Rupegia

Chapter 172: Psyche Up – Part 2

Intermission – Skylander Soldier

We march in formation across the island's open field, an almost barren land cleared of trees in preparation for this exercise, but one would barely notice it as it's teeming with men and tents. Even the sky is full of winged soldiers and airships, but the monstrosity that the land-dwellers brought with them overshadows everything.

It's three times as thick as a Leviathan, has dozens of wings like a Kite Dragon, and there's even a swarm of planes flying around it like Dreamers protecting their Mother Moth. It's a thick beauty with a very round bottom, and it's so sexy-looking that the other airship-sexuals and I can't keep our eyes off it.

Luckily, we're pretty good at marching, so we don't make fools of ourselves in front of our ancestors. And since we're talking about them… nobody could believe that there are ancient Chimera spirits among the guests, let alone that they've sworn loyalty to land-dwellers, but the Behemoth floating above us is proof that it's true. There are also the [Sense Presence] fellas, who all agree that half of the guests really are spirits, and that's creeped out everyone.

"Halt! Line!" the Land Commander orders, and we line up with the land-dwellers, who flank us on each side. They outnumber us on land, but most of the winged soldiers are ours, though nobody knows how good those airplanes they have are.

"Maybe I can get my wings after this…" I mumble absentmindedly.

"Maybe I can get a cozy seat on an airship gun after this," the fella to my right mumbles wryly.

But this is as much chatter as we're capable of as everyone is tense, and the eerie silence from the land-dwellers doesn't help loosen our tongues, while the cold drizzle of a Day of Ne makes our ballsacks recoil. Then I notice that their steel(?) armor is, like, super glossy, and under the sheen, I can see a number of curved lines all over the surface, which is a weird pattern to put on armor.

They do look a bit awfully thin, though. Are they eating well?

Still, I get envious of what they wear and wield as all we get is scale and a gambeson, but then I remember that they're supposed to be Lordsguard, and they serve, like, seven Queens, or something, so I think we're doing fine considering our position. Except that now I'm worried if our levels and skills are high enough to actually fight alongside them.

Aren't we just going to embarrass ourselves here? They even have [Blessing Magic] enchanted into their armor!

Oh… maybe this is why all the officers looked like Waimarie blessed their tea this morning.

Then I notice that a land-dweller mage is walking in front of their line, energetically sprinkling something onto the soldiers. I sniff loudly as I sense a familiar scent, which makes me confused for a second, but then I see the liquid fall onto the armor of the land-dwellers, and that confirms it: the mage is sprinkling blood.

What in Heaven and Hell…?

"Look alive!" the Land Commander suddenly shouts, and the murmuring ceases as everyone clenches their assholes and straightens their backs.

"Ironic words!" a jokester makes a mistake, and the murderous look the Commander throws in his direction makes me think he'd strangle the dog fella if he could.

We all look forward, but then our eyes are drawn to the shiniest winged soldier I've ever seen, which means that they're definitely not one of ours. Their wings are also the purest white and have such a wide span that they could easily wrap around someone like a blanket and hug them tight to make sweet love to them as they're caressed by the ticklish softness of those white feathers.

Weimarie's blessing…

Then the shiny and horned winged angel raises an equally shiny glaive as they begin their speech, "Soldiers! Today, three different cultures, along with that of migrants, unite under a common goal: to protect the Sky Lands and its people! Here, Sky Lander, High Elf, Hauhuri Chimera, and the migrants who have joined us shall all fight side-by-side! There will be glory and Experience aplenty for everyone, but this is still only a prelude to the true fight to come! Show us that you're worthy of accompanying us further into the Fortress of Calamity! Show us your might!"

And their shininess becomes so bright that I can barely force myself to look at them, but I also find it hard to look away. What in Heaven and Hell is going on with that?!

"[Men! What do we say to her challenge]?!" a land-dweller officer suddenly shouts in Andraste, which I can understand a bit, and his gentle but strong voice sounds just like how I imagined an elf would sound.

"[GUIDED BY THE LIGHT]!" the rest of the dwellers roar back so loudly that a few of us even jump in surprise. Then they all suddenly assume a combat posture at the same time, which is eerie as hell.

"To arms!" the Land Commander orders, and so we also assume our combat posture, which is merely "point our sticks forward."

Even their formation is fancy.

Then a horn blows, sounding the unsealing of the dungeon's entrance, which releases the swarm of monsters that was trapped within.

Before we even see a hint of hair, hide, or scales, we hear the distant sounds of explosions coming from far above and behind us, but we were already warned about it, so nobody's surprised when we hear more explosions, now coming from ahead of us. We can't really see what's going on aside from noticing that the rising cloud of black dots stops growing as the monsters suddenly start dropping like flies, which makes this land-dweller weapon quite terrifying.

