robe from Deidre and somewhat laboriously flew it over to the table with extra clothes, and laid the robe out there.

Deidre sat on the surgery table, accepted the potion vial that Satsuki handed to her, and downed it quickly. She returned the empty bottle, then laid down on her back and closed her eyes. The potion would help numb the pain and partially paralyze her, but she had already chosen to be awake during the procedure to ensure that Svetlana would be able to give feedback based on what Deidre felt.

The living-crystal-wood beneath her was just cool enough to be comforting, even when it grew branches that wrapped around her limbs and key portions of her body to ensure that she couldn’t reflexively move in response to the surgery.

There was a rustle of cloth, and through Svetlana’s view, Deidre could observe Moriko helping Satsuki put on the last of her surgical outfit. While some basics like a smock and a mask were obvious, the construction of these garments was new to everyone but Satsuki; it was something that she had learned from her off-world travels, and she’d had to carefully instruct Moriko as to what order to help her don the pieces and what parts of those pieces could be touched. The often vain kitsune had even gone to the trouble of shifting into a completely human form that was devoid of any hair.

The others had acted similarly, though Moriko had to accept a spell from Mordecai to have her hair temporarily suppressed. Deidre appreciated what they were doing for her, but they all looked a little odd, unfamiliar, and a little scary this way. She closed her eyes to block out the view, and did her best to not dwell upon it.

Multiple beyond-blue light sources embedded in the ceiling and walls activated, and the smell of lightning crept into the room. Satsuki had specified both of these, and Mordecai had shown Svetlana how.

The revelation of the other bands of light had sparked more anger at how limited her ability to experiment had been, but it was a small drop in a large bucket of grievances that could never truly be redressed.

Deidre pulled away from her awareness of Svetlana’s senses; she didn’t want to watch herself being cut into. Satsuki’s presence and touch helped, and there was no one she trusted more to do the surgery, but it was not something that was easy to be relaxed about.

A scalpel sliced through her flesh, and even with the numbing effects of the potion, it was an unnerving sensation. Deidre focused on it, determined to be as aware of everything as she could be, but she said nothing. Svetlana was relaying anything moderately important to Mordecai, and Mordecai was passing it on to Satsuki.

Even with salves that quickly staunched any bleeding, the surgery to implant the pieces of core matrix into her body felt like it was taking forever. The metallic tang of blood that now filled the air only added to her discomfort. Each piece was being carefully placed to rest at a junction of nerves that also met flows of mana, spiritual energy, and meridians for the flow of chi. Moriko verified the meridians, while Satsuki verified the rest. Mordecai had his eyes closed and was focused on the sensations from Deidre’s body, via Svetlana.

Once a piece of matrix was settled into place, a small amount of healing potion was applied to the wound by Kazue, and then the connections double-checked before more healing potion was applied.

It was slow, steady work, and nerve-wracking for all of them, though nothing surprising happened during the carefully scripted process.

When all the pieces were implanted, the steps were checked over once more, and every aspect of physical and spiritual connection to and around the matrix was verified. Only then did everyone relax, though it was not yet the hardest part of the full process.

“Alright dear,” Satsuki said as the table withdrew its branches. “Let’s get you dressed; then we can have you move around and test your flexibility to make sure everything feels alright.”

Deidre nodded and followed the instructions Satsuki gave her. This had been one of the most important decisions in Deidre’s life, but now that it was happening, it felt surreal. Her emotions seemed disconnected, making it hard to feel strongly about anything. The numbing potion had already begun to wear off, so it wasn’t magic that was responsible — the looming change that would soon occur was just daunting. And terrifying.

If it didn’t work, then Deidre would probably be even more dead than if she’d merged back with Svetlana. Avatars were designed to fully integrate their spiritual connection to their nexus’s core. This was part of what made such a connection incredibly hard to sever in most circumstances. But that was exactly the plan today.

While Satsuki helped Deidre go through the physical exercises to ensure there were no problems, spiritual energy was gathering and building up in the room. Four nexus cores, three avatars that were faerie royalty, an immortal nine-tail, and a young but already powerful world-tree were all focused on her, and deliberately increasing the density of the spiritual energy around Deidre.

The pressure wasn’t intended to push against her, as some might do to demonstrate their strength; it was intended to saturate her with spiritual energy.

It was working, but it ached in a peculiar way. She was being filled and overfilled with all this energy, and it was compressing her aura. Deidre fully relaxed her control over her aura, an action that should have flooded the area around her with it. Instead, it was pressed even deeper into her flesh, and into the core matrix now embedded in her.

The goal was simple: condense enough spiritual energy to start forming a nascent soul inside of her despite her nature as an avatar, and only then cut the connection between herself and Svetlana. It should be more than enough to help her survive the severance, and from there let her fully form her own unique soul.

Should.

An important and terrifying word. One that haunted her. If it didn’t go as intended, and her body died, she might truly die irrevocably, with no soul to salvage.

However, Kazue’s boon worked even for normal animals, who only had spirits, just like Deidre currently did. Surely that boon would attempt to grab her spirit, but no one had any idea of how well that would work or how trying to recreate her body would work. There were so very many unknown factors, but they had all been covered repeatedly in previous discussions. Deidre was not going to let any worries or fears distract her at the last second.

She shuddered, and her legs wavered under the increasing pressure of spiritual energy. “I need to lie down,” she gasped out to Satsuki, who nodded and helped her back to what had once been the operating table, but had already been converted into a comfortable bed, with a sleeping pad and blankets.

Deidre curled up onto the bed and began shivering. Her body didn’t know what to do with all of this excess energy being forced into it, and Deidre felt uncomfortably stuffed and full in every way possible. It was an illusion of sorts — her nerves and mind were trying to translate this feeling into something that she had experience with. That knowledge didn’t make things much better.

Satsuki sat beside her and petted her soothingly, but she was also using her touch to push her spiritual pressure even deeper into Deidre’s body, compressing it around the bits of core matrix. Deidre felt like she was being crushed, a giant vice made of everyone’s will pressing into her from every direction, and had now gone far beyond simply aching. Kazue joined them, sitting on Deidre's other side and offering up what comfort she could.

Every bit and piece of her hurt. Compressed, crushed, overfilled, and ready to explode, all at the same time. She refused to let pain win, though she was quite glad to feel her Paine settle next to her head and press into her hair. “I’m right here with you,” the little pixie whispered. “It’s going to be all right. I am your familiar, and I am going to help get you through this.”

By power alone, the pixie could make little difference here, but she still might truly be helping. She’d formed a familiar bond with Deidre specifically, and that mystic bond was tied to Deidre’s spiritual form, not to Svetlana’s soul.

Deidre was grateful for the pixie’s love and care, and regretted that she’d been so brusque earlier when she’d shrugged off her robe. “Thank you,” she whispered back to Paine, then fell silent again as she turned her attention back to coping with this excess of energy flooding her body. Eventually, the pressure stopped building, and the sensations plateaued in intensity, though everything still hurt. In some ways, that was worse. The building pressure had been something to concentrate on, and now that it had stopped, it was harder to ignore the pain.

“Alright, that’s all we can do,” Mordecai said, and he sounded hoarse. Everyone was giving everything they had to this, and they clearly couldn’t compress any more energy into and around Deidre.

“Are you ready?” Satsuki asked Deidre.

“Yes.”

A moment later, Mordecai verified that Svetlana was ready too.

Deidre did her best to draw all her attention and will into herself, and could feel the person who should have been her otherself withdrawing as well. Satsuki reached out into the space between Deidre’s body and Svetlana’s core, her hand growing ethereal for a moment, then she grasped something immaterial to draw it into the physical world.

A shimmering strand of what looked like thick antiqued silver thread lay in her grasp, the ends of it trailing off into nothing. Deidre felt like she was going to be sick; the intimacy of the sensation was threatening, a violation of the sanctity of her very self. She had to fight to control herself as she watched Satsuki’s hands transform into claws that glowed with spectral light, claws she slid delicately across the silver thread connecting Deidre to what should have been her true soul.

SNAP!

Deidre writhed and screamed in agony. Part of her was gone, cut away, and she needed it back, but this hollow void was suddenly overwhelmed as the surrounding spiritual energy forced itself into the gap.

She was being ripped apart and crushed into nothingness; she was dying and being born; destroyed and recreated. Everything she had ever been was being undone, her very existence unraveling from within while tangled threads of thought tried to cling to each other and create a new weave and pattern of self.

She had no sense of time or of the space around her during this torture, but after what felt like an eternity, the overwhelming and contradictory sensations softened and eased, letting her begin thinking again. And thinking meant being alive. She groaned as she opened her eyes, every sensation feeling like it was against rubbing raw nerves. Then she gasped at what she saw.

Satsuki was pinning her down, as were Mordecai and Moriko, while Paine fluttered overhead, darting back and forth anxiously. Kazue was sitting on the ground nearby, looking exhausted. One side of her dress was shredded, bloodied, and entirely missing a sleeve, though her flesh appeared unmarked. Mordecai and Moriko’s clothing also bore signs of recent injuries, though it also appeared that they’d been healed already as well. “What happened? What did I do?”

“It’s alright love,” Satsuki murmured with a relieved sigh as everyone let go and gave Deidre some space, while Paine swooped in to land on her shoulder and give Deidre’s head a hug. “You thrashed wildly and your body shifted form a few times, but it was clear you had no idea what your body was doing. We had to pin you down just to make sure you couldn’t hurt yourself. Well, anymore than you already had. More healing had to be used on you than anyone else.”

Kazue looked up and gave a wan smile. “I was unlucky enough to be the first one you hit, but my arm took most of the impact. The inside of my body wasn’t injured.”

Deidre’s eyes widened at that; she knew what Satsuki had been doing with the three of them, and that Kazue was carrying a child. The thought that she might have injured Kazue’s baby was horrifying. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I—” She was cut off by Satsuki pressing a finger against her lips.

“We know,” Satsuki said, “and everything is alright. You are alive, and your soul is forming nicely. It’s already passed the strength of a toddler’s, and by the end of the day should be as strong as most teenagers. It’ll slow down from there, but you will still gain years of strength per day until your soul catches up to where your spiritual strength should be. For now, take it easy and rest. Maybe in a day or two you can start doing some sparring, or even try delving on the combat route. Just don’t push yourself too much; the exercise will help stabilize your soul, but too much could undo some of your progress.”

Deidre nodded, then she realized she’d forgotten something. “Svetlana! How is she doing? She’s alright, yes?”

“Yes,” Mordecai said. “While it did hurt for her too, the backlash was a lot less severe. She wanted to help you, but there was nothing more she could do. She didn’t even dare risk supplying more of her spiritual energy, lest your connection try to reform haphazardly. I don’t think that would have gone very well for either of you.”

Moriko helped Kazue to her feet, then turned toward Deidre. “Come on, we’re going to take you back to our home. You can have dinner with us, and Satsuki also has a room topside, not just the one she has near our cores that you’ve been sharing. Oh, and you never had a chance to meet Amrydor’s friend Gemeti; she’s going to be joining us for dinner, which should be entertaining.”

Kazue shook her head with a look of exasperation. “I don’t know what Fuyuko was thinking with her game this morning, but I think we’ve reached the limit of any advice we can give.”

“Oh, this sounds good!” Paine said excitedly. “You have to tell us everything; looks like we missed out on a bunch of tasty drama.”

|| <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

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u/Zagaroth — 25 days ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 381: Getting a Tour

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

“What do you mean by an encampment?” Gemeti asked as she walked with Amrydor.

“When Azeria was attacked last year, Kuiccihan decided that they needed to establish a permanent guard here. Um, I think that was after the second attack, because there had bee a small army that assaulted Azeria. Anyway, Kuiccihan set up their own encampment, which sort of worked out for everyone, because that also meant they could delve as sort of a shift. They've kept doing that, thought they rotate which soldiers are stationed here now.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. Easier to respond to an invasion if you are already there.” She knew a little about what had happened from what she’d been told during their visit to Artgoi, and more now from the rumors and stories she’d heard since. “So, what is your role here now? I wasn’t sure if you were going to be here or off training at your temple.”

“Er…” he coughed and she raised an eyebrow at how awkward Amrydor suddenly seemed. “Well, my job as Fuyuko’s protector has sort of been expanded upon. Um, you’ve heard of Kuiccihan’s marked? I am one now.” He held up a hand to show the back of it, which glowed briefly to show tattoo-like mark of a shield protecting a castle. “Only, there’s a special kind of Marked that gets a second one.” Now he showed the back of his other hand, which glowed with a shield design in front of a symbol that was clearly meant to represent Fuyuko. “Turns out that Fuyuko also counts as a princess of Kuiccihan, which is kind of weird, but it technically works. This whole set is a new variation of being marked, so no one knows exactly what to expect. Oh, and now I am a sort of half-contractor to the nexus, so I can switch between whether I am acting as a contractor or a delver, but I don’t get the full benefits of either role.”

After a moment of thinking, Gemeti said, “Your life is strange. I think I am going to be happy dipping in and out of it during my travels, but I don’t think I would like being involved in this level of craziness all the time.”

Amrydor laughed. “That’s a fair call; it’s rather crazy from my side as well. But some sort of craziness was always going to be part of the deal, I think. see, if you want to get really strong, you have to deal with things that really challenge you. Training can only get you so far. Sparring can get you farther if you are both pushing each other hard enough, but you have to be willing to get hurt and possibly hurt others in the process. Someplace like a nexus, where you can push yourself harder, is better, but I think they are all weird here, just in different and unique ways.”

“You’re not afraid they’ll object to you calling them weird?”

He shook his head with a grin. “Not at all; they’d all freely admit it, though some of them might have to think for a moment first. Ah, and there’s Fuyuko, though I don’t know who's with her.”

Gemeti, however, did recognize the man, though she didn’t know his name. “I think he’s some sort of entertainer. I’ve seen him practicing some dance moves using a weight on the end of a rope, and at night he likes to use a different weight that glows.”

“Weight on a rope?” Amry asked. “I think I know why they are here now, and if I am right, you saw flow practice for a weapon called a meteor hammer. Fuyuko is practically in love with that weapon, though she still likes bows more.”

Huh. She wouldn’t have thought it a very practical weapon, but as she and Amry got closer, she could see several dents and a rather worrying crack on the surface of the target that Fuyuko and the other guy were near. “Hi Fuyuko!” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything — I just wanted to see you before I made Amry show me around.”

Fuyuko shook her head. “No no, it’s fine; Kenzai was just showing me why he has so many heads for his meteor hammer. He’s practiced swapping them out really fast, so he can change them while fighting, and some of them are made for using alchemical stuff. Shizuko would like to see that, I think.”

Kenzai gave a small bow at the mention of his name, and Gemeti returned the greeting. “Nice to meet you Kenzai; I thought you were a performer when I saw you practicing before. I didn’t realize that it was a weapon.”

“It can be either weapon or art,” he replied calmly, “and I do enjoy demonstrating the performance aspects of it. However, the nexus seemed like an ideal opportunity to practice combat skills beyond sparring with a soft, lightweight head, but without risking truly hurting anyone.” He raised a finger in thought, then turned toward Fuyuko. “Ah, just to be sure, did I understand that aspect of a nexus correctly? Any injury done to the inhabitants is repaired by morning?”

“Yeah,” she said, “and it’s actually dawn and dusk for Azeria. It still hurts, but the instincts of the nexus-born are sort of different, and they don’t mind, so long as it’s all a part of what they are supposed to be doing for the nexus.”

“That is still going to be difficult for me to adjust to. While I have a lot of training and practice — often against people stronger and faster than me — I’ve never deliberately aimed to do serious injury before.”

Gemeti smiled at Kenzai’s comment. “Oh good, I’m not the only one who’s nervous about that. Um, I’ve been practicing my magic, and have had a little bit of training for self-defense so that I can try the combat path, but I don’t know how good I’ll be.”

Amrydor looked thoughtful. “We should see if we can get you evaluated by Kuni and Seon then. They are in charge of making sure people are ready to take the combat path. Kuni does martial skills; Seon does magic. There’s also Jiah, who can test things like hunting, gathering, and crafting skills, and Ubasti, who’s the religious expert.”

Fuyuko nodded. “That’s a good idea; I’ll make sure to let them know, but I think there’s a line to see them already for today. Um, but first, Gemeti, I wanted to ask you something. Er, privately, sorry.” She waved at Gemeti to follow her away from the two men.

When Fuyuko seemed to think they were far enough, she stopped and looked over at where Amrydor and Kenzai were chatting before turning back to Gemeti. “Um, so, I was hoping you could do me a favor, because it’s something I can’t do for myself, and I think you’ll like doing it too.”

“Well,” Gemeti said, “you’ve certainly got me curious. What do you need?”

