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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Swiss Arms (Historical SI Gamer)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 33
-VB-
While I went around collecting soil samples, I also visited the rest of the villages of the compact to gauge their reception to nail making. I got mixed responses.
For sure, Davos was up for it like Arnold and Alvia assured me. The same could not be said for the rest, especially villages furthest from us (i.e. Maienfeld). Davos only agreed because the villagers there knew that whatever I put my hands to, something glorious happened. The rest of the villages trusted me to lead them on the battlefield but not on the table to navigate the economics of the future.
As the chief of Maienfeld (father of Arnold's wife, Beatrice) told me bluntly to my face, "We are busy as it is feeding ourselves with what we have. We don't have the means nor the desire to explore something that may see children dead in the coming winter."
He was being blunt as fuck about it, but he said nothing incorrect. Survival came before experimentation.
Davos, still, was willing.
They were willing because they didn't have a blacksmith. This was part of the reason why Kraft had been supportive of Arnold learning smithing under me.
While the rest of the villages weren't as blunt or rude about it as Maienfeld, their objections and reasons remained the same.
Admittedly, my failure to win over anyone outside Davos hurt my ego a little more than I thought it would - hurt me more than I thought it would - because hadn't I been their leader? The commander who led them to victory? Davos would have been the last village in line to suffer from the pillaging and murder the counts -.
No.
I couldn't let myself dig that kind of rabbit hole and throw myself down it. Yes, I commanded them, but it didn't mean that they owed me. We fought together against a threat. Sure, I would have done fine on my own, but fighting together made things easier for everyone.
We signed a Compact, and I might have been the one overreaching by asking them to divert their finite resources. I can't forget that I am the only one with "extra" resources. I'm the only one among the Compact's people who go out to hunt animals in the middle of the Alps' winter to hunt bears. They can't do half of what I do; I can't expect them to do as much as I do.
So I gave up on it for now. I would come back to it later.
This meant that I had to now focus on pottery. Already, I saw that simple innovations that a potter could use on the spot worked in my favor. I just had to help spread that - and my influence - through the rest of the Compact.
And once I found whatever that lithomarge stuff, then I could see about exporting porcelain, too.
Speaking of which, I had zero luck in finding that shit. I have looked everywhere from Maienfeld to Zernez, and I couldn't find it there. This meant that if I wanted to continue looking, I would have to explore other territories.
Funny thing about exploring other territories: they don't want the military commander of their former enemy and potential future enemy to scout out their lands.
Ah, this was what suffering in success felt like.
I would have to rely on peddlers and merchants and ask them to find lithomarge for me.
In the meantime, I needed to experiment!
"So that's what happens if I use glaze with a lot of iron," I grimaced as I looked at the admittedly shiny but utterly black bowl. When I stood up, I noticed Arnold staring at me. "What?"
"What do you mean 'what,' Hans? Do you not see how smooth and shiny your earthenwares are?" he asked me incredulously.
One such earthenware was in Alvia's hands, and her eyes shined like they did when she first saw me cutting gemstones. She was pretty good at that, actually. At her request, I fashioned a few rose gold rings for her to set her cut gems into. She's sold quite a few to passing merchants and paid me my due (workshop and material fee minus discount).
"That's from the glaze," I replied. "You know, the thing I did before I fired it up?"
"And that furnace! You didn't use fire!"
"Yeah? That was the point," I replied. "Air does shit when it gets really hot, and smoke does it, too. Isn't this ho-"
"No."
"Oh," I muttered as I stared at the mostly misshapen bowls that now littered the floor in tall stacks.
[Pottery] LvL. 13
One of the most prehistoric inventions, you too can shape the earth to match your imagination. Provided you have a fire.
*-0.1% material cost per LvL
*+0.5% drying speed per LvL
*+1% increase in quality guarantee (+100% increase to Common upgrades quality to Moderate)
I may have gone a little crazy trying to increase the level as much as I could in an as short amount of time. The result was twelve levels increase to [Pottery] after I made some two hundred plus dishes.
Most of them were [Bad] in quality. Some were [Ubiquitous]. A rare few were [Common], all of which came after I got past [Pottery] LvL. 10.
I actually got the last level by applying glazes after the first firing.
