The odd feeling of distress faded away after a minute or so, all while Yuriko tried to figure out where it was coming from. Meditating to enter the dreamscape wasn't feasible, considering her true body wasn't in a place of repose.

Rather, she was standing back while her companions were busy wiping out a flood of giant scorpions that had metal and crystalline tails, the tips of which fired plasma beams. She might have called them lasers, after what movies she saw in Astoria, but subsequent research and some critical thinking revealed that proper lasers weren't actually visible to the naked eye. Anyway, the metal scorpions' tail beams were quite fascinating since only the origin point contained whatever technique it used. The beam, and the subsequent damage, was a result of natural laws and reactions. Studying it through her Anima perception made her feel as if she were approaching touching an Ennoia.

Unfortunately, her own Truths clashed against the burgeoning ones. The feeling was as if she reached for a small glass sphere within a box she couldn't see inside of, only for her fingers to stop and bounce off from it and onto the more familiar Truths she held.

Still, the exercise wasn't entirely futile since she was able to derive some insight from the observation process. Well, that and she enjoyed bashing the metal bugs every now and then. There were too many for their small group to contain anyway, and they were a couple of biomes from reaching their daily limit.

The second layer's monsters weren't that much more potent than the ones found in the first layer, just that there were about three times as many of them in each biome instead. They were tougher, but by the slightest of margins, though she suspected it was actually because she was too powerful to notice the difference.

Heron and Gwendith certainly didn't seem to have more difficulty in fighting, though Carina certainly felt it. The greenette and Sir Blue had to focus fire on a single scorpion for half a minute before they damaged it enough to bring it down, and if the pair worked alone, they would have been overwhelmed.

She casually used an Invisible Edge to sever a scorpion's tail before the stinger could fire a beam at Sir Blue's…back? The wisp didn't have a face, and there was no discernible way to tell if he rotated to shift direction, but the sentient orb had been lightning-blasting another scorpion in the opposite direction of the one she intercepted.

Ka-chunk!

The metal bug gave out a high-pitched squeal, turned around and charged her instead of Carina and Sir Blue. Yuriko drew her Arclight Sword to toy with the creature instead of finishing it off. At the same time, she fired off a couple of Edges to ease up the pressure on her companions. Ilvarra and Ryoko weren't that good in direct combat after all, though the former's use of a submachine gun proved as effective as Carina's plasma rifle, which meant the silverhead used up a magazine of bullets to put down a single scorpion. Ryoko wasn't even trying to fight and was just preoccupied with reading something on her tablet. Saki kept Yuriko's other handmaiden safe, however.

The Arclight Sword was an arming sword—a one-handed weapon that was often paired with a shield, or a parrying dagger, she supposed. Not quite the same as the rapier or sabre that she practised in Astoria with the HAMA and fencing club, but the foundational techniques were similar. Most notably, an arming sword was not the preferred melee weapon against a beast. For a foe that was covered by a tough exoskeleton, a blunt weapon would have been more useful. One with reach, preferably, such as a poleaxe, a longspear, or a glaive? That only really mattered if she was mundane, however, and if the Arclight Sword wasn't capable of blasting out Crescent Waves. Not that she used it, anyway.

She was whiling away time while keeping an eye on her friends. She could end the swarm with a simple expression of Animakinesis, but if she fought all the battles, then she would be the only one to progress.

She casually practised her footwork and her defences while operating at a slower speed than the scorpion. She moved no faster than what Ilvarra could manage, and with a similar amount of strength. Which meant her practice was more like solving a puzzle rather than an expression of overwhelming strength.

'Basic sword techniques are really meant for humanoid foes,' she thought idly while she caressed the edge of the sword against the scorp's pincer and nudged it away from her. She couldn't actually stab the thing's face without stepping well within reach, and she was still working out the timing and angle to allow her to do so without moving faster than her self-imposed limit.

It wasn't as if the scorpion was all that good at fighting within melee, and it left wide openings that she could have taken advantage of within the first couple of seconds of the fight. Its typical mode of fighting was probably to blast with a tail beam, then finish off the wounded prey with pincers. Not that the thing wasn't lightning quick, but the movements were repetitive and limited in scope.

After a few minutes, Gwendith froze and shattered half of the remaining swarm while Heron killed the rest with precise stabs to the brain. Yuriko stepped smoothly into the gap of her toy's attack and stabbed the Arclight Sword directly into an eye, the blade angled to penetrate deeply into the 'head'. The thing shuddered and collapsed.

