Chapter 4: Old Men stuck in their ways shall foverer be done away with by the young

Simply standing there and looking at the female Elder, as she held the illusion Room in her hands and looked at it with a blank gaze was an excruciating experience. And it wasn't only Jin who started getting anxious from the waiting, as after a few minutes even Elder Lung and Elder Qin started exchanging confused looks.

As the few minutes stretched into what must have been half an hour, the two Elders even decided to consider intervening.

"This is ridiculous, the boy must have failed to create a proper illusion somehow. There is no possible scenario in which Flower would take more than this amount of time to clear a Room made by an outer disciple," Elder Lung said with a frustrated growl.

Meanwhile, the number of disciples looking at the examination process from behind the large stone gate had increased.

Elder Qin ran his fingers over his beard as he briefly contemplated. "It is certainly unusual. However, it might be that she is just taking her time due to the supposed novelty of the scenario. Examining all aspects of the combat system, instead of just the difficulty and the fluidity attributes," he eventually said.

The other Elder looked like he wanted to add something to that, but bit his tongue with a glance at Jin.

Perhaps Flower was not someone known for her extensive examination process, or her patience, and the Elder simply didn't want to criticise her in front of a disciple.

If the delay was being caused by the woman being thorough, then Jin would have very much liked it if she could stop.

His knees were slowly turning into jelly.

If he didn't get the promotion he'd be kicked out of the sect and left to fend for his own in this horrible feudalistic shithole these people called civil society.

Thankfully, several minutes later, just as Jin was about to collapse from the stress and Elder Lung began insisting again that they should do something, Flower came to herself with a small shake of her head.

She gave Jin a neutral look and went back to stand next to the other two examiners, still holding the illusion Room.

It was worrying how she didn't say anything, and despite Jin knowing that his illusion Room couldn't have been that bad, her neutral countenance worried him.

"I finished with my part of the testing," she announced. "Elder Lung, Elder Qin." She glanced at both the men. "Which one of you would like to go next?"

"I think you should go first, Elder Lung," Elder Qin said, glancing at the other man. "I don't want to delay this process any longer than necessary and if both of you agree then the exam is over anyway."

It seemed that the Elder responsible for the outer disciples held some sort of tertiary power regarding the examination process. If one Elder said yes, and another said no, then the third would decide. It was a good sign for Jin since he wouldn't fail with just one no.

"All right, I'll do it," Elder Lung said with a sigh, as if he was being forced to do something truly disgusting, other than just following his responsibilities as an Elder of the sect.

He took the illusion Room from Flower and looked down at it almost disparagingly. Jin refrained from clenching his fists, knowing that the act would be caught by the Elder's superior senses.

The man's eyes blanked out, and the illusion Room glowed a violent purple for a moment, signalling that someone had entered it; or, in more scientific terms, had started interacting with it.

An illusion Room worked by connecting the mindscape of the person using it with the scenario inscribed within it. It did not create a miniature version of the user and inflict on them a miniature version of the scenario trapped inside a fancy box. That was just a misconception that some peasants living around the mountain of the sect had about the product being developed there. They told each other tales of how wrathful cultivators shrank people and locked them inside the Rooms sometimes.

The second that Elder Lung was gone, Elder Flower suddenly burst into laughter.

Jin and Elder Qin both gave her concerned looks, but it was only the latter of the two that asked what the issue was.

"Is something the matter, Elder Flower?"

"It's nothing," the woman replied with a small smile. "Just thinking about Elder Lung fighting the monstrosity inside that room. The man's no warrior. What did you call it, Dragonslayer Ornstein?" she asked, turning to Jin.

The young man awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. Dragonslayer Ornstein was indeed not a name that had any particular meaning in this world. Dragons might have actually existed, but they were too powerful to actually be hunted in any capacity. Naming anything dragonslayer was a bit arrogant.

Wyvern?

Maybe.