And… well…
The currently finished dishes were less than half of what I initially started with. Yes, more than half of the dishes I made with clay broke during the firing.
I really hoped that wouldn't always be the case.
"Hans, Gunther the Potter makes fifteen finished pots a day. You just made two hundred in a week."
I blinked.
Oh.
Um.
I looked down at the dishes. The black dishes, shining like they were smooth river stones, glistened in the noon sun.
"I guess I should get Gunther involved in this and not leave him jobless?" I asked the two siblings.
"He would be happy to keep food on his table, yes…" Alvia muttered as she turned her dish around. The dish she held was the only [Moderate] quality dish I made out of this week's batch. "I'm keeping this."
I snorted in amusement. "Go ahead."
She ran off.
I had to remind myself that even though all of us were adults, both Alvia and Arnold were in their teens. They remained youthfully excitable.
"You look disappointed with this."
I blinked and turned around. "Oh, Beatrice. I didn't know you were interested in this."
"I was curious," the normally shy woman bowed slightly, showing deference to me. "But I had assumed that you would keep women out of your way…"
"Nah, I don't do things traditionally," I replied.
"That and you did keep my husband occupied for half a day each day for the past week."
Arnold looked sheepish. "Well, I was just doing my job."
"Yes, and you left me alone. Not too keen on doing the husband part of your job, huh?"
As the two descended into what looked like was their first couple spat, I felt a little guilty.
Which was why I left as quickly as I could.
-VB-
In the coming summer months and into fall, I worked and made more pottery. I reached LvL. 45 in [Pottery] as fall came in and even gained [Bartering] as a skill (it increased the opposite party's willingness to settle for higher in my favor).
In total, I sold roughly ten thousand dishes at a few coppers per dish.
I actually now had a merchants specifically visiting me from St. Gallens (north of Werdenberg) to keep buying my earthenware and I bought salted fish from them.
I supposed that this was a start of an industry and a trade route (even if I wasn't the one in charge of that trade route).
Oh, as for Gunther, he brought his entire family to my fort and settled in as one of the permanent residents, bringing the total number of residents from thirty to thirty-five.
As I waved goodbye to the now familiar Merchant of St. Gallens, Alexander the Gallens Merchant, I got an alert.
Ping!
[Requirement met for Quest: Industrialization! Turn the quest in? Y/N]
I thought about it. Porcelain was its own separate quest, so I didn't need to think about that. The base reward for the quest was 10 points, which meant a lot to me. However, establishing one more industry would make the Compact that much stronger and myself 5 points richer. The quest didn't end until I chose to end it, so …
I pressed no.
I could wait until I fulfilled all of the bonus requirements.
"Hans!"
I looked back to the rudimentary road connecting Davos to my Fluela Fort and saw a man running up.
It was Bruno, a man from Klosters (village just north of Davos and a member of the Compact) who had fast become a messenger in these months (because I paid him to deliver letters). He was sweaty; he normally wasn't because he walked to his destination, but this time, it looked like he ran.
"What is it, Bruno?" I asked him.
"Messenger from Schiers… It's urgent. I'm sorry I read it, but I think you'll appreciate that I ran.
Frowning at the lack of confidentiality (though the letter's envelope didn't ask for it), I pulled the letter out of the envelope and read it.
Dear Hans of Fluela,
This is Gerald of Schiers.
We have met four times so far: once during the foundation of the Compact, once during your patrol-visits, once during the fight against the counts to the west and north, and once when you came to see if our blacksmith was willing to change how he smithed.
I met a man eager to see change for the good, but when told to stop, who agreed with the people who had to live with the consequences.
I thought wrong.
In the past four months, you have bypassed Maienfeld, Schiers, and Castels. You hired none of us in your new pottery workshop that has ruined the potters in our villages. You buy clay from St. Peters and Langweis and hired men from Klosters and Davos. Yet you did not even send us three notices of your new business.
I believe that you are showing favoritism.
While the Compact formed to protect ourselves from outsiders, I believe that it should involve helping each other in other areas as well.
As such, I ask that you provide your expertise in growing our three villages.
Signed,
Gerald
Representative of Schiers to the Compact of the Seven
"Well," I smiled. "I guess I have some traveling to do."
