Do we have to tho?At that point I would unseal Perseus because the strongest floor bosses would await - or we get back to the surface for the fated battle with Awakened Mischa.
Wait, wait, hear me out! Why don't we just... approach him stealthily and kill him in his sleep? I mean, Shinji is capable of doing it, right?..
Ah, damn, characterization.
As a note, the Trial of Courage is not one about facing the strongest bosses, but the worst possible enemies for you. Confronting your fears, confronting your past - confronting yourself (and yes, that is a solo, instanced encounter). The Trial of Force is the major DPS Check of the dungeon, just as the Trial of Insight involved you seeing past the obvious dangers or strategies.
Are you clever? Are you strong? Are you worthy?
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
...Should we even know this?
Well, basically, Perseus-lovers, now is your chance to shine. We won't need him after this Challenge, other than the insight he provides us into Shinji's psyche as a twisted mirror of his character. So if you want to face the strongest bosses with Percy-boy on your side, vote now. We won't have the time to acclimate to the changes otherwise.
Of course, I continue to believe that in the close future Perseus will be liability, and liability only. He will interfere in our ability to Fuse, will sap Shinji's willpower and sanity. We won't be able to adapt in time, definitely not during the most serious battles up to date.
But you can still believe in the Heart of the Shounen, or something.
Last edited by Malorius; November 12th, 2018 at 04:46 PM.
Well, that sounds promising indeed.Originally Posted by alfheimwanderer
Sounds like a "Drink PoAP, instant win!" to me. Oh wait, we won't have any by the time we will reach the third Challenge.Well, that sounds promising indeed.
That's gonna be a problem. Shinji has "a disposable character" plastered all over his face.
Ah you all wish that you could just drink PoAP to solve everything.
The Trial of Courage is a bit more hands off in our direct intervention by way of choices. It is more of a test of the character we have built over the course of all our choices before hand. At least this Shinji has a courage blessing given wayyy back during his last Japanese outing with Ayaka by a tengu.
But before that part we really need to survive this coming challenge which is going to require everything we got and then some. But I do hope that we can at least save some PoAP for Sokaris to replicate/improve the recipe.
Last edited by Skull Leader; November 12th, 2018 at 07:22 PM.
Well I guess if the test of strength is up next then let's undo the sealing. I would have liked more time, but it seems it's now or never.
Don't you? In a better world we wouldn't have to worry about dosage and amount of effort to produce a new potion. In a better world, a Perfect!Shinji would sweep all ladies from their feet with his dangerous bishounen grace and tear his foes apart with his ultimate cosmic power. Sadly, we don't play in a better world.Ah you all wish that you could just drink PoAP to solve everything.
Then again, we get to bask in schadenfreude of the contemptible Seaweed being beaten, degraded and hated instead. With a healthy dosage of SuFfErInG, power of will and overcoming. So... yay.
Last edited by Malorius; November 13th, 2018 at 03:07 AM.
By the way, there us a tie between information and unsealing right now, 3:3. Those with unsteady faith in our choices, who believe that they may switch to unsealing Perseus when we face the hopelessly overwhelming challenge, - you better vote now. Merging in the middle of a boss fight, or right before it, while being anime as hell, will be very counterproductive to our success.
Last edited by Malorius; November 13th, 2018 at 05:52 AM.
Considering the update Alf posted, we may need power more than knowledge to beat this trial, I'm willing to swap for Unsealing if the tie last too long. If only because, I would rather not use the PoAP on the Force Boss, unless absolutely necessary, and save it for the Courage boss (since it's a solo battle).
Last edited by Daiki; November 13th, 2018 at 02:25 PM.
>inb4 Trial of Courage boss is Ultimate_Crying_Sakura_Killed_by_Big_Brother's_Bet rayal
This is getting ridiculous. Anyone willing to reevaluate their opinion and switch? Daiki, you volunteered.
[x] Unsealing.
The tie is broken, ladies and gentlemen. Let's do this.
Choice 413: [x] Maybe the sealing should be undone? With things getting more difficult...
