The feeling of falling disappears as the two of them make contact with the rough ground in a loud thud.
Jack hisses as the air escapes from his lung involuntarily as his bruised and battered body rolls over, splayed out on the ground like someone unable to use their limbs while the bunny girl lands not too far away from him. Jack breaths in roughly and starts coughing up some blood from his airway.
“Owwie, that was such a rough landing, hmm what stinks? Where are we?”
“Tell me... what is... going on!?” Jack struggles with the words but he almost ends up shouting the final few words without caring where he is while coughing up.
“I want to know that too, where the hell is this?!”
Jack coughs up a few more times while inspecting his body.
Luckily the countless barriers soaked up majority of the damage from the giant lightning strike before it landed within that room probably saving everyone from doom, amazingly there appears to be no lasting damage but Jack knows that was down to luck and probably the little boy who was in the room.
Lifting his arm, he’s able to see the hole that was going through though his hand is gone while the other hole created by that strange beam of folded over space has been replaced with pink and tender skin.
Jack grits his teeth and with difficulty, sits up.
This allows him to look at the rest of his body, the subtle golden glow from deep within and the new grey-silver glow are shimmer softly just over his skin making his appearance lighter and almost the only thing seeable within this strange dark, hollow area.
The silver-grey qi, Moon Yin Qi or perhaps just Moon qi seems to combine with the residuals of the Pure Silver Qi from the vision but it’s quickly running out.
“Wherever we are is high in demonic qi, can’t you see the golden glow coming from me? Keep your voice down and explain. What the fucking hell was going on back there? Who are you? What did you get me involved in? Speak Selena!”
Jack can feel a connection to the bunny girl nearby, like his life has just been tied to this girl that he knows nearly nothing about apart from what she looks like naked and that she can dance. Jack can hear her shuffle about, but he’s not able to see her without using his divine sense to look at her.
“Don’t call this Princess by her first name, her friends call her Lunamarie or Luna, but you are neither”
“Yeah, I’m your master now so, speak. What happened back there?”
Jack tries to use the mark on his finger, causing the crest on her forehead to burn. Information about how to use the crest has been embedded into his mind, but beyond controlling her life and death and some slight pain, there isn’t anything else.
“I’ll talk, I’ll talk, stop it!”
She hisses out. Jack nods his head stopping the crest from burning her anymore. She rubs her head and explains.
“I used an upper level contract to escape the one I had with... that person. They always hammered that into us at training school, ‘The stronger something is, the more enforced it is’ so when I found an animal skin that could hold the energies required for that level of contract. I knew that was my only chance to escape. Only this princess was serious about studying runic markings in training school.” Jack can’t see her but he can tell that she has a smug smile on.
“So what was going on up there? Why were we attacked?”
“We weren’t really attacked, if... that person, if he wanted to destroy us then he would have done it without even entering the room.”
“What about the stab then?”
“You should be proud of being stabbed by this Princess, it’s considered a blessing”
“What sort of blessing is that?”
“The blessing of holeyhand”
Jack chuckles at this stupid joke diffusing some annoyance he had with her as she continues to explain, “It was the quickest method I could use because if he detected what I was doing, well you saw. He has to follow the rules exactly for punis... It’s just his way so because you and me are contracted under the higher system, he cannot touch our bond and as you’re a player, he cannot touch you either.”
“Couldn’t you have asked before doing all of that stuff?”
“That would have slowed things down plus it all worked out in the end”
Jack pushes his body up from the rocky ground, “I guess well first we should work out where we are... Do I call you Selena or Lunamarie or what?”
A pungent odour comes over his nose making him cough again sending some pain to course all throughout his body as the bunny girl approaches him, she doesn’t look any worse for wear from the incident so far, her fingers adorned with many rings reaching out and stroking Jack’s back passing him a few small pills.
“Come on, you weren’t hurt that badly and I know it’s smelly but it’s not dangerous, it’s just some old blood and herbs. In fact, those herbs should help your body heal. You may call this Princess as Princess or Lunamarie as only her mother calls her Selena”
“I see well Lunamarie... You will need to explain more because I thought the system that runs all the information, cities and hearts was the highest system, yet you’re talking about something higher? What have you gotten me involved with? Who was the kid? Why were you there up there?”
“Ahem, I was hoping to save the introduction when we were outside this smelly and dirty hole but as you have asked I shall allow you to bear witness to this Princesses glory. I am Selena Portia Lunamarie Heliuso Tialak Kallius Reguld Nelliath. I am 992th in line to the Throne of the Nelliath Kingdom within the Phoenix Empire while my father is 4th in line to the throne. I am 19 years old where I have lived the last several years within the Eternal Ember Upper Plateau Training College.”