“You know I can’t delve and earn rewards in Azeria, right? So, I was sort of hoping you could delve for me, and I could just pay you for the part of your delve rewards that I want. I still have some of the money Papa gave me when we were in Artgoi. And what I want to do is get something for Amry; his birthday is going to be a little after we get to Ekuilance. I had been thinking of a shield or maybe some better armor, but he kind of just got an upgrade to that, so maybe a weapon. Mama M or Papa could help figure out what’s best. You just gotta declare that you want to hold off on full rewards until later. Um, some things are automatic, especially on Mama K’s route, but the rest you can save up on.”

Oh. Well, certainly she didn’t mind the idea of earning some direct coin by trading in the value of her delving, assuming that the value was high enough, especially as it would be for a gift for Amry. “That seems fine, and yes, I’d like to contribute to that. Hmm. Well, I guess getting improvements to his gift for me can wait until the caravan comes back.” She pulled back a sleeve to show the smooth black material of the strange armor.

“Oh!” Fuyuko said with a smile. “That’s what he got you from his last delve. I knew he got you a present, but not what. He also got something else, but didn’t want to tell me what it was for some reason.”

Gemeti stared at Fuyuko for a moment. The answer to that mystery was obvious to her, but the other girl seemed oblivious to the idea that Amrydor was getting Fuyuko a present too. “Huh. Well, not my business either, I guess.” There was a small chance she was wrong, and Amry seemed to want to keep it a surprise anyway. “Anything else before we head back over?”

“Er, sort of. I don’t know what your plans are or anything, but I’d like you to stay with my family if you can. I can ask my parents to give you a room next to Amry’s, if you’d like.”

Gemeti was pretty certain she’d be spending her time in Amrydor’s room, not next to it, but she was willing to keep up appearances if that was easier. “That sounds good. Where do you guys live, anyway?”

Fuyuko pointed. “Up there. See that balcony at the top?”

“The giant crystal tree? Sort of? I see a bump that I think is what you mean. But you guys really live up there? How do you get up there?” That was a long way up.

“I usually just shadow-step up and down, but Amry usually uses one of the mushroom clouds, or has Krystraeliv transport him. My parents simply fly. Oh! Hold on, I should introduce you to Mavialeko and Krystraeliv. Well, Krystraeliv is the crystal tree, and Mavi is her dryad. Uh, and my niece.”

“That me!” A blue-skinned, green-haired girl called out as she appeared nearby, bringing with her the scent of fresh herbs. “Hi!” If not for the unusual coloration and fragrence, Gemeti would have thought the girl to be a kitsune, given the fox ears and tail.

“Oh! Um, hello Mavialeko. I’m Gemeti. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Mavi,” Fuyuko said, “Gemeti is a friend that Amry and I met when we were traveling, and I’d like it if Krystraeliv would let her ask to be moved places like our home. She’s going to be staying with us while the caravan is here.”

“Hmm, sure!” Mavi said, then turned her strange tawny eyes to Gemeti. “You’re not connected to the nexus, so you have to do it out loud. Anyplace you can see a part of Krystraeliv, you can just touch her and say her name, then tell her where you want to go. Um, if you really need to, you can also just shout for her almost anywhere. She can do stuff anywhere in the nexus, it’s just easier for her to notice people and do stuff if they are touching her.”

“Thank you,” Gemeti said. “I appreciate that.” Though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask the magic tree to whisk her off places.

“Mavi, why don’t you join us?” Fuyuko asked. “I just met someone from the caravan who’s really good with meteor hammers and he has a couple of neat tricks he can show us.”

The three of them went back over to Amrydor and Kenzai with Mavi running in front most of the way, then lagging behind looking shy once they had almost reached the interesting stranger. After Mavi and Kenzai were introduced to each other, Gemeti finally got to see the meteor hammer in action. It was surprisingly fast for Kenzai to keep striking with the weapon after each rebound, and it was much more dangerous-looking than when he’d been doing the dance-like practice she’d seen previously.

The demonstration also included his fast-swapping technique. It only took a few seconds, though it still seemed like a vulnerable time in the middle of a fight. Still, better than not having the option, she supposed.

Fuyuko was eager to try it out herself, and eventually they left her to her practice with Kenzai. This did mean that Mavi was now with Gemeti and Amrydor, but Gemeti didn’t mind too much. For one thing, the girl was cute and sweet, and for another, seeing Mavi riding on Amry’s shoulders was adorable.

As there was a long line of people waiting for evaluations, mostly from her caravan, Amrydor promised to get her in when there weren’t so many people in line, and in the meantime, was happy to give her a tour. Meanwhile, Mavi was happy to chatter about everything of interest to her while ignoring anything she didn’t find interesting. He even took them to what looked like an ordinary section of forested hillside, then guided Gemeti through a turn she wasn’t sure she could replicate while the hill seemed to briefly open up. This took them into someplace called the ‘warrens’, which was where a lot of the inhabitants lived.

A nervous thought skittered across her mind about being dragged off into a faerie hill, but she put that idea down by amusing herself with images of Amrydor being the fae lord she would be bound to serve in such a story. That wouldn’t be too hard of a ‘terrible fate’ to accommodate — though she would have also attempted to woo that imagined version of Amry into serving her instead.

That was a fantasy she intended to explore in more depth later. Right now, there were wondrous sights to behold, and despite her own mental tone with the phrase, she also meant it sincerely. There was an entire underground city with houses made of everything from stone to wood to giant mushrooms, complete with industrious workshops and pleasantly broken up by gardens and orchards filled with strange plants.

Then there were the creatures living in that city. Most were the smaller, fuzzy varieties of rabbit people, but there were also many other animal-like people of similar stature, as well as the ones who didn’t have bipedal forms, and a few who had taller, mostly furless forms. She had heard about the usagisune, but she hadn’t realized they’d all be so very pretty, men and women alike. It was a little distracting, but that was a thought to possibly explore some other time.

After a while of exploring, which included sampling some fruits and Amry taking her to a ‘shortcut’ that led directly into a giant library, Mavi announced that it was dinner time, and Amrydor nodded in agreement. “Yuyu said that her parents want to start getting dinner ready. You’re entirely a guest, so you get to just relax while the rest of us take care of everything.”

Gemeti shook her head. “Your whole mental communication thing is going to take some getting used to.”

“Oh, that’s not the weirdest thing you’re going to deal with here,” he said with a grin.

He proved true to his word before food was even served. First, there were the cloud mushrooms that carried them up to the balcony, high above the earth and metal zones. That ride made her more than a little nervous, but Amrydor distracted her with amusing stories of nervous delvers trying to decide between risking the clouds or taking one of the long slides down to the ground. She could see why that would be a hard choice to make!

Then there were the three baby dragons that swarmed her excitedly. She’d only briefly met Carnelian and Sparks before, and there hadn’t been much socialization with them, but now they seemed eager to get to know the new guest.

And finally, there was the rather daunting encounter with Fuyuko’s sister, Carmilla. The faerie woman was polite and pleasant enough, but Gemeti could feel that she was being evaluated and weighed in a strangely thorough manner. In a way, it reminded her of how her mother would look over jewelry and quickly make an accurate appraisal.

It did not help that once dinner was ready, she was seated on one side of Amrydor with Fuyuko on the other, while Carmilla and Mavi sat opposite to them. Carmilla was very good at asking ‘innocent’ questions that got Mavi curious, and it was very hard to deflect anything, especially with it being impossible for her to lie around anyone here other than Amry. It was clear that Carmilla was feeling very protective of her little sister, and just as clear that Mavi was oblivious to the idea that Gemeti might be more than Amrydor’s ‘friend.’

Making it through this dinner was going to be rough, though at least the food was delicious.

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u/Zagaroth — 1 month ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 380: Gemeti Arrives

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GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

As the caravan slowly moved along the road leading up into the foothills, and ever closer to the Azeria Nexus, anticipation filled Gemeti, forcing her to make sure that her tension didn’t cause her to pull on the reins of the wagon she was driving, under supervision of a more experienced wagon driver. She was looking forward to seeing Amrydor, though part of the reason for her anticipation was also slightly annoying to her.

Amrydor and his friends were the only people Gemeti knew in their age group who had that sort of personal power and strength. She’d felt the intensity of his spiritual pressure and had loved it, which was part of what had inspired her to attempt joining their training expedition. Her swift defeat in physical combat at the hands of Shizuko showed that she was not close to ready for that.

The problem this presented her was that she found the sensation to be an incredible aphrodisiac. She liked the feeling of being helpless against carefully contained power, and she loved it when she had control over that restrained power. It was not quite addictive, but it was certainly something hard to match.

She had a fair idea where she might find people close to her age that would have at least some of that type of strength, but aside from not being interested in the rougher sort of company that would probably be involved, Gemeti wanted to be a successful merchant in her own right, and a good reputation was one of a merchant’s most valuable commodities.

Her other option was not appealing either; Gemeti had no interest in people more than two or so years older than herself. Or that physically appeared to be too much younger than herself; on the trip here, she’d found that the elves her own age or even a little older looked too young to pique her interest.

Once the caravan had reached Riverbridge, there had been a few options that could have satisfied that intensity she wanted, but now it felt like she was too close to what she was really craving, and it left her not in the mood to experiment, especially since she already knew many of them, past associations would just remind her even more of what she was missing.

Besides, there was a certain thrill to whetting one's anticipation as well. Or was that appetite? Perhaps both. That was a thought that entertained her as the caravan continued to trundle along painfully slowly, because she was certainly looking forward to seeing Amrydor again. She just hoped that he didn’t have any other company — while she’d never had the need to consider rules like the ones he'd described to her in what was starting to feel like an eternity ago, they made sense, and she had decided to adopt them for herself as she intended to travel a lot.

Movement caught her eye as Derek and Galan abandoned the caravan with haste, and Gemeti smirked. Just because she hadn’t bedded anyone in Riverbridge didn’t mean that she hadn’t found toys to play with. The half-elf Galan was too young and looked even younger; Derek was just as young and truly ensnared by Shizuko. So there had been no true intent on her part when she’d flirted outrageously with the boys, and she didn’t think they believed she meant it. However, watching them turn beet-red had been very entertaining.

Still, those two knew the area well, so if they were abandoning the caravan now… Gemeti focused on the path ahead, leaning out from the side of the wagon. Those buildings had to be the trading post, and there were a lot of people moving about, but one figure wasn’t moving. Her eyes widened with delight as she took in the tall boy waiting by the side of the road; not only did he seem to be unattached, it looked like he was anticipating seeing her too!

“I’ll be back shortly,” she said with a smile as she handed the reins over to the senior driver. “And with a bit of luck, I’ll be returning with another pair of very strong hands to help with settling in the wagon and unloading.”

The older man made an amused snort. “Off with you then; I know that look.”

Gemeti hopped off the slowly moving wagon and restrained herself from running. But a bold stride would do quite nicely to bring her to Amrydor much more swiftly than the unhurried wagon would have. The expression on his face as he looked her over was nice.

“Hello, Gemeti,” he said as she got close, and he stepped forward to meet her.

“Hello Amry,” she replied as she pulled him out of the main thoroughfare and into some cover, then stepped inside of his embrace and pulled herself up to kiss him. He helped, his arm wrapping around her waist to press her close as her feet left the ground during their kiss. His height was inconvenient at times, but his strength did make up for it in some situations.

He tasted wonderful, and she could feel the difference in their power had grown, which was unfair given how much she had been practicing her magic and even training with some of the younger guards back in Artgoi. However, it was also exciting.

When their kiss broke and he set her back down on the ground, she leaned back against his arm and looked up with a smile. “I take it you missed me? That’s nice for a girl to know.” Gemeti grimaced as she realized how that might sound. “Er, I mean, I would have been happy for you guys if things had changed between you and Fuyuko, just, if it hasn’t, then, well, it’s a bit selfish, but I am glad for me.”

She wasn’t sure what reaction she was expecting from him, but it certainly wasn’t simple amusement. “Don’t worry, I get it. Also, things have sort of changed between her and me, just not in a way you need to worry about. We’re closer, but it’s complicated, and she’s definitely happy to see you with me.” He grinned and added, “Just be glad you are someone she likes. I asked her to imagine someone she didn’t like cuddled against me, and she then broke off a bedpost without meaning to.”

That was… somewhat scary, but also rather nice to know that Fuyuko liked her. Wait, bedpost? No, she didn’t want to know. Or maybe she could explore that later... “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Though I guess this means I still have no chance of seducing her either. Too bad that; I’ll just somehow have to make do with a tall, strong, handsome young paladin at my beck and call… eep!” He’d pinched her bottom just hard enough to make her jump.

Amry grinned at her. “Careful, or I might need to punish you later. And all I have to do to punish you is to not use a little trick I learned recently.” His hand had slid up to her lower back, and she could just barely feel the touch of his spiritual energy gathering there. It was something she couldn’t have done at all just a month ago, but she had been practicing a lot.

Gemeti narrowed her eyes. “Alright, this sounds interesting. Show me this little trick of yours.” Lowering her resistance, choosing to not resist the intrusion of someone else’s spirit, was relatively difficult because of how new she was to consciously controlling her spiritual energy this way, but it only took a few moments of concentration to find that mental state that let her relax properly.

She could feel him doing something that started around the lower section of her spine, but then the sensation spread down into her belly and hips, and rolled up her spine as her eyes widened in shock while her hands grasped onto his shirt tightly. “Amry— !” She cut herself off to bite her lower lip, keeping herself from making inappropriate, wanton noises as she shuddered. Her thoughts scattered as her hips bucked with induced pleasure, and only his arms kept her from sinking to the ground. Then a second wave rolled through her, clouding her mind even more. The third wave wiped away all ability to think for a few blissful seconds.

When she could think again, she was breathing hard and could taste blood from where she had bitten her lip. “What... what was that?” she asked in a daze. The bastard was smirking at her. Gemeti was very glad she’d pulled them out of the view of her caravan. She’d never live this down.

“Like I said, just a little trick I figured out recently. You’re the first person I tried that particular version on, and it’s the third time I’ve used it at all. I don’t think it’s something that can be used in combat at all. It’s sort of too close-ranged and too easily blocked by a person’s aura. It can’t be forced passed even a normal person’s aura if they don’t let it happen.”

Before she could ask another question, he bent down and kissed her briefly. Gemeti was surprised to find that her lip no longer hurt, and a quick test with her fingers showed that she wasn’t bleeding anymore. “Oh? You can heal now? Are you a proper champion and priest already?”

He shook his head. “No; something light and superficial like this is as much as I can do. I wouldn’t be able to even slow the bleeding of a more serious wound.”

Admittedly, she found that a little disappointing, but being able to heal at all was still a sign of how fast he was growing. “You’re going to have to show me what else you can do in greater detail later tonight. And we’re going to find out how long you can keep that going.” Gemeti shivered happily at the thought, then shook her head to clear it. “But I’ve taken long enough; I need to keep up with the caravan. There’s a lot of work to do… and surely, a big, strong man such as yourself would be willing to help me deal with all this heavy cargo?”

That made him laugh. “Alright, I can help. Just show me what you need me to do.”

“Don’t worry; I like telling you what to do, how to do it, and how long to keep doing it for.” She started to slip out of his arms to follow the caravan, but he caught her and pulled her to him, her back against his chest.

“Hold on just a moment; I have a gift for you. Don’t turn around, this is perfect.” He fastened something around her neck, and it tightened just enough for her to feel that it was a choker of some kind, but the fabric felt weird.

“What is this?” she asked as she ran her fingertips along the strange, almost slick material.

“It’s a special variation of living leather armor, similar to that which everyone who visited Artgoi had gotten. You should be able to focus on it, bond with it, and then command it to turn into a thin layer of protective clothing that slides under all your other clothing.”

It took her a couple of minutes to figure out how to bond with it and command it properly, then a sleek, shiny layer of fabric-like material flowed snugly over her skin. “Oh, that’s friendly!” she said in surprise before examining the sections of it that she could see. “This seems a lot thinner and tighter fitting than what you guys have been wearing.”

He nodded. “That’s probably because it’s a hybrid with living liquid crystal. This version won’t be as strong of a protection, but once you get used to it, Mordecai said that it should be very good at changing shape and absorbing other outfits for it to copy exactly. Oh, and it’s currently unique — Mordecai said that Azeria doesn’t intend to produce any more copies until they get some feedback from the only person who has one. Say, right before your caravan leaves the nexus for Artgoi? Which does mean that no one else in the caravan will have this version.”

So she’d be the only one wearing this temporarily unique version of the armor, and thus the only person in Artgoi with it too. And it sounded like, with some effort, she could use it in very visible ways that would draw attention to her connection to Azeria. That was something a junior merchant could use to her advantage.

