AN: Thank you for your patience! Here are the interludes!
-/-
The officer’s lounge was silent as the group of soldiers which had bundled their salaries all those years ago looked at the Illusion Room glowing gently on the coffee table in the middle of the more opulent tent.
“We all finished Skyrim,” the lead officer said from his lotus seating position at the coffee table, his interlaced fingers supporting his chin.
“We all got promoted,” another one said with furrowed brows. Then he shook his head. “I don’t really understand how it could have been so easy all along though.”
“The army is boring. You march, you sit, you wait, you march, you train, you march, you sit, you wait,” the lead officer muttered. “The opportunities for advancement are limited. Most soldiers can’t read, most of the scriptures available to them aren’t worth the time of learning. The cultivation techniques are uniform and unadaptive.”
One of the officers hit his palm with a fist. “I understand now, this feeling I was getting,” he said suddenly. “Experiencing this scenario, it’s how my daughter describes her novels. A different world. Losing yourself in the immersion.” He looked dubiously at the Illusion Room and closed his eyes to start humming the song of the Dragonborn. “Sometimes, when I was in the depths of Skyrim, I exited the Illusion Room and felt that this was the false reality,” he eventually admitted.
“It even fixed your potty mouth,” another officer joked.
“The experience of leading different sects,” the lead officer mumbled. “Even if simulated. The Thieves Sect, the Dark Brotherhood, the college, the Companions. It was training us in a way that we barely understood. Leadership. Decision-making. Confidence. Then we went out into the wilds, the burden of the world on our shoulders.”
“Pa always used to say,” someone mumbled. “Don’t wish for lighter burdens, train for a broader back.”
The lead officer stared coldly at the Illusion Room. “General Shroud was right,” he determined. “Illusion Rooms are a way for the army to not only familiarise themselves with specific situations and enemies, but also to extract valuable experiences amidst all that waiting.” He closed his eyes, as if re-living something. “Without Skyrim I would never have found out I had an affinity for lightning. If I had never found out I had an affinity for lightning I wouldn’t have spent all my savings on the heavenly lightning cultivation manual from that wandering monk. If I hadn’t spent my money on that manual, I would have died in that skirmish.”
“Never would have known I was using the wrong type of weapon,” a large burly officer growled. “Standard army sword, how about you fuck off,” he said, gripping the heft of a large bone axe that he always carried with him since that demon assassination attempt in the latrines.
“A man needs experience to grow, but everyone in the army knows that valuable experience is the most dangerous thing of all to attain. After all, you can only get it in situations from which you might not return alive,” one member of the group whispered softly.
“Some of us broke through in our cultivation, others in terms of skills and others yet in the weapon they use,” the lead officer mumbled. “One single unit, all promoted in the span of a few years. If that’s not proof of the fact that Master Jin’s Illusion Rooms are something different, something necessary, then I don’t know what is.”
“We should donate the Room to the grunts,” one officer grunted. “It pains me to do so, but we all experienced it at least twice each. Diminishing returns.”
“I’ve been talking with some others,” the lead officer muttered. “With a tool like this available… The way we train the soldiers under our command… The way we structure their daily life… It’s not logical. There are steps that need to be taken on an organisational level. We had the highest survival rate in the last large war due the General’s insistence on commissioning The Last of Us. Then, immediately after as interest in Illusion Rooms grew, we had the highest cultivation breakthrough rate of any Imperial army.” He paused meaningfully. “We need reform.”
“Good luck trying to convince those oldies at the top to change anything when it's not for their own profit in particular,” someone muttered bitterly.
“We don’t need them,” the lead officer said harshly, steel in his eyes, suddenly making a decision. “We will change the schedule of the units under our command first. Pool our money to buy more copies, keep an eye out for this creator in particular. We will petition higher command while spreading information about our ascension journey to the bottom rungs. People are always willing to spend money to get promoted, or to breakthrough. Let them. Once everyone in the army is using Illusion Rooms and showing better results in training regardless of any institutional change, then the rules will bend to follow reality.”
“I thought you were saving for a house in the capital,” the axe-wielding officer pointed out.
“Fuck the house! If there’s anything that Skyrim has taught me is that all it needs for good to prosper is for one man to stand up and say, enough, we act now! We will be those men!” the lead officer shouted passionately, standing up and letting his gaze sweep across the tent. “Will we be those men! Those who initiate change, rather than cower before it. Those who put aside petty squabbles, desires and material ambitions for a greater purpose.” He raised a fist into the air. “For the Empire!” he shouted.
“For the Empire!”
“For Humanity!”
“For Humanity!”
“For the war to end all wars!”
“For the war to end all wars!”
-/-
Kong Ching turned into light and disappeared into the sky the moment the Blood Tiger fell at his feet, head caved in.
He didn’t even bother harvesting it, flying through the sky towards his next destination as the frightened villagers exited their houses and started cheering.