Chapter 97. Unmoored
Matou Shinji found his arms and legs moving almost of their own accord as he made his way about a vast garden of magical plants, illuminated by crystals glowing with a soft white light. It was peaceful here – strangely so – so peaceful that he couldn’t believe that this place could only be reached by passing through five levels of the isle’s great labyrinth.
In the process of getting here, he’d nearly been killed by hydra venom, smashed by a golem, incinerated by a white chimera, and more besides – learning of all cruel and unusual ways that whatever force or entity had designed this labyrinth had employed to test the worthiness of those who entered.
According to what Elesa had told him after they’d reached this safe haven, those five floors had collectively been the first of three great trials that protected the secrets of the installation. Specifically, it had been the Trial of Insight, testing whether he had the wisdom to search for what was hidden, the ingenuity to know how to bend rules if necessary…and the discipline to realize that some rules were there for a reason.
“…if that was only the first trial, what horrors await below?” he’d murmured quiet, with the American Champion raising an eyebrow as she overheard his comment.
“Levels designed to test whether we are worthy in other ways,” the blonde had replied after a moment. “You’re worried, I see,” she’d commented. “Thinking about how you did?”
“I nearly died. More than once, at that,” Shinji had grunted. “I think I have the right to be worried, especially since I…since I signed a self-geas contract to aid you for as long as you wished it. If I’m no help but a burden…”
“Ah, yes…there is that,” Elesa had noted, reaching into her pack and rummaging for a moment as she withdrew the scroll in question. “Well, if that is your concern, then I’m fine with releasing you. The contract says that you will aid me so long as I wish – but if I no longer wish it, then you are no longer bound by the geass. You can go back to the surface – I can continue alone.”
Shinji had frozen, his eyes unable to meet those of his adventuring companion.
“Have I been that much of a disappointment?” he’d asked flatly. “So much of a burden that you’d release me just like that?”
“No. You’re quite talented for your age, even if you are no Sajyou Ayaka,” Elesa had told him, something which mollified him slightly. “I’ve just grown used to working alone over the years.”
“You?” Shinji had voiced incredulously. “A model? Working alone?”
“…do I look very much like a model at the moment, Ishmael?” his counterpart questioned archly, with the boy shaking his head.
“Point,” he’d conceded. “No one who was just a model would have…the skills you’ve demonstrated.”
“Yes…well, those, I am particular about,” Elesa had quipped. “Which reminds me,” she’d added in a more serious tone of voice. “I will need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement should you choose to leave now.” She’d glanced around, looking to one of the more developed crystal formations. “I think one of those crystals should be buy your silence, yes?”
“…what are they?” he’d wondered. “They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“A Saint Quartz formation,” the blonde had answered, her expression solemn. “Outside of this isle, and places like it, they are very, very rare. As befits the source of one of the magically potent materials in the world. In places particularly rich with prana, the boundaries between the layers of reality grow thin, and so sometimes, the wishes of mankind – or the planet – may manifest in physical form as one of these crystals.” She’d glanced at the boy. “I believe your benefactor – the one who gave you your new limbs – would be satisfied with one of these?”
Shinji’s mouth had dropped open as he just stared at what – if Elesa was correct – was probably the most valuable object he’d ever seen.
“You would…” His words had died as his mouth went dry, and swallowing, he’d tried again. “You would give this to me?”
“Yes.”
“…why?”
“Why not?” the young woman had remarked. “You clearly desire it, and in this place, I have little use for it, save as a catalyst that I don’t particularly need, given what I am. The choice is yours. Take the crystal and leave or continue with me to the floors below. Either way, I will void your contract.”
Her offer of him leaving with this great treasure was tempting – very, very tempting. After all, he'd seen things his classmates back at Hogwarts wouldn’t even be able to begin to imagine, things he doubted any living British practitioner had ever done.
He'd been incredibly lucky to stay alive, to come this far, and to not be punished – to not be killed – for breaking his contract, but given something for his time…it almost made him weep.
And yet…
He could not accept her offer.
