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Letting out a sigh, Sora slumped forward in his seat, elbows braced on his knees as his head hung low. While the rest of the students began to bombard their club captain with questions he remained quiet and unnoticed at the back of the classroom, thoughts swirling through his head as he processed everything he had just heard.

So it was exactly as he had feared. He had been summoned here because of that, the little part of his family history that apparently made him ‘special’, along with everyone else in this room. At least it wasn’t as bad as he had thought; he wasn’t the one being hunted for one thing and if everyone the older student was telling the truth about being like them then his family should be safe as well.

That the things he could see were real and not figments of his imagination was not a revelation, his family had explained that to him long ago, nor was the fact that he was not alone in having this ability, his own mother shared it after all and surely his was not the only family descended from Yōkai. What did give him pause was the idea that they all had abilities that went further than just being able to see more than the average person; the notion that he would have super powers because someone eight generations removed from him managed to have sex with a wood fire was hard to believe. He had never heard anything about it from his mother after all, and she of all people should know such things.

But then, Yōkai were said to possess strange and powerful abilities and he possessed the same blood as them, albeit diluted by time and distance. Maybe it wasn’t such an impossible idea. Maybe this club captain really would be able to bring that power out of them. Maybe, maybe not; either way, from the sounds of it being a member of this club had a price attached to it.

Tuning back in to the conversation in the room Sora listened as the other students expressed their own doubts and concerns. Surprisingly, it seemed like a few of them really were sceptical to the fact that this was all real, others wanted to know more about these supposed abilities and another asked the question that had been burning in his mind ever since receiving his acceptance letter; ‘how did you find us’.

“I really wish you’d told us all this before the school year started; if I’d known what this club was about before I moved here I wouldn’t have bothered.” Speaking up for the first time since entering the room Sora raised his head and focused his gaze on the club captain, but otherwise maintained his slouched forward posture. “Everyone’s asking a lot of questions and I’m curious about the answers to some of them but all I really want to know is this; why should I care?”

It was a callous question, he knew, but one that needed asking. “You’re saying these spirits we see aren’t always benevolent or harmless right? That sometimes they attack or take people away and you want it to be our job to stop them? You want us to risk our lives when we’re just a bunch of kids and some of us aren’t even sure those things we see are real to begin with? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just go back home.”
Artorigus was hot on his clan leader’s heels as she entered the cave, as willing as any sane person would be to get away from the monstrosity now tearing its way across the battlefield. “Looks like our gracious host has a few surprises up his sleeve. Seriously a Flood infection form? And was that the Hulk?” From the cave mouth distant roars and crashes could be heard, along with the occasional scream, as the parasite-infected beast attacked everything in sight. At least from what little he had seen before he ran the thing was more focused on the other clan than the Spectres, turning a losing battle into something survivable; with a little luck the other clan would be wiped out and a few more Spectres would make it out like they had.

“I didn’t hear about anything like that happening in previous rounds; makes me wonder what he’s got planned for the finals. Guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

Looking around the cave as Ekloria spoke Artorigus could indeed see that the cave was filled with some kind of unnatural illumination despite the lack of a visible light source. The idea that it might be someplace unknown was exciting, but unfortunately he had no way of knowing himself; despite all of his talk about being one of Sanctuary’s best close-range fighters he vary rarely took part in the constant death matches that took place on Planet Doom. Unless a special event was going on he didn’t feel confident throwing himself into a unrestricted melee with only one Unique Artefact to his name.

“Something undiscovered on Planet Doom? This is the most popular place in Sanctuary, there’s no way a cave like this goes unnoticed. Unless it was added as part of this tournament. Normally I’d suggest not getting side tracked, but we’ve already got our kills for this round and with that thing rampaging outside we can’t leave. We might as well take a look around while we’re here and wait until the round ends.”

