空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 38

Week 38 24th March 2025
Last Week Week 37
Next Week Week 39
Home Thread 空の軌跡

This week’s stopping point is the morning of the second day of the tournament. (You’ll have 2 bullet points on the current notebook page.)

Side Quests

Nothing at all this week.

Screenshot

Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.

We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. How’s the tournament?

  5. Who’s looking forward to some sewer exploration?

  6. Do you think it was a good idea to tell Nial about everything?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

4 Likes
恋のパワーはノンストップ。 どんな障害もブレイクスルーだよ。

I finally have a good answer for the line that caught my attention this week; it’s that one.

One of these people doesn’t quite look like the others.

I accidentally wandered into the guild (meant to be going to the equipment shop heh) and talking there got me a little voiced scene where they asked about クローゼ, since we had planned to meet her here. The guy in the guild didn’t know anything, though.

Tournament was fun! We even have the classic talking to all the other competitors while we wait thing. Sometimes repeated patterns are comforting. I’m not so sure how confident I feel about beating a group like the bracers, but seeing the pirates again was very fun. Love these characters story-wise but I dunno about the party – right now if not using arts Olivier felt particularly weak, and Jin is a little too single-target focused.

It’s obvious Joshua knows that one guy (or thinks he does). We still don’t know about Joshua’s history and WHY he’s like this but at this point it feels kind of like a character flaw that he won’t tell anyone a damn thing. We must be in double digit occasions of him acting super suspicious and going “nope, it’s nothing!” Characters being flawed is good for writing but also I want Estelle to smack him a few times when she finally figures it out.

Sewers are notoriously everyone’s favorite place to go in videogames so I’m sure I’m gonna love it. Sounds like the area is optional for training and probably finding some items? I’ll give it a look next week, sure.

Honestly, I’ve criticized our group for being loose-lipped in the past, but I think I’m on their side with talking to Nial this time. For one, because they never stop leaking info, we already know he’s been seemingly trustworthy and there have never been negative consequences. But also with this particular situation, I assume some big public takeover is coming later – didn’t リシャール kind of imply that it wouldn’t stay hidden maneuvering? I think the group needs people on their side who know the truth to back them up, and he’s in a position to even help provide more info.

4 Likes
This week

I don’t expect to see 特務隊 guys in the tournament. Same condition as MC, but I didn’t notice another someone with incomplete team in the prelim.

Not sure if Duke’s allowing criminals to participate means something…

Soldier hit damages aren’t really nothing, but no one uses a skill at all. Just thoughtless attacks. And yeah, sword guy hits too hard. Same or different guy from the one who defeated Agate, I am not sure.

I went to the sewers, but Joshua won’t use the key. Gotta tell the team first.

White curry’s :curry_rice: and not just drinks.

It might be a good bet to tell Nial for a large part, but even allies can get information extracted. Also, restaurant may have ears.

4 Likes
Week 38

Both the pirates and special forces in the tourney were a surprise to me, although it probably shouldn’t have been— this is the final chapter and we need some dramatic confrontation! From a reasonable perspective it’s definitely weird for the special forces especially to flaunt their skills in public, but I suppose they could also be trying to ensure the bracer team doesn’t get the castle invitation? Maybe I’m overthinking it.

As soon as we got the sewer key I knew we were going to be doing some end-game bonus dungeon crawling. Those punks are alright. Wonder if there’s any treasure worth finding in there :eyes:

I’m sort of ok with telling Nial everything, but would’ve been more ok with it if they’d started out with the warnings about the army before spilling it. At this point I think they can trust him to write for truth and justice and all that, so it’s not about Estelle and Josh making bad decisions. Though I’m with @polv in that it was a poor choice to have the conversation in public. In general I’m sort of disappointed that there isn’t more of an atmosphere of intrigue in the city to go along with the royal takeover. Everything seems like business as usual, and the casual dinner with Nial just adds to it.

Olivier has some great lines this week! I understood maybe half of them. Estelle is right, 意味不明すぎる.

I hope we’re going to get some answers about this before the finale ends. The blatant hints about his mysterious past have been popping up all game long, it’d drive me nuts if it continued into the sequel!

5 Likes
Spoilers

I kinda agree with you on the city. I mean, things are happening on the hush and at least giving the facade of business as usual I think, so I guess it tracks ok for now that nothing really feels different in the atmosphere of the town, but I had imagined getting to the royal capital to be a section that, at this point, had way more clear urgency to it than we’re getting. Like I said I LOVE a jrpg tournament so I don’t mind what we’re doing, but the stakes still don’t entirely feel real.

4 Likes
秘密

I don’t think we’ll get to do that. I predict that day two will be us vs. pirates and bracers vs. Spec Ops. Bracers are going to get fully rekt to up the stakes. Final day is us vs Spec Ops.

That guy who got three turns in a row was spoopy though.

Yeah I was a little disappointed. The fight against the hoodlums wasn’t really hard but still took longer than I expected given our lineup. I miss Tita’s mortar.

At this point we’ll get Estelle’s marriage proposal before we get his backstory. Really mad.

Yeah I don’t bother trying too hard with Olivier, it’s not like his dialogue is too important as long as he doesn’t reveal his true role in the story.

4 Likes

And we’re ready for another round of tournament.