Of course, just because Jin had now accepted, quite easily, he proudly thought, his new lot in life… Had decided that it was best to continue on the path that he'd been gifted, that of an illusion Room creator. Even if he was now willing to create an illusion Room, or in other words, a game…
That didn't necessarily mean that doing so was easy, or that he could start immediately.
After all, while Jin would call himself experienced in terms of video games, at least the playing aspect, and his photographic memory would assist him in recreating the scenes he'd witnessed in his past life… Well, illusion Room's weren't really games, were they?
Rather, they were specific scenarios.
A cultivator of the Illusion Room Sect would either receive a contract from another sect to model a specific problem, or would try to identify a gap in the current market, a need, and create an illusion Room to fill that gap.
The difference between a game and a scenario was that while every game was composed of several scenarios, not every scenario was a game. What was missing was the narrative.
Jin quickly identified the reason for the difference. In his past world games had been created for pleasure only, they were meant to be fun. Here, in this cursed land of cultivators and sects, illusion Rooms were only created and sold and bought because they were useful. Sure, maybe some rich people could commission an illusion Room of a harem, however, cultivators were mostly concerned with practicality. They commissioned and bought games that would make them come closer to a specific goal, which usually happened through familiarising them with a particular enemy or skill.
If Jin tried to remake Tetris, or Pacman, the most popular games from his past life, then he'd probably get confused looks and a swift boot up the ass, straight off the mountain. This was due to two reasons, firstly, because neither of those games, as fun as they were, taught a valuable skill, or acclimated the 'player' to a dangerous scenario. The second reason was because if a game was only there to help acclimatise someone to a specific scenario or to teach them a skill, third-person games became useless. Cultivators were only interested in using their own bodies and skills to confront an illusion Room. The role of the protagonist who was a separate person one could control became obsolete. All illusion Rooms had to use the player as a template for the protagonist, otherwise the immersion would be broken.
This eliminated most games Jin had played.
One could wonder at this point, why he didn't simply consider creating an original scenario, as he should, considering that not plagiarising was one of the main requirements of the exam at hand. Well, that and not destroying the Room, and making something at least remotely useful from a conceptual level.
The reason for that was simple. Most cultivation techniques taught at the illusion Room sect were focused on better processing information, retaining it, and refining it. This was because random sect member A would not want to have to go out and find a nesting wyvern every time he had to make a game for a scenario involving such a creature, to properly model the scenario. No, the sect paid warriors to bring them memory slips of monsters, places, and skills, which the illusion Room sect members were specifically trained to absorb, refine, adapt and insert into the scenarios they were creating.
To create an illusion Room, a designer needed to be able to vividly create in his mind the separate pieces of the scenario, before fittingly infusing them into the empty Room to create a coherent whole. Their mind was a game engine, essentially.
So, the sect had a library of various monsters, demons, fighting styles and environments. Generally, outer disciples accessed the outer disciple version of this library which held lower-tiered information that their mind and cultivation could actually process.
Jin's problem, and the reason why he had to rely on a game from his previous life was simple. The person who'd he'd inherited this body from had never planned on passing the exam and had thus not actually studied any of the information he would need. Now, with only a week left before the end of the exam, it would be impossible to get anything useful.
First, to find something one could use, and then secondly, to fragment the information of the memory slip and reconstruct it in one's mind to use it as a scenario for a Room.
The process took a while. Longer than a week. This meant that Jin needed to use the information already stored in his mind about the video games of Earth. But how could he justify creating something so different?
A knock suddenly resounded on the door, causing Jin to look up from his thoughts from where he was lying on the floor. "Come in," the disciple said calmly while his thoughts raced.
The wooden door opened inwards and a distinguished-looking older gentleman in fanciful sakura petal robes and a well-kept moustache and beard entered but remained close to the door as he looked around, until his eyes locked onto the Room which had very obviously not been used.
It was Elder Qin, the man responsible for the upkeep and the lecturing of the outer disciples. The post, from how Jin understood it, wasn't particularly prestigious. It was usually held by those who didn't have many prospects and upper mobility left. Elder Qin didn't seem to care, always stern, but helpful to those in his care. Gossip said that a rival had sabotaged him the moment he formed his nascent soul, preventing him from pushing further.
