Thirty-Two
 
A foot nudged Kon awake and he looked up to see that the rain had finally stopped its pelting onslaught. He had grown so used to its stinging presence that he could now sleep through the discomfort. Diur looked fresh as ever as she stretched next to him and Alice stood above them, the exhaustion having disappeared. She did happen to look a bit contrite.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this look on her face before. I wish I could take a picture.” Alice hooked her thumb in her belt next to her axe and swallowed loudly as she stared at them for a few seconds.
“I fucked up and I’m sorry. I’ll be better.” That was all she said. She turned and leapt off the tree they had fallen asleep on to land silently on the ground. Her back was stiff, legs straight and there was a hint of a blush on the back of her neck.
“Think that’s as best as we’re going to get,” Kon whispered to Diur who nodded.
“Better than what our masters or elders would say. They’d just ask what was learned and then tell you it all went according to plan.”
“Sounds ass.”
“What?” Diur looked at him confused, finger touching the translator embedded behind her own ear.
“Human saying. It’s a poor position to be in with little to be positive about.” Kon heard a snort beneath them as Alice did her daily stretches, facing away from them.
“Oh. I was wondering. My translator isn’t the greatest. It has just the main language used by common species.”
“Enough. Come down here and hit me,” Alice commanded. She snapped her neck side to side and Kon could hear the popping as she loosened up.
“Wait. We do this together,” Kon said, grabbing Diur’s shoulder before she could leap down. She glanced down at his hand and Kon rapidly released her.
“We will have to try to pin her to a corner and then overwhelm her that way. She’s too fast if we let her have open ground,” Diur mused.
“She can hear you. Just get down here and hit me. This isn’t a tactics class,” Alice groused but she had a hint of approval in her eyes. Just the lightest curve around her mouth and eyes. Without his new node Kon doubted he would have noticed. Even without rift energy coursing through him he could see a lot more than he used to.
“Got it. I go left, you go right,” Kon said as he started down the trunk of the tree. Diur just jumped straight off and landed in a fighting stance. Alice didn’t give her a moment to wait though. She attacked.
Alice slowed her attacks to the limit of what Diur could block, and then increased it ever so slightly. The young cultivator was thrown back as an open palm strike hit her solar plexus and sent her flailing backward.
“This is what happens when you cheat and try to be fancy. Just hit me,” Alice demanded as Kon turned around. He had already caught glimpses of the fast movements as he scaled down, but he could hear Diur groaning as she got up.
“You just hate losing!” Kon shouted at her before throwing himself at her. She sidestepped a jab and ducked under a roundhouse kick. Kon then saw the canopy. The move had come so fast he hadn’t recognized it.
She’d swept his supporting leg out from under him as he went up for that roundhouse. The breath had left him as he smacked into the soft, wet, earth and he struggled against his heightened senses, but was able to overcome them after a moment. He struggled to his feet to watch as Diur was sent flying backward when she overextended.
“From now on I’ll be pointing out your flaws,” Alice said with a wide grin. She wiped her thumb across her upper lip and winked at him. Kon grimaced. He had landed a punch, but he had a feeling he shouldn’t have.
An hour later he was sore, groaning, and certain that he shouldn’t have called out Alice for having a mustache. Diur was hardly in better shape even with her greater martial training. Alice had made it seem simple to reach in and through her defenses to slap her around. None of the blows had been that painful, more forceful pushes or shoves than strikes.
“You guys suck,” Alice said as she sipped from her cantine. Now that she struck back instead of relying only on dodging it seemed easier for her. There was no sweat at her hairline nor was she breathing hard.
“You’re my trainer. If I suck, it’s on you,” Kon said as he caught his breath. His recovery was faster now than it had been and he could feel the strength in his limbs as he worked out. The transformation was incredible, the power of the runes he had absorbed helping him grow in ways he couldn’t fully comprehend.
“Ohhh…I guess that’s true. Going to have to make sure to fix that,” Alice said evilly and Kon wanted to bury his head through a tree trunk. If he could keep his mouth shut for a few minutes he’d be better off.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Mom and Dad always said I had a big mouth.” The thought was little comfort as Alice gathered their gear and distributed it around. She poked through the packs they had stolen and smiled happily as she pulled out a holo pad. It was a basic unit with no communication suite. It should have a library of shows, books, and music on it that the previous owner would have stored.
She fiddled around with it for a minute as it booted up and did a little dance when she saw there was no security lock to it. She started to browse it as Kon and Diur pulled their packs on and got ready to move.
“Man, this guy had terrible taste in music. Has a nice etch function though. Never was much of an artist,” Alice complained, but she didn’t give the pad back. Kon tucked the laser rifle to his shoulder and Alice finally spoke.