It was clear what his choice had to be – not just from a desire to continue and prove himself, or from the knowledge that if the plants around him – like Thaumatagoria – or the crystal formations on this floor were any indication of what lay ahead, then what awaited at the very bottom must be something beyond his ability to even conceive of in his most fevered imaginings – but from the fact that he’d given his word to Sokaris, and that he could not break.
He'd said to her that he would do his best. Not that he would win, not that he would brew the best potion the world had ever seen, but that he would do his best.
If he simply gave up now, when Elesa was offering him an easy out, how could he look Sokaris in the eye and claim to have done all that he could? To have truly done his very best?
Simply put, he couldn't.
The previous floors had tested his mind, it seemed, with trials to see if he had the wisdom to see through their deceptions or to puzzle out their mechanics. In this...he had largely failed, and surely would have died if not for Elesa's help.
The ones to come...he suspected they would assess how powerful he was, testing his strength, his endurance, and his abilities to deal with challenges magical and physical.
'Truthfully, I have no idea if I'm ready, but...'
If he didn’t even try, he would be a failure, so he had no choice but to try, if he wanted to be worthy of standing by Sokaris' side.
That...and he had promised Elesa that he would assist her as long as she wished it, so long as she planned on exploring the island. Perhaps she was willing to release him, but since she was going to be continuing no matter what he chose, he thought, it would be against the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter, if he did not choose to continue to accompany her.
Why, he'd only begun to prove himself useful – perhaps enough to make up for being a burden.
'I don't want her to think of me as a burden.'
He didn’t want anyone to think of him as such, for that matter.
"You won't mind if I choose to continue?" he’d asked.
"Not particularly," the blonde had replied, which wasn't particularly a ringing endorsement, but didn't indicate refusal either.
"Then I’ll go with you onto the floors below," the boy had resolved. “As long as you wish to continue, I will follow.”
“Heh. So you do have a sense of honor,” the American Champion had said almost…approvingly. “Very well, you may come with me…and for your services so far, I suppose I can grant you this Saint Quartz formation anyway.”
“What.”
That…it hadn’t been an either/or choice? She was—
“I mean, if you die, I’ll take it from your corpse, but this won’t be the only formation about, I’m sure,” Elesa had remarked, almost casually. “Anyway, I think it would be a good idea for us to rest and recover a bit after what we went through.”
“…do you even need such a thing?”
“It can be useful, yes,” the young woman had shot back. “It’s not as if what I do isn’t draining in its own right. And Matou, you should really be worried about yourself. Aren’t you nearly out of ofuda after that display earlier.”
The boy had sighed and conceded the point.
“Though in addition to restocking your ofuda, you may as well take advantage of the ingredients in the cavern to brew some potions,” Elesa had commented. “You’re unlikely to see…a more impressive selection on the surface, after all.”
“…true,” Shinji had agreed, thinking for a moment before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a vial of golden liquid. Uncorking it, he down half the contents before stoppering it again and tossing it to the American. “Yours, if you want it. Felix Felicis. Liquid Luck, if you’re curious.”
But Elesa had just tossed the vial back to him.
“Thanks, but I make my own luck – or should I say, my own fate,” she’d quipped, with the Japanese boy accepting her words with a grunt. “I’ll be brewing some utility potions. You’ll want some, I assume? And some brewing equipment?”
Shinji had nodded idly, his eyes already looking for somewhere to set up a potions station.
“Also, with regards to the equipment I gave you, are the modifications working, or did you want me to adjust them a bit when I had a chance?”
“…I could use some extra magical protection instead of the physical defense boost,” he’d replied, with Elesa promising to get on that later.
And then everything else had fallen away as he’d begun to move around the cavern, gathering materials, as he was doing even now.
From a pool of prana-rich water, he retrieved a sample of Witch’s Ganglion, with the bright red bulb of the plant peeking out from under its leaves.
From a corner of the room, in the shadows, he retrieved several eye-like pods from a rather large specimen of Pritcher's Porritch, each oozing a blue, sticky substance that reminded him strongly of blood. The plant…
‘It doesn’t feed on light – it feeds on prana…’
Near the entrances and the exits, there was a small thicket of Niffler’s Fancy, a plant with gleaming copper-like leaves once used as currency by early practitioners.