"Disciple Jin, I see that you have not yet started inserting any illusions into the Room," the man stated, with no particular judgment in his tone.
"I've been working on it," Jin muttered from his position on the floor.
"Sources told me you have not been seen in the library since the start of the assignment." Was the retort.
An answer suddenly came to Jin, a way to explain why he hadn't been to the library, while still showing critical thinking and innovativity. "No, I haven't," Jin answered serenely. "And that's not because I've given up either." He looked at the Elder, who simply raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I do wonder why a student so strong in theory and cultivation has been neglecting the obvious path forward to becoming an inner disciple."
Jin narrowed his eyes. "It's been bothering me. We create scenarios and tests for monsters and challenges people expect to face," he started. "Things they know they will face. Our customers, collaborators, whatever you want to call it… They gain experience in fighting a very specific enemy, and not much else. Couldn't illusion Rooms be used to train more general skills, rather than specific scenarios?"
"What is an ability to handle a specific situation, but a very specific skill. And what is it that one requires to solve a scenario if not a skill?" the Elder asked rhetorically with a small smile.
"A specific skill is only useful in a specific situation, and can only be planned for when one knows the enemy. This is the case for hunting heavenly beasts and monsters, but the demons spilling forth from the dark half of the world are constantly shifting, changing and are never the same."
"And that is the fundamental issue," Elder Qin interjected. "How do you prepare for the unknown? You cannot. You do not know what it is."
"I reject the simplicity of that answer. I've refrained from going to the library for a very simple reason," Jin said in a quiet voice, knowing that the Elder likely had ears sharp enough to hear even his heartbeat. "To avoid intertextuality as much as possible. The inevitable condition of creativity is that everything we make is influenced, consciously or subconsciously by something the creator has already read about or seen before. All texts are just remixes of the dictionary and all discoveries rest on work done previously."
The Elder hummed. "The question remains, how do you prepare for the unknown?"
"By creating something never seen before. The only way to become adaptable is to practise fighting enemies one has never even thought of."
Something impossible to do generally… But for a transmigrator?
"The issue of course is that sects are not interested in buying something completely unknown. After all, they would profit more if they practised against something specific they expect to come up against."
"Thankfully I'm not trying to sell a product, but impress a panel of judges who are less short-sighted than the average warrior," Jin retorted and got for his quip a rare treasure.
Elder Qin gave a short chuckle.
"And, what is your plan to create something completely original, something never seen before? How did you say it, so fittingly? Intertextuality is an inevitable condition of all creation. How, without visiting the library, can you make sure you will not simply reproduce an existing dilemma speaking to you through your subconsciousness."
"Let that be my worry, Master Qin," Jin muttered, thoughts going a mile a minute.
The Elder looked him up and down appraisingly. "It seems I was worried for nothing. Intelligence or not, spirit is also an important criterion for an illusion Room cultivator," the older man said. "I'm looking forward to what you'll show us in a week, disciple Jin." He turned around and promptly left, a breeze shutting the door behind him.
Jin meanwhile, had figured out, from his newly received memories, what niche exactly he wanted to focus on filling to make himself valuable to the sect, and thus live a safe and comfortable life with few worries.
It was very difficult for the inhabitants of this new world to face new challenges. Their society was not based around creativity, but rather an odd form of what Jin recognized as strict spiritual Confucianism. In addition, the world had not yet reached the potential post-scarcity level of technology, and thus most of its population was still stuck farming fields and were not even literate.
The artistic output of this relatively small agricultural and illiterate human population, resting perhaps at about 1 billion globally, if not less, could not compare to the artistic output of the 21st and the 20th century on Earth. Especially with the creation of the internet, which if nothing else was a machine that sped up people's ability to be creative and the proliferation of art to a previously unprecedented scale.
Jin's niche in this world was thus that he had an entirely different cultural background, one that arose from a Western school of thought, and the artistic consumer experience, saved in his brain through his photographic memory. Even if he did not have access to a mental game library of about 500 games, thousands of movies, dozens of shows, and hundreds of books, he would likely due to his different background be able to create stuff that was not, perhaps a masterpiece, but at least original.