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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Swiss Arms (Historical SI Gamer)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 34
-VB-
It took me the rest of the year, but I managed to get the rest of the Compact to work towards my vision for our people's future.
Of course, this wasn't without its troubles.
A lack of a paved road to help facilitate trade between each of the villages made life extra hard. Fixing that within a year was not possible, even for me. I did manage to put a dirt paved road between Davos and Klosters, and I already had people using it frequently. Mostly, it was people from Klosters also getting in on selling me clay.
Speaking of clay, I did manage to find a lithomarge deposit within our territory. It was, however, at the very edge of it. It was within Davos's claimed lands, which made up for the fact that it was at the southern edge of it.
When I inquired Kraft about hiring workers permanently to regularly supply me with lithomarge (I marked it down for him on a crude map), he told me that he had enough young men to do the work and if he didn't, then he would inquire from Klosters.
As for Maienfeld, Schiers, and Castels, those three have banded together to form their own co-op. I taught them how to make paper from fibrous tree bark. While I had initially thought about teaching them how to make paper from wood logs and chips, the entire process was too mechanically involved for villagers to do the work. Grinding up flexible bark was more manageable, and so I experimented and taught them how to make paper with that.
Sure, the paper wasn't the bleached industrial white A4 paper I was so familiar with in my past life, but I didn't need to care about quality when the paper I taught them to make was cheaper and easier than making parchment from animal skins.
After all, the binding agent and the raw material all came from the bark itself, so there wasn't even a need to source other materials.
Last I heard, they managed to get the ever-parchment-hungry abbots, priests, nuns, and the bishop of Chur to start buying their paper.
I am a little concerned about profit from that particular trade getting to the heads of those villagers… but then I remembered that we, the Compact, didn't quite have taxes.
That's right, the Compact didn't have taxes.
Due to how the Compact was formed through a defensive pact, there was no official position on leadership, taxation, and even military affairs outside of "come protect each other against outside threats." For that reason alone, the three villages had a reason to stay within our Compact, because as soon as they are conquered by other lords or even the now severely weakened Prince-Bishop, they would start having to pay a lot of taxes on what was a very special trade.
So I wasn't too concerned about them becoming rich. I wanted them to taste an iota of wealth because I knew that they would have no way to keep up with the demands on their own, even if they hired workers from outside of the Compact.
My mass pottery manufacturing also progressed really well. I also made a "print dipper," a device for precise pattern painting. It was a bouncy stretch of leather (a result of my many experimentations) that could fit into a bowl that's gone through its first baking, and leave behind a "print" of the painted pattern on the ceramic bowls that would go under a second baking.
… Admittedly, it didn't work as well as I wanted it to. It seemed to break down at least twice a week, but the fact that I could now mass manufacture semi-ornately decorated dishes and bowls remained revolutionary for our little corner of the world.
It took half a year before the regional peddlers and merchants realized that I sold something unique, and began to regularly buy from me.
To accommodate the merchants, I expanded my little fort towards Davos. The extension of the fort basically had me double the size of my fort, but most of that space was for four new buildings: stables, inn, warehouse, and apartment. The stable and inn was for the travelers and merchants. Not all peddlers had horses, but quite a few had ox pulling their carts and carriages, and they still needed to stay inside the stable and not roam outside the fort where they could be stolen by opportunistic humans. Or animals.
The warehouse and the apartment was for my business and people. See, the opening and expansion of my pottery factory saw a lot of young men - and two women - from Davos come to work at my place. I couldn't house them all in the fort like I did before; last time I did that, it had been under a serious threat to all of our lives. As the demand was there, I spent the time to make a two story apartment with enough units to house five small families and seventeen more individuals in separate units. It was also built into one of the valley cliffs, so there was room in the new half of the fort for people to gather.
What concerned me was that it's been less than two months since the completion of the apartments and the rest of the fort when I started getting migrants from Tyrol.
I was the concerned because in this medieval serfs could not simply get up and leave the lands they worked at because that was illegal.
How illegal?
Capital punishment illegal.
However, I was not going to let people die due to my reluctance to help them, and this was where my second concern came in: illegal serf migrantion and acceptance of these people was one of the main issues that caused lords to butt heads.