But, if he was already committing intellectual copyright fraud then he might as well honour the original intentions of the developers, instead of just slapping a new culture-appropriate name on their products and creations.

"I sort of blanked out on the name and just went something. I planned on changing it in case I came up with something better, but I never did and then the time ran out," he lied.

"Well he won't be slaying any dragons anytime soon, but it was certainly an annoying enemy to fight," the Elder admitted with a nod.

"Must have been quite troublesome, if you would go so far as to say that it was annoying," Elder Qin mused.

"It was certainly something new."

"That's good to hear," Jin muttered.

He glanced at Elder Lung, still immersed in the illusion Room, only to take a surprised step back as the man's eyes opened.

The man snorted and looked at Jin with a complicated look before handing over the illusion Room to Elder Qin.

"As expected, a complete waste of time," he said.

"What makes you say that?" Elder Flower asked with a frown.

"Incomprehensible surroundings, loud music that distracts from the actual combat, an oddly designed enemy. It's as if the illusion was created with the sole purpose of ruining any immersion, and distracting the user of the Room with as much stimuli as possible, to prevent them from actually drawing combat experience from the work," he explained.

"That was the point of the whole thing, to create novelty. By definition, novelty is at the beginning a bit overwhelming." Jin couldn't help but interject, immediately shutting his mouth again when the Elder threw him a smouldering glare, heavenly energy shining in his eyes.

What he'd just said could have been taken as an insult. He cursed internally. Definitely not a smart move. Saying that novelty could be overwhelming was implicitly insulting the man for having a too-small brain to understand new concepts.

Elder Qin sighed. "I guess it's up to me to decide the end result of this exam."

Elder Lung looked at Flower, clearly surprised. Almost as if asking, 'You really passed it?'

Jin was honestly starting to very much doubt the professionalism of the sect that he was now bound to. In what world did examiners nitpick each other's decision in front of the examinee?

This one, apparently.

Also, in what world were examiners so biased? Jin was perfectly willing to admit that his rendition of that particular Dark Souls level was a bit challenging to go through from a simple aesthetic perspective, but it was still clearly visible that the work was quality in its own way.

Novelty was something to be celebrated, not cursed at. Was he really going to experience the fate of Ibn Al-Haytham?

"Going in," Elder Qin reported.

"The combat system was clearly innovative, and the argumentation that we need novel opponents to prepare for demons is very much valid." Elder Flower said back to the other Elder.

Jin didn't know if he had the mental capacity to listen to their argument. After all, he now stood on a precipice, Elder Qin holding his fate quite literally, in his hands.

At least he could trust a man to be purely objective, considering that his reputation amongst the outer disciples was very much that of a fair if strict Elder. The only issue was naturally that if Jin had indeed made an actual mistake,

Elder Qin wasn't going to pass him simply for any sentimental reasons.

"What's the point of fighting someone in an environment that is so decisively out of one's experience that one first dies several times from the distraction of the novelty?" Elder Lung retorted in the background, while Jin continued having his existential crisis.

If he got expelled from the sect now, the amount of fucked that he was could not even be quantified. He would have wasted his initial cultivation pathways on this stupid scenario-generating piece of garbage, only to have a masterpiece like Dark Souls insulted by someone who probably wasn't even as educated as the average American high school student, which was an insult in itself really.

Thankfully, unlike Elder Flower and Elder Lung, Elder Qin seemed to actually be efficient at his job. It was only 5 minutes of pure earth-shattering anxiety that Jim had to suffer before the man exited the illusion Room.

"He passes," the man said clearly and calmly.

The words caused Lung, who had lost the Elder epithet in Jin's internal narration, to throw his hands in the air and promptly storm off. Literally, in his case. He dissolved into a tornado of wind which flew up into the air and up the mountain.

Very dramatic exit.

-1/10 for shit personality.

Jin just stood there, confused. He had been working and thinking only about this exam for seven days straight now with no minute of respite. To have it end in such an anticlimactic manner, the two Elders looking at him expectedly as if they wanted him to thank them or something, made him feel more than any of his other experiences that he was in another world.

