Five
Kon woke with a start as he jackknifed upward, ignoring the strain of the movement. His eyes swept the dark confines, finding nothing of note, before looking over to where Alice sat. The woman was hunched over by the corner of the cave she had found and had deepened with a few blows of her axe and a bit of digging.
Without the violet aura around her, she looked shrunken. Raw red skin had grown over the stump at her shoulder and even as he watched he felt like he could see skin crawling around the wound. Alice had made multiple mentions about regrowing her arm, but Kon had thought that would be back on a ship, not out here in the wild.
Alice turned to look at him and jerked her head to bring him closer before turning to look out toward the jungle again. It had been a rude awakening to realize that they had been near the edge of the jungle, or at least a less dense part of it. As they had followed the tracks that the pack of monsters had laid down, the woods and growth had only grown thicker.
Where there had primarily only been trees when he had searched for Alice, now there were thick vines, underbrush that ripped at his skin, and the continuous screams of animals echoing out. The last kilometer had been a nightmare that had left his legs torn and bleeding before they had found the small cave and taken refuge.
Kon walked toward Alice, keeping his head tucked down to not scrape on the ceiling, and looked out toward the hostile jungle. The incessant rain had stopped for the moment, but the thick clouds were visible even through the canopy. Violent lighting still flashed and illuminated the heavens and the constant rumble of thunder was a poor facsimile to a ship’s engines.
“Sit down,” Alice said, kicking a foot toward a patch of ground not far from her. Kon looked at the woman and realized without the coating of blood on her, she looked young and tired. Emphasis on the tired. He folded his legs and sat down while Alice leaned back and continued to stare out into the brush.
“How much do you understand about cultivation,” Alice said.
“It’s a way of channeling rift energy into our body and enhancing ourselves,” Kon said instantly. It was the rote answer that was taught in education sims.
“That’s a terrible answer, but technically correct. If not for the fact it makes something as vast as cultivation reduced to nothing more than how one can enhance themselves,” Alice said. She sighed and the bags under her eyes seemed to deepen.
“Rift energy is present everywhere there is life. I’ll let you ponder on that and the link between rifts and life, not my cup of tea. Rifts release monstrous amounts of energy and said energy can be harnessed through cultivation. Again, cultivation is just what we call the processing of energy through a set of metaphysical, personal means, to show enhance abilities. Again, basic as shit,” Alice never looked at him, the words came as if she had memorized them years ago and was bored.
“When rifts first found our old homeworld, nobody knew how to cultivate. Over the years as we battled to close them and hold on to our world, we learned how to. Kinda. When we finally connected with the rest of the galaxy we found out that we do it weird, but it’s what makes our Knights so dangerous. You saw my battle with the enemy cultivator, right?”
“Kinda hard to miss. You lost an arm.” Kon used his chin to point toward the stump while Alice snorted.
“Not the first time I’ve lost a limb. It’s why our brand of cultivation is so strange. We combined it with something even more esoteric that the rest of the galaxy doesn’t. It’s one of our most closely guarded secrets. How we can produce so many powerful warriors even without having a world to harvest rift energy. Runes.”
“Runes?” Kon asked.
“Yeah, runes. Rifts have a habit of connecting to old places, places that they have already consumed. Each rift is a pocket of a world thats already fallen to the rifts. Slices of them. Don’t know if they’re the actual planet or just copies of it, doesn’t really matter I suppose. In one of the rifts we found a planet that had an advanced civilization. Buildings anyways. Most of the rifts are just like jungle and shit.” Alice waved her hand out at the current jungle they were in.
“The first Knight are the ones who found that rift. Instead of clearing and destroying it like it had been the M.O, they decided to explore. Scientists, soldiers, politicians, businessmen, everyone wanted in on the fallen society. It was a big rift too, probably a low C-grade. Carved into the buildings were these runes and the rift energy reacted strangely to them. So they copied them down and started studying them.”This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“That’s a reach. To look at some carved signs and decide to study them?” Kon said, more to himself than to Alice, but she responded anyways.
“They were desperate. Their weapons couldn’t keep the rifts back and the homeworld was so densely populated they were attracting C-grade rifts constantly and from what I know, up to B-grade. Continent ending threats. They would do anything to stop it. So they studied the weird runes that had been carved onto buildings.”
“And those are the runes we use?”
“They were pieces of the runes we currently use. Even that old ass fallen society couldn’t figure it out, but they touched a piece of it. After the fall of Earth, we fled and found the rest of the galaxy and over the years we explored rifts pretty thoroughly and we collected all that data and sent it back to the World-ships. They’re the ones who finally cracked it and started us on our current path.” Alice sighed and grabbed the canteen and took a swallow before continuing.