“They invited me/told me to oversee a ritual because no one else could fill in a particular role so they asked me if I wished to fill in. Only the elites of the training school get invited to these sorts of roles, so imagine my surprise when they got me to fill in when I still had so many years left to even apply for a week leave.”
“So you were just invited to oversee a ritual?”
“Not at all, they actually invited me to fill in the role of a priestess of the legendary Jade Palace. Don’t you know that even Emperors would have to ask favours of the Jade Palace Priestesses? So can you imagine my shock when they told me when I was going there and then being told that I’m filling in for the head priestess. All my sisters would be so jealous while all my brothers, hahah they wish they could even exist within the same region as the Jade Palace!”
“Why did you want to escape then? It sounds like a good deal”
Jack circulates the medicine around his body but he doesn’t really need to do anything, his body is quickly returning to normal.
“It truly was good until well, perhaps that person let slip his future plans. I already thought things were strange when he wouldn’t even let me send a letter to my family. I could always contact them at training school. Ever since I was forced to come here I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore, plus the fact that all the books were blank suggested that it’s not actually part of the training school. I knew I had to escape.”
“Future plans?”
Jack cracks his neck as he feels his body become limber, the energy is returning to his body but he isn’t sure if it was the medicine that she gave him or it’s the effects of that silver qi still floating through his body.
“Yeah, he let it slip that he wanted to find the perfect partner for me and encourage breeding within the Jade Palace because he wanted to see just how good... my body is”
“Oh”
“So I had to find a way to escape and when he said some players were coming along and the Jade Palace was the perfect place if he timed the ceremony to coincide with then, I was given my only chance to escape though, I did have some other ideas about how to escape but I didn’t have the chance to do anything else because he showed up at the Palace again.”
“Who is he?”
Jack circulates the qi around his body trying to detect any issues and luckily there are no issues, in fact his veins and meridians seem much better than before. It’s like that Pure Silver qi has healed nearly all of his internal structures.
“He’s a being above everyone within this place, he’s-...”
Jack listens but a strange static sound comes over his from seemingly nowhere as he tries to listen, she is speaking several lines of dialogue but Jack is just staring at her mouth agape wondering what’s going on, rubbing his ear but not being able to clear the noise out.
“Is it the person called the ‘overseer’?” Jack interrupts her.
“Oh yeah, you’re still under his control... um Yeah, that’s what they call people in his position but there're millions of people with the same position so it gets confusing, most people call them by their designated race or region number.”
“It’s a position given to him by someone? What do you know about what’s going on?”
“It’s a position given by the elder council... a bunch of ancient humans who haven’t ascended yet, I heard the youngest of them is over 20 billion years old but those are just rumours as they don’t appear in public ever. I can’t really tell you what’s going on because I didn’t even know these inner realms were being used, they were only just discovered in the outer reaches recently...”
“That’s not helpful... Xueli?”
‘I can’t fault what she says but you need to be careful with what you say, it seems like she thinks the Phoenix Empire is still around and if it’s gone... there is a good chance her family is gone too and are you prepared to deal with that?’
Jack lets out a sigh as he attempts to push himself off the ground attempting to stand up but stumbling over. He’s caught by a helpful hand. Lunamarie (as she’ll now be called), the bunny girl, has caught him stopping his awkward fall to the ground gently lowering him back down to the ground.
“Is Xueli the little dragon’s name? Why isn’t she coming out?”
“Umm, she’s shy but perhaps you’ll meet her soon, I can’t really force her… so that’s all he told you, nothing about what he needed you to do or what purpose?”
“The medicinal pill called ‘Heaven’s Bell’, it’s not very high level, but it has a lot of rare and hard to grow herbs but I don’t know what he was using it for. I read that it could save people near death, but the side effects don’t make it worth it. The history books said that an evil group could use it to gather spirits and force them to combine and appear but that was soooo long ago and I really don’t know why he would want one of those pills.”
“Well, that’s not helpful but I guess we’re stuck together for quite some time thanks to the contact?”
“Kinda...”
Jack pushes himself off the ground again. His body coursing with pain, but that pain that has dulled considerably. Jack stretching his back as he stands up but as he does, his hair contacts a strange sticky substance.
A strange translucent substance that is ridiculously sticky and won’t come off his finger upon inspection.
“Do you know what this stuff is?”