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Instead of blood or haemolyph coating the tip of Arclight, it was stained with golden oil. Bits of metal, electrical circuitry that she wouldn't have recognised if she hadn't spent time in Astoria—and Irvalla, come to think of it—clung to the edges for a moment before they fell off. She guessed that the scorpions weren't animated with Arcana, Chaos, or any other kind of esoteric energy, or at least, not primarily so, but by technology. Or pseudo-tech, considering they were in Shangria. Either way, the scorpions destroyed earlier began to disintegrate, a full minute after they were put down.

"Hmm, good work," Yuriko said softly, though she knew her words were heard by everyone. Gwendith grinned at her while Heron shrugged. Carina and Ilvarra scowled, knowing full well that they were out of their depth, at least for the monsters of this biome. Ilvarra wasn't a combatant, and the robotic scorpions were resistant to Carina's methods.

She frowned as the distress emanating from the dreamscape caught her attention once again. In her incarnation self, she was in the midst of meditation as she delved into the mysteries of the Bladeless Sword. In Shangria, it wasn't quite late enough to end the day, which was admittedly strange, how time desynchronised. But then again, the days in the second layer were just off compared to the time in the first. The days were longer by half an hour or so, so instead of twenty-four hours in a cycle, it was twenty-four and a half.

Then again, it suddenly occurred to her that she didn't need both bodies in the dreamscape to track a distress call.

Oh, but her train of thought shouldn't be interrupted so easily. She might lose the insight. She clicked and tongue and said, "I need to meditate, set up camp, please."

"Yes, young mistress," Ryoko answered easily as she snapped her novella closed.

Yuriko took on a seated meditation pose, though she hovered above the sandy ground. She sank into a trance and smoothly moved her incarnation's train of thought to her true body. Following a distress call would be easier if she were on the same plane after all.

Then, she flung herself into the dream and found herself in the familiar scene. Mists covered the horizon, though there were none within her Anima reach. Green tendrils covered her surroundings, thick enough to cover everything else if they were truly opaque. She couldn't move towards the threads as one body, but it was simple enough to track which one it was that throbbed at her.

Considering she'd only notice if the thread's owner was someone she knew, rather than someone who knew of her, the list was suitably short compared to the rest. Er, only comparatively, though. She knew a lot of people, and the threads came from everywhere rather than just where she was locally.

…now that she focused, there was more than one source of distress. She focused on Kato's severed thread for a long moment and sighed. She still had no way to tell if he was really still alive, just that the presence of the severed thread indicated otherwise. But she only assumed that anyone she knew who died would have the thread disappear instead…it was just that she hadn't had any personal acquaintances who'd perished whom she also could observe the thread, too. She couldn't give up hope, either way, but since she couldn't do anything about it right now, she forcefully shifted her attention to other sources.

She traced the thicker threads, the ones that lightly touched her dreamscape body. The new thread, or threads—she wasn't sure—was slowly solidifying, even though she had not met them in person. It, or they, were her children, after all, one way or another.

There was a soft throbbing to the thread, as if they were under light stress. Instincts would have been dormant, reared up inside her. She might not have been anything more than an unwilling and unknowing donor, but they were connected all the same. They were her children. She could reach the thread with her dreamscape body, so she touched it. Now that they were solid enough not to be easily disrupted, anyway.

And she knew instantly that there were two threads intertwined, and they led to an unknown plane. She couldn't force things since the threads were still fragile, but it was enough for her to get a basic reading.

They were closer to Astoria than Shangria.

They were moving closer to Astoria.

Yuriko took a shuddering breath as weakness nearly overpowered her control. She carefully withdrew her touch and sighed. It looked like her incarnation body couldn't linger in Astoria forever.

There wasn't much she could do about her kids, either way. She could go into interstitial space and find a way to reach them, she supposed, but that meant leaving everyone she'd met behind. Plus, she had a feeling that things were just about to get more interesting, so…

She scanned the rest of her close connections and found Carina and Ilvarra's threads to be throbbing with annoyance. She smirked, then moved past them.

Only to frown once she got a better measure of what she was facing. The distress call came from too many threads, and she couldn't identify them. If she used a second dreamscape body, she might be able to hone in on one of the thread clusters, but even then, it might be the work of hours to find the particular one she felt. And for that matter, was it even the same thread that gave out the call earlier?

She wondered if she had the time now to devise a better way to sense these things, but felt that it would be a waste of time. For now, anyway. Perhaps once she ascended? How long would it take to reach Manifestation, anyway? Aside from her Anima reach, she felt her Intent and Will weren't at the optimum point yet.

Actually, she could ascend as soon as she advanced her Radiant Colligia into the next level, Reperta, but if nothing else changes, it would be a flawed ascension. Something she felt sick even contemplating. The next proper point on her journey was still shrouded in fog, and though she knew what she had to do to reach it, she still felt anxious at not seeing the goal.

She spent the rest of her meditation session fidgeting in the dreamscape, and even while she looked, she couldn't discern who was asking for help.

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