And near the Saint Quartz formations…
Thaumatagoria.
…the azure-colored plant that Ramona had used. That he’d allegedly found in his explorations.
It was here.
And in his mind, under the influence of Felix Felicis, he knew exactly what to do, how he might combine them into something…great.
Exactly what that something great would be he didn’t know, but he thought – hoped – it would be at least equal to the Elixir of Restoration, especially with these other ingredients being added.
His hands and feet moved of their own accord, as he walked about, gathered, sat down, chopped ingredients, heated a cauldron filled with prana-rich water, did a dozen things at once, working for minutes – or was it hours – as he crafted the great brew, letting neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue interrupt his working until at last, it was finished.
Only the very the moment it was, the boy slumped to the floor, as his consciousness drifted off into an unknown land, falling into the pattern of a dream.
As had been the case in many dreams before, Matou Shinji found himself locked in deadly battle, fighting for his life against black-cloaked, masked figures whose sole task was to eliminate him from the world. He’d been fighting for quite a while now, exchanging spellbeams with his enemies, but as the air grew chilly around him, he knew he’d run out of time, that they’d received…reinforcements.
‘Dementors,’ he thought. He didn’t know the Patronus of course, but it wasn’t like he could retreat.
After all, he was the only thing that stood between his assailants and his partner, the girl who, like the moon she was named for, glowed as she floated in the night sky, air, maintaining a shimmering field of force that held back the distant allies of the Dark, hundreds of faceless warriors clad in rust-red cloaks who longed only to sweep over the city – his city – and destroy it, purging all within it with magical fire.
‘I won’t let them.’
Emboldened by the presence of ghastly reinforcements, his foes redoubled their assault, beams of crackling force tearing apart the air as they ripped into the great goblin-silver barriers he was using for cover.
Soon, they would be upon him, he thought, as he gripped his staff and—
Whump-BOOM! Whump-BOOM! Whump-BOOM!
The spells stopped, fizzling out as those who had been casting them were…wiped out, blown to smithereens by a fireball big enough to swallow up a house.
‘What the…’
“Guess it’s my turn to help you, Matou-kun,” the mischievous voice of Tohsaka Rin murmured beside him, with the boy noting that she held a number of gems between her fingers. Apparently, she’d decided that the best way to get rid of the problems facing them on this particular front was to
throw money at the problem.
…and much to his surprise, it worked, for the group of attackers, having never seen what Jewel Magecraft was capable of, had overlooked the small gem she’d tossed. For a moment, the dark tide froze in place, unable to understand what had just happened, and in that moment, the boy struck.
In Britain, it was accepted as a truism that combat apparition could only be used by the most skilled and powerful of practitioners, as the level of concentration required to ensure that one did not splinch oneself during apparition was...difficult to sustain during a duel, much less the chaos of a battlefield. Granted, it was possible for a force to apparate into a position to ambush another, or for individuals to try and flee - which was why any army of practitioners who controlled an area tended to cast anti-apparition charms and anti-disapparition jinxes – but once battle was joined, it was considered at best, impractical, and at worst, suicidal to actually use apparition in combat unless you had talent on par with legends like Grindelwald, Dumbledore, or Voldemort.
Which was why no one expected Matou Shinji to blink away from his position, only to reappear in the middle of the group of black-cloaked figures in the guise of a demon of stone, his scythe crackling with dark energies as he spun about, its cold edge slicing through cloth, flesh, bone, and soul. The lucky ones – the practitioners of witchcraft caught up in the attack – didn't have time to realize what was happening before they were cut down, their very lives devoured by his weapon.
The unlucky ones – just outside the maximum radius of his length-shifting scythe – could only look on in horror as the golden-eyed demon rose from the aftermath of his initial strike, his lips curled into a vicious grin as he looked at them, a storm of paper bursting from his form to obscure his outline.
Spellbeams tore through the air, torrents of red, green, and purple seeking to put an end to the grim reaper that walked among them, yet none of them connected.
Some struck ofuda and were absorbed, turned aside, or reflected.