And it sounded like Amrydor had gone out of his way to get this for her.

Gemeti turned to look up at him. “I think that this is the most perfect gift I have ever received. Thank you Amry.” She pulled him close for another lingering kiss, then stepped away. “Come on, I really do have a lot of work to do. But later, later I intend to show you how much I appreciate this gift.” Between his new trick, and experimenting with this fascinating living outfit, she did not expect either of them to get much sleep tonight.

The first thing that needed to be done was to find out where the wagons were going to be stored so that the horses and other animals could be unhitched and taken care of while the wagons were inventoried and unloaded.

During this process, Gemeti coordinated with one of the adorable flying rabbit people; a ‘rabkin’, Amry had called them. She had never worked with someone so distractingly cuddly before, but it was a good reminder that the world was more diverse than she was familiar with.

She first showed the rabkin all the items that Azeria had either previously purchased or had specifically requested. Once the previously purchased items were collected and verified as delivered, they were taken away, disappearing into thin air. The requested cargo varied; if there had been an agreed-upon price, it was annotated onto the bill of lading to add to the total owed to Gemeti on behalf of merchants back in Artgoi, and also taken away. If it had been requested but a price had not been agreed upon for whatever reason, it was set aside to be negotiated for later.

The next category of cargo was stuff that had not been requested. Gemeti intended to sell this stock to either the nexus or to delvers, though she would get very little profit for any of it. None of it was hers, and all of it had a minimum sell value. She was obliged to not sell for less than that unless she wanted to pay the difference herself, and she would only get to keep some of the profit if it sold for more than the minimum. Anything that didn’t sell needed to be brought back to Artgoi, which meant less space for goods to return home with, and once again a smaller profit, plus a smaller reputation. She couldn’t have that

She had a fairly small amount of cargo in that category; it was more of a test of trust and capability before anyone would entrust her directly with cargo of significant value. The caravan also had a lot of other merchants and representatives with their own wares to sell, but per the bargain that had been reached with the help of Seshadri, Gemeti was in charge of all the things that the nexus had requested or paid for.

Once everything had been sorted and stowed, Gemeti could take a break. There was still a lot of activity going on for the rest of the caravan, as they had more cargo to ensure was properly secured, but she could afford to let other merchants sell their wares to the nexus and to delvers first.

“Now,” she said to Amrydor, “I want to also see Fuyuko, then find out how this delving business works, and then have you show me around. I’m done for the day, and I don’t have a schedule.”

“Alright, well, Yuyu is that way; we can meet her over there… why is she by the Kuiccihan encampment? This might be interesting.”

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u/Zagaroth — 1 month ago

[No Need For A Core?] — 379: (Meteor) Hammer Time

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The very first people that Fuyuko saw move away from the caravan were her friends, Derek and Galan, who looked like they were in a hurry. The caravan must have picked them up in Riverbridge. Weird to think that one of them was technically her uncle, she mused.

Shortly after that, Gemeti hopped off the wagon she had been traveling on because she'd spotted Amrydor waiting by the side of the road.

Fuyuko grinned as the two met and kissed, and was rather satisfied with the warm happiness she felt from Amrydor.

She knew that this was probably unusual — she liked Amry enough to have been rather happy snuggled up with him while they had slept last night. From what she knew of how most people reacted, that should be enough for her to feel some of that possessiveness or jealousy a lot of other people seem to feel when the person they liked also liked another person, but it didn't seem to work that way for her.

Well, unless that person was someone she didn't like, maybe. She guiltily remembered the broken bedpost and contacted Mama M. 'Erm, I forgot to mention this earlier, could one of you repair my bed? One of the posts got broken earlier.'

There was a moment of hesitation before she got a reply. 'Got broken? Do I want to know how that happened?'

Fuyuko pondered whether to be vague in a way to bolster the illusion of her prank, but decided to tell the more exact truth. 'Amry and I were talking about stuff like Gemeti, and he suggested I imagine someone I didn't like snuggled against him. And, well, that happened.'

'I see. Love, if things get too complicated, you know you can come to me, right?'

That made her smile. 'I know. But I think we're figuring it out. Seems anything involving me is going to be complicated. Don't worry about this part though — I can see them right now, and I'm happy.'

Warm affection flowed across the link, and Fuyuko enjoyed what felt like a mental hug. This was one thing she liked a lot better about being in the nexus compared to using her earring. More than words could be communicated.

She had not stopped watching the caravan come in while she'd been talking with Mama M, and she was impressed. It was a lot bigger than Gramps' caravan, with entire wagons devoted to plants and animals. And with all those wagons came a lot of people.

Deciding it was time to pay more attention, she put away her practice lock, but she didn't leave herself entirely unoccupied. She could still eat while watching all the people.

While she was eating a fruit that tasted like a lightly spiced cross between a pear and a peach, Fuyuko spotted a particularly interesting looking man. His dark curly hair was shorn on the sides, while the messy top was dyed a bright pinkish-purple, and he wore what looked like a variation of a gi that was mostly black with some white and purple sections.

It was quite an interesting look, and she decided she liked it, but that wasn't what really got her attention. There was a long silk rope wrapped around his shoulders and chest in a harness-like pattern, with one end of the rope slung around his neck to dangle forward over his shoulder, and at the end of it was a small weight. Even better, there were also a bunch of other weights and odd shapes attached to his belt that she was certain could also be switched to attach to the end of that silk line.

The man stepped to the side of the path and paused, looking around a moment before his gaze lifted to look directly at her. Oops, she must have stared too hard. She waved, wolfed down her fruit, and jumped down to the ground before walking toward the man. Who was waiting patiently, but he seemed smaller and harder to focus on? Wait, had her vision changed briefly?

'Papa,' she sent, 'I think my eyes did something weird. I was able to see someone clearly when I was focused on him, but now it's almost like he's further away despite being closer.'

'You've heard the stories about archers who can shoot targets so far away as to be invisible? Well, they aren't invisible to the archers who are that good. You have to be able to see your target to aim. Don't play with the ability too much just yet or you will give yourself a headache.'

Oh. Well, that made sense. She wasn't sure how she felt about being predicted so easily though; she had been about to try making that focus thing happen deliberately.

As Fuyuko got close to the man, he bowed slightly and asked, "May I help you, young lady?" His accent was mild, but he had a fun way of talking. It was sort of casually formal; she couldn't think of a better way to describe it.

"Hi! Um, sorry for staring. I was interested in your harness — is that a meteor hammer? Why do you have it wrapped around you like that? How fast can you swap out the heads? Oh, sorry, I'm Fuyuko; it's nice to meet you."

"It's a pleasure to meet you Fuyuko, I am Kenzai. Yes, this is a meteor hammer; I take it you are familiar with them? As for the harness, it is designed so that I can quickly and easily slip it free for use if needed, though this does not seem the place for a demonstration of either the harness or switching heads."

She nodded. "Alright, um, if you don't mind, I'd really love to see it. How about you tell me where you want to go and I'll show you? Make sure you get things done quickly, and I can get a demonstartion in return."

He inclined his head in response. "That sounds like a fair trade. I take it you are very familiar with Azeria? For the moment, I am seeking to discover where I can make it known that I am available to join a party of delvers and then find a room to rent. Oh, and I am hoping to clarify some information — I understand that proof of martial competence is often required, but it was not clear if that was for everyone, or only for those early in their chosen path."

"Yeah, I know the nexus about as well as anyone can," Fuyuko said with a grin as she gestured for him to follow her while they talked. "I'll show you where the party sign-up boards are; you'll want to check back several times a day to make sure you see if anyone wrote on your post wanting to meet up and talk. Once you have a party, your group can use the delving sign-up boards. I don't think you have to worry about a demonstration; after all, you felt me looking at you from over there..."

Fuyuko had waved toward the tree, but now she paused to stare at it. The branch she'd been on was about thirty feet in the air, and she'd hopped down from it without a thought.

"Is something wrong?" Kenzai asked.

She shook her head and started forward again. "Ah, no, just realized how far up I had been. The last year has been strange. Er, oh yeah, as I was saying, you're strong enough I don't think anyone will be worried about you taking that challenge; though you can if you want. I bet Kuni would love to see you do a demonstration of your skill, and the effort would probably increase the value of your rewards from the nexus."

"Interesting. So, how familiar are you with the meteor hammer?"

"I've only been practicing with it for a few weeks. I got a large set of different weapons during a delve, and I have been trying to learn the basics of all of them. What I'm really good with is a bow, but I'm pretty good with swords and stuff too. I think meteor hammers are really fun, though, and once I'm good enough, Papa and Mama M will let me practice with a rope dart too."

"I see." Kenzai looked like he wanted to ask something but wasn't sure if he should, and Fuyuko took a guess as to what it was.

"I have Papa, Mama M, and Mama K. Um, if you meet them, it'll be obvious, but I'm adopted."

"Thank you. That does make it simpler to know, though I am a little embarrassed that I was that obvious."

"Don't worry about it. Saying 'Mama M' when you only have one mama would be weird, right? And here we are. So, you grab a paper from here, put your name on it, and this is a list of symbols to make it easy to categorize your skills and stuff. Then you also note specific things like your meteor hammer. Then you stick it on one of the pins on that board. People write on your paper if they want to meet you and talk. Or you can look at other people's posts and try to meet up. Once there are two or three people together, they usually just look at other people's posts and take down their original ones."

Kenzai studied the board as he nodded along with her explanation. "I see. Effective enough, I suppose, though it seems rather wasteful of paper."

"Nah, don't worry about it. This is just nexus mana craft. If you tried to take it out, it'd evaporate when you crossed the border. Um, in the future, there might be some odd and probably rough paper there instead. If that happens, it'll be real and made from stuff in the nexus. So you can have a keepsake if you want. But they want to make sure that they can make enough before they do that, so that there aren't some people with it and some people without it."

"Ah. That sounds much like what I have heard about the cores' concern for fairness. Which reminds me — when we left Artgoi, I understood there to be two cores: Lord Mordecai and Lady Kazue. However, when we reached Riverbridge, there were some confusing stories about there being three cores now, the third being Lady Moriko. Is that something you know about?"

Fuyuko shrugged. "Well, I can't explain how it happened, but yeah, there were two cores, but they were in a relationship with Moriko, and somehow, something happened that caused a core to start forming in her head. She had to be rushed back here so her core could join the other two before it grew enough to start forming its own territory." And she absolutely refused to think about the details of what had to have happened there.

That caused him to raise an eyebrow. "Well, that certainly is unusual. I can't say that I have ever heard of that happening before. Not that spiritual nexuses are very common, so there may be much we do not know. Now, if you'll give me a moment, I'll set up my paper, and then you can show me where you think I should stay."

While he was writing his post, Fuyuko mentally asked around for which places had the most rooms available and decided on one nearby. "Alright," she said when he was done, "I think I know a place. Come on."

Everything was going fine with her intention to avoid mentioning her real role as part of Azeria, right up until she brought him to the inn she'd selected, and one of the bunkin working there noticed her showing Kenzai around. "Lady Fuyuko! Is this a special guest of yours? Will his stay be free?" Fuyuko winced. It was clear that the bunkin had meant well, and he was very enthusiastic, but that also messed with her plans.

Kenzai took only a moment to put the pieces together. "Ah. You did say you had three parents, and the initials of your mothers match Lady Moriko and Lady Kazue. I take it you are not interested in advertising your status."

The bunkin's eyes went wide. "Oh, I'm sorry. Um..."

She sighed and said, "Don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. And yeah, I was trying to avoid the hassle. Er, I feel awkward about it now, but I don't think I'm supposed to be offering free rooms or anything; I was just showing you a place with open rooms."

He smiled and nodded. "I understand. I wouldn't want to put you in a difficult position, and I was expecting to pay anyway. As soon as I arrange my room, I can give you that demonstration."

That took only a few more minutes, and then Fuyuko could finally bring him to where he could demonstrate the harness like body wrap and why he had so many heads for his weapon to swap between. "So, the Kuiccihan soldiers that are stationed here set up some training dummies for themselves near their camp. There aren't as many of the soldiers now, so there's always plenty of dummies available. I figure that's a good place."

"I agree. That sounds ideal."

The demonstration was fantastic. She hadn't expected the meteor hammer's rope to slide past itself so easily. Kenzai could unbind it and snap out his first cast of the weight in about the same time that most trained people could draw a sword or a dagger. This had the advantage of a longer range attack without using magic of any sort, but meteor hammers also weren't great as defensive weapons, even if they did cause people to keep further away from the swing of the rope.

As for the rest of the demonstration, she thought the head swapping was pretty neat. The most common use in battle would be to swap between meteor hammer and rope dart without having to also get a different rope, but he had heads of different weights, including a three-pound head that did a good job of cracking the wooden training dummy. Oops.

"Um, just keep practicing on that one," she said. "I'll make sure it gets repaired for the soldiers later." She was pretty certain that one was a good head to use against metal armor or really hard creatures, but she thought it might also be tiring to use after a while.

Just as Kenzai was getting ready to start another demonstration, Amrydor sent, 'We're coming to you; Gemeti wants to say hello before I show her around.'

Oh. "Wait a moment, it looks like I have a couple of friends joining us. They'd probably like to see your tricks too. Well, Amry will; I am not as sure about Gemeti."

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u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

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[No Need For A Core?] — CH 378: Archery

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Fuyuko shook off her musings about what Carmilla was up to — she knew her sister was dedicated to Azeria, so while the faerie swamp witch might want to play her games, she'd never do anything that would risk harming the nexus.

She headed downstairs to finish getting ready for the day, and to accept her jinbei back from Amrydor. Having his scent on her clothing was nice, but that was a thought she wasn't going to follow up on until after Gemeti left to return to Artgoi. Fuyuko didn't want to mess anything up there.

With nothing in particular scheduled for her, Fuyuko decided to take the nexus's shortcut down to the arena, where she found Amrydor just starting the same type of practice as her starting point for the day: archery.

It was not exactly the same set, however — Amrydor was training to remain proficient, and in this case to practice how to configure his armor's new ability to allow him to properly draw a bow fully. One of the limitations of his normal heavy armor was that its articulation was not designed to allow for drawing a bow, and required removing key pieces in order to do so.

This took much less time than Fuyuko's training, and he was ready to head to one of the other training areas while she was still working her way through her sets.

An idea struck Fuyuko as Amry was about to leave, and she called out, "Wait." When he turned back, she hesitated. "Um, I had an impulse to tease you, but I just realized it could be a little mean."

"Now I'm curious." He smiled and gestured. "Go on."

Fuyuko was wearing her normal shirt and skirt combination over her armor, so she paused to take her shirt off and draw her hair forward over her shoulder. After she picked her bow back up, she modified the back of her armor the same way she had on the day when she had managed to nearly make herself sick.

Then, with her bare back facing him, she very slowly and deliberately notched an arrow and drew it back, then held the pose for a moment before she loosed her arrow.

Amrydor's reaction to watching her back was... satisfying, which worried her. "Am I that vain?" she asked softly. "For all that I don't want all that you want of me, I kind of like the appreciation part of your reaction."

As he walked up behind her, Fuyuko simply waited, not sure what to expect. She felt him lightly touch her neck, then he caressed down her back. It was somehow soothing, and she relaxed into his touch. "Vain?" he said. "Maybe a little. But you also don't seek that reaction from anyone but me, so I don't think it's something you need to worry about. You might want others to think you are pretty, but you don't care as much about what other people think. And I like that you enjoy my touch. Even if your reaction is more like a spoiled pet's rather than most girl's reaction."

She turned her head to glare at him, but he just reached up and scritched her ears, making it hard to focus on glaring. Maybe she did rather like this sort of touching.

"I think we can call it even," Amrydor said, a laugh in his voice as he stopped scritching her ears.

"Go on, get out of here," Fuyuko muttered, and once he was gone, put her shirt back on before resuming her training.

Her training set began by working with her heaviest non-magical bow and shooting twenty times with each draw style that she had been taught. These were simple full draws done without haste and with a focus on precision and accuracy. She then repeated the process when she switched hands, but only ten times each. Fuyuko was not attempting to train herself to equal proficiency; she simply wanted to be able to use either if the angle of a shot around a barrier required switching hands.

This bow was not the heaviest that she could possibly draw, but Papa had said he wanted her to practice at no more than this weight for a while, and to focus on mastery before he got her a bow with a heavier draw.

After that, she switched to what was a mid-weight bow for her, which was still heavier than the bow that she'd been given a year ago, and activated one of the room's training sequences. A set of barriers rose out of the ground at the end near her, and a few moments later, moving targets with their own barriers and ranged attacks appeared at the other.

