There is certainly not much more I can help you learn in a mere book, beyond the reasons behind the technique and how to do it. The book is one of the worst ways to learn how to fight, for a book cannot pick up on the minor mistakes you do, the habits you built from the foundations.

  As such, find a master. Find someone to teach you these techniques, or better yet-- Reteach you them. This book is a collection of techniques, yes, but the techniques within are incomplete as you rely on just one man to teach you all there is to know.

  The techniques within are incomplete for they may be an entire sect’s knowledge of the technique; however a true master of the technique I am likely not. You need to remember that for most written techniques; the scribe is likely not the master who taught the scribe.

  -The Legendary Techniques of Yinyue, Written by SSR++ Adventurer Frienu

  70

  Dialogue

  Bariton was taken aback by the phrasing Shammus used to state the war, almost immediately turning on the ball of his foot, similar to how he used to move in battle. The bard looks at the swordsmaster, who simply looks on with an empty look in his eyes.

  “Apologies, was that not the right thing to say?” Shammus’s apology felt more like pouring a bucket of water over a campfire that was the potential reaction. The apology didn’t feel quite real, but more of a necessity, something expected.

  “No, it was just…” Bariton paused for a second, trying to find the proper words to respond. “Unexpected?” Bariton throws a word at the wall, and sees if it sticks. It didn’t feel like it had, so he kept trying others. “Nay, it felt more shocking.”

  Shammus nodded sagely in response, his red eyes closed. The nod felt more false than anything else in this hallway of potentially, and likely, infinite length. “Would that not make it the wrong thing to say in a scenario? Should I, a participant in conversation, say the expected to allow the flow of such?”

  Bariton shook his head nearly immediately, “No.” The no he let out had more emotion than the bard previously wanted. He reached out and stopped himself before grabbing Shammus’s forearms.

  “To say the expected is not to conversate.” Bariton says, turning to face the candles. “To say the expected is to ensnare me into an echo chamber. And doesn’t that just kill your soul a little?”

  Shammus flinched when Bariton asked that, and Bariton bit his tongue for his stupidity in his rage. But Shammus seemed to be processing it, turning to face the candles in the void the same way.

  Shammus’s words answer to Bariton’s question shocked him a little bit, but of course a living legend like the swordsman would answer akin to that. He got to live for a good time while powerful, compared to the bard, who only reached this level of power in a faux environment.

  A place with people only as real as the average dungeon monster, someone only as real as the flesh they can tear through. Maybe Shammus felt people meant something no matter where they were, maybe the rest of the party thought that way.

  But Bariton had no way of knowing. He felt like he was alone in the answer that he was just a larger candle. The moon causes tides to change greatly, but a grand enough blaze would do the same.

  A grand enough blaze would be more fitting to Bariton, at least so the bard thought. The moon would cause destruction if it were to randomly appear, flowing about throughout the void surrounding the changing building.

  The fire of a blaze is much more fitting to the bard, or the party at the very least. Even if Shammus felt himself the moon; Bariton was silently introspecting at how he was just the flame, the flare that violently tore apart the surroundings, even if with a good goal.

  “You said back before our training arc, our built up control, that we’ll likely see more of white haired foes, and that you knew them…” Bariton opened his mouth, staring out the window. Realizing just how far they’d walked. The hallway should have had the geometry of the building outside. “But we kind of brushed over it in that you were a legend from the war of Lirdsuania.”

  Shammus noticably flinched for a moment, his eyes now not just looking out the window but refusing to look upon the bard. “Indeed; the foes with white hair were my old…” The swordsman paused, gripping his cane tightly. Bariton noted the notes of the minor scale simmering from within it. “My past allies. They are no longer such ever since the King arose to power.”

  Shammus turned to face Bariton, not as a lover should view the other, but with a violent glint in the eye. “And I request your help to rid them of the tower, and rid the party of this issue.” Shammus looked down to his feet as he let the request tumble, and Bariton caught eye contact, captured it.

  “Ha!” Bariton couldn’t help but let out a laugh as he stepped around the swordman. “Please, you cannot be serious…” Bariton shook his head, letting out more of a laugh than ever before. “You say you love me than give me a request you know I’d have said yes to… Please, let’s go gather our forces!”

  Shammus was out of view by the time Bariton quit the speech, quit the acceptance, but he heard his breathing quicken. “Well? What are you waiting for?” Bariton held out his hand towards the swordsman, and he didn’t quite walk back to where the main room probably was.

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  He waited instead, for his new partner to grab his hand. He waited with his eyes closed, and knew full well the Tower made the everchanging location rotate the hallway they were in while Bariton was waiting.

  But, it also seemed to match the will of the Demigods, leading them along to where they wanted to go. It wasn’t an everchanging maze, rather an everchanging direction, and finally the warmth of a hand met Bariton’s.

  “Took ya long enough…” Bariton shrugs as he takes Shammus’s gloved hands forward, and finally makes it back to the main floor, with hundreds of other couples dancing, other faces that meant nothing to the bard, meant nothing to anyone but those close by.

  The two were now walking side by side. The wood left a nice click beneath Bariton’s heels and Shammus’s boots. And of course, the room was absurdly large atop of everything else, and while Pallad, Clara, and Judine were nowhere to be found, they’re tunes certainly weren’t.