However, he would rather not gamble his becoming an inner disciple on his up until now yet unproven creative abilities. No, it was time to access the memories of both his lives and consider which thing stuck out the most as being missing in this world.
He sat himself up in the lotus position and retreated deep into thought.
Cycling through the monsters in his mind, trying to decipher which one would be the weirdest to the people of this new world, he quickly came upon an interesting factoid.
The language he was now speaking was not English, obviously, it was simply the imperial standard. However, there was an English word which didn't have an imperial synonym, despite it really needing one if one considered how martial this society actually was.
There was no real concept of full plate armour as Westerners knew it. Which was weird. But why was that the case? Jin's mind raced a mile a minute as he considered the variables. Eventually, he settled on the most likely explanation.
Heavenly energy. The big difference between the two worlds. Heavenly energy, as was the name, came from the heavens and suffused the biology of all living things. Cultivating was simply taking in more of this heavenly energy than was strictly necessary, and using it to empower one's body, one's mind, and to use it as fuel to cast spells and other effects.
But that was the crutch, heavenly energy suffused the biology, not the inorganic. That meant that while rocks and metal were just as tough as in the last world, everything else was stronger. Due to the constant influx of energy humans were more powerful as a baseline, without any cultivation, animals were faster, and monsters were more ferocious.
A body cultivator of the foundation establishment stage would likely be able to snap a metal armour plate with a punch. Considering the plate was out of an inorganic material, it was also more difficult and costly to enchant. It just wouldn't stick. Leather armour made out of the hide of some powerful beast, however? Dead useful. Naturally, this meant that all armour was somehow flexible since it was made of organic material. The soldiers and cultivators of this world simply didn't know how it was to struggle to penetrate someone's iron full plate during which every strike resonated partially back into one's own body.
Jin had made the experience at a mediaeval festival, and it hadn't been fun. However, simply creating a creature that wore armour was hardly innovative. Armour existed in some form after all, chitin pilfered from bug monsters was somewhat similar. However, there was another thing, a weapon that wasn't very popular.
Since time immemorial on earth, humans had fastened sharpened stones, and later metals to long poles of wood, creating a safe long-distance weapon that could be thrown, as well as handled near an enemy.
The spear.
In this world of cultivation, this weapon seemed almost non-existent. At least Jin had never seen one. The absolutely preferred weapon was a sword. One of the first immortals to ever ascend, who'd doled out his skills to humanity in general, had been a cultivator focusing on the way of the sword. There was just something about it.
It was also more cost-efficient in a way. Here weapons were generally made out of bones, or out of fangs of great beasts. Dragons and house-sized tigers. Stuff like that, things you didn't want to meet in a dark alleyway. Or any alleyway for that matter...
Naturally, these resources were limited to one's ability to kill dragons and house-sized tigers and when one eventually succeeded, one would rather carve out of the same amount of material three swords, rather than one spear.
One could ask at this point why one couldn't simply create 15 spear tips rather than three swords, to then add those tips to poles of wood, and the answer was… While there were incredibly durable woods, since trees also took in heavenly energy, it was not considered very intelligent to stack materials for a weapon. The more materials something consisted of, the harder it was to enchant it. Similarly, the more materials something consisted of, the harder it was for the user of such a weapon to channel their spells through it. Channelling energy through a weapon required a specific frequency of vibration so to say, and going through wood then bone was several times as hard then simply going through either.
It would only make sense to make a spear if one could truly make it out of one piece of bone or fang. However, those gigantic fangs and bones generally belonged to very powerful creatures. By the time a cultivator became powerful enough to kill such a creature… Well, it was rather improbable that they did so bare-handedly. They'd likely done so with a sword, or with a staff. They were hardly going to make a spear out of the material and switch weapons at that stage of their journey. That would just be asinine.
As for soldiers? Why they didn't use spears? On Earth, the spear had been the staple of the mediaeval and the Roman infantryman. Every single warrior culture on the planet had developed the spear independently.
The answer to why this wasn't the case here? Other than cultural influence from cultivators seeping through the rest of society, and sword techniques being more developed in general, soldiers were a bunch that very much wanted to become cultivators, even if only for the first stages, which is what their talents usually were sufficient for. What was the point of learning the spear, if one wasn't going to use it for longer than a few years. Might as well start with the sword.
