Thirty-Eight
 
“Hit me!” The familiar command was a salve to Kon as he moved. Energy forced him to move, to act, to strike out. It was like an electric current buzzing in his muscles as he snapped out a punch fast enough that Alice had to throw herself backward in an uncharacteristic clumsy dodge. She cursed as she turned her awkward scramble into a smooth backflip, landing easily in a fighting stance.
Kon didn’t give her a moment to settle in. The power that filled him was too strong to be patient. It was like eating E-Grade meat for the first time all over again. It was almost too much energy and strength, it threatened to blow up if he didn’t act.
A spinning heel kick transitioned into a smooth leg sweep that finished as a flying haymaker. Three full rotations done in a second, the physics borderline impossible. Alice laughed as she jumped back, urging him on as he sped up.
Euphoria filled him as they dueled back and forth. Alice was always a step ahead, but Kon could feel himself closing in. Every strike was just that much closer to hitting than the last. He mirrored her smile as he let himself just enjoy the fight.
“Enough. Diur, grab a blade.” Alice said as she skipped back a few steps to let Kon come down from the fighting high.
“We only have the one?” Diur said. Her hands were wrapped protectively around the pommel of her grandfather’s sword.
“Two appropriate length branches. I’ll turn them into staves.” Alice waved at her and she disappeared into the forest to look for the branches. Alice waited a moment, watching as Diur ran.
“Alright. That was freaky. You shouldn’t be that fast. Like at all.” Alice said it all with a broad smile. The hint of uncertainty in her eyes was hard to see, just the gleaming edge of nervousness hiding behind her excitement.
“I thought that’s what body cultivation did?”
“It is. But this is extreme. I want you to got and get that holopad. We’re going to record everything.” Alice was bouncing in her excitement, checking into the forest to see if Diur was coming back.
“NO! Not that one. Two different sticks!” She yelled, seeing something that Kon couldn’t. He grumbled under his breath but went and got the holopad and opened up a notetaking section and handed it to her.
“Kon. I have one arm. Take the notes.” Kon stared at her and then the holopad in his hand. It would be a bit hard to type with only one hand and he didn’t see a voice function on the cheap piece of tech.
“What do I write?”
“Everything we’ve done. Starting from you using an E-Grade stone to channel a pure energy blast. I doubt that did anything, but you never know. I can’t wait for Leo to go over this!” It was the happiest Kon had ever seen the woman. Outside of fighting. And even then, it was close.
“Can you imagine! What if, instead of you being some weird freak of nature who’s somehow able to do all this, it’s replicable? If we found the sweet spot between humanities rune cultivation and classic cultivation. Or at least body cultivation. Don’t think we can do the whole gathering energy thing. But…maybe we can?” Alice had started pacing as she spoke but at the last sentence she paused and looked off to where Diur had run off to.
“Can we trust her?” Alice spoke so softly that Kon doubted he was supposed to hear it. She ran her finger over the head of the axe on her belt, thumb tracing the cruel edge.
“After this lesson, I want you to ask her more about regular cultivation. See if you can do it. And then, if you’re willing, I want to try to push you further into body cultivation before we build more nodes.”
“He needs to advance further anyways,” Diur’s voice rang out, startling both of the humans. Kon felt his heart lurch as the Ulmna woman stared down at them from a tree branch. How she had snuck up on Alice, Kon didn’t know. His own heightened senses couldn’t feel a thing.
“What do you mean?” Kon asked before Alice could decide what to say or do.
“You have started a process by imbuing your body directly with energy. You can’t stop till you reach the first threshold.”
“But, what if I do? If I decide I don’t like sweating black goop and throwing up constantly?” Kon asked, a bit of defiance and anger in his voice as he looked up at her.
“Your body will continue to try to devour itself as it seeks to find equilibrium. If your runes work the way I think they do, your body will constantly draw the energy away from them.”
“Oh. That’s not good,” Alice said, suddenly looking concerned. Kon hadn’t felt one way or another until Alice looked worried. It wasn’t a look he associated with the Knight. She leaned in and placed a finger out, a new partial rune coming to life, and whispered in his ear. The only sound that came through was her voice, everything else had been excluded with the activation of the rune.
“Our runes filter energy for us. It’s like a buffer. We fill our nodes and cores full of power and they allow us to do what we do. Using it directly is what cultivators do, but if your body is constantly drawing energy away from your nodes, you’ll never become a Knight. You’ll be too weak. Shit, you might not be able to leave planetside. There’s no rifts in space, no energy. Your body will devour itself.” Alice’s eyes met his and Kon sighed. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Alright. We find my equilibrium. How do we do that?”
“We ask Diur nicely?” Alice said. She dropped her finger and the rune disappeared, sound returning with its disappearance.
“Diur? Would you be willing to help me not devour myself?” Kon asked with the sweetest smile he could offer. Diur just stared at him blankly a moment before speaking.
“It was implied. I don’t know as much about body cultivation, but I do know an energy neutral form my clan often offers as a stepping stone. The treasure you consumed was similar enough that it shouldn’t be a problem for this path.”