It was troubling that I had already accepted serfs, two families of four and five and nine stragglers of seven men and two women.
I sighed as I looked at the equally frustrated and exasperated Count of Zernez.
"I … really hoped that we wouldn't meet again after the last incident," Terrace von Waldenberg, the Count of Zernez, grumbled.
"Yeah," I grumbled back. "Didn't bring a lot of people?" I asked as I looked over six men-at-arms.
All of those men-at-arms recognized me, though that might been an intentional thing on his part.
Terrace had also grown in height and size. He wasn't the lanky teenage boy only a little younger than me. He now had the height and size of a leader, though I would need to see how much he's matured.
"My men found track marks of my serfs coming into the valley," he began.
"They passed by," I replied. "I told them it would be foolish of them to stick to a region that was right next to their former lord's lands."
He gave a deadpan. "What if they remained?"
"I'm sure they didn't."
"Do I have your assurances that they didn't remain? Swear your name to Saint Nicholas?"
I didn't say. I did accept those people, after all.
"I do not tell people to stay or go," I replied. "But if they did stay, I don't want to see them get taken away to suffer the consequences of a situation that they did not have a choice in."
"And I am supposed to accept serfs just running away?"
I thought about how I could solve this issue. Terrace was rightfully angry. Serfs may be born serfs, but it didn't change the fact that a single person was important in these sparsely populated Alppian valleys.
"What if I were to pay for their loss of service?"
Terrace stared at me.
"What?"
"What if I were to pay you to not pursue them and acknowledge that they are lost to you. That I am paying you to help you, my neighbor, offset his losses."
He stared at me some more before reaching up and gripping the bridge of his nose.
"They're here, aren't they?"
I didn't say anything that would incriminate myself.
"I am merely concerned about the fact that -"
"The fact that you are trying to pay me is an insult," he snapped at me, dropping his hand and glaring at me.
I didn't return the glare. "Why is it an insult?" My words brought him to a pause. I used this pause to bulldoze forward. "I am your neighbor. You must understand what a neighbor means, Lord Terrace. A neighbor is affected by his neighbor whether he or she likes it or not. If you lose people in your lands, then I am losing people I can buy and sell to."
He sneered at me. "Mercantile as always, I see."
"Being pragmatic, Terrace," I snapped for the first time in our conversation, and saw him flinch. "Is not mercantile. It is when I try to profit from your suffering that I become mercantile."
"... Fine."
"So a loss of my neighbor is a loss for me, so a neighbor should be helped. Or would you rather if I ignored your plight?"
He glared at me. "Fine. Fine! What would you even give me th-?!"
I gestured for my ever-present helper, Arnold, to come forward with a small sack the size of a fist I'd prepared. I took the sack and tossed it over to Terrace. He caught it, and his eyes widened as he felt its weight. He quickly opened it and looked up at me in shock.
"Half in silver. Half in gold. It should be enough, yes?"
He begrudgingly kept the pouch. "... The serfs must have made a good impression on you."
"No," I replied without any explanation as I turned away with Arnold. I heard Terrace turn away and leave, and sighed in relief.
I really hoped this wouldn't become a regular occurrence.
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Gusfes, Silver W. King replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Too Badass For This NTR World's Plot (Inside An Adult Game As A Former Hero/FGO Reincarnation)

Another day, another desolated bandit wooden fortress. Seriously, how many bandits are carpenters?
I projected an arrow, nocked it on the strong, the Statbringer Bow's enchantment covered the arrow, and I let it go. It zoomed away, and in an instant pierced through the last runaway bandit, before hitting the ground. It should disappear in a few minutes afterwards. Might as well not leave evidence of what powers I use lying around.
"Dammit, what the hell are you!? I've never heard of an Adventurer as strong as you!" Shouted the Bandit Leader, flying on his own wyvern in front of me.
Dugal growled. Very angry. Very loudly.
He seemed to take personal offense that another wyvern and its rider was opposing him. Or us, I guess.
"No, I'm not gonna stop here. I'm not giving up! I'll avenge my friends and take. You. Down!" The Bandit Leader shouted.
Bro, what the fuck? Why are you acting like a shonen protagonist for? You were literally raping one of your 'friends' minutes before I came here and killed everyone.