Also, people in this world generally distrusted weapons constructed out of two separate materials in general, so the point became, once again moot.
Jin had never seen a spear, and although there was a word for it in the language, he didn't think it was used by anyone other than farmers who liked to hunt for wild pigs in the forest. As a weapon of war, the spear essentially didn't exist.
He could consider a monster that was somewhat special as well, but Jin thought that putting forth a new combat style would also score him innovatively points. After all, while he could create a never-before-seen monster, which would require the "player" to think on their feet to beat it, a humanoid monster with armour and a spear would require a similar level of innovation, but could also introduce a combat style that didn't exist yet to anyone who wanted to get inspired by it.
He considered for a second if he should make one scenario with armour, and one with a spear, but then the perfect combatant suddenly came to mind.
The perfect monster to impress the judges.
If one talked mediaeval armour and a spear there could only be one really.
Dragonslayer Ornstein from Dark Souls
Dark Souls was a special game in many people's hearts. If they hated the painful experience of being forced to learn trick upon trick upon trick just to beat the first boss, or if they loved it, nobody could really say anything bad about the game's quality. Ignoring the bugs of course, and the sometimes horrible PvP which had been ruined by meta-slaves.
Anyway, Dark Souls was doubtlessly one of the most culturally relevant classics back from James' world and while Dragonslayer Ornstein wasn't a lord of cinder, or the final boss, he had been one of the enemies that Jin had most enjoyed beating back in his previous life.
To bring such an iconic and well-designed character to this world of cultivation would be an honour.
However, for him to be able to do so, he first needed to change the design up a bit. There wasn't anything he wanted to shift in terms of looks or weapon functionality, but…
Comparing games and illusion Rooms was a wasted effort, they were two different media. Naturally the first was more fun, which only made sense when one considered that the latter was only meant to improve a warrior or provide a useful training scenario.
It was because of this difference, the fact that video games and illusion Rooms were very much not the same thing, that translating between the two became a bit of a challenge.
There was one problem in particular, which would likely take Jin the rest of the week to resolve. Namely, while he had the perfect character template of Ornstein in his head in terms of looks and style, he was not a perfect simulation of how a knight with such a lance would actually fight.
This was perhaps the biggest difference between video games and illusion Rooms. Realism. After all, what was the point of fighting a yellow drake in a Room if it didn't actually behave or fight like a real yellow drake? Best case the training would be only marginally useful as a desensitisation strategy. Worst case it would inflate the confidence of the cultivator and make them commit a fatal mistake once they actually challenged the real thing.
Jin sort of wiggled out of this issue by focusing on monsters and combat styles that just didn't exist in this new world. However, Ornstein for all his iconic power was still a video game character with a fixed battle algorithm that could be exploited by people who'd never even wielded a weapon in real life. The algorithm he'd played against would be a joke to any cultivator. A bad joke.
That was why Jin's work would mostly consist of developing an actual fighting style for his version of Ornstein. He already had the figure, the dimensions, the weapon, the armour, the space. Now he just needed to polish those aspects. Make Ornstein a valid threat rather than just a nuisance. The dash would stay, as would the tight spearmanship. However, the gaps in the algorithm that represented the lack of actual skill or intelligence would be fixed.
It probably sounded to the outside as if Jin wanted to graft an artificial intelligence which could make real-time combat decisions, however, this was something that was completely beyond him at the moment.
This was why he was standing outside of his hut, the view still stunning him minute by minute, holding a broom in his hands as if he was wielding a spear. Slightly widened stance, confident. Dangerous. He thrust forward and enjoyed the fluidity of his body. Then he spun the broom in his hands as if wanting to deflect a hail of arrows, creating a violent circle.
A finger got in the way and the broom fell on the floor.
Jin bent down to pick it up and started again.
The body he'd inherited from the previous owner was several times better than the one he'd left behind when he'd transmigrated.
There was nothing to say about it. While James had lived in an inherently polluted world in one of the most unhealthy countries on the planet, this new body lived in a world where microplastics and pollutants didn't exist, the food was by default, always organic, and heavenly energy literally fell from the heavens to strengthen all living organisms.
