'Thought you said this was going to be a stroll?' Jack wrote on Syraviel's back.
The Goddess paused a second before turning around.
'You've gotta crawl before you walk.' she wrote on his shoulder.
Jack rolled his eyes. As he let out a sigh, a bit of the tall grass got in his mouth causing him to sputter. They'd only been crawling through the grassland for thirty minutes but the boy was already exhausted. Alicia was tied tight onto his back via a rope harness Lisaseron secured around his torso. The girl wasn't particularly heavy but the boy's hands and knees ached from moving through the rough ground with her added weight.
He sat on his shins to give his knees a break for a moment, watching Diana and Lisaseron straighten the grass behind them.
'Don't have a spell to do that for you?' he wrote on Lisaseron's shoulder.
'I do have one. But I am limiting my use of magic for awhile.'
Jack gave her a concerned look but Lisaseron smiled, her face a pleasant and polite mask.
Syraviel held a hand out to halt them. The rest of them got down on their stomachs, waiting quietly for the massive bulls to pass by again.
New Skill gained! Hide Presence Lvl 1!
Not all who stand in the light are bold. Not all who hide are afraid.
When activated, Slightly reduces your aura and presence per level.
Minimally decreases the effect of Perception on your actions per level
The satisfaction of gaining a new skill was short lived for Jack. As he laid still on the ground, he couldn't stop thinking about what Lisaseron said, as if her words were an itch that he couldn't quite reach. He looked back at Lisaseron, and she just smiled again but it felt off to him.
'Your body okay?' Jack wrote on Lisaseron's arm.
'Of course. You should not worry.' She wrote.
Jack squinted at the Goddess.
'You're lying.' He wrote.
Lisaseron's smile faltered for a second. The Goddess chuckled.
'Let me rephrase. My condition is not something you will be able to significantly influence, therefore, you should not worry. But if all you wish is to make me feel better, I believe I have already told you the best method.'
Jack gulped, feeling the heat of her eyes on him. He tried to write more but Lisaseron simply pointed forwards. Syraviel was already moving again.
Jack let out a groan as he slogged forward. There was nothing to do, Syraviel wasn't even allowing him to use the observe function on the beasts once he could get a proper look at them.
'You observing the scavenger tauruses would be like flashing a light into their eyes. We aren't trying to attract attention here.' Syraviel wrote.
At this point the boy didn't really care. He was exhausted. His core and arms burned. Sweat frequently dripped into his eyes, forcing him to awkwardly move his roped covered shoulder up to wipe the sweat away. His hands and knees were nearly rubbed raw against the ground, even though Syraviel would check every few minutes to make sure nobody started bleeding. The darkening skies didn't help either, causing the boy to misplace his hands onto rocks and branches, an unwelcome down payment for future bruises and blisters.
Syraviel raised her hands again and the boy dropped flat in relief. He couldn't believe he'd complained about his old masters making him crawl across unkempt football fields for training before. Compared to what he was doing now, his old training felt like a tandem ride in the park.
The sound padding hooves brought him out of his reverie. The boy forcibly slowed his breathing, ignoring the burning in his lungs that demanded he pant for the relief of sweet oxygen. An exhale escaped his mouth like a low grunt. The boy sealed his lips tight in consternation while Syraviel glared at him.
The hoofbeats grew closer. Sweat poured off his back, his unconscious passenger not helping by trapping the heat of his exertion against his own skin. An annoyed snorting came from the opposite direction of the hoofbeats. Jack winced, the sudden sound startling him.
He shook his head, adamantly refusing to be scared of a cow. A scavenger taurus circled near them, one of their muscular legs planting themselves not even five feet from Jack's right leg. The oversized grazers passed them by, none the wiser of the existence of three humans and two Goddesses right beneath their noses.
Jack finally caught his breath letting out a sigh. As the boy got ready to push up and move again, Syraviel's hand darted out, deepening the shadows covering their ghillie suits and sprouting more shadow grass around them.
Two golems flew overhead, their attention unusually focused on the area where Jack and company lay prone. Both of the golems shaped a single arm into a blade, perfectly in sync as they suddenly dived downward.
With a sharp whoosh, the sound of cloven flesh and splintering bone filled the air before the agonized bellows of the scavenger tauruses filled Jack's heart with dread. He felt hot liquid splash against his face, filling his lungs with a metallic tang with slight hints of musk. The boy didn't move an inch, while his heart thumped like a nitroglycerin powered jackhammer.
Hide Presence Lvl 1 → Hide Presence Lvl 2
The scavenger tauruses couldn't even finished their death rattle before the golems hoisted their bodies over their shoulders and flew away. Syraviel turned around to look at the rest of them. When she saw Jack, she mimed cleaning her face. The boy wiped the blood off his face but the Goddess frowned, pointing at the dirt.
When the boy hesitated, she moved closer to him.
'You need to clean the blood better. If I could safely access my storage dimension to give you the proper stuff to clean with I would. Sorry. But when monsters come sniffing for the blood, is your face really the thing you want them to find?' Syraviel wrote.
Jack grimaced.
'And it has to be with the dirt?'
'To hide the scent better, yes. What else would you use? Don't tell me you wanted to rub your face on this grass. The goal is to hide the smell of blood, not leak more of it.'
Jack scooped up a clump of dirt with his hands and started scrubbing his face with it.
'Good. Change the dirt to new dirt every couple of scrubs to keep diluting it. Don't be shy, we know you're a stud on the inside. That's what counts.'Syraviel wrote.
'Perhaps I was mistaken. You may indeed have what it takes to be a battle healer. You certainly have mastered their look.' Lisaseron wrote.
'Doing great, Rambo! Hang in there!' Diana wrote.