However, in a setting like this, there was a general rule one could follow when one got confused.

When in doubt, bow.

Jin bowed at a stiff angle towards the Elders and put his fist in his palm. "Thank you, Elders, for your guidance," he said.

"Well, I haven't guided you in any sort of way, but you're welcome nonetheless," Elder Qin snarked, while Elder Flower simply put her hands together and gave Jim a short nod. As sure a sign of respect as any that he was going to get. Especially from someone of such a comparatively higher rank than his own.

"I must commend you for having created such a unique fighting style. Obviously, it has issues and repetitive instances but perhaps the scenario actually merits an updated version once you have had more time to truly think about how the weight of the lance can be used," Elder Qin said. "About the aesthetics, while I do see what Elder Lung meant, I rather appreciated the destabilisation that such a new environment would have on a warrior. Combat, which is what we're training warriors in, does not generally occur in a comfortable or familiar space. It is rather in an unfamiliar place that warriors die, which is why it's good to prepare them for that. All in all, I have to say that I do not believe your scenarios will find mass appeal considering the difficulty and the feeling of unease such a new environment generates. That doesn't mean, however, that they are not useful and won't help anyone."

Jin nodded. That had been a very thorough explanation. Also a very fair one. He wasn't able to create a combat system that made perfect sense in such a short amount of time. His level design and architectural aesthetic would also naturally appear odd to people from this world, who did not have the historical context of the gothic period.

He bowed once again. "Thank you, Elder Qin, for your guidance. Perhaps it is better to succeed in a small pond first before losing one's will to fight in the big sea," he added metaphorically, which elicited a small smile from the man.

It was Elder Flower who stepped forward next. "The combat system was very new, and also very difficult to beat on the level of physical restriction I was functioning under. However, it is definitely noticeable that you do not have any resources available to you on how such an opponent would actually fight. After a certain amount of time, I was able to determine a set of movements that I could commit to with a sword, which would elicit a very specific reaction from Ornstein. Since this is very much the death sentence of any fighter, being predictable, in the end, he was not even able to touch me, even though I was functioning at a physical level slightly beneath his. I understand of course that you had to create the whole thing from scratch yourself, but this is still a fatal flaw that we will have to fix. Perhaps it is unavoidable that the fighting style that does not in fact exist will eventually fall into a predictable pattern, however, extensive work should be invested into making the period before this happens as long as possible," she said. She seemed to consider for a second before saying another thing. "If this is the path you're going to walk, I would suggest dedicating a few of your cultivation nodes to more martial purposes."

Jin nodded and bowed once again. "Thank you for your guidance, Elder Flower."

His mind meanwhile was stuck on something else that she had said. 'A fatal flaw that "we" will have to fix.'

He wasn't the only one who'd noticed.

"That is a very direct proposition, Elder Flower", Elder Qin said with a small grin. "After all, you are currently the only true martial cultivator in our entire sect."

The woman smiled beatifically. "Well, being the only one of something does mean that the price of my services trumps the price of other things which exist in abundance," she turned towards Jin. "What do you think? If you're going to be creating combat systems you're going to need the help of the only person in the sect who knows about fighting on a very personal level. In that regard, I'm also visiting the Mad Monks Sect soon. They are known for using staves and if anyone will be able to help you achieve the next level for Ornstein, it will be them. I think it would be a sad thing to see the scenario you've created decay because it was created by a relative amateur."

Jin bowed, for the umpteenth time today. "I would gladly accept such an offer."

Apparently, it was time to ride the coattails.

 -/-

AN: Lung couldn't handle the bantz. I've always had difficulties created such obviously asshole characters in the past, but life experience has taught me that dickheads like this actually exist. Stupid, malicious, stuck in their ways. Sigh. It seems like Jin made an enemy today, and an ally, but, which will prove more valuable or more dangerous? Find out in the next installment of... Peepee poopoo