AN: Important note at the bottom
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Koncho was a vibrant city full of sights, smells, and interesting plotlines that would increase the level of any novel to its pure peak if they were included in the narrative.
Unfortunately, Jin and Hashimi got to see exactly none of that while waiting for the tournament to commence.
Their mornings consisted of training themselves into the ground, cultivating and getting screamed at by an irate Elder Flower who wanted to take full advantage of the fact that the Illusion Room sect, of all sects, had managed to get five of their disciples into the brackets.
When questioned about why she wasn't also similarly training Lung Junior and the other two disciples, the woman made a face as if she'd stepped in shit and continued beating them up.
This would go on all the way until noon, at which point Jin and Hashimi would abscond to their rooms, bruised and broken, with some high-grade ointment which they vigorously applied, but which sapped away even the last of their energy.
"I can't believe that Purple Cloud sect asshole also helped Lung Junior pass," Jin muttered in disgust as the two companions pulled out their sketches, jade slips and other assorted Elder Scrolls making material.
"And the other two, whatever their names are," Hashimi replied as she sorted through her pens, feathers and brushes.
Jin really wished that he could complain to Hashimi how he even hadn't wanted to pass, but that was a secret he'd be forced to take to the grave. "I just wish I'd passed on my own merit," he thus complained.
"You did," the dark-skinned girl replied. "You just gave the material to me. You're the one who has to put up with Bao until she finds a beau back at the sect."
"Maybe she'll do it even faster; she's spending most of her day gallivanting around Koncho. May the heavens arrange her a fruitful marriage," Jin muttered.
Surprisingly enough, the woman was actually a decent servant, although if that was only the case because he wasn't asking for much remained in the air.
She brought him tea, rubbed ointment into his wounds and cleaned the room without complaints.
"Well, let's see, she seems quite taken with you, heaven knows why."
Jin narrowed his eyes.
The mousy woman had been much nicer to him than he would have initially suspected from her first impression.
There was something he was missing, but he wasn't sure what…
Eventually, he could only conclude. "I guess I am pretty handsome," he said modestly.
Hashimi raised her head from where she'd started sketching out her own more cultivation-based interpretation of Whiterun while still keeping some of the original Nordic flavour.
"I guess taste really is subjective," she eventually determined.
"That's true," Jin agreed. "Seeing it from that direction, there might even be hope for you one day."
"The heavens work in mysterious ways," Hashimi concluded sagely.
"Yep," Jin commented, before returning to his work.
Designing characters wasn't very hard work, especially when they weren't meant to have any remarkable combat abilities. Picking a body type, clothing style, face and all that.
It especially helped that he did remember having played the Elder Scrolls in the past. The characters from there he could simply recreate.
Unfortunately, in his quest to make a larger-scale and more realistic version of the game, he also needed 10 other NPCs per original NPC. Whiterun was supposed to be an important town. It couldn't have only 70 people. 700, however, that worked a bit better. A real town of Whiterun's size would have had around 70k, but there were some things even Jin couldn't accomplish.
He'd made a sort of randomness generator for most of the really useless NPCs and had already created most of them, given them a few lines of dialogue, a few templates and the basic reactionary tendencies to fistfight if attacked, or to run away.
The most common dialogue line in the game right now? 'I'm busy, perhaps another time.'
He would add more flavour in the future if he wanted to.
No, now Jin was working his way through the named non-combat NPCs, who, in comparison to the randomly generated ones that took barely a second, took about a minute.
Right now, he was working on a particularly righteous example which would teach whichever cultivator attempted the Illusion Room the value of patience and forbearance.
The sneer had to be just right, the voice just nasal enough to be annoying but not completely laughable. The patented look of moral superiority…
Of course, Jin was a mind cultivator; one minute of work for him would have been an hour of work for a normal mortal at this point. Considering that he already had the template for most of the things he wanted to create, the comparison became even more unfair.
He eventually finished the NPC who had his own pathway through the city, his own dialogue, his own personality, but who seemingly had zero value to the plot other than being beaten up as a quest for the companions.
"Hey Hashimi," Jin said, holding up a jade slip.
"Hmm?" Hashimi hummed and looked up from the sketch of Jorrvaskr, the home of the companions.
"Can you playtest this interaction for me?" Jin asked. "I need to see if I got the proper tone."
The girl shrugged. Them asking for each other's opinion was very normal.
Her eyes went blank as she touched the jade slip.
A second later, a look of annoyance spread itself across her face.
"You didn't finish," Jin accused her.
Hashimi crossed her arms and gave him a contemplative look. "I tried punching him, and it broke the sequence."
"Alright, so maybe you got the gist. Which line got you in the end?"
"I actually advise the Jarl on political matters. My input is invaluable, of course. But this is all probably a bit over your head." Hashimi parroted in a nasal tone of voice.
Jin wiped a tear from his eye. "Classic old Nazeem," he muttered, before continuing his line of questioning. "Well, if you heard this guy in the street, would you be able to stop yourself from punching him, or beheading him?" he asked curiously. Face was very serious in the cultivation society, and cultivators were used to getting away with a lot.
Hashimi seemed to consider, before eventually shaking my head. "No, off with his head," she eventually determined.
Jin cackled.
"Good, good. Many an experiencer will lose their time, life and reputation in Whiterun, I see," he determined.