@Burning Kitty@MissCapnCrunch
Following Ash into the elevator, Alastair continued to examine the curio he had picked up though he spared a second to glance at the control panel. Strangely there was only one button, marked with a down arrow, giving a rather limited set of options for progressing; they could always exit the elevator, return to wandering the endless expanse of concrete, but something told Alastair that they would either find no other exits or somehow end up back here again.

“Whoever built this place did not want us leaving too easily I imagine.” He pushed the button and the elevator began to descend.

Turning his attention back to the device in his hands, Alastair began to mutter under his breath as he turned it over in his hands over and over. “This is man-made. Machined. Not a natural shape and the material feels metallic. But what powers it? What lies inside? Not a simple battery, no, no. You agree, yes? Magic powers this. A magical power source inside of a machine. A hybridization of the arcane and the technological. How very unheard of. How very… unwise. The idea is intriguing and that it was apparently successfully implemented has interesting implications but… attempting to mix science based on universal principals with a force that bends those principals… such endeavours do not go well.”

After what seemed like a few minutes the elevator reached a point where the shaft disappeared and the elevator was suddenly filled with unnatural light. Alastair recoiled and swore as he pulled his hood down low over his face and moved into the corner like a frightened animal. Peering out of squinting eyes Alastair could see an open space reminiscent of a large shopping mall, a location not at all out of place where he came from though it had been many years since he had visited one. The happy crowds of shoppers and consumers were replaced by a slightly less happy mass of shambling zombies however.

“I thought you said no-one had purview over the dead?”

@Illiren

It took a bit longer than expected, but here's my character.


@Satoshi Kyou I'm still around, just waiting on a reply from the Synchro dorm before I can do anything.
Based on the information on the Artifacts spreadsheet it looks like you're using the word Artifact as just a different way of referring to derivative gear from another series and not in the Ready-Player-One sense where artifacts are unique items with no replications. Is this true?


I can answer this one at least. We are using 'artefacts' as a catch-all term for items of all rarities; I raised the same query as you when this was in the planning stages.
It was a bit of an understatement to say that Artorigus was happy with the provided gear for the fourth round of the tournament; after three rounds of being forced to fight using guns and magic and other things he had no interest in the tournament organiser had finally seen fit to equip him with something a little more in his wheelhouse. The decorative samurai-styled armour was a little more restrictive than his usual gear and the katana, although similar in principle to his Okami, was considerably shorter than he was used to. Nonetheless, if everyone was on a level playing field and using the same weapons as him then he was confident he would make it through the next round without issue; it may have been his particular brand of arrogance shining through, but he didn’t think there would be many people in this tournament who could wield this katana and wakizashi better than himself.

****

Arrows. He had forgotten about the arrows.

It probably didn’t come as a surprise to find that most clans preferred not to engage in a messy close range battle, instead preferring the ancient, tried and true tactic of firing mass volleys of arrows at each other. The woefully undersized by comparison Spectres of the Apocalypse had been forced to run, unable to match the larger clans for sheer quantity of firepower.

For the past three hours they had been implementing a constant fighting retreat; run until they opened up some distance between themselves and their pursuers, turn and fire, then run again when they got too close. It wasn’t the kind of battle Artorigus liked to fight but it had kept them alive for now, though that seemed to be about to change as it looked like their pursuers were finally starting to close the gap.

Artorigus covered the clans retreat from the rear while the rest ran to cover, striking down any arrows that he could with his sword; using his Okami’s unique ability had given him plenty of practise at slashing projectiles from the air and although the timing was tighter than he was used to due to the shorter length of his current weapon, on objects as slow moving as these arrows it wasn’t too hard. He couldn’t stop every one however and more than a few managed to slip past him to imperil his fellow Spectres.

A sudden yell from his left caught him by surprise as someone leapt at him from behind a partially destroyed wall; it seemed like some enterprising member from the other clan had managed to rush ahead of the others unseen in an attempt to flank them and was now rushing Artorigus with his sword held high above his head. His loss.

