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The city of Koncho, built around the volcano, was a fascinating city built mostly from obsidian and the cracked debris of dried lava.
The sect itself was situated inside the very active volcano and differed from other sects in that the outer ring could be found on the top of the volcano, while the inner ring, and then the core ring, could be found deeper down the hole. Jin had heard, although had been unable to confirm, that the elders of the sect essentially lived on rocks floating around in the lava at the very bottom.
That seemed a bit sus to him, but it wasn't like the outer ring, inlaid on the inside rim of the volcano, could be accessed by outsiders.
Not that he cared either.
He stared blankly at the street beneath the balcony of his room at the inn. He didn't have a view of the volcano, like Elder Flower did, but he did have a view of the main street.
And the main street had a view of him.
Whenever he saw one of the disciples participating in the tournament mixed in with the many affluent mortals who had travelled here over the past days, they clumped together in groups and whispered, sending him very obvious glances.
Jin had stopped channelling qi to listen to the conversations a long time ago.
He knew what they were saying.
'One of the three contestants to pass with a wyvern head.'
'I heard he fought like 24 desert snakes at once, just for fun!'
'He's so handsome, kyaaaaa!'
Ok, maybe that last one was made up.
"He's still like that?" a serious older female voice said from the entrance to his rooms as he sat on the balcony, letting the tea that Bao had brought him cool down to room temperature. Which, it was like 45 degrees Celsius, but still.
"He's still injured, Elder Flower," a younger female voice replied.
"Hmppfff, tell him to get better sooner, or I'll rescind those servant privileges I granted earlier as a reward."
"Of course, Elder."
The door slammed shut.
Hashimi sighed as she went through the bare room and stepped onto the very small balcony. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at Jin, who was still recovering from his broken and bruised toes from when he'd ran on top of the snakes, and the spots where the bats had gotten him. "What am I going to do with you?" the girl asked.
Jin stared at her blankly. "Huh?"
A combination of thoughts ran through his mind. The same thoughts that had been running through his head for days now. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I? Huh?
"If you don't recover soon, Elder Flower is going to administer shock therapy," Hashimi said with a sigh before sitting down on the chair opposite Jin's. "Your face probably wouldn't appreciate it."
Jin suddenly shook himself awake. "Hashimi," he croaked, causing the girl to perk up. "Why did I become the third most notorious disciple left in the tournament? The one everyone is strategising against. The one to beat?"
The girl looked at him blankly. "I mean, it's quite obvious. It's because Biri was telling everyone how brave you were to sacrifice yourself against a hundred scorching wingbats and five hundred desert horned snakes. Then you hunted a wyvern all by yourself with broken feet."
"But I didn't do any of that…" Jin argued desperately.
Hashimi broke eye contact with him at his refusal before looking back. "Huh, did you say something?" she asked.
That was how it had been going for a while now. Jin had managed to look like he'd been doing his best in the preliminaries, but had been quite glad to crash out early so he wouldn't get his ass kicked in the later tournament.
Then that purple-robed bastard had gotten to him and just handed him the head of a wyvern.
Really, who did that?!
"Why me?" he groaned.
"Look, I know your bloodthirsty personality doesn't want to advance unless it was by merit and combat, but sometimes we just have to accept heaven's grace when it finds us," Hashimi whispered conspiratorially. "If you feel like having to rely on luck is against your honour, then just regain it by crushing the enemies before you, hearing the lamentations of their women, the screams of their children." She looked down at the street. "The disciples from the combat sects are outraged that a non-combat disciple had such a good showing. They already pledged to 50 generations of their ancestors that they'll take your head to regain the honour of combat sects. There's going to be so much hardcore, bloody, all-out combat in the next month that even you'll get sick of it, I promise."
Jin buried his face in his hands. He was seriously considering strangling himself.
Maybe he could pull the classic: 'I surrender because the competition is too pathetic' scheme?
No, Elder Flower would kill him.
"Just think about it one match at a time," Hashimi continued.
"Brackets?" Jin croaked.
"They're out, yeah," Hashimi said and pulled out a piece of parchment with 32 contestant names on it. "Your plans on enraging the others by not showing up to the draw?" She put her pointer finger and thumb together and kissed them. "Chef's kiss, peak psychological warfare. The opponent you're fighting first felt so offended he swore to commit seppuku if he doesn't break at least one of your limbs. He'll be completely incapable of thinking straight during the fight."
Jin had simply been too depressed to go, but to each their own.
"Match-ups?" he asked.
"You'll be facing a blazing fire sect disciple, as will literally everyone else not from the host sect," Hashimi quickly explained, pointing to the names on the document. "There are 17 disciples from the Blazing Fire Sect and 15 from other sects. It's so bad that the rule of intra-sect start had to be broken so that two disciples from the Blazing Fire Sect could face each other. Wouldn't have worked otherwise." Her finger traced over the paper. "They're not anything special from what I saw, just incredibly suited for the challenge we faced. Anyway, once you beat your first BFS disciple, you'll go on to the army cultivator."
"Once I beat the BFS guy who swore to break my limbs?" Jin asked for elaboration.
Hashimi nodded absent-mindedly. "Yeah, that one." Then she continued. "After that it's Xiao's turn. Then it's the purple cloud sect guy who gave you the head. Then it's Xin Erwa, the crazy bitch who killed the other wyvern."