"Is that good?" Hashimi asked with a doubtful look.
"Of course, cultivators need to learn patience and the virtue of silence," Jin replied. "Especially the outer disciples this work is intended for."
"Well, one annoying character won't drag the scenario down too much," Hashimi eventually said. "Although that idiot from Bleak Falls Barrow is already pushing it quite a bit…"
Jin frowned at her. "What do you mean by one?" he asked.
Hashimi froze. "There's more?"
"Of course. The classist and materialist wife of the saint who verbally abuses her husband in public and demands he repay the debt she continuously accrues with her taste in expensive jewellery. The farmer who mistreats his three daughters because he blames them for the death of their mother. The orc who sends assassins after you because you killed someone who owed him money, until you find and kill him yourself. The breath and width of annoying characters that deserve to be included in a scenario as grand as this are as numerous as leaves on a tree," Jin said breathlessly with a happy smile on his face.
Hashimi stared at him, aghast. "What happens if you kill the farmer? There's probably no guards around in the countryside, right?" she eventually asked.
Jin gave her a queer look. "You find the three daughters being mistreated in an orphanage later. What, are you going to adopt them yourself?"
The girl gave him a deep, soul-penetrating look before eventually shaking her head. "There is something seriously wrong with you," she eventually concluded.
Jin crossed his arms. The annoying characters improved the scenario. Sure, many cultivators would likely go insane from the consequences of their own actions, but surely it would be a learning experience, right?
-/-
The days passed like the fart of an anal-loving geriatric granny living in a sex retirement home.
Quickly and almost without notice.
As Jin's anxiety about the tournament increased, the effort he was putting into Skyrim went up in an almost completely causal relationship.
To approach the behemoth of a game, of which the resolution could only be maintained at a decent level if it functioned for only cultivators below the foundation establishment level, he had recently changed his approach.
Mapping out the basic social geography and literal geography of the game had already been done in a very barebones visual map with little dots representing people.
Jin's initial plan had been to painstakingly make his way through the entirety of the game in a chronological order while working on every single bit of material that he could grasp under his sweaty little fingers until it was perfect.
Very quickly, he had noticed that this approach would accomplish nothing but give him a severe burnout.
He still hadn't finished making Camilla Valerius of Riverwood, because he was struggling making her beautiful enough to actually justify her entire plot-line.
In the original methodology, Jin would not have allowed himself to move past Riverwood, which he'd already mostly complicated before being done with her.
But it was never sure when inspiration came, so he'd just move on and made the Dark Brotherhood and their quest line instead.
He'd been feeling inspired and had managed to adapt the entirety of the assassin's guild in an hour, during which he was sure he would still be struggling with Camilla.
Instead of moving through the thing step by step, he'd decided to simply colour in whatever part of the portrait he wanted, trusting his later ability to pull it all together.
This approach privileged the overall view of the situation and might not have worked back on modern Earth, but here Jin's mental faculties were much improved. He could very easily keep track of all the aspects of the scenario and jump between parts that needed improvement or refinement.
"The whole thing is so all-encompassing," Hashimi sighed. She preferred the step-by-step approach because, according to her, all the regions of Skyrim needed to be slightly different to justify their different cultures and quest lines. The easiest way to ensure this difference was to simply do everything sequentially and put a value on the ever-evolving style of an artist.
Jin just called her smooth-brained, but to each their own.
"Really, how did you think of all of this?" Hashimi asked again. A glance at her sketchpad revealed that she was putting the last touches on Whiterun, more specifically, the Bannered Mare, the only inn in town.
"Source: it came to me in a dream," Jin replied, receiving a queer look.
"Was that supposed to be a joke?" She asked.
"Yeah, please laugh."
"Hahahaha."
"Thank you." Jin paused. "Anyway, it doesn't matter where it comes from, and I take no credit. Thinking of something is easy. Executing it is hard. Everyone can have good ideas, but the amount of good products on the market is always negligible in comparison to the shit ones."
"Still, we have everything from thieves guilds, mage colleges, assassin conclaves, vampires, werewolves, dragons, greybeards, my head hurts," Hashimi groaned.
"Take a break then, don't hurt yourself," Jin reminded her.
"I'm just stressed," the girl complained while rubbing at her temples. "If I stop working on this, the anxiety from the tournament tomorrow will just come back full force."
"Maybe you can revisit the annoying batch of characters I made, see if they can cheer you up?" Jin asked curiously.
"Ugh, don't remind me. Every single one of them makes me want to fly into a murderous rage. Don't you have anything else?" she asked.
"Well, I recently finished The Lusty Argonian Maid," Jin said thoughtfully.
Hashimi paused, looked up, stared at him, right in the soul. "Wait, you actually did that? I thought that was a joke."
Jin hummed. Why had he written a 40k-word smut novel? Why had he written one at all?
"Why?" Hashimi repeated.
Jin narrowed his eyes. "It was integral to the plot," he eventually decided to say.
All he got in return was a very tired look.
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AN: Guys, help me out and check out my new story on RoyalRoad about a stupid mage getting stuck in a time loop! My first time writing something completely original (this story still has derivative elements) so I'd really appreciate your support.
Also, well, if you like my writing style, you'll probably like this!
Time Looping For Dummies by Bor902 on RoyalRoad