At least you can see arrows or sense spells. But this? Just a *bang*, then another, and you're dead. All we have to do is wait as scores upon scores of monsters crash down upon the barren ground, and the way that my Experience slowly trickles up proves that a huge number of them are dying.

But the officers also said that this wouldn't last; it's merely a brief test. The explosions stop as suddenly as they began, and now our turn comes. The black cloud of the swarm grows bigger, and the dots take the shapes of flying monsters. Then a low rumble reaches us as the stampede approaches.

"FOR THE KING!" someone shouts excitedly.

"FOR THE QUEEN!" I shout back as the inspiring speech finally gets to me.

"FOR THE QUEENS!" another shouts, and I realize it's the land-dwellers that are shouting, but they're using Reo, so it must be one of our ancestors.

Then I'm suddenly filled with an indescribable feeling. Our ancestors are here, right beside us, and they're willing to bleed for the future of the Sky Lands.

This is the start of our rebirth!

"FOR CHIMERAE GLORY!" I roar as the furor overflows from within my heart. I've resolved to die for my homeland, but it won't be here.

And my rage is contagious, for my comrades also begin to roar. It's a pity that these monsters are mindless, for even orcs would be intimidated in the face of our fierce battle cries.

But we're still far from being worthy of standing alongside our ancestors, for as soon as the mass of monsters collides with our immobile wall of pikes, the crazy land-dweller fellas start fighting like they're possessed. We thought the Punishers that were prowling about a couple of days ago were scary, but they've got nothing on these beasts over here.

This is only an exercise, though, so we should use this difference in level and strength as inspiration to learn from them, for the real battle is still to come.

Intermission end.

Rupegians have an interesting definition of "joint exercise," but we got a neat little live test, so I ain't complaining.

Then lunchtime comes, and the girls feel like it'd be appropriate to invite The Four, so we do so. But when they arrive, we immediately notice a problem: they're a bit resentful of the wives. Maybe they noticed that the girls made them lose quite painfully, or maybe they're just sour after the brutal training, but the important thing is that we can't let this tense atmosphere persist.

Unfortunately, it means that I have the most potential to fix things, so we start to brainstorm together to come up with a solution for this. Fortunately, I quickly get an idea regarding a very interesting topic.

"So, we've established that our Earths are different from each other's, but I'm wondering what cool, unique stuff there is on our home planets," I promptly begin with an eager tone as I give everyone a glance.

"Ooh~…" Samkelo hums as he raises his eyebrows in excitement, and even Caterina seems interested in hearing about this.

Then Lily instantly pokes a hole in my idea, "Yeah, but how will we know what's 'unique' to our worlds unless we talk about every last detail and compare them?"

Shit…

But the gnome boy salvages the plan, "Well, to start, I'm pretty sure there's something fucky going on with the geography around Cambodia-… Cambotcha? How did you pronounce it?" And then he gives the snow cat a smirk.

Thant sighs and slowly explains, mildly offended, "Cambodjia, but I'm from Burme, which is next to Cambodjia."

"I've never heard of Burme, so maybe it's one of the differences between our worlds," I remark.

He doesn't seem to be too eager to talk about his home nation as he continues with a rather dull tone, "It's a big country surrounded by Vietnam, Cambodjia, and Bangledash. It's also near India, so Lily was supposed to know of it," -he very subtly smirks at the cinnamon loli, likely a bit scared of making fun of her- "but now that we know that our worlds are all different, it's obvious that my Burme isn't the same as hers."

"There are a lot of small countries in that area, so I couldn't remember exactly where it was," Lily replies, and by her impassive expression, I know she's hiding her embarrassment at her less-than-stellar geographical knowledge.

And Thant continues, now just a bit more enthusiastic, "But on my Earth, there aren't any small countries in that area. Burme invaded their smaller neighbors after the military coup, but the US and China told them to chill before they could threaten Vietnam since that was right after the Americans pushed out the commie Chinese from there, and they were very protective of their one ally in that area of Asia."

"The US lost the Vietnam war on my Earth," I promptly state.

"Same," Lily hums.

"Not on mine," Chesa softly follows up.

"Vietnam war?" the gnome innocently asks, but nobody feels like explaining it, so we just consider it rhetorical.

Then I ask a non-rhetorical one, "What about Thailand? I remember it being a country in that area."

"I never heard that name before," Thant answers with a shrug.

"Could've been one of the countries conquered by Burme, then," I hum thoughtfully.

And the manchild gnome amusedly remarks, "To be honest, all these names are making a mess in my head. It doesn't help that every Earth has a similar but different history, so I can't keep up with four other timelines."