Her objective was simple: shoot all the enemy targets without getting hit by them. The targets were shooting arrows, spells, and the occasional bullet, but these were constructs made mostly of illusion. They did carry some force and would hurt, but had far less impact than the real version would. Instead, they affected the muscles around the impact point, making it harder to move and restricting some actions.

It was almost impossible to complete the course without being hit a few times; however, that too was part of the training. Being hit hurt and reduced speed and power, but being able to continue on despite being hurt was important.

However, if Fuyuko did manage to consistently get through the randomized course at this difficulty, it would automatically change to the next tier of difficulty. Papa had created tiers to the point he couldn't clear it without getting repeatedly hit in the process, using any ranged attack of his, not just using a bow. So, Fuyuko had plenty of improvements to make, and she did get a scoring sheet at the end of each run, so she could track her improvement for a given tier.

Unexpectedly, it had been Momma K who had added a weird addition to the courses. She’d said that the smell of the training room was distracting and that no-one would ever be fighting somewhere that smelled like that, so she insisted there be random scents and ambient noises included in each training sequence. Momma M had said that Momma K just hated the smell of sweat that tended to fill training rooms, but the idea had its merits — making the environment smell and sound more like places where a person would need to use these skills would make the training more effective.

Once she was too tired to keep running this course, it was time to take a break and eat while she recovered. Well, she could have gone for a little longer, but the scent had just changed to a nice blend of flowers and grass with a hint of forest. The next set of smells could be much less pleasant, as Papa had decided to add things like bogs, dirty slums, and sewers to the possible scents.

The next training set involved various maneuvers. Instead of dashing between cover and then shooting, she had to practice shooting her bow while moving. This involved a lot of jumping and leaping, as being mid-air in a smooth arc was better for both accuracy and power than being mid-stride while running.

There were also other maneuvers, such as one that involved sliding onto a knee with the other leg out and bringing her body nearly level to the ground to dodge below incoming shots while drawing her bow, and coming partway up to shoot back; from that stance there were a few options such as rolling forward or to the side to come up to her feet, or dropping back down again.

After a few practice runs to get warmed up, Fuyuko activated the training set. This configuration had her running forward toward a small group of enemy targets while also firing her bow, trying to shoot them while not getting shot. Once more she ran this until too tired to make clean work of it. This scenario’s random terrain had her diving repeatedly into or over a muddy gully. She was very glad that when the sequence disappeared, so did the mud coating her from head to toe.

Her final round of archery training was to repeat her first set, firing twenty shots of each notching style using her right hand, then switching to do ten shots with her left hand. This time it was a lot harder, and her muscles protested the action, but she completed the set with clean shots every time.

A very important aspect of this was that she was doing this with muscle alone, with only the passive effects of her body having been reinforced by her spiritual strength. This still meant that she was a lot stronger than she had been a year ago, and it built up a better base for her spiritual power to amplify. It was amazing to think of what a naïve kid she'd been a year ago.

So no battle aura, no killing intent, no focusing her will to make her body move beyond what muscle alone could do; just pure physicality.

Everyone she knew who was really strong and skilled agreed on this basic methodology: During solo training of physical skills, a person needed to build physical power directly without depending on spiritual power. During sparring and such, a person should build spiritual power by contesting against others, using their inner strength to enhance what their body alone was capable of.

Training her shadow-based abilities was still restricted at the moment. The game of tag with the hatchlings was one thing, but pushing herself in the way that would be required to really enhance her skills was another.

While Fuyuko was pondering what she should do next for training, Mama K's thoughts touched her mind briefly. "The caravan is close; you may want to head up."

She smiled and stretched to help relax her muscles, passed the message on to Amrydor, then made her way toward the entrance to the shortcut to the surface. This was going to be the end of her training for the day; it was time for some people watching that also part of her job as a contractor. While being a princess had its own complications and benefits, Fuyuko had no intention of not also being the best contractor for Azeria that she could.

Naturally, Amrydor was making his way up as well, though his focus was clearly going to be different than hers. At least he looked a little bit guiltily embarrassed when she said, "You look eager. Just don't go drooling all over her."

"I would never do that," he said, and when she raised an eyebrow, he amended, "In public, at least."

Which made Fuyuko realize that the conversation was drifting toward details she didn't want to know.

A single step into the shortcut brought them up to the shrine area, and heading into the warrens let them bypass the normal lines of people going through the main entrance. "Well, make sure to let her know I said hello. And I do want to be able to spend some time with her, so don't go locking her up in your room or something."

Amrydor smirked. "No, it's princesses who are supposed to get locked away to suffer durance vile."

The odd phrase took a few moments for Fuyuko to process, then she frowned at Amrydor's retreating back. "Eww." While she was interested in exploring how much she'd enjoy spending more time physically near him, Fuyuko had an idea what sort of 'suffering' a princess might endure.

Of course, he already knew that wasn't the sort of thing she was interested in, and had even declined her offer last night, so she knew he was just messing with her. Mostly. Blegh. She was stubborn enough that she wasn't going to take back what she'd said, but she was really glad he'd not acted on it.

She dismissed that thought and headed for one of the taller trees along the main road through the trading post. A quick jaunt through the shadows brought her to a nicely shaded perch on a sturdy branch, and there she settled in to watch the people below.

Most days, there was very little chance of anything happening, but this caravan had a lot of people who were all new to the area, let alone the nexus. They wouldn't be here with friends or comrades who had experienced Azeria before. This made the situation a little more uncertain, and her job was to keep an eye out for potential trouble.

There were plenty of inhabitants that would be interacting with the crowd too, of course, but this view would let her possibly see things that might get missed by a distracted bunkin looking in a different direction or from a different angle.

While she waited for the first of the caravan's passengers to arrive, Fuyuko broke out a practice lock that Papa had gotten for her. She'd previously mentioned to her Azeria parents that her clan parents, her father in particular, had begun teaching her a little about clockwork mechanisms, as that had been his job, though she didn't remember much. Kinda hard to practice such things at an orphanage, though she'd had cause to get practiced in lock-picking. The big locks were easy to force, if noisy, but the little ones with all the pins were harder if they were made well.

Well, now she had her very own enchanted 'lock' that would reset and randomize itself every time she closed it, including randomizing the number of pins, and could only be opened by picking it, as it had no key. The maximum number of pins increased if she started picking the previous one too easily, and there were tricks that it would add randomly as well, such as pins designed to feel like they'd been raised high enough before they actually had. There was a subtle difference, but it was an easy mistake to make if she wasn't paying enough attention.

The dwarf who had made it had also provided some basic training on clockwork mechanisms, given how little she remembered clearly of what her father had taught her, and the nexus now had a collection books on clockwork and lock-smithing, which Fuyuko was studying.

She was confident that she could now assemble or repair simple things like a basic music box if she had all the parts, but there was still a lot for her to learn or relearn, and things like crafting a spring or a gear were not things she was ready for at all, and that kind of crafting hadn't even been talked about in the books she'd read. But maybe that was something her mother had done for her father, since she was a smith.

Did Amrydor know how to smith? She should ask him at some point. Though he'd need to know white smithing, not black smithing. Or maybe something else. She wasn't entirely sure how exactly one made gears and springs. The books only talked about which ones were good for what and how to match and assemble them.

While she was musing, the caravan came into view, and the first of the passengers started to break away from the caravan.

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u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

▲ 8 r/romantasycirclejerk

A Warning to anyone who would date a (Romantasy) reader...

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u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH377: Fuyuko Has A Plan

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Amrydor kissed Fuyuko's lips lightly, then rolled to the side with a sigh, and she could feel him pulling in his emotions, drawing that desire back and doing... something with it, because she no longer felt it across their still open connection.

Fuyuko felt vaguely insulted, though she couldn't say why. She shoved that feeling aside and sat up to look at him. "Amry, are you sure you should be doing that? That sort of felt, um, painful for you?"

He looked exasperated. "It was only a little difficult, and that was only because I let it build like we were actually going to do something. Stopping and putting desire away is something that everyone should be able to do. It's still there, but the, um, intensity is going away."

Amrydor sat up and stretched his neck to crack it before he said, "Yuyu, you don't really want sex. Well, it's not something you do to someone else, it's something you do with someone else. If you don't actually want it for your sake, your pleasure, then it's not happening. Hells, Klastoria sounded like she'd at least have fun playing the part when she tried to seduce me, rather than something she'd endure."

Klastoria? "Wait, she tried to seduce you? How would that work? No, never mind, I don't think I want to know."

"Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that. She made both an offer to just 'play' with me, and an offer that made it a prelude to eating me. Um, she seems to mean well, weirdly enough, but she's got some strange ideas in her head. Er, her core actually, I guess."

Fuyuko shook her head. "I don't know if I should talk with her or not. Well, anything you decide to do is between the two of you. Or, any of the nexus's other people, now that I think about it."

"I just turned you down, but you are fine with me sleeping with one of the inhabitants?"

She shrugged. "I, look, I meant what I said, but whatever else you do with other people doesn't bother me."

"Really? What if it was someone you didn't like?"

Would that make a difference? Fuyuko didn't think that it should, and there weren't a lot of people she disliked. Well, there this one girl from the gangs she'd dealt with in Cantraberg; what if Fuyuko saw that girl cuddling up against Amrydor like she'd seen Gemeti do?

CRACK!

Fuyuko stared down at her hand in surprise, which now held the broken end of a bed post. Papa had made this bed out of really strong wood.

"So," Amry said, "I think I'll make sure you like any girls I spend time with. It seems safest for everyone."

She could hear the laughter in his voice, and she wanted to protest, but the evidence in her hand suggested he was right.

"Anyway." He stood up and turned toward her with a smile. "Thank you, Yuyu, your offer was really sweet, but I care about you too much to take that sort of offer. Some people would. I don't like those sorts of people. So, um, good night, I guess. And thank you for making sure I was doing alright."

When he started to turn away, Fuyuko said, "Wait." It took a moment more for her to finish organizing her thoughts, then she nodded. "I still want you to stay."

"What? Um, why?"

"I want to find out what it's like having you sleep next to me. One night in the same bed, just as if we had done it. I like how you smell, and I felt your reaction when you woke up. I know you feel the same way. Oh, and I wanted to mess with my parents. I know they meant well, but part of me is annoyed despite Mama M being helpful. Papa's nose is as good as mine, so when we get breakfast tomorrow, he won't know what to think."

Fuyuko had intended to stop there, but it felt like the truth was incomplete. "Also... turning me down after being that close hurt my ego, even if you were right, so I kind of want to make you suffer a little. Damn it, I wouldn't even have realized that if I didn't have to tell the truth." She could have maybe not told Amrydor, if she had already admitted it to herself, but instead, she'd tried to lie to herself by thinking that the first two reasons were the only ones.

She scowled as he started laughing, and he kept laughing until he had trouble breathing and was on his knees. When Amrydor finally recovered, he grinned at her. "Alright Yuyu, you win; I'll play your game."

Her pillow hit him in the face. "Stop it with the yu-yu-yu thing! That's at least the third time! I know you are doing it on purpose." She could have thrown the bedpost instead. Maybe she should have.

His grin was unrepentant as he tossed the pillow back onto her bed. "Your plan has one flaw, though. I need to go bathe in your bath to get the scents right. We need to both smell like we cleaned up, and I am assuming you already took a bath, since you're in your nightgown. I can't believe I'm helping you trick your parents into thinking that we might have had sex."

"Oh, um, I guess you should have something to actually sleep in..." He was still wearing his now rumpled clothes from earlier over his living armor. "I have an idea." Fuyuko went to her closet to grab the pants to her jinbei, then paused before grabbing the shirt as well.

"The pants are comfy enough to sleep in easily, and then you can wear the shirt in the morning. I was a little shorter when I got this for my birthday, so it should be a pretty close match for you now."

It was a silly, ridiculous little nonsense conspiracy — Fuyuko didn't think her parents would be anything more than slightly confused — but it made her happy for some reason.

By the time Amrydor was done with his bath, he was sleepy enough to go back to bed. He hadn't actually gotten enough sleep to make up for everything before; he'd just slept enough to be able to eat.

As for Fuyuko, well, she'd been up most of the day and had a rough morning before that, so she was ready for bed too. Getting into bed felt a little awkward, but Fuyuko insisted that he sleep under the covers with her, though they did settle on sleeping back to back.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Fuyuko woke up briefly and realized that this had changed. Amry had rolled over to cuddle around her in his sleep, and had one arm draped over her. She decided she didn't mind and snuggled into him with a smile as she went back to sleep.

In the morning, after they'd gotten dressed, Amrydor said, "Wait, there's one more thing." He looked her over critically, then nodded. "Your body language is wrong. And I know how to fix it. Lie back down on the bed, face down."

His instructions confused her at first, but she complied, mostly just to find out what he was up to. The solution he had come up with was to give her a quick massage to loosen up her muscles. Fuyuko certainly didn't mind, but she didn't understand how this was going to change anything. Then she felt his aura spreading out from his hands, and somehow commanding her muscles to relax while he worked.

Stopping the effect would have been trivial; it only worked at all because she hadn't reacted to feeling his aura pressing into her spirit and body. But since she allowed it to happen, her body responded to his will in a way she couldn't even make it do, and she had no idea how he was doing it.

After he'd worked her over once and reached her calves, he had her roll onto her back, which was surprisingly difficult. Then he massaged her belly briefly, his fingers pressing into her flesh softly as he worked down to her thighs. The entire process was leaving Fuyuko confused, though admittedly amazingly relaxed. Then he sat on the bed and put her feet in his lap to massage them.

She'd never had a foot massage before, and she suddenly lost her ability to focus on anything but that sensation until he finished.

It was hard for her to remember exactly what he'd just done; she just knew it had felt really good, and that she'd felt a sharp pang of disappointment when he'd stopped.

"Maybe we should skip breakfast," she muttered. The words felt like they should be blasphemy, but she really didn't want to move right now.

He laughed. "Well, that's about the right feeling, but I might have overdone it. It's the first time I've tried to do specifically that, but I'm glad it worked."

"What did you do?"

"Not gonna tell you. It's my secret for the moment. But I can't use it in a fight or anything; you literally have to let me do it."

Well, she'd been able to figure out that last part herself, so he was right about it not being useful for a fight. She giggled at the sudden image of Amry winning a spar because he offered a foot massage if the other person forfeited. Then she considered sparring with him just to win another foot massage. But she needed to go get food, so she made herself get up.

Well, she tried at least.

It was like her muscles didn't want to work anymore. She could move, but everything was uncoordinated and weak. Sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed was a struggle. "You should have done this last night," she muttered at him.

"You're right, that was my mistake, but this is kinda funny." He ignored her glare and offered his hand. "Here, let me support you, and we'll get your muscles working before we try going upstairs."

Walking in circles around her room a couple of times certainly helped, but she wanted to lean against him still when it came time to walk up the stairs. Which had the advantage of getting to enjoy his scent. Then she remembered seeing Mama K leaning against Papa like this a few times. "Wait, does sex really do this to girls?" she asked incredulously.

"Sometimes, but it sort of depends on a lot of things. Being relaxed and cuddly was all I was going for; you having trouble walking is a rarer thing."

"And they still like it?"

Amrydor smirked. "Yes, and you don't want to know any more."

She made a face at him, then ignored the topic as they reached the top of the stairs.

Breakfast was only getting started when they got there, and the brief silence that their arrival created was hilarious. At least until Fuyuko realized she was having trouble with coordination still, and Amrydor made her sit down before he went to go help with making food.

Feeling helpless was not a side effect of her prank that Fuyuko had anticipated, and it was embarrassing. Plus, she'd only meant to mess with her parents, but Carmilla had come up for breakfast too this morning. Had she heard something about Fuyuko and Amrydor? Then again, she was a faerie witch; maybe that let her magically know that she wanted to be at this breakfast.

Meanwhile, Amry was simply ignoring all the looks that were being exchanged as he helped her parents and sister out in the kitchen. Fuyuko was just glad that the dragons didn't seem to notice anything and were happy to have someone sitting still long enough to give them attention. When they weren't trying to steal food, at least. It was amusing watching them try to drag food to her lap so they could have both food and cuddles simultaneously, each trying to steal one or both from the others.

When the food came out, Carmilla took the seat directly opposite Fuyuko, while Amry sat next to her. No one asked or suggested anything, though the conversation felt a little awkward. Maybe this is what it would have been like if she and Amry had actually done anything. Well, that meant her prank worked at least a little, and Amrydor was being extra nice and making sure her plate stayed full of food while they ate. It was hard to not enjoy that.

By the time they were done, Fuyuko was feeling a lot more coordinated and could help clean the dishes, and that helped her ignore the slight awkwardness that was still lingering from everyone else ignoring what had supposedly happened.

Before she could get back downstairs to finish getting ready for the day, Carmilla said, "Fuyuko, could you come here a moment?" with a mischievous look in her eyes.