Drawing his wakizashi in one smooth motion Artorigus pivoted towards the charging samurai. With the small dagger in his left hand he deftly deflected the descending sword before following through with a swing of his own, his katana cutting through his opponents arm as easily as it did the air. Now literally disarmed his opponent could only looked shocked as Artorigus brought his sword back around in a horizontal swipe that took the opportunistic samurai’s head from his shoulders.

Seeing that most of the others had already made it to cover Artorigus hurried to follow, vaulting a low wall and landing in a crouch on the other side, suddenly finding himself face-to-face with Ekloria.

“So, what game plan do you think these guys are using? Are they picking us off because we’re weak, or taking us out because we’re strong?”

@Burning Kitty
@Burning Kitty does the clan ship have a name that's different from its class name or our clan name? I'm just going to call it the Glorious Heritage for now and change it later if need be.
Oberon did not get in Mourningstar’s way this time, letting her fly past him rather than try and block her again. Though he didn’t like the idea of her heading off alone, he sensed that their conversation had come to an end and unless he was willing to physically keep her from leaving or go with her there was little more he could do. Besides, if she was going to be spending time with the other wisps in the cave then she should be fine; she was just trading out one group for another, assuming that the other wisps accepted her. With a sigh he turned away from Mourningstar’s retreating form and began the walk back to the bonfire, grabbing her discarded sack of mana crystals as he did so.

3 Mana Crystals added to inventory.
1 Flame-Touched Mana Crystal added to inventory.
System:Oberon


During the quiet walk something that the wisp had said kept repeating itself in his head, about how if she stayed who she was before she was sure to die; something about that idea made him uneasy, probably because it applied to him just as much as it did to her. “It’s not like the rest of us are doing any better. My old life didn’t exactly prepare me for this kind of situation.”

In his absence the bonfire seemed to have experience a flurry of activity. The corpses that had been strewn about from their earlier battles were mostly gone, one of the lizards was practicing with their poison spit, the rats were grouped together to one side and the green slime he had healed earlier… well, he seemed to have changed considerably. Now sporting a wizard hat-shaped protrusion and a gel flap cape the only thing he was missing was a staff and he would look the part of the classical wizard class, just in slime form. How or why such a change had occurred was a mystery to him, one that Oberon sought to solve by using Magic Analysis on the slime.

Otherwise, as usual, there didn’t seem to be anything of urgent importance for Oberon to do; no-one seemed to be dying at the moment so his healing abilities weren’t required and everyone looked to be getting along perfectly fine with whatever it was they were working on.

Setting down his sack of mana crystals near to the bonfire, as well as the ones he was still holding from earlier, Oberon sat down next to it with his back to the fire pit and considered what he should do. Continue his experiments was the obvious answer, but with an attack from the remainder of the Goblin’s imminent it was important to prioritise and think about what he could accomplish in the time he had to work with that would benefit him and the rest of the group.

He could potentially develop a working version of the Minor Regeneration skill in that time, but with his various Shield spells and Minor Heal it was probably redundant at the moment; though still something he wanted to work on later. Beginning his experiments with the flame-touched mana crystal was potentially more useful if it resulted in a fire-based spell that he could use in the upcoming battle, but given that he would be starting from scratch he likely wouldn’t have enough time to make anything workable.

No, increasing his offensive options was the right way to go about this but he needed another way to do it that he could manage in a short time frame. Given that he now had Mana Shape in a complete form to work with it was probably best that he continue trying to create a version of Mana Orb with piercing properties.

With that decided Oberon wasted no time, quickly forming the spherical shape of a Mana Orb between his hands before attempting to warp its shape using his new Mana Shape ability. He flattened and lengthened the mana, stretching it thin as he had tried to do before, finding the process much easier now that he had a spell to help guide the process. When he had a long and thin bar of mana formed between his hands, thicker in the middle and rounded at each end like a stretched out oval, he attempted to sharpen the end that was not pointed at himself. Once this was complete he let the attempted Mana Arrow fly.


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