Jin raised a dubious eyebrow. "That backstabbing piece of shit monk motherfucker?" he asked.
Hashimi nodded. "Yeah, that guy."
"Why didn't you count yourself?" Jin asked.
"I'm not making it past the BFS disciple, let's be honest," the girl said self-deprecatingly.
"And I'm different because?"
Hashimi waved her hands in the air as if trying to make a shape, but was unable to come up with one. "You're, I mean, you're stronger than me. In the oasis, you were all like, kachaw, kapoom, wheng! You know?"
"Hashimi," Jin started, taking a breath. "The first guy is going to break my limbs. Or more likely, roast them to charcoal."
"Don't be so negative," Hashimi said helpfully. "You have to believe it! You're the only one who can truly represent our sect, although it is a bit weird that we all passed…" she trailed off and scrunched her eyebrows. "We're the second most represented sect. It's a bit odd."
Fingers rubbing at temples, Jin didn't even want to talk about it anymore. "Can we do something else for a bit? You already trained, right?"
Hashimi rolled her eyes, took a sip of Jin's cold tea, and spat it out. "If you can call Elder Flower kicking my ass training, but yeah, I'm free now. My body's done for the day."
"How's Elder Scrolls doing?" Jin asked.
He'd been sketching out the next steps, making characters in his head and planning, but Hashimi was the one actually making the environment.
The girl bit at her lip. "Bleak Falls Barrow, it's huge. I'm making the underground, trying to segment it into smaller assets as you suggested. Then later I can just reconfigure the wall plating and the floor into different dungeons." She shook her head. "Still, it's an immense undertaking. More than most anyone would bother creating for any single scenario."
"It's crazy when you think about how it basically represents less than a percent of the actual game as well," Jin said with a sigh. "I have the same feeling making the characters, developing their fighting styles to be somewhat realistic and adding enough texture to make it appear real."
"We can convene on the design in the evenings for a few hours," Hashimi said. "But we probably can't spend too much time on it. We need to train our combat skills and raise our cultivation."
Jin snorted. "Nobody is going to achieve a breakthrough in cultivation in the 28 days we have until the tournament starts."
"You have to meditate when you can; every bit counts," Hashimi chastised. Her eyes then swerved to the left, to look down from the balcony on the busy street below. "The other disciples. The only thing they do all day, the only thing they've been doing for decades now, is train and cultivate. Nothing else. All their missions are combat-related."
"That's why we're inner disciples fighting outer disciples. Our cultivation will be higher by default," Jin reminded her.
Hashimi frowned. "Yes, but a non-combat sect has never won the tournament, regardless of that. Our higher realms of cultivation simply make us larger targets. Something to awe the audience who's told that a battle across cultivation realms cannot be fought."
"Talking about big targets, I've been making that giant that you meet on the way to Whiterun," Jin said idly, switching the topic again.
He didn't want to talk about the tournament, hear about the tournament, or think about the tournament.
"The companions, so tragic," Hashimi said breathlessly, her eyes fluttering.
"Especially Kodlak. A great leader and warrior cursed to grow old as a beast and die right before it's lifted." She fixed Jin with an intense stare. "You have to tell me when you finish his design. I'll use him as a test subject for my dungeons."
"I'm not going to give his human form much combat ability," Jin slowly cautioned.
While most male players of Skyrim fell for Aela, he had found through his discussions with Hashimi that Kodlak, as a tragic older male figure who was also a werewolf (also rich, probably), was the one drawing in the female players.
Or maybe it was just Hashimi.
The girl wiped her nose.
"He doesn't need to know how to fight," she said huskily. "I won't let any harm come to him."
Jin stared blankly at the dark-skinned girl. "I'll send you his pack the moment it's ready," he said.
The girl nodded. "Yes, yes. I'll keep working on that dungeon and you bring me the, uh, goods."
"Are the traps doing fine?" Jin asked.
"No problems so far. I followed your suggestion and drastically increased the difficulty of the initial sketch you gave me. I was able to take some designs from the library before we left, the ones suggested for inner disciples, so that they learn how not to die from a pressure plate trap. If our experiencers aren't careful, they won't even know what killed them."
Jin nodded. Good, good. In the original game, the traps had never been particularly dangerous. If you observed and progressed carefully, you would rarely die. However, if they wanted to propose Skyrim as an all-purpose adventuring learning kit, then the traps needed to be taken up a notch.
Hashimi briefly explained the contents of the new traps to him. Random poisonous needles jabbed in between the stone plates of the floor. One wrong step and you'd find yourself shitting and bleeding yourself to death. Oxygen deprivation chambers. Fire sigils exploding the room and collapsing the ceiling if you failed to disarm them. Stuff like that, relatively simple, nothing that a decades-old warrior from a combat sect shouldn't be able to solve relatively easily.
"I also changed the puzzle into something more complicated. A basic cryptography question, really, but while it might be simple to us mind cultivators, the experiencers we'll be drawing in will likely need to think about it for at least a few minutes."
Jin found himself nodding along. Hashimi really was taking the whole project very seriously; he knew how to appreciate a good work ethic.
Mentally, he assigned finishing Kodlak a higher priority.
Effort should be rewarded.
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AN: Gonna be combining the tournament and the skyrim development in the next few chapters to see if I have the skill to push two plot points at once. Never to late to grow! Tournament is finished on Patreon, so if you ever felt like supporting an aut- I mean artist, I'm available as a target.