That made Fuyuko nervous, but she didn't have a good excuse, so she waved to Amry, who had paused at the top of the stairs. He nodded and went down, and Fuyuko followed her sister into the main room.

Carmilla wrapped them both in a privacy spell, then smirked. "I have a naughty little sister, trying to trick our parents like that. You did a good job, but there's one hole in your plan. I was born a faerie, and have gotten used to reading all the little things my senses tell me. You are still a virgin, and your boy has definitely had something winding his spirit tight without a chance to release."

Crap, she hadn't realized that was possible. Wait, there were faerie stories where the faerie just knew if someone was a virgin or not. Double crap. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Me? Not a thing. I'm just entertaining myself; though I would like to know how he got you so relaxed. That part is definitely not acting."

"Er, well, he gave me a massage, which was nice, and then he, ah, gave me a foot massage." Why was that embarrassing to say? Then she remembered the foot massage; her balance wavered a moment and she grabbed Carmilla's arm to steady herself. "Are, are foot massages supposed to do that?" she asked as her voice trembled.

"Only the best foot massages, my dear sister," Carmilla said, then glanced speculatively toward the stairs. "I think I might be just a touch envious."

Fuyuko stared at her. "But, don't you already have lots of guys, um, visiting you?"

"All I could ever want, by numbers. However, even for me, an endless feast is only entertaining for so long. I've been becoming more discerning, and prefer to indulge myself in quality. Being able to give that sort of foot massage is certainly a quality to admire. You really should take good care of him."

"I'm not sure what else to do." She hesitated, then decided to confess to her sister. "I told him I wouldn't tell him no."

Carmilla looked incredulous. "And he still didn't? When a boy that age wound up like that? Hmm. Do you think that sort of self-control is something common to all champions of Zagaroth? Maybe I should let Prince Gou, I'm sorry, I mean, 'Champion Yugo' try flirting with me again next time he visits. He'll be eighteen by then, right? A little young still, but if that's what they are all like..."

"Eww, enough!" Fuyuko said. "You do whatever you want there, I don't want to know."

"I'm sorry," Carmilla said contritely, "I forgot. I'm used to talking about boys with my other sisters." While she said that, Carmilla's hair had shifted silver for a moment as she'd briefly became Princess Elara. "Well, I won't keep you any longer; we both have stuff to do." Carmilla suddenly froze, then shifted back to Elara again. "One of my other sisters is here, in the nexus. I can't tell which one, or where, but she's been here for a while."

With a shake of her head, Princess Elara once more became Carmilla. "It seems I have lots of work to do. Now that I know to pay attention, I can still feel her, and I have a pretty good idea of how she got here. The little cheater probably copied me. Though I suppose there could also be more than one. That could be an entertaining problem. Don't tell our parents, please. I want to have fun with this."

With that, Carmilla disappeared into a shower of purple sparks, leaving a bemused Fuyuko to wonder what was going on.

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u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

▲ 48 r/touchfluffytail+1 crossposts

Mavialeko

Commissioned by me, from the artist Navae

Character is an OC from a serial I am writing, and is both a kitsune and a dryad. Her name means "Blue Amber", which is an actual type of amber in the real world. Her blue skin is a reflection of nature of her unusual tree; the blue hue you can see in parts of the bark and some of the leaves is not an accident.

She was recently 'born' appearing to be about 10, and is determined to not grow up any time soon. She'll spend at least 30 years slowly growing up until she appears to be about 20. It's a one way thing for her, and she wants to spend as much time as possible being a child and having fun. 😁

u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 376: Fuyuko Has An Idea

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Fuyuko's reading was interrupted about an hour after Amry passed out. Mama M insisted on bringing some more food down herself and checking Amrydor in person, just to be safe.

The food came in a serving trolley with three levels — the top one had food for Fuyuko to enjoy now, while the lower two were closed and sealed. For a brief moment, she wondered how Mama M had gotten the trolley down the stairs, but then Fuyuko realized between her control over air and her nexus powers, Mama M had a lot of options.

"The two bottom sections are keyed to Amrydor and will open only for him. Don't worry, they are also enchanted to keep everything in stasis until then," Moriko said, looking amused.

That made Fuyuko feel a little guilty, as she had already been considering breaking into the snack food she'd set previously aside for Amry. After all, she could just go get more, right?

After examining the sleeping boy, Moriko nodded. "He's just exhausted. He'll probably wake up long enough to eat, and then want to go back to sleep. Now, any particular reason you decided to play nurse by putting him in your bed?"

Fuyuko shifted in her chair as Mama M looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Well, I thought it might be funny to see how he reacted when he woke up there. And I don't mind having his scent on my pillow." Fuyuko finished in a rush, caught off guard by the need to complete the truth. She was beginning to understand why not being able to lie could be considered troublesome, and it wasn't exactly a question she could choose to not answer. Telling a more complete truth wasn't compelled, strictly speaking, but it also required the right mindset that it didn't feel like a lie.

Mama M put a hand over her mouth to muffle a brief laugh. "Alright, I can certainly sympathize with both of those points, but that means I need to talk with you about something."

"Um, am I in trouble?"

"No love, not at all. But Fuyuko, you need to be careful here. He cares a lot, which means it can be easy for you to hurt him by accident. I'm not saying don't tease him; friends also tease and mess with each other all the time. I can't tell you where the line is between what is fine and what will be bad. That is between you and him. I just want you to keep in mind that you need to be careful. Even ignoring everything about the princess and guardian bond, if you hurt him, you would feel awful. That's a situation that could cause either or both of you to do something rash that might make the situation worse, or at least more complicated."

Mama M paused with a look of surprise, then said, "Wait, I'm giving advice about not making rash choices? Since when have I been spouting wisdom?" She made a face and added, "Your father must be rubbing off on me."

Fuyuko giggled. "He does like to share his wisdom a lot. But that's part of what makes him Papa." She shrugged and scratched at her cheek. "Um, but about that. Amry and I sort of had a talk before. He knows I am trying to understand things that I don't really get. Though I guess this might be outside of what we agreed on."

"That's good that you've talked; it's important." Mama M smiled. "I admit, talking has often been low on my immediate interests, but that was one lesson I did learn well. Talk to make sure you and the other person both know what you want. When you know someone well enough that there are no questions, less talking is needed. You'll make mistakes; everyone does. But you can try to avoid and minimize them. Now, enjoy your book, and we'll leave you two alone for the evening."

That struck Fuyuko as odd, and she frowned at Mama M. "Wait, aren't parents supposed to be more worried about this stuff?"

"Maybe for some, but in this case? No. He's not going to do a thing you don't let him do. As for what you let him do, that's between you." She grinned at Fuyuko's expression. "Love, we all worry about you, but aside from you showing no interest, you are also old enough that if you decide to get into boy trouble, there's nothing we can reasonably do to stop you. So, we're always available for advice and help, and we're making sure you know you can talk to us about anything."

Mama M pulled Fuyuko's head forward to kiss her on top of her head. "We love you, and trust you. Oh, and the caravan had to stop for the night; they should be here tomorrow morning sometime."

Fuyuko sighed after Mama M left. That seemed like it might be a lot to think about, but was it really more than what she'd already been thinking about? And did she really want to think about it right now, anyhow? She had just wanted to mess with Amry a bit.

Well, there was no reason she couldn't eat while thinking.

Happily, there was a lot of meat. Unhappily, there were also a lot of vegetables. Thankfully, those vegetables came with a spicy cheesy sauce, plus some nice fresh bread to clean up the last of the sauce with.

There was, however, a distinct lack of dessert. Fuyuko suspected that desserts were going to be found in the locked sections, and she'd have to wait for Amrydor. Who, amazingly enough, had not been awakened by the smell of fresh, hot food.

She studied the sleeping boy as she ate, thinking about what Mama M had said. Amry had quickly become one of her best friends, but Fuyuko couldn't imagine saying that she cared more for him than for Shizo or Derek. But, maybe there was room for differently?

That thought created the complication of figuring out what 'differently' meant here.

She was still thinking about all the possibilities and all the choices and different possibilities as she finished the last of her food, tidied up her dishes, and even tidied her room. Fuyuko didn't feel like reading, so she paced, then she practiced some of her combat forms and exercised, and then went to take a bath.

After the bath, she hesitated. It was well into the evening — normally she wouldn't put on her regular clothes after an evening bath. She only took a few moments before deciding to simply wear a nightgown that fell to her knees, much as she would if Shizo was staying the night in her room. Mama M was right after all; Amry wouldn't do a thing that Fuyuko didn't let him do.

Treating Amrydor's presence differently felt like it would be a statement of distrust, and she did trust him. It felt wrong to not show her trust — after all, it was only her own issues that were involved. She had been the only one at the bathhouse in Artgoi who had cared about there being a divider. Gemeti hadn't even considered that there might be an issue until Amrydor had started laughing.

Fuyuko felt much more settled now that she had made that decision, amongst others she was working her way through. She even left the choker that was the collapsed form of her armor sitting on a bookshelf.

Then she sat back down in her comfy chair to continue reading. She was on the second book now, and had the third on a small table nearby, waiting for her. Even a year ago she wouldn't have been able to read this quickly and easily, but her family had been very thorough about all aspects of her education.

Come to think of it, most of her days were filled with training of some sort. But most of it was stuff she loved, so it didn't feel like a chore or anything. She was just having fun with her friends and family. And most of the stuff she had thought she would dread wasn't so bad. Even the history lessons came in the form of stories, which she liked. Horace wrote some of those himself, and based on the books she'd seen around his desk, it seemed that he was taking the boring versions of history to turn them into the stories she enjoyed.

When Amrydor began to wake up, Fuyuko could feel it immediately. It came across their bond as a warm and fuzzy sort of happiness, and she looked up from her book to see him hugging her pillow with his face pressed into it. Well, it was nice to find out that he liked how she smelled too.

That happiness was slowly replaced with confusion as he finished waking up, along with wariness as he took in the situation.

Fuyuko giggled.

Amrydor raised himself up to turn and stare suspiciously at her. "Yuyu, why am I in your room and on your bed?"

"Because you passed out, so I decided to mess with you," she admitted cheerfully as she put her book down and stood up. "And now that you are up, you can unlock the cart that Mama M left when she checked on you; she said it was keyed for you to open."

"So your parents know I've been asleep on your bed." He sighed and shook his head.

"Stop making a fuss; let's eat. We can use these tables and chairs." She didn't exactly have a matching set for sitting at to eat with a guest. Hmm. Maybe she should ask for antechambers of her own at some point. It didn't seem like she would need to do official princess stuff of her own very often, but it would be nice to have someplace to bring her friends that was her space, but wasn't her bedroom.

Amrydor's confusion was clear both on his face and across their bond, but food wasn't an offer he could refuse without good reason. And Fuyuko was feeling every emotion of his clearly; she was putting just enough mental pressure on the bond to let Amrydor know that she wanted their bond fully open, though not enough to stop him if he chose to restrict it anyway.

It took a few minutes to get everything set up, but Fuyuko was pleased with the results. There was even more food in the lower sections than there had been on top of the trolley, and that was before one counted the desserts, which were in a separate side compartment inside each bigger one.

They didn't talk much at first. Fuyuko was hungry, but no more than usual this long after her last meal, so she could have held up her half of a conversation. Amrydor, however, had slept through the previous meal, and he practically attacked his food. She was even kind enough to give him some of her food... but only some of her vegetables. She would make sure he had plenty to eat, but Fuyuko had no intention of giving up her meat when he had a lot of meat too.

Once their late dinner was finished, it was time for dessert, which was strawberry ice cream covered with pomegranate seeds and a thick drizzle each of dark chocolate and spicy honey.

Fuyuko was about to eagerly dig in when she noticed Amry staring at his bowl as an odd mix of exasperation, embarrassment, amusement, and resignation came across their link. "What's wrong? If ya don't want it, I'll eat it for you."

"Keep your hands on your own food or find out what it's like to be stabbed with a spoon. Nothing's wrong really; Lady Moriko is just messing with me."

She looked down at her bowl, then back up in confusion. "I don't get it."

He chuckled. "I think that's part of the point. These are all foods with a reputation for promoting passionate feelings. There, now you can feel my embarrassment too." With that, he started eating.

It only took Fuyuko a moment to get it, then she gaped in surprise before blushing. "Oh, that's evil." She hesitated briefly, but even that knowledge wasn't enough to keep her from eating every bit of such a tasty treat.

After they finished their desserts, Amrydor looked uncertain about what to do with himself and glanced toward the door, but Fuyuko already had plans. "Now, time to talk about what Mama M said to me earlier."

"What? And why are you enjoying my confusion so much? What are you up to?"

"Sorry," she muttered. "I couldn't help it. I guess I like teasing you a lot. But, um, anyway, that sort of brings up the point. Amry... both Orchid and Mama M told me that I could easily hurt you if I'm not careful, though they were sort of talking about different things."

Sitting while talking about this felt impossible, so Fuyuko got up and started putting away dishes and moving furniture back where it had been while she talked. "I don't like the idea of hurting you. I care about you, even if it's not really the way you'd like. But it also made me realize something else."

She turned to face Amry, who was also standing now, after helping put away the chairs and tables. "We talked before about being friends, and about you being my shield. But that's not really all of it, is it?" It felt so vain to say out loud, but Fuyuko pushed herself to say what she'd been thinking. "You are simply mine, aren't you?"

Amrydor froze for a moment, and she could feel a complex flash of different emotions from him before they settled into a calm state of acceptance. "There are limits," he said, "but yes. You have as much of me as you wish to claim."

One limit she could guess easily enough, but that was part of what she had already decided upon while he slept. "I will be careful to not impinge upon your duties as a champion and priest of Zagaroth, within the limits of my own duties," she said, using the phrase she'd carefully built. It wasn't quite an oath or promise, but it was a strong statement, and that was as close as she was willing to get for this. Fuyuko was beginning to really feel why so many sidhe and other fae talked this way. Faerie magic could be such a pain.

He tilted his head in thought, then nodded with a smile. "Thank you. That's a good balance, too. You really worked on that one, didn't you?"

For some reason, that made her blush, and his amused reaction to her embarrassment didn't help. "Yeah, um, any other limits I should know about?"

"Yes, but only because you seem to be up to something, and I think private stuff might be relevant. Um, so this sort of starts with what we are taught about being aware of how our lives can affect our relationships, as most champions are traveling a lot. This is the source for a couple of unofficial rules, passed from seniors to juniors for a long time, and I think has spread pretty far. The first one is just about defining expectations and stuff. The second one is more specific. If you are with someone for even just a known short time, you don't break that for another relationship."

He shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable with the topic, but he continued. "So, assuming Gemeti and I get together during her visit, then she and I are together until her caravan leaves the Azeria Clan, since we're going to be riding with her caravan to there. Even if I meet another friend like her that I already know, it doesn't change anything. The important thing about this is that everyone knows about the rule, which means no one gets hurt, hopefully. There's never any choice to make, because everyone is using that rule, so no one ever feels like they have to choose between two special friends, and no one feels ignored. Er, it's not perfect, cause people don't always know what they really feel, but it helps a lot."

That rule made sense to Fuyuko, even if she didn't understand all the feelings behind said rule. She took a moment to reword an idea she'd had previously, then said, "Whatever else may happen between you and me, I do not want to interfere with any of your friendships or relationships. You've already chosen to be mine, and that choice isn't changed if you also spend, um, private time with someone else."

She ignored the mix of suspicion and concern coming from him and finished with, "Amry, I know I'm going to keep using you to figure things out, but I've realized that's really not fair, so I've decided I'm also never going to tell you no, because that feels at least a little more fair." Getting those words out had been hard because it wasn't something she really wanted to do, but maybe it would make it easier to not hurt him, and that was worth it.

When he stepped closer to her, she made herself stay relaxed, and focused herself on staying that way when he drew her close to him and reached up to caress her face briefly. She let him guide her to the bed, and then onto it. His desire, that she couldn't seem to understand, practically burned its way across their bond, seeking to claim her as his.

She looked up at him and smiled, and refused to close her eyes. She wouldn't ignore him; whatever happened, she was going to try to be part of it.

"Idiot," he whispered.

Huh‽

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Win 10: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-10,36929.html

u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

▲ 89 r/InfinityNikki

If your PC stutters while playing Nikki, I may have a solution for you.

Wish I had figured this out earlier; I think IN killed my last computer. But it is working for my wife's laptop quite well. I'm using 'Guide' as my flare, though it's a trouble shooting guide, not a game guide. Let me know if I should change it.

So I just figured out how to improve the game's performance, if you have a certain stuttering issue.