"I'm not even trying to keep up," Lily casually states.

I snort. "Same… but instead of history, how about we focus on the cool stuff from our world? Like, cutting-edge technology?" We might all be nerds, but we aren't exactly historians, so I'll focus on something more nerdy.

Lily immediately bites and states to me, "You mentioned VR, but my Toto and I hardly spent any time in it since it was still pretty shitty and heavy."

Okay, yeah, that's very much not like my Earth, so I hum in surprise, "Wow. VR is the new craze in my world. We have paper-thin screens that can bend, and they decreased the weight of the headset to almost nothing, so it's really immersive now. I'll also guess that our video cards are better than yours."

"Yeah, we have nothing like that," the cinnamon loli wryly remarks, sounding just a bit envious.

"Oh, I remember that you were surprised to hear about grenade launchers, Wolf," Thant follows up, actually sounding slightly curious now.

But I find his level of focus on GLs weird. "Are you a military enthusiast or something? Why would you know so much about grenade launchers?"

And now he gives me a weird look. "Well, I'm a conscript in the Burmese army, and every soldier is given one."

"I'm sorry, what?" I blurt out as I chuckle, and even the others find it a bit ridiculous.

But the teen cat becomes awkward at the sudden attention and asks defensively, "You guys don't have grenade launchers? How do you deal with drone swarms?"

So I wryly reply, "Well, we use jammers or some other shit. Not grenade launchers."

"Jammers do shit against autonomous drones, so you have to blast them," he answers matter-of-factly.

"Swarms of intelligent killer bots sounds pretty dystopian," the gnome wryly hums and takes a loud sip of his alcohol.

But Thant tempers our fantasies, "They aren't very 'intelligent' though. They just launch grenades towards anything that moves on the ground, so you need airburst to counter and anti-frag plate to survive."

"Anti-frag plate?" I inquire and lean forward, very curious about the cool-sounding name.

"You're a military geek just like my Toto," Lily dryly remarks, and her tone makes it ambiguous whether this is a compliment or not. Then she starts eating her food before it can get cold, which reminds me that I must also eat.

"'Geek'?" Urmeie repeats. It seems that this word doesn't exist in Andraste.

"An amateur enthusiast who has a hobby of collecting knowledge about their favorite topic," Suzy explains since Ted isn't here, and it's amusing seeing everyone give the floating golem doll a concerned glance as they don't know what to make of her.

But the answer makes the Princess frown suspiciously at me, "Wait, so Wolf wasn't actually a weaponsmith back in his Realm? Not even a legitimate scholar?"

I quickly swallow my partially-chewed food and promptly defend myself, "I'm a researcher, so yes, as it's the equivalent of a scholar in this world. It's just that Earth has a huge amount of freely-available knowledge, and there are some people, myself included, who are addicted to learning."

And Lina shyly raises her little hand as she chimes in, "I'm like that, too. I like reading books in the library, and not just novels, so I could maybe participate in certain topics not related to enchanting or smithing."

"Yeah, I basically read a few volumes worth of knowledge about warfare," I add and send my studious little loli a loving smile, which makes her smile back as she bashfully averts her gaze.

"Hmm…" the beary Princess hums thoughtfully, which is a bit weird coming from her.

Now that we've fallen silent, Thant decides to tentatively continue, just a little bit happy to talk about his world, "Anyway, about the anti-frag plate, we're basically back to looking like medieval knights, though this time we have fiberglass visors, and our plate is made of carbon fiber, not metal."

"That sounds cool as fuck," Samkelo reads my mind.

"His world sounds very war-like," Chesa concernedly states, promptly deflating the cat's slowly growing little ego again.

"Yep," Lily agrees and sends me a rather disapproving glance. My Lily wasn't as moralistic as this Alt-Lily, so it's annoying that this fake is wearing her face.

"If that's 'war-like,' then what do you think about ours?" Yunia soberly inquires.

And that makes us, the Earthlings, look away in awkwardness. But then Thant becomes somber, and he grows a child-sized pair of balls that allows him to answer, "Wars here are less brutal. We don't have healing magic back there, so scores of soldiers die or get crippled with each battle."

"Perhaps it's because of your perspective that you were chosen to wield Light," Ciel kindly states, and she's clearly hit the spot because the cat makes a complicated face as he goes silent and looks at his plate, reflecting deeply upon her words.

"Hmm… do you guys not have medi-gel?" the gnome confusedly asks.

"Like in a game?" I blurt out, my geek senses tingling.

And the manchild grins cheekily. "Yeah. Nanomachines, son. The meme became reality."

Then the manchildishness infects me as I swear, "Fuck no, we don't have that shit, which also sounds awesome."