Some struck a bulwark of earth and were nullified.
Some passed through empty air, as the demon was no longer there.
One moment he'd stood among the severed limbs of their comrades, amidst the crimson rain. The next...he was among them once again, and they could not apparate away.
The practitioners, fell back in all directions, thinking that he couldn't be in more than one place at a time, their wands barking out powerful spells that tore great gouges in the battlefield.
Bombarda.
Confringo.
Fiendfyre.
And yet, as if ignoring the threat they posed, the demon flashed forward, through the storm of spells, his scythe rising and falling, rising and falling again and again, abruptly strangled screams tearing apart the night – until there were no more people left to make screams around him.
Only a swarm of black cloaked figures who had never lived and thus could not die, who, ignoring him, were sweeping towards a girl in red trying to pelt them with gems.
Dementors.
“Stay back – focus on the practitioners, if there are any left!” he barked out, noting that a very few had managed to escape him. “I’ll deal with this trash.”
Tohsaka acknowledged with a nod, and without another word, her figure blurred, her body hurtling forward and past him as she slammed a gandr-charged fist into the groin of one of the fleeting black-cloaked practitioners, sending him flying far further than a grown man should after being hit by a small fourteen-year-old girl.
'What the...? Was that the Mystic code she was working on? The glasses?'
She'd mentioned something about using gravitic anchors in battle, as well as manipulating her weight to deal more damage in melee, but he hadn't really thought about it too much, since the one she'd been working with for melee combat practice was Pansy. Either way, she seemed to have things dealt with, so Shinji turned to the more pressing foes.
The dementors.
By his will, spikes of earth rose to impale them, yet very few fell victim to his assault, as they floated, drifted around them, meaning he could not immediately petrify them, as he needed to touch them to do so. And the one he did impale...it bent down, its maw opening as it drank the energy out of the earth, and the spike crumpled.
Well, it wasn’t as if he thought it would be so easy, he thought – readying his scythe, though his resolve faltered as he saw Tohsaka stagger to a halt, then fall as a jet of purple flame swept over her, with some new enemy – an older witch with a crazed expression – appearing out of thin air, with the earth exploded around her, sods of dirt being flung into the air and knives which hurtled down at Tohsaka.
He could act – save her.
But if he did, there would nothing stopping the dementors and their allies.
They would reach Luna.
The allies of the black ones would be freed from their prison, and would sweep over them all.
He…
He could…
He made his choice.
As the boy came out of a blink, the dream shifted, with his surroundings changing around him until it was nearly unrecognizable. Oddly enough, he no longer stood on a street – he was no longer really standing, really, because that would imply he was standing on something, and there was nothing there.
All around him, there was darkness, utter and absolute, save for a few points of light coming from jagged shards of multiple realities spinning all around him. Fragments, these – all that remained of choices made and possibilities brought to a premature end.
'Where am I?' he wondered, but there was no answer. There couldn't be, not here, not in this place where things like light, sound and thought were foreign concepts, where there was no life, no meaning save the possibilities constrained within the shards.
A place where he did not belong.
"You are not meant to be here," a voice spoke in the darkness, echoing his thoughts, as reality bent and he could feel something change, in the way that a dreamer will sometimes feel a dream changing around them. He could not tell what had changed, nor did he recognize the voice, even if it seemed somehow familiar, only – "At least, not yet."
The words that were spoken threw him into confusion.
"...does the word yet have a meaning in this place?" the boy asked, the corners of his lips twitching downwards.
"Only to the extent that you believe it does. That we believe it does. But then, we are both unmoored from the anchors of the world. Of Alaya, at least."
"Unmoored?" Shinji echoed, finding the word disturbing on a level he doesn't quite understand. "What do you mean unmoored?"
"An existence that flickers from moment to moment, from possibility to possibility. Unfixed yet not…adrift,” the other spoke. “You see memories of what has not yet been, as other yous see realities that will never be, with your futures as fractured as your past will be."
"My past?"
"What may yet come to pass when infinite possibilities collapse to singularity."
"But how...the future isn't the past, and..." The boy's words trailed off. "What do you mean collapse to singularity?" he asked.