  Bariton and Shammus both walked in the same method, which Bariton shrugged assuming that maybe it related to the song within the cane. “I wonder, we both clearly see the world so differently, as we’re demigods of different, yet we both know what to look for…”

  Bariton began speaking without thinking, it was a usual habit the bard held. “Maybe it’s just because we value similar things, maybe it’s because we hold the same morals, but I doubt it’s so simplistic as that.”

  Shammus stopped to listen to the bard, and then thought for a moment before responding. “It could be that we wield the same ideas about what to do with similar enough data.” The swordsman steps forward, swinging around the cane as he took in the room, or at least acted out doing so.

  “It’s differing data, sure, but are we not going towards where we feel divinity the strongest, even if for me it’s the void’s connection to, and for you it’s…” Shammus paused for a moment, and Bariton took the chance to continue.

  “True, it’s the stronger symphonies that are somewhat similar in instrumentation, and tune. All of us have imbribed fates, don’t we?” Bariton asked, but Shammus simply laughed. He took Bariton’s hand again and began walking ahead towards the stronger songs.

  “Maybe that’s a question for Judine.”

  Shammus’s answer was certainly satisfactory as the two approached the three other demigods of the party. Judine was talking of something or other with Clara and Pallad, and the three stopped when they saw the grim look on Shammus’s face, something Bariton could only assume was on his own.

  “What may be the problem?” Clara asks, her eyebrow raised, and her face now painted in worry. “You two certainly hadn’t had the shortest relationship ever, so something else is getting you two down…”

  Shammus took a deep breath while Bariton watched it all occur. “We will have to kill my old comrades, and likely not just once.” Shammus took a step forward, but seemed to break in some imperceivable way as his main melody had a random sharp note.

  Bariton stepped forward. “This is because the System that made this damned tower is a sadistic bastard.” The bard remembered back to the glasses, and he clenched his fists together in some way to stifle his own anger. “It’ll likely force us to kill and kill and kill or wind up slain to give the other ones a chance at godhood.”

  “That I doubt.” Shammus closes his eyes as he seemed to finally compose himself. His song stated otherwise, being full of motifs that Bariton had no way of recognizing. “The System has already groomed us to become gods. We are set to slay the 50 others who were sent to the tower before us to prove to it that we are the worthy ones.”

  Shammus stood on the wooden floor, and took a step towards Judine. “Please, you are the current head judge, yes?” Judine nodded, and so Shammus took a step back once more, and lightly bowed down his head. “Please. I requested help from my partner already, but I must request your own.”

  Shammus looks up to face the other three, Bariton noticing a fire in Shammus’s eyes he hardly ever saw, he hardly got a chance to see within the tower until just now. “Please, all four of you are necessary for us to make it past my old allies.” The swordsman stood where Shammus once did, and he looked around the four.

  “This will not end with one of us dead, the System knows this.” The swordsman took a deep breath, the vibe of the man once known as Shammus dead for just this monologue. “We will prevail against my old allies, and with that weight gone from my shoulders, done with allies I can truly trust to have my back in combat.”

  “Please. Let me trust you.” Shammus finally returns as a long pause grew between them. The group’s pause allowed Bariton to bite his lip as he thought. Finally, the pause broke as Bariton clapped.

  “Obviously, you’ll have to trust me, we’re in a relationship.” Bariton stepped forward and pulled Shammus back, and the rest of the party nodded in approval. Of course, Clara had to add more to his stage play.

  “And of course, if Bariton trusts you; we have no choice but to follow him into battle.” Clara sighs as she steps towards Shammus, who was calm in Bariton’s grasp. Pallad stepped forward and lightly punched Shammus in the arm.

  Shammus flinched, but Pallad simply laughed. “If you dare go into battle without me, you’ll regret it! ‘Cause we fight together or die trying to fight alone!” Pallad looked on with his hammer.

  He heard words ring out from who they presumed to be Wrath, but that’s when Bariton noticed something. These sins’ songs were similar in power to his own. Similar to his party’s. Not a gods like Heavenly or Insanity.

  “Alright, a swell night my friends! Why not hit the hay, the party tonight was hard, and it may go down harder.” The cup Wrath held contained wine that seemed to flow unnaturally, the wine constantly swirling around without a singular hand motion. “So please, just find any room, you’ll find it reaches your needs.”

  When Wrath snapped his hand, the duo latched to one another wound up in front of a room, with another void with candles across. The same vase they argued about within. Bariton was also hit with a wave of fatigue, not as though he just simply hadn’t noticed before.

  It was unnatural. Something his body hadn’t felt in ages since he reached over Level 1000 from the damned Skeletons. Those things shot the party ahead by miles because Shammus had to share experience.

  Bariton was beginning to spiral down that path, but before he noticed he was being dragged through an open door into a bed. “You are tired randomly too, aren’t you?” Shammus’s voice was soft. With concern sure, but something else.

  It was love. And Bariton was fast asleep before the comforting warmth of another joined him in the bed. He felt joyous even with the threat on the horizon, and his sleep was dreamless. It was also senseless. It was floating in a void of no sound, no light, and nothing to touch.