“Glad you found something like that. You won’t be clearing rifts with it though. Use it only for self-defense.”
“What? Why?” Kon asked, perplexed that she wouldn’t allow him to use the most common weapon in the galaxy.
“We have a limited time together and any idiot can teach you to use a laser rifle. I’ll show you how to clean and properly maintain it. But our training will be in my specialization.”
“Which is killing things close enough that their blood drenches you?” Kon asked.
“I’m glad you realized it!” Alice said with a wide smile. She looked around for a minute and then bent down and pulled something up. It was a fist sized rock.
“Do you wanna go back to using a rock? Or would you like to use a spear again?” Alice smiled sweetly.
“You really need to stop needling her. It’s not working out for you,” Diur whispered to him and Kon could only nod in agreement. Alice tossed the rock to the side and looked about for a moment.
“Diur, how good is your energy sense?” Alice asked.
“Fine. The elders said I was acceptable but not exceptional.”
“Head due East for five kilometers. Straight as an arrow, don’t divert. Then cut Northwest another two kilometers. I should catch you by then.”
“Where are you off to?” Kon asked without thinking.
“Got to go get our loot bag. You should be skirting around a pair of F-Grade rifts as you go through and then diverting to avoid an E-Grade rift. Don’t engaged. We need to be silent as we put more space between us and the wolf.”
“Did he manage to kill the peak D-Grade?” Diur asked.
“No. I can feel the D-Grade, but it’s far away and not as powerful as it had been earlier. Or at least its presence isn’t as loud. The wolf is good at suppressing his aura. Can’t feel him at all.”
“The monster could have killed him?” Kon offered. The two girls looked at him like he’d just said the dumbest thing in the world.
“Faint, faint, faint, possibility. It’s not our luck that the perpetrator of our ambush is killed by a random beast. No, he’s out there. His pack is running thin though,” Alice said and this time there was plenty of violent glee in her voice.
“Get a move on. I’ll catch up in an hour or so,” Alice said before she disappeared. Kon could see her move now, but even with the enhanced senses, she was no more than a blur as she ran.
“She seems better now,” Kon remarked. He had waited till he knew for sure that Alice was a distance away before speaking.
“She’s rested. A good night’s sleep is a cure for many ailments. Still, those mistakes will haunt her. She’s a professional and those errors are the type she’ll obsess over.”
“How do you know?”
“You see it often enough amongst the more martial of my clan. Those who volunteer to serve the Confederacy in a martial capacity. They make mistakes, but they don’t make the same one twice.” Kon mulled that one over as they started Eastward like Alice had told them. Diur took the lead and Kon followed in her footsteps.
She set a brisk walking pace, nothing at all like Alice’s. Neither spoke as they walked, keeping their eyes peeled and senses alert as they walked through the trees. There was plenty to be nervous of here, even with Alice’s assurances.
“Stop shifting around. Observe the world and let its nature fill your mind. Release your doubts and troubles,” Diur whispered to him within twenty minutes. Kon stopped all the slight motions he had been making subconsciously. The straps to the bag had seemed too tights, his leathers chafed badly, even his boots had seemed wrong.
“Observe the world. What does that even mean? Its trees. Sure they’re coated in metal, but, trees.” Kon’s thoughts fought him for another ten minutes before he could relax enough to just observe and acknowledge the foreign planet he was on.
The air was thick with humidity and as he focused on the weight of it, he eventually felt something else there. A weight that wasn’t in the physical world, a strain on his body so light he hadn’t noticed. The metal trees glistened, beads of moisture trickling down their length, rust forming on some of them while others stood unblemished. Old leaves crumbled under his feet, the metal soft and flaking away like paint chips as he trod on them.
Kon took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the heavy air. His processing node in his gut activated for a fraction of a second. If he hadn’t been paying attention to how the air felt as it traveled into his lungs he wouldn’t have noticed it.
“Okay, I get it now,” Kon said to Diur. She sighed and shook her head. She laughed under her breath, a single, sharp, sigh of amusement.
“I really should have known better. Thirty minutes of silence was nice,” Diur said
soft enough that Kon hardly heard the words. He rolled his eyes but shut up and continued to observe the world all around him.
Lost in his observations he hardly noticed it at first. It was subtle. A thickening of the air. A heavier weight on his body and in his lungs with every breath. A light crackle of electricity over his skin.
“Diur?” he whispered. She had stopped in her tracks and was looking around herself.
“Silence. We strayed and entered an E-Grade’s territory. Back up slowly and keep your eyes alert.” Kon spun slowly and froze. Yellow snake eyes stared back at him.