Already just the average farmer was probably healthier and more athletic than any gold-medal-winning athlete in his last life.
Jin? A cultivator? He blew even that out of the water. Sure his cultivation didn't necessarily focus on physical aspects, but he'd still gone through the body-purifying stage of cultivation before focusing on mental techniques and spells.
This meant that the memory he had in his last life of legit spear-wielding techniques he'd seen in film or tutorials flowed through his new body and into the broom at an intense pace, something that would have been completely unachievable before. He was sure that by the end of the day, he would become more adept at wielding the weapon, and would have developed a decent understanding of how to create a good combat template for his Ornstein to use.
Jab, deflect, slash, parry, thrust. His body didn't seem capable of getting tired and Jin watched the sunset as he practised his broom techniques on the cliffs of the sect mountain. Other disciples came and went, walking the stone-paved path, occasionally laughing at him, and occasionally cheering him on. No one knew what he was doing, and he was fine with that.
When he did lay down the broom when the sun had set and Brother Lin had delivered the second batch of food for the day, he went straight into the lotus position on the green grass, not even bothering to go inside the house for this next part.
Quickly, more quickly than ever before he sank into a meditative trance. Considering that the illusion Room sect was essentially focused on creating only a specific type of product, they had gotten quite decent in creating techniques to develop that product with. The Room, empty as it was currently, was only one half of the equation, one that Jin hadn't focused on much. This was essentially the only real decision one could make when joining the sect. If one wanted to create the Rooms, or if one wanted to create the illusions. Jin had walked the path of illusions, and thus his main spell, the one that had at this point been carved into his very soul, was the mind-illusion spell.
In simple words it was a game-engine, just stuck there, inside his head.
In reality? It was much more complex like that.
Through meditating the cultivators of the sect were able to enter a sort of mental interface in which they were able to develop the individual aspects of the scenario they were trying to create, and then they would save them, like they did the catalogue of real-life experiences harvested from warriors, until they next had time to work on the project.
It was at this stage, that Jin's photographic memory flexed its muscles. The entire process of character design, which could sometimes take just as much as the insertion of the actual combat system, was finished in a flash. One simple flex of Jin's mental muscles made Dragonslayer Ornstein appear in front of him in the black space in all his glory. Golden spiky armour with mesh underclothes, a highly stylized lion-faced helmet with red plumage and an oddly designed spear and lance hybrid with a long blade and a cross-guard.
In simple words, the character looked exactly as he had looked in the games, but just with another added level of realism.
It was in the design of the space in which the scenario of the fight would take place that Jin hesitated. Quite frankly, what was really innovative was the character design concept. If he wanted to highlight that it might have made the most sense to use one of the standard battle templates, a large stone circle hovering high in the heavens under the ruthless sun. The cathedral-like structure in which one actually fought Ornstein in the games also had completely innovative architecture never before seen in this world. It was clearly western, and not just that, but also gothic, with its large stylised spire support structures and high windows.
In the end it probably made more sense to include it, just in case the judges didn't like the character design, they might be swayed by the architectural style. Another mental flex and the room in which the player would fight Ornstein was created.
As a last special addition, Jin also input the music. One of the aspects of illusion Room design that he considered to be undervalued was the emotional quotient. Experience showed that the more emotionally engaged the Room users were, the better they would be able to transfer any skills gained in the illusion back to reality.
Naturally, Jin understood perfectly why narrative structures and music were not generally part of the illusion Room design. After all, most illusion works were the result of one person's labour. And if the person already had to consume a lot of memories in regards to the creature they wanted to depict, create a functioning combat system which was the number one priority, then they would hardly find the time to make a narrative, let alone music to accompany the battle. In the austere and ascetic society Jin was now living in, those things would likely be considered wasteful.
He added it anyway. Ornstein stood in the middle of the cathedral, perfectly still while the orchestral choral-based ambience music started resounding from everywhere, but from nowhere. Not loud, since cultivators also depended on their sense of sound to fight sometimes, but enough to add to the experience.
And now, now that he had all that?
Well, now the difficult part started.
Determining what effects cultivators and Ornstein would have on the environment, how stone chips would fly if one hit one of the pillars to increase immersion and so on. The way that feet would scuff on the ground if one blocked an attack and slid backwards.
