Thank you to my new Patrons: Joseph Villamor, Mason Pedersen, Aydan Mam, Jp, Bolticrontic, mat, Spook1918, Seb Jacquinot, Roukanken, Roberto Galeno, IdioticWatermelon, Shae Shae, TheCosmicLoner, John Layton, David zeiss, Regnar Jordan, Josef Blumers, Mantiqore, Mit, Ian, Ramon Diaz, Angel, Gero-Alexander Görke, JourneymanMike, SouthMonk
-/-
It was a mentally confused Jin who returned after so long to his little apartment building and the outer reaches of the inner disciple enclave. Elder Flower had dropped him off at the food hall, so he'd eaten one meal before meandering towards home. The home he'd spent cumulatively less time at than at the Mad Monks Sect. He had to shuffle his feet, tired from standing all day but managed to reach his destination. Once in front of the cheery yellow apartment building slash house, he opened the front door and started going up the stairs.
However, even the simple pleasure of entering his apartment after so long, laying face down on the bed and screaming into a pillow was taken from him by the inevitable reality of living in a shared building.
After he'd ascended the flight of stairs, he heard a noise to his left just as he was about to put a hand on the doorknob of his apartment, causing him to look to the left where he locked eyes with an older-looking girl who was coming out of the other apartment on the floor.
Before he could think too much of it, his right hand which had previously been hovering over his doorknob was promptly ripped away to be vigorously shaken by the dark-skinned woman now standing opposite him. Had she teleported? he wondered as he desperately tried to take his arm back before it got dislocated.
"Oh my Heavens, it's so nice to meet you. To think that I would get promoted to an inner disciple today and get to meet my neighbour," the girl babbled, her beige robe swinging with erratic movements revealing that she was if nothing else adult in body, if not in attitude.
"What a day it's been as well, an amazing inner ring truly, what a nice place to live. I don't mind at all that I'm a bit away from the main buildings as it means that the walk I'll need to take to get to the amenities will be invigorating every single day. Did you hear by the way that due to the stirrings at the border, a development challenge has been announced for all inner disciples?" she continued rapidly not letting Jin get in a word edgewise.
"Apparently there are some of these so-called zombies down at the base of the mountain where the army is camping out. We can go visit them to base our scenario on their behaviour. I heard the winner of the challenge will get the necessary amount of sect credits to jump straight into having a servant even if we only got promoted from outer disciple recently. Isn't this amazing?" she asked but didn't let him answer the question before she continued.
"By the way my name is Himashi and I come from a long line of painters based in the outer reaches of the Balkit mountain chain in the south of the empire. I was scouted by a passing Illusion Room cultivator a year ago and was brought here to begin cultivating and creating scenarios. I worked hard to pass the promotion examination and I'm very happy to continue working on my art here. I am 23 years old and was born in the year of the rabbit while Saturn waned. I like to spend my time painting and swimming. My favourite food is Natto but I dislike pickled radishes. I am 182 cm tall and I weigh approximately 72 kilos. What about you?" she asked and finally her mouth stayed closed after the verbal assault that she had just committed on Jin's fragile psyche.
Jin for his part stared blankly at the girl, and finally now that she stopped being so agitated managed to slowly pull his hand out of hers and gently massage it with his left to return the feeling it had lost being bullied around the airspace during that entire one-sided conversation.
"I, -uh, ah- Jin," he eventually said tentatively.
Himashi blinked slowly once as if processing the shortness of his answer.
Jin meanwhile noted that she was taller than him. He'd never measured his new body, but if she was accurate, then by comparison he'd be about 1.75 metres tall. She had long brown hair tied into a very messy bun with two bangs framing her face and chestnut brown eyes that seemed to have more energy than a nuclear reactor swirling inside them. The pupils suddenly widened to a comic degree as his answer was finally processed.
