67 - You've Got a Friend in Me

<AUTHOR'S NOTE>

Sorry for the delay, and thanks for the concern. I am healthy, I was just basically nocturnal and wanted to fix that. It's better now, I think, but I did end up taking a nap earlier, so I might have messed it up again. Oh well.

I hope you enjoy!

<END AUTHOR'S NOTE>

This challenge almost ends before it can properly begin. The Phoenix construct starts with the same motion as before, punching in front of her from twenty feet away, but this time, rather than a relatively harmless gust of oum, it’s a beam of spiraling flames hot enough to burn a hole straight through my hair as I barely dodge. I’m more prepared for the second, but the end of my hair still can’t quite keep up with the rest of me and gets singed again.

Before I can even finish, she’s in front of me and punching. With no time to dodge, I bring my arm up to block, and between the force and the flames, my arm nearly comes off. It’s healed again a few seconds later, but it hurt like hell.

“Not going easy any more, huh,” I say.

“Nope!” she says cheerily. “Ready to go again?”

“Yes.”

I was caught off guard by her new level of aggression in that previous round, so this time, I do better. I got stronger by reaching Peak 1 star, but with her upping the ante, the power gap is still basically the same. I manage to dodge her first strike and attempt to counter with a flaming fist of my own, but she basically ignores it and uses her oum to block as she attacks again. I manage to dodge and counter once more, but her next attack ends the fight, and a second later, I’m on the ground getting a broken femur healed.

“Just in case you’ll answer, is copying your techniques enough to pass this challenge?” I ask as she helps me to my feet.

“Is that what you believe?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

Damn. She’s gotten better at giving non-answers. Or maybe the first non-answer she gave was built into her programming or whatever is guiding her actions. That would make sense, I guess.

We separate by a few steps, and then right as she’s about to call for the rematch, I strike. This is no time for niceties, and I have something I want to test. 

I try to imitate her spiraling fire attack. I don’t have the amount of oum that she does, so it’s not as powerful, and has less range, but I get a decent version going. I use the natural rotation of the punch to guide the fire and create a beam of fire that’s kind of rotating. It’s not as good as hers, but it’s not bad for an attempt from a Peak 1 star. I’m sure if I was 2 star, I would have been able to spin it faster, but I just don’t have the force to do it quite yet.

Her eyes widen as she sees my attack, but then she does something I didn’t expect. She turns to face me, taking up a half-squatted stance, and makes a motion with her arms like she’s accepting a handoff in American football and absorbs my fire. It’s not true absorption, and it doesn’t go into her core, but it gathers in a ball between her arms, then gets siphoned out onto her arms where it joins the rest of her fire.

“What-?” I start, but get cut off when she attacks again.

The battle ends about ten seconds later, and as she heals me, I lay on the ground and close my eyes, trying to recall what just happened. Absorbing oum from another cultivator’s attack is generally either impossible, or just a really bad idea. She didn’t do the most risky thing and take my oum into her core, but she still took it over and started using it as if it was her own, which should have been harder than she made it look.

“No napping in my chamber,” says the Phoenix picking me up like a sack of potatoes. “If you want to sleep, do it out there.”

“No, I want to go again,” I say.

“Then act like it,” she says, putting me down. 

“How did you absorb my oum like that?” I ask.

“Maybe you’ll find out if you earn my Legacy.”

“Do you have any self-imposed restrictions?”

“No.”

Ah, good. A clear answer. And an answer I like. That means that I can learn how to do that too. And if this really is the Phoenix from the first Floor, then the technique itself shouldn’t be too advanced. Or maybe it is… She did say she was the daughter of the Great Sage.

“Did your father teach you how to do that?”

“No.”

Hmmmm.

“If you don’t-”

I cut her off by using my imitation flamethrower attack. The spiral is a bit tighter this time, and I’m less wasteful with the oum, but it’s still not quite perfect. I might have to go to the antechamber to practice on my own if I want to fully imitate her. At least for the more offensive skills. None of them are too complex, but they’re different from the ones I’m used to.

I watch closely as she absorbs my oum once again, using the same stance and arm motions. This time I get a tiny bit of insight to what’s happening there. I sense her use a fair portion of her own oum to catch mine, and then a bit more enters the ball of my fire before she full takes it over. It’s not all that much though, which only makes me more confused. My first guess was that she had simply brute forced taking control. Maybe she flooded my oum with hers to wipe out my signature and claim it as her own. That’s clearly not what happened there.

She fires the oum right back at me, so I dodge and shoot more fire at her, which she catches once again. I frown even more deeply as this happens. As I observe, I see that she’s not even converting the oum. That oum is still mine. It’s just no longer under my control. I can feel my signature within it as she uses it, but she wields it as if it’s hers.

“Can I at least have a hint?” I ask as she helps me to my feet after I lose again. “How are you controlling my oum?”

“All fire is under my command,” she says. “Ready?”

“No,” I say, attacking her.

After I lose this time, I return to the antechamber. Progress on fire techniques can be made faster out here without the interruption of her constantly bringing me to the brink of death and then healing me, and I need some time to think about what she said. I feel like it was an important hint, but it doesn’t really tell me how she’s doing what she’s doing. Or does it? Regardless, I need some time where she’s not constantly interrupting me to either nearly kill me or kick me out. 

Timmy is still giving Trinity belly rubs when I get out. I guess I was only actually in there for a couple minutes. I’m glad they’re getting along though. It lets me be a bit more hands-off with handling them, since they’re keeping each other entertained.

“Are we leaving yet?” asks Timmy.

Or maybe not.

“Not yet,” I say. 

“Okay.”

He looks disappointed.

“You’re not going to be leaving at all,” I add, realizing I forgot to explain my plan to him.

“What?”