But Samkelo's expression becomes just a bit serious as he adds, "That's weird because medical nanomachines are really important for medicine. You simply can't have gene editing without them."

"Okay, now gene editing sounds cool," Thant chimes in, starting to get over his little blue mood like a man is wont to do when faced with awesomeness.

And the nerdy gnome excitedly continues, "There were some crazies who were starting to alter their bodies, like growing claws, fur, and shit like that, so I'd guess that becoming like the Chimeras here wouldn't be too far off."

"So nanomachines are your version of [Alteration Magic]?" Kaatohe politely interjects, looking very interested in the topic.

But Samkelo snorts crudely. "Not even close. I don't know how to explain this in a way that a Rupegian would understand, so I'll just say that nanomachines are little robots so small that you can't even see them, smaller than dust and spores, and that allows them to enter our bodies and make changes."

So my bronze cat instinctively turns her head to us as we likely have enough "Wisdom" to give a proper comparison.

"They're dumb little golems that enter our blood and travel across our bodies, then do construction work," I speak a joint statement.

"Fascinating…" the curious cat curiously hums, which is ironic.

But we're also curious about the rest, so I promptly move the conversation on, "What about you two girls? What cool stuff is there on your Earths?"

Lily frowns, unsure what to say, but then the pretty mer girl tentatively shares, "What about anti-grav particles?"

"Oh, shit! That's crazy!" I exclaim with a wide smile and grab my horns, mindblown. Then Alissa reminds me to eat since my food is getting cold.

The slender girl becomes a bit shy in the face of my excitement, and she doesn't know how to reply, so she turns to the other Earthlings and asks, her exasperated expression making her look like she's asking for help, "So, no anti-grav on your Earths?"

"Nope. That's exclusive to your world," Lily quietly replies, starting to sound a bit bitter that she can't think of anything cool about her Earth to talk about.

"What did you use it for?" I impatiently ask and continue to eat.

Chesa assumes a cute demeanor and starts playing with her not-green-peas as she starts to deliberate, "Well… we built a few floating cities, including Puanabik, where I was born, and they also serve as space elevators. There are even a few talks about building arks to take pioneers to mars and colonize it."

I once again swallow my half-chewed food and exclaim, "Okay, that's the coolest Earth!"

"And these floating cities helped you escape climate change?" Lily suddenly makes a serious remark.

Now that dampens the mood as it seems that no Earth has escaped it. "Well, yes… most of the Philippines is now underwater, but the lucky few like me live in the equivalent of an apartment block in the sky."

"Wait, the Philippines is still very much dry on my Earth," I worriedly state.

"Same," Samkelo hums, his mouth full.

"Same," Thant echoes, his mouth not full.

"Not on mine," Lily soberly hums. Then she suddenly makes a complicated expression but ends up chuckling. "We built underground cities like dwarves."

"The Gods have a sense of humor," Alissa playfully remarks, and we all chuckle.

"I don't get it; what do you mean?" Urmeie promptly questions with a frown.

So Lily explains with a surprising amount of kindness, "There are only humans on all of our Earths, and I was turned into a dwarf because the people in my world were starting to live like them."

"Shit… are the Gods implying that the beastfolk are violent animals or something…?" Thant quietly talks to himself, unsure if he should be offended.

"They are," Urmeie immediately replies, 0% joking, and Thant makes a complicated expression.

"How did you make underground cities viable?" I push the conversation forward because I don't want to dwell on "are the Gods being racists or not?"

And the cinnamon loli's face lights up as she finally realizes what's unique about her world. "Drills, vibrating drills, but I don't know much about them. Though, I do know a lot about Project Atlantis. It was nothing short of a miracle that so many countries cooperated to build the underground cities before the flood killed millions."

"Flood?" Kaatohe curiously inquires. As a flying-island-cat, seas and flooding are completely alien concepts to her.

So I happily explain to my curious kitten, "Basically, all of our Earths were dying, though apparently, some were more dead than others. The seas were rising and flooding the coasts, reducing the amount of land available to live on as there were no mer, only humans."

The Rupegians also don't have a word for "apocalypse," so Kaatohe hums a very familiar word to her people, "Calamity…"

Samkelo then assumes a very cynical expression as he jokes, "The 'heroes' got ripe enough for harvest, so the 'human experiment' was over, and the 'Earth multiverse' started shutting down."

And I grumble as I can't help but be a bit cynical myself, "I hate how much sense that makes."

"I have no idea what you're all talking about most of the time, but I still enjoy hearing it nonetheless," Kaatohe gently remarks. It's interesting how she's the opposite of Alissa, who hates being left out of the conversation.

And at least my little clingy orange fox has the decency to be embarrassed about it.