A young lad, about nine years of age was the first to see the pulsating purple metallic square laying next to the slowly bleeding out corpse.
The cultivator who’d saved their village had left something behind.
The lad stumbled forward, curiously touching the cube as the villagers descended on the felled beast to harvest it for meat.
That young villager's life would never be the same.
-/-
The scene had repeated itself over countless villages, enclaves, trading caravans in the past few years.
Light would descend from the sky in the form of a ragged looking young blonde man.
Whichever danger was present would be annihilated, before the cultivator once again disappeared in a beam of light, leaving behind nothing but a solitary metallic cube that pulsated with a mysterious purple light.
And wherever that cube remained, wherever someone experienced its story…
Change followed not far behind.
After all, the first tenet of progress was believing that it could be done.
-/-
Tian was pulled out of the Illusion Room in front of him by his hair.
He was just about to spin around and lash out when he saw that it was an Elder who’d done the deed, rather than someone he could reasonably retaliate against.
He immediately bowed deeply in that closed off cave.
“Inner disciple greets Elder!” he exclaimed.
“Your fascination with the work of our greatest enemy has been tolerated for too long,” the Elder said, eyes glinting coldly in the darkness of the cave.
Tian nodded. “I have studied him through his works, I’m almost there. I understand him now. Better than he understands himself.”
“You’ve been studying for too long,” the Elder replied. “The time is now. He’s left the sect. For the first time after so many years, he’s finally out, unprotected, moving west.”
Tian stilled with narrowed eyes, thoughts still on Skyrim, or rather, on a particular Argonian Maid.
It was time to find Jin.
Confront him.
Why was the Argonian Maid only a novel, instead of a scenario that could be experienced on one’s own flesh?
This required rectification.
“I will find him,” Tian promised. “And I will make him understand our displeasure on his own body.”
-/-
Xiao Yung looked at the hollow eyes looking back at him from the mirror in his bathroom in the core ring of the sect.
His progress recently had been rapid, but so had his mental deterioration.
The gaps in his memory were becoming worse.
He dared not tell anyone.
He would not be consigned to that cold stone fortress with the others, locked away for the rest of eternity.
A cure was out there.
He knew it.
Now if only he could remember where.
His body suddenly twitched as his eyes rolled back, the white replaced by pitch black.
“An entire core formed with a parasite in your soul,” a raspy voice said using Xiao’s vocal chords. “Back in my day we used to call that finding out.” The young face in the mirror grinned. It was an ugly smile. Hideous and hateful.
“I think it’s time to go make myself a body and leave this husk.”
The room stilled.
Xiao’s body shuddered, eyes returning to normal and he suddenly knew where to go.
“Of course, the tears, they can heal this,” he mumbled almost incoherently as he frantically started pacing around, planning his route.
His gaze fell on the Illusion Room tucked away on the top of his wardrobe.
An angry look hushed over Xiao’s face.
He hadn’t been out in a while…
Would there… Would there finally be a chance to vanquish this heart demon?
He could only keep the flame burning. The hope lit.
He had nothing else left.
-/-
“Another one lost it?” Elder Lung asked with a pained face.
The Elder in charge of deciphering the newest technique that had landed in the sect library nodded sadly.
“Elder Ka Ren this time, she went out after saying something about how we all live in a simulation.”
The richly decorated office fell into silence as Elder Lung leaned back in his chair.
“This is the third time they’re talking about simulations,” he muttered quietly. “What’s behind all of it?”
“My guess?” the other Elder replied. “The code has to do with generating a realistic environment with a smaller investment. After looking at that system for too long, you start doubting yourself. Start doubting if you are real.”
“I thought we had a protocol. To pull out before that point,” Elder Lung said harshly.
A shake of the head from the other. “Everyone knows the protocol, but when the numbers start dancing and reality itself starts looking like a series of 0s and 1s then that part gets easily forgotten. She failed to plug out. We lost her to the code.”
Elder Lung angrily slammed a fist onto the table, but remained silent.
“My suggestion is to let it go,” the Elder cautioned. “We can’t keep losing people. Let this technique be. We can’t understand it, let alone improve on it. It’s built on some sort of alien logic, logic that we can’t understand. It’s outside of our context.”
“You incompetent buffons…” Elder Lung muttered angrily. “Everyone around me is a moron.” He suddenly stood up. “The strike was a bust, everyone’s been playing fucking Skyrim. That’s what it is. A game to be played, not a scenario to be experienced. All this drivel about it, it’s just an overinterpretation of a failed product.” He stormed out of the office.
“What are you doing!” the Elder in charge of the code project asked worriedly.
Elder Lung threw the other man a look over his shoulder, moustache askew in anger. “I’m going in!”
-/-
AN: Alright, taking a week of was worth it, I worked exclusively on the plot and now I know exactly where this story has to go next! The extra chapter voted on is in five days again. Hope you enjoy the next arc :)