"Humans ever wish for second chances, but some lead only to regret when the river runs backwards."
"I don't...” the boy swallowed. “I don't understand."
"You will."
"Why—"
"Because, Matou Shinji, you are the one who asked me to tell you this."
"What, no I...I never…" The boy's eyes narrowed, as some things began to make sense. "Wait…when? When did ask you to tell me?"
"At last, you begin to see."
The voice sounded almost…amused, something that amused the boy not in the least.
"...this isn't really helpful, you know."
"And yet I cannot be more so, lest possibility once again become singularity. There are things amuck in the world beyond you, forces far greater and far less, yet the you who was and the you who will be must choose, cursed with free will as you are.”
“Cursed with free will?”
“Make the right choices,” the voice went on, as if he had not spoken. “Be mindful of the visions, the dreams of what might be, yet know that you are not yet bound by what they show."
"...I don't know," the boy said doubtfully. "They—"
"They are a path you walked before, yet who knows if you will walk that path again? In your wake, you left only fragments, hardly enough to build a world from."
"One can try."
"One can. But for now, you will awaken. Take heed – that you succeeded once is no guarantee you will succeed again, and yet you must, lest all you know be lost."
And with that, the boy awoke, his consciousness hurled back into his body as he opened his eyes.
When Shinji awakened from his dream, he remembered in full clarity what happened within it. How he, together with Luna, Rin, and a number of others, had been fighting against a number of black-cloaked figures – and how it had faded before he knew what would come as a result of his choices. Choices he'd apparently made before, in some future that might never be, but more worryingly, might still happen.
How would such a thing even come about though?
He had no idea, yet…it wasn’t the killing that disturbed him, not really. It was a certain phrase that the
voice in his dreams had used.
The voice had told him that he had…or maybe he would…become unmoored from the anchors of Alaya.
What on earth did that mean? And why had the voice seemed familiar to him?
‘I should ask these things of Elesa,’ he realized. She’d already done a great deal for him, and this…all this sounded like something she might have more insight into than him.
After all, she was Nyx – he was just poor Ishmael.
Elesa's eyes narrowed as Shinji mentioned the collapsing of infinite possibilities into singularity, among the other oddities in that second, odd portion of his dream.
"Have you had dreams like this before?" she asked, with the boy frowning.
"Not like the last part," he began, before recalling a very odd vision he'd seen years ago. "Well, no, I take that back. I did, but only once, really. That was...I was in Mahoutokoro, and in a dream after...after the death of the Matou family..." He shook his head. "The spirit of the tree found me, asked me questions. Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going? Do I have anything worth living for? Those sorts of things." He shook his head. "Someone once told me that when I was dreaming, it was like my mind was linked to somewhere else. Like my body was an empty shell."
"...and you mentioned that you had a dream that came true? The one where we fought the Chimera?" Elesa pressed, with Shinji nodding sharply.
"Yes,” the boy confirmed. “It was…strange, realizing that I had seen it all before. That I had foreseen working with you – that even though I didn’t know what lay beneath, all my choices led me to this.”
“You’re not a seer, are you?”
“…I don’t think so,” Shinji temporized. “The voice…it told me I was seeing memories of what has not yet been. Not possibilities, but memories. But how can that be? It's almost like its saying these things already happened, and I'm seeing them through someone's eyes. Seeing their memories."
Elesa went utterly still for a moment, her cold blue eyes seeming to pierce right through him.
"...ah," she murmured, her features lighting up with soft surprise as she shook her head, suddenly seeming very tired. "So that's how it is..." She seemed as if she'd realized something in that moment.
"What's how it is?"
But the girl shook her head, closing her eyes.
"Tell me, Matou, do you know much about time?" she inquired after a moment. “About the nature of it? The way we perceive it on earth?”
"That it keeps everything from happening at once?" Shinji volunteered, with Elesa snorting as he offered this tidbit.
"Well, you can certainly say that!" the blonde replied with a hint of a smile, opening her eyes once again. "Though, there are ways one could render that statement false.”