"Let's go, Firezard!" The Bandit Leader cried out, and his wyvern roared with him.
Did he just...
I dismissed the Statbringer Bow to my Ether Storage, and brought out the Statbringer Spear. (Thinking about it, with how this world has a Leveling system, Ether Storage really did feel like an Inventory. An Inventory in the Soul with a limited carrying capacity, but still pretty helpful.)
"Okay, yeah. This guy dies." Fuck him for parodying Pokemon.
Dugal roared loudly and for so long, he pushed back the bandit and his ride from sheer sound. The bandit covered his ears, while his wyvern began to lose balance and lower down in height.
I directed Dugal to move and he flew downward, moving faster than bandit could recover from the headache of Dugal's shout.
Before the bandit could get his hands to a weapon, or direct his wyvern with the reigns, I threw the Mythril spear right into his stomach, and into his spine, while Dugal was upon the other wyvern, biting the serpentine neck.
The bandit's wyvern struggled and roared but all too quickly, with a growl and roar in his mouth, Dugal ripped the other wyvern's neck off.
Dugal threw the bodies down to the camp below, while spitting the enemy wyvern's head aside. He roared in victory as blood rained on the dead camp below.
[hr][/hr]
You know I thought that making the Statbringer Weapon--my newly 'forged' Mythril weapons, that make Monster Cores of any opponent I killed--would be my haxx to OPness.
I didn't realize it would make the after battle such a chore.
"Ooookay, and this one is twenty seven. That should be all." I said, mostly to myself, and talking in general because Dugal was there.
Dugal let out a sound like a laugh as he looked at me, before starting to one by one eat the corpses that we just collected.
"Don't eat them all, you fucking glutton!" I shouted for my wyvern. "Just wait until I collect my share."
I frowned and got to work. I put my hand into one of the bandits mouth, dug around, and pulled out a slightly bigger version of a Monster Core.
"Okay, maybe...I should called them Human Cores instead?" I put the Monster Core aside and did the same process to the rest of the dead bandits.
An...expected side effect of using the Statbringer Weapons on people was that, at the moment of their death, a 'Monster' Core is formed in their body, usually the heart or lungs, and then ends up in the throat, or mouth.
It kinda freaked me out when it first happened, but Dugal just saw it as a neat bonus that increased his stats. I mean, is that due to how I made my weapons function, or is every living being here technically a 'Monster'?
"Maybe I should called them 'Spirit Core' to differentiate?" I wondered, and Dugal gave a sound that translated to 'don't care'. "Wait, no. I use that term for something else, it would just get confusing." I kept brainstorming. "Well, they're technically like gems, or crystals?" I threw out some ideas. "'Spirit Crystals'? Hmm, maybe. You know what stats translate to someone's ability, so 'Ability Crystals'. Fuck it. Yea, that works." I nodded to myself before a sound from Dugal drew my attention to the body of the Bandit Leader.
Dugal was grunting, while gesturing with his head toward the body of the Bandit Leader and his mount. His senses had gotten much sharper since I started feeding him Monster Core and almost all the Ability Crystals we got--it felt icky to take them myself, but free power up was a free power up. Plus, they gave like seven to ten boost in a stat. Or sometimes three in all stats.
If Dugal felt something, it was worth investigating. I dug around the bodies, using a diagnostic spell to just see where the Cores were at, when I couldn't find them immediately and cut them out.
"Huh." The Cores I cut out, rather than being cerulean like usual Monster Cores, or the noticeably enlarged version that was the Ability Crystal, these ones were like Ability Crystals, but orange in color. "Okay, this is new."
The analysis spell I calibrated for Cores or Crystals was cast to see what's different about these, and the feel I got from them, wasn't one of increased stats. Like a feel of being stronger, or faster, or tougher, or more invigorated.
Rather the one from the leader bandit gave off a feel like...talking. Making a connection. While the one from the wyvern gave off a feel of two things working fluidly.