Manually set the pagefile to a minimum of 40 GB (40,000 MB. And yes, I know, binary is 1024 not 100; close enough for this). You will then need to set a maximum; I used 60GB on my wife's laptop.

Her stuttering issues are gone and she's not getting all the error messages.

Win 11 (option 3): https://www.elevenforum.com/t/manage-virtual-memory-paging-file-in-windows-11.8618/

UPDATE: Now that she's tested it more in depth, she's getting less stuttering, rather than none. Still a large improvement.

EDIT: We have two more possible solutions, based on the comments.

Turning pagefile off all together
Disabling Freesync, if you have it.

u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 375: Goodnight, Good Knight.

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

At some point I screwed up a certain name, starting with book 2. This will be slowly, painfully, edited over time, but implementing the correct name now. "Silent Child" is Shizuko, not Shizoku. Though I think I will keep the short name as 'Shizo'.

Fuyuko was not in a good mood.

First, she'd been woken up just before dawn by... whatever it was that Amrydor had been feeling. That was weird, and she still didn't know what had happened.

Then she hadn't been able to get back to sleep, and she did not like being up that early in the morning to begin with, so she'd grumpily made her way upstairs to eat a heavy breakfast to help her feel more settled. Then had to tell her parents that her morning was crappy and she needed to go back to sleep now.

Thankfully, they were understanding, and her morning hours were usually spent practicing stuff she'd already been taught anyway, when not doing something for the nexus. Getting more sleep wasn't going to mess with anyone else's schedule.

Getting up and eating had helped her get back to sleep, so now that she had woken back up, she did feel better than when she'd first crawled out of bed, but that didn't mean she felt great. Having her sleep interrupted that way was disruptive.

After that, she'd scrubbed her face with cold water to try to wake up a little more, then settled in with a book to wait. A quick check with Amrydor had let her know that there wasn't really enough time to go do anything, as he had already been heading back, but wanted to talk with Mordecai first. Then a while later, said he was taking a quick bath first.

At least her book was good, though she thought it might be aimed at someone younger than her. Young princess runs away to go work for a dragon because she didn't want to get married to some guy her family wanted her to marry. No romance stuff to deal with.

The least plausible part of it to Fuyuko was making a tasty-sounding dessert like that and not eating any of it at all. Hmm. Maybe she should see if her parents knew how to make this. She wasn't sure if setting it on fire with alcohol was really needed, or just for show. Maybe they could skip that part?

Fuyuko was enjoying her musings when she felt Amrydor's attention focus on her as he approached her door. Well, gentler than being interrupted by a knock. "Door's unlocked," she sent to him as she closed her book.

She got to her feet just before the door opened and Amrydor walked in. Fuyuko stared at him for a moment before pointing to a chair. "Sit down!" she said as she let herself pay more attention to their bond than she had been. It confirmed what her eyes told her: Amry was exhausted and had been forcing himself to stay awake. Maybe she should have pushed more when he said everything was fine; she'd been trying to not get involved since he clearly didn't want to talk about it.

Amrydor hesitated only a moment before he shrugged with a brief smile and obeyed. "As my princess wishes, of course."

Oh, she was going to strangle him.

Later.

"Amry," Fuyuko scolded, "I said I wanted to know what was going on, but I didn't say you had to rush here. You should have let me know you were this tired."

"It's fine," he said, waving off her concern. "It'll be easier to tell you now; then I can sleep until the caravan gets here, rather than trying to make sure I remember to talk to you later."

Fuyuko felt like she was beginning to understand why Shizuko had said that boys were stupid. "Fine, well you're here, so, tell me, I guess. Wait, no, food. Have you eaten?"

He gave a half-hearted nod, like his head was heavy. "Yeah, had a bunch of food with me already; I've been eating as I walked and stuff."

"Hmm." She frowned at him, then shook her head. "No, I don't think you've eaten enough. You still feel weak." Their bond might not let them talk to each other directly outside of the nexus, but it did have the advantage of letting them know how the other was doing. Unless, of course, you had some reason to be actively ignoring it.

"Maybe, but too tired right now. Let me just tell you what happened first, alright? I'll eat more when I wake up."

She nodded reluctantly, motioning for him to go on as she paced.

"Well, um, I have to ask you something first. Could you give a limited promise to not tell anyone? No one wants your parents to know, and your dad has already figured out enough that he seemed quite happy to pass on knowing more."

That made her worry more, but it wasn't a hard request either. "Alright. As long as it doesn't involve someone's health or safety or something like that, I promise I won't tell anyone, even my parents." That should give her enough leeway if she needed it, and he had only asked for a limited promise.

"Right, thank you. Um, so, it has to do with Klastoria, and she said to use my judgment when telling you what happened — it's your parents she really doesn't want to find out. Or most others; she just wasn't going to ask me to hide anything from you."

It took him a moment to find his next words, and Fuyuko could tell he was fighting his exhaustion to focus on what he was trying to tell her.

"Er, anyway, I've been trying to figure out more about my life and death sense, and she's a very different sort of life, so I wanted to examine her. That was fine, but she also wanted to test if she could control her reflexes and instincts when not paying attention since I was delving and didn't have the protections of a contractor. It sort of worked, but she also wound up, well, kind-of-like she had partially soaked into me. That was really weird. Then she tried to pull herself back out of me. That was kind of bad, and that was what woke you up."

"Bad?" Fuyuko asked as she briefly paused in her pacing. "Did she hurt you?"

"No, not like that. She, well, she seeped out of my skin. Imagine sweating a lot, but the sweat is all oozy and is both pushing itself out from the inside and pulling itself out from the outside. But things got weirder after she finished separating herself from me; she said that she was missing part of her mass, and thought that I'd 'eaten' part of her. That turned out to be my armor, but we found that out later. So, um, this meant she was now really hungry, and was trying to fight the impulse to eat me. That's what she's most embarrassed about; she feels like she was betraying what the nexus wanted of her."

Fuyuko thought that Klastoria might have a point there, but, well, Fuyuko wasn't going to claim she was perfect either. She nodded to show she was listening, but kept her mouth shut; she didn't want to interrupt when he was struggling to get it all out.

"So, she figured out how to bind herself by offering me a challenge. I, um, won that challenge, which was how we figured out that my armor was what was eating her. Now my armor can do this." He rolled up his sleeve to show the living armor underneath, which suddenly became coated in thick ooze that formed and hardened into a thick section of plate armor made out of crystal. "And, well, this was from pulling in all of, er, her. Except for her core. I think she wants me to do something with her intact core, but I wouldn't feel right just treating it like materials or an item or something, and I certainly don't want to display it."

He had Klastoria's core? Intact? "You killed her?"

Amrydor flinched, then nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, that was the challenge. I needed to use my abilities to retrieve her core before dawn, or she would eat me. That was her out; her way of stopping herself from acting and to give me a chance. She wasn't resisting; the difficulty was because her core was deeper than it appeared. Her internal space is bigger than it looks."

That was just... Fuyuko shook her head, unable to find the words to express her thoughts. "Amry, that's crazy. Why did you accept her initial challenge to begin with? Being eaten by acid sounds like it'd be painful."

"Er, well, I wanted to increase the rewards I was getting."

She rolled her eyes at that, then paused and looked him suspiciously. Nothing she'd seen suggested that Amrydor was greedy like that, and his answer was sort of vague. "Why?"

"Um, well, I did get a gift for Gemeti."

The way he said that felt off; he wasn't telling her something still. "Amry—"

"Yuyu," he said, cutting her off, "please don't. I get to not tell you things occasionally, alright?"

His tone caused her to stop and think, and then she quickly became embarrassed. "Right, sorry. I don't need to know that. I was just worried, and, you know, got caught up in asking things." Which didn't mean she wasn't still curious about what else he'd gotten, but if he wanted her to know, he'd tell her.

"So," she continued, "that sounds like a lot. You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, just tired."

Well, him saying that to her meant that he believed it; it didn't mean he couldn't be wrong. But she also wasn't going to badger him. "Well, I guess that's fine then. Um, so that thing you did with your armor, how much can you do with it? Can you make any armor you want over the leather?"

He laughed suddenly. "Klastoria had a similar expression when she asked me to demonstrate. I can do anything solid, and I can fake articulation, but I can't do things like chainmail, where it sort of has to be a bunch of individual parts. I can sort of fake that too though, with a kind of squishy layer that gives me the same amount of movement."

Anything solid? "Hmm, so does that mean you can make your armor all ornate and fancy? Oh, can you do things like spikes? Or maybe like blades on your forearms? What about shields? Wait, if you can do shields, can you do weapons? Wait, no, first, how did Klastoria ask you that? You'd just killed her." Which felt so weird to say.

"The challenge was right before dawn; she met me in the tunnel on the way to the river zone." He shook his head as he stood up. "At least she wasn't having trouble controlling herself anymore, but she also said she's really hoping I'll let her eat me some day. It's really kinda weird; she's possessive about it too, and said that she doesn't want anyone else to eat me. Well, except you, like you had first dibs on eating me or something."

While he was talking, he'd started testing all of her ideas, but he also looked really tired while he was doing so. That made her feel bad, but Amry seemed curious too.

"Wait, she thinks I would want to eat you?" Fuyuko asked while watching him test how much he could do with the shape of the crystal armor.

"Maybe? Er," he paused for a moment, looking uncertain, then said, "She also mentioned some stuff about Oni funerary rites."

Oh. Fuyuko sighed. "The luponi do that too. It was one of the things in a book they gave me, though they kind of talked around it. I think they didn't want to just say it, in case it upset me, but they also didn't want to hide anything. So it was stuff like 'partake of the fallen'."

Now it was her turn to hesitate before she admitted, "It doesn't bother me like I think it would most people. I mean, I don't really want to or anything, but I don't find it offensive either. And yeah, if I was at that sort of funeral, I don't think I'd have any problem with being a part of it." It wasn't something she actually wanted to talk about, but the topic was there now, and her only options were to tell the truth or somehow be evasive.

Fuyuko had been worried about how he'd react, but she could still feel his emotions over their bond, and there was no sense of revulsion or such. He just seemed thoughtful for a little while before he said, "I'm not sure I get it; I think I'd have a problem with being part of the ritual, but I don't have a problem with it happening, or even with you being a part of it."

Well, that had gone a lot better than she'd been dreading. Enough better that she actually had no idea what to say, so they stood there in silence for a moment as Amry finished testing her ideas, and added a few more variants like making a spiked shield.

It didn't take him much longer to finish checking her ideas. They all seemed to work, though he wasn't sure the weapons were a great idea. "It's pretty strong, but something like a spear seems like it would be brittle if it got hit from the side. And I don’t know if I can suck the broken-off material back in after, or if it will regrow like the rest of the armor. "

"Maybe," she said, pacing as she thought about all the possibilities, while Amrydor sat back down with a tired sigh. "But isn't the bad thing about spiky armor and stuff that it would get in the way? But you can just grow spikes any time you want. Or, say you block an attack and turn the weapon away, and now your fist is pointed at them. You can just suddenly grow one of those arm-blades rather than swing back around or something."

"Mm."

"Oh, wait, what about a helmet spike so you can headbutt a big monster? Or... Amry?" Fuyuko had turned back to face him, and he was slumped sort of oddly. Had he fallen asleep that fast? Checking on him made her sigh; now she felt really badly about asking him even more questions.

Well, now what was she going to do?

After some consideration, Fuyuko shrugged and grinned. He might be embarrassed, but she was pretty certain that he also wouldn't mind. She was just glad that there were no shoes allowed inside, so she didn't need to take off his boots or anything.

She picked him up and carried him over to her bed, placing him down on top of the covers. Then she went and got a separate blanket to throw over him; having him on her bed was one thing, under the covers was another.

Now she could grab some food and bring it back with 'watching over him' as an excuse, and then read her book until he woke up. Or until the caravan got here; she'd wake him up for that. But there was one thing she wanted to check first, just in case.

Fuyuko leaned in close to Amrydor and inhaled deeply through her nose, taking in his scent. Then she let it go gently, feeling relief. Klastoria's comment had made her worry for a little bit, but no, smelling Amrydor didn't make her want to chew on him.

She did like how he smelled; it made her feel warm and safe. So having his scent on her pillow would be nice. That was also something she had no intention of telling him. Though it also carried a hint of that graveyard serenity, which part of her brain did not like, but that was washed out by the amount of comfort she found in it.

Pleased, Fuyuko went off to get some snacks. She was even going to be nice and make sure there was enough so that he could have some when he woke up. And she could have some more too when he woke up.

This imgur post/gallery has art for the holy symbols for all of the Empyreal Pillars: https://imgur.com/gallery/holy-symbols-gods-of-setting-K2SN6BP

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u/Zagaroth — 2 months ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 374: Gift Crafting

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

"You look rather tired," Mordecai said as he sat down with Amrydor in the main room of their home, grown into Krystraeliv's living trunk. Most delvers who wanted custom rewards would be received in a more formal environment, but that seemed rather pointless with the person who was officially the personal guardian of Mordecai's daughter.

"Yes, sir," the boy replied, then smiled. "It's been a rather more challenging delve than I had anticipated. Hopefully, that will turn out to be a good thing."

"It should be," Mordecai said. "Now, what are the custom rewards you are seeking?" As he asked this, he brought his instinctive awareness of the fair balance of reward owed to Amrydor to the front of his mind. In confusion, Mordecai raised his hand and said, "Wait. You were on a non-combat delve; how did you gain a sudden surge in value owed and then have most of that value immediately offset by gathered materials?"

Accumulated balances and rewards were one thing, but there should have been nothing in the mushroom forest that could have created a sudden surge on both sides of that equation so quickly without combat being involved.

"Lord Mordecai," Amrydor said, a sudden faint blush on his cheeks, "I sincerely believe you would prefer to not know, that there is no actual need for you to know, and that everyone involved would prefer that you not know."

His sudden formality gave weight to the seriousness of his expression; that was a fairly thorough and specific list, especially given that Amrydor couldn't lie to him.

Mordecai considered the situation for a few moments, then nodded. "Very well, I'll trust your judgment on the matter." He was certain that something complicated and undoubtedly awkward for all involved had happened, and based on the values, it somehow had something to do with one of the bosses for the zone. It also felt like it was a personal matter, and Mordecai had no interest in digging into people's personal lives if it wasn't needed. "Now, as I had asked before that tangent, what are you seeking?"

"Right. Ah, well, the details I'll leave in your hands, but what I am asking for is the highest quality meteor hammer head and chain you can make, designed for someone very strong and enthusiastic. Oh, and there should be space for inscribing multiple blessings on it, but no enchantments should be placed on it."

It was not hard for Mordecai to guess who this particular weapon was intended to be a gift for, and from Amrydor's slightly embarrassed expression, the boy appeared to know that it was obvious.

Mordecai decided that if this was intended for Fuyuko, one of the most important qualities was going to be durability.

He began with designing the structure; a hollow sphere constructed out of a triangular grid was his starting point. To this he added internal support, with struts running from the underside of each vertex to three vertexes on the opposite side. After he had that shape set, he could modify the sides of the triangles, giving them arched support that blended into the struts, and then provide multiple connections between the struts, to spread future stress and impacts out more evenly.

A solid ball might be easier to make durable, but Mordecai wanted this one to have a significant size to its head, and even Fuyuko would only be able to work with so much weight.

For a final touch, he added dull spikes to each vertex; there was no need for them to be sharp, given the force with which they were going to be impacting with, and the dull edge design would be more durable with fewer thin areas to break, chip, or warp.

He also made sure that the undersides of each arch had a smooth, flat surface to place inscriptions on; inscribing blessings on the top surface would expose them to far too much abuse.

Now that he had the design completed, Mordecai began running through his available metals and alloys, comparing their specifications against the results he wanted. His final selection created a complicated alloy where the ratio of materials varied to create a smoother version of a laminated effect.

The head also needed a sturdy chain that moved smoothly and was of suitable strength. Mordecai designed two components for this design. The first component was an elongated, multi-sided lozenge of metal with a thick ring of metal built into each end. The second component was a pair of chain links laying parallel to each other and 'soldiered' together. The paired links were used to connect the lozenge end-rings together to form the chain, alternating between lozenge and paired links.

The lozenges’ multiple sleek flat faces gleamed, showing the subtle shading of the alloy as waves, and the specialized laminated effect created a smoothness that lessened friction. The round, smooth links were sized to resist deformation, and he had chosen to pair them instead of creating even thicker ones so that if one cracked, the other was still in place, and the crack could not perpetuate to the second link. With a thicker link, if a stress crack formed, it would simply grow until it had broken completely.

"Here," Mordecai said as he manifested the meteor hammer head and its three feet of chain in his hand. "This is hard and durable enough to resist wear and scratches in most circumstances, with enough flexibility to ensure resilience. Even without magic, it should retain its shape very well in almost any circumstance." He handed it over to Amrydor, and that transfer merged with Amrydor's intent, turning the mana construct into reality.