"Heh…true, but…that’s…you’re talking about…”
"True Magic," Elesa said bluntly. "Still, even if one wasn’t using such to turn infinite possibilities into singularities, something…else could have transpired, if a powerful enough artifact or entity were involved. After all, there are other ways to manipulate time. The Hour-Reversal Charm, for instance, lets one travel through time to a degree, though it both unstable and unsafe for the user, as quantum fluctuations will cause your form to decohere if you go back too far. After all, past a certain point, there are too many possibilities to take into account – too much noise – if one will. Causing a singularity..."
"I don't know the word," Shinji admitted. "But in context...a point when there is only one possibility?"
"...you could put it that way," the American Champion allowed. "And if you are seeing these sorts of memories, then that means you – a future you – is probably involved. Somehow. Or that a future you has been indulging in time-travel and that transference is occurring."
"Transference?"
"Either skills or knowledge is bleeding from one instance of your 'self' to the other, as the world grapples with the fact that there are two of you in a particular instant of time."
"Ah..." Shinji blinked. "But what does that all mean?"
"...that is a matter for after we finish what we have begun on this isle," Elesa stated frostily. "I do think it would be wise for you to alert your patron, however. I…suspect that whatever is happening, it is far beyond you."
"My...patron?" Shinji echoed, his voice higher than usual.
"...don't play dumb, Matou, it's not a good look," the American Champion said flatly. "Now, I have to ask, do you have any idea what could cause such an incident?”
“…no?” the boy hazarded, only to realize in the next moment that the Holy Grail might be able to cause such an eventuality.
“Well, I’ll debrief you later, but in the meantime, you are going to be involved in such an incident, I suppose should make sure you get out of here alive."
"...I would appreciate that, yes," Shinji squeaked.
"You know, I rather thought you might.”
Gained - 3x Potion of All Potential, 1 Crystal of Saint Quartz
Choice 414: The first level of the trial of force is simple - a chamber full of birds. Birds of all sizes and shapes with beaks of razor-sharp metal, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and of course - poisonous/corrosive droppings. These are quickly fried by Elesa, with fumes handled by bezoars, the duo proceeding past without much trouble.
The next chamber, however, a massive cavern with a sleeping lindworm blocking the exit, seems as if it might pose more difficulties.
Any ideas?
[ ] (write-in)
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
Huh? Do they hold it in the mouth or what? Does it interfere with spellcasting?The short summary of our current resources will be helpful, Alf. We know about Greater Potions. Now we need some info on the types of ofuda we managed to create and potions Elesa has given.with fumes handled by bezoars
[ ] Create a spiked metal ball. Transfigure it into fluffy cute animal to bait the beast, place some explosive ofuda for added effect. When lindworm devours it, untransfigure and detonate.
KISS. Let's keep true to legends, it definitely worked in the past!
Last edited by Malorius; November 18th, 2018 at 11:57 AM.
Ofuda:
- Explosive
- Binding
- Flow-walk
Potions:
- Tonic of Preservaton and [REDACTED]
- Fire Protection Potion
- Girding Potion
- Wit-sharpening Potion
- Vitamix Potion
- Strengthening Potion
- Invisibility Potion
- Sleeping Draught
Last edited by alfheimwanderer; November 16th, 2018 at 04:23 PM.
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
The difference in your interpretation, please.Endurance Potion
Girding Potion
Also, wiki says that some of those last for days or weeks, which is implausible in the context of "finite resources in a short dungeon run" scheme of things.
Is it valid?
Last edited by Malorius; November 16th, 2018 at 03:33 PM.
They can last for weeks if properly brewed. Elesa used some shortcuts, trading brewing time for duration of effect, so these are good for a couple hours once taken.
Also, I apologize - I meant to say fire protection potion, not endurance.
Last edited by alfheimwanderer; November 16th, 2018 at 04:23 PM.
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne
Argh, I didn't convey it well. The thing is their effect lasts for days and weeks.
How much can we count on? One dose for one Trial's length? One floor? Or are they more intended as instant effect, not long-term buffs?
EDIT. Oh, right, you answered that. Reading comprehension failure, please ignore me.
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