Jin thought of so much, and he was still very much off from any terms of reality.
Hours later, when the moons hung fully in the sky and Jin had exhausted his store of heavenly energy, he returned to his hut and collapsed in bed. Thankfully the techniques of the illusion Room sect didn't take a lot of energy, or he could imagine that he'd be unable to finish within the deadline simply because he couldn't work the amount of time necessary.
In the end, he'd barely added the rudimentary movement and the iconic dash to Ornstein, all his efforts had been spent modelling the environment and body interaction. It was good enough at the moment, but in need of a lot of improvement. He'd refocus on that if everything else remained on track during the next six days. The combat system was still the most important and he still had a lot of work to do.
Oddly enough, despite having lost everything he'd ever worked for and being transported into a magical world where the food was healthier, but he could be eaten by an angry demon or monster at any time, Jin went to sleep with a smile.
-/-
The next six days were perhaps the most gruelling of Jin's life. He woke up and started working immediately, experimenting with the broom according to any and all memories he could find in which he'd seen a useful depiction of the weapon's use. Eventually, his body wouldn't as much grow tired, as it simply collapsed. Then, lying outside in the grass, in this perfect climate, for all to see, he continued modelling the combat system. The environment was done, the music was set, and the character was created. All of these parts came together in his head, in his mindscape to form a beautiful symphony that could only be referred to as artistic.
The combat system continued improving the more he worked himself into the ground. He'd begun on day two with the dash and with some very basic handling of the lance, thrusts, parries, and deflection spins. On the second day, he added more subtle movements such as footwork that he considered rational for the feats being achieved. On the third day, he created the physics of the moves, how fast they would flow into each other depending on the circumstances and how hard the spear would hit depending on how much body weight was put into it.
Suffice it to say, while Jin hadn't added the electrical attacks, rather just focusing on the dash and on the handling of the weapon, Dragonslayer Ornstein received a major upgrade.
After all, while Dark Souls as a series prided itself on being difficult and requiring the player to learn and adapt, they still had to leave some weaknesses for a player to exploit, or else the thing would become completely impossible.
Jin on the other hand would be rewarded for a combat system that was as hard as possible to beat, without being unrealistic.
To be quite frank, on the last day, after he'd pulled out the still-empty Room and began considering it in his hut, Jin didn't know how he would defeat his creation. After all, while he'd swung around the broom to get a feel for how the spear functioned, he'd improved Ornstein with martial techniques that he was only qualified to see and imagine, not to actually perform.
The result was horrifying. The only way he could imagine making Ornstein more of a bitch to fight at this point was if he increased his base stats. However, he couldn't since he as a cultivator wasn't advanced enough to model something that was so fast, so strong, or so complex.
There was a reason why illusion Room cultivators only created scenarios either for warriors on their equivalent level of cultivation or for those below it.
Jin lightly slapped himself in the face. Quite frankly, he was growing slightly delirious from the amount of work he'd been completing and from the little sleep that he'd been getting.
"I just need to infuse the illusion into the Room," he said, looking at the intricate metal box the size of his head in question. "Easy, right?"
Everything could go wrong here. Developing an illusion in one's head was one thing. Shoving it into the box was another thing. As long as the internal logic of the scenario was flawless then the box would play the illusion as intended. However, if something didn't make sense, Jin would be sent on a wild goose chase to find out what exactly the issue was.
He didn't have that sort of time. Or the energy, for that matter. Tomorrow morning would be his exam, and while he could stay up all night to try and fix the issue, it was more likely that he would fall unconscious from sheer exhaustion.
A sigh escaped his lips. He was hesitating, which didn't lead anywhere. He extended his arms, sleeves falling limply onto his hands and clenched all his ten fingers around the edges of the box.
One last burst of mental effort collected the separate information packets that made up the scenario as one whole, before sending the entire thing into the box. It lit up a bright pink, which quickly faded, but some of the vibrations remained, the box giving off a very quiet hum. If the hum were a bit louder then Jin would have been able to distinguish the melody of the music he'd inserted into the scenario coming from the box. Dark choral music with some atmospheric vocals.
He couldn't, however. He was unconscious, out like a light.