"It's just a guess, but I think these two...give off a Skill, rather than a state boost." I voiced my thoughts. Dugal made a sound of being interested. "I'm not 100% sure, but I'd say this one gives some kind of Communication Skill, and this one gives a Synergy Skill." I said, holding up the Bandit Leader's Crystal, then his wyvern's Core. "I guess that explained how they managed to survive till the end, and why the guy could fly his wyvern without steering it." Dugal made a sound of annoyance, remembering how the other wyvern actually dared face him. "Oh stop being a drama queen. At least he had the balls to fight us."
Dugal growled. It definitely felt like him going 'I'm not whining'. Heh.
"Well, you take them." I threw both Core to Dugal, who while surprised snatched them up from the air, and swallowed. I didn't feel like I needed the Skills, stats felt better for me. Dugal needed to be stronger, as I got a feeling I'll face more crazy things in the future.
I took my pile of Ability Crystals, using magic to wash and dry them, then held them up to my face.
I let out a breath.
"Okay...okay, bottomed up." I downed the Crystals in one go.
[Strength +17]
[Agility +23]
[Durability +11]
[Mana +30]
I drank some squeezed lemons, and some water afterward. Yes, there is no taste to these things, and yes they are sterile clean but fuck me if it doesn't feel weird.
"FfOOoOOoooOOoOOooOoOOooooOOOoODDD!"
I blinked and whirled around at the voice to see Dugal looked at me with a smug look.
"...That was you, wasn't it."
"NnNnNNnNNnnOOooOOOoOoOoOOooooo." My wyvern said with a very amused smug look.
"Aaaand, I'm already missing when things were quiet." I sighed.
[hr][/hr]
The mind is an organ that churns out ideas and connect new and previous ones at a constant rate.
It's why when thinking back on the end of my duel with Lorian, that the feel of facing his Holy Sword sparked a memory in my mind.
Not one of my memories but one of Cloud's.
The day he was chosen as a Hero by the Goddess Iris. The day he was blessed with the Holy Sword.
It was memory that left a strong impression on him. He was in his village church, during the usual weekly sermon, when a light shined through the roof, directly at him.
He felt a power slowly fill him up and coarse through him. A power he'd later come to identify as divine energy.
For him it was a day that was one of great joy, and then great despair in hindsight.
But for me something else came to mind. When I said the divine energy coarse through him, I meant it literally. Like it was moving through a pattern of veins, or their equivalent for magical energy. People in this world don't have Magic Circuits, but their bodies do naturally generate mana from a spiritual organ, along their spine.
Cloud naturally didn't remember how that divine energy filled or moved through him. Only the feeling of the feeling of elation and empowerment, as he could feel his being breaking free from the limits of mortal men, even if his 'freedom' was lesser than others.
"What if there's a correlation?" I said to myself.
Dugal let out an inquisitive noise. Both of us were sitting on the ground, in our makeshift camp, a fire in front of me, and Dugal's large body behind me as I leaned against him.
I held the Holy Sword in my hand, it still only have 4 Charges, my curiosity was getting to me.
"I'm wondering if the breaking of mortal limits, basically the cap on levels people have, or how much slower it gets later on, is something that can be broken through divine energy." I voiced my thought.
"WwwWwwHhhhHHHhhHyyyyyy...MmmmaaTTTtttEEEeeeRRRrrrrssS?" Dugal asked. His speech was...gonna take a while to get used to. Or hopefully he'll get better. I hope it's the later, because fuck me, it's like listening to a mimic that didn't know how to talk, pretending to be human.
"Because...what if I can make my own Heroes?" I said back. "What if I replace Gis and Lorian with people who are actually decent." I thought about what the Goddess said. That despite the Heroes of Alitia and Carta being pieces of shit, their actions end up helping humanity survive. "Maybe due to the nature of this world, good people would end up getting tricked, or taken advantage of like Cloud.
"In which case, maybe it does makes sense from a divine perspective to have two people more or less keep the status quo, but kinda help out by killing monsters here and there, while one actually does the important work, and one just ends up saddled with the negative shit karma of it all." I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. "But why? Do people need a Hero to look down upon and condescend toward?
"Like, does it give peace of mind to the general populace, that in the back of their mind, one of the Heroes is incompetent, so they can feel morally righteous in looking down on him, so they don't change their lives, or rebel or something like that?" I said out loud. "Maybe I'm trying too hard to make sense of her thought process. I mean, it kinda sounded like the world is designed like that for a reason, so she's making the most of it, while indulging herself." I looked at Dugal right in his giant eye. "Or am I projecting logic and reason on the goddess?"