“Energy neutral?” Kon asked.
“As you start dealing with higher grades of rifts, the energy can take on aspects of the rift. It’s not a problem until you get to the peak of D-Grade. Energy is to diffuse before that. I guess body cultivation is different.” Alice answered. Diur nodded her head in agreement.
“Treasures are needed to proceed with body cultivation rather than ambient energy. It’s why you have to worry about aspects. You can’t consume a treasure that has a light aspect while also consuming a treasure with a metal aspect. It’d be…not good,” Diur trailed off as she realized Kon had started to blanch.
“This is getting really complicated.”
“But the water we drank. It was neutral? I don’t have to worry about having a not good reaction?”
“The water we drank had slight aspects, but they were weak. Most treasures won’t have gained an aspect at this low of grade. For a neutral body we just need a few base treasures to build on what you’ve started.”
“A few more E-Grade tre…” Kon was cut off by the glares of both women.
“Okay. F-Grade treasures then.” Both of them shook their heads and gave each other a look that spoke volumes.
“You’ll start training with Diur with a sword when we can afford to. Right now we have plenty of room to be loud. The packmaster is out of my range and so is the beast. We should be fine for right now.” Alice didn’t sound as sure of herself as Kon wanted her to be.
“Have you any training with a sword?” Diur asked as Alice took the thick branches she had brought from the forest and started roughly trimming them down with her axe.
“Uhhh…no.”
“Why would I have trained with a sword when we have laser weapons?” He kept that thought to himself as Diur nodded and accepted a stave from Alice. She flicked her wrist as she started to test the staves balance. Finding it acceptable, she handed it to Kon.
“My clan has a long and storied history of swordmasters. I was on that path myself before this happened. This is not the brawling you do with Alice. Precision, discipline, and thought are your allies here.” Alice grumbled off to the side about that statement, but didn’t interrupt Diur.
For the next three hours Diur told him in a thousand and one ways how he was wrong. From how he held the stave to how he was breathing. Everything was wrong. She corrected him constantly, her voice sharp but not disparaging.
“I prefer brawling with Alice.” He kept that thought to himself too.
“As you advance as a Knight, you’ll encounter more and more cultivators. They’ll be the only ones who can really stand up to you. They use martial weapons like these. So, wipe that expression off your face and learn from a talented instructor!” Alice yelled the last part as she watched them. He had let a bit too much of his inner thoughts leak out onto his face.
Even with his new advanced physiology, he couldn’t train for this long and at this level of intensity for long. At the end of the three hours he was a quivering mess of sore muscle.
“How is staying in one position so hard?” he asked as he stared up at the black clouds. The familiar burn of his muscle repair node activating was a distant observation. By the time he woke up tomorrow there’d be no trace of the trauma of today’s training. It would just encourage the pair of sadists to go harder.
“Alice? Would you like a spar?” Diur held out Kon’s former stave and the Knight stared at it a moment before smiling and taking it. Kon shoved himself back and away from the duo as they slowly circled it each other. Diur held the stave in both hands, blade positioned in the center of her body. Alice didn’t bother with a guard, turning her body sideways to protect the missing arm and letting the stave point at the ground.
Then they moved and Kon struggled to keep up with them. The hammer blows rang out across the small clearing they had found, metal wood splintering under the fury of the fight. Diur was graceful, fast, and precise. Alice was fury trapped in human form.
The older woman was holding back, not exerting her full strength, but trying to rely on her own skill. It was a losing proposition as Diur drove her back, with a flurry of attacks. Kon’s breath caught in his chest as he watched them.
Alice’s fight with the Lupine on the Dragon’s Maw had been fast and brutal, so quick that he couldn’t really comprehend it. This was the first time he had the sensory ability to actually watch her fight and not just be a violet blur.
Both of the women’s aura began to spill out as they ramped up the fight. Kon watched as Diur’s aura flowed into the stave itself while a small rune appeared over Alice’s. Both of the wooden staves should have exploded by now, but whatever they were doing, it was keeping them from becoming splinters.
The bout ended suddenly as Diur lunged, dropping under Alice’s thrust, and spearing the older woman in the sternum. Alice grunted in annoyance but nodded her head in acceptance. They backed up and reset then attacked each other again, this time with Alice being the aggressor. It ended the same way. With Alice’s more advanced levels of cultivation toned down, she couldn’t keep up the Diur.
“Wow. That was crazy,” Kon said as they finished their bout. Alice had a wide smile stretched across her sweaty face as she bowed.
“Wait till she hits D-Grade and that aura she’s putting into the sword can start splitting apart regular steel like it’s paper.” Diur laughed at Kon’s expression when he heard that.
“I can already do it in quick bursts. You saw that at the rift we ran together. But, Alice is right. Once I break through to D-Grade it will be as easy as breathing.” Diur settled next to him while Alice ran off to go and find them dinner.
“I heard what you two were talking about. Regular cultivation, to see if it’s possible for you. I’m willing to try.” Diur spoke as she stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with him.
“Thank you.”