“Do you remember at the beginning of the Started Quest when they said that if you were still in the Outlands at the end, they would teleport you back? You’re going to wait for that, and then you’ll appear back on the circle that we started on.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be leaving alone in a couple days.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“You’ll only be alone for a couple days,” I say. “But I’ll need to move fast, and I won’t be able to keep you safe.”

“I’ll be alright,” he says. “I’m stronger now!”

“Not strong enough. You’re staying here. It won’t be for long.”

“But-!”

“No buts. You’re staying here. That’s final.”

He protests more, but I ignore him as I walk back into my room. I hear him knocking on my door from the outside, but fortunately, the doors are locked and sealed by someone much more powerful than me, so he can’t get in. 

It did cross my mind that now that I have access to Trinity’s voidspace, I could keep him in there as I travel, but that would honestly be worse. If the two options are leaving him here where he has unlimited food and water and no danger, or leaving him in a pitch black closet with a corpse, it’s obvious which option is better. He’d be alone either way, but at least he’ll be able to move around here.

I turn my thoughts away from Timmy and back to the Phoenix’s control of fire oum. I wanted to practice out there where I’d have more room, but that won’t be possible with Timmy around, so I’ll just have to make do in here. Can I move the bed? Can I destroy the bed? There’s a pretty solid chance of that happening if I’m working with fire. I guess I could ask Sam, but can I bother the Floor Lord with something so trivial?

Of course I can. He said to call if I had any questions, and if he decides it’s a problem, he can tell me to piss off. Plus, I get the impression from my previous two interactions with him that he won’t mind at all.

“Sam,” I call.

“Yes, dear,” he says, appearing on the bed with a rose in his mouth

What the hell?

“Nevermind. Go away.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” he says, getting up. “I was just making a joke. I thought we were close enough to joke.”

“What gave you that impression?” I ask.

He scratches his chin a few times. “You know, I’m not sure. I haven’t made a new friend in… a while. Now that I think about it, I guess you’re supposed to take things slower with new friends. Though none of the Administrators ever seemed to get annoyed…”

“Probably because they were scared of you.”

“And you’re not?”

Am I? I don’t really get a sense of danger from him, and from what I know of the Tower, barring extreme circumstances, he can’t actually do anything to me. I do wonder if this Legacy counts as an extreme circumstance, but if not, I don’t think there’s anything to fear.

“No,” I say.

“Interesting,” he says, leaning forward. “Well, what did you want to ask?”

“I wanted to know if I could move or destroy this bed.”

“That’s all?”

“I guess if you’re willing, I have more questions, but that’s the most pressing of them.”

“I’m always willing to answer more questions. And as for the bed…” He snaps his fingers and it vanishes. “There you go! You can just call for me when you want it back!”

“Can you do the nightstands too while you’re here then?”

Another snap later and the room is completely empty.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“No, this is perfect,” I say.

“What about your other questions?”

I think for a few seconds about what would be best to ask him. I have a lot of questions about the Phoenix, but I’m not sure which I should ask first, or what he’s allowed to say. I guess I might as well start with the base question and work backward from there.

“How does the Phoenix control other peoples’ oum?”

“I can’t answer that,” he says immediately.

Of course.

“She said she didn’t have any self-imposed restrictions. Is that true?”

“Yes. The Phoenix of the first Floor had no self-imposed restrictions.”

“Then she got some later?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Was the technique to control other peoples’ oum taught to her by the Great Sage?”

“Not directly.”

“So she learned some oum from him, then used that knowledge to create that technique?”

“Maybe.”

I see a flash of amusement in his eyes. Did I say something strange just now?

“What’s so funny?”

“I can’t answer that,” he says, his smile widening.

“What did she mean when she said that all fire was under her command?” I ask.

“She means that all fire is under her command,” says Sam. “What else would it mean?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

“Fair,” he says with a shrug.

“Is the way to pass the first challenge to learn her techniques?”

“That’s a bad question.”

Hmmm. I guess it is, since there’s more than one way to pass, so the way doesn’t exist.

“How many ways are there to pass the first challenge?”

“Three.”

“What are they?”

“One is to defeat her. The other two, I can’t say.”

“And I assume that means you also can’t say that learning her techniques is one of those two ways.”

“Correct. I can’t say that.”

He puts emphasis on the word “say” which more or less confirms my suspicions. It also raises some new ones.

“Why are you helping me so much?” I ask.

“I’m just doing the duty I agreed to you and answering questions for those pursuing the Legacy of the Phoenix,” he says innocently. 

“Is that the full truth?”

“It’s the technical truth.”

“What’s the full truth?”

He shrugs. “Boredom? Pity? Empathy? I dunno. I think you’re right about your situation being unfair though. You’d figure out at least one of the ways to pass the first challenge if you had enough time, and while I’m bound by the rules, the Phoenix and I go way back, and I know she wouldn’t want to pass up on a promising inheritor for some silly reason like the Starter Quest. I can’t blatantly break the rules, but I can bend them a little bit if you’re clever enough to catch on.”

“And telling me that isn’t breaking the rules?”

“Nope!” he says happily. “As I said, the Phoenix and I go way back. Another Floor Lord might be more restricted, but me? She basically set the restrictions up as formalities as part of the required process to leave a Legacy. They’re pretty loose.”

“So you’re allowed to freely share information about things outside the Legacy challenges?”

“Yes, but she’s a private person, so I’m not just going to spill all her personal details.”

“Fair enough,” I say.

That works for me. There’s still plenty I can get from that. And since he’s apparently able to freely share the details of how the Legacy was set up, I’ve already got a couple questions in mind. As usual, time to start with the most telling one and work back from there.

“What were the criteria that the Phoenix chose to judge her potential inheritors by?”

“Now that is a clever question.”