"Are you the one favoured by Elder Flower, the leader of the coalition of Elders who want to increase the combat training for disciples so that we might better protect ourselves in the future during altercations rather than only relying on our allies? I heard that you were integral to the diplomatic mission sent to one of our allied sects, the Mad Monk sect, that happened recently. Is it true that you're going to be participating in the intersect fighting tournament after this whole border conflict has been resolved? Are you glad that you have more time to train now that it has been delayed? Are you planning on participating in the challenge of creating a scenario for the zombies? I feel I am because due to this one-year grace period where I don't have to contribute any sect points I think it would be a fascinating challenge to make something that directly addresses a currently existing need rather than making something and trying to anticipate the needs of others," Himashi shot out rapidly, moving her mouth as Jin slowly but surely took small steps backwards towards his door and put his right hand behind his back on the door knob.
How did this girl even know all of that? His meeting with the sect leader, which had occurred after the general assembly meeting with General Shroud, had concluded only an hour ago! He'd only stopped for one quick meal at the cafeteria before making his way here.
"I think you might be confusing me with someone else," he said kindly, before quickly using whatever qi he had running through his body into his physical stats, opening the door and slamming it shut in the surprised face of his new neighbour.
Once inside his apartment which was quite dusty, he sank to his knees and questioned reality. "What just happened?"
First the talk with Elder Flower, and now this?
-/- One hour earlier
"I guess our original plan, the tournament was delayed. What do you think about the scenario challenge?" Elder Flower had asked Jin as she was transporting him back to the inner disciple ring. The flying sword was going much slower than he knew it could, implying that she had something to discuss.
"The soldiers have some of the zombies captive in their camp, I'd have to see them before I make a decision," Jin said. If he even wanted to participate, of course. Did he have to participate? Quite frankly if the tournament was delayed and he didn't participate in this zombie nonsense then didn't that mean that he could finally snag some months for himself to relax? Maybe further explore his cultivation?
Elder Flower shook her head. "You will participate of course. If for no other reason than for the fact that Lung and his ilk will try their best to win. They don't know yet what you achieved at the Mad Monks Sect, so they cannot prepare against you in particular."
"What's the issue with Elder Lung anyway? He seems to have a problem with me, or you, or us," Jim asked directly. It had been bothering him recently. What exact side had he joined when he'd agreed to the offer of tutelage from Elder Flower all those months ago? Ting had implied that Elder Flower, being the most martially gifted of the Elders in their sect, was a proponent of them developing in a more martial direction but what did that mean?
The woman in question hummed thoughtfully. "I guess the way you acted in the Mad Monks sect was admirable enough for you to know a bit more. One certainly can't say you're not mature enough after that fiasco" she decided, before explaining. "Me and Lung have never seen eye to eye, but recently it's come to a head. What do you think about the amount of Illusion Rooms present in the library, in particular those that have been deemed unnecessary?" she asked.
The disciple pondered the question. "Well, there's a lot of them and they're quite fun to go through," he started slowly. "Other than that it's impressive how many little variations have been made to improve a product further and further until perfection."
"Fun, most wouldn't refer to it like that but I agree with you. It's the same way I see it. It's a fun way to train and fight without any of the risks. What's not fun about that? The injuries don't even hurt as much as they do in real life." Elder Flower mused. "However, it is the second thing you mentioned that I would say is at the core of this issue. The Illusion Room sect is production-based. We take contracts to develop scenarios for specific situations, as we did with the Mad Monks sect, and we develop our scenarios according to what we think people might be interested in and put them in our library demanding tribute for access. There's an inordinate amount of energy being put into perfecting every single scenario and turning every single possible enemy anyone could meet into actionable training."
"Is that not a good thing?" Jin asked. "From what I understand the disciples have to hone their craft on something so that they can advance." He didn't quite understand where this conversation was going.
"Is it a good thing?" Elder Flower wondered out loud. "Perhaps it is a good thing for Lung and his family who make most of their contributions through how other people use their environmental templates. At higher levels, they even provide the internal logic of the system all written out and ready to use. If the process ran according to their wishes, every Illusion Room Creator would simply change a few of the combat interactions and make one Illusion Room a day and use as many templates as possible."