“You’ll find this all out when you become a squire. Or maybe it's during your apprenticeship, can never remember right. Anyways, the original Knight channeled rift energy through themselves, from beast cores, and used the runes to transform said energy into something physical. We can still do that, but much more effectively with our current model. This was a pretty big deal and all the galaxy started to call us wizards. Or heretics. Kinda both actually.”
Alice lifted her hand and channeled her energy, the violet fire rolled down her arm and she traced a finger in the air to form a trio of harsh lines connected to a circle in the middle. When the fire faded from her body the rune kept burning in the air for a second before it died away and disappeared.
“That is the rune for light. So our predecessors, who called themselves mages for some reason, I think it had to do with video games?” Alice got sidetracked as she slowly blinked and stifled a yawn.
“Yeah, so, they like channeled their energy through the runes and did all sorts of shit. Then we met true cultivators, like that wolf guy I crushed. Literally,” Alice chuckled darkly at that and reached a finger to run over her axe. Kon began to think that the Knight Commander might be a bit disturbed.
“I’m tired, Kon. I need to sleep, even if only for a few hours. Regrowing limbs is draining. We met cultivators and we combined it. How they drew the rift energy in to enhance themselves and our runes. It's the basis of the Knightly orders and the chapterhouses. We travel and try to find rifts that have that old world or even other worlds that have discovered runes, and try to find more. Chapterhouses build themselves and their strength over how many full runes they can find.”
“Full runes?” Kon asked.
“I’m not a scholar about this, Kon. I punch shit really hard and keep punching till they’re dead. So, this might not be fully accurate. The rune I showed you only encompasses a piece of the word that is light. The rune I have on my core is for regrowth, but it's much, much more than just the rune used to regrow stuff. Where the light rune has three lines on a circle, my full rune is several hundred of them.”
“Core?”
“Do they teach you anything in school?”
“Not really. I can do push-ups really well and solve for X,” Kon said with a shrug.
“I don’t have time to explain. We built an elaborate system that constantly funnels energy through our runes to empower or Knights. I was trying to give you background so it all makes sense to you, but I’m too tired to do it right. Nodes are the first step to it. This is what we’re going to work on right now. We establish a few nodes and you’ll see a big difference in how you can fight and move. Then we can worry about your first core.”
“How do I develop a node?”
“Energy. Lots and lots of energy and meditation. We can’t start yet, I have to show you how to do the meditation and energy channeling, but when I wake up we’ll start.”
“What am I supposed to do while you’re sleeping then?”
“Make sure I don’t get eaten. If anything comes running at us, scream for me like a child and I’ll kill it. Otherwise stay quiet and let me sleep.” Alice got up and left her axe buried in the cave’s floor as she went and flopped down on the ground. A snore rattled out of her open mouth only moments later and Kon felt a bit of admiration on how fast she could fall asleep.
“She just dumped a ton of information on me and then went to sleep. I’m sure she wanted me to think about it while she’s resting.”
It was interesting to hear about old Earth. How the ancestors had faced the end and had not bowed their heads and accepted defeat, but rose up to struggle against the calamity that had seized innumerable worlds and had created a system that no one else in the galaxy had. Or at least talked about.
The odds that nobody in the galaxy had figured this out or that a human traitor hadn’t sold their secrets were so astronomically small that it was laughable. Yet, nobody had copied their methods, or at least fielded warriors comparable to the Knights in any type of number.
“I wonder what type of rune I’ll have? Do I get to pick it or do I have to do a path of discovery or something?”
Idle thoughts continued to worm their way through his head as Kon sat on the floor of the cave and looked out into the jungle. There was movement everywhere, their cave being only slightly elevated and removed from the jungle floor. If more of the beasts charged at him he wouldn’t really have time to do anything but scream.
“She said it required energy and that the ancestors used beast cores. Does that mean we have to go and hunt more of those monsters? I don’t remember anyone saying they had to do something like that back on the ship.” Kon suddenly felt dread as he looked down on the jungle. Alice’s bloodsoaked face with her wide smile and booming laughter filled his mind and he knew instantly that she would send him out into that jungle to hunt.
The memory of the power that he had harnessed in the monster core came back to him and a hunger awoke in his gut. If he had to risk life and limb to feel like that again, to feel strong and powerful, he would do it. He risked a glance back at Alice.
“I’ll try not to be as crazy as she is though. I don’t think people should laugh about regrowing limbs.”