"'LlllLLLiiiIiIiIiIKKEeEEe CCccLLllLOoOOOoUUuuUUDddD'?" Dugal focused on that. Was it me or was he more perceptive? Or was he always like that but didn't care?
"Right, I never told you." I said. "My name isn't technically actually 'Cloud'. It's a...long story, I might tell you about it someday. If for some reason you speak in front of others, do use 'Cloud'."
"NnnaaaAAammMMeeeEEE?"
"Michael." It felt nice to say it to someone. Even if it was just a big scaly cat, that only thought of killing and eating. "Michael Chaser."
Dugal let out a growl and nodded.
Then smacked him head with his tail.
"Ow! You freakin..." I rubbed my head, and he grinned at me.
"LlllLiiIiiiIIIMMMMMmmMMMiiiiIIIiITTTTtttT?"
"Right, I think it might be possible, well, not to make people into Heroes, but at least remove the level cap on them." I explained my idea. I looked at my Holy Sword and frowned. "I only have four chances though." I muttered. "Hey, Dugal," I said getting his attention. "I'm gonna do a memory dream dive. I won't be a light in sleep like usual. It should only take, maybe an hour maximum. So what over me till then okay?"
Dugal let out some grunt and whining growls of protests.
"TTtttEEEEeeeEEEeeeeeEEEETTTTtttTTTHHHhhhHHH!" He demanded.
"Look," I said exasperated. "I'll write the Monster Core Making Runes on your fangs and claws tomorrow, okay? We're not hitting a bandit camp tomorrow, and it's not like we're in a hurry here, okay?" Dugal growl more fiercely, fire even leaking from his gritted teeth. "Dugal. Stop being a whiny little cat and more like the dragon you wish you could be. Now, I need to do this memory dive, and if everything works out, you'll be the first I'll use the limit breaking ritual on. Or would you rather wait and until I safely try it on someone else?" I smirked.
Dugal's throat rumbled and then he nodded.
"Good boy." I patted the body behind me.
I opened my shirt, wrote the needed Runes of my chest and then forehead, and felt myself drift off to not-sleep, as I rested against Dugal's torso.
The wyvern covered me with his wing and waited.
I felt like I was falling, I saw memories not my own. Easy to tell who they belonged to.
I focused on the feel of the one I wanted. The day Cloud became the Hero of Prona.
It was like going through a dream on auto-pilot, and it was one of those dreams that you already dreamed once, so you know what will happened, but you don't mind experiencing it again anyways.
I wanted to speed up through it, but I might end up throwing my mind too far to a future memory. It shouldn't be long now, so I just waited.
Finally 'I' was at the local church.
'I' was sitting listen to the sermon, thinking on 'my' childhood friend, Neria and who we might be in the future. On maybe being 'together' in that future.
Cloud's memories and emotions were too intense in this stat. But like with any meditation, I didn't fight the memories and emotions, I let them come and pass through me.
Finally, the moment came.
'I' felt the Goddess's Light descend upon 'me'. I felt the divine energy fill up 'my' body.
I focused on how it did so, the pattern it moved in, what the energy felt like that 'first time' and how it was interacting with everything in 'my' body, and saved it to my mental archive with Record Magecraft.
Then came the exclamation of the people around 'me' and the local 'priest'. The cheers, the talks, the weaseling. Neria hugging and cheering for me.
No. For Cloud.
Slowly, I pulled myself free, stepping back from the memory, as I lifted myself up and away to consciousness and waking.
I felt alert, as there was a rumble from Dugal's throat that vibrated through his whole body. A growl of anger and indignation. My mind connected to the Bird Network, to see several figures in black closing fast on our location. There weren't just randomly traveling and passing through.
They were heading for us intentionally.
No.
As my mind fully set back to wakefulness, I felt Dugal's attempts fight with biting fangs, one arm wing and tail, while trying to protect me.
They were already here.
Five assassins.
And one of them passed through Dugal's protective wing.
I opened my eyes to see a knife swinging straight at my neck.View This ThreadUnread Watched Threads
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