"Thank you, sir," Amrydor replied with a smile as he examined the weapon. The metal was dark, but the exact hue shifted in a pattern matching the alloy ratios of different sections, and he hefted it into the air just enough to test its weight. "This is far heavier than anything I've seen used before."

The head alone weighed more than five pounds; adding the chain more than doubled the total weight. This might not seem like a lot of weight to those who'd not wielded a weapon before, but even the largest of mundane two-handed swords weighed less than nine pounds. Flinging around over ten pounds of metal at the end of a rope would be a good way for anyone without a tempered body to dislocate multiple joints.

"I am anticipating the future," Mordecai said. "I doubt Fuyuko would be able to use it terribly well at the moment, but this will also give her goals, along with a weapon that will last."

Amrydor's smile widened. "That brings me to my next request, which, to be clear, is being asked of Fuyuko's father. Not the nexus."

Mordecai raised a brow, then nodded, feeling pleased. The boy had clearly been paying attention and understood that Mordecai had different constraints based on his role at the moment. "Go on."

"Well sir, I was thinking that it would be nice to gather blessings from several priests of different deities, especially the empyreal pillars. And, so long as I have it back in sufficient time before her birthday, I hope to be able to apply one of those blessings myself. If not, I do know a few priests of Lord Zagaroth who might be willing to do me a favor."

Given that Amrydor was training at the temple, his last comment was something of an understatement. "I take it you want to start with my blessing, as a priest of Ozuran, and Moriko's, as a priestess of Sakiya."

"Yes sir," Amrydor said as he handed the weapon back to Mordecai.

"Alright, I'll collect all the blessings I can here, and see that it gets back to you in plenty of time. Is there anything else you would like to request of the nexus? You do still have a fair amount of balance in your favor."

Amrydor nodded. "Yes, I was hoping that there might be enough to create another suit of living leather. I'm assuming that I can't get a particularly enhanced version, but I am hoping it can at least start with the reshaping flexibility. Um, it should be fine if it's not very strong yet, until it gets upgrades."

That was interesting; there was no reason Amrydor would need it for himself, so it must be intended as a gift, and there was only one likely candidate that Mordecai knew of.

"I should be able to do that," Mordecai said, "but this time, I feel the need to pry into personal matters a little. Is there any reason Fuyuko might be displeased about the intended recipient of this gift?"

Amrydor coughed and shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable with the nature of the question, his cheeks flushed once more, but he replied calmly, "No sir, I don't believe so. I think I've been clear and open about everything with her. If anything, she seems to find it funny."

That was as much as Mordecai wanted to know; he didn't care about the details, he just wanted to be sure everyone was fine with everything, and it was pretty much what he expected. "Very well, give me a moment."

Focusing his attention on manifesting an armor of living leather caused Mordecai to pause; then he sighed. "It seems that at least one of our inhabitants is aware of the existence of a new variant or ability that incorporates liquid crystal into the living armor. But this has not yet been examined by myself, Kazue, or Moriko, so we don't have the information to readily duplicate it. Now, if the person possessing that armor were to allow me to examine and analyze it, that would count as a trade toward accrued reward value. And I have no desire at all to question how this variant came into existence."

The boy groaned and covered his eyes with one hand for a moment. "I should have realized that would happen; it's the same as with the conversation Shaman Crizdirk and I had. The knowledge is assimilated into the nexus's awareness." Then he sighed and slid his hand down over his face. "Alright, that's a fair trade." There was a faint movement under his clothing, then he reached under the collar of his shirt to pull off the choker that he had shifted the armor into.

Mordecai accepted the choker, and that direct possession allowed him to focus his core's analysis upon the new nature of the armor. "Interesting. I knew it could mutate under unusual circumstances other than just the addition of deliberately crafted patches, but this particular change is not quite like anything I have seen before."

It also gave him more information about the balance of rewards, even if he didn't particularly want that knowledge. The change to Amrydor's armor was roughly the value of Klastoria's body, assuming most of her body was collected in a usable, high-quality state. Klastoria's core would make up the rest of the value that Amrydor had collected, if it was perfectly intact.

Achieving both of those conditions would be nearly impossible in combat, and achieving even one would be incredibly difficult. To his knowledge, no one had yet achieved either of them. Yet Amrydor somehow had, while not participating in a combat delve.

Mordecai handed the choker back without further comment about the origin of its new abilities, then said, "After analyzing this, I have worked out a new option. The liquid crystal of your armor is a separate layer from the living leather, but I believe I can create something of a hybrid version instead. Consider it a semi-fluid leather that can reactively stiffen into crystal hardness when struck, though this would make that section brittle during that moment as well. It would also take better to any form of appearance alteration magic, providing better non-combat flexibility."

He smiled and added, "Oh, and the recipient would even have a temporarily exclusive item. It would be the first of its kind after all; it'd be good to have feedback after a month or so of use." Which was about enough time for the caravan from Artgoi to complete its loop and be ready to depart Azeria to head back to Artgoi.

It only took a moment for Amrydor to understand. "Oh, yes, I could see her being pleased about that. And she would be the only one in the caravan to have it, at least, until their next trip. Yes, she would like that a lot. So, yes, I would like that option."

Mordecai nodded and said, "This might take a few minutes; I want to make sure I get it right, especially since it's the first of this variant we'll have made." That was always one of the problems with creating new things, rather than simply copying old patterns; there was always a chance of something unexpected happening. Once Mordecai was as certain as he could be about the results, he manifested the new outfit in its choker form. "I assume this will be the easiest way to gift it."

"Yes sir," Amrydor said as he accepted the choker. "Thank you again."

"I enhanced it as much as I could within your budget, but you still have a little bit left over. I think it will be best to just save that until you are about to leave for the Azeria clan." The balance didn't have to be perfect, but if it was too far off when someone left, it could be disconcerting for the nexus in a way that scaled with how much was owed. Thankfully, the bargain they'd made with Gil negated that sensation in his case especially since the dolls, made in a cutely deformed image of his visage, were selling well, though none of the doll designs could beat the Zushi pillows for sales. "Now go on, I do believe Fuyuko wanted to talk with you."

With that matter taken care of, Mordecai headed back up to the master bedroom of their home. He paused just inside the entrance to admire the view; Moriko was posed while Kazue was working on some sketches reference to use later while sculpting, and she was wearing naught but an artistically selected and arranged set of jewelry. It was a fine view, but mischief came to mind quickly, and Mordecai created a series small, cool breezes that carried hints of sweet rose to tease Moriko's skin and nose.

Moriko's controlled poise wavered a moment, her eyes become dark as a sultry heat entered them, and both women shifted their gazes to glare at him. He grinned at them unrepentantly. "Don't mind me, I'm just entertaining myself while admiring the view." He wasn't going to mess with Moriko too much, yet, as he didn't want to create any issues with Kazue's sketches, but a little teasing should be fine. After all, her avatar was a first stage immortal; surely she could handle a little teasing without moving and breaking her pose.

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u/Zagaroth — 3 months ago

▲ 4 r/redditserials

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 373: Slime Time

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Klastoria had begun gliding slowly forward as she talked, which was when Amrydor realize that she hadn't fully resumed her bipedal form. Her dress ended in a puddle on the ground, and he was fairly certain she didn't have legs at the moment.

"Now," she said as she spread her arms apart, "time is passing still. You shouldn't dawdle."

He eyed where her core had shifted to skeptically, and she smirked. "Though I should mention, if rumors about my lapse spread, I assure you that I will talk about this part in a way that ensures you seem like a, mm, pervert? That is the right word, yes?"

That elicited a laugh from him. "Klastoria, earlier you said something about not being certain how you felt about thinking of yourself as a girl, or what it meant. Well, this is the absolutely most 'girl' thing I've seen you do. Up to you if that is a good thing or not."

Strangely enough, this made him feel more relaxed about the situation. He focused his spiritual energy in his right hand and reached for her core, plunging into the center of her chest, right between the swells of her form's breasts.

As he pushed his arm deeper into her body, reaching forward to bridge the gap between himself and the target, he also pulled on the folded space between, trying to draw the core into his hand.

After a few moments of focusing on this complicated task, he felt Klastoria's hands grip his shoulders. "Amrydor," she said softly, then raised her voice a little when he didn't immediately respond. "Amrydor, don't stop, but look at your arm. This time, this is all you."

Paying attention to anything else while he was trying to breach across the distance to her core was difficult, but that sounded like something important. With most of his will still pushed toward her core to maintain his progress, he glanced down to see what she was talking about.

Klastoria's substance was being drawn up along his arm, coating it at first but then trailing off into ever thinner threads as it was absorbed. Only Klastoria was slightly wrong about what was happening; something she seemed to realize at about the same time he did. "No," she said, "not your body, your armor. You're eating me by making me part of your armor." She sounded amused. "Later, I want you to show me. But if you fail, you first have to come to me to retrieve your items. Alone."

She was crazy — Amrydor was certain of that. But she was correct; it was his armor that her mass was being absorbed by. He had never used its function to absorb and store other outfits to change into, and somehow her substance was being taken up by that capacity. He couldn't afford to think about it more, but it did give him one more tool to use.

When he focused back on drawing her core to him, he deliberately included pulling her flesh toward him as well, willfully feeding her into his armor.

"Oh, that's interesting. How are you doing that? You're not just pulling my body to you; I can feel my flesh responding to your will. It's like you are commanding part of my body."

That wasn't exactly what he'd been intending, but the feedback was useful. It only took a few more moments to bring her core into his hand, but the situation had changed. Klastoria wasn't standing on the ground any more; all of her lower body had been drawn up toward his hand, and her upper body was half collapsed against him. The rest of her had either been absorbed by his armor, or was currently spread thin across his body, accelerating how fast his armor could eat her.

"Don't you dare stop," Klastoria said, even as she was clearly struggling to keep a face formed. "Or I'll complete my part of the challenge by hunting you down and eating you after dawn. I am not accepting anything from you short of completing the task."

Which meant that he had to absorb the rest of her. Somehow, this felt worse than the idea of simply pulling her core out of her body. "Klastoria," Amrydor said as he focused on completing the challenge, "I agreed to this only because it seemed like the only way out without embarrassing you, and you seemed pained. But I didn't really want your core as a prize. I'll treat it well, as a treasure even, because anything less would be disrespectful to you. So, as far as I am concerned, you still owe me for doing this. It is your reputation we are protecting."

Her body had collapsed too far to respond, but he knew she was still aware of what was going on. It only took a few more minutes until he finished the process, drawing the last of her slime into his armor, leaving her core bare.

Klastoria's life flickered in that orb, then slowly faded, the patterns deteriorating and collapsing. In her final moments, at the edge of death, he briefly saw her soul clearly, then it was gone, whisked off to the safety of the nexus's core. It had been a clearer view of a single soul than what he could see of the souls of the divine agents.

Maybe it was a bit morbid, but Amrydor decided that he thought souls were rather beautiful.

He was also very, very tired.

So much for that nap; any rest he had gotten was completely undone by that ordeal. He considered whether or not to just end the delve, but there was one more person he really wanted to talk to and examine. Maybe he could do that without actually traveling the river zone. He'd ask when he got there.

Amrydor carefully and gently stored Klastoria's core in his pack. He had meant it when he had said he would treat the core well. After that, he ate some more fruit and meat, then pulled himself together to head down to the next zone. Thankfully, his boots were enchanted, so Klastoria had not eaten those when she'd engulfed him. He paused for just a moment to be amazed, and a bit appalled, at how much of him she had managed to coat while they had slept.

While he was walking, he contacted Fuyuko. "I'm sorry for the delay. It's all taken care of now, and I am fine. I was simply uncomfortable while the situation was being fixed." Which was true, though he was understating the level of uncomfortable he had been in.

There was a moment of silence before she replied, "When you are done with your delve, I want you to tell me more about what happened. That was more than just uncomfortable. But, um, I hope you enjoy the rest of your delve."

She sounded uncertain during that last sentence, but it was sincere and it made him smile. Hopefully nothing too 'interesting' would happen for the rest of his trip.

It wasn't until after he had used his tokens to open the door at the end of the forest, and was partway down the tunnel leading to the river zone, that Amrydor was reminded of how close dawn had been.

"Hello, Klastoria," Amrydor said as he rounded a corner in the tunnel. She must have come here immediately after she was restored to life by the dawn reset of the nexus. He'd sensed her there a little while before he got to the corner.

"Amrydor," she replied warmly. "I hope you don't think this too strange, but overall, I actually had fun with our little encounter. There's just one thing I insist on: I want to see it. What does your armor look like with me as part of it?"

"I, um, well, don't know yet," he said with a sigh, then smiled and shrugged. "I guess we can find out together. But, you know that this is weird, right?"

She sounded amused when she said, "I think being upset just because my old body might be used for something interesting would be much weirder."

Well, he wasn't sure about that, but he supposed she might have a point. Though, dungeon inhabitants had really different viewpoints from outsiders, he noted. He briefly wondered if more of the inhabitants felt this way, but realized he didn’t want to put in the type of research necessary to find out.

It took a bit of experimenting to figure out exactly what his armor could do now, but he was pleased with the results, though there was a cost. The enchantment to copy new outfits and replace outfits when its storage limit was reached no longer functioned. It had been altered and subsumed into the living armor's new abilities.

As far as he was concerned, that was a small price to pay.

Klastoria's liquid-crystal slime could now be exuded by his suit of living leather armor to form different layers of protection, ranging from a thin hard shell over key sections of the base armor, to a complete protective suit, with helmet, that was better than steel plate armor, especially because of how well it could form a contiguous flexible layer over joints. He could also control color and transparency, though it was going to take a long while for him to be able to obtain the fine control that Klastoria had.

There were stronger materials for making armor out of, but this enhancement could be manifested quickly, making it great not only for dealing with surprises, but to replace damaged armor in the middle of combat. He might even be able to 'patch' armor with it, or coat existing armor with an extra layer, though he'd need to test that to be sure.

Additionally, the crystal-slime had enough material to simply make more crystal-slime armor if any of it was damaged, even when mimicking his full set of plate armor. The real limit to the thickness of the armor layers was his own ability to move in it.

The biggest thing he wasn't certain of was if that slime would regenerate or not if it was lost.

"Amrydor," Klastoria said, "I wouldn't worry about that. This armor does something very important for me; it makes sure nothing can eat you. So if you ever need more of my substance, just come to me, and we can work something out. After all, I don't want anyone eating you but me."

He was certain that while she was teasing him, she also meant it. He also was suddenly reminded of those candies with the hard outer sugar coating, and hoped he was alone in that thought. Klastoria hadn't tried one of those, right?

"Although," she said thoughtfully, "I will concede that the princess has first claim, if she wants it."

He stared at her a moment before asking, "Fuyuko? What do you mean?"

Klastoria smiled. "Princess Fuyuko Azeria is very sweet and nice, and a much more, mm, civilized? Domesticated? I'm not sure what's most accurate. Well, for society, a more polite person than I am. She's also of mixed lycan and oni bloodlines. Two carnivorous species not known for being very particular about where their meat comes from. The oni even practice ritual cannibalism for funerals. So don't mistake her niceness for being safe."

Amrydor shook his head in confusion. "Wait, how do you know that much about oni?" He didn't recall Crizdirk saying anything about oni funerary rites.

"I borrow many books from the library; I have reason to do a lot of research about species with very strong urges to eat. Oh, that reminds me, reading should be easier for me now, thanks to you."

She pointed at her eyes, and Amrydor realized that they didn't look like the rest of her sculpted substance. They were a little darker, and had a different sort of reflectivity. "Thanks to observing them in action from the inside, I figured out how the whole layering and focusing lenses thing works. Oh, and did you know that you sort of cheat with how you see color? You only have three types of light-sensing spots; you just use how they are reacting simultaneously to work out what a color is. I now understand what people mean by purple; it's what you see when blue and red are mixed, but it doesn't actually exist on its own. So, I owe you a little more for that."

"Ah, you're welcome," he replied weakly in the face of her enthusiasm. This meant that she'd been inside of his eyeballs when her body had soaked into his. That was rather disturbing to think about.

"I do have a lot to thank you for, Amrydor," she said. "I'm not entirely sure why you said it, but telling me that my little trick with where I placed my core was a very 'girl' thing to do, did make me feel better. The entire reason for my experiments was because I was thinking about what it meant to be a girl, and whether or not I could play the role of someone physically female safely. Now I'm not worried about it so much. At the same time, I owe you a separate apology from what I had said before."

"You do?" he asked, feeling overwhelmed at the moment.

