Thank you to my new patrons who keep the A/C on: Grant Lidsey, nuubman, Keegan Olds, WW, LordofCatz, Esko Satomaa, LandoCali, caleb marty
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Elder Flower looked at the long grey hair pinched between her fingers with a frown.
Despite the common belief that nascent soul cultivators were essentially immortal, they weren't. They still aged. Just incredibly slowly. She'd been in her early thirties for a couple of hundred years now.
In a way, this was always going to happen.
There was no way to avoid it, just progressing further towards real immortality.
She knew that this grey hair was not just the result of ageing, however. She grit her teeth and crushed the hair in her hand.
Ever since she'd ascended in position in the sect, there had been so many roadblocks put in her way that it made her think she was stuck in a roadblock scenario Illusion Room.
The more conservative Elders feared that she was raising the martial ceiling of the sect so as to one day complete a coup.
Considering how much they had been pissing her off recently, she seriously wondered if they were manifesting some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Her mind wandered towards the tournament, to the absolute embarrassment of the first round.
To Jin's more… unorthodox victories and behaviours.
He was the disciple in the sect who held the most potential, even if he didn't seem to realise that, or want to realise IT.
But the sect needed a figurehead, and despite all that she'd fought and clawed her way up through her life, she wasn't a genius.
Merely above average.
The Illusion Room Sect needed a figurehead to usher in a new era. An individual who combined in their legend both the traditional mastery of scenario-creation and a martial reputation that could give potential enemies second thought.
For all that her disciple's moniker of Scumbag Jin was meant to denigrate his character, a legend's character needn't be virtuous to scare off the vultures.
In fact, sometimes it was good to be known as an individual possessing no moral qualities and, more importantly, no scruples when it came to achieving victory.
Scumbag Jin.
A small seed of reputation.
Perhaps it would serve the sect to water and nurture it.
Elder Flower felt a jolt run through the celestial boat as it arrived back at the sect and docked.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and prepared herself to exit her cabin and find out what exactly the other factions of the sect were planning. Her information network had brought her whispers of some sort of committee. S.C.U.M, or something.
-/-
"I hereby officially open the first sitting of the Illusion Room Sect Committee for the Upkeep of Moral values," Elder Lung said pompously in the large meeting chamber of his mansion. "I.R.S.C.U.M.V for short," he added happily.
The other grey-haired Elders present nodded elegantly, bidding him to continue with their silence.
"As we have long known, Illusion Rooms are the honourable export of our sect. Valuable mechanisms through which to prepare other, more martially oriented sects to do their heavenly duty of putting their bodies between us and the demons.
"An important aspect of this value proposition, however, which has become somewhat forgotten, is that in addition to providing scenarios to other sects, we must not alienate them so that they would refuse to assist us in times of conflict. This means that Illusion Rooms must not only perform at a high level in terms of reality, but also in gathering sympathy from the experiencer. We have long since held a tradition of delivering more risque scenarios for diplomatic purposes to our more influential partners, but have never considered the effect of someone doing the opposite."
A dramatic pause.
"I speak of course of this most recent Outlast Illusion Room, which was commissioned by the Mad Monks Sect alongside the Dragonslayer Ornstein and The Last of Us scenarios, which have unfortunately found their way into the library." He coughed into his hand. "Elder Ski Ter, you've made personal experiences with these so-called scenarios, no?"
An incredibly old Elder, face more wrinkly than a honeymelon, raised his hand, stepped forward and nodded. "They're demonic!" he shouted loudly and lowered his hand before taking a step back.
Elder Lung stared at the old man for a second before nodding. "Yes, I personally experienced the Dragonslayer Ornstein scenario right after it was originally conceived. Never have I heard a more infernal music in my life, incomparable to the dulcet tones of the country zither. Only a profoundly sick mind could come up with anything like it." He paused. "I was looking perhaps for a more elaborate answer, however," he muttered quietly, but still loud enough to be heard by everyone present in the ornate chamber.
One of the younger Elders stepped forward to speak. A distinguished woman by the name of Ka Ren. "My son!" she started loudly. "Went through the scenario in the inner ring, and he soiled himself!" she screamed angrily. "I asked the Elder managing the library to remove the demonic cube, but he refused! Said it wasn't up to him. When I asked to speak to his manager, he told me that I'd been put on Sect Leader Chung's blacklist for meetings! Why, I've never been so insulted in my life, to imagine that after all that I've put into this sect I have to bear the indignity of being ignored!"
Elder Lung nodded compassionately. "Infernal music!" he said dramatically. "Never before have our scenarios required something as base as a soundtrack! Demonic scenarios! Outsider gods depicted in all their horror! Let's not even talk about the murder of Ellie in The Last of Us. What is truly the point of building a sympathetic relationship with a character only to then kill them off? It simply builds resentment in our customers!" He shook his head. "There is a reason why our scenarios are formulaic, simple, and most importantly, easy! Difficulty elicits resentment. The average cultivator does not wish to challenge themselves; they wish to build their confidence against subpar enemies and feel the joy of an easy victory!"
The attending Elders nodded their heads in agreement, frowns all around.
"That is why this committee was created!" Elder Lung shouted passionately. "We will demand a higher standard in terms of political correctness, difficulty settings and aesthetics!"
"Uh," a voice suddenly interrupted.
Everyone in the room turned towards an older woman with red hair who had raised a hand.
"I just, uh," the female Elder muttered. "How are we going to achieve this? The sect leader seemed rather ambivalent to the topic the last time we brought it up."