Jack brings his hand before her eyes but the bunny girl shakes her head, ‘I don’t know what it is but be careful’ Xueli replies within his head.
Jack calls out a fireball to his hand, the yellow dragon qi fireball lights up the dark space they’re in giving them a first look at what’s going on. They’re sitting on a small platform surrounded by this strange sticky substance like some sort of web while the platform itself is made of broken and damaged stone bricks, in the middle of the platform is an orb.
The orb is one of the countless red orbs that have appeared on the plains, giving Jack hope that they’re within his region. Scouting around, Jack finds that his divine sense is being blocked by the web and given little other options launches a fireball forward.
The fireball easily penetrates through the strange substance that’s surrounding them, creating a sizeable hole.
Jack launches another couple of fireballs creating a larger gap, big enough to pass through.
“Ooh, nice job! I thought you only had the fiendgod cultivation but you also have beast race skills, did you little dragon give you access to the fireball?”
“No... what’s a fiendgod?”
Lunamarie stands up and inspects the hole that Jack opened up, off in the distance a pile of dying embers from where the fireball landed shows that it’s about 100m to the wall. Jack feels his body is about ready to move properly even if it’s still hurting, the distance easily crossable with ‘Bunny Dash’.
“Why doesn’t anyone tell you these things? Fiendgod is the strongest human cultivation technique in this universe. Divine avatars copied it... umm, I don’t really know that much about it because I’m technically from the Beast Race but at the Training school, one professor always said that it was the second strongest human cultivation technique which no one believed”
“Did they say which is the strongest? Do you remember?”
Lunamarie climbs through the opening that Jack opened up as she’s talking to him,
“Uhh umm... Something Myriad Arts- AHH”
Jack’s heart pounds from hearing this information, but the scream startles him.
He moves his tired and sore body as fast as it will through the opening he created and can see Lunamarie floundering in something like water revealed through a newly created hole she fell through in the strange webbing.
She’s struggling to keep her head above the ‘water’ as she flails and flounders about while Jack reluctantly reaches down to pull her out.
“Help me!” Lunamarie yelling and almost screaming as Jack pulls her out of the water, Jack fights to keep back a laugh as he looks over the girl but a pungent odour comes from her body nearly causing him to gag.
She looks incredibly sad and pathetic in her wet state, but he wants to keep his distance from her because it’s not water that she fell into. It seems they’re surrounded by an underground pool of blood.
“Do you have a change of clothes?”
“No”
Lunamarie is just standing there without moving a muscle. Her clothing from the ceremony has been ruined as the red liquid drips from her.
“Do you have something to clean yourself off with then? I see you have lots of storage rings”
Lunamarie’s fingers twitch for a moment before a small cloth appears, but she doesn’t move, holding it towards Jack.
Jack lets out a lengthy sigh as he takes the cloth from her hand and wipes down the exposed parts of her body before moving onto her face but as their eyes meet at this proximity. Her eyes nearly instantly dart away as a blush develops on her face that Jack confuses for blood, rubbing her face extra hard.
“Ow, be gentle, you brute”
“Oh, you’re alive, I thought I was cleaning up a doll. Are you going to stay in those clothes or do you want to get changed?”
“Do you have some clothes?” She responds with an excited tone.
“No, but I have this robe, you can borrow it”
Jack takes off his robe, revealing his bruised and battered but well sculpted upper body. Her gaze lingers on his body for several moments, taking a moment to even notice that Jack is passing her the robe.
“Ok give me some privacy, go over there” She points through the opening in the web substance to the back wall that is slowly disappearing from view.
“I will not risk it. Gah, let’s just do this”
Jack’s scoops up the girl holding his robe, his body groaning from the extra weight but he needs to do this as he prepares ‘Bunny Dash’ by crouching with her. This is the first time he has used ‘Bunny Dash’ while holding someone so praying to himself that this works.
“AHH, put me down!”
‘Bunny Dash’
He leaps through the gap in the webbing reappearing a short distance away from the wall that was his target and nearly stumbling backwards into the pool of blood at his back while Lunamarie tries to force her way out of his grasp nearly knocking him backward forcing him to drop her on the ground with a thud.
“Ow, why did you drop me?”
“You told me to put you down... uhh while you get changed I will look around”
Jack turns around without waiting for her response as he walks along the bank of the circular pool of blood looking for signs of anything, the dark room not allowing him to see much more than 5 metres in front but as he walks, he can hear a faint yell.
“HEEEELLL...P”
poor bunny