"Yes. I didn't think about it until you had started my final challenge, so it was too late, but I should have realized, and suggested, that you simply end your delve. Declare it with enough intent, and your strange half-contractor status would have kicked in. I would have physically been incapable of willfully harming you. But, given your new armor, this worked out for the best, right?"

"Yeah, I guess it did..." Amrydor felt like an idiot now; that was something he should have thought of too.

"Mm, you look tired. Ah, your hybrid status means that you don't fully benefit from the nexus's reset even as a contractor, do you? I won't keep you much longer then. Amry, if you come visit me while not delving, I'll be happy to host you, and if you like, I can 'play pretend' a little. It doesn't matter for my physical pleasure, but if it makes you happy, then I'd be pleased."

Then her voice took on a more dangerous tone. "However, if you come to me alone, as a delver, then I'm going to take that as permission to do as I please with you. That will end with me trying to eat you. If you delve with a group for fighting, and it happens to be my turn as the boss, then I will do my best to take you out and stash you someplace to enjoy at my leisure, after the battle. It may cost me a lot, and I might have to concede early, but it would very much be worth it. I like you, but that just makes me want to draw out the process of devouring you even more. So, be careful how you approach me; I don't want you to make any mistakes. And don’t worry, I’ve been studying more than just how and who those other bloodlines eat. I’ve been learning all about pheromones and aphrodisiacs as part of my alchemy studies. I’ll continue to study hard and make sure you thoroughly enjoy yourself, for as long as possible. Goodbye Amrydor, I do hope you come visiting soon."

He sat down for a while after she left. Klastoria seemed like she was, generally, a good person, but her naked desire to eat him was kind of terrifying. Taking her up on the offer to visit her alone was just not a real option. However, ignoring her felt rude, especially when she was trying to be nice in her own way. So, maybe he should visit her with other friends or something. Just, not alone.

While he rested, Amrydor also pondered what she had said about studying alchemy. Given the way she could change her colors and properties, including choosing to not eat him with either acid or enzymes, and her statement about what she had been studying, he wondered if she could do alchemy internally and just shot globs with other properties than acid at people, or release gases into the air around her. Or even inject something, if she hit someone with a spike. Klastoria might be a lot more dangerous than her strength alone would indicate.

What would happen if Klastoria studied with someone like Shizoku?

Once he had gathered his thoughts and a little more energy, Amrydor finished making his way to the river zone, sat down at the shore of the starting lake, and waved over one of the buzzkin working on a boat nearby. "Excuse me, could you ask Iara if she is willing to talk with me for a while? You can let her know I am curious about her mix of elemental and fey life aspects."

Thankfully, the undine boss of the river zone proved much more reasonable to deal with than Klastoria had. However, she was still a fey woman, and she teased and flirted with him for her own entertainment. After all, he was asking to 'stare' at her unabashedly.

It was very interesting to see how her life force extended into the water around her body, making it a true extension and part of herself rather than simply controlling the element.

When they were done, Amrydor called an end to his delve.

He really wanted to get some sleep, but there were two people he needed to talk to before he could do that. First, he wanted to talk to Mordecai about what he wanted for his delving rewards. Then Fuyuko wanted to see him.

Kazue or Moriko could have crafted what he was interested in just as well, he was sure, but he felt like they were much more likely to tease him about his choices and he'd already endured too much of that today.

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My Blue Sky

Cover Art for our main characters. From left to right: Moriko, Kazue, and Mordecai.

Romance.io - TVTropes

u/Zagaroth — 3 months ago

▲ 0 r/Romantasy

Interested in a semi-cozy, balance genre blend of Romance and Progression?

No Need For A Core? is a long running serial that will soon be published later this year in both physical and audiobook formats.

Our starring trio (Kazue, Moriko, and Mordecai) are in circumstances where they chose to form literal magical bonds for mutual benefit, and those bonds also become a path to a three-person relationship. In the process, each will learn and grow.

A man who once trusted to his own power alone to enact vengeance, and failed, is determined to not make the same mistakes, and Mordecai is committed to ensuring that he is the best partner he can be for the two women involved in saving him from his doom.

A young kitsune shrine maiden who thought nothing of importance would happen in her life was almost correct, given the embarrassing way she died. But her goddess took pity on her, and now Kazue has been reincarnated in a form that could lead to great power. But Kazue has no interest in being powerful or scary. Perhaps she can use her new magic to create some friends, starting with these cute rabbits nearby...

A half-elven, temple-trained monk has been living her life in a mostly carefree manner, with no ties of commitment outside of her goddess and the temple. But even a disciple who is dedicated to the way of passions can still learn, for there are many forms of any passion, and sometimes deeper commitments can be more important than personal indulgences.

-------------------------------------

If you like Beware of Chicken for its semi-cozy vibes with characters living/building their lives, and occasionally needing to use force to deal with people who would harm them and theirs, then this might be a good fit. Though to be clear, I am not claiming any other similarities beyond those vibes; very different stories set in very different worlds.

Though I do think Tigu and Fuyuko would get along fabulously (while also confusing each other occasionally).

The serial form of No Need For A Core? is approaching 1 million words!

It is currently available for free on [Royal Road](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/57517/no-need-for-a-core) or [Scribble Hub](https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1063356/no-need-for-a-core/).

Royal Road/Scribble Hub cover is by Navae and Tsuu

Book 1's title is Down The Rabbit Hole, and will be available in physical, ebook, and audiobook formats in December, 2026.

Book 2 (Family Royalties) will publish in 2027, and there is no release date yet for book 3.

Now for preorder links! And to avoid any confusion, yes, Podium has gone with a different cover artist.

Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GFDCX2CN (you can also follow my author profile here: www.amazon.com/author/zagaroth )

Barnes and Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/down-the-rabbit-hole-a-b-zagaroth/1149137751

Bookshop: www.bookshop.org/a/123333/9798347033119

reddit.com

u/Zagaroth — 3 months ago

[No Need For A Core?] — CH 372: Hungry, Hungry Slime Girl

Cover Art || <<Previous | Start | Next >> ||

GLOSSARY This links to a post on the free section of my Patreon.

Amrydor slowly awoke to the sensation of a heavy blanket covering his body; or maybe it was his body that was heavy? It was hard to move and he couldn't really look. As his mind cleared, he was able to sort out what his life sense was telling him, and he sighed.

While Klastoria's humanoid form hadn't moved, the portion of her body that had enveloped his hand and lower arm had grown during that nap, and it now covered almost all of him. Also, his non-magical clothing had dissolved, though thankfully there was no damage that he could discern to the semi-living armor that he had started using as an under layer for most clothing.

"Klastoria," he said softly, trying to not startle her.

The slime boss shifted, stirring the content of her body, which pressed and pulled on him in odd ways. This movement made him aware that she must have at least partially seeped under his armor as well. Amrydor did his best to ignore both the embarrassment of that discovery, and the associated concern. "Hmm? Oh, there..." her voice trailed off as she took in the situation.

"Are you alright?" Klastoria asked, sounding nervous and possibly leaning toward panic. "Did I hurt you?"

"I'm fine," he said, "though it turns out you make a pretty good heavy comforter." he said, aiming for levity, and perhaps to calm her down. He really didn’t want her to panic and make mistakes. "However, I would like to be able to move."

"Right, sorry, of course." She started to withdraw from Amrydor, but that created a tugging sensation that felt like it was coming from inside of his skin, drawing a startled gasp from him, and she froze. "What? Oh no, what did I do? Amrydor, I, um, I seem to have soaked into your body."

Her statement confused him, but when he focused on the boundary of their life patterns, it made much more sense. There wasn't so much a boundary as there was a region of overlap. That didn't seem good. "Er, this could be a little embarrassing, but perhaps you should ask the cores for help?"

"No!" came her startled, panicked-sounding response. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to shout, but please, don't tell anyone. I, I need to be able to fix this. I need to be better than this. The risk of eating you in my sleep was bad enough for both of us — I only asked because I really needed to find out — but this is somehow worse. I don't want anyone to know about this if they don't have to, please. Please?"

Amrydor's training helped him stay focused and outwardly calm as he spoke softly. "Klastoria, that's fine. I think we've finished the challenge you presented, so let's go ahead and do what you said. If you can resolve this, then now is the time to do so."

Inwardly, Amrydor was much more worried. If Klastoria couldn't undo what ever she had done, then it would take intervention of some sort to possibly separate them. The only other option he could see would be to let her actually eat him. As much as he'd been willing to take that on as a risk of sleeping next to her like this, it was sort of the same type of risk one took entering any combat, though he wouldn't have agreed to even that without the safety of the nexus. Just simply agreeing to let someone eat you was entirely different. Definitely a step beyond, and one that he really wasn’t comfortable with.

His words had helped soothe Klastoria, and soon she was carefully working on extracting herself from Amrydor. "I know skin is porous," she said, "since I had the bodies of some of our invaders to examine and eat after the second invasion, and I had wondered if I could do something like this if I was careful enough, but I didn't think it could be done accidentally."

Her somewhat disturbing chatter was clearly to help keep herself distracted while she tested how to retreat from his body. She was also sounding a little more like she had previously, when she'd been very matter of fact about what she was seeking.

What was strangest about this to him was that none of the sensations he was feeling from her movement actually hurt, not even the portions of the movement that were happening under his skin.

"Well," she said, "um, it looks like marking you clearly as someone not to eat also activated another idea I'd had been thinking about. One of my enzymes has turned off your pain sensors."

Ah. Well, now he knew why nothing hurt.

That didn't make the process any more pleasant. Even without pain, the sensation of her oozing and weeping out of his skin could only be described as excruciatingly intense. Amrydor managed to not react loudly or retch, but the prolonged experience and his body's reactions made him also very glad that there were no other witnesses.

Unfortunately, there was one person who noticed. "Amry? Is something wrong?" Fuyuko asked over the nexus link.

Hearing her made Amrydor realize that he'd let some portion of his emotions leak, and he spent some mental energy on clamping down on their empathic bond as he told Fuyuko, "A mistake was made, other person is fixing it, but embarrassed. Don't do anything, it'll make them feel worse; I'll try to explain more later. Need to focus now."

He could feel Fuyuko's concern as she sent her acknowledgment, but he just didn't have the mental energy to talk about anything at the moment.

While this was happening, Klastoria released her hold on her humanoid form and gathered the rest of her body into her natural sphere, letting her focus on her work. She'd stopped talking as well, entirely absorbed in what she was doing, and Amrydor had no desire to break her concentration, so he continued to suffer in silence.

Finally, with what appeared to be great physical effort, Klastoria finished pulling herself free with a faint snapping sound.

Her action sent her tumbling away from him, but it was hard for Amrydor to pay attention to her right now. He felt ravenously hungry — almost like he was hollow — and his body felt like it was extremely heavy. With a groan, he rolled onto his side, then got to his hands and knees to make it the few feet to where his pack was, so that he could start pulling out food and a canteen of water.

There were dry rations in his storage ring too, but those would have been too hard to eat right now. Fruit and bread made a good, easy start, then he started adding meat and cheese, and just in case, added a few of his weakest healing potions into the mix.

After he'd managed to get enough food in his stomach to quell the hollow feeling, he could pay enough attention to realize that Klastoria didn't look like she was feeling well either. She was trying to reform her humanoid shape, but it seemed like she was having trouble building and holding it. Well, if that had drained him this much, maybe she was having similar problems.

So he tossed her some of the food he was pulling out of his bag. The first couple of throws she just allowed to hit her and then sink in as they dissolved, but she almost immediately started moving better, and the next time he tossed her a fruit, she caught it in her hand. Then she grinned briefly and ate it whole in one swallow. Not a trick she could do with a real mouth and throat, but sort of funny.

After that, he kept tossing her food as he brought out food for himself, glad that he had made sure to stash so much food before he started this delve. He also tossed her some of the dried rations, as he figured she'd have less trouble eating them quickly.

Eventually, he was able to slow down how fast he was eating, and as Klastoria was staring at two fruits she was just holding, he figured she didn't feel like she needed more at the moment.

"Amrydor." Something in Klastoria's voice made him freeze, and he focused his attention on her. "You— somehow, you ate part of me."

"What? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, you ate part of me."

"Oh yes, I did," she said in a soft voice, "though fortunately for you, it seems that it was only a little bit, and mostly your fat layer." He reflexively wanted to protest the idea that he was fat, but his education had included enough anatomy to know what she meant; all animals always had a fat layer under their skin.

"However," she continued, "I've lost a lot of my mass. About twice as much mass as you have, or maybe, that you did have. And the taste of you lingers. This is a very dangerous thing, and I do not recommend you move quickly. I'm having enough trouble as it is."

Amrydor's feeling of being in danger grew with those words, and what she said next did not at all help. "I may not have proper memories of most of my existence, but I know that before I was elevated, everything was about food, about not letting myself be eaten, and eating everything that I could. Those instincts, they are still there, and I can feel them demanding that I reclaim myself from you, and so much more."

That reminded him of a lesson that they'd been given a couple of days before his group had left the temple to travel to Azeria; the first generation of people elevated directly from non-sapient species tended to have dangerously strong instincts compared to those who had a few generations of distance between them and their more animalistic ancestors. Klastoria had been elevated from an even more instinct-driven creature than most animals were.

Her smile was predatory as she continued. "You could make it easy on both of us; you could give me permission. I would even do my best to make the experience enjoyable for you. I haven't tried it yet, but my understanding of your biology suggests that if I play out the part of a girl with a boy, you'd find the results very pleasant and distracting. It wouldn't make much of a difference to me, but I imagine that your reaction would at least be entertaining."

Part of Amrydor wanted to find that inappropriate, coming from an apparently older woman, but she'd been sapient for less time than he'd been actively dating girls.

However, Klastoria wasn't done yet. "And as for the rest, well, I don't want to eat you like this." One of the fruits she was holding simply sank into her hand as it dissolved into her body.

"Instead, I was thinking more like this." He watched as she infused the other fruit with her essence, infiltrating it like she had done to him, but even more thoroughly. Then she slowly converted the fruit's flesh into her own flesh, while keeping the integrity of the fruit's structure intact. "It could be rather interesting, don't you think? I wonder how long I could keep you conscious like that, how much of your brain's activity I could mimic while maintaining the pattern using my flesh. And then, well, this."

The fruit was already made of her substance and at her will, it simply melded into her body.

"I am going to have to decline that suggestion," Amrydor said. "Perhaps we do need to get someone else involved if you are having problems with controlling your instincts." Simply allowing himself to be eaten was still not a point of negotiation as far as he was concerned, no matter how enticing she tried to make it sound.

Klastoria shuddered, a rather more thorough motion for her than for most people. "I'd rather die than risk the cores learning that I am this close to betraying them, to violating the rules that they'd laid out." Then she tilted her head thoughtfully, and Amrydor did his best to ignore the fact that she'd tipped her head too far; that motion would have broken a normal person's neck.

"There's an idea... if I bind myself with a challenge, I won't be able to act. Mm. About twenty minutes until dawn, and we reset. I think you might be able to do this in less than fifteen minutes. Amrydor, I offer you a challenge, as you are technically delving right now. With nothing but your bare hands, extract my core while I am in this form. I won't resist, but I don't intend to help either. It will be entirely up to you to do it. If you succeed, well, it won't be as valuable as a nexus's core, but no one has ever retrieved my core intact before. So something special, yes? And if not, then when dawn comes, and all my mass and strength is restored, I'll envelop and consume you. Slowly. The way I showed you with the second fruit."

Amrydor ignored that last part as he focused on her core. Visually, it appeared to be in the center of her humanoid form, but he could read the other layer of truth to the situation. She may have less mass than normal, but she'd still had to compress and fold away her mass to take this form. He'd have to counteract that somehow in order to actually be able to reach her core, as the distance from her skin to her core was much larger inside of her body than it appeared from the outside.

Still, he thought he could manage it in about ten minutes, if she wasn't resisting. It would be difficult, but with that much time, he was fairly certain that he could use his own abilities to overcome the way she had compacted her mass. It would actually be more difficult if she was in her original form.

The way that nexus-born creatures could be very casual about their own deaths, however temporary, was very strange, but it had been months since his group had first arrived at the Azeria nexus.

Maybe they were beginning to rub off on him. Amrydor probably should have just asked Fuyuko to get her parents to intervene, but he also believed Klastoria's distress at the idea of the cores finding out, and he didn't like the idea of doing that to her. "Alright, I agree to the challenge, but you should know that Fuyuko sensed something was wrong earlier, when you were separating us. She's waiting for me to talk to her."

Klastoria smiled, and it was much sweeter than the predatory look from earlier. "I see. I take it you haven't told her much? Thank you; you're being kinder than I am. I can't ask you to hide anything from the princess, so use your judgment when speaking to her. Now, shall we begin?"

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