They resumed their cross country crawling with renewed speed after Jack cleaned his face. They encountered less run-ins with the scavenger tauruses after the golems killed the two in front of them, allowing them to cover more distance than before. Jack felt the copious amounts of leftover adrenaline give him a second wind that allowed him to keep pace with the rest.
The tall grasses stopped dominating the landscape as more brush and trees appeared ahead of them. Lisaseron called a stop with her hand while Diana eagerly looked at the Goddess.
Lisaseron's hands and fingers moved at blurring speeds while she stared straight ahead. Jack felt an unnatural vibrancy fill the air and flora around him. The stalks of grass he was crouching on turned so robust and springy that it relieved his aching hands and knees. The wind tasted sweeter and he could even feel himself relaxing more as if the space itself transformed into something more comforting.
'What is she doing?' Jack wrote on Diana's shoulder.
Diana shooed the boy away, as she continued to watch with starry eyes. Jack raised an eyebrow at the girl but let it go, asking Syraviel the same question.
'You saw yourself how this world looks like it's been hastily stitched together right? Well, those 'stitches' are filled with loads of supportive formations which Void is working to edit.'
Jack nodded slowly.
'It feels like she's making them better than they were before.'
Syraviel clicked her tongue.
'She is. In the short term, at least. This is one of her more experimental ideas but the fundamental concept is solid. She guides the formations to improve their output but with very slight and numerous inefficiencies. The hope is that with enough inefficiencies compounding on each other in less important support formations, more critical formations could be easier to alter or subvert. It's a gamble on whether or not she can implement it properly. There are countless things that could go not quite right and make it useless.'
'So nobody will notice what she's doing? This isn't another crazy situation like the Solar Direwind stuff, right?' Jack wrote.
'Compared to the other things we want to accomplish, this should be fairly safe.' Syraviel wrote.
'The Tunnel was supposed to be fairly safe too.' Jack wrote.
'For sure, but this isn't something she would or could go all in for. Not enough reward for too much work.'
Jack shrugged, nodding along with the Goddess.
An hour passed and the sense of vibrancy in the air had diminished to the point where it didn't feel unnatural like before. Lisaseron's blurring hands came to stop before she signaled to keep going.
The towering treeline grew closer, obvious even from their view from the ground.
'So what are we going to do once we stop in the forest?' Jack wrote.
'Who said anything abut stopping in the forest?' Syraviel wrote.
There's something I've been wondering about these past couple chapters. What does the bond feel like when Alicia is unconscious/sleeping? Is Jack getting any feedback from the bond? Does she have any wandering thoughts or emotions? Can she respond at all to her surroundings, such as temperature or physical orientation? What about responding to Jack's varying emotions? If Alicia has a dream, can Jack see it?
(I wish there was a Discord server where I could ask these kind of questions.)
An excellent reminder. Last chapter, I purposefully used Alicia's unconciousness as a chance to focus on the other girls. This chapter I treated her as dead weight to focus on Jack and the toughness of the mission. I'll be sure to give Alicia the time she needs.
Not sure about discord, but I'll try to answer what I can here, unless its spoilers/ information I specifically and intentionally want to bring up later.
Thanks!
I'd feel that sleep and unconsciousness would result in different situations. While unconscious she wouldn't be dreaming in the same way as she would while sleeping. Remember that you are technically conscious while sleeping since you are aware of your surroundings, and can react, despite being heavily distracted. Therefore I doubt much would leak out from Alicia until she was much closer to consciousness.
On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if they began to influence each other's dreams. Up to now they haven't really had much of a chance to sleep, nor have they been able to fully adapt to their radically changed circumstances. So for the near future they would be dreaming about everything that has recently happened to them. This includes reexamining the person they have just bonded with so they can form a proper understanding of their new life partner.
@SuperBort I agree that sleep and unconsciousness are different; I was just trying to ask two questions at once. You make a good case for the bond being silent while she's unconscious. In that case, I think the feedback from the bond would be limited to sensing her physical location.
I fully agree with you about the dream influence. In fact, I suspect they're going to eventually progress towards shared dreaming.
Walking in the tall grass...
Has an encounter...
Runs away...
Thank you for the chapter! I hope everything goes well with work for you.
Well they didn't have any pokeballs handy, so they couldn't do much.
@SuperBort I know. I just liked the parallels, especially since I think there's a pokemon called Taurus.
@PencilThief There very much is, and it was a bit*h to catch in the first games. The f*ckers ran away almost as soon as they showed up, and they were really hard to find in the first place.
@SuperBort I have a lot of nostalgia for the Pokemon games. I played Emerald a fair bit. One of my personal challenges was to beat the Elite Four and (Steven?) with only Rayquaza.
@PencilThief Yeah, Steven was the gen 3 champ.
To be honest those games lose some of their enjoyment when you realise how easy it is to out level everyone with a little effort. Heck just using a single Pokemon can actually be a good strategy because they get all the exp and thus become super over leveled. It also doesn't help that all the AI trainers have god awful stats if you know how all the hidden mechanics work.
That's actually why I enjoyed the hack mod (technically not illegal if you own a copy of the original game that is being modified, but many people use illegal roms to run it) Pokemon Unbound. They added stuff like scaling levels, soft level caps, and actually well prepared battles. I especially enjoyed the fact that each gym had unusual mechanics like permanent weather, or inverse battles (the inverse one was a bit mean because it was a Normal type gym, and thus had only a single weakness to ghost types, while being strong or neutral to every other type).
@SuperBort Thank you for sharing this with me. I had never heard of Pokemon Unbound before. I wonder if it's compatible with any graphics updates
@PencilThief It is based off Fire Red (thus you need a legal copy of it to play it legally), but uses a lot of custom assets. It is basically already about the best you could expect for a 2d game.