"That obviously doesn't work, that would simply mean that we'd be producing so much garbage that it would become not worth the effort. Creating the artefacts in which the illusions are placed also requires labour," Jin said despite not quite knowing that much about the artefacts and their production. He was decisively on the scenario side of the sect, not that artificer one.
"Isn't that exactly what's happening? Heaps of garbage being produced as an excuse to justify skill gain? You developed a completely novel scenario for the Mad Monks and I would argue that you learned more during that time than if you had created three scenarios containing only a simple beast. No, while we certainly need to continue improving our abilities in creating scenarios, it shouldn't be our only focus. After all, even if we're not perfect in what we offer, do the visitors have somewhere else to go?" Elder Flower argued.
It was then that Jin suddenly understood the issue. "The library. If people had truly been making scenarios for so long and if they'd already covered so many possibilities…" he trailed off. "Couldn't we just stop adding stuff to the library so that we can focus on other stuff?" He then realised why that particular trail of thought would not be well received by Elder Lung, whose family mostly focused on the production of templates. In Jin's opinion, the artist who made the entirety of the work would usually create something of a higher quality than the one who took shortcuts. So, exactly how many of the best Rooms available in the library would be those using templates if the rate of development wasn't so fast?
"I see you've gotten the point, proving further that you have enough intelligence to see what's necessary," Elder Flower said brusquely. "As you could probably tell from today's very sudden change of schedule, our world is not safe and the idea of relying on the protection of our allies when we could protect ourselves is cowardly. The Illusion Room Sect has abilities that make us more suited for combat than one would think, it's just that we are so exclusively focused on the production of scenarios that all else has been ignored for a very long time."
Jin's mind whirled. It became clear now why Elder Flower had been pushing him to learn how to fight. "So what, we split the focus 50/50? That's already what we do with those who develop scenarios and those who develop Rooms, although I heard it's more of a 90/10 split," he muttered.
"Of course, it's not as simple as that, but what I and many others in the sect believe is that if we stop diverting so much attention to rewarding an endless river of contributions to the library and instead start offering rewards for more martial pursuits, then overall the production quality of our goods wouldn't decrease by a significant amount while our ability to defend ourselves for the rise greatly," Elder Flower concluded. "The production quality might even increase if you consider that what our disciples lack most is combat experience."
In essence, the argument made sense to Jin as well. Wasn't this essentially the Pareto principle? By putting in 20% of the effort one usually achieved 80% of the result, wasn't it better than to divide one's time into five different pursuits of 20% with an overall result of 400%? However, this was a fallacy when one wanted to discuss the production of quality goods. At the highest level, it was this tiniest shavings of a percentage that mattered in cornering a market, if one was considering a rational consumer. Cultivators whose whole life revolved around combat were probably as close as one could get in regards to scenarios, however. If they could not hold the Illusion Room Sect accountable for the quality of their products, then no one could.
It was at this stage of the conversation that they arrived at where Elder Flower was apparently going to drop him off.
Her last words to him shifted the topic of the conversation again back to the scenario-developing challenge that had been issued today.
"Considering how little time we have before the likely incursion I would suggest finding a teammate or two to tackle this project with," were her departing words of advice.
Jin was not nearly stupid enough to think that what she'd given was advice. It was an order.
Rather than training his martial arts to compete in a tournament, it seemed that now he had to form a team to compete for the lucrative contract of creating the scenario for an entire army of people instead of just one small group of mortal potential disciples.
Great.
He wondered for a second if he should bother listening, before deciding that he was currently too tired to make a choice or to even think.
His stomach rumbled. He hoped he could eat in peace and crash at home, nothing more to disturb him until tomorrow morning.
-/-
AN: We're seeing a bit of the internal politics of the sect here. Of course, we're only seeing one side, so Jin doesn't have the full picture, and thus neither do we. Is the sect leader relevant? We hear her name for the first time today.
There wasn't a very long break between arcs I guess. As you can probably see, the zombie arc starts now.
Experimented with a different narrative technique this time. Time-switching. Just thought I'd try and keep it fresh. It might suck, I don't really care though, it was fun to write.
Currently the last days of the poll which will determine the next game port on Patreon, also access of up to 10 chapters.