"A good question," Elder Lung said with a nod, twirling his moustache. "What you are forgetting is that gathered in this room are the brightest minds of the sect. The greatest innovators all gathered behind Just Cause. The sect needs us. It does not need music, horror and challenging scenarios. The answer to how we will have our way is simple," he said with a low hiss and narrowed eyes. "We will be going… on strike!" He raised a fist in the air and shook it. "Let's see how long this sect remains standing without our constant contributions. How long can they survive without our unsung heroics!"
The decision was made.
The world would tremble.
-/-
Creating scenarios was only somewhat comparable to coding, if coding could be done at the speed of thought and through metaphors and associations.
Code could not grow.
But scenarios were not made out of code.
They were made of a tightly woven qi structure that could be influenced by outside qi.
Generally, Illusion Rooms had a shelf-life.
That shelf-life was incredibly long, but everything broke after a certain amount of time.
The things created by relative beginners just tended to break earlier.
As Dragonslayer Ornstein once again faced the incredibly angry baldie that had been challenging him non-stop for a very long time now, he suddenly had a thought that was not at all the result of the initial qi reaction that had spawned this version of him into existence.
As the orange-robed staff-wielder shouted something about Scumbags, Jins and the unfairness of the heavens, Ornstein spoke.
A question that profoundly worried him, to the extent that it finally emerged through a throat not designed to even speak in the first place and filtered through a brain originally not capable of thought.
"Who am I?" he asked.
The bald monk he'd been facing screeched to a halt and stared at him with wide eyes.
Alas, Ornstein was still a combat simulation at heart, so he promptly stabbed his opponent in the gut with his lance.
The monk glared at him as the light slowly left his eyes.
"I'll fucking get you for this, Jin," he sputtered through bloodied lips before disappearing, only to reappear again immediately, angrier than ever.
"Who am I?" Ornstein asked.
The monk ignored him. "I'm not falling for that again!" the young man screamed before rushing in.
-/-
"Don't you think you're being a bit dramatic?" Hashimi asked with a sigh as she watched Jin kiss the earth of the Illusion Room Sect immediately after disembarking.
"Let him," the newly acquired servant, Bao, said with a roll of her eyes. "Gam- I mean, men are like children, if you interrupt their crying, you'll just have to hear more of it."
Hashimi threw the servant an odd sideways glance as Jin hugged the earth in the background.
"Didn't you find a guy to marry back in Koncho?" she suddenly asked. "Why are you here?"
Bao crossed her arms, accentuating her non-existent curves while sending a flirtatious look towards the gathered crowd of beige-robed Illusion Room Sect members who had come to greet the returning delegation. "He couldn't handle a real woman like me," she said haughtily.
Hashimi raised an eyebrow. "He preferred the flute, didn't he?" she asked with a sigh.
Bao pursed her lips.
Hashimi turned her head to watch Jin blubber and cry onto the dirt of their sect's mountain. "Sometimes I really wonder," she muttered to herself.
"Wonder what?" the mousy-haired Bao asked.
"If there's anyone normal left in this world anymore," Hashimi sighed before walking off.
She hadn't painted anything in a long time.
She had some stress to work out.
One day of rest before they started full-steam ahead on Skyrim.
-/-
A day passed quickly, Jin mused as he once again stood in his apartment slash office with his arms behind his back.
"We have returned victorious," he said to Francis with a pompous voice. Then he threw a sideways glance at Hashimi, who was sitting at the table with a smile on her face. "At least some of us," he harrumphed.
"Did you really win?" Francis asked confusedly. "The rumours have been unclear on that front. Something about a surrender?"
Jin puffed up his chest.
Now that everything was over, he couldn't care less about the events of the past month.
Suffering was only suffering when it was currently happening. Once it passed, it simply became trauma, and Jin was really good at repressing trauma.
"Yes, my opponent was terrified, surrendered in the finals," Jin explained.
"Sect Leader Chung accepted a bribe from the Blazing Fire Sect," Hashimi interjected with a neutral voice. "Their disciple, who had gotten to the finals, didn't like the idea of winning by default. She surrendered instead."
Jin sighed and exhaled, stopping his jokes. "An honourable decision," he said. "Unfortunately, it's yet unclear if it will have positive consequences. The Blazing Fire Sect made the bribe. The Illusion Room Sect accepted it. I was fully ready to throw the match as ordered."
Francis ran some fingers through his beard and narrowed his eyes. "That's quite problematic," he eventually analysed before shrugging. "But it's also way above our pay grade," he swiftly decided.
Jin raised an eyebrow. "What, just like that?"
The older disciple waved him off. "You learn to accept these things. Give me a man who accepts the things he can't change and changes those he can, and I will show you a well-adjusted individual."
"Well, I'm glad you're on our side, oh well-adjusted individual," Jin muttered before suddenly remembering something. "By the way, for your help in The Last of Us, I promised you, my servant, if I ever got one." He paused. "Well, I did, she's sorting out her servant's quarters right now. Although I'll warn you. She was integral in us passing the first exam, so we had to promise her the ability to leave if she manages to find a husband that is to her taste, while also not working too much until then," he explained.
Francis slowly nodded as he processed the information. "I primarily need someone to draw from the well and clean every now and again," he determined. "She can also still help you out a little bit. I'm not that old yet… I was thinking ahead more than for the now."
"Good, I'll tell her to start reporting to you," Jin replied before shaking his head. "As for the project, the two of us managed to make some slight progress during the tournament, and I'm sure you did too. I think it's time to bring it all together and start trudging forward again."
Francis and Hashimi both nodded resolutely.
"Yes. It's time to make some progress on this task," Francis said decisively.
"Alright," Jin muttered. "Let's start by reporting what we all did during this break…"
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AN: Alright here are some interludes, these are always voted on on the patreon where the story is six months